CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I heard you come in at eleven,” he
said.
Molly squinted at Jeff standing at the
top of the attic stairs. She lay on the chaise longue in her art
studio, snuggled under the comfy throw from Restoration Hardware.
She realized Jeff must have snuck up there in the middle of the
night and covered her with it.
He was right. She’d come home at eleven
o’clock. She’d driven to Capitol Hill and gotten Thai carryout from
Jamjurri. Then she’d driven to a lookout point on Fifteenth Avenue,
a small park with a panoramic view of Husky Stadium, Lake
Washington, and Bellevue.
Molly had sat in the car, eating her
ginger chicken and gazing at the Bellevue lights in the distance.
The park was across from Lakeview Cemetery, where they’d buried
Angela—a fitting spot for her to admit to herself that Angela had
been right all along. She didn’t even want to think it, but the
evidence—or lack thereof—was overwhelming. All those business trips
Jeff had taken without any expense records meant he was hiding
something—like an affair, or several affairs. Jeff had been with
another woman the night Angela had been murdered.
The son of a bitch wasn’t much better
than Jeremy Hahn. And now she was going to have his
baby.
When she’d come home last night, she’d
had no desire to see him—or even sleep on the same floor as him.
She’d gotten a pillow from one of the twin beds in the guest room,
and then taken it upstairs to her studio.
“I’ll see the kids off to school,” Jeff
was saying. “You just sleep.”
“You need to make Erin’s lunch,” she
muttered, turning away from him.
“I’ll handle it,” she heard him say.
“Just do me a favor. If the phone rings today and the number’s
blocked, don’t pick it up. And please don’t say anything to the
police about those calls. Just hold off for today. You and I will
straighten this out tonight, and then we’ll both talk to the police
tomorrow. Okay?”
Molly didn’t say anything.
“Maybe we can get together with that
cop who’s so fond of you, that Blazevich guy.”
“Yes,” she said, tonelessly. “We’ll
have to be discreet. When it comes out where you were that night,
it’ll be embarrassing for you. Am I right, Jeff?”
She heard him sigh. “We’ll work this
out, Molly,” he said. “I promise.”
Then she listened to his footsteps
retreating down the stairs.
Molly didn’t want to wait until tonight
to “straighten this out.” She imagined trying to talk to Jeff about
his infidelity while his children were in the house. They were
better off having their discussion over lunch—preferably in a
cafeteriastyle place, where they paid up front. So—if she wanted to
storm out of there, she could. Or maybe they’d just talk in his
office with the door closed and his assistant out to
lunch.
That was where she was now, downtown on
the twenty-ninth floor of the Bank of America Tower. With a trench
coat on over her navy-blue blouse and black skirt, Molly stepped
off the elevator and through the glass double doors to the suite of
offices for Kendall Pharmaceuticals. She never much cared for the
wannabe–Jackson Pollock artwork on the walls. But she liked Jeff’s
assistant, Peter, whose desk sat outside Jeff’s office in a
separate alcove. A husky, handsome, ebony-skinned man with a
goatee, Peter always wore vibrant-colored shirts with dark, subdued
ties. Today, the shirt was Orange Crush orange.
Usually, Molly enjoyed chatting with
Peter, but this time she’d been hoping to catch Jeff with no one
else around.
“Hi, Molly,” Peter said, looking up
from his monitor. “I’m sorry, but if you’re looking for Jeff, you
just missed him. He’s out to lunch, I don’t know where. He told me
he’ll be back in an hour, but you never know.”
“Yeah, you never know with him,” she
said, working up a smile. The frosted-glass door to his office was
closed; and it looked dark in there. “Well, he wasn’t expecting me.
I’ll just go in and leave him a note.”
“Go on in. Do you want some coffee or a
soda?”
“No thanks, Peter.” She stepped inside
Jeff’s office and closed the door. He had a spacious office with a
bookcase on one wall, a sofa, and a large mahogany desk—on which
sat a computer monitor and a framed photo of her, Chris, and Erin.
