No One Needs to Know (6 page)

That was how Cheryl felt. Suddenly, she was very perishable.

The explosion on Friday that had killed Maureen hadn’t been the result of a leaky gas line. She was almost certain of that. It was no accident. Cheryl had good reason to believe she was the one who was supposed to have died in the blast. But she couldn’t admit that to the investigators—not without getting herself into deeper trouble.

Standing in the parking lot with the rain matting down her ash-blond hair, she couldn’t help wondering about this mystery package in her hands. Was it a bomb of some kind?

Perishable.

People didn’t send bombs in the mail. They sent anthrax.

It was probably just food of some sort. But who would be sending her food?

She started toward her red 2005 Saturn. Since Friday afternoon, every time she climbed inside the car and started the engine, she held her breath. It was probably pretty simple to wire a car for detonation. If they hadn’t succeeded in blowing her to bits the first time, they would certainly try again.

Or perhaps they planned to kill her some other way now—something that would look like an accident or suicide.

Last month, she’d bought a gun and had a security system installed in her apartment. She felt more vulnerable outside, away from home. Doing something to her car seemed the obvious choice for whoever wanted her dead.

Setting the mystery package on the roof of the Saturn, Cheryl dug out her car keys. She imagined the bomb going off when she opened the door. The big storefront window to the post office would probably shatter from the explosion. On the street corner, she noticed a woman with an umbrella, holding a toddler by the hand. Cheryl waited until they crossed the street—away from the parking lot. Then she took a deep breath, unlocked the car door and opened it. No white flash, no thunderous boom, nothing. She was still standing—and in one piece.

Cheryl grabbed the package, and slid inside behind the wheel. Dropping her purse on the floor, she set the parcel on the passenger seat. She checked under her dashboard, and didn’t see anything strange there. In the movies, it was almost always when the person turned the key in the ignition that the bomb went off. At least that was the way it was with Robert De Niro in
Casino,
and Sam Shepard in
The Pelican Brief.
Cheryl decided just to get it over with, and she slipped the key into the ignition and gave it a turn.

The car started.

She uttered a pathetic, little laugh. While the engine purred, rain tapped lightly on the car roof. Cheryl took a pocket knife from her purse, and cut open the parcel. Inside, she found a Tupperware cake container—with an envelope taped to the top. She pried off the lid, and got a whiff of something citrusy and sweet. It was a golden brown Bundt cake—saturated with orange or lemon juice or both—and drizzled with a sugary glaze. One look and one sniff, and Cheryl could tell whoever had made this knew how to make desserts.

She pried the envelope off the Tupperware lid, opened it, and pulled out a postcard. It was a photo of one of those restaurants that went up about thirty years ago, trying to emulate a fifties diner. Emblazoned across the top of the card, it said:

SUPERSTAR DINER

Just Off I-90!

ELLENSBURG, WASHINGTON

On the back of the card was a note:

Dear Cheryl,

Please help me get out of this place! Actually, I enjoy working here as a chef, but I’d love to be in Seattle, cooking for you at Grill Girl. Here is a sample of one of my desserts. But I’m very creative with sandwiches, too. If you’re interested, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Bon appétit!
Laurie Trotter

PS: I read in Seattle Met mag that you’d love to cater a party for Gil Garrett. He’s my godfather & an old family friend!

Cheryl broke off a piece of the cake, still moist—with just the right firmness along the glazed exterior. She took a bite, and closed her eyes.

It was incredible.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Tuesday, June 3, 7:07
P.M.

Kent, Washington

“J
ust wait. She’ll try to make out like it was our fault the wrong bitch got blown up. I’ll bet she wants us to whack this Cheryl Wheeler for free—or on the cheap. I say, no way. It was her mistake, and she should pay us full price to correct it.”

In the car’s passenger seat, Keefe Grissom wondered if his work partner, Jay Trout, was even listening to him. Trout sat at the wheel, watching porn clips on his mobile device. “You like that?” the porn actor was asking, between grunts. The girl was panting and groaning in ecstasy.

The silver Audi was parked by the loading dock of an abandoned warehouse. They’d been sitting in the car with the engine off for about ten minutes. Graffiti covered the big door, crabgrass sprouted through the cracks in the driveway, and on the dock sat an old shopping cart full of rags and garbage some derelict must have left behind.

Whenever they met with this client, she’d always set the meeting in some bizarre, godforsaken spot. Shit like that came with the job. They rarely knew the names of their contacts. They nicknamed this one Zelda. She didn’t know that, of course. She was a funny-looking bitch, with her wiry build, long face, and pale complexion. She always wore black—maybe to match her short-cropped, coal-colored hair. And she never smiled. But she’d paid them well for their last couple of jobs, so Grissom wasn’t going to complain.

However, this last job was her screwup. They’d acted on her instructions to the letter. While his partner had lured the woman out of the food truck, Grissom had gone to work quickly and efficiently. He’d even come up with a piece of improvisational genius: nuking some aluminum foil in the microwave to set off the gas explosion. And not that he gave a crap one way or another, but the collateral damage had been pretty minimal. They’d done a damn fine, neat job—on the wrong woman.

“Harder, do it harder!” screamed the porn actress on the video Trout was watching.

With a sigh, Grissom leaned back in the passenger seat. “What the hell is the point watching a movie on a screen that size? Her tits are about as big as a couple of pinheads. I mean, can you see anything at all?”

