CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Exactly one week after Chris and Erin
had buried their mother they were sitting in the front pew at the
funeral mass for their dad.
Molly was in the same pew, but she
might as well have been alone. Chris had asked Elvis to sit with
him. Erin wanted nothing to do with her and clung to her Aunt
Trish. Molly was the fifth wheel, seated on the aisle with Elvis at
her side.
One good thing about being on the
aisle—at least it was easier for her to make a hasty exit when she
felt sick, even with the walk of shame down the aisle in front of
everyone. Halfway through the service, she’d had to go get some
fresh air. Rachel, several pews back, walked her outside, and she
gave her a peppermint from her purse. It seemed to help—for a while
anyway.
Molly felt a bit light-headed again as
the priest gave the final blessing. She was supposed to lead the
congregation out of the church, and when she did, Molly signaled to
Rachel to help her. Her neighbor quickly came to her rescue, put an
arm around her, and helped her down the aisle and out the
church.
Outside, a few people shook her hand
and gave their condolences. Molly kept thinking she just needed to
lie down. But she hung in there, nodding and thanking people while
Rachel kept a hand on her back. She looked around for Chris and
Erin, but didn’t see them on the sidewalk in front of the
church.
Jill and Natalie approached her
together, and each one shook her hand. It threw Molly for a loop.
She hadn’t noticed them among the congregation and couldn’t believe
Natalie, of all people, had come to Jeff’s service. The reclusive
neighbor gave Molly a tiny, joyless smile. “I’m sorry for your
loss,” she murmured.
“Thank you, Natalie,” she managed to
say. “And thank you for coming.”
“Jenna? Jenna, is that
you?”
Molly glanced over her shoulder toward
the street. A thin, fortyish woman with her frizzy brown-gray hair
half hidden by a bike helmet pedaled by on a bicycle. She wore a
blue Windbreaker, and her bike toted a little go-cart carriage for
a toddler, who was also in a bike helmet and bundled up in a
jacket.
The bicyclist was looking right toward
her—and her neighbors. “Jenna Corson, is that you?” she
called.
Molly twisted around to look at
Natalie, who suddenly glanced over her own shoulder. Molly didn’t
see anyone else who seemed to notice the bicyclist—or react to the
name Jenna Corson.
Why would Ray Corson’s widow want to
come to Jeff’s funeral?
Molly turned toward the woman on the
bike again. With a puzzled, slightly embarrassed look, the
bicyclist pedaled on—the child in the attached cart trailing behind
her.
“Well, that’s a little tacky,” Molly
heard Rachel whisper, “yelling at someone coming out of a funeral
mass. Do you know this Jenna Carlson?”
“Corson,” Molly
murmured numbly. “Her husband was Chris’s guidance counselor at the
high school.” She glanced around for Chris. If he was nearby, he
might have recognized Mrs. Corson; but then Molly remembered—he’d
never met her.
If anyone had a better reason not to
mourn Jeff’s passing it would have been Jenna Corson. “You have a lot of nerve showing up here,” Ray Corson’s
sister had growled at her and Chris at the Corson wake when they’d
asked to talk to Jenna. “Haven’t you done enough
damage? She’s been through hell, thanks to you
people.”
Why in the world would Jenna Corson
attend Jeff’s funeral?
Had she come to gloat?
The woman on the bicycle seemed to have
been addressing one of her neighbors. Molly turned to face Natalie,
but she wasn’t there anymore. She’d disappeared among the mourners.
“Natalie?” she called. “Natalie?”
No heads turned in the crowd. She
wondered if Natalie looked like Jenna Corson.
Then it hit her. What if Natalie
was Jenna Corson?
“Jenna!” she impulsively cried out.
“Jenna Corson?”
“Molly, what are you doing?” she heard
Rachel ask.
“She’s been through
hell, thanks to you people.”
Was it Ray Corson’s widow who had asked
Kay the week before her death if she thought she was a good
mother?
“You’re going to pay
for what you did,” someone had told Angela.
