No One Needs to Know (51 page)

“‘Star Wars?’ This dude’s a big-time producer and that’s his ring tone?” The voices became fainter as they walked to another part of the house.

“There’s the damn thing. I see it . . .”

Gil coughed past the gag. The chair’s back legs creaked under his weight.

“Did you hear that?” one of the men asked.

“Well, the place is supposed to be haunted,” the other answered. His voice was clearer now. “Hey, I’ll bet you twenty bucks you’re too chickenshit to go up those stairs and stand in the master bedroom for a full minute.”

There was silence.

Laurie glanced over at Cheryl, who had the gun by Gil’s ear.

“Twenty bucks?”

“Yeah, and you can’t turn on any lights either.”

Silence again. Then Laurie heard footsteps on the curved stairway. She caught a glimpse of Cheryl—and the intense look on her face. The hand holding the gun trembled.

The upstairs hallway floorboards creaked. A shadow started to sweep across the corridor wall. But then it stopped. “This is bullshit!” the man announced.

The shadow on the wall disappeared, and Laurie listened to the footsteps retreating down the staircase. The man in the foyer was laughing.

Gil began to stir. He tried to scream out past the gag.

The light went out downstairs. Laurie heard the front door slam, and then the lock clicked.

She reached over and gently pushed Cheryl’s hand away so the gun was no longer aimed at Gil’s head. She pulled the sock out of his mouth.

He started to cough. “Water,” he muttered.

Bending over, she tried to hoist the chair back up, but he was too heavy. “Cheryl, help me,” she said.

Cheryl wearily got to her feet. Between the two of them, they set the chair—and Gil in it—upright. His glasses had been knocked askew again. Laurie straightened them on his face. Then she left Cheryl alone with him. In the bathroom, she found some Dixie cups on the counter. She filled one with cold water, and then brought it in to Gil.

Cheryl was sitting on the floor, with her back to the wall. She stared at Gil, and kept the gun pointed in his general direction. It was a strange sight. They were like two exhausted fighters between rounds.

Laurie brought the cup to Gil’s lips and he gulped down the water. He pulled away at last. “My mouth still tastes like foot,” he said in his gravelly voice. “Thank you, sweetheart. You know, if I had any feeling left in my arms, I’d say the right one is sprained. My head’s throbbing, too. I’ve just about had enough. I’ve answered all your questions—and honestly, too. Hell, I even told you about the dirty work Arnie Shearer did for me.” He cleared his throat. He seemed to study Cheryl’s face. “So, okay, now it’s my turn to ask you something, dolly. Is all this true about you rescuing Elaina’s baby?”

Cheryl nodded tiredly.

“What happened to him? I’d like to know.”

“He died,” Cheryl answered quietly.

“On the farm or later or what?” he asked.

Laurie sat down on one of the boxes. She remembered the “missing” poster with Charlene and her three-and-a-half-year-old “brother,” Buddy.

Cheryl looked so utterly defeated. The man from whom she’d wanted a confession had turned the tables on her. Now she was answering his questions, and she seemed resigned to it.

“I remained in the backseat of that car for at least two hours,” she said. “I waited until I was sure they were gone. Then I took Buddy into the house. On the way, we had to walk past all those dead bodies—including my mother’s. I remember trying not to think about anything but the money.”

“What money?” Laurie asked.

“Trent kept some cash hidden under a floorboard in his closet. I found it one night when everyone else was out getting high and skinny dipping. Trent had saved up about fifteen hundred dollars—from panhandling and stealing. I used it to hitchhike to Eugene. My mom had a younger brother who lived there. By the time I reached Uncle Dorian’s a couple of days later, it was in the newspapers about Trent and Biggs Farm. Mom was listed among the dead. I’d managed to convince Uncle Dorian that Buddy was my brother and we’d run away before July seventh. He didn’t tell the police, bless his heart. I took a new first name and went back to Mom’s maiden name before she married that Milhaud loser. We lived with Uncle Dorian for almost three years.”

A wistful smile came to her face. “We were a regular family. We even had a dog—a sweet, three-legged corgi named Abby. It was the closest thing to a regular home I’ve ever known. I was actually going to school and making friends. But I was afraid of getting too close to anyone, because I didn’t want them to know who I really was—and who Buddy really was.” Cheryl sighed. “But then it all went to hell.”

