CHAPTER TWENTY
Her cell phone rang.
Molly put down her artist’s brush and
reached for her phone. Another blocked number, and another hang-up
without a message. It was the fourth time in an hour. That was how
long she’d been up in her attic studio working on her painting with
all the partygoing cola drinkers through the ages. Her man from the
fifties had an intentional resemblance to James Dean; but the woman
from the twenties—in the foreground of the ensemble—looked way too
much like Jean Harlow. Molly didn’t want the piece to look like one
of those paintings from Spencer’s with Elvis, Bogart, Marilyn, and
James Dean all hanging out at the drive-in. The painting was so
complex, it drove her crazy. And the phone interrupting every few
minutes certainly didn’t help.
She kept thinking it was probably that
creepy woman calling again.
Ask him where he really
was.
Everything Jeff had said this morning
made sense, and yet Molly still felt he was hiding something from
her. Maybe all this doubt and suspicion was hormonal or
something.
She went back to the painting and
picked up her paintbrush once more.
The phone rang again.
“Shit,” Molly muttered. She swiped up
the phone and switched it on. “Yes, hello?” she said
impatiently.
She heard that asthmatic breathing
again.
“Listen, stop calling me,” Molly
growled.
“Do you know where Jeff was that night,
Mrs. Dennehy?” That raspy, singsong voice sent a chill through
her.
“Yes,” she shot back. “He was at the
Hilton in Washington, D.C. What the hell business is it of
yours?”
“He wasn’t in Washington, D.C., Mrs.
Dennehy,” the woman replied. “Check the hotel.”
“I did check the hotel, and they
confirmed it,” Molly lied.
She heard the woman laughing quietly.
Then there was a click on the other end.
Molly switched off the phone. “Goddamn
it,” she muttered.
The woman seemed to know she was lying.
She felt so pathetic and stupid. She’d even admitted to the insane
bitch that she’d doubted her husband enough to phone the hotel
where he’d claimed to have stayed.
All right, she got to
you, she’s happy, Molly told herself. Chances were she
wouldn’t call again for a while.
Molly forced herself to look at the
painting again, but she just shook her head. She couldn’t
concentrate. She quickly rinsed out her paintbrushes and retreated
downstairs with her cell phone in hand. She was about to pull her
sweatshirt over her head when she heard a noise in the
foyer.
For a second, she froze. But then she
saw the mail on the floor—below the slot. She hated that slot in
the door. Whenever she was home alone, and the mail came, it always
caught her off guard and gave her a start. On top of that, she
sometimes thought how easy it would be for some stranger to squat
down by the door, lift up that little brass lid and peek inside the
house. She imagined someone doing it at night, while they were all
asleep upstairs.
She went down to the foyer to check the
mail—nothing but bills: Seattle City Light, Premera Blue Cross,
Visa . . .
Molly let the other bills drop to the
floor. The Visa bill was addressed to Jeff. She tore open the
envelope. Unfolding the bill, she scanned the most recent purchases
for a Hilton in Washington, D.C., or any purchases at all in D.C.
There were none.
The bill didn’t show any activity on
his card from the period he was supposed to be at the Hilton on
Dupont Circle to when he came home. The gap went from Monday,
November 1 through Wednesday, November 3. There was a Shell station
gas purchase in Fife, Washington, on the fourth, from when he’d
taken the kids down to their Aunt Trish’s house in Tacoma. And he
must have bought some flowers for Trish, because a $35.10 charge
that same day came from Blooms by Beth in Tacoma,
Washington.
Molly checked, and she found hotel,
restaurant, limo, and rental car charges in Boston and Philadelphia
for his other recent business trips. So Jeff did indeed use this
credit card for business. Why was there a gap for his trip to
Washington, D.C.? Did he pay for everything in cash? What was he
hiding?
He had an American Express card, too.
Rummaging through the desk in his study, Molly found his last
American Express bill. The billing period stopped in mid-October.
So she phoned customer service, and after punching several numbers,
she finally got a real person. Molly asked for a list of charges
made between November 1 and 3, the day after Angela had been
murdered.
There was nothing.
Ask him where he really
was.