That same someone had Angela, her
boyfriend, and his daughter murdered. And that same night she’d
arranged for Jeff to meet her in Vancouver. She’d known all along
Jeff would have to account for his whereabouts that evening. Molly
could still hear that raspy voice: “Do you know
where Jeff was that night, Mrs. Dennehy?”
She could still see Angela in that
booth in the restaurant, a glass of wine in her hand. She’d
wondered out loud: “Maybe Jeff has found someone
new, and she wants to sit back and watch us scratch each other’s
eyes out.”
In order to sit back and watch, she’d
have had to be close by all the time. She’d have to be a
neighbor.
“Jenna Corson, is that
you?” the woman had called, staring directly at Molly and
the women from her block. Everyone was there, except Lynette Hahn,
who was at the hospital with Courtney.
Molly thought about Courtney’s
“accident” and Jeremy’s arrest, their kids getting cut up in the
vacant lot, Rachel’s toolshed catching fire, Chris’s locker being
broken into, and the smashed pumpkins. Someone had hired a sleazy
detective to look into her family history—months before Angela
admitted to doing the same thing. He or she planted an anonymous
note to Chris inside his locker and sent a letter to
Rachel.
“. . . she wants to sit
back and watch . . .”
She remembered Lynette confronting her
a few nights ago: “For two years, I lived here—and
we were all very happy, and then you moved in . . . and everything
changed.” But Lynette wasn’t quite right. Molly had lived on
the block for ten months, and no had been hurt or killed. But then
less than two weeks after Ray Corson’s murder, Kay had had her
fatal accident.
“Jenna?” Molly cried out, weaving
through the crowd. “Jenna? I know you’re here!” It all started to
make sense, and the horrible realization made Molly’s stomach turn.
Ray Corson’s widow was there, watching.
“Molly, for God’s sake,” Rachel
whispered, trailing after her.
She caught a glimpse of Chris, by the
church steps with Elvis. He was scowling at her as if she was
crazy. His face seemed to go out of focus. The sidewalk felt
wobbly. Molly’s head was spinning. She reached toward Rachel just
as her legs started to give out.
Then everything went
black.
She could hear people downstairs,
chatting quietly. Molly opened her eyes and saw Rachel sitting at
her bedside. For a moment, she felt totally disoriented and thought
it was morning. But then she saw the digital clock on her
nightstand: 12:55 P.M.
Molly realized she was still in her
dress from the funeral. She vaguely remembered riding home in the
limo, and Chris and Elvis helping her upstairs to the bedroom.
Trish was supposed to be hosting a brunch.
Molly tried to sit up. “Who’s
downstairs?” she asked groggily. “Are Jill and Natalie down
there?”
Rachel shook her head. “No, the brunch
was kind of a bust. People could see you weren’t exactly up for
entertaining. And the few that came over got one look at the
boozefree, meatless vegan spread Miss Crunchy Granola had laid out,
and they headed for the hills.” She reached for the bottle of
ginger capsules on Molly’s nightstand. “It didn’t even last an
hour. The only ones left down there are Trish and a friend of hers,
Chris and his pal, and Erin—and a ton of rabbit food no one
touched.” She took out a pill and offered her a tumbler of water.
“Here . . .”
Molly shook her head. “No, I think
those are making me even sicker.”
With a shrug, Rachel put down the
tumbler and set the pill beside it. “In case you change your mind.”
She moved over and sat at the end of the bed. “So—you kind of
scared me out there in front of the church. What’s the story with
this Jenna person? You said she was the wife of Chris’s
coach?”
“She’s the widow of Chris’s guidance
counselor,” Molly said, reaching for the tumbler on her nightstand.
She gulped down some water. “Her name is Jenna Corson, and I—I
think she’s behind all the strange things that have been happening
on this block—including Jeff’s death. . . .”
Molly somehow felt stronger as she
explained to Rachel about who Jenna Corson was and why she would
want to hurt the people on the cul-de-sac.
