The Last to Know (33 page)

“Do you think he’ll choke?” Tasha asked, seeming worried.

“Nah,” Paula reassured her with the experience of a longtime mom. “It probably feels good on his teeth.”

That was one of the few times they spoke directly to each other since the conversation about Rachel. Ever since Paula revealed that Fletch Gallagher was Rachel’s mystery lover, Tasha was subdued. After that, Paula mostly talked to the kids—the kind of mindless chatter that keeps them entertained.

Now, as Paula steers her Honda away from the Banks home, up the winding lane that’s crowded with press vehicles on both sides, she decides to stop again at the Gallaghers’ to see if there are any new developments. She double-parks at the curb and hurries toward the crowd, spotting Brian Mulvaney in his blue uniform nearby.

“How’s it going, Brian? Any news on Sharon Gallagher—or anything else?”

“Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Big news, Paula. The kid just turned himself in—Gallagher’s nephew.”

She gapes at him, her pulse racing. “Jeremiah? He admitted to the murders?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure he’ll admit to the Leiberman one. Haven’t you heard about Jane Kendall’s sister yet, either?”

Jane Kendall’s sister.

An image pops into Paula’s head. She remembers the gaunt, homely woman she saw scurrying toward the Kendall mansion that first day after Jane’s disappearance. “What about her?” she asks Brian Mulvaney.

“She was in love with the husband.”

“Jane’s husband?” Paula’s thoughts are scrambled as she tries to keep up with the flurry of new details.

“Right. Owen Kendall. Last night after Jane’s body was found she made a move on him. When he wouldn’t go for it, she went to the cemetery and killed herself on her father’s grave. Looks like she murdered her sister to get her out of the way. The Kendall case isn’t related to the Leiberman one after all.”

“It doesn’t look like it, does it, then?” Paula agrees, even as she silently tells Brian Mulvaney,
Don’t be so sure about that. Don’t be so sure about anything
.

F
letch is staring miserably at his reflection in the rain-spattered bay window when the telephone rings behind him.

With his body facing the room, head twisted toward the window, he doesn’t even bother to turn around at the sound.

It’s been ringing all afternoon. One of the police officers answers it every time.

Now, as a stormy twilight descends outside, he notices that the lights have come on in the house around him. That’s why he can see his reflection.

He looks like his father.

The unavoidable truth is right there in front of him. He looks just like the bastard who ruined his mother’s life and then Fletch’s. Aidan’s, too, although his brother would never admit it. Aidan likes to pretend that everything is fine. Even after losing first one wife, and then another. Even now, with his son missing and suspected of murder—along with his brother.

And what the hell is Fletch supposed to do about that? There’s nothing he can do. This time there’s no escape. When they start digging into his past, they’re going to find out—

“Fletch?”

He sees someone come up behind him in the window as he registers the voice. It’s Detective Summers.

Fletch doesn’t reply.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Fletch.”

This is it.

They know.

Fletch braces himself, his hands clutching the edges of the window seat beside his thighs.

“Sharon has been found, Fletch. I’m sorry. She’s dead.”

A
fter tucking the kids into bed, Tasha goes to the phone in the kitchen and tries Joel’s cell phone again. She’s been calling it every so often, with no response. Not this time, either. Not surprising. She knows he uses it mainly for outgoing calls and rarely keeps it turned on. She doubts he even checks his voice mail for that phone, so she doesn’t bother leaving a message.

Instead, she dials information.

“The Hyatt Hotel, Chicago, Illinois,” she says succinctly into the receiver when an automated voice asks for the listing.

Moments later, a female voice comes on the line. “Which Hyatt Hotel, ma’am? There are several in Chicago.”

Of course there are. Tasha pauses. What did Joel say? She thinks back to this afternoon, when he tossed the name over his shoulder. Belatedly, she realizes that it was something more specific than just the
Hyatt
, but she has no idea what it was.

Reluctantly she takes down the numbers for all of the Hyatt hotels in metropolitan Chicago. It isn’t a short list.

Does she really need to call all of them looking for Joel?

