Die Before I Wake (31 page)

A quarter mile past the bridge, the trailer appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. One minute, I was traveling through deep, dark forest; the next, I was passing an open patch of land where an ancient silver trailer gleamed in the sun. An old blue pickup truck sat next to it, stripped of its doors and its hood, stalks of goldenrod growing up through the compartment that had once held an engine. No attempt had been made to tame the property around the trailer; straw and milkweed and wildflowers grew right up to the skirting. It looked as if the structure had been plunked down in the middle of a hayfield with no thought to esthetics or practicality.

When I pulled into the driveway, which was little more than a scattering of loose gravel, an arthritic golden retriever stood stiffly. He stretched and sniffed the air, trying to determine whether I was friend or foe, then lumbered over to greet me. I got out of the car, patted his head and moved toward the door.

The steps were wide planks propped up on cement blocks. No expense had been spared here when it came to welcoming visitors. I rapped on the rusted door. “Hello?” I shouted. “Mr. Levasseur?” There was no answer, yet my instincts told me somebody was inside. I rapped again, harder this time.

“Mr. Levasseur? It’s Julie Larkin. I need to talk to you.”

I heard movement inside, caught a flash of motion from the corner of my eye. Levasseur had lifted a window blind and was peering out at me. “Go away!” he shouted.

“Please,” I said. “Remember me? I met you on the bridge a few weeks ago. You said bad things had happened there. I need to talk to you about that.”

“I can’t. I can’t talk about it.”

“You have to help me.” I took a deep breath and followed my instincts. “I’m pregnant, Mr. Levasseur, and I’m afraid. I think I may be in danger.” He dropped the blind. A moment later, I heard him release the lock. He opened the door cautiously, and the odor hit me hard in the face. I tried to control my gag reflex, but it wasn’t easy. Instead of inviting me in, he stepped outside. “Thank you,” I said, coming down off the steps in the hope that he’d take a hint and leave plenty of fresh air and space between us.

He eyed my flat belly and said, “You’re pregnant?”

“Yes. I just found out. I need to know what happened that night. The night Beth died. I know you were there. Dwight Pettingill told me you were the one who found Sadie there alone in the car. You called the police. I have to know what you saw.”

“Didn’t see anything.”

“You saw Sadie, didn’t you?”

“That was afterward. After she fell.”

“Then you did see Beth fall?” Eagerly, I demanded, “Who was with her that night?”

“I’ve said too much. They’ll come after me.”

“Who?” I persisted. “Who’ll come after you?”

“I had a wife once,” he said. “And a son. He’s a lawyer now, in Baltimore. That’s in Maryland.”

“Mr. Levasseur,” I said, “I know you’re an educated, intelligent man.” One who’d forgotten that cleanliness was next to godliness. “You must understand how important this is. I have to know the truth.

Who is it that’ll come after you?”

“Go away.”

“I won’t. Not until you tell me what I want to know.”

“No,” he said. “Go away from Newmarket. It’s not safe for you here.”

“Why?” I grabbed his arm, no longer concerned about the foulness of his person. “Why isn’t it safe for me?”

“He was there that night, you know.”

“Who?”

“Your husband. Tom Larkin.”

“I know he was there,” I said impatiently. “The police called him and he came out to pick up Sadie.

He—”

“Not then. Before.”

“Before what?”

“Before she went in the water.”

“What?”
I knew I gasped; I felt the color drain from my face. Until now, I hadn’t truly believed Tom was involved in Beth’s murder. “Are you sure?

Maybe you’re mistaken. Maybe you only thought it was Tom. Maybe it was Riley. His brother. Do you know Riley? They look a lot alike.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I clutched his sleeve and shook it. “
Tell me, damn it!
Did Tom kill her?”

“My wife left me,” he said, apropos of nothing.

“Her name was Irene. She had an English degree from Vassar. And great legs. Did I ever tell you that my son’s a lawyer in Baltimore?”