“Why would this Jenna person threaten
me?” Rachel asked. “I didn’t have anything to do with her husband
getting the ax at Chris’s high school. I wasn’t even living here at
the time. Yet she was ready to burn my house down. I didn’t want to
tell you, Molly, but I got another one of those calls yesterday,
and that lady is crazy. Why would she pick on me?”
“Maybe it’s because you’re my friend,”
Molly replied. She took another swig of water and sat up
straighter. “I’m the one who first reported the incident with her
husband and that poor student. Chris and I started it all. And look
what happened. She made Chris an orphan.”
“And you think she was outside the
church after the funeral?” Rachel asked.
“More than that,” Molly answered. “I
think she was standing right in front of me when that woman rode by
on the bicycle and called out to her.”
Rachel stared at her. “But the only
people there were Jill, Natalie, and me.”
Molly nodded. She was thinking back to
the day before Jeff died, when he’d come home from work, and the
same group had gathered at the end of the driveway—Rachel, Jill,
and Natalie. Jeff had been home so seldom that she’d had to
introduce him to their neighbors. Then he’d acted so peculiar—to
the point of rudeness. Was it because he already knew one of
them—and he was having an affair with her?
One of the women in that group had
spent the weekend with Jeff in Vancouver, British Columbia. She’d
had another tryst with him in La Conner. And she’d poisoned him
with drugs and alcohol in a hotel by the airport four days
ago.
“So—you’re saying that Natalie or
Jill—or me—one of us is really Jenna?”
Rachel let out a stunned, little laugh. “Do you need to see my
birth certificate?”
Molly quickly shook her head. “No, not
you,” she said. “I think it’s Natalie. I’ve always had a weird
feeling about her. And just seconds after that woman called out
Jenna’s name, Natalie disappeared. I’d be surprised if Natalie
shows her face again on this block. How much do we know about her
anyway?”
At the same time, Molly couldn’t
totally dismiss her other neighbor, Jill. There was something very
sensual and earthy about her that might have appealed to Jeff. She
was just about the right age to have been Ray Corson’s wife. And
Molly remembered they had a young son. Was he around Darren’s age?
Molly wasn’t sure.
She hated to even think it, but she
couldn’t be one hundred percent sure about Rachel, either. But then
that meant Rachel had set fire to her own toolshed and left herself
that threatening voice mail, and sent herself the letter with the
news clipping about Charlie. And even though the bicyclist had
called out Jenna’s name—exposing her—there was Rachel at Molly’s
bedside when she’d awoken.
“Don’t you think we should call the
police?” she asked. “I mean, they should know about this Jenna
person.”
Molly smiled a tiny bit and told
herself that Jenna Corson would never have made such a
suggestion.
“We can’t call the police, not yet.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “You heard me trying to explain
everything to Chet Blazevich the day before yesterday. He didn’t
believe me—and hell, he likes me. No, before
we go to the police, we need some solid proof that Jenna Corson is
responsible for all these deaths and ‘accidents.’ We have to
determine whether it’s Natalie or Jill behind all this.” Molly
paused. “Listen to me with the ‘we this’ and ‘we that.’ I didn’t
mean to be so presumptuous. You don’t have to be
involved.”
Rachel reached over, took her hand. “Go
ahead and presume, honey. I’m here for you. By the way, you’re
finally getting some color in your cheeks. I’ll go see if I can
find something edible for you down there. You stay
put.”
“Thanks,” Molly said, working up a
smile. She watched Rachel head for the door, and her smile waned.
She had to know something. Molly waited until her new friend was in
the doorway, and then she said in a quiet voice, “Jenna?”
Rachel stepped out to the hallway, then
hesitated and glanced back at her. “Did you just say
something?”
Molly quickly shook her
head.
Rachel frowned at her. “Yes, you did.
You said, ‘Jenna.’ ”
“I’m so sorry,” Molly replied,
grimacing. “I just needed to be sure. . . .”
Rachel sighed. “Listen, I’m suddenly
not feeling so well myself. I think I’ll go home and lie
down—”
“Please, Rachel, I’m sorry.” Molly
started to climb off the bed. “That was stupid of me,
I—”
“I’ll be sure to bring my driver’s
license with me next time I come over, Molly,” she said. Then she
turned and started down the hallway.
