Die Before I Wake (30 page)

“Julie?” she said when I leaned over the bed to kiss her.

“What, honey?” Her hair smelled like bubble gum, sweet and fruity from the shampoo we’d used.

“Thank you for taking us to the fair.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart. I hope you had a good time.” Except, of course, for my assault in the House of Horror. And my subsequent interrogation by the head of security.

“I did.” She hesitated, then said, “I’m glad that man didn’t hurt you.”

“Me, too.”

“And I’m glad that my dad married you. Good night.” Before I could respond, she rolled over and buried her face against Tweety’s magnificent yellow-ness.

I slept alone that night. Tom never returned, and I woke in the wee hours and crept downstairs to find him asleep on the couch, still in his clothes. He’d shoved a throw pillow under his head and covered himself with his mother’s handmade afghan. His jacket and tie were strewn carelessly on the floor, his dress shirt unbuttoned at the throat and hopelessly wrinkled. The couch wasn’t quite long enough to ac-commodate his length, so he was curled in a fetal position, one foot bare, his missing sock tangled in the bedclothes.

Somehow, the sight of that foot, so bare and vulnerable, struck a chord deep inside me. Shaken, I bent and picked up the tie, laid it out on the coffee table. I was shaking the wrinkles from his jacket when he opened one eye and looked at me. “You didn’t have to sleep here,” I said, hanging his jacket over the arm of the couch.

“I’m not ready to forgive you just yet.” His voice was hoarse and sleep-fogged; he didn’t sound like my Tom at all. “Come here,” he said. “Don’t say anything. I just want to hold you.” He lifted the afghan and I slipped beneath it. Tom wrapped it around us and snugged me up tight against him, one arm around me, his palm flat against my belly. His breath was warm on my cheek, his heartbeat strong against my back. “Whatever my failings,” he said, “and I know they’re legion, one thing remains steady, and that’s my feelings for you.” I didn’t answer. But I lay my hand on top of his, there on my still-flat belly. He turned his wrist, bringing his hand palm-to-palm against mine. I threaded my fingers loosely through his and let out a hard, shuddering sigh.

We didn’t sleep. We didn’t talk. There was too much tumult inside us, too many conflicting emotions, too many words which, if spoken, could be hurtful or even fatal to our relationship. Instead, we just held each other in the early-morning silence.

Sometimes, when the chaos of life swirls around you and there’s nothing else solid to hold on to, that’s the only thing you can do. Our marriage was in critical condition. Right now, I didn’t know whether or not the patient would survive. I didn’t even know if the man whose arms held me so tightly was a killer. All I knew was that I loved him. I couldn’t guarantee that we’d stay together, but at this moment, the future lay at a great distance, and the only time that counted was now.

Our contentment didn’t last. Eventually, the rest of the household began stirring. Jeannette came downstairs, took a single look at the two of us huddled together on the couch and, mouth pursed, turned without a word and headed directly for the kitchen. Upstairs, the bathroom door closed with a bang; a moment later, the toilet flushed. The scent of brewing coffee, rich and inviting, drifted in from the kitchen. With a sigh, Tom disentangled himself from me and dropped his feet to the floor. I sat up beside him and wrapped the afghan around my shoulders. Elbows braced on the knees of his wrinkled pants, Tom rubbed his face with his hands.

“That couch is a travesty,” he said. “It reminds me of my days as a resident, when I used to sleep anywhere and anytime I could manage. There was this hideous old orange Naugahyde
thing
that dared to call itself a couch in one of the hospital waiting rooms. I spent more than one night on that back-breaker.”

I didn’t say anything, just gave him a wan smile.

“Jules?” he said.

“What?”

Instead of answering, he leaned forward and kissed me tenderly. I let go of the afghan and rested my hand against the nape of his neck. It felt warm and familiar. The kiss went on for a while. We parted and drew back to look at each other. His eyes appeared as somber and uncertain as I felt. “I have to get ready for work,” he said, and he got up and left me there alone.

