Someone Must Die (27 page)

C
HAPTER
51

The fireball burst over the kitchen counter, hypnotizing Diana for barely an instant.

Ethan!
she thought, dropping to the floor.

The second, louder explosion came a fraction of a second later, the force of it crushing her chest. Something flew across the room, as plaster and glass fell all around her. Then Diana could no longer hear anything, just shrill, high-pitched ringing.

But she was alive. She was still alive.

Something over her head was trapping her. She rolled away. The coffee table had protected her from the worst.

Ethan . . . she had to get to him.

Smoke burned her eyes as she felt around for a piece of broken glass and cut through the binding on her wrists, then ankles, trying not to breathe.

She covered her mouth and nose with her blouse and crawled behind the sofa toward the door, barely able to see through the thick smoke. Flames shot up around her, the floor shifted beneath her.

Ethan. Where was Ethan?

Something was lying in a heap. Red and blue and white.

The little boy on the tricycle. She had to save him.

She crept toward him on hands and knees.

The head was wrong, eyes wide open, neck broken, blood pouring from his face. Diana stared into his blue eyes.

Not the little boy. Gertrude.

The hot air was crushing her. Flames bursting. Ringing in her head like a relentless siren.

The little boy. She needed to save the little boy.

Di’s head was filled with cotton, so no sound could break through. Only a shrill, high-pitched ringing. She ran from the brownstone as the ground fell from beneath her. She turned to see bricks flying through the air, the building collapsing.

On the sidewalk, a red tricycle. Near it, something blue, white, and red. The little boy.

Di crawled toward him. She needed to save the little boy. Something warm was running down her check, in her eye. The ringing sound screamed in her head.

She picked up the child and tried to run, but her feet were trapped in quicksand. The boy—he was so very heavy. She heaved her legs away from the smoke and fires and flying debris.

“You’re going to be all right,” she said to the bundle in her arms. She pulled herself down the street, past two people huddled by the stoop of another brownstone. A flash of white. A flash of black. Something familiar about them.

She kept dragging herself forward, the warm wetness in her mouth, in her eyes so she could no longer see. The ringing so loud that all she wanted to do was scream. Then she became weightless as she fell into darkness.

Diana coughed. She stretched out her arms and thrashed the air. She had to get to Ethan, but the darkness was too thick.

And there was nothing to break her fall.

C
HAPTER
52

Aubrey felt it before she heard it. A tremor beneath her feet. Then came a blast so loud, so sudden, that even from a hundred feet away where she stood with Smolleck, the sound reverberated through her body.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes off the small building that seemed to swell as though it had just taken a shallow breath. Hundreds of cracks appeared in the walls as windows burst out of their frames and mustard-colored stucco fell to the ground.

Blinding lights flashed in the downstairs apartment.

Aubrey found her voice. “Mama!” she screamed.

Something was restraining her arm, keeping her from running toward the exploding building, where black smoke flowed out like lava.

“Mama!” she cried, trying to run. “Let me go. Let me go!”

Someone pulled her back. He was stronger than she. She looked up. Smolleck.

“Aubrey. We have to get away from here. Now!”

She took deep breaths.
Calm down,
she willed herself. She stopped fighting him and went slack.

He eased his grip.

And then she took off and ran toward the building.

“Aubrey, stop!”

She didn’t know whether he was following her, but she sprinted toward the building, charged with adrenaline.

She yanked on the outer door and ran into the building. Smoke poured into the hallway, coming out of the apartment on the right. She covered her mouth and nose, ducked down low, and tried not to inhale. Part of the wall to the apartment was missing. She stepped through the torn gap. Flames shot up where the kitchen had been. The outer wall of the building was gone, and part of the upper floor dangled above her.

She searched through the haze for her mother.

Two bodies were lying on the floor, head to head.

Aubrey crawled over.

Star’s eyes were wide open, her head twisted like a broken doll’s. Beside her, Mama was huddled in a fetal position, her shirt pulled up over her mouth and nose.

“Mama?” Aubrey shook her.

Her mother jerked and opened her eyes. She began to cough.

Aubrey grabbed her arm. “Come. Quick.”

Her mother was confused as she glanced at Star’s wrecked body. Then panic filled her eyes, and she crawled after Aubrey through the gaping wall into the hallway. Behind them, the spitting flames set off another blast.

“Ethan!” her mother shouted over the noise.

Aubrey rushed ahead and opened the door to the garage. She prayed she was right about Ethan, that the movie they’d watched together had left an impression.

Her mother pointed upstairs. “Ethan.”

The upper floor was caving in around them. They had to get out.

“In here, Mama.” Aubrey pulled her mother into the garage, then threw the door closed behind them. She could hear plaster and wood crashing down where they had just been. Only a thin haze of smoke had leaked into the small garage. A white sedan took up most of the space.

