Quiet as the Grave (2 page)

This was the kind of candor that would drive Justine nuts. She had the theory that admitting any inadequacies was bad for the boy's ego. But Mike knew that Gavin's ego was perfectly healthy. Maybe too healthy. Gavin was as gorgeous as his mother, he lived in a six-thousand-square-foot mansion with his own boat and
plasma TV, he pulled down straight As, and he boasted the best batting average in his Little League conference.

It would do him good to face the facts: Hugh Tillman was a better singer.

“I know,” Gavin agreed happily. “I can't ever get the tune. Mrs. Hadley hates me. Where's Mom?”

Mike felt the eyes of the other parents once again.

“She's outside,” he said as casually as he could. “She got a phone call.”

“Oh, well, tell her I love her, okay? I gotta go.” Gavin and his buddies had plans to celebrate the success of the play with a pizza party at the Tillmans' house. “Hugh's mom is already waiting in the minivan for us.”

“Go tell her yourself,” Mike said. He knew if he let Gavin leave without saying goodbye, she'd carp about it all the way home.

The boy flew off, with Hugh and about four other boys trailing behind him like a pack of puppies. Mike grabbed a napkin, wiped cinnamon sugar off his hands and tossed his empty punch cup in the big trash bin.

“Three points,” Phil Stott, Judy's husband, said with a smile. Mike appreciated that. He knew that Phil, a nice guy who didn't have kids but was here to support his wife's school, was trying to bridge the embarrassment gap.

Gavin was back in a flash. “Found her! She says to tell you she's waiting for you in the car.” He held up his hand for Mike's goodbye slap. At home it would be a hug and a kiss, but with Hugh and the other “dudes” standing by, a high five would have to do.

Mike obliged, and then did the same for all the other boys, who were accustomed to parading by him
this way after every Little League game. He'd coached these boys since they were in T-ball. They were good kids. But he couldn't help thinking his own smart, silly son was the best.

He wished Gavin were coming home with him right now, but he realized that was pretty cowardly. Yeah, the ride home would be a bummer, with Justine pouting or ranting, but he could handle it. He didn't need to use his son as a buffer.

By the time he got to the car, Justine wasn't speaking to him. Good. Pouting was ridiculous, but it was easier to ignore than the ranting.

She'd rolled back her silk sleeve and was rubbing conspicuously at the discoloration just above her wrist. He checked it out of the corner of his eye, just cynical enough to wonder which way the finger marks were facing. He was pretty damn sure he hadn't been rough enough to bruise anything. She'd probably done it herself, while she waited for him to come out.

He considered trying to make conversation, but it seemed like too much trouble. Woodcliff Road was kind of tricky, with a twenty-foot drop through wooded slopes on the passenger side. He needed to concentrate.

Let her sulk. She loved that anyhow.

Finally, though, her resentment simply had to bubble out in words. She swiveled in her seat and glared at him. “So? Don't you have a single thing to say for yourself? After what you did to my arm?”

Damn. He'd almost made it. They were only a couple of miles from Tuxedo Lake. He negotiated a curve through some overhanging elms, which were just beginning to go yellow. He glanced at her face, which looked slightly jaundiced in the glowing light.
The shadows of the trees passing over her made it seem as if her mouth were moving silently, though he knew it wasn't. It was a disagreeable sight.

He turned away and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I just couldn't believe you were actually going to leave right when Gavin's part was coming up.”

She waved her hand. “You call that a part? I can't believe he dragged us all the way out there for that. He made a fool of me, that's for sure.”

Clenching the steering wheel, Mike tried not to react. This was pointless, and he knew it. He'd tried for years to make Justine think about any situation, anywhere on this earth, without viewing it through the prism of her own self-interests, but she simply couldn't do it. He'd looked up
sociopath
once, and it fit perfectly. It was kind of scary, actually.

But, like an idiot, sometimes he just couldn't stop himself from responding. He accelerated, whipping the passing trees into a batter of lemony green.

“He made a fool of
you?
Sorry, but you're going to have to explain to me how Gavin's school play can possibly end up being all about
you
.”

She didn't answer right away, and he knew that was a bad sign. She was lining up her ammunition, which meant this wasn't going to be just a skirmish. It was going to be war.

“That's just so like you,” she said. “The perfect Mike Frome can't make mistakes. If anyone dares to point out that you've done something wrong, like rough up your own wife, you just launch a counterattack, trying to change the subject. Well, I won't be put on the defensive. You manhandled me, and I ought to go to the police.”

“You're not my wife,” he said. That was stupid,
too. That wasn't the point. But she did that to him. She made him so mad his brain shut off.

“I'm your son's mother. I think that is just as important, don't you?”

“No. I think it's tragic.”

“God, you're so melodramatic.” She narrowed her eyes. “Tragic? Because I took a call on my cell phone? I'm sorry to tell you, but that doesn't make me a bad mother.”

