CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
With a pile of American Express and
Visa bills, and her Edward Hopper wall calendar, which usually hung
in the kitchen, Molly sat at Jeff’s desk in his study. On the
calendar, she always marked the dates for Jeff’s trips and noted
the city in which he was staying.
It was four-fifty in the afternoon, and
she should have been up in her studio, working on her cola
illustration. But Molly couldn’t focus on that.
Instead, she was trying to match Jeff’s
travel dates and locations on the calendar with different purchases
on his bills. Most of the time, he used his Visa for those business
trips, and most of the time, Molly came up with a match. All the
charges for his trip to Boston five weeks ago—the hotel,
restaurants, taxis, a Barnes & Noble purchase, CVS Pharmacy,
Logan Airport Gift Shop—were on his Visa bill.
Yet she couldn’t find any expenses
during his two-day trip to Denver the following week, though it was
marked on her calendar. She noticed one or two gaps like that
nearly every month, usually brief trips, too.
It didn’t make sense. Why pay for most
of his trips with this Visa card, and then sometimes not use the
card at all?
Jeff must have had another credit card
account, one she didn’t know about. Maybe the bill was sent to his
office.
Molly was about to look at his
checkbook when she heard a car horn honking. She glanced out the
window and saw Rachel’s black Honda Accord in the driveway next
door. Rachel stepped out of the car and glanced toward the house.
She was wearing a sweater and jeans, and her brown hair was all
windblown.
Molly went to the front door and opened
it. “Hey, there,” she called.
“Sorry to honk the horn,” Rachel said.
“I figured I’d rope you into helping me with some groceries. I went
berserk in Costco. I mean, how can I pass up five pounds of snack
mix? Do you have a few minutes to help a shopaholic in
need?”
Molly laughed. “Sure, give me a
second.” Ducking back inside, she went to the basement doorway and
heard the TV down there. “Erin, I’m going next door to Rachel’s
house for a few minutes,” she called. “Okay, honey?”
“ ’Kay,” she answered.
Molly threw on her heavy cardigan and
headed out the door.
“I have enough Charmin here to last me
until the rapture,” Rachel observed as they were carrying in the
last of the groceries from the car. Molly followed her into the
house with two light bags. She was taking it easy, because of the
baby.
Except for a framed poster of the
Eiffel Tower on the wall, Rachel hadn’t done anything yet to Kay’s
old kitchen. The appliances were all white, and the breakfast nook
was a little booth with built-in red leather cushioned seats. A
window over the booth looked out to the wooded backyard. Rachel’s
phone and an old answering machine sat on the kitchen counter—near
where Molly set the groceries. The message light was
blinking.
“Have you heard how Courtney is doing?”
Rachel asked while unloading the contents from one of the
bags.
“Chris called around lunchtime,” Molly
said, leaning on the counter. “He talked to Lynette, and she said
the doctors are very optimistic about skin grafts and a prosthetic
ear. And they’re pretty sure her eye’s going to be all
right.”
“Thank God for that,” Rachel said. She
put two big jars of spaghetti sauce in the cupboard. “How’s Lynette
holding up?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Molly sighed. “I
don’t think Lynette and I are talking. Apparently, everything bad
that has happened in her life lately is my fault.”
“Well, I knew you were to blame for
global warming, but Lynette’s problems, too? My goodness . . .”
Rachel began to unload a second grocery bag. “I thought I heard a
heated discussion going on outside last night. It didn’t have
anything to do with me threatening bodily harm to her sweet little
boy, did it?”
“Nope, it’s all me,” Molly said with a
sigh. “You have a phone message.”
“Someone trying to sell me something,”
Rachel said. “Last week, it was all those prerecorded
election-related calls.” Reaching past Molly, she pressed a button
on the machine.
A beep sounded, and then a perky
recorded voice chimed in: “Hi, this is Claire from
Comcast! Did you know you could have all the latest movies and the
hottest TV shows right at your fingertips?”