Frustrated, Molly started to cry. She
dug a Kleenex from the pocket of her jeans and blew her nose. Maybe
she just had to get out of the house for a while and leave her cell
phone behind. Even if it was just for a walk around the
neighborhood, she needed to go stretch her legs. It didn’t matter
she was wearing her sloppy painting clothes. She went to the closet
and pulled out her Windbreaker.
“Get while the getting’s good,” she
muttered to herself. “I’d just as soon be gone when that crazy
bitch calls again. . . .”
She hesitated at the door. Where had
she heard that before? She remembered six months ago, that night
Kay had come over. She could still see Kay, sitting on her sofa
with a glass of wine in her hand: “Thanks for
having me over tonight. I’d just as soon not be home in case that
creepy bitch calls again. . . .”
That was just hours before her
death.
Molly couldn’t remember exactly what
the woman had said to Kay on the phone. It was something about Kay
being an unfit mother.
The house phone rang, giving her a
start.
Molly marched into Jeff’s study and
snatched up the cordless. “What? What do you want?” she
barked.
“Molly?”
She recognized Lynette’s voice. “Oh,
hi, Lynette,” she said. “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone
else. I’ve been getting these crank calls—”
“Molly, I need a favor,” she
interrupted. “I need you to pick up Carson and Dakota from school
today. I already cleared it with their teachers that you’d be by. I
wouldn’t be asking you, but Jill can’t get away from work
today.”
“Well, ah, sure, I guess,” Molly
replied, confused. “Lynette, I’m very sorry about what’s happening
with Jeremy. I—”
“Thanks,” she said with a tremor in her
voice. “But I really can’t talk. Courtney’s been in an accident.
She wrecked her car. They took her to UW Hospital. I’m on my way
there now.”
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry,” Molly
murmured.
“Just pick up Carson and Dakota for me,
and don’t tell them anything. I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ll
call you when I find out more. Okay?”
“Of course,” Molly replied
numbly.
She heard Lynette start to sob. “Thank
you,” she said, tearfully.
Then she hung up.
Eight-year-old Carson Hahn picked up a
large pebble by the entrance to the play area outside Burger King.
It looked like he was about to hurl it at a car in the parking
lot.
“Carson!” Molly yelled. She was sitting
outside at a red and yellow plastic picnic-style table with Rachel.
It had grown chilly with nightfall, and though the play area was
well-lit, she’d buttoned up her coat to stay warm. She nibbled on
some fries that had gotten cold while Rachel ate a
salad.
Molly hadn’t had any problems with
Carson’s and Dakota’s teachers when she’d gone to pick them up.
Lynette had called around 5:30 to report that Courtney’s condition
was critical. Chris had come to the hospital to keep her company
while Courtney was in surgery. Lynette couldn’t say when she’d be
back to pick up the kids.
Molly had kept Carson and Dakota in
line by promising to take them to Burger King. She’d had to
separate Carson from Erin twice, because he liked to tease her. But
the three kids had behaved themselves during their November night
picnic dinner. Now they were working it off in the play area. The
girls seemed to like the slide, and Carson seemed to like trouble.
Molly knew—as soon as she saw him pick up that pebble.
She quickly got to her feet. “Carson,
you put that down right now or you’ll be very sorry!”
He sneered at her. “I don’t have to
listen to you!” he shot back. “And you can’t hit me, because my mom
will be real mad if you do!”
For a moment, Molly didn’t know what to
say.
Rachel threw her plastic fork into the
plastic salad receptacle and stood up. “Well, I don’t know your
mother and I don’t care if she gets mad at me. So do what Molly
says before I come over there and slap your face!”
His mouth open, Carson gaped at her. He
shrugged awkwardly, then tossed aside the pebble. He gave the fence
around the play area a kick, and then wandered inside and plopped
down on a swing.
“Thank you!” Rachel sweetly called to
him. She looked at Molly and sighed. “Something tells me that’s
going to come back to haunt me.”
Molly chuckled. “Oh, he’s so going to tell his mother on you. But I for one thank
you. I’m really glad you could come along.”
“No sweat,” Rachel said, picking a
crouton out of her salad and nibbling it. “I think we have an
easier job here than Chris does—holding Lynette’s hand at the
hospital, the poor guy. I’m not a big fan of hers, and I hate
hospitals. My mom was in and out of hospitals for so many months.
She had cancer.” Rachel tilted her head to one side and squinted at
Molly. “Are your parents still around?”