No, she realizes. She doesn’t. It’s a long shot but she can try to reach his secretary at home. She’ll probably know where he’s staying. After all, Joel says she has a photographic memory.

As always, Tasha feels a stab of jealousy at the thought of Stacey McCall being privy to every detail of her husband’s professional life when she herself is in the dark about most of them. But this time, she reminds herself, she should be glad the secretary keeps such close track of his schedule.

She dials information to get the phone number, figuring it’ll probably be unlisted—or, with any luck, she’ll be given a list of S. McCalls to try. If that happens, she’ll have to weigh the list against the list of Hyatts, and decide which will be less time-consuming.

To her surprise, though, there’s only one S. McCall on Sutton Place. Better yet she recognizes the voice that answers.

“Stacey, hi. This is Joel’s wife.”

A pause, as though it takes a moment for that to register, and then an incredulous-sounding, “Tasha?”

“I’m so sorry to call you at home on a Sunday night.” She paces nervously across the kitchen floor. “Joel left on his business trip this afternoon and I can’t seem to find the phone number of his hotel. I was wondering if you knew which Hyatt he’s at.”

“Business trip?” Stacey echoes.

Tasha frowns. So Miss Photographic Memory isn’t as brilliant as Joel thought.

“He’s not on a business trip, Tasha.”

“Yes, he is. He just left this afternoon.” Even as the slightly smug words spill out of Tasha’s mouth, she realizes, with a sudden, sick feeling, what’s coming.

“All I know is that he’s off tomorrow,” Stacey tells her. “He told me he was taking a personal day. It’s been on his calendar for two weeks now.”

“Are . . . are you sure?” It’s all Tasha can do to force her voice from her throat.

“Positive.”

“I guess . . . I guess I forgot,” she says in a futile, feeble attempt to appear in control. To appear as anything other than what she is: a wife whose husband has lied to her.

It’s no comfort that he’s obviously not with Stacey McCall . . . or is he? Is she covering for him? Is he there, in her apartment with her? Are they now, after Tasha has hung up, making fun of how blind she is not to have guessed?

You can’t think that way
, she tells herself, wrapping her arms around herself, trying to calm the swarm of butterflies in her gut.
You don’t really believe that Joel would lie to you, do you? Even though Stacey said
 
. . .

There has to be some explanation for this.

There
has
to.

He said he was going to be at the Hyatt in Chicago, and she’s going to prove that he is.

She sits at the kitchen table to place the first call.

By the third, she’s standing.

By the fifth, she’s pacing.

After the last she tosses the receiver on the table, the pizza she has eaten churning in her stomach.

Outside, the storm rages.

Inside, the house is silent except for her own quickened breathing.

She hears the dial tone, then a clearly audible announcement in a robotic masculine voice.
If you’d like to make a call please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and dial your operator
. Then a loud, fast-paced beeping.

Tasha ignores it.

It’ll stop soon.

The phone can be off the hook all night, for all she cares.

She knows that the one person who matters won’t be calling her.

There is no Joel Banks registered at any of the Hyatt Hotels in Chicago.

J
eremiah’s father rushes into the interrogation room just as he’s telling the detectives, once again, that he didn’t kill his aunt. That he didn’t kill anybody.

“Dad!” he cries out, looking up to see the familiar figure, arms outstretched.

His father strides over and embraces him tightly. “It’s going to be all right, Jeremiah,” he says, his voice sounding choked up, the way it was before Melissa’s funeral.

“Dad, I didn’t kill Rachel. And I didn’t kill Aunt Sharon. I swear it.”

His father pats his head, then sits beside him. Jeremiah sees a big smudge of dirt along the front of his dark uniform and realizes it’s from him. He’s filthy.

“I’ve called a lawyer,” Aidan tells the three stern-looking detectives. “Jeremiah won’t answer any more questions until he gets here.”

“But I want to talk to them, Dad,” Jeremiah protests. “I want to tell them everything, because I’m innocent I swear I am.”

“If you’re innocent Jeremiah,” one of the detectives says, leaning across the table, “then why did somebody see you sneaking around the shed behind your Uncle Fletch’s house? What was in the bundle you took out of the shed, Jeremiah? And why did you carry it into the woods with you when you left?”