“Rachel, wait!” Molly heard her
footsteps retreating down the stairs. She started to get up, but
felt a head rush and quickly sat down on the bed
again.
She heard the front door open and
shut.
“Hello, you reached the
Nguyens. We cannot come to the phone right now. But if you leave a
message, we will be back to you.”
Molly listened to Mrs. Nguyen’s
recorded voice. She had the Nguyens’ Denver phone number in her
address book by the phone in her bedroom. She sat on the edge of
her bed and waited until the beep sounded.
“Hi, Dr. and Mrs. Nguyen,” she said.
“This is Molly Dennehy, your neighbor on Willow Tree Court. I need
to ask you about Natalie, the woman who’s staying in your house.
It’s very important. Could you call me—”
A click on the other end of the line
interrupted her. “Hello?” Molly said.
“This Mrs. Nguyen,” she said, in her
slightly fractured English. “Molly? What you talking about with a
woman in our house? There’s no woman staying in our
house.”
Molly hesitated. “Ah, actually, Mrs.
Nguyen, there is,” she said. “A woman named Natalie has been
staying at your house for the last two months—”
“What you mean?” Mrs. Nguyen
interrupted. “No, house is empty. We have Todd to check every week.
No one is living there now. We don’t know any
Natalie.”
“Mrs. Nguyen, I’ve seen this woman
coming and going into your house since September,” Molly said.
“She’s a thin blonde in her late thirties—or early forties—and she
goes by the name Natalie.”
“No, that not right. I call Todd to
find out. It’s mistake. . . .”
“Is it possible someone named Jenna is
staying there? Jenna Corson?”
“No! Nobody staying there!” Mrs. Nguyen
declared angrily.
“Would you mind if I called your
friend, Todd, and talked to him? It’s very important I find out
more about this woman.”
“One minute, please,” Mrs. Nguyen
said.
“Yes, I’ll wait,” Molly replied. “Thank
you.”
While Molly stayed on the line, she
thought about how she’d hurt Rachel’s feelings earlier. Her only
friend in the world, and she’d alienated her.
A part of her couldn’t help wondering
if she was a little crazy or hormonal—or just in shock over Jeff’s
death. This notion that Ray Corson’s widow had infiltrated the
block in order to invoke some kind of revenge was pretty
far-fetched. And it was all based on the fact that some woman had
called out Jenna’s name to a crowd of people.
Now it didn’t seem so crazy. She kept
thinking about the way Natalie had suddenly disappeared right after
that.
Molly remembered Natalie jogging past
her house when Angela’s murder had drawn a crowd of newspeople and
gawkers. She’d jogged past Lynette’s house when Jeremy’s arrest
brought the spectators and news crews back to the block a week
later. Though from afar Natalie had seemed uninterested, Molly
wondered if her neighbor had felt compelled to be out there at that
particular time. Maybe she’d wanted to witness the fruits of her
labors.
“Molly?” Mrs. Nguyen said, getting back
on the line.
“Yes, I’m here,” she said, grabbing a
pen off the nightstand.
“Have you seen this woman take anything
from house?”
“No, I haven’t, but then I can’t be
sure,” Molly replied. “Do you have a phone number or e-mail for
this Todd person?”
“I call him right now.”
“Well, could I call him, too? Please,
Mrs. Nguyen, it’s important.”
“His name is Todd Millikan,” Mrs.
Nguyen said. “425-555-8860.”
Jotting it down on the front page of
her address book, Molly repeated the number out loud to make sure
she heard it right past Mrs. Nguyen’s accent. “Is that right?” she
asked.
“Yes. I call him right
now.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Nguyen. If you get
through to him, could you call me? He might not pick up for someone
he doesn’t know. I’ll do the same for you if I get ahold of
him.”
“Yes, yes, good-bye,” she said
abruptly. Then Molly heard a click on the other end.
