Stay Close (24 page)

“She’s seen us,” Barbie said. “She could identify us.”

“I know.”

“We’re supposed to keep this contained.”

“We have no choice now,” Ken said.

“So how do you want to handle it?”

Ken thought about it a moment. “The husband,” he said.

“What about him?”

“They just had a fight. A neighbor probably witnessed it. Maybe we can pin what happens to her on him.”

Barbie nodded. It made sense.

A few minutes later, a teenage girl headed out the front door and got onto a school bus. A few minutes after that, a woman with two kids came up the walkway. The Pierces’ front door opened again. A boy who looked about ten or twelve kissed his mother good-bye and left.

Ken and Barbie waited until the street was clear.

“She’s alone now,” Barbie said.

Ken nodded, opening the car door. “Let’s get in position.”

“S
O WHY WERE YOU IN
A
TLANTIC
C
ITY
?”

Dave’s words landed like a body blow. Megan stood there, stunned. Dave didn’t wait for an answer. He turned away. She snapped out of it and reached for his arm. “Dave?”

He pulled away and hurried down the path.

“Wait, hold up a second.”

He didn’t. She debated giving chase, but from behind her she heard Kaylie call, “Mom? Can I have lunch money?”

Dave was all the way down the path now. When he slipped into his car, Megan could feel her heart sink.

“Mom?”

Kaylie again. “Take a ten from my wallet. I want change.”

The car pulled out quickly and sped down the street with a tire squeal. The sound startled the Reale kids. Barbara and Anthony Reale both turned at the exact same moment and watched Dave shoot down the street with disapproving glares. So did Sondra Rinsky and her dogs.

“I only see a twenty,” Kaylie said. “Mom? Can I take that?”

Still reeling, Megan stepped back inside and closed the door.

“Mom?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice sounding far off in her own ears, “take the twenty. That should cover you for the rest of the week.” She headed back into the kitchen. Kaylie rushed out to catch the bus, leaving her dishes in the sink—as always. Megan wondered how many collective man-hours parents had wasted asking their children not to leave their dishes in the sink, to simply put them in the dishwasher, and wondered what sort of nation could have been built with said hours.

Jordan walked to school every morning with two friends, the parents rotating who made the walk with them. It was the Colins’ week. This arrangement had always driven Dave nuts. In his day, Dave would whine, you just walked to school with your friends—no helicopter parents necessary. “It’s three blocks away!” Dave often cried. “Let them have some independence.” But you just don’t do that anymore. Kids were under constant surveillance. It was easy to bemoan and criticize, but Megan still did it because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.

How had Dave known about her being in Atlantic City?

She hadn’t used the E-ZPass. She hadn’t even used her credit
card. So how did he know? And if he knew where she was, what else did he know?

Dread filled her chest. Once Jordan was out of the house, she called Dave’s cell phone. No answer. She called again. Still no reply. She knew that he was just ignoring her. His car had Bluetooth, and she had called it enough times to know that the cell service was fine for his entire drive. She called one more time. This time she waited until she got his voice mail.

“Call me,” she said. “Don’t be like this.”

She hung up. On one level, Megan realized that she just had to give him space, let him blow off steam, whatever. But another part of her didn’t like this at all. Dave knew that his wife hated the silent treatment. She tried his phone one more time. Nope, no answer. Terrific. So that was how he was going to play it. Anger started creeping in. Figured. He was all Mr. Understanding last night. He probably just wanted some. Men. In a sleazy nightclub or the comfort of a suburban mini-mansion, it didn’t really matter—men are the same. People are shocked when politicians or celebrities blow themselves up, but regular men do it too. It is a constant, and so maybe Dave was being nice to her because…

No, she wasn’t being fair.

She was the one who had vanished. She was the liar, after all.

So now what?

Megan started to clean up the kitchen—Dave might cook on occasion, but the job of cleaning always seemed to fall on her. She had her tennis group in an hour—doubles at the indoor Kasselton Tennis Club. She wanted more than anything to skip it, but you can’t play doubles with only three, and it was too late now to find a replacement.
How bizarre. From the club called La Crème to the club called Kasselton Tennis—quite the leap.

She started up the stairs to change into her tennis whites. The club was old-world with a strict dress code—all players had to wear only white. Ridiculous, really. She thought about her mother-in-law, Agnes. Maybe after tennis she’d go over and see how she was doing. Agnes had been so agitated during Megan’s visit yesterday. Wow, was it only yesterday? It felt as though she hadn’t seen Agnes in a month.

She let herself think of Ray. The warmth started so she pushed it away with the important logistics: If Ray hadn’t killed Stewart Green, then what had happened that night?

Forget it, it didn’t matter anymore. It wasn’t her concern. She had to put it behind her. She took another step, as if to signify the distance that she was putting between herself and that horrible night, when the doorbell rang.

She stopped. No one just came to the door nowadays. People called or texted or e-mailed. No one just stopped by except maybe the FedEx and UPS guys but it was too early for them.

The doorbell sounded again, and Megan knew, just knew, that whoever was ringing that bell was going to tell her something horrible, that all her attempts at self-comfort were nonsense, that now that the past had found her again, it would not be so easy to shake.