I gave up at that point. I wasn’t getting anything more out of Roger Levasseur. I bid him goodbye and left him standing on his rickety steps with his old dog, both of them watching me drive away. I was heartsick, trembling so hard I could barely keep the car on the road.
Oh, Tom,
I thought.
Why?
What could have driven a seemingly sane man to kill the mother of his children? What terrible thing had she done to him? For I was convinced, even at this point, that it had been a crime of passion. I just couldn’t imagine my husband cold-bloodedly planning a murder. That kind of cruelty wasn’t in his makeup.

Something must have happened, something so distressing, so shocking, that he’d flown into a rage.

Maybe her death had even been accidental. They’d been fighting; he’d raised a hand to her; she’d ducked away from the blow and fallen backwards over the railing.

“You’re reaching,” I told myself. “You’re really reaching.”

Of course I was reaching. I didn’t want Tom to be the villain in this piece.
Dear God,
I prayed,
let
me be wrong. Let it be anybody but him.

But the evidence was piling up, and it was all pointing to my husband. Was it really possible he’d sent that thug to assault me at the fair? Had he also been responsible for my fall down the stairs? I’d spent hours in the attic that day with no view of the driveway. A quiet person could have crept into the house and strategically placed those batteries right where I’d be sure to step on them, and I never would have known the difference.

But why? Why would Tom marry me, proclaim his undying love, then do his best to ensure that I was out of the picture? It didn’t make sense. There was a missing piece to the puzzle, and without it, I had nothing but a collection of unrelated puzzle pieces.

Beth,
I thought.
Cherchez la femme.
Everything had to do with Beth. And I might have no idea what was going on. But I realized, with an insight I hadn’t known I possessed, that I knew who did.

I circled the supermarket parking lot twice before I found a parking spot. It was the first of the month and food stamps were out, and the place teemed with locals loading up their carts with sirloin steaks, sugary cereal and Diet Pepsi. I found Mel in the canned-food aisle, stocking cans of string beans on a shelf. “I want to know the truth,” I said. “The note I found in
Dr. Zhivago.
You know what it was about, don’t you? What was the big secret that Beth was keeping? The secret that’s responsible for her death?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice was steady, but her eyes were downcast, and her hands, rapidly shuffling cans from a cardboard box to the shelf, were shaky.

“I was attacked yesterday,” I said.

That got her attention. Her eyes widened in disbelief. “What?” she said. “Tell me.”

“I was at the fair with Claudia. Some man followed me into the House of Horror and attacked me. He roughed me up a little, called me by name and said he had a message for me.”

“Holy fuck.”

“This is getting serious, Mel. Somebody’s out to get me. And I know it’s connected to Beth’s death.

I have to know the truth. If you don’t tell me, I’m going to have to call Dwight Pettingill and tell him you know more than you’re saying about your sister’s so-called suicide.”

“Shh!” Her gaze darted around, and then she jerked her chin in the direction of the back room.

“Come with me. We can’t talk here.” She led me through a swinging door, down a dingy corridor, and into an office paneled in the cheapest, ugliest fake wood paneling I’d ever encountered outside of a basement rec room. The desk was littered with coffee-stained papers and empty soda bottles. The air conditioner had developed a leak at some point in the last decade, and water stains marred the paneling below it, adding to the overall ambiance of the place. Mel shut the door and then locked it, just to be safe.

“I’ve thought about telling you this. I almost did the other day. But I was afraid. I didn’t want it to get out. It’s too late to hurt Beth, but it could hurt Sadie, and I don’t want that to happen.”

Through gritted teeth, I said, “Tell me.” Mel took a deep breath. Twisting the hem of her apron between nervous fingers, she said, “Beth had an affair. Tom found out about it.”

“An affair?”

“That’s right. By the time he found out, it was long over. But of course, he was furious. Not that I could blame him, under the circumstances. It must have been quite a shock. He was furious. Beth said he was like a wild man when he confronted her about it. She thought he’d strangle her with his bare hands.” I’d witnessed a little of that temper myself, when I hung Beth’s painting in the girls’ room. Grimly, I said, “How did he find out?”

“It was one of those weird coincidences. Sadie got sick. We thought she had meningitis. The hospital did blood tests. Thank God, it turned out to just be some virus. Nothing life-threatening. But you know how small-town hospitals are? Everyone knows everybody else’s business—”

“Just like small-town pharmacies. Yes, I’ve had the pleasure. Go on.”