She clicked off and decided to wait a
few minutes before calling Todd Millikan. With the address book in
her hand, Molly stood up—remembering at only the last minute to
take it slow. In her stocking feet, she walked out of the bedroom
and down the front stairs. She could hear water running in the
kitchen and the clattering of dishes and silverware. Trish was
talking to her friend, Holly, in the kitchen. From the front
hallway, she saw Erin napping on the family-room sofa.
Molly quietly opened the front door.
The chilly November breeze whipped against her, but she stepped
outside in her black funeral dress and stocking feet. The sky was
overcast, and she felt a few raindrops as she padded to the end of
the walkway. Clutching the address book to her chest, Molly kept
her arms folded in front of her. Down the block, the windows in the
Nguyens’ house were all dark. Natalie’s blue Mini Cooper wasn’t in
the driveway.
Molly turned and headed back to the
house again and found Trish in the doorway. Her friend Holly, a
thin thirtysomething blonde with a Joan of Arc buzz cut and
glasses, hovered behind her. They both gaped at her as if she was
crazy. “Molly, are you all right?” Trish asked, glancing down at
her stocking feet.
“I’m fine.” She nodded distractedly.
“Did Chris and Elvis go out?”
“No, they’re downstairs, watching TV,”
Trish replied. She and Holly stepped aside as Molly came into the
house.
“Good. Everyone’s home, everybody’s
safe,” she murmured.
Trish closed the door behind her. “Are
you sure you’re okay?”
“Could I get you a plate of food?”
Holly chimed in. “There’s plenty left over.”
Molly shook her head, and then, without
thinking, she suddenly hugged Trish. “Listen, thank you so much for
everything,” she said. “You’ve both been so terrific. I’m sorry
I’ve been ill. . . .” She pulled back. “Oh, and don’t worry, I’m
not contagious. Anyway, thank you.” She nodded toward Jeff’s study.
“I need to make a call, okay?”
Trish and Holly both nodded and seemed
to work up smiles for her—as if she were someone on probation from
a mental institution.
Molly ducked into Jeff’s study and
closed the door. Rain tapped against the window, and it was dark
enough that she had to turn on the lamp on his desk. Consulting the
front page of her address book, she picked up the cordless phone
and punched in Todd Millikan’s number. She counted four rings until
a message clicked on.
“Hi, it’s Todd,”
the recording said. “You’ve missed me, but you got
my voice mail. You know what to do. Talk after the beep. Ciao for
now.”
Beep.
“Hi, Todd,” she said into the phone.
“My name is Molly Dennehy, and I live down the block from the
Nguyens’ house on Willow Tree Court. I can’t get ahold of Natalie,
and I’m kind of concerned about something. Could you please call me
as soon as possible?”
Molly left her phone number, and then
clicked off.
She gazed at Jeff’s computer monitor
for a moment, and then reached for the mouse. She went to Google,
typed in Jenna Corson, and clicked Images.
The response came back, “Did you mean
Jenna Carlson?” And there were dozens of pictures of Jenna
Carlsons, but not one picture of a Jenna Corson. Molly tried
Facebook, and came up with a nineteen-year-old Jenna Corson at
Marquette University in Milwaukee, and a fifty-two-year-old mother
of five in Oakmont, Pennsylvania.
She glanced out the rain-beaded window
at Rachel’s house next door. She needed to apologize to her—and she
wanted to tell her about Natalie. But reaching for the phone, Molly
hesitated. Instead of making the call, she went back to the
computer keyboard and tried a new entry on Google Image: Rachel
Cross.
Most of the results were for a
singer/songwriter named Rachel Cross, and there were a lot of
photos of purses called Rachel Cross Body Bags. Molly went through
eleven pages with twenty Rachel Cross pictures per page, and she
didn’t see her neighbor in any of the photos. She’d really hoped to
find something, too. She still wanted to call her, but right now,
she couldn’t afford to trust anyone.
She tried Jill Emory. After six pages
of the wrong Jill Emory, pictures of Jill St. John started coming
up. Molly refined the search, and typed in Jill Emory, Seattle Art
Institute. At the bottom of the first page was a small photo of
someone who looked very much like Darren’s mom, posing with another
woman—at some formal occasion. Molly clicked on the image.