“See? What did I tell you?” Rachel
said. “All I get are salespeople and charities.” She went back to
unloading her groceries while the recorded sales pitch went on and
on. “I don’t need any help putting this stuff away,” Rachel
said—over the recording. “This is the easy part. You don’t have to
stick around—unless you want to stay for a glass of wine or
something.”
Molly shook her head. “Thanks anyway,
but Erin’s home, and I don’t want to leave her alone too long.” She
turned toward the kitchen door.
On the message machine, the Comcast
pitch had finally finished. The beep sounded, and another voice
came on.
“Rachel Cross?”
a woman asked.
Molly stopped in her tracks. She
recognized that raspy, demented singsong delivery.
“Rachel, you’ll be
sorry you ever moved onto that block... you stupid
bitch.”
There was a click, and then a
beep.
“End of
messages,” announced a mechanical voice.
“What the hell?” Rachel said. “Who was
that?”
“My, God, she’s calling you, too,”
Molly murmured. A hand over her mouth, she moved toward the
answering machine on the counter. “How—how long has this been going
on?”
Rachel shook her head. “This is the
first time. Why? Do you know this nut job?
“No, but she’s phoned me a few
times—and said things.”
“ ‘Said things’? Well, that’s vague
enough. What kind of things?”
Molly couldn’t look at her. “Mostly
stuff about my brother,” she lied. She didn’t want to admit this
horrible woman had caught Jeff in a lie about where he’d been the
night of Angela’s murder.
“Well, I’m just going to star-six-nine
her ass,” Rachel said, reaching for the phone.
“Don’t bother, the number’s blocked,”
Molly said.
Rachel took her hand away from the
phone and stared at her.
“Could you play the message back?”
Molly asked. “Maybe if I hear her again, I’ll recognize her voice.
She’s never actually left me a message. I didn’t think she’d risk
having her voice recorded. She must be getting
bolder.”
Rachel reached over and pressed a
button on the answering machine. The Comcast lady came on, and
Rachel quickly pushed another button to skip over it.
“Rachel
Cross?”
Molly listened to that creepy voice,
trying to discern if it sounded familiar. She blankly stared at the
breakfast nook—until suddenly something moved past the
window.
“Rachel, you’ll be
sorry you ever moved onto that block... you stupid
bitch.”
Molly spotted a man in a hooded
sweatshirt. He seemed to have come from the woods at the edge of
Rachel’s backyard. It looked as if he was about to walk right up to
the house.
Rachel must have spotted him, too,
because she suddenly let out a shriek.
The hooded man took off—toward Molly’s
backyard.
Rachel frantically stabbed at the
buttons on the answering machine to shut it off. “Oh, Jesus,
where’d he go?” She grabbed the phone. “Did you see him? I’m
calling the police!”
All Molly could think about was Erin
alone in the basement, and that man heading toward her house. She
ran for the front door.
“Molly, wait!” Rachel called after her.
“For God’s sake, don’t go out there!”
She flew out the front door, and raced
across the lawn. The door was unlocked. She hadn’t thought there
would be any need to lock it. She’d been gone such a short time.
Molly flung open the door and ran up the front hallway to the
kitchen.
Then she saw him. The hooded man was
poised outside the family room’s sliding glass door. He violently
tugged at the handle. Molly could hear it rattle.
“Get out of here!” she screamed,
without thinking. She spun around and fumbled for a large knife
from the rack on the kitchen counter.
The rattling became louder, then
stopped abruptly.
Molly swiveled around again with the
knife in her shaky hand.
But the man was gone.
Natalie What’s-Her-Name quietly argued
with one of the cops.
They’d pulled her car over, and now her
slightly battered blue Mini Cooper was parked in front of Molly’s
house. Everyone on the block had gathered at the end of the
driveway while the police combed the area for the man with the
hooded sweatshirt. Lynette had been at the hospital all day. Jill
was babysitting Dakota and Carson. Both kids—along with Jill’s son,
Darren—had been fascinated by the police presence on their block.
