CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He caught only fleeting glimpses of
her. She was down on her knees, working in the garden on the other
side of the bushes. He couldn’t really tell what she looked like.
In the middle of the backyard with the rake in his hand, he was too
far away.
Chris was curious about her—maybe
because Molly had mentioned at dinner the other night that the new
neighbor was “quite a dish.” She and Molly were getting to be fast
friends. Molly had nothing nice to say about the other two women
who moved onto the cul-de-sac over the summer: Jill Somebody and
Natalie Something. Chris still hadn’t met either one yet. He’d only
seen Jill at a distance—or in her car. And he’d yet to lay eyes on
the unfriendly jogger woman, Natalie. He figured he’d probably meet
them eventually. He wasn’t in any hurry.
But he was kind of intrigued by this
Rachel person. Through the foliage, he could just make out that she
had brown hair and fair skin.
Chris wiped the sweat off his forehead
and went back to work. His dad had asked him to do something about
all the leaves in the backyard. They were having people over for
brunch after the funeral on Tuesday. Molly was freaking out,
deep-cleaning every room in the house. Apparently, she wanted it
looking immaculate, which didn’t make any sense. If ever they had a
good excuse for letting the place go to shit for a few days, it was
now. Chris imagined telling company, “Sorry I
didn’t get around to raking the backyard, but my mother
died.”
It was nuts, because he just wanted to
be alone to think about his mom—and maybe even have a good cry.
Instead, he was running around doing all these chores for the wake
tomorrow and the funeral the next day, and the reception after the
funeral. They were busting their humps to make sure they were—as
Molly put it—“dressed to the nines” in different outfits for each
service. She needed to prepare about a dozen different dishes for
the brunch, and his dad was stocking up on booze for the fifty or
so guests. And the place had to look like House
Beautiful. All these distant relatives and old friends his
dad hadn’t talked to in years were coming to this thing. Were they
ever going to see these people again? Chris wondered if these
“mourners” would have cared as much or even known about his mom
dying if she hadn’t been murdered.
As he raked the leaves into a big pile,
it occurred to him that his mom—more than anybody—would want them
to put on a first-class funeral and brunch for her. She was always
big on impressing people and keeping up appearances.
He was doing this for her. Suddenly it
mattered that the backyard looked nice. He felt tears in his eyes,
but kept on working.
Up until last year, he’d attended only
two funerals in his whole life—and both of those were for
grandparents. His mother’s funeral on Tuesday would be his third in
six months: first Mr. Corson, then Mrs. Garvey, and now his mom. He
still felt awful every time he thought about what Mr. Corson’s
sister and his widow had said to him. He knew it was stupid, but he
couldn’t help wondering if they were right. Maybe he was just a
lousy guy, and his mother’s murder was some kind of karmic
punishment directed at him.
He wished like hell for another dull
weekend in Bellevue, another night on Larry’s lumpy foldout bed in
the mallard shrine of a study, just one more weekend with his
mom.
“Hey, how’s it going over
there?”
Chris glanced over toward the
neighbor’s yard. At a break in the bushes dividing their yards, the
pretty brunette smiled at him. She wore a gray sweatshirt, jeans,
and gardening gloves. “Are you Chris?” she asked.
He quickly wiped the tears from his
eyes. “Hi, yeah, hi,” he replied awkwardly. With the rake in his
hand, he stepped over toward her.
“I’m Rachel,” the woman said. “I was
really sorry to hear about your mom.”
He nodded. “You’re the one who brought
over the apple pie, right? It was really good,
thanks.”
“Well, you’re very welcome,” she said.
“I got to meet Erin the other day. Now, except for your dad, I’ve
met the whole family.”
“Dad’s at the office today,” Chris
explained. “He figured he’d catch up on stuff for a few hours while
it was dead there, being Sunday and all.”
Frowning, she glanced past him at the
yard. “Are you burning leaves?”
He shook his head.
“Oh, I thought I smelled smoke. Well,
the yard’s looking good. Maybe next summer, if you’ve got time, you
could mow the front and back here. No pressure. Knock it around and
name your price. We can haggle over it later.”
“That sounds good. I used to mow the
lawn for Mrs. Garvey.”
“Garvey?” She seemed puzzled for a
moment. “Oh, of course, Garvey, that’s the
woman who used to live here— with a teenage daughter. The Realtor
told me about her. Were you close to the daughter?”
