Page 6 of The Fighter
“Cause of death said suicide, but what if it wasn’t? What if her husband killed her?”
Mila jerked back her head. “Why would he kill her? He fought for her. She was his bride.”
“I don’t know. Maybe she refused to have sex with him and he got furious.”
“Yeah, but Raven, if he was mad that she wouldn’t have sex with him it wouldn’t make sense to kill her. You would think that he’d force her instead.”
I wiggled my finger in front of my face. “Maybe he did force her. Maybe that’s why she ran up to the attic and when he came for her, she had nowhere to go but out the window.”
“So, you think she really did kill herself?”
“Maybe she didn’t intend to. Maybe she thought she could crawl to safety and get away from her abusive husband.”
“You don’t know that he was abusive.”
“True, but don’t you find it suspicious that she died only a week after marrying him?”
Mila pushed up from the bed. “Yes. And, so does Magni. He told me that he would like to know what happened to his sister, but it’s been decades and the husband died right after she did.”
“What do you mean?”
“According to Magni, his father Marcus went to investigate and he ruled it suicide, but still the husband was found dead a few days after her.”
“Aha!” I joined Mila by the door. “That has to be proof of foul play. Two young people don’t just die.”
Making sure to turn off the lights in the room before we exited, Mila agreed, “No, they don’t. So, what do you think happened?”
I straightened up. “I’m so glad you asked that question. Since the husband is dead it has to be one of three scenarios. Either it was murder-suicide, murder-murder, or suicide-murder.”
Mila raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”
“It would be murder-suicide if the husband killed Dina and then committed suicide out of guilt. But if the husband murdered Dina and Marcus then murdered him, it would be murder-murder, right?” I paused only long enough to suck in air. “But there’s also the possibility that Dina committed suicide and that her father blamed her husband and killed him for it. That would make it suicide-murder.”
Mila was walking at a slow pace when she tilted her head to one side. “Hmm, yeah, but I guess we’ll never know.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m going to investigate, Mila. Don’t you think Dina deserves for the world to know the truth about her death?”
“To be honest, I don’t think most people remember that she lived.”
With a hand on Mila’s arm, I stopped her. “We know she lived and now I want to know how she died.”
For a moment she watched me as if waiting for me to break into one of my signature laughs, but I was serious.
“Okay. And how are you going to investigate her death more than thirty years later?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done anything like it, but my logic tells me to follow any clue I can find.”
“All right, and were there any clues in the file?”
“No.”
Mila walked on. “It sounds like it’ll be a short investigation then.”
“We can’t give up this easily. There are people in your family who knew Dina. One of them must have information about her death.”
“I told you everything that my father told me. I don’t know anymore.”
“Okay, but Khan, Magni, and Erika would know more.”