Please be here.
She opened the rear car door. A blanket covered the space behind the driver’s seat. Had he remembered the movie with the clever little boy?

“Ethan?”

The blanket moved.

She pulled it away.

There he was—wide-eyed, his damp blond curls matted around his head. A small indentation in his cheek from a crease in the blanket. A jumping dolphin on his wrinkled blue T-shirt.

Safe. He was safe.

“Was I brave enough, Aunt Aubrey?” he asked, in his pure, sweet voice.

Her eyes stung. “You were the bravest.”

“Ethan,” her mother said, taking him into her arms. “Oh, my precious boy. Oh, my Ethan.”

Another blast shook the garage. A piece of ceiling crashed down on the top of the car.

“Mama, get in. Quick.” Aubrey gave her a little shove, then slammed the door after her. No time for reunions. The garage was reverberating from the explosions. They needed to get out before the building collapsed.

She felt for a button to open the garage door, but found nothing.

She climbed into the driver’s seat, praying that Janis had left the key in the ignition, in case she and Star had needed to make a quick getaway.

Yes! It was there. She started up the car.

“Hang on,” she shouted.

“Grandma, get down,” Ethan said.

Aubrey stepped on the accelerator. The car began to move. She floored it, squeezing her eyes shut and lowering her head. The wheels squealed.

The car crashed through the wood door. She heard the crack of glass.

Out. They were out!

She opened her eyes. The windshield was a giant cobweb of thin white lines. She couldn’t see beyond. She eased the car into the street.

Behind them came an explosion that rocked the car, scattering pebbled glass.

Her arms shook so badly she was afraid to let go of the steering wheel. The sound of sirens surrounded her. People in uniforms rushed toward them. Smolleck, his tie askew and arms outstretched.

“Aunt Aubrey?” asked a little voice. “Is it safe to come out?”

Glass from the windshield glistened on the passenger seat, on her lap.

Glass like from a smashed snow globe.

“Yes, sweet boy.” Her throat ached. “It’s safe to come out now.”

C
HAPTER
53

Hours had gone by. Or maybe it had only been seconds. Someone had wrapped a blanket around her, but Aubrey couldn’t stop shaking. The lights were disorienting, spilling out red, white, and blue, like a Fourth of July gone crazy. Then things came into focus. Sirens blared as people ran from firetrucks, ambulances, police cars.

Aubrey watched black smoke billow out of what once had been the time-share. It reminded her of the gaping hole between two intact buildings in the photo of the brownstone explosion.

Explosion. Where was Mama?

She looked around in a panic, but quickly spotted her mother sitting on an ambulance stretcher, her arms enveloping Ethan. His head rested against his grandmother’s shoulder, eyes closed.

Safe now, and finally able to sleep.

Ethan was fine.

They were both fine, but Mama had refused to let go of her grandson when they were helped from the car. Everyone seemed to understand why and gave her some space with Ethan.

The burning smell lingered in Aubrey’s nose and chest. She couldn’t tell whether her nostrils and lungs were scorched from earlier, or if the acrid odor was hanging in the open air.

She noticed a woman standing beside Detective Gonzalez a short distance away. Feral black hair, a prominent chin. The woman was absolutely motionless as she stared at the burning building.

Aubrey drew nearer. Up close, she could see the woman’s resemblance to the college photo of Gertrude Morgenstern. Gertrude, who had been her mother’s roommate.
We were once very close,
her mother had said.

And now, here were their daughters. Two women whose lives had been shaped by their mothers.

What had Gertrude done to her daughter to make her willing to go along with her plan to kidnap a child and put his life at risk? Why hadn’t Janis had sufficient will to resist her?

Gertrude’s daughter seemed to sense Aubrey’s presence. Their eyes met. Janis’s were very blue. Pretty, even. Like Star’s.

Like Gertrude’s would have been, behind her pink-lensed glasses.

“Why did you do it?” Aubrey asked.

Janis sucked the thick air deep into her lungs. “My mother,” she said. “She was so sad. I just wanted her to be happy.” She turned back to stare at the smoke rising out of the building.

And Aubrey realized that was exactly what she had been doing her own entire life. Trying to make her parents happy, because she had wanted so desperately to preserve their family. A family she had sensed had been built on a weak foundation, which could collapse from pressure on the tiniest fault line.

The breeze shifted and it began to snow. Aubrey looked at the snowflakes on her arms.

Not flakes.

Ashes.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Janis asked. “My mother’s dead.”

“Yes,” Aubrey said.

Janis nodded. She held up her arms, bound together by handcuffs. “Finally, I’m free.” A smile grew on her face. “And so is Mom.”

