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Chapter 27

Kennedy Carter

Watcha Cove, June 2015

Kennedy was back in her Watcha Cove bedroom, pacing back and forth while the interview that she’d done with her mother in New York uploaded to her external hard drive. She’d made the quick trip from seeing Asher in Cambridge over to Watcha Cove. It wasn’t staffed right now, but she only needed a few days. She would leave the coverings on the furniture, even. She stopped walking to stare out the window at the waning moon. She sighed out loud, frustrated with her lack of progress on completing her mission. Her mother, she knew, would not be the person to ask about Kofi. Her parents had met well after college at a fundraiser, as her mother had just asserted on camera.

Kennedy walked over and checked the progress: 43 percent. She pulled out her notebook to review the dates that she had written down and anything that was confirmed by anyone already interviewed for her project. So far Kennedy knew this: her father had a college roommate who died by suicide. He had never spoken about it or mentioned it ever, and that could be because the death traumatized him. The other strange part was that his corporation had been paying millions of dollars over the last few decades to a woman whose last known occupation was “housekeeper.” She had never heard of or met Gifty Obeng before either. When she paid a service to verify Gifty’s identity, she found that Gifty had been working as a housekeeper and property manager at the hotel owned by Kofi’s family. Earlier in the spring, when she had finally tracked Gifty down and spoken with her, her daughter intervened and mentioned an NDA. Her last advice was to “find Kofi.” She had found Kofi, but that was no help since he was dead. Curiously, years after Kofi’s death, Gifty began her tenure at the Carter Corporation. Kennedy called Tashia, who wasn’t arriving at the Vineyard until next week for the party but was happy to mull over facts on the phone.

“So you’re saying you think this is all related?” Tashia asked.

“I know it sounds like a detective movie, but you have to admit that’s pretty weird,” Kennedy said.

“Well ... did you talk to anyone else about it?” Tashia asked, trying to appeal to Kennedy’s logic.

“I mean, I tried my brother; he was no help. I don’t think I can ask my mom. She only talks about herself, and I can’t ask my dad without blowing the whole surprise open, so I’m on my own, I guess,” she said, sliding from her bed to her floor.

She looked around her room at Watcha Cove. It was a museum of “good taste,” which meant that she often had to struggle to get comfortable, like she was doing now.

“Ken, I don’t want this to sound insensitive, but have you considered that maybe none of this matters for the tribute video?” Tashia asked gently.

Kennedy had considered this. The project that she wanted to make was almost complete, but making art that was ultimately dishonest felt wrong. She had wanted to tell an epic, emotional, and hulking story of her father’s life, which could not be done without talking about the Carter Corporation. He had long ago merged his professional life with his personal life, and they were now a unified entity, forever inosculated. Now, even with every single person checked off the preapproved list of interview subjects, she was feeling like the piece fell short. It was a surface video, promotional and shallow, and she hated watching it. She knew that there was more to this than what she had, but she just didn’t know how to put everything together.

“Let’s change the subject,” Kennedy offered, tired of thinking about the same thing she had been thinking about for weeks now. “How are you?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Tashia said. “I’m seeing a new guy. I mean, it’s only been like two months or whatever, but so far so good. I mean, you know how it is. I wasn’t sure if it was just a situationship, but it feels like maybe it’s something good. I’ve been holding my breath hoping that it didn’t implode, but now it’s like we are together like all of the time. I met him in a coffee shop, totally randomly, but he went to Princeton, so he had such an interesting perspective on my photo project. And he’s sweet and funny, and I think it’s going well. He’s actually here now.” Kennedy could hear the levity in her friend’s voice, and she lit up too.

“Oh my God!” Kennedy exclaimed. “I can’t believe I have been rambling on about nothing when you have a real-life update to share. That’s amazing, Tashia. I’m really happy for you. I can’t wait to meet him.” Kennedy smiled. It was good that her friend was finding some happiness. She deserved it. She didn’t want to bring the mood down by insisting that they continue to hash out the sketchy details of her father’s past. “Tell me everything,” Kennedy said.

As Tashia revealed more details about her new boyfriend, Kennedy laughed to herself when Tashia said that she, at first, thought this guy “might be a weirdo.”