One wall was a floor-to-ceiling window—with a view of the Olympics,
Puget Sound, and the ferries on their way to and from the islands.
Gray clouds hovered over the horizon, and not much light came into
Jeff’s office. Molly switched on the overhead, then went to his
desk and sat down.
She was wondering about those business
trips that hadn’t shown up on Jeff’s Visa or American Express
accounts. He must have had a secret account, and the bills were
either coming here or at a post office box someplace.
Molly tried his desk drawers, but all
of them were locked. She wondered if he’d set up the account
online. But he’d logged off his computer, and she didn’t know the
password. Molly tried her name, then Chris,
then Erin, then Chriserin, and other combinations that included
birthdays.
Through the door’s fogged glass, she
could see Peter getting up from his desk. She quickly grabbed a pen
and started scribbling on a notepad.
Peter knocked, and then stepped in.
“I’m headed out to lunch, Molly,” he said. “I’d stick around and
keep you company, but I’m meeting Mark and his mother at Ivar’s. I
can’t keep her waiting. She already thinks I’m not good enough for
her son. Anyway, take your time in here. Everything’s locked up, so
just turn off the lights and close the door when you
leave.”
Molly nodded. “Will do, thanks,” she
said. “And good luck with Mark’s mom.”
“Thanks, I’ll need it,” he said. Then
he set some mail on Jeff’s desk and headed for the
door.
Molly heard the door close after him.
She wasn’t looking in that direction. She was staring at the mail
he’d left in front of her—and the MasterCard logo in the left-hand
corner of one envelope.
At this point, she didn’t care if Jeff
knew she’d looked at his mail. She was sick of secrets. With his
letter opener, she cut open the envelope and pulled out the bill.
The most recent purchase was listed on the day she’d found out
about Angela’s death. He’d checked out of the Chateau Granville
Hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia. The day before, there were
charges from BC Liquor Store, Divine Vine Florist, and Blue Water
Café—all in Vancouver.
Earlier in the month, when Jeff was
supposed to be in Minneapolis, he’d taken a brief trip north about
sixty miles to La Conner instead. There, he stayed at the La Conner
Channel Lodge, and he’d had a $122 dinner at Palmer’s Restaurant,
and spent $247 at Windmill Antiques & Miniatures. From all the
prices, Molly could see Jeff was treating his girlfriend to the
finest hotels and restaurants. He was also buying her flowers and
antiques. Maybe he was in love with her.
Devastated, Molly unsteadily got to her
feet. Stuffing the MasterCard bill back in the envelope, she stuck
it in her purse. She turned off the overhead light and stepped out
of his office. She was shaking and tried to hold back her tears as
she walked through the corridor. Just outside the glass double
doors, on her way to the elevators, she heard her cell phone
ring.
Molly reached into her purse, and
checked the caller ID: CALLER
UNKNOWN.
She took a deep breath and pressed
Talk. She didn’t say anything. She could hear the asthmatic
breathing on the other end of the line—then that voice:
“Mrs. Dennehy, do you know where your husband was
when his ex-wife was murdered?”
Molly swallowed hard. She couldn’t stop
shaking. “He was in Vancouver, British Columbia,” she answered
steadily. “And he was with you—you malignant bitch. Wasn’t he? How
did you like the flowers?”
She heard a click on the other
end.
Jeff heard a plane soaring overhead
from the airport nearby. He walked into the Marriott’s bar, an
all-glass and wood-beam circular dome. With the overcast skies
above, the light pouring through to the bar was subdued. The place
was about half full with the lunch crowd.
Jeff found her at a table with a view
of the indoor pool and tropical garden area. She was dressed
demurely in a white turtleneck and black slacks, and she looked
nervous. She had her favorite drink, a Tom Collins, in front of
her. She smiled up at him.
He plopped down in the chair across
from her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked under
his breath.