I folded the afghan. Carrying Tom’s jacket and tie, I went back upstairs to get the girls ready for school. I wasn’t sure exactly when the job had become mine, but at some point along the way, Jeannette had abdicated the mommy role, and it had passed on to me. I felt honored to play mother to these two delicious little girls. My only regret was that they might sense my ambivalence toward their father. I didn’t want to be the cause of any anxiety on their part. They’d been through enough already.

I didn’t know where any of us would be in a year.

But if I ended up having to leave these two little girls, my heart would be ripped in half. Already I loved them as if they were my own. If Tom and I parted—

and I couldn’t believe I was even considering such a thing—I would insist on somehow remaining a part of their lives.

In spite of a tension so thick you could cut it with a knife, everybody made it out the door on time, and I was alone, the only sound that of the kitchen clock ticking. I took my antinausea medication and my prenatal vitamins and then I made myself a bowl of oatmeal. It wasn’t high on my list of favorite foods, but until the pills kicked in, it was the only thing I was certain I could swallow. I hoped this nausea wouldn’t go on for nine months. If it did, I’d be a skeleton by the time I was done, for even my normally healthy appetite couldn’t stand up to twenty-four-hour-a-day morning sickness.

I filled the sink with hot, soapy water and proceeded to wash the breakfast dishes. We had a dishwasher, but sometimes, especially when I had serious thinking to do, washing them by hand was my preferred method. It gave me something to occupy my hands while my mind was occupied with other things. Like yesterday’s mugging. It was hard to believe, with the morning sun pouring in and the songbirds hopping around outside my window, that yesterday I’d been physically attacked and could have been seriously hurt. Or even killed. Hard to believe that someone out there wished me harm.

In hindsight, I probably should have made a report to the State Police. But by the time I’d gone a few rounds with Barney Fife, all I’d thought about was escaping. We hadn’t caught Mystery Man, so we had no idea who he was. I could describe him quite clearly to the cops, and so could Claudia. But unless he was a known felon, or the cops had a suspect in custody for me to identify, it would be like search-ing for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Besides, I had no proof that he was the one who’d attacked me. Not that I doubted it. But it had been pitch-black inside the House of Horror, and I hadn’t seen his face. Even if I’d been able to identify him in a lineup, all I’d actually witnessed him doing was smiling at me. Even I wasn’t stupid enough to think the cops would arrest him based on that.

Besides, unless the cops could coerce him into talking, it didn’t really matter who he was. Mystery Man didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him. He was clearly working for somebody else, somebody who did. Somebody who wanted me roughed up and shaken. Somebody who had a message for him to deliver.

I mentally kicked myself for my quick reflexes.

I should have waited to clobber him until he finished telling me what he had to say. If I’d heard the message, I might have had a clue about who had sent it.

But I was too distracted with fighting for my freedom—and for all I knew, my life—to give him time to say his piece.

If nothing else, I knew it all came back to Beth.

There was no other reason anybody would want me out of the picture, and everything that had happened since I’d arrived in Newmarket seemed to be somehow tied in with Beth Larkin’s death. Someone out there—almost certainly someone that I knew—

was a killer. And if I wasn’t careful, I might become the next victim.

If I had half a brain, I’d pack my bags and leave today. I had friends in L.A. who would help me. A place to go, a lumpy couch to sleep on. Louis and Carlos and the girls at the boutique would welcome me back with no questions asked. There was really no reason for me to stay here. No reason other than those two sweet little faces that had studied me so somberly over their breakfast cereal this morning.

No reason other than their father, the man who may or may not have ended their mother’s life. The man I loved. I didn’t trust Tom Larkin as far as I could throw him, but that didn’t do anything to weaken my wild attraction to the man.

The telephone rang, and I jumped. I was so skittish these days. I dried my hands and went to answer it.

It was Dwight Pettingill of the Newmarket PD.

“Just following up on the vandalism thing,” he said.

“Have you folks had any more trouble out there?”

“None at all,” I said. “Tom had some fancy security system installed on the car. If anybody so much as brushes against it, it’ll make enough noise to wake half the county.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Dwight pointed out. “It would be enough to deter me from trying to break in.”

The prospect of a chocolate doughnut would probably be enough to deter Dwight, but I wasn’t about to verbalize the thought. I had other fish to fry.