Chris shrugged. “We hung out sometimes.
I haven’t really seen her since she moved in with her dad and her
stepmother.”
Rachel blinked. “Oh, really? What
happened to her mother?”
“Well, she’s dead,” Chris replied,
matter-of-factly. Then he saw her stunned expression and
immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry. Didn’t you know that? There
was an accident. Mrs. Garvey fell and hit her head.”
Rachel stared at him. “In the house? My
God, did she die in the house?”
He gulped. “I’m sorry, I figured you
knew. . . .”
She shook her head. “That damn Realtor,
he should have told me,” she muttered. “I think he’s legally
obligated to inform me, the son of a . . .” She trailed off, and
rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry, Chris. Do you know what room she
died in?”
He hesitated.
“No, don’t tell me.” She put up her
gloved hand. “I don’t want to know. Besides, I already have a
feeling where. I’ll bet it happened in the big bedroom. There’s a
cold spot in there, right by the door. I get chills every time I
stand there.”
Chris just stared at her. He couldn’t
believe it. From what he’d heard, that was exactly where Mrs.
Garvey had fallen and bashed her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a long sigh.
“I don’t mean to act like such a baby about it—especially in front
of you, after what you’ve been through. It’s still a beautiful
home. I’ll just hire a shaman and have the place smudged and
blessed.”
She made a face, wrinkling her nose.
“Somebody’s burning leaves, because I can smell it. Can’t
you?”
Chris glanced over her shoulder and saw
black smoke billowing out from the other side of her screened
porch. “Oh, Jesus!” he cried. “The house. . . .”
Rachel turned and let out a scream,
“Oh, my God!”
Without thinking, Chris tore through
the bushes and rushed past her. From working in Mrs. Garvey’s yard,
he knew the hose connection was by the screen-porch door. As he got
closer to the house, the smoke became thicker. Every time he took
in a breath, he tasted it. He heard a crackling sound. “Call
nine-one-one!” he yelled.
“I don’t have my cell phone with me!”
Rachel replied helplessly. “Oh, God. . . .”
“Our back door’s open. Use our phone!”
Chris reached the outside spigot and saw the garden hose was
connected to it. He quickly twisted the valve open. With a hiss,
water shot out of the nozzle end. Grabbing the hose, he ran around
to the other side of the screen porch, toward all the smoke. He
prayed the hose was long enough and didn’t snag on
him.
“Chris, be careful!” he heard her
call.
His eyes hurt, and he tried to hold his
breath as he got the hose ready. He suddenly stopped in his tracks.
The smoke wasn’t coming from the house, but from Mrs. Garvey’s
toolshed—about ten feet away from the screened porch. A rope of
fire shot up from a pile of what looked like old newspapers by the
shed’s door. Little scraps of burning paper floated around the
shed. Flames licked at the mossy roof, creating plumes of black
smoke. But the roof hadn’t caught on fire yet.
Coughing, Chris staggered back from the
smoke. He directed the hose toward the shed—aiming near the roof
and working his way down the line of fire. For a few moments, it
didn’t seem to do any good. The smoke only grew thicker. But then
the flames started dying under the jet spray of water.
Chris heard Rachel clearing her throat,
and he glanced over his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he gasped. “I think
we’ve got it under control. Did you call
nine-one-one?”
“No, I didn’t want to leave you out
here all alone.” She fanned the air in front of her
face.
Chris kept the hose on, dousing the
side of the shed. The smoke started to clear. The corner of the
little shed was charred black; it looked like the shadow of a ghost
against the blistered wood. At the base of the door, amid a
smoldering pile of soot, he could see some patches of wet newspaper
that hadn’t burned up.
Chris finally twisted the hose nozzle,
shutting off the flow of water.
“God, thank you, Chris,” Rachael said,
squeezing his arm. “You’re a lifesaver. I wouldn’t have known what
to do. Hell, I didn’t have a clue! If you weren’t here, I think the
whole house might have burned down.”
She took a step toward the shed. “What
is that anyway?” she asked, pointing to the mound of refuse by the
door. “That wasn’t there earlier. I walked by this shed a half hour
ago and didn’t see any newspapers there. What’s going on? Did you
see anybody else out here?”