“My mother is,” Molly admitted. “But
we—well, we’re kind of estranged.”
“I’m sorry, that’s too bad,” Rachel
said, fingering the straw to her vanilla shake. “My mom and I were
close. She practically raised me by herself. Never mind about my
dad. He’s not worth going into. Anyway, they’d discovered the
cancer too late. Toward the end, I moved her into my house, and
took a leave of absence from my job. I was a financial forecaster
for this investment firm in Tampa. The money was really good, and I
had a nice house—and a gorgeous, sexy husband, an actor by the name
of Owen Banner. Have you heard of him?”
Molly shrugged. “Sorry, no, I
haven’t.”
Rachel nodded glumly. “And you never
will. I basically supported him while he spent my money on booze
and other women. He did three commercials and dinner theater for
the geriatric crowd. Talk about a loser. He’s very immature, and I
guess in some warped way that appealed to my maternal side. I
wanted to take care of him. But Owen didn’t like having my sick
mother in the house. He finally issued me an ultimatum: either my
mother went or he went. So I started divorce proceedings. In the
meantime, my mom died. I had no idea that I’d gotten all my
financial savvy from her. Thanks to her investments, my mother left
me with about nine hundred thousand bucks. When Owen got wind of
this, oh, boy, did he come running back to me, ready to make
amends. I know he’s bad news, and that’s why I moved away—as far as
I could. I already had ex-sex with him about two months ago. That’s
one more reason I made the move here to Seattle.”
Rachel slurped the last of her milk
shake through the straw, then sighed. “Anyway, that brings you up
to date on moi—motherless, jobless,
divorced, and independently wealthy for the time
being.”
Molly shrugged. “Wow. Well, I’m glad
you told me. Thanks.”
Rachel reached for her purse. “Don’t
thank me yet, Molly. I just wanted to let you know about me and my
background and my mistakes before I showed you this. . . .” She
pulled an envelope from her purse, and set it on the table.
“Remember, this came to your house by mistake? You gave it to me
last week when we first met.”
Molly remembered. It was the only piece
of mail that looked like a personal letter.
Rachel pointed to the handwritten
address in the corner of the envelope.
785 NW Fleischel
Ave.
Portland, OR 97232
Portland, OR 97232
“That address is a fake,” she said. “I
looked it up on Google. There is no Fleischel Avenue in Portland.
And see, the postmark is Kent, Washington. Somebody in Kent wants
me to think they’re in Portland—and they’re not doing a very good
job. Anyway, open it up. . . .”
Molly took out the letter. “Oh, my
God,” she murmured.
It was a folded photocopy—in
negative—from a microfiche file of the Chicago
Tribune’s front page, from January 30, 2007. The headline
read: 3 DEAD, 5 WOUNDED IN
CAMPUS SHOOTING SPREE. There was a photo beneath it, which
Molly knew very well by now: a cop comforting a crying woman with
blood on her blouse. They stood in front of the community college’s
front entrance with the crowd that had been evacuated from the
school.
Someone had stuck a Post-it to the
page. You might ask your new neighbor about
this, it said.
“Isn’t your maiden name Wright?” Rachel
asked gently.
Molly just nodded. The piece of paper
began to shake in her hand
“I didn’t want to ask you about it
until I knew you a little better,” Rachel said. “But I looked it
up. So—this Roland Charles Wright, was he related to
you?”
Molly nodded again. “He was my brother.
He—he had some emotional problems, obviously.”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said, putting a
hand on her arm. “Who would send me something like this? Do you
have any idea?”
Molly just shook her head. She couldn’t
blame Angela anymore. The letter might have arrived at her house by
mistake when Angela was still alive, but she knew Jeff’s late
ex-wife hadn’t sent it. She couldn’t blame a dead woman for those
strange phone calls she was getting. Sure, Angela had lied to her
at that lunch when she’d claimed not to have told anyone else about
Charlie. But what if that had been her only lie?
Someone else is behind
all this....
This someone
seemed to know everyone’s secrets. This woman knew about
Charlie—and she also had something on Jeff, concerning his
whereabouts the night Angela had been murdered. When Lynette’s kids
were cut up by the glass in the vacant lot, Lynette had asked her,
“You’re not the one who called me?” That had
been a few days before Jeremy’s arrest. Had this woman hounded
Lynette about Jeremy’s secret the same way she was now tormenting
her about Jeff? A raspy-voiced stranger’s phone calls had haunted
both Angela and Kay just days before they were killed. Angela was
going to pay for something she’d done. And she’d asked Kay if she
was a good mother or something along those lines.
