The Last to Know (23 page)

“All right,” she tells the nurse, her mind whirling through her obligations for the day ahead. “Tell him I’ll be there this afternoon.”

“I’m sure he’ll be pleased,” the nurse says.

Are you?
Paula wonders, hanging up. Her father has shown no emotion for several years now. Even seeing Mitch hasn’t brought a flicker of recognition, let alone pleasure, to his aging face. In fact, Mitch can’t stand visiting his grandfather anymore. He says it’s too disturbing, seeing him like that. Paula rarely insists that he go these days, although he does continue to send handmade artwork and little notes addressed to “Grandpop.”

Mitch.

Paula rises, lights a cigarette, and goes into the next room to find Frank’s telephone number again. She swiftly dials it.

“Hello?” a groggy female voice answers on the third ring.

“This is Paula. I need to speak with Frank.”

“Just a second.”

There’s a muffled sound, then an unintelligible murmuring. Paula realizes Frank’s second wife has her hand over the mouthpiece for some reason. Why? What are the two of them scheming?

“What is it?” Frank asks, coming on the line.

“I left a message for you to have Mitch call me yesterday, damn it. I never heard from him.”

“Well, we drove out east for dinner and got home late. He was tired. He went right up to bed. He’s fine, so don’t—”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she cuts in. “You went to school yesterday morning and stole my son—”

“He’s our son, and I didn’t steal him. I just picked him up early. I was supposed to have him for the weekend anyway. I didn’t even think you’d notice he was gone.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Paula keeps her voice level. He won’t get to her this time. She won’t let him.

“I thought you were working, that’s all. Mitch said you’re busy covering some story over there.”

He must have heard what’s been going on in Townsend Heights, even if Mitch didn’t tell him. It’s been all over the wire services these past few days. You’d have to be living on an island without television or the Internet to escape hearing about the small-town murder of one young wife and mother and the disappearance of another.

Choosing to ignore Frank’s dig about her work, Paula says evenly, “He can’t afford to miss school. Don’t you dare take it upon yourself to pull him out without my permission ever again, or I’ll do everything I can to cut off your visitation rights.”

“As if you already aren’t doing just that,” Frank mutters.

“Put Mitch on the phone,” she snaps. “I want to talk to him.”

“He’s asleep.”

“Wake him up.”

“No. He needs to rest. He’ll call you when he gets up.”

She won’t be here then, damn it.

“Make sure he does. On my cell phone,” she tells Frank, not about to go into any detail about her plans for the day.

She hangs up without saying anything else. She imagines Frank turning to his blond wife in their bed, probably calling Paula a bitch. Maybe the two of them are laughing at her. Maybe they’re making plans for the day that they get full custody of Mitch.

“But you won’t,” Paula murmurs, striding to the kitchen to make coffee, hoping the caffeine and the tobacco will jump-start her sluggish body. She feels sore and weary from head to toe, wanting only to sink back into bed and drift back into numbing sleep.

But she has a full day ahead, including a visit to Haven Meadows—and paying a visit to Fletch Gallagher.

F
letch waits until a respectable hour—eight o’clock—to call his lawyer again. He makes the call from behind the closed French doors of his den, not wanting his nieces to overhear. Naturally they know what’s going on—that the woman down the street has been murdered, and that their brother is a suspect and has disappeared. They cried themselves to sleep last night, Sharon said.

“Has Jeremiah turned up yet?” David asks.

“Still missing,” Fletch reports. “I spent most of last night out looking for him. I drove through every neighborhood in town more than once, and Sharon stayed here by the phone in case he called. Of course, he didn’t.”

“Any idea where he could possibly be?”

“None.” That’s not true. He has an idea, but it’s so far-fetched it’s not worth mentioning to the lawyer.

The cabin in the Catskills. It’s the one place Fletch hasn’t checked. For one thing, although Jeremiah knows it exists, he’s never been there, and it isn’t exactly easy to find even if you have the address. For another, it’s almost a two-hour drive from here, so how would Jeremiah even get there? And even if he had the means, Fletch checked both his keychain and Sharon’s, and the keys for the cabin are still on both of them.