But now the novelty was wearing off, and they were starting to hit
and poke each other. Molly held Erin’s hand, while Rachel whispered
to her that right now, she had sixty dollars’ worth of frozen food
thawing out on her kitchen counter.
Four patrol cars had shown up, and a
total of six cops were checking around each home to make sure there
was no sign of a break-in. The two old skeletons of half-finished
homes were getting the once-over, too. Jill wanted one of the cops
to accompany her back inside her house—just to double-check and be
safe.
Natalie must have misunderstood, and
thought they were about to do a search inside each residence. “I
can’t let you just barge in there!” she argued to a stocky, blond,
babyfaced cop. Her voice was shrill. She wore jeans and a white top
that seemed too big for her. Though pretty, she was way too thin.
Standing this close to her, Molly noticed that her teeth were
grayish. “I’m house-sitting for these people, and I’d need to check
with the owners before I let anyone inside.”
Molly wondered what the hell she was
talking about. She and Jeff had joked about how Natalie should have
installed a revolving door in the Nguyens’ house to accommodate all
the guys who dropped in—at all hours. And some of them looked
rather seedy, too.
“We’re just checking the grounds,
ma’am,” the cop assured her.
“Well, why can’t I go home right now?
Why are you holding me here?”
Because the police want
to make sure you don’t end up in one of the Nguyens’ closets with
your throat slit, Molly wanted to say. But she kept
quiet.
“Daddy’s home!” Erin declared. She
started waving at Jeff’s silver Lexus as it crawled up the
cul-de-sac.
Molly knew he must have been alarmed to
come home from work to see four police cars on the block—and most
of his neighbors standing at the end of his driveway. He pulled
over in front of Natalie’s Mini Cooper.
“Erin, stay with Rachel for a minute,”
Molly said.
Rachel took her hand. “C’mon, cutie
pie, keep me company.”
Molly stepped around to Jeff’s side of
the Lexus as he opened the door. “Everyone’s okay,” she said under
her breath. “We had a prowler. He came out of the woods into
Rachel’s backyard and tried to get into our place through the
sliding glass doors. But I scared him off. I told Erin this is just
a police drill. I didn’t want to worry her.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he murmured, hugging her.
“You sure you’re okay?”
She gratefully held on to him. “Yeah,
just a little shaken up.”
He kissed her, and Molly kissed him
back. Jeff loosened his tie and slung his arm around her, and they
started toward the others.
But he suddenly stopped dead and pulled
his arm away. He stared at everyone gathered at the end of the
driveway. Molly realized, to Jeff, most of them were strangers. “I
don’t think you’ve met a couple of our neighbors, have you?” she
said. “Jeff, this is Natalie . . . and from next door,
Rachel.”
Natalie looked him up and down for a
moment. Then she turned to the police officer. “May I go inside my
house now?” she muttered.
The cop nodded wearily, and Natalie
retreated to her car.
“We haven’t formally met yet either,
Jeff,” said Jill with a pinched smile. She put her hands on her
chubby son’s shoulders. “I was a friend of Angela’s. I was at the
funeral, but never got the opportunity to give you my condolences.
And this is my son, Darren. Darren, say hello to Mr.
Dennehy.”
“Hello,” the kid muttered.
Jeff didn’t respond at all. He glanced
over at Natalie’s Mini Cooper as it pulled down the cul-de-sac
toward the Nguyens’ driveway.
Just then, Erin broke away from Rachel.
She ran up to Jeff and hugged him around the legs. He patted her on
the head. He gazed at Jill and her son, and nodded.
“Hi, Jeff,” Rachel said, coming to him,
ready to shake his hand.
He didn’t reach out to her. “Excuse
me,” he muttered. Then he retreated toward the house—with Erin
clinging to him.
“Nice to meet you!” Rachel
called.
Molly was embarrassed that he’d acted
so rudely—especially to Rachel, who was her friend. Jeff was like a
zombie. She watched him and Erin head inside the
house.
“Officer?” she heard Rachel say.