“You know,” Rachel said. “I think this
cul-de-sac must be cursed. I mean, the woman who lived in the house
before me, your friend, Kay—she fell, hit her head, and bled to
death. And the mother of your stepchildren was murdered. And just
in the last week, Lynette’s little darlings . . .” She nodded
toward the play area, where Carson was teasing Dakota and Erin.
“They were cut up in that empty lot. Then my toolshed mysteriously
caught on fire. Lynette’s husband got arrested yesterday. And now
this afternoon, Lynette’s daughter gets in a freak car accident.
It’s like Willow Tree Court is one big bad insurance risk. I mean,
please, tell me this isn’t normal.”
Molly’s cell phone rang. She
immediately thought of the crazy woman caller, but when she checked
the caller ID, she saw it was Lynette. She clicked on the phone:
“Hi, Lynette. How’s Courtney?”
“In recovery,” she answered edgily.
“They sent us home. So—I’m here at your house with Chris, and I
don’t see my children. Where are my kids?”
“I took them out for dinner here at
Burger King,” Molly said. “They’re fine, Lynette—”
“I need to be with my kids right now,”
she said, her voice cracking.
“All right, we—we’ll leave now,” Molly
said. “Do you want me to bring you something from Burger King? Does
Chris want anything?”
“I just want my kids!” Lynette
cried.
“All right, we’re leaving right now.
Bye, Lynette.” She clicked off the cell and looked at Rachel. “God,
she sounds absolutely crazed.”
“I could hear her,” Rachel said. She
put her fingers in her mouth and let out a loud whistle. “C’mon,
kids,” she called. “Your mom’s waiting for you.”
She folded up the microfiche photocopy
with the Post-it attached and shoved it inside the envelope. “Do
you want this?” she asked, offering the envelope to Molly. “It was
addressed to me, but I think, well . . . I think it was really
meant for you, Molly.”
“Please, throw it away,” Molly
said.
She watched Rachel tear up the letter
and toss it in the trash receptacle.
Chris was in his bedroom, about to
change out of his clothes. He desperately needed a shower. He still
smelled like the hospital.
He noticed a bright light sweep across
his windows, and he heard a car.
“Thank God,” he muttered. If Molly was
returning with the kids, then Mrs. Hahn would be going home. He
felt so horrible for her, and at the same time she’d practically
sucked the life-force out of him for the last five hours at the
hospital.
Chris had been waiting for Courtney
outside the music building when another student asked if he’d heard
about Courtney Hahn cracking up her car. A bunch of kids had seen
the accident a few blocks from the school. Stunned, Chris called
home to see if Molly had heard anything. She said Courtney had been
taken to UW Hospital, and if he could catch a cab or a bus, Mrs.
Hahn would probably appreciate having someone there with
her.
But Courtney’s mom was like a crazy
woman—sobbing one minute, and getting so angry-bitchy at all the
doctors and nurses the next. It was embarrassing to be with her.
The hospital staff she abused at every turn probably thought she
was his mother.
He was so busy trying to comfort Mrs.
Hahn and apologizing behind her back to half the hospital staff
there really wasn’t much time to let it sink in about Courtney. The
doctors explained that Courtney had second-degree burns on the
right side of her face and neck, and third-degree burns on her
right hand and arm. They said that she’d lost her right ear and two
fingers from her right hand. They rattled off her various sprains,
cuts, and contusions. And yet as Chris listened to them, he
couldn’t really think about Courtney and her pain, because Mrs.
Hahn became hysterical.
“Courtney will be all right,” Chris
tried to tell her in the hospital corridor. “She’s tough. She’s
going to get through this—”
“How can you even say that to me?” Mrs.
Hahn screamed. “Didn’t you hear him? Weren’t you listening? She’s
not going to be all right! My beautiful little girl will never be
beautiful again. . . .”
She settled down a bit after Courtney
went into surgery. The doctors were hoping to save her right eye.
It was only then that Chris could think about Courtney, and how
pretty she was—especially this morning, without makeup. The thought
of her face all burned up and mangled made him ache
inside.