“This doesn’t look good for him, Fletch,” his lawyer is saying.

Gee, yuk think, Dave?
he wants to say, but he holds the sarcasm in check.

The last thing he needs right now is to alienate his lawyer. He might need David himself, if that detective decides to read anything into Fletch’s response to yesterday’s questioning. His stomach turns over at the very idea, and he forces it from his mind.

One thing at a time
, he cautions himself.

Aloud, he asks David, “How much longer are we going to be able to stall the cops?”

“Until they show up at your door with a warrant,” David replies. “Which could be any second now. . . .”

“Or it could be never,” Fletch says hopefully. “Maybe they believed the kid.”

“Maybe they did,” David tells him. Fletch can hear the doubt in his voice; it’s echoed in Fletch’s gut. “Listen, I’ve got a racquetball game in twenty minutes, Fletch. If you need me, dial my beeper. Otherwise, I’ll catch up with you a little later on. Okay?”

“No problem,” Fletch says, hanging up.

He sits there at his desk, gazing absently at the trophies on his shelf, wondering where the kid is—and when his father’s going to call.

He left two messages for his brother yesterday but was told he couldn’t be reached. Some kind of military mission, presumably.

He resents Aidan, not for the first time, for dumping his son and stepdaughters on Fletch’s doorstep and then heading back overseas in the wake of his second wife’s death. But then, whenever the going got tough, Aidan got going—in the opposite direction. Escape always was his style. Just like their old man.

But Fletch doesn’t want to think about their father now. He’s spent a lifetime dissecting what happened—how their father walked out on Mom, leaving her in a small Queens apartment with two preschool boys and a mountain of debt. She managed to survive, working as a secretary in Manhattan to support the three of them. She’s been gone for years now, a victim of a virulent cancer that took her within weeks of her diagnosis.

As for Dad, the bastard never looked back. Nor has Fletch sought him out—or, for years now, even wondered why he left. After all, he knew his parents weren’t happy. It wasn’t that they argued often, or anything that obvious. They were just distant from each other. Cold. There was clearly no love between them.

It wasn’t until Fletch was in high school that he and Aidan stumbled upon the ugly, shocking truth about their father. The teenage brothers vowed to carry it to their graves, so profoundly affected by the revelation that it influenced the career and relationship paths they took from that day forward.

And even now, as the memory of his father flits through his mind, Fletch clenches his fists, a familiar hatred bubbling forth in his soul.

I
n her third-floor bedroom, Margaret finally hears the sound she’s been listening for all morning. A door creaking open and then shutting on the second floor, then the unmistakable tread of Owen’s footsteps in the hall and on the stairs.

He’s slept later than usual this morning. She wonders whether he finally gave in and took the prescription drug his doctor gave him a few days ago, after Jane disappeared. It was supposed to calm his nerves and help him to sleep.

And what about me?
Margaret wonders, reaching up to rub the burning ache of fatigue between her shoulder blades. For several nights now, she hasn’t slept more than an hour at a stretch, waking from frequent nightmares to find herself in the strange bed in the third-floor bedroom of her sister’s house. Sometimes she drifts back to sleep after a while. Other times, she lies awake, waiting for daybreak and sounds of life below.

This time, she rose upon awakening at around three and washed and dressed. She took extra time with her hair and put on a bit of makeup, knowing she would see
him
. It’s driving her mad, spending night after night under his roof like this, her imagination frequently dragging her to places she’d be wise to avoid. At least, for the time being.

Now, hearing Owen’s footsteps, she stands poised by the door. She cracked it open earlier, knowing that if she didn’t, the thick, old wood might muffle sounds from below. But she clearly heard Schuyler’s first whimpering in her crib, as well as Mother’s hurried footsteps down the hall, and her baby-talk murmuring to her granddaughter. She brought the baby downstairs over an hour ago, and Margaret is certain they won’t be coming back up to the second floor until Schuyler’s nap time, which isn’t for another hour. Minerva doesn’t work on weekends. Owen’s descent means the second floor is now finally deserted, including the master bedroom.