“Anyway,” he was saying, “I just wanted you to know we’ve closed the case. We weren’t able to lift any fingerprints from the belt, and without any other evidence—well, it’s not as though there was any real damage done.”

It seemed to me that law enforcement in this neck of the woods was pretty lax. Or maybe I’d simply met the two least competent men in the field of police work. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for us,” I told him.

“All in a day’s work, ma’am.”

“And your job must be fascinating,” I said,

“dealing with all that crime on a daily basis.”

“Well—” I could imagine him flushing red at the other end of the phone. “Sometimes we do get ourselves into some serious situations. Domestic violence, for example. Just last year there was a fellow who—”

“Do you ever investigate homicides?” I tried to inject a little breathless enthusiasm into my voice.

Julie Hanrahan Larkin, police junkie and morbidly curious citizen.

“Why…yeah,” he said. “Occasionally. For sure.” I could tell he didn’t want to admit that he’d never, in his entire career, worked a homicide case. Newmarket wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime. It wasn’t often that somebody showed an interest in his day-to-day work. Probably the little woman discouraged him from talking about it in front of the kids.

Wouldn’t want them to have nightmares after hearing about their daddy’s deadly run-in with a dangerous shoplifter.

“Like, for instance—when Beth Larkin died. Did you know it was suicide right away, or did you investigate the possibility of homicide?” I’d put him between a rock and a hard place. If he told me they’d automatically assumed her death was a suicide, there was no place left for our conversation to go. The fish he’d hooked would break free and get away. If he said they’d investigated it as a homicide, I might be pressed to ask him for details he didn’t have and couldn’t make up on the spot. Dwight didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who was good at thinking on his feet. I held my breath, waiting as he teetered on the fence, wondering which direction he’d fall.

He landed on the side of honesty. Probably a wise decision, given his cerebral limitations. Lies simply bred other lies, until pretty soon, they took over your life. Dwight might not be an intellectual giant, but he wasn’t a fool, either. He knew his limits. “It was pretty obvious that it was a suicide,” he said. “She left a note.”

“Really?” I breathed, in pseudo-fascination. “Did you see it? What did it say?”

He hesitated, torn between the desire to impress me and the certainty that the information he was about to divulge was confidential. “I can’t really say,” he finally said, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. Damn. It was a lousy time for Dwight to discover professional ethics.

“But I can tell you it was the most pathetic sight I ever saw. That poor little girl, crying for her mother.

And the mother, floating facedown in that river—” He stopped abruptly, suddenly cognizant of who he was talking to, and the fact that the victim and I shared a husband. “My apologies, ma’am,” he said.

“You don’t want to hear this.”

I had to do some quick thinking or I’d lose him.

“Are you telling me that one of the girls was with her that night? Nobody ever told me that. How awful!

Which one?”

“It was Sadie,” he said, his voice appropriately somber. “Damnedest thing I ever saw. Beth left her sitting there in her car seat and jumped off the bridge right in front of her.”

“That’s terrible! How did you find her?”

“Oh, it wasn’t us that found her. It was Roger Levasseur. Crazy as batshit, that guy, but he knew what to do that night. He picked up Beth’s cell phone and called 911.”

The neighbor I’d read about in the newspaper article. Roger Levasseur. I should have guessed.

Nobody else lived out there in that godforsaken place. Now I understood the reason he’d been so concerned that day when he found me alone on the bridge, staring into the river. He knew what had happened there. He might even have witnessed Beth’s plunge to the chilly waters below. Might have seen who pushed her off the side.

I had to talk to Roger.

In spite of the sunny morning, Swift River Road was as lonely and eerie as I remembered. I shuddered when I drove across the bridge, my tires singing on the gratework as the river rushed below me. I reached the other side, where the trees seemed to close in on me, turning mid-morning into twilight. I had no idea what I was looking for, could only hope I’d recognize it when I saw it. Once I crossed the bridge, the road narrowed, and then it turned to dirt. I hit a pothole and my teeth slammed together so hard it hurt. Out here, even the utility poles had shrunk, like old men lined up in a row, aged and decrepit and forgotten.