A nurse came out and explained to them
that Courtney had made it through the surgery okay, and they were
placing her in the ICU.
Mrs. Hahn had one final hissy fit,
demanding to talk to a doctor. The ever-patient nurse managed to
convince her that they’d know more in the morning and she should go
home.
Courtney’s mom had another minor
meltdown when they’d gotten here and found that Molly and the kids
were gone. But his dad came to the rescue and fixed her a drink.
When Chris had slipped away and snuck up to his room, he’d left
them standing in the kitchen with Mrs. Hahn crying in his dad’s
arms.
He’d only gotten as far as unbuttoning
his shirt when he heard the car. Chris stepped over to the window
and watched Molly’s Saturn pull into the driveway.
“Call me if you need anything,” he
heard their neighbor, Rachel, say as she climbed out of the
passenger side of the car. She headed across the yard toward her
house. Carson, Dakota, and his sister piled out of the back. Molly
herded them toward the house. “C’mon, kids, let’s get inside,” she
was saying.
Chris’s bedroom door was closed, and
for a few minutes, he could only hear mumbling downstairs. It was
hard to make out any of it.
But then there was a click, the sound
of the front door opening. He went to the window again and watched
Carson and Dakota amble down the driveway. Molly and Mrs. Hahn were
so close to the house, he couldn’t quite see their faces. He was
looking down at the tops of their heads.
“Call me if you need anything, Lynette,
okay?” Molly was saying.
Mrs. Hahn nodded, and started to move
away. But then she stopped and turned toward Molly. “Why is this
happening?” she asked.
She sounded as if she expected Molly to
have an answer to that question. He could see Molly shaking her
head.
“Why, Molly?” she pressed. “In just one
week, my little ones were cut up, I buried my friend, then my
husband was arrested, and now, this. They still don’t know how it
happened. One of the cops said it might have been some sort of cell
phone malfunction. What does that even mean? Half of her beautiful
face is burnt off. . . .”
Molly reached out to her, but
Courtney’s mom slapped her hand away.
“For two years, I lived here—and we
were all very happy. Then you moved in,” Mrs. Hahn said. “And
everything changed. Two of my neighbors—my best friends—were killed
within six months of each other, a freak accident and a murder. Kay
had dinner with you the night she died. Angela met you for lunch
just hours before she was murdered. Do you expect me to think it’s
all just a coincidence? I swear to God, I must have been out of my
mind to leave my children in your care today. . . .”
“Lynette, you don’t know what you’re
saying,” Molly replied.
Mrs. Hahn backed away from her.
“Something’s truly wrong with you,” she said. “Maybe you’re not so
different from your brother, the one who shot all those people.
Deaths and accidents and tragedies—they have a way of following you
around, don’t they?”
“Lynette, your children are waiting for
you and they’re tired,” Molly said in a steady voice. “Go home.”
She turned and headed toward the door.
Chris heard it open and shut a moment
later. Downstairs, he could hear Molly’s muffled
crying.
He watched Courtney’s mother,
slump-shouldered, wander toward the street, where Carson and Dakota
waited for her.
He thought about what Mrs. Hahn had
said, about all the bad things that had happened after Molly came
to live here. But she’d left something out, something
important.
Courtney’s mom must have forgotten all
about Mr. Corson.
With a pair of tongs, she held the
little, rubber-like blond doll over a Sterno flame. She had to be
careful to burn just one side of it—so she could match how Courtney
had been burned. The whole right side of her face
is toast, wrote one of her classmates on Twitter. It might
have been easier to just color half the doll’s head with black
Magic Marker, but that would have been cheating. Besides, it was
important to her that the doll was actually burned. The slightly
melted rubber face made all the difference in the
world.
She hadn’t a clue where Courtney would
be when she pressed the Talk button on her rigged iPhone. So now
she’d have to start shopping around for a little model car that
looked like Courtney’s Neon. The thought of smashing up the front
of the model car made her smile.
She had plenty of miniature trees in
her supply of dollhouse accessories. She just needed to find one
that was the right proportion to the car.
The patch of fabric from Courtney’s
black pullover was in a plastic bag on her worktable. She would
burn a bit of that, too.
She’d stopped work on the Dennehy
dollhouse to create this little reenactment of Courtney’s
accident.
But she would get back to the Dennehy
house soon enough.