“I just wanted to be near you,” she
said.
A pretty Latino waitress approached
their table. “Can I get you something from the bar?”
“Nothing, thank you,” Jeff replied,
turning his head away slightly.
“He’ll have Wild Turkey—double, with a
glass of ice on the side,” the woman said.
He waited until the waitress left
before he spoke again. “I’m not staying long,” he frowned. “And I’m
not drinking with you. I told you when we first got together six
months ago that it was nothing permanent. It shouldn’t have lasted
even this long. I love Molly. I’m not going to let you destroy my
marriage or my family.” He leaned in closer to her. “Are you out of
your fucking mind, setting up house right on my
block?”
“But she doesn’t know,” argued his
Willow Tree Court neighbor. “And I promise, she’ll never know—not
until you’re ready to tell her. Have I ever tried to push you in
that direction? I don’t want to break up your marriage. I don’t
want to hurt anyone. I’m in love with you, Jeff. Like I said, I
just wanted to be near you.”
The waitress returned with his Wild
Turkey and a glass of ice. She set a dish of pretzels between them.
“Thank you,” Jeff muttered, his head down.
“No worries,” said the waitress, and
then she headed to another table.
“I really don’t get ‘no worries’ in
lieu of ‘you’re welcome, ’ ” the woman said, nibbling at a pretzel.
“It just doesn’t seem to be the right response to ‘thank you.’ It’s
like I wasn’t worried, I was just thanking you. Know what I
mean?”
He stared across the table at her. He
wondered how she could act so cute right now and make lighthearted
conversation. She didn’t seem to comprehend the seriousness of what
she’d done. “It’s over,” he said.
She quickly shook her head. “No,
please. Listen, listen, have your drink, and—and—and we’ll talk. I
didn’t mean to make you angry when I moved into that house. I just
wanted to be close by. I’m staying out of your way, Jeff. I mean,
Jesus, I’ve been there all this time, and you haven’t even seen
me—until yesterday.”
He poured some of the Wild Turkey over
the ice and gulped it down. “You look me in the eye and tell me
that you don’t want to hurt anyone, and yet you’re telephoning
Molly and asking if she knows where I was the night Angela was
murdered.”
She shook her head. “Not me, Jeff. I
don’t know what you’re talking about. Why would I want to blow the
whistle on myself? I like what I have with you. I wouldn’t do
anything to wreck that.”
“You already have,” he
said.
She grabbed his hand. “Listen, if
you’re really that upset about the move, I’ll just pack up my stuff
and be gone by the end of the week. Poof, problem solved,
okay?”
He had another hit of his drink and
leaned back in the chair. “I’m going to tell Molly about us
tonight, and I’ll beg for her forgiveness. Then I’ll go to the
police and explain to them that someone is harassing my wife.
They’ll probably question you. If you’re telling me the truth, and
it’s not you making those calls, then it’s probably one of your
friends. Think over which of your friends you’ve told about
us.”
“Jeff, I haven’t told a soul,” she
whispered, tearing up.
“After today, I don’t want to see you
again. You’ll have to move. I need you to stay away from me and my
family.”
“You can’t mean that,” she pleaded,
shaking her head. “Don’t be this way, Jeff. I made a dumb mistake.
People in love can do dumb things sometimes. Can’t you please
forgive me?”
He just glanced down at the
tabletop.
She sat back and kept one hand around
her glass. “So—you want to break up. Do you have to be so cruel
about it? Is this how you want to wrap up what we’ve had together?
Six months, that’s a pretty good run, Jeff.” Her voice began to
crack, but she was smiling. “Does it have to end so—so badly? Can’t
we hold each other one last time? C’mon, honey, you’d think I could
have some closure, at least. What do you say we have one last time?
Listen, if you go to the front desk and get us a room, I’ll drive
to the liquor store and buy us a bottle of Wild Turkey. Remember
that time in Portland? It’ll be just like that.” Her hand came up
to his face. “C’mon, baby. What do you say?”