“Some lab tech, out of the goodness of his heart or the smallness of his brain, recognized the name on the blood sample and sent the test results to Tom as well as Sadie’s G.P. She was Tom’s daughter, and he was a doctor, so of course this idiot put two and two together and came up with seven.”

“And?”

“And one of the tests they ran, as a matter of routine, was blood typing. Sadie’s blood type is A-negative. When Tom saw that, he went ballistic.

You see, Beth had O-positive blood. Tom’s is B-negative. Anybody else might have missed it, but he’s a doctor. He knew right away that there was no way on God’s green earth he was Sadie’s father.” I grasped the back of an ancient desk chair for support. Suddenly, I felt as though I were seeing her through a long, narrow tunnel. “Are you telling me that some other man is Sadie’s biological father?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Once Tom found out, Beth broke down and admitted the whole thing.

The affair, the pregnancy—she’d never been sure, you see. She’d known it was a possibility, but because the affair was over and she’d stayed with Tom, she put it out of her mind. As far as she was concerned, Tom was Sadie’s father, and that was that. But Tom couldn’t accept it when he found out.

He was crushed. He worships that little girl. And he was so furious with Beth for what she’d done that he made her life a living hell. She cried, and apologized, and begged him to forgive her. But the damage was already done. He threatened divorce.

Threatened to take her girls away from her. So she did the only thing she could. She decided to take the girls and leave him instead.”

“Beth was going to leave him?”

“She planned to, as soon as she could find a job and a place to live. She told me about it a few days before she died. She’d been hoarding away money, and she almost had enough to start a new life without Tom. But it never happened. He won the battle, and the war.” Mel’s words took on a bitter flavor. “I never saw her alive again. Now do you understand why I’m so certain he killed her?”

This was more than I could take in at one time.

My head was spinning, and if I didn’t sit down soon, I was afraid I’d pass out. “Julie?” Mel said. “Are you all right? You don’t look so hot.”

“I just need—” I looked around for a place to sit, eyed the grimy desk chair, and sat in it anyway.

“Julie?” Mel’s voice carried a distant echo, as though she were speaking from miles away, even though she was so close I could reach out and touch her.

“I just feel a little faint,” I said. “I need to rest.”

“Oh, hell. You’re not going to keel over, are you?

We’re not even supposed to be in here. If you pass out in here, Mr. Bronson will have my head.”

“No. It’s just—” The room was swimming, and I clutched frantically at the worn chair arms in an attempt to stabilize myself. “Tell me,” I said.

“Tell you what? Should I call you a doctor?

You’re white as fresh snow.”

“Tell me who. I have to know who Sadie’s father is.”

I already knew the answer. I knew it even before she said it. But I needed to hear it anyway. Needed to confirm what my instincts were screaming at me.

Mel’s face was growing long, stretched out and twisted like the reflection in a fun house mirror.

“Nobody else knows,” she said. “Just Tom and I. But it’s Riley. Riley is Sadie’s father.”
Riley,
I thought, just before I passed out.
Of course.

When I came to, I thought at first I was dead. All those kindly, concerned faces encircling me, gazing down from above, reminded me of every near-death experience I’d ever read about. Except that they were all strangers, and not previously deceased relatives come to ease my way into the afterworld. All of them, except for a stout woman in a blue warm-up jacket with a white athletic logo, were dressed in teal smocks.

That was a little disconcerting. I presumed their presence meant I was still breathing, although I couldn’t imagine what had happened to cause these identically-dressed strangers to be staring at me so oddly.

The woman in the athletic jacket held a Dixie cup of cold water to my lips. “She’s coming around,” she said to the room at large. To me, she said, “Here you go, sweetheart. Have a drink of this.” I lifted my head obediently and sipped. The water felt soothing as it trickled down my dry, scratchy throat. “What happened?” I said.

“You fainted, hon. No big deal. That happens sometimes in early pregnancy.”

I glanced around, desperately seeking a familiar face, to no avail. The woman patted my hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m a nurse.”

“All right, people,” said a male voice, “party’s over. Get back to work and give the lady a little breathing room.”