Jewel's Life

25

Adam pulls out his phone and dials Arthur's number, waiting for him to pick up he sits back in his chair and closes his eyes. "Arthur, how is Michelle doing?"

Adam listens for a bit. "Can you ask her if she's up to visiting with a couple of detectives? They found Judy's body and they have some questions. Since Julie can't answer them they are hoping that Michelle can. She was closer to Judy than Julie was anyway." Adam listens for a bit then hangs up.

"Michelle will be down shortly, she needs to get dressed first so it might take a few minutes. While we're waiting why don't you get your questions for me out of the way?" Adam says tiredly, he hadn't slept much in the last forty-eight hours and he is getting to the end of his endurance.

"How long has Miss Santos been missing?" Michaelson asks getting straight to the point. Adam has a great weight on him and he doesn't need this to add to his burden.

"I'm not sure, I more or less lost track of time. About a week before my kids' birthday. That was about two weeks ago I'd say. But I'm not sure. The irritation of that bitch takes second place to my children."

"That's right you have children, how many again?"

Adam looks at them directly, "I have twenty of them. Yes, they are all Julie's. Because she was pregnant with so many in the second pregnancy they came early, very early, we almost lost three."

"The birthday was for the children of the first pregnancy or those from the second?" Addison can't help asking. He can't help it. It's hard to believe that Mrs. Julie Demarco had twenty children and still has the figure she has.

"The second, does this have to do with the death of Miss Santos?" Adam finally snaps.

"No, sorry sir, just some background."

"We had seven children the first pregnancy and thirteen the second. The first had their birthday a few months ago. The second pregnancy children just had theirs two weeks ago, like I said. Now she's pregnant again and we're not sure that she or the children will live. Any more questions regarding my children?"

"No, sir." Chastened Addison let Michaelson take over the interview and kept his eyes down in embarrassment.

"Mrs. Demarco is several years younger than you, how did you meet?"

"Are we doing an interview for a magazine or something? I met Julie at a party her friends Michelle and Judy dragged her to. They were drunk out of their minds and Julie was their designated driver. I tried to start a conversation with her and she told me to bugger off. People don't usually tell me to bugger off so she got me interested.

"The next day I found out where she lived and also that her parents abused the shit out of her. Her parents kicked her out of the house before I could offer her a place to stay."

"Why didn't she go to the police about the abuse?"

"Her parents were criminals and had 'friends' on the police force. It wasn't an issue two months later, she turned eighteen. Also her parents gave her a birthday gift, the first one ever when they conveniently lost control of their car and went over a cliff. Julie had no idea her parents had money or vacation homes until the lawyers came to visit and informed her the day after her birthday. They had made her work and buy her own food after taking two thirds of her pay for rent."

"They sound like lovely people," Addison says under his breath. Adam couldn't agree more with the sarcastic comment.

"I had asked Julie to marry me at her birthday/graduation party. She said yes and we were married a short time later. The children came a few months after that."

"How did Miss Santos nearly cause the miscarriage?"

"Part of the deal with Julie living here was that she'd be our girlfriend. By our I mean myself and my brothers. That stopped after we were married of course, but until then she was dating us all. Judy targeted my brother and intentionally slept with him because she wanted to hurt Julie for whatever twisted reason her mind came up with."

"Up until that time Julie had been a protector and defender of Judy. Judy was jealous of Julie, thought Julie was spoiled. She never knew about the whippings and beatings Julie received on a near daily basis. Julie never trusted Judy enough to share that. She never knew that Julie gave most of her money to her parents for rent. She never knew that Julie hardly ate anything because the money she had left went towards a car and saving to get the hell out of that house. 

"Julie protected Judy from the bullies at school. Since she protected most of the kids at school at one time or another the kids respected Julie even when they despised Judy.

"After Julie started dating the Demarco boys, Judy became more jealous than ever before. She found excuses and reasons to come here and look over the various Demarcos looking for which one she wanted to take from Julie. She saw Alex and targeted him." Michelle took over the narrative coming into the room.

She shakes hands with the detectives then takes a seat across from them. Like usual Adam is in his throne. She has no doubt that the detectives are more than a little intimidated by Adam. She still is and she's been here nearly as long as Julie.

Adam picks up the narrative. "The shock of the betrayals was enough that Julie almost lost the babies. It was unknown for almost a week if she would keep them or not. She finally rallied, like we're hoping she'll do this time, and was able to keep all the babies."

"How many children is she carrying this time?" At the temerity of the detectives question Adam raises his eyebrow.

"Only six this time."

"So what happened between Mr. Alex and Miss Santos to escalate things to her claiming he raped her?" Michaelson jumps in after giving his partner a hard look.

"The day Julie was finally deemed well enough there was a benefit auction. We had already made plans to attend as a family. Judy swore that Alex offered to take her, but like much of that night he doesn't remember doing so. But Alex is too much a gentleman to tell her to piss off, so he ended up taking her.

"Instead of being quiet and respectful Miss Santos was being a spiteful bitch and we left. Alex stayed because there was one item Julie had her heart set on and Alex wanted to get it for her as an apology for all the pain she'd gone through.

"Once the auction was over, Alex, told the spiteful little bitch that he never wanted to see or hear from her again and told her to never contact Julie again. She didn't like that. She saw Alex as her ticket to freedom. She's a lazy bitch that never liked to work and was jealous of the life of those that had what she wanted that did work.

"So to get back at Alex she went to the local police station and made the report that he raped her. The idiots didn't even have a rape kit done, they just took her word for it and had him arrested. 

"Fortunately for him he'd gotten a speeding ticket on the way home at the very same time he was supposedly violating the bitch. He was released and she was arrested for any number of things. The officers didn't like being made fools of and threw whatever they could at her. In the end she served five years. The only job she could find was working for me.

"Any other questions?"