“I can zoom in,” his friend said, eyes riveted to his mobile device.

Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, Zelda appeared at the driver’s window, staring in at them. Grissom saw her first and flinched. “Shit!”

The woman had a way of sneaking up on them. They never heard her, never saw her coming. But all at once she was there.

Trout glimpsed her on the other side of the glass, and he dropped his device. Fumbling to retrieve the phone, he finally snatched it up and switched it off. He restarted the engine so that he could lower his window. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me,” he said to the woman.

Stone-faced, Zelda put her arm up on the edge of the door. Grissom noticed she wore some kind of weird, studded black leather cuff that went almost all the way to her elbow. “We have a problem,” she said in a quiet voice. “As you must know by now, the wrong woman was killed. Cheryl Wheeler is still alive, and my client isn’t too happy about it—”

“Well, that’s not really our fault,” Grissom said. “I mean, c’mon, you—”

“Now Cheryl’s in the spotlight,” the woman said, talking over him. “And we can’t touch her for at least another couple of weeks, not without the police catching on. That’s really unfortunate. You two did excellent work on the Hawaii job—as well as the L.A. assignment. But this mistake on Friday, it’s disappointing . . .”

“Hey, you gave us the go-ahead,” Grissom said. “It’s not like we went in there on our own . . .”

Zelda stared at him. Her mouth seemed to tighten.

Grissom shut up. He didn’t want to push his luck with her.

But his friend didn’t seem to care. “We carried out your orders,” Trout said, one hand on the steering wheel. “If the wrong woman is dead, that’s your fault, not ours. Now, we don’t mind correcting this screwup, but it’ll be at our regular fee. Don’t think you can get a freebie by shifting the blame on us.”

Zelda took a small step back from the window. She tugged at the leather cuff on her arm.

Grissom squirmed in the passenger seat. “Listen, what Trout’s trying to say is—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake . . .” Trout interrupted, turning toward him. “A minute ago you were going on about how if she tried to pin the blame—”

He didn’t get another word out—just a deep gasp.

The woman had reached inside the car. It had happened so fast. Grissom had thought she was swatting a fly off his friend’s shoulder.

Now he realized what was happening. Trout started to twitch as if he were having convulsions. Then his body suddenly went limp and slumped toward him.

The woman was wiping the blood off something that looked like a meat thermometer. She must have pulled it out of a pocket in that leather cuff on her arm. She slipped it back inside the cuff.

All the while, blood gushed from a hole on the side of Trout’s neck, just under his ear.

Grissom glanced over at the woman in the window once again. Her face was expressionless. She pointed a gun at him.

“Oh, Christ, no,” he cried. “Wait—”

Two shots rang out, one right after another.

The first bullet went through his hand, a defense wound.

The second one went through his eye.

Without passion, she stared at the two dead young men in the front seat of the Audi. Blood dripped down the passenger window—and the windshield.

Her paid assassins had been more like gifted amateurs than professionals. They’d been subcontracted by her—and they’d been reliable up until this last job. She didn’t blame them for killing the wrong woman. That wasn’t why the two men were dead now.

She kept tabs on all the police and fire department bulletins. There had been one this morning—from a witness to the food truck explosion on Friday afternoon. The waitress had seen Maureen Forester’s last customers: two men in their twenties, one on crutches. A vague, but accurate enough description of the two young men had gone out on an APB. The police regarded them as “persons of interest” in the incident.

Now the woman needed to make sure the police never found them. Climbing inside the blood-splattered car, she collected their wallets and their phones. She wasn’t too concerned about staining her clothes. It was one reason she always wore black while on the job. The blood didn’t show.

Once she was outside again, she tossed the wallets and phones into a small plastic bag. Then she pulled out her own phone and made a call. A man answered: “Yeah?”

“I need you to come clean this up and make it disappear for me,” she said.

“Will do,” said the man on the other end of the line. Then he clicked off.

Like her, he was a professional. He’d get the job done.

The woman clicked off. She stared at the two corpses inside the crimson-stained car, two talented, young amateur killers. No one would ever find them or connect them to her client.

That was a problem easily fixed.

But Cheryl Wheeler was still alive.

The woman told herself she was working with another professional now. No subcontractors this time. She’d just have to be patient and wait it out a couple of weeks.

Then Cheryl Wheeler would be another problem easily fixed.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

Wednesday, June 4, 9:41
P.M.

Ellensburg

T
he third Molly Ringwald Heavenly Chocolate cake still had twelve more minutes in the oven until it was ready. Two were already baked, frosted, and in their Tupperware containers. Laurie had promised her boss, Paul, the cakes tomorrow if he put one of the other cooks on tonight’s solo closing shift.

She just didn’t want to be there today, not after last night. Joey had had a fever—and a bad cough. Listening to him hacking away was heartbreaking. Laurie had spent a good chunk of the evening in the bathroom, rocking him while the hot water in the shower had gone full blast. The steam had helped clear out his little lungs. But he hadn’t fallen asleep until three-thirty in the morning.

Joey’s temperature was near normal today, thank God. Now he was asleep in his room. Some Jennifer Aniston movie provided harmless distraction during the lulls in baking. Laurie also kept busy with an ongoing project—emptying out her big antique desk in the living room. In preparation for moving, she’d been cleaning out all the drawers, cabinets, and closets this week. It was amazing how much crap she’d accumulated in three years. She’d filled five big plastic trash bags with junk.