“Why?” Laurie asked. “What happened?”

“Dorian got a girlfriend, Ivy. I used to call her Poison Ivy. She hated my guts from the get-go, and vice versa. The funny thing is, I know Dorian was gay. I guess Ivy was his last futile attempt at heterosexuality. Anyway, Ivy moved in with us, and I think she started to figure out the truth about Buddy and me. Anyway, I didn’t trust her, so after a couple of months, I ran away.

“I knew the police would be looking for us, so I dyed my hair—and Buddy’s. We hitchhiked to Spokane. I didn’t have two dimes to rub together, so I dropped Buddy off in the lobby of a children’s shelter. I managed to find work as a waitress in this greasy spoon called The Ham and Egger. It was close to the shelter, and I was able to keep tabs on Buddy. During my breaks, I’d sneak in visits with him on the playground. I thought all this was just going to be temporary until I got a place for the two of us. See, I was sleeping on a cot in a little annex off the break room in the restaurant. Anyway, I went to visit Buddy at the shelter one winter day, and he wasn’t there on the playground. I found out they’d put him in a foster home—a couple from Pullman. I lost track of him after that. Then I got into the drugs . . .”

Laurie thought about the letters Maureen had collected from adoption agencies.

“Anyway,” Cheryl continued, “last year, once the Grill Girl was in the black and bringing in some money, I started making inquiries. I found out this couple from Spokane had become Buddy’s foster parents when he was nine. I tracked them down—only to discover they were both dead. I got ahold of their neighbor and asked about the child—who of course, by then was a grown man. Or so I figured. She said she didn’t know anything about a foster son. But then she got back to me a few days later, and told me—the boy died a long time ago. He drowned a week before his twelfth birthday in a boating accident with some friends.”

“Shit,” Gil murmured. He seemed genuinely disappointed and sad.

“When I heard that, it was all I could do to keep from going back to the drugs,” Cheryl admitted. “But instead, I decided to gather as much inside information as I could on the Styles-Jordan murders and the
suicides
at Biggs Farm.”

“I thought you were there,” Gil said with irony. “I thought you already knew—better than anyone else. At least, that’s what you’ve been saying.”

“I wanted confirmation about who orchestrated all of it.” Glaring at him, Cheryl got to her feet. “You see, Gil, it’s become my mission to make you accountable for what you did, you son of a bitch.”

Gil just shook his head at her. Even though he was sweaty, beaten, and bruised because of her, there was still pity in his eyes as he gazed at Cheryl.

At that moment, Laurie realized they’d never get a confession out of him. She was almost positive Gil had been telling them the truth all this time.

And she was terrified that Cheryl would kill him before she realized that, too.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-
SIX

Saturday, 5:11
P.M.

Snoqualmie, Washington

“P
op, are you okay?” Adam asked. “Can you hear me?”

“He’s doing fine,” said the woman over the phone. “He’s just not very talkative right now.”

“I want him to tell me that,” Adam replied. Hunched close to the steering wheel, he navigated the treacherous back roads winding through the forest near Snoqualmie Pass. The dull, constant rain made the pavement slick. Low guardrails were all that stood between Adam’s Mini Cooper and a deadly plunge off the mountainside. His ears had already popped from the altitude change. At some curves, he’d gape out his window at the tops of evergreen trees. The dark blue SUV followed close behind. He hadn’t seen another car in at least five minutes.

At different points, the road leveled off and he spotted gravel side roads that led into the forest. He wondered when she would tell him to turn onto one of those trails. Adam was still convinced they were going to kill him and his father some place in these woods.

“Pop, I’m in the car in front of you, do you understand?” he said.

“Who is that?” his father asked feebly.

“It’s Adam, Pop,” he said, glancing in the rearview mirror. “Are you okay?”

“Who’s the fellow they shot? Do you know him?”

“Never mind about him, Dean,” the woman said. “That was at least twenty miles back. Wave to your son. He’s right in front of us. You and he will have a chance to stretch your legs pretty soon. You’ll have some refreshments, too. Are you thirsty? I made you a Trent Hooper cocktail. It’s lemonade and another secret ingredient. You’re going to love it . . .”