A
soft knock on Mitch’s door awakens him. Confused, he looks around the darkened room, locating the glowing digital clock on his shelf. It’s past ten. He’s been asleep for more than an hour. Why would somebody be knocking on his door?

“Come in,” he calls, his voice croaking a little the way it does when he’s been sleeping. He rubs his eyes and props himself on his elbows as the door opens and a shaft of light from the hall spills into the room.

Shawna is in the doorway.

“Mitch, I have something to tell you,” she says, crossing the room.

Something about her tone makes his stomach instantly queasy.

“What is it?” he asks, swallowing hard.

“There’s no easy way to say this, Mitch. I wish I didn’t have to be the one to tell you.”

Mitch braces himself for whatever is to come, his hands clutching the edges of the nautical quilt, trembling.

Please, don’t let it be Mom. Please, don’t let it be Mom.

“A
ll right,” Jeremiah finally says, his voice breaking as he looks at the detectives, at the lawyer, at his father. “All right, I’ll tell you. But only because then you’ll know the whole truth. And I didn’t kill those women. I swear I didn’t.”

“But you’re hiding something, Jeremiah,” one of the detectives tells him. “You’ve admitted to that. It’s time to tell us what it is. What was in that bundle you carried off into the woods? And where is it now?”

Jeremiah looks down at his hands, clenched tightly before him on the wooden table. His fingers are filthy, caked with dirt and scratches and smears of dried blood, the nails blackened with grime.

“Jeremiah,” one of the detectives prods.

He takes a deep breath.

Then, haltingly, he begins to talk. He stares at his hands as the words pour from him, as he spills his darkest secret, not wanting to meet his father’s gaze—or the bitter disappointment and shame he knows he’ll find in it.

“I
’m worried about Tasha,” Karen tells Tom as he turns off the television set across from their bed, plunging the room into dark silence.

“Why are you worried?”

“Her phone has been busy all day. I just tried it again when I went down to get a bottle for Taylor, and it still is.”

“You said she probably took it off the hook again because of the reporters. We can relate to that.”

He’s right. Their phone number might be unlisted, but there’s nothing to stop the reporters from ringing their bell. They’ve done it all day and night—even once or twice after Tom and Karen turned off all the lights and came upstairs to watch television in their bedroom with Taylor tucked cozily between them.

Now the baby is in her crib down the hall. But tonight, for the first time, Karen has left her door wide open, and theirs, too. That way, she can lie awake and listen for any unusual sound that might disturb the quiet household.

“I’m sure Tasha’s fine,” Tom tells her.

“Joel’s away. She’s alone with the kids. Maybe one of us should go down and check on her.”

Tom is silent for a minute. “You’re not going out alone in this weather, Karen.”

She listens to the pouring rain, to the wind creaking the tree branches high above their house.

“You want me to go?” he finally asks reluctantly.

She considers it. Then she would be alone in the house with the baby.

And Tom would be alone out in the stormy darkness.

“No,” she says decisively. “Not now. But first thing in the morning, one of us will go over there.”

“Okay. Good night.” He rolls over.

She murmurs a reply.

Long after Tom’s breathing has grown rhythmic, Karen lies awake, unable to get past a growing feeling of uneasiness as she listens to the howling storm.

A
lone in the house after the last detective has left, Fletch goes into his den. He pulls out the leather chair behind his desk and sinks heavily into it.

The phone calls to Randi and Derek were the hardest. He promised to fly down and get Randi in the morning and bring her home from college, and in the meantime he has made sure that her friends and the RA are going to stay with her all night. She was hysterical after he told her.

Derek took the news surprisingly well, or else he was stoned when Fletch finally tracked him down at one of his buddies’ homes. Maybe so. In any case, he said he would be home tomorrow. He didn’t even ask how Fletch is holding up.

Neither Randi nor Derek seemed surprised to hear that Jeremiah has been arrested for their mother’s murder.

Not that the kid has admitted anything to the police. At least, not murder. Not to ordering those puzzles using Fletch’s credit card, either.