Free,
Aubrey thought.

So why was it so difficult to breathe?

C
HAPTER
54

Her ears hadn’t stopped ringing, and her head felt as though it were filled with sawdust, but she was alive. More important, Ethan was safe, in good health, and reunited with his mother and father.

Diana rolled her wheelchair out of the hospital room where she had spent the last twenty-four hours. Her hands were in bandages, and it was painful to use them to operate the wheelchair, but she was too unstable on her own feet.

She had been to Larry’s room earlier today, shortly after he’d regained consciousness, but she had wanted to wait until they were alone and he was stronger before she spoke to him.

If not for the misunderstanding, she might never have put it all together. The nurse had assumed she was Larry’s wife, not ex-wife, and had brought her a large folded paper that had been tucked into Larry’s waistband when the medics had brought him to the hospital. The old, yellowed paper was spotted with recent blood. She had unfolded the document and realized it was the blueprint of Low Library that she had seen forty-five years before. But it was only when she examined the notations in the margins that she recognized the handwriting. Handwriting that had been so new to her when she first saw the blueprint, she hadn’t made the connection.

That’s when everything came together for her—Gertrude’s last words before she blew up the time-share, Larry’s reluctance to go to the FBI so many years ago, and Diana’s confused memory of the two people huddled together a few doors down from the exploding brownstone.

The hallway was quiet, just the sounds of beeping coming from patients’ rooms. It was after ten and the visitors were mostly gone. Aubrey had left a few minutes earlier. Diana had reprimanded her daughter for risking her life, but there was no heart in her motherly scolding, and Aubrey had known it. Without her daughter’s intervention, Diana and Ethan would never have survived.

She stopped at the doorway to Larry’s room. A basket of wildflowers from she didn’t know whom. A balloon held by a coffee mug filled with candy—“Get Well Soon!” She eased the wheelchair closer to the bed, grimacing as her hands touched the wheels.

His bed was raised, and he was propped up against a couple of pillows. A white bandage covered his head. It reminded her of the white bandanna he’d worn when he’d been Lawrence of Columbia.

A million years ago. Mere seconds ago.

He opened his eyes—sky blue set in bloodred. “Diana,” he said, his voice hoarse, “so glad to see you.”

His words were muffled, almost drowned out by the ringing in her head.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Been better.” He tried to smile. The cleft in his chin quivered. “How about you?”

“About like that.”

“What about our girl Aubrey, eh? She really saved the day.”

“She could have died.” Her voice came out too harsh, but she didn’t care. She wanted him to understand the magnitude of what could have been.

“How long have you known Star was Gertrude?” she asked.

He jerked, and the heart-monitoring machine he was attached to beeped his agitation. “Not until the day she tried to kill me,” he said. “When she recognized the ringtone on Aubrey’s phone as yours.”

Our love is stronger than the pain.
Sentimental nonsense. She should have moved on years ago.

“So for eight years you didn’t realize who she was?”

“Everything about her was different,” he said quietly. “Her face, her body, the way she talked and moved.”

“How could you not have noticed her finger?”

“I don’t know, Diana. The prosthetic was perfect, and she never took the ring off.”

Or maybe he had seen what he’d wanted to see. “What about the ransom note?” she asked.

“What ransom note?”

“The one in the greeting card you left for me at the house.”

“Greeting card?” he said. “My God. Star gave me an envelope when I went to the house to see you. She said it was a ‘We’re-thinking-of-you’ card and asked me put it with the mail. She didn’t want me to make a fuss about it. Was there a ransom demand?”

“There was.” Diana was fairly certain he was telling the truth. At least about that. “I finally remembered,” she said. “About April Fool.”

He kept his bloodshot eyes on her.

“When I was carrying the little boy away from the explosion, I saw two people standing near a stoop a couple of doors down.”

The heart monitor beeped again.

“Something about the two people seemed familiar,” she said. “I don’t know—maybe I was concentrating so hard on getting the boy to safety that I didn’t pay attention. Or maybe I blocked the memory.”

“You had a serious head injury.”

“I did,” she said. “Were you hoping either the injury or the trauma of the explosion would wipe away my memory?”

He seemed to go whiter. The monitor beeped more quickly.

“You were right,” she said. “At least, for the last forty-five years or so. But today, I remembered.”

He squeezed his eyes shut.

“The two people by the stoop,” she said. “He was wearing a white bandanna, and she had a long black braid.”

She waited for him to deny it, but he said nothing. Just lay there taking shallow breaths.

“I thought I had figured everything out, but I hadn’t. Gertrude even told me I was mistaken just before she died.”

His eyes flew open.

“You were the one who planned to blow up Low Library.”

“No, Diana. I didn’t.”