Closing his eyes, Jeff let out a long
sigh of resignation.
She parked around the corner from the
liquor store’s entrance, near the Dumpster, where there was less
foot traffic. No one could see her at work in the car’s front seat.
She’d ground up ten tablets of ecstasy, and used the rolled-up
liquor-store receipt to funnel it into the Wild Turkey
bottle.
She’d bought the pills from Wolf, the
same sleazy character who had wired Courtney’s phone to blow up.
She was a bit upset with him, since Courtney hadn’t died. But she
figured it wasn’t his fault. Besides, she took a certain
satisfaction in the fact that Courtney had been maimed and
disfigured. No one would ever give Courtney Hahn a break or hold a
door for her again just because the girl was pretty. Still, she was
disappointed and had decided last night to abandon her notions of a
miniature re-creation of Courtney’s smash-up. After all, Courtney
wasn’t dead. Yet she couldn’t toss out that little Courtney doll,
wrapped in the material from her pullover, with half of its face
blackened and slightly melted.
She sort of cherished it.
Along with the ecstasy, she’d purchased
some cocaine and heroin from Wolf. It cost nine hundred dollars for
a thin packet of heroin no bigger than a teabag. Wolf assured her
that she was getting a terrific deal, and he even tutored her on
how it should be introduced into the bloodstream for the effect she
desired.
Her cell phone rang, and she saw the
number on her caller ID pad. She clicked it on, and put the phone
to her ear. “Hi, Jeff,” she said.
“I’m in room 104, on the first floor—by
the pool,” he said.
“See you in about five minutes, my
love,” she replied. Then she clicked off.
She put the bottle of Wild Turkey back
inside the long, narrow brown paper bag. Starting up the car, she
pulled onto International Boulevard and thought about what Chris’s
guidance counselor had written in his notes regarding Jeff
Dennehy:
He’s a very nice
guy, who obviously loves his son. But I believe he
compartmentalizes his life. Jeff Dennehy doesn’t seem to realize
how his womanizing ways are spilling over from one compartment and
hurting his family. With his good looks & his friendly,
confident manner, I’m guessing he attracts a lot of women &
it’s hard for him to say no. Chris has felt very close to his dad .
. . until he found out about all the cheating. But I don’t know if
Mr. Dennehy can stop, even with his new wife. It’s as if this is
how he’s used to living. The guy just can’t say no to a pretty
woman. . . .
As she walked down the first-floor
hallway of the Marriott, she felt as if someone was following her.
She kept glancing over her shoulder at the vacant corridor with its
gaudy-patterned green, pink, and oatmeal carpet. She peered at the
darkened doorways and alcoves but didn’t see anyone. She told
herself it was nothing, just her imagination.
She reached room 104 and knocked. She
knew Jeff would be there waiting for her.
She knew how hard it was for him to say
no.
He’d followed Angela Dennehy’s
ex-husband as far as the twenty-ninth Floor of the Bank of America
Tower, and then to this hotel near the airport. From a table on the
other side of the domed bar, he’d watched Jeff and his Willow Tree
Court neighbor have their pathetic little assignation.
He’d been extra careful to make sure
they hadn’t noticed him. It had been a close call yesterday, when
Molly had spotted him in the backyard next door. He’d barely had
enough time to check out the lock on the sliding glass door to the
Dennehys’ house. He’d heard the police sirens while ducking back
inside his car, parked on another dead-end road behind those woods.
At the intersection of the other cul-de-sac, he’d watched the cop
cars zoom by with their roof lights flashing and swirling. He’d
counted four patrol cars. He’d felt sort of proud his presence on
Willow Tree Court had prompted such a forceful
response.