Chris just shrugged and shook his
head.
“This is crazy,” she muttered, a hand
at the base of her throat. “They—they must have snuck back here
while I was planting the annuals. I don’t understand. Why would
anybody do something like this?”
“I don’t know,” Chris said,
baffled.
“Is this normal around here?” she
pressed. “I mean, two days ago, those kids got cut up by all that
glass in the vacant lot, and now, someone decided to set fire to my
toolshed. What’s going on?”
Chris glanced over at the mound of
burnt debris by the shed’s door.
He had no idea how to answer
her.
Molly wondered where Lynette Hahn
was.
Despite some residual tension after the
glass-in-the-dirt incident, Lynette had offered to co-host the
funeral brunch. Bizarre as the arrangement was, it made sense to
Molly that Angela’s best friend play hostess in Angela’s old house.
Molly really didn’t mind taking on the role of caterer. It kept her
busy—and gave her an excuse to keep the awkward small talk with
Angela’s friends and relatives down to a minimum. Lynette had
invited some of Larry’s friends, too.
A light, misty rain had descended on
the burial service in Lakeview Cemetery, where Jeff and Chris
remained stoic and unshielded by the drizzle. But Erin sobbed
quietly from and clung to her Aunt Trish, who held a red umbrella
for both of them. Molly stood behind Trish.
Lynette’s husband, Jeremy, had a sudden
business thing and couldn’t attend. But Lynette promised he would
be at the Dennehys’ in plenty of time to set up the bar and start
passing out drinks to the first arrivals. She’d brought Carson and
Dakota to the cemetery. They were fidgety as ever, fighting over
their umbrella and picking at the Band-Aids on their hands.
Courtney had her iPhone out most of the time, texting through most
of the service.
Molly slipped away early to set up for
the reception. She’d asked Rachel if she would like to attend.
“Thanks anyway,” Rachel had told her. “I didn’t even know Angela.
Besides, I’m giving Lynette and her kids a wide berth for a while.
I can’t help thinking those kids had something to do with my
toolshed catching on fire. It’s not that big a leap from throwing
dirt balls at cars to playing with matches and setting toolsheds on
fire. The cops said it was definitely arson—and sloppy arson, at
that.”
Just the same, Rachel had been nice
enough to make a rice salad for the party—wild rice with sun-dried
cranberries, smoked turkey, and green onion. Giving in to a
craving, Molly had had three helpings that morning before the
funeral.
She’d managed to set out all the food
and plates before the first wave of guests started drifting in.
Jeremy Hahn had never shown up, and Molly had played bartender for
the first half hour—until Jeff had taken over, thank
God.
Now she was playing hostess and
fighting some morning sickness as she smiled through several Angela
stories told to her by total strangers. For two hours, she made
sure her guests’ glasses were filled and took their empty plates.
All the while, she wondered what the hell had happened to Lynette.
She even asked a few people. Apparently, Lynette and the three kids
had disappeared right after the burial.
Molly started to feel so sick and
light-headed that she snuck upstairs to lie down. But there were
about forty coats piled on Jeff’s and her bed. Some woman—Molly was
pretty sure she was Angela’s cousin—was breast-feeding her baby in
Erin’s room. A man she didn’t recognize was sitting on one of the
twin beds in the guest room, talking on his cell phone. Chris’s
door was closed. She knocked and poked her head in. Chris was at
his desk, and Elvis sat in the beanbag chair. They both had beers
and plates of food. Chris’s sweet, four-eyed portly pal gave her a
goofy smile. “Hi, Mrs. Dennehy. Great rice salad!”
“Thanks, Elvis,” she said weakly. She
turned to Chris. “If your dad should ask, I’m not feeling well. I’m
going upstairs to rest for a few minutes. And I never saw the
beers.”
She closed the door, and heard Elvis
call out: “Thanks, Mrs. Dennehy!”
As she turned away, Molly almost bumped
into Jill Emory standing at the top of the stairs. The tawny-haired
forty-year-old wore a loose black pantsuit that camouflaged her
plump figure. She was frowning at Molly. “Why did you leave the
cemetery early?” she asked.
Molly put a hand over her mouth and
suppressed a burp. “I beg your pardon, Jill?”
“You left before the burial service
ended. Why?”