He'd had enough. “No,” he said. “What makes you a bad mother is that you're a raging bitch. You're the most self-centered, foul-tempered bitch in the state of New York. That's what makes you a bad mother.”

He half expected her to slap him. He definitely expected her to start yelling epithets at him. But she didn't do either of those things. Instead, she did something that shocked the hell out of him.

She opened her car door.

“Justine—”

“Stop the car.”

“Damn it, shut the door.”

“No. Stop the car. I'm getting out.”

He was already applying the brakes, but he had to be careful. She had one leg out. He didn't want to fishtail on these narrow, curving roads. He was mad as hell at her. He might wish he'd never met her, but he didn't want her to get hurt.

He maneuvered the car to a safe spot. His heart racing, he turned to her. “Are you insane? Do you want to kill yourself? Shut the damn door.”

She didn't answer. She just picked up her purse and got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her.

He rolled down the down the window. “Justine, for God's sake.”

“Go to hell,” she said without looking at him. “Just go straight to hell where you belong.”

He looked at her, so messed up with contradictory, heart-racing emotions and adrenaline that he couldn't even decide what he felt. It was about five o'clock, and the trees behind her were already full of shadows. She had on high heels, the better to impress the other Volunteer Mommies with, but no damn good at all for walking along an uphill cliff road.

“Justine. Okay, look. I'm sorry. Get back in the car.”

She didn't even answer. She just began to walk.

He trolled along behind her for a few yards, leaning over to beg her through the window and steering the car with one hand. He felt like a fool, which was bad enough, but when another car came up behind him and honked impatiently, the embarrassment of it was just too much.

“Justine, get in the car right now, or I'm going to drive away, and you're going to have to walk the rest of the way home. It's nearly a mile.”

No response, except another short toot from the car behind.

“Justine, I mean it. It's getting cold. I'm not coming back to get you.”

She didn't even turn her head. She shifted her purse to her other shoulder and kept walking. The people behind him probably thought he was a stalker, or a serial killer.

Honk…

Well, screw her, then. If she wanted to walk all the way home in a snit, fine. She logged about five miles on the treadmill in the home gym every single day of her life. He figured she could handle half a mile out here.

He rolled up the window and hit the gas. He watched her in the rearview mirror, getting smaller but never once looking his way or acknowledging her predicament by the slightest twitch of a muscle.

Finally he came to a curve, and when he looked in the mirror again she was gone.

That was the last time anyone—except perhaps her killer—ever saw Justine Millner Frome alive.

Two years later

“H
OLD STILL
.
You've got a spot of green paint on your face.”

Suzie Strickland waited while the man in front of her reached up and teased the bridge of her nose with his fingernail. She didn't believe for a minute that she had any paint there. Ben Kuspit just wanted to touch her. He'd been flirting with her ever since she arrived an hour ago to take pictures of his son.

He was paying her four-and-a-half thousand dollars for a painting of Kenny, the youngest of his four kids. It was the largest commission she'd landed yet, and she needed it. Still, if they'd been alone, she would have made it very clear that the price didn't include groping rights.

Unfortunately, nine-year-old Kenny was still in the room, and she was reluctant to embarrass Daddy in front of his kid.

And, to be fair, maybe Ben wasn't inventing the speck of paint. She had been using viridian paint this afternoon as she finished up her current project, a pair of adorable two-year-old twins with green eyes, green dresses and green ribbons in their hair.

She'd come a long way since the early years, when,
after a day's work, she'd find splattered color everywhere. In her hair, under her fingernails, even on the soles of her shoes. She still painted with passion, but she'd learned how to harness that intensity. Today, her sunny workroom on the third floor of her Albany townhome was the cleanest, best-organized space in the house.

Still, paint was paint, and it had a way of insinuating itself into some pretty strange places.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling politely at Ben, though her voice was tight. He needed to back up. He was seriously violating her personal space. And that smile was gross. The man was fifty, for God's sake. His kid was staring right at him.

She lifted her camera up between them and moved to the far side of a gold chair, the kind of fragile, frilly thing Mrs. Kuspit apparently loved. The huge room was full of them.

“I'll just get two or three more shots, and then I think I'm done here.”

“Great.” Ben looked over at Kenny, who stood next to the living room mantel, where trophies were arrayed like a metallic rainbow, catching light from the overhead chandelier and tossing it onto the flocked ivory wallpaper in little oblongs of silver and gold. They didn't match the frilly gold chairs, but apparently Mrs. Kuspit didn't make
all
the decorating decisions.

“Hey, I've got an idea,” Ben said, snapping his fingers. “Kenny, pick up the football. Make like you're getting ready to toss a long one.”

Kenny grimaced, but he bent down and retrieved the football at his feet. He lifted his arm awkwardly, glancing sideways at his father. “Like this?”