Stepping Out in Style! Friends of the Arts Gala
Fundraiser Nets $50,000 at Seattle Art Institute was the
headline of the story—from 2007. Scrolling down past about twenty
photos, Molly found the one with her neighbor, looking slightly
slimmer in a black dress with a red satin jacket. All smiles, she
posed with a pretty blond woman. The Art
Institute’s Jill Emory chats with Keynote Speaker, Barbara
Campbell, said the caption.
That cleared Jill.
She wished she knew Natalie’s last
name—so she could try looking up her image. She kept glancing over
at the phone, waiting for it to ring. She started sketching on the
desk notepad—a cartoon of a woman. It looked a little like
Natalie.
Molly suddenly put down the pen and
opened the side drawer to Jeff’s desk, where she’d stashed the bill
from his secret MasterCard account. She glanced at the charges for
the La Conner Channel Lodge, the Palmer Restaurant, and Windmill
Antiques & Miniatures.
La Conner was a little over an hour
away by car.
Molly glanced at the crude cartoon
she’d drawn on the notepad. Getting to her feet, she hurried up to
her attic studio. She was a bit winded reaching the top step. She
still hadn’t put away the yellow paint or cleaned up the mess.
Molly ignored all the destruction as she retrieved her sketch pad
and charcoals. She didn’t want to work up here. She needed to be in
the front of the house, where she could keep an eye out for
Natalie’s Mini Cooper should it come down the block. And she wanted
to be near the phone in case it rang.
She brought the pad and charcoals down
to Jeff’s study. Molly sat down and started to draw from memory a
portrait of her neighbor, the woman who called herself
Natalie.
As she worked on the drawing, Molly
lost track of the time. She was trying to capture on paper
Natalie’s fine, limp dark blond hair when she glanced up at the
window. The rain was coming down harder, and it had turned dark
out. She clicked the mouse on Jeff’s computer and checked the time:
4:11 P.M.
It had been three hours since she’d
called the Nguyens and left that message for Todd Millikan. She
phoned the Nguyens again. It rang twice before Mrs. Nguyen
answered: “Hello?”
“Hi, Mrs. Nguyen, it’s Molly Dennehy
calling again. I was just wondering if you were able to get ahold
of Todd yet.”
“Oh, yes, I talk to him,” Mrs. Nguyen
said. “You mistaken. He come by a few times to check on the house
with friend, Natalie. But no one staying there. House is empty, he
said. You mistaken.”
“Mrs. Nguyen, that’s just not true. How
well do you know this Todd person? He isn’t being honest with you.
He—”
“Todd is friend of my son for fifteen
years!” she interrupted impatiently. “I trust him. He looking after
house while we are away for two years now. You
mistaken.”
Molly said nothing. All she could think
was that Natalie—or Jenna—must have somehow
gotten to this Todd person. He’d put her up in the Nguyens’ house
and now he was covering for her. Maybe she was paying him or having
sex with him. Or maybe she was blackmailing the guy. It didn’t
really matter how she’d gotten him to work for her.
What mattered most was that Todd knew
someone had caught on to the deception. And even if Mrs. Nguyen
hadn’t said anything, Todd could be sure it was the Willow Tree
Court neighbor who had left him a voice mail: Molly Dennehy at
206-555-2755.
So Natalie—or Jenna—or whatever she
called herself when she was screwing Jeff—certainly had to know by
now that she’d been found out.
“Mrs. Nguyen,” Molly said finally.
“Todd’s lying to you. But I guess you’ll have to find that out for
yourself. Thanks for your time.”
She hung up, clicked on the phone
again, and dialed Rachel’s number. It rang four times and then the
message clicked on. It was one of those impersonal automated
greetings. Molly waited for the beep. “Hi, Rachel,” she said. “I
don’t know if you can hear this, but call me as soon as you can. I
need to apologize. And I have to tell you something about our
neighbor down the block. Please call me back, okay?”