Creeping down the stairs, Margaret holds her breath. It’s daring, what she’s about to do.

Yet she has no choice.

Owen asked her about Jane’s journal.

But he didn’t invite you to snoop through his bedroom
, she reminds herself.
He only wanted to know whether you thought a volume was missing
.

Well, she does think so. Like Owen, Margaret knew her sister well enough to realize that she wouldn’t just take a year off from her daily ritual.

And unlike Owen, Margaret is almost certain that she knows where her sister stashed the missing volume.

Feeling as though she’s betraying her brother-in-law, she stops in front of the closed door to the master bedroom.

Why must you do it this way?
she asks herself.
Why didn’t you just tell him your suspicion last night?

Ignoring the voice in her head, she reaches out and opens the door, stepping into the big, elaborate room her sister shared with Owen. A room that, like the rest of the house—and perhaps its mistress as well—has its share of secrets.

A
fter settling Taylor in her swing for a catnap, Karen turns on the television. She really shouldn’t. After all, she still hasn’t cleaned up the breakfast dishes in the kitchen, and she still has to take a shower, which she can only do while the baby is asleep.

But she can’t get Rachel Leiberman off her mind. She needs to know if there have been any new developments since she fell asleep in front of the television last night, not budging from it until Tom woke her and made her go to bed.

Now she flips to Channel 12, the local news station, and sits on the edge of the couch. It’s almost the top of the hour, which means the newscast will be starting in a minute or two. Right now there’s a commercial for a kids’ clothing boutique in White Plains. Ironic. Just a few days ago, Rachel mentioned shopping in that particular store.

Now she’s gone.

Karen slept fitfully last night, haunted by nightmares in which she was being chased by some nameless, faceless creature. More than once she woke with a gasp, only to curl up against Tom’s warm back and try to reassure herself that there’s nothing to be afraid of. That whoever had killed Rachel isn’t, even now, stalking another victim.

She wishes Tom were home.

But he’s with that demanding client again, and he said he most likely won’t be back until early evening. Which leaves Karen alone with the baby and a long, lonely Saturday stretching ahead.

There’s a harvest festival in town. Maybe she’ll call Tasha later and see if she wants to go.

A throbbing musical interlude from the TV alerts her to the fact that the newscast is starting. She turns up the volume.

“Good morning,” the pretty anchorwoman says, seated behind her nondescript desk in the studio. “At the top of our news this morning, more than twenty-four hours after the murder of a Townsend Heights woman, her killer roams free and there are seemingly few clues to his or her identity. Police have yet to name a suspect in the slaying of Rachel Leiberman, who was found dead yesterday morning in her two-story home on a quiet suburban lane. We take you now to the scene, where our reporter Ted Jackson is standing by.”

So the Leibermans’ house is still surrounded by the press, Karen notices as the scene shifts. Maybe even more of a crowd than yesterday. So far nobody’s rung their bell yet today, but she’s been poised for the deluge of reporters to begin. Now Tom isn’t here to deflect the questions and slam the door in their faces.

The reporter mentions that there are still no leads in the Kendall disappearance and that the Kendall family has no comment on whether it might be tied into the Leiberman murder.

“However,” the reporter concludes, “it hasn’t escaped anyone’s attention that both Rachel Leiberman and Jane Kendall were young stay-at-home mothers, unlikely targets for random violence in this tony Westchester suburb. Until Jane Kendall is found, the questions will remain—and very likely, many young mothers of Townsend Heights will be locking their doors and looking over their shoulders.”

On that ominous note, the camera shifts to coverage of police divers on boats beneath the spot where Jane Kendall’s baby was found. The water is particularly deep at that point, and the winds have made it choppy. Now a storm is forecast, which will further hinder the divers’ efforts.

“But,” says the reporter, “if Jane Kendall’s body is trapped in the murky depths, these divers are determined to find her.”

Shuddering, Karen turns off the television, not wanting to hear any more.

H
is stomach coiled with intense hunger, his body racked with cold, Jeremiah huddles on the damp, musty bed of leaves, his back against a large boulder. Wisps of mist hang eerily low among the trees.