The doorbell rang a third time. Whoever it was, he or she had no interest in patience or waiting.

Megan headed back down the stairs and reached for the doorknob.

T
HE DOORBELL RANG A FOURTH TIME
. Megan looked out the window by the door, frowned, and opened it.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

He took his time replying. “Harry Sutton’s phone records,” Broome said. “Can I come in?”

“You promised.”

“I know.”

“The last thing you said to me was that you wouldn’t track me down.”

“I know.”

“You should have gone through Harry.”

“I would have,” Broome said, “except Harry’s dead.”

Another body blow. Megan actually stumbled backward. Broome didn’t wait for an invitation. He stepped into the house and closed the door behind him.

Megan managed to say, “How?”

“We don’t have an official cause yet, but it looks like heart failure.”

“So he wasn’t… ?”

“Murdered. He was. I mean, it may technically be manslaughter, but there’s no doubt someone is responsible.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Harry was tortured.”

Megan’s stomach fell anew. “How?”

“You don’t want to know. Nothing lethal, but…” Broome shook his head. “The strain was too much. His heart gave out.”

It was odd how the mind worked. For years she had believed that Ray had killed Stewart Green in an effort to protect her. Now she knew (or at least, strongly believed—wasn’t there still a little doubt?) that it wasn’t true. But still, despite that, the first thought when she heard about Harry Sutton was a simple, horrible one:

Dave had known that she was in Atlantic City.

She dismissed the thought immediately. It was one of those outrageous thoughts that just jump out, and you know right away the thought is ridiculous and unworthy of further consideration.

The second thought—the more dominant thought—was, well, Harry. She thought about that sweet, comforting smile, his simple honesty—and then she thought about him being tortured to death.

Third thought—one she couldn’t shake—was the simplest of all: It was her fault.

She cleared her throat. “Where did you find him?”

Broome took a second on this one. “In his office. He was found first thing this morning.”

“So wait, when I stopped by his office and the door was locked…”

“We can’t say for certain, but he was probably already dead.”

Megan met his eye. Broome turned away. Her fault, yes, but now she could see that Broome felt guilty too. Megan had come to him
last night. She had warned him that Harry Sutton might be in trouble. He hadn’t really listened.

“Interesting,” Broome said.

“What is?”

“How you knew something was wrong.”

Whoa. So much for the guilt theory. Megan took a step back. “Hold up a second. You don’t think—”

“No,” he said quickly, but she wasn’t sure whether she believed him or not. “That’s not what I’m getting at. I’m just wondering what made you so suspicious?”

“He didn’t show up at the diner, for one.”

“Yeah, okay, but that wasn’t the only thing, was it? You said something about the receptionist answering the phone?”

“Right,” Megan said. “You know Harry’s operation.”

“Threadbare.”

“Right. He didn’t have a receptionist, especially one who’d answer his cell phone. And her voice, that cheery tone—it just gave me the creeps.”

“So somehow a woman is involved in this.”

“I guess.”

“Okay,” Broome said, “so let’s go through this step by step. We know that Harry spoke to you on the phone.”

“Right. He said you wanted to show me that photograph.”

“Okay, then he was supposed to meet us. He never showed and never called to cancel. So for the moment we can assume that sometime between the time you called Harry and the time he was supposed to leave for the diner, someone grabbed him.”

“You said he was found in his office,” Megan said.

“Yes.”

“So whoever did this probably grabbed Harry there.”

Broome nodded. “Makes sense. So go back a second. When Harry called you, where were you?”

“What difference does that make?”

“Humor me.”

She didn’t like it, but if it could help find Harry’s killer, she was willing to play along. “At La Crème.”

“Why?”

“I was visiting old friends.”

Broome frowned. “Who?”

She shook her head. “It’s not important.”

“Like hell it’s not.”

Megan wouldn’t tell him about Ray, but then again he hadn’t been at La Crème anyway. “You know Lorraine.”

“Right. Who else?”

“That’s it.”

He looked doubtful. “Okay, so you were at La Crème. Did you learn anything?”

“No.”

“And how about after the diner? Where did you go then?”

“I went to a bar called the Weak Signal.”

“Why?”

She hated to lie, but she knew that this was not the way to go. “It was an old haunt of mine, okay? I was just taking a tour of my past. What’s the difference?”

“And you were there when you called Harry and that receptionist answered?”

“Yes.”

Broome rubbed his chin. “Tell me again about the receptionist. Leave nothing out.”

Megan recounted the phone conversation again. She explained how the woman on the phone sounded young, how she tried to get Megan to give her real name and address. Broome raised his eyebrow at that.

“What?”

“I don’t know if I want to scare you,” Broome said.

“Lying scares me,” she said, which was both true and ironic. “What?”

“Well, think about it. Harry was tortured. Maybe someone did that for kicks, but more likely, there was a purpose to it.”

“Like what?”

“Like trying to get information from him. Maybe they got the information before he died, I don’t know. But they took his phone, right?”

“I guess.”

“And then you call and what does this woman do? She pretends to be a receptionist to solicit information about you. She wants to know your name and where you live.”

Megan felt a fresh spike of fear. “You think, what, they’re after me?”