Molly clicked off the phone, then went
to the window and looked at Rachel’s house. Rain pelted the car,
still in the driveway, and there were some lights on inside the
house.
She thought back to the last time she’d
seen a light on in that house and no one had picked up the
phone.
She knew Rachel was upset with her, and
that was probably why she didn’t answer the phone. Still, Rachel
had been getting those threatening calls—just as Kay and Angela had
been getting. And now that Natalie—or Jenna whatever her name
was—knew she’d been found out, all bets were off. All hell could
break loose.
Molly reached for the phone again, but
a knock on the front door stopped her. She hurried into the foyer
and checked the peephole. Someone was holding a driver’s license up
to the other side of the viewer. Molly couldn’t make out whose
license it was. The photo and the writing were slightly
blurred.
“Molly, is someone at the door?” Trish
called from upstairs.
She hesitated, but then opened the
door.
Rachel was on the front stoop, with a
hooded Windbreaker on to protect her from the rain. She was holding
up her driver’s license. “This is my Florida license,” she said.
Then she showed her a piece of paper with her picture on it. “And
this is my temporary license for Washington state, and here’s my
Macy’s card. . . .”
“Molly, who is it?” Trish
called.
“It’s Rachel for me!” she called back.
She smiled at her. “Get in here.”
Stepping inside, Rachel put the cards
in her pocket and pulled back the hood to her Windbreaker. “I heard
you apologize to my machine,” she announced. “And I decided to
forgive you since you’re recently widowed and knocked up and all.
I’m glad to see you’re out of bed.”
Molly nodded and quickly pulled her
into the study. She closed the door.
Rachel unzipped her Windbreaker. She
glanced down at the sketch pad on Jeff’s desk. “That’s Natalie,
isn’t it?”
Molly nodded. “It’s her name around
here, at least. Tomorrow, I’m taking that sketch up to La Conner,
and I’m hitting the spots where Jeff wined, dined, and had sex with
that bitch. Someone’s bound to recognize her.”
“So—you think she’s really this Jenna
person?” Rachel asked, a tiny bit skeptical.
“The owners of that house down the
block, the Nguyens, they have no idea she’s living there,” Molly
whispered. “I just talked to Mrs. Nguyen. Their house sitter, some
guy named Todd, has them convinced the place is empty. And I have a
feeling from today on, it will be. She’s not going to stick around
now that she’s been found out. . . .”
Rachel stared at her and didn’t say
anything. Her light brown hair was a bit wet, and some raindrops
slid down the sides of her face. For a moment, Molly wondered if
she really believed her—or if maybe she’d just been trying to
placate her earlier.
Molly remembered the pitying look Chet
Blazevich had given her when she’d tried to convince him that Jeff
had been murdered. She thought about the way just three hours ago,
Trish and Holly gazed at her as if she were a mental patient. Was
Rachel like them? Did she think all of this was in her mind—some
paranoid conspiracy scenario from an unbalanced woman who was
“recently widowed and knocked up and all?”
“I’m not making this up, you know,”
Molly insisted. “I was just on the phone with Mrs. Nguyen fifteen
minutes ago. I’m not sure why, but this Todd person lied and told
them the place is empty. He’s been covering for this woman. And now
she knows she’s been found out. But I don’t think she’ll quietly
disappear, either. I think she’ll wreak as much havoc and take as
many lives as she can before she vanishes.”
Rachel didn’t say anything. She just
kept looking at her with a bewildered expression.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Molly
asked, tears in her eyes.
“I do believe you, honey,” Rachel
whispered, nodding. She grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I
believe you, and I’m scared. I’m scared for all of
us.”
The rumbling of the clothes dryer
seemed to drown out her crying.
After five days, Chris and Erin were
headed back to school tomorrow—and they didn’t have any clean
clothes. Neither did Molly, for that matter. Still in her black
funeral dress, she’d gone down to the basement after dinner to do
some wash. She’d gathered a load of whites and found several of
Jeff’s V-neck T-shirts. The shirts still smelled like him. He would
never wear them again. She pressed one of the T-shirts to her face
and started sobbing.