Adam realized what they were planning. The murders of Dean and Joyce imitated the way Trent Hooper had killed forty-four years ago. Now he and his father would die in the same manner Trent and his followers had killed themselves.

They’d pin the policeman’s murder on him, too. All they had to do was toss Stafford’s Glock 19 in the Mini Cooper. The police would match it with the gun used to slay that poor traffic cop.

They had it all worked out. Suddenly, Adam couldn’t breathe.

“Adam, that’s you up there?” his father asked.

“Yeah, Pop,” he managed to answer.

“Go faster,” his father said.

The woman laughed. “Well, you’re a regular hot-rodder, aren’t you, old man?”

Adam anxiously glanced around the front seat for something he could use to defend himself with. It was about the fifth time he’d done this since leaving Medina, and still he didn’t see a damn thing. He had a tire iron in the back, but he had no way of getting at it. He looked up just in time to see the road curving in front of him. He jerked the wheel to one side and felt the Mini Cooper tilt slightly. The tires screeched.

“Watch it up there,” the woman said.

“Go faster!” his father repeated.

His stomach in knots, Adam stole another glance in the rearview mirror. His poor dad was obviously somewhere else in his mind right now.

“Go faster!”

“All right,” the woman grumbled. “That’s enough, shut up.”

His father started singing: “Pack up all my care and woe . . .”

It took Adam a moment to recognize the tune. It was “Bye Bye Blackbird.”

His dad warbled that same song whenever he was “faking” during one of Dean’s uncomfortable visits at Evergreen Manor. Was he actually lucid right now—and pretending to be out of it?

“No one here can love and understand me . . .”

“Okay, that’s enough, old man,” the woman growled. “Can it.”

His dad kept on humming the tune. “Adam, go faster!” he said, and then he went back to his humming.

Adam realized his father knew exactly what he was saying. He was giving him instructions. He’d seen the driver shoot the cop. And forty-four years ago, he’d seen that group suicide at Biggs Farm. He knew what the woman meant by a Trent Hooper cocktail. He was cognizant.

Taking a curve in the road, Adam pressed harder on the accelerator. He felt the tires skid a bit. Rain pelted his windshield. His speedometer jumped up to fifty-five in the forty zone. All the while, he could hear his father singing—even louder now.

“Hey, up there, slow down,” the woman warned. “And you, old man, shut up!”

“Faster!”

The road straightened, and Adam picked up speed. He glanced in the mirror, and the SUV lagged farther and farther behind. Approaching another bend in the road, he could see the treetops again past the low guardrail. White-knuckled, he steered along the curve. The Mini Cooper veered too far left and scraped against the guardrail for a second. Adam winced at the grating noise. It felt as if the car might flip over at any minute. But he didn’t let up.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing up there?” the woman growled. “If you want to see your father again, you better slow down . . .”

“Go faster!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

The road straightened out once more, and the terrain changed. The perilous drop on the other side of the guardrail was now a wooded gully. The guardrail ended. Adam pushed down on the gas until the pedal almost met the floor. The engine roared, and he watched the speedometer jump to eighty.

In the oncoming lane was a Jeep, the first car he’d seen in a while. Adam passed it in a flash, and he heard a whoosh. The driver leaned on his horn.

Adam glimpsed the SUV way behind him. It too almost swerved into the Jeep. The horn blared again.

Over the phone, he heard the woman barking instructions to the driver.

All of a sudden, she screamed. A loud shot rang out.

Adam quickly took his foot off the gas.

In the mirror he saw the SUV tilt and spin out of control. All he could think was that his father was in that vehicle.

The SUV hurtled toward the shoulder. There was no guardrail to stop it.

Adam slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed.

In horror, he watched the SUV fly off the side of the road. It landed with a crash in the gully and slammed into the trunk of a tall evergreen. The impact triggered the vehicle’s horn. The sound was deafening in the small gorge.

Adam pulled over to the shoulder. He staggered out of the Mini Cooper and gazed down at the wreckage. The front of the SUV was bashed in. The glass that remained in the shattered windshield was splattered with blood. Through the large jagged hole in the frame, he caught a glimpse of the driver—lifeless, trapped behind a deflating airbag. Blood streamed down his face from that strange, sheared hairline that looked painted on.