“Stop
lying
.” Her voice carried over the ringing in her ears. “I have the blueprint. It’s your handwriting on it, Larry.”

He closed his eyes. A tear ran over the purplish pouch beneath his eye, then down his sunken cheek.

“I’m trying to understand, Larry. We were lovers then. How could you have planned such a thing and me not know?”

He kept his eyes closed. “You saw what you wanted to,” he said. “You believed I was a hero.”

“I thought I knew you. You proclaimed to the world that murder wasn’t the answer. Was that a cover story?”

He wet his lips with his tongue. “I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d never accept killing. I didn’t want to fall off the white horse you put me on.”

But he had fallen. Far and hard.

“What changed you?” she asked, her voice hushed inside her sawdust brain.

“She did.”

Diana felt a stab. So many years later, and she was still jealous of her.

“Gertrude had such intensity,” he said. “She persuaded me that the only way to get the world’s attention was to do something devastating.”

“So you came up with the plan to blow up the library and kill hundreds of students.”

He pulled in several labored breaths. He was talking too much. Wearing himself out. “I was caught up in her vison,” he said finally. “She was always the one with the true convictions. Not me.”

Lawrence of Columbia. He had been nothing more than an actor playing a part.

“When I asked you to come with me to the FBI to stop the plan, you were reluctant at first, then you agreed.”

“I was relieved you’d discovered the plan,” he said. “I hadn’t wanted to go through with the bombing, but I didn’t know how to stop it once it was in motion.”

“Except you didn’t want anyone to learn the truth about you. That it had been your plan.”

He lay there, dead still.

She needed to get it out. All of it.

“Instead of going to the bar to tell the others that we had negotiated for their immunity, you snuck down to the brownstone basement. You decided to silence the people who knew the plan to blow up Low Library was your brainchild.” She stopped to take a breath. “And that’s what you did, didn’t you? You silenced them. Michael Shernovsky, Gary Cohen, and Gertrude Morgenstern. And a five-year-old boy named Martin Smith, who happened to be riding his red tricycle that day.”

He moved his head back and forth against the pillow, but she sensed it wasn’t in denial, but rather some inner hell he was trying to block out.

“You were the one who blew up the brownstone on April Fool.”

He let out a noise like he’d been kicked in the gut.

“Except you had expected Gertrude to be in the basement, but she wasn’t. She was upstairs, where she’d been talking to me at the front door.” The beeping of his monitor seemed to merge with the ringing in her head. “So what happened, Larry? Did you see her running from the building and stop her at the stoop where I saw the two of you? What promises did you make after convincing her you’d known she hadn’t been in the basement when you threw the bomb? Did you tell her to plant her body parts and clothes to make it look like she had died in the explosion?”

“I panicked.” His voice came out in a whisper. “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“Did you reassure her that the two of you would run away and hide in Mexico? Maybe Puerto Vallarta or Cabo?”

“I didn’t know what else to do,” he said.

Larry had been Gertrude’s shining knight, too. That’s what she’d called him. Her knight. It had been Larry who had made Gertrude promises, not Jonathan. It was all so clear now. So obvious.

“You had a relationship with Gertrude when I believed it was just you and me.” The idea no longer hurt her. She was finally past that girlish pain.

“That’s why Gertrude believed you. You two had already been planning to go off to Mexico.”
La cucaracha. La cucaracha
.

The ringing in her head was too loud. She willed it to stop. “But you never replied to her messages after she went into hiding, did you? You discarded her.”

“I was in love with you, Di. Never with Gertrude.”

“Not until she came back as Star. Although you didn’t know it was Gertrude, or that she had come back to get even with you and with me.” She paused, a lump rising in her throat. “And with Jonathan.”

Because of Larry, the man she loved was dead.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a fraud.”

Diana leaned back against the wheelchair, the sickly smell of flowers surrounding her, the ringing in her head finally quieting down. Jonathan’s remains would be cremated, as he had wanted. There would be a memorial, but it wouldn’t be enough. Not nearly enough.

“The sins of the fathers,” Larry was saying. “I’ve brought terrible pain upon my children. Upon you.” He met her eyes. “I’m sorry, Diana. I wish I knew what more I could say or do.”

She turned away from the eyes that had once captured her heart.

“Will you tell the FBI?” he asked. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

“No,” she said.

“And the children? Are you going to tell Aubrey and Kevin what I did?” He wet his cracked lips with his tongue. “It would kill me if they knew, Di.”

He had once been her hero, her white knight on a snowy stallion. The man she had sipped wine with on the shore of the bay. He was the father of her children.

“No. I won’t tell anyone.”

She rolled her wheelchair away from him, toward the door. “Enough have already suffered and died because of you.”