“Officer, I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but
right before Mrs. Dennehy and I noticed that guy in my backyard,
this crazy woman left me a really weird, threatening voice
mail.”
Molly turned toward them.
Rachel nodded in her direction. “Mrs.
Dennehy said this same woman has been harassing her,
too.”
The cop frowned at her. “Have you
reported this, Mrs. Dennehy?”
She shook her head. “We had a lot of
crank callers and hang-ups after Angela was murdered. I just
figured this one was taking longer to move on than the
others.”
“Are the calls of an obscene nature?”
the policeman asked.
“Well, she called me a bitch,” Rachel
chimed in. “And usually people don’t call me that until they know
me better.”
The cop looked a bit mystified, as if
he wasn’t sure whether or not to laugh.
“I still have her on my answering
machine,” Rachel continued. “Would you like to hear?”
The cop turned to Molly. “Could you
come with us, Mrs. Dennehy?”
She followed them toward Rachel’s
house. The cop mumbled something into a little walkie-talkie device
on his shoulder. Molly glanced over at her house, wondering about
Jeff and his odd behavior. He’d been so concerned when she’d told
him about the attempted break-in, and within a minute or two, he’d
just walked inside the house—leaving her behind.
She was reluctant to report the
harassing phone calls. What if the police wanted to put a tap on
the phone and listen in? Then they’d hear this woman asking where
Jeff had been the night Angela was killed.
She knew Jeff couldn’t have had
anything to do with Angela’s death. But the police didn’t know
that.
“Have a listen,” Rachel announced, once
they were in her kitchen. She pressed a button on the answering
machine.
“You have no
messages,” the machine’s mechanical voice
announced.
“What? Oh, damn it!” Rachel said. “I
must have pressed the wrong button and erased it when I was trying
to shut it off. Of all the stupid . . .” She sighed. “Well, you can
ask Mrs. Dennehy. It was this crazy-sounding woman with a scratchy
voice—and a weird way of talking, almost like she was reading a
nursery rhyme. She said I’d be sorry I ever moved onto this
block.”
The cop turned to Molly. “What kind of
things has this woman said in her messages to you, Mrs.
Dennehy?”
“Well, she’s never actually left me a
message,” Molly explained. “I’ve only spoken with her a few
times—and mostly it’s just gibberish.” She tried to avoid eye
contact with Rachel. “She hasn’t spouted anything obscene or
threatening.”
“One minute, please,” the officer said.
He retreated down the hallway—by Rachel’s front door. He muttered
into his shoulder walkie-talkie again.
“Molly?” Rachel whispered. “What gives?
Don’t you want to report this?”
“I just don’t feel like getting into
that whole thing about my brother again,” she said under her
breath. And it was partially true. In that note left in Chris’s
locker and the letter sent to Rachel, the telephone woman was
holding that over her head as well. “I’m sorry, but right now, I’d
just as soon drop it.”
Rachel patted her arm. “Okay, Molly,”
she sighed. “But something tells me I’m not getting the whole true
story here.”
When she walked through the front door
five minutes later, she glanced over toward Jeff’s study at the
stack of old credit card bills on his desk. If he asked what she’d
been doing in there, she would tell him, “I’m
trying to figure out why the hell there’s no record of where you
were the night Angela was murdered.”
She’d just told that nice policeman it
wasn’t worth reporting a few strange phone calls. But she knew she
couldn’t ignore them much longer.
She found Jeff mixing a drink in the
kitchen, while Erin watched TV in the family room. Jeff offered her
a highball. It looked like a bourbon and water—her
I-really-need-a-drink drink of choice. “Something tells me you need
this,” he said.
She shook her head. “Thanks, anyway.”
She turned toward her stepdaughter. “Erin, could you go watch that
down in the basement, please?”
With a sigh, Jeff set the drink down
and reached for one he was already working on.
Oblivious to the tension in the air,
Erin passed between them and retreated down to the basement. Molly
found the remote and switched off the family-room TV. She took off
her cardigan sweater and draped it over the back of her chair at
the breakfast table. She could hear the television in the basement
starting up.