Jeff Dennehy’s girlfriend seemed to
pick up on the fact that someone was watching her in the Marriott’s
first-floor hallway. She kept glancing over her shoulder as she
sauntered down the corridor with her big purse. He stayed hidden in
the alcove with the pop and ice machines. He heard her knocking on
a door and waited for the sound of the door clicking open. Then he
caught a peek of her stepping inside room 104. He didn’t want to
listen in at the door. So he tried the window on the other side of
the room and discovered that number 104 had access to the pool
through a sliding glass door. Each one of the poolside rooms had
one or two patio chairs outside it. An indoor mini-jungle separated
the lanai area by the room entrance from the huge, star-shaped
pool. So it was easy for him to wander around by those doors and
not be seen.
He could hear splashing and the
laughter of children as he settled down in the patio chair outside
room 104. Though Dennehy and his girlfriend had shut the drapes,
the edges didn’t quite meet, and he could just make out their naked
forms through the sheer curtain. He adjusted the chair so it was a
bit closer to the glass.
“Marco . . . Polo . . . Marco . . .
Polo!” some kids were yelling.
He leaned over to one side, like he’d
fallen asleep in the chair. He could see into the room now. The air
conditioner–radiator must have been right near that sliding door,
because every once in a while that sheer curtain fluttered open—and
he could see everything. He spotted a quart bottle of Wild Turkey—a
little over half full—on the table near the door.
It looked like booze wasn’t the only
thing she’d bought to the party. Lying naked on the bed, he saw her
carefully applying something that might have been cocaine to her
breasts. Dennehy was naked, poised over her on all fours. She
grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head down. He eagerly
sniffed and licked at her nipples. Even with the door closed—and
the kids screaming and carrying on in the pool, he could hear her
muffled laughter.
The sheer curtain billowed and
reflected against the glass, totally obscuring his view for a few
moments. He wasn’t sure what he missed, but as the curtain moved
again, he could see her walking across the room naked. At first, he
thought she was coming to the sliding glass door, but she was only
retrieving the bottle of Wild Turkey.
Dennehy was sitting on the bed with his
feet on the floor. He gripped the side of the mattress with his
hands, and shook his head repeatedly as if having a spasm of some
kind.
Perhaps it wasn’t just cocaine he’d
been snorting off his girlfriend’s breasts, but something even
stronger. Dennehy put a hand to his forehead.
She started to hand him the bottle, but
he knocked it out of her hands.
All at once, Dennehy bolted up. It
looked as if he was about to attack her, but he took two steps and
collapsed on the floor.
The curtains began to billow again, and
he couldn’t see much.
It appeared as if she was just standing
there with one hand on her hip, looking down at him.
The man in the patio chair kept waiting
for her to help Dennehy. But she didn’t move. The man thought about
counting the seconds so he could time her, because she stood like
that for a long, long time.
She watched Jeff Dennehy writhe on the
beige-carpeted floor.
Jeff had said he wasn’t into drugs. But
he’d already had at three shots of Wild Turkey heavily laced with
ecstasy. And she knew he couldn’t say no. There was only a bit of
cocaine in what he’d snorted off her breasts. Most of it was
highgrade heroin.
One hand on her hip, she stared down at
him. She remembered Wolf commenting that the ecstasy was quite
powerful. “Two tabs, and you can fry an egg on your forehead,” he’d
said. She wondered if Jeff was reacting to the ecstasy or the
heroin—or the combination. He was covered with sweat and gasping
for air. She touched his chest with her toe, and the skin was hot.
It was almost as if his body was cooking. His handsome face was
crimson.
“My husband actually liked you, Jeff,”
she said, gazing down at him. “He didn’t blame you as much as the
others for what happened to us. But I do. Before Ray was even
killed, I was already planning on how I’d meet you and seduce you.
I knew you couldn’t resist a pretty girl.”
His eyes seemed to keep going in and
out of focus. One moment his gaze connected with her—and the next
his stare was blank. He vaguely reached out to her, but she kicked
his hand away.