Ben made a disgusted sound. “Damn it, Kenny,
why are you flashing us your armpit?” He strode over to the boy and began twisting his skinny elbow into a better position. “If you think I'm paying four-and-a-half thousand dollars to have you look like a geek, you've got another think coming.”

The boy flushed, but he didn't protest. He just stared at the floor while his father adjusted him like a mannequin. Suzie lowered her camera and tried not to hate the man. Throwing a football in the formal living room?
Come on
. His ego had to have some limits, didn't it?

She didn't say anything, though. She'd had weirder requests, like the woman who wanted her parakeet's picture painted as if he lived inside a genie's bottle. She'd like to meet the psychiatrist who could figure that one out.

She had taken that commission, too. She needed every job she could get. If the Kuspits liked her painting—and she could already tell she'd have to add about ten pounds of muscle to the little boy in order to please Daddy—they would hang her picture where their rich friends could see it.

Their rich friends would then decide that their own little darlings deserved to be displayed in a big, beautiful rococo gold frame, too.

And voilà! Suzie could pay the mortgage on her town house, and everyone was happy.

Except Kenny.

Poor kid
.

Ben was big and beefy, a good-looking former athlete. Kenny was scrawny and appeared to have about as much athletic ability as a scarecrow. Most of the trophies on the mantel were inscribed with phrases like Most Improved or Best Sportsmanship.

“Okay, that's good, hold that. Don't move.” Ben gestured impatiently toward Suzie. “Get one of him like that.”

Suzie lifted the camera, although the image she saw in the viewfinder was hardly inspiring. Kenny looked like he was being tortured.

He must hate football, but Ben obviously didn't care. The three older Kuspit offspring were girls. Suzie would bet that, the minute Ben saw the little manly splotch on the ultrasound, he had scrawled
“live vicariously through my son, the awesome high school quarterback”
into his engagement calendar. He wasn't going to let the dream die easily.

If he only knew what a mistake he was making. Look at Mike Frome, the most “awesome” jock in Suzie's high school. At seventeen he'd landed Justine Millner, the prettiest girl in Firefly Glen. By eighteen, he'd been forced to marry Justine—because she'd had his kid—though he no longer even liked her. By twenty-five they were divorced.

Not that Suzie was keeping tabs on his life or anything. She knew all that only because, right after the divorce, Justine had hired Suzie to paint her son Gavin's portrait.

It had probably merely been Justine's way of spending Mike's money as fast as she could, but Suzie didn't care. She would have taken a commission from the devil himself to jump-start her career. And Gavin had actually been a pretty neat kid in spite of having been scooped out of a scummy gene pool.

“Suzie?”

She focused again, and saw both Ben and Kenny in her viewfinder. Ben was frowning. “Suzie? Is everything okay?”

Darn. It had been a long time since she'd let thoughts of Mike Frome distract her.

She pressed the camera's button automatically, forgetting that she'd now have both father and son in the picture. No big deal. She often picked up all kinds of extraneous people and things. She could drop them out with her photo program.

“Yeah, fine. I think that'll do it.” She smiled at Kenny. “You did great.”

Kenny looked skeptical, but he smiled back and shrugged. He turned to his father. “Okay if I go? I've got homework.”

Ben patted him on the shoulder. “You bet. Gotta get those grades up.”

God, could the jerk put any more pressure on this kid? Suzie began packing away her camera and supplies, reminding herself to schedule the sittings when Ben Kuspit was at work. He did go to work, didn't he? Surely plaguing the hell out of your family wasn't a full-time job.

“Ready?” Suddenly Ben Kuspit's voice was very close behind her.

Oh,
rats
. She'd forgotten that she'd agreed to let him drive her home. Her twelve-year-old Honda, which she'd named Flattery because it wouldn't get you anywhere, had hunkered down in her driveway and refused once again to start. She'd taken a cab over here, but Ben had insisted on driving her home.

Suddenly she didn't like that idea at all.

“You know,” she said, turning, her camera still in her hand, “I think I should get a cab back. This took longer than I'd expected, and I know you have things to do.”

“No, no,” he said with a smile.
That
smile. He
caught his full lower lip between his teeth in a way that would have looked stupid even on a man half his age. “There's nothing I'd rather do than take you home. Honestly.”

Oh, yeah? Well,
honestly,
the idea of getting in a car with you makes my skin crawl.

Somehow she kept the smile on her face, though she was getting downright sick of this guy.

She thought of the Sailor Sam's Fish and Chips uniform she'd hung above her easel as a reminder of what life used to be like. A reminder that she was always just a couple of blown commissions away from having to wear that blue sailor jacket, tight red short-shorts, kneesocks and jaunty red-ribboned cap.

She took a deep breath. “No, it's okay. I'd really rather take a cab.”