She turned to Jeff. The kitchen’s
island counter was between them. “Okay, so what was that all
about?” she asked him quietly. “Why were you so rude to our
neighbors?”
He shrugged. “Why should you care? You
hate them. They’ve been awful to you.”
“I don’t hate Rachel. I happen to like
her very much. She went to shake your hand, and you just ignored
her.”
Jeff put down his drink and rubbed his
eyes. “I’m sorry, honey. I was distracted. I was worried about you
and Erin and the house. If you want, I’ll send each one of them a
written apology—starting with your friend . . .” He seemed to
falter for her name.
“Rachel,” she said. “I’ve already
apologized for you. But you need to know something, Jeff. That
crazy woman caller who’s been harassing me—”
“Damn it, Molly, I’ve told you, if
you’d just screen your calls—”
“Let me finish,” she insisted. “The
woman left a message on Rachel’s answering machine today. I heard
it. She threatened Rachel. The same woman called Angela and Kay
shortly before they were killed. I’m beginning to think Kay’s death
wasn’t an accident. She could have been murdered. Have you stopped
to consider all the deaths and accidents and tragedies this one
little block has experienced lately? You should have heard Lynette
last night accusing me of stirring up some kind of hornet’s nest of
bad luck for everyone here on Willow Tree Court. She even brought
up Charlie in her little tirade.”
“You can’t take what she said
seriously,” Jeff pointed out. “She was half out of her mind last
night.”
“But the thing of it is I don’t really
blame Lynette for feeling that way. I’ve felt it too, at times.
After what Charlie did, I’ve always worried about something
horrible like that happening again to someone else I love. I’ve
tried to prepare myself for when the other shoe might drop. Maybe
that’s why I became so obsessed over the cul-de-sac killings. I
didn’t want to tell you, but I’ve had some nights here when you’re
out of town that I’ve been absolutely terrified.”
“But you’ve always acted so brave,” he
whispered. “Why didn’t you say anything?” Setting down his drink,
Jeff looked like he was about to come around the counter to hug
her.
“Would it have made a difference if I
said something?” she asked. “You’d have gone on your trips anyway.
Am I right?”
It stopped him in his
tracks.
She put her hand up. “My point is—I
can’t really blame Lynette for thinking bad luck follows me around.
But I know it’s not me or my bad luck that’s making all these
horrible things happen lately. I think it’s the work of this
demented woman on the telephone—I think she may be responsible for
everything from Erin’s smashed pumpkin to Courtney’s car wreck. I
need to tell this to the police—before someone else is hurt or
killed. But one thing is holding me back, Jeff. She has something
on you. You weren’t in Washington, D.C., when Angela, Larry, and
Taylor were killed. And yet you’re sticking to that story. Well,
sooner or later, the police are going to figure out you’re lying.
And Jeff, God help me, I don’t want to be the one who exposes your
lie. But I will. I will, if it means I can stop this woman from
hurting someone else.”
Frowning, he let out an exasperated
sigh. “Honey, listen . . .”
He stopped talking at the sound of
someone at the front door.
Molly heard the lock click. She peeked
down the front hallway to see Chris opening the door. He wore his
school jacket and had his backpack slung over one
shoulder.
“Hey,” he mumbled. “Sorry I’m late. I
took the bus to the hospital to see Courtney. But she was pretty
out of it, so it wasn’t much of a visit. . . .”
Molly just nodded, then turned and
walked into the kitchen again. At the breakfast table, she grabbed
her cardigan from the back of her chair. “I’m going out,” she said.
“There’s leftover ham in the refrigerator. Or you can order out. I
don’t care. You guys are on your own for dinner.”
Chris looked at Jeff—and then at her.
Unlike his kid sister, he seemed to sense the tension in the room.
“What’s going on?”
“Ask your father,” Molly grumbled,
throwing on her sweater. She grabbed her purse. “Good luck getting
a straight answer from him. I’ve tried, and I can’t.”
She headed down the hall—and out the
door.