“My family and I went through hell for
five months. My husband lost his job, our marriage was ruined, our
teenage daughter ran away—all thanks to you and your meddling
neighbors on Willow Tree Court,” she continued. “Your children came
to my husband for the guidance you couldn’t give them—and then all
of you turned on him. I think I aged years in those few months. But
I was still pretty enough to turn your head. Less than two weeks
after Ray was killed, I had you in that Jantzen Beach hotel room in
Portland. Remember? That was the same night Kay died. Molly called
you and got you out of bed. . . .”
Thrashing about on his back, Jeff
looked like he was choking. He was like a helpless little baby who
couldn’t turn himself over.
Jenna Corson felt just a twinge of
pity, but not enough. She stared down at him, fascinated by his
suffering. “Ray and I were unofficially separated,” she said. “I’d
given up on us, but he hadn’t. He kept coming back to me. When I
discovered Ray had taken out a very expensive insurance policy, I
knew something was up. It didn’t take me long to figure out he was
planning to kill himself—so the kids and I would be taken care of.
I just didn’t know how he would make his suicide look like an
accident. We were spending more time apart than together, but one
night while he was in the shower, I found a number on his cell
phone, the number of the man he’d hired to kill him.
“I guess I could have stopped it,” she
admitted. “But we’d hit bottom, and there didn’t seem to be any
other way. Besides, I couldn’t let the people who had destroyed my
family go unpunished. You people on Willow Tree Court were the
worst offenders. Ray took notes during his sessions with your
children. Some were in his private journals, some in the school
records. I stole everything he had about the kids on Willow Tree
Court. So I knew all of your secrets—and all your
weaknesses.”
She let out a long sigh. “Even before
Ray was killed, I planned to take that insurance money and whatever
I’d get for selling the house—and use it to destroy you and your
neighbors. That’s the real reason I moved onto your block, Jeff. I
didn’t care about being near you. I just wanted to see the
devastation closeup.”
It looked as if Jeff was struggling to
talk, but all he could get out was a warbled groan.
She touched him with her toe again. He
was on fire. “You know, at just about the time I accidentally met you, Jeff, I contacted the man who
killed my husband and hired him to kill Kay Garvey. He murdered
Angela for me, too. He did such a thorough job on my husband, I
knew he’d take care of those bitches with the same efficiency,
though I suppose he could have handled Angela’s death differently.
. . .”
Gazing down at him, she sighed, “Oh, my
God, look at you. You should see yourself.”
Jeff had thrown up. Pale gray bile ran
down the side of his mouth and formed a puddle under his neck.
Blood oozed out of his nostrils. He stared up at her. Spasms began
to rack his body.
“You know, it’s funny how I’ve lived on
that cul-de-sac for a while now, Jeff,” Jenna said. “I kept
wondering if you’d ever notice me. Ray used to say you people only
cared about yourselves, your families, and your small circle of
friends. I think he was right. I didn’t go to his funeral, because
I didn’t want anyone from Willow Tree Court to recognize me—in case
they came. I was already planning to move onto your block then. I
already knew what I had to do.”
Jeff’s breathing became a death rattle.
The crimson color began to drain from his face. He was totally
still, and his eyes were listless.
“But I didn’t know how I would kill you
until three months ago,” Jenna continued. “That’s when I learned
that my daughter, Tracy, had died on the street from a lethal
combination of drugs and alcohol. She was only sixteen years old.
My sweet little girl . . .”
Jenna began to cry, but her voice was
angry and accusatory as she leaned over him. “A lethal combination
of drugs and alcohol, that’s when I knew how you’d die, Jeff.
That’s when I knew. . . .”
He stopped breathing. The room was
quiet.
She could hear kids splashing and
laughing in the pool outside the sliding glass door.
Naked, she walked over to the sofa and
reached for her purse. Jenna took out a small pair of scissors. She
picked up Jeff’s T-shirt from the bed and then carefully cut a
piece off the sleeve.