“Don't be silly.” He reached into his pocket and jingled his keys suggestively. “I insist.”

“Mr. Kuspit, I don't think you understand. I want to take a cab.” She smiled to soften it. “I'm
going
to take a cab.”

He must be really rich, she thought. He looked as if he'd never heard the word
no
before. He gave her a playful scowl and came even closer, so close it made the hair on her arms stand up and tingle.

Cripes
. Maybe she should go back to the Goth style she'd adopted in high school, the unflattering, chopped-off purple hair and the black, slouchy clothes. Passes from boy-men had never been such a nuisance back then.

“But I've been looking forward to it,” he said in a throaty voice. “I'm eager to get to know you better, Suzie. You're such a talented young woman.”

Oh, man, she really, really didn't like people
invading her space, and this guy was so close she could see the tiny broken veins around his nose. If she were painting his face, she'd need a whole tube of cadmium red.

A drinker.
Great
. She needed that.

She tried one last time to be smart, to remember the mortgage payments. Would it kill her to ride in the car with the guy one time? Her town house was only ten minutes away. She thought of the red short-shorts and the screaming kids who puked up tartar sauce on the tables. She thought of the way she had come dragging home every night, too tired and angry to paint.

He touched her arm. Still smiling, he ran his index finger slowly up, until it disappeared under the little cap sleeve of her T-shirt. She shivered in disgust, and she saw his gaze slip to her nipples.

Oh, no, you don't, buddy
.
Waaay over the line
.

She narrowed her eyes.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Kuspit. I guess I didn't understand exactly what you wanted. The portrait is forty-five hundred. But if you're expecting to have a thing with me on the side, that's going to cost extra.”

He blinked once, but then his grin twisted, and his fingers crept up another inch. They found her shoulder and cupped it. What an incredible sleazeball! He thought she was playing games.

“Oh, is that so?” He raised one eyebrow. “How much extra?”

She scrunched up her mouth and made a low hum of consideration. “Let's see,” she said. “I'd say…oh, about…no…well, let's see…”

She looked him straight in the eye. “Oh, yeah, now I remember.
There's not enough money in the world
.”

His brows dived together. His hand tightened on her
shoulder and pulled her in, and his other arm started to come up. She didn't stop to find out what he had in mind. She swung out with the camera as hard as she could.

He was so close she couldn't get much leverage. Still, the camera connected with his cheek and made a nice little thump, followed by a grunt of shocked outrage.

“Shit,” he said, recoiling. “What the hell's the matter with you?”

She didn't bother to answer. He was holding his cheek, looking at her as if she'd broken his jaw, which she definitely had not. She knew what that sounded like. She'd broken a bone once, the left radius of a university teaching assistant who'd thought he could teach her something more than algebra and had to be set straight the hard way.

This guy wasn't hurt. He was just a big baby.

She reached out, lifted his hand from the cheek and eyed it calmly, pleased to see she'd drawn at least a little blood. He'd have a nice colorful bruise there tomorrow.

She felt like blowing smoke from the tip of her camera, gunslinger style. But that would have been gloating.

Still, she was pleased to discover that, even after ten years of learning to play nice and conform, she hadn't lost her touch entirely.

It wasn't until she was halfway home in the cab that she realized what she
had
lost.

She leaned her head against the cracked vinyl seat and let out a groan.

Blast it
. She'd lost four-and-a-half thousand dollars.

 

D
EBRA
P
AWLEY DECIDED
to go over to the Millner-Frome mansion a couple of hours early so that she
could make sure everything was spiffed up and gleaming for the open house at noon.

She was by God going to sell this house
today
.

Tuxedo Lake was one of the most desirable communities in this part of upstate New York. It was about thirty minutes northeast of Albany, just close enough to be considered a bedroom community…if you didn't plan to sleep late.

The lake itself was big and elegant, with sandy shores you could get away with calling a beach in your brochures. A picturesque ring of low granite cliffs nearly circled the lake, and if a sailboat drifted by at the right moment, your brochure illustration looked dynamite.

The mansion itself was gorgeous. A 6,462-square-foot French château jewel, complete with marble vestibule, formal library, swimming pool with central fountain and Jacuzzi. Nanny quarters over the four-car garage.

Debra didn't often let herself envy the houses she listed. But she envied this one.

When she sold it, she'd make a bundle in commission.

If
she sold it. The house might be perfect, but the house's history was a mess. Justine Frome had mysteriously disappeared two years ago and had never been heard from since. The police suspected foul play, and so did her parents. Justine's father had dragged the lake and jackhammered up the swimming pool looking for her, but no body had ever been found.

That was the problem in a nutshell. Debra didn't mean to be insensitive, but who wanted to pay a couple of mil for a beautiful lakefront home if they were always going to be wondering when a body might bob out of the lake, or start stinking up the basement?