“Of course you did,” Kennedy replied, knowing that because Tashia was a naturally skeptical person and had an innate distrust of men overall, this would be the case. Back in high school, when Kennedy had fallen for Ollie, Tashia repeatedly told her that he wasn’t worth all the trouble that he was making. In the end, she was right, of course, but Kennedy had to learn that the hard way, the very hard way. Kennedy remembered thinking, Tashia was right; he deserted me , as she sat crying on a conference call with both her parents and their legal counsel. The room had fallen deathly silent. Even Kennedy’s audible cries had ceased. Kennedy remembered that she could hear her own heartbeat thumping in her ears. She saw herself, totally out of her own body, sitting at a long glass table. Kennedy was limp, her tears silently falling, the only sound escaping was her uneven breaths. Jacqueline and William looked at their daughter in disbelief.

Kennedy never spoke to Ollie again. She was sure that he was enjoying his life at Brown, also not thinking about her. She felt triply betrayed, and it was significant because she understood then that she was utterly alone.

Forty minutes later, when Tashia and Kennedy had wrapped up their phone call, Kennedy wandered downstairs at the Vineyard house and found herself in her father’s office. It was late afternoon, and the light was flooding through the paned windows and bathing the room in an atmosphere that she could only describe as abundant. She figured that now was as good a time as any to do the snooping that she came to Watcha Cove to do. When she was younger, all the offices in all the homes were considered to be off-limits, but she’d been sneaking into her father’s offices for years now.

In the center of the room sat a large antique executive desk with drawers on each side. Some of them were locked and some weren’t, but she knew where the keys were stored. Her parents seemed to believe that neither she nor Asher would ever violate their rules, like circus animals who’d been trained to only do one thing and kept doing it long after their retirement. For her, at this point, she had to get some answers, so she turned to the built-ins, located the trick book where her father kept his desk keys, and removed a heavy Cartier key ring. She briefly held up the weighty object and wondered how much it cost. It wasn’t even gold. It was plated. She tried each key in each of the drawers, and when she had all of them opened, she began to comb through their contents.

The first thing Kennedy found in a folder were plans for an underground nuclear bunker. She put those aside. Next, she found various invoices for the Watcha Cove property. She found security clearance forms for friends who’d stayed at the house when they were not there, lists of important numbers and local services. She also found some Carter Corporation documents that she couldn’t make sense of. Some of them looked like quarterly earnings and projections, but some of them were also org charts and invoices, all outdated. She gripped the bridge of her nose, not knowing what she was looking for exactly. As she returned the files to their respective drawers, she hit something with a folder. Upon closer inspection, she discovered that it was another key, this one taped to the inside of the drawer.

She held up the key and examined it. Now that she had a new key, she had to find what it kept. Her eyes scanned the office. This felt like a sinister scavenger hunt, trying to guess where her father would hide something that he clearly did not want another person to see. She walked the perimeter of the office, checking carefully for any potential hiding spots. As expected, everything was neat, orderly, and organized. Kennedy opened the only closet in the office and noticed a plain gray box on a shelf. She stood on her tiptoes to pull down the box and saw that it was fastened with a tiny gold lock. When she tried the key in the lock, it fit flush, and when she turned it to the right and heard a satisfying click, her heart began racing.

Inside the box, she found a handwritten note with several passwords. She assumed these number combinations corresponded to accounts that she was not interested in accessing, although she was surprised to see such a flimsy method used for their safekeeping. Watcha Cove was guarded twenty-four seven, as were all the Carter properties, but any person could have done what she did this afternoon and found this. She moved those papers aside and found herself holding a medium-size brown leather journal. Inside it was embossed on the bottom with faded lettering. She traced the letters K O F I. Kennedy dropped the book out of shock. She went to pick it up again and read it cover to cover over the next twenty minutes. Kofi’s thoughts and musings came pouring out all over the pages, even as she felt guilty reading the private thoughts of someone who was dead.

When she got to the last entry, it read: I do not feel right about working with these men. I know that we need money for funding, but money cannot be the only thing that dictates this decision. We have to think about legacy and what we are leaving behind. Future generations will inherit the consequences of this decision. I am going to speak about this with William tonight.

Kennedy frowned at that, her skin bunching together between her brows. The Crimson article detailing Kofi’s suicide flashed in her mind. Perhaps his reservations about founding what became the Carter Corporation caused him to jump to his death. This entry didn’t seem like the ramblings of someone on the brink of taking their own life, but what did Kennedy know? An uneasy feeling swept over her as she moved the journal aside. The last things in the box were some plans that she didn’t know what to make of either. She took a photo of the pages that she wanted and carefully stacked everything back in the box the way that she’d found it.

Then she texted Tashia to call her back right away.