“To set the food out for this stupid
reception,” Molly shot back. She was feeling too sickly to be
patient with her. “And I could have used some help from Lynette—or
you. The two of you were better friends with Angela than I ever
was. Where is Lynette anyway? Where’s Jeremy?”
“Oh, like you don’t know,” Jill
sneered.
“What’s that supposed to
mean?”
“Lynette says you’ve always resented
her, because she was best friends with Angela. You’ve always been
out to get her.”
“I don’t understand—”
“One of the reporters told Lynette that
a woman phoned the police with a tip. The anonymous call came in
not very long after you left the cemetery.”
“What tip? What are you talking
about?”
“I was just on the phone with Lynette,”
Jill said, clutching the post at the top of the stairs. “She’s
still at the police station. She said the whole thing was a
frame-up. The reporters were tipped off, too. They were waiting
outside the hotel when the police brought Jeremy down in the
elevator with that prostitute. Are you trying to tell me you had
nothing to do with it?”
Molly shook her head. She almost wanted
to laugh, she was so stunned. “So Jeremy Hahn was arrested—for
buying himself a hooker? Was that his ‘sudden business thing’? Is
that why he missed the funeral?” All she could think was,
What an asshole, he deserved to be
arrested!
At the same time, Molly wondered why
the police and reporters were treating the incident as if it were a
major sting operation.
Jill didn’t explain why.
Molly had to wait for an explanation
from a reporter on the six o’clock news. It was a bit surreal to
see the story unfold on television while two TV news vans were
parked in front of Lynette’s house down the block. About a dozen
people loitered in front of Lynette’s to see what the fuss was
about.
On TV, the pretty, thirtysomething
blond reporter wasn’t posted outside Lynette’s house. Instead, she
stood in the light drizzle in front of the W Hotel, speaking into
her handheld microphone: “Seattle Police arrested
local businessman Jeremy Hahn at the W Hotel this afternoon, after
receiving an anonymous tip that Hahn, an executive vice president
for Sea-Merit Financial, was engaged in sexual activity with a
minor in one of the rooms. . . .”
The image on the TV screen switched to
show two uniformed officers leading Lynette’s handcuffed husband
into a police car, parked in front of the luxury hotel. Jeremy
looked angry. His casual Brooks Brothers clothes were disheveled
and his thinning brown hair was uncombed so the bald spots weren’t
covered. Behind him, a young woman in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform
was being led out of the hotel as well. But her face had been
blurred digitally, which of course, made the scene appear even more
lurid.
“We’ve protected the
identity of the minor,” the reporter said. “But police sources say she is sixteen, and accepted money from
Hahn in exchange for sexual favors.”
The picture switched back to the blond
reporter in front of the hotel. “I’m told the
police found a substantial amount of cocaine in the hotel
room—along with some child pornography. This will only add to the
number of serious charges Jeremy Hahn is already facing. . .
.”
On another local newscast, they
indicated that Sea-Merit Financial would be investigating if Hahn
had used company funds for his sexual trysts with underage
girls.
Even though she hated her guts, all
Molly could think was, Poor
Lynette.
The house was still a disaster area
from the party. As she moved into the living room, Molly turned a
blind eye to the dirty plates, cups, and glasses on every table.
Instead, she gazed out the window at the TV news vans and the
people in front of Lynette’s house.
She remembered Lynette coming to her
rescue, dropping by with McDonald’s and her take-charge attitude
the day after Angela’s murder. Molly still had some food left over
from the party. Taking over some dinner to the Hahns would have
been the neighborly thing to do. But like Rachel, she was giving
Lynette a wide berth today. After all, Lynette clearly blamed her
for Jeremy’s arrest—all because some woman had phoned in that tip
to the police.
Molly remembered once again something
Angela had told her over lunch on the last day of her life:
“Someone else is behind this, some woman. . . . Do
you think it’s possible somebody is trying to pit us against each
other?”
Staring out at the Hahns’ house, Molly
spotted a jogger in a sweat suit running up the street. It was
Natalie, from down the block, out for her run—at night this time.
She seemed to ignore the news vans and the onlookers outside
Lynette’s.
Molly recalled her doing the exact same
thing last week, when the TV trucks and gawkers were there because
of Angela’s murder. Natalie had jogged by, barely glancing at
them.
It was almost as if on both occasions
Natalie knew ahead of time they’d be there.