She didn’t hear anybody coming down the
basement steps. But Molly glimpsed a shadow sweeping across the
utility room wall. She swiveled around to see Chris standing in the
doorway of the recreation room. “Oh, Jesus,” she gasped, a hand
over her heart.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he
said sheepishly. He was wearing sweatpants and a Futurama T-shirt.
“That’s okay,” she said in a scratchy
voice. “I just didn’t hear you—for a change.” Usually it sounded
like a stampede when he was going up or down stairs. Molly set the
T-shirt on top of the dryer. She tore off a sheet of paper towel
from a roll above the laundry sink and blew her nose.
“You wanted Elvis to call and let us
know once he got home all right,” Chris said. “He just called my
cell. You can relax. He’s home, and he’s fine.”
“Thanks,” Molly said.
Chris and Elvis had stared at her as if
she was crazy when she insisted Elvis phone them when he got home.
She’d gotten a similarly perplexed look from Trish and Holly when
she’d asked them to do the same thing as they’d left this
afternoon. They’d called before dinner, saying they’d made it back
to Tacoma okay.
“I know you think I’m being way
overcautious,” she said. “But I have a good reason to
be.”
“Why is that?” he asked, raising an
eyebrow. “You still think some lady killed my dad and mom—along
with Larry and Taylor and Mrs. Garvey?”
“I forgot that you heard me talking to
Detective Blazevich on Sunday.” Frowning, Molly nodded. “Yes, I
think this woman is the one behind Courtney’s accident, and Mr.
Hahn’s arrest, and Rachel’s toolshed catching on fire. I think she
broke into your locker, too. Your mother even talked about it with
me that last day—”
“The day she was killed,” Chris
said.
Molly nodded. “Over lunch, your mother
asked me, ‘Do you think some woman is trying to pit us against each
other?’ And I believe your mother was right.”
Chris didn’t say anything. He folded
his arms and leaned against a support beam.
“Let me ask you,” Molly said. “Do you
really believe your father was alone in that hotel room when he
overdosed? You know he didn’t do drugs, Chris. Don’t you think he
might have been tricked into taking them?”
“Maybe,” he muttered, shrugging. “I
used to think I knew my dad really well, but things changed. I’m
not so sure anymore.”
Molly studied his hurt, confused
expression as he glanced down at the floor. She realized she
couldn’t tell him that Jenna Corson could have orchestrated all the
recent killings and tragedies—not until she knew for certain. If he
knew the scandal with Mr. Corson had caused his parents’ deaths,
Chris wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt.
“I believe Natalie, the woman staying
in the Nguyens’ house, might be responsible for everything that’s
going on,” Molly said.
“That’s the jogger lady you don’t
like,” Chris said. “Is she the one you were yelling at in front of
the church today? I couldn’t make out what you were saying. . .
.”
Molly nodded. “I think she’s very
dangerous. She knows she’s been found out, so I doubt she’ll be
coming back to the Nguyens’ house. If she has any unfinished
business, she’s going to wrap it up very soon. We have to be on our
guard. If you see her, Chris, you need to let me
know.”
Reaching up with one hand, Chris tugged
at the clothesline. “Well, I really don’t know what she looks like,
so that’ll be kind of tough.”
Molly could tell he wasn’t taking her
very seriously. She opened the dryer, took out a pile of warm
towels, and started folding them. “I’m just trying to tell you to
be very careful and cautious for the next day or two. As soon as I
can gather some more information about this woman, I’m going to the
police.”
“Why don’t you go to the police now?”
he asked.
“Because—like you, they don’t believe
me,” Molly replied edgily. “They think I’m paranoid—and irrational
and maybe crazy.”
“I was talking to Elvis, and he said
ladies can get that way when they’re pregnant.”
Molly put down an unfolded hand towel.
“So—you know?”
“Yeah, like I told you, I heard you
talking to that cop.”
“And how do you feel about becoming a
big brother again?” she asked nervously.
He gave an uneasy shrug. “To be honest,
I’m not really sure. Are you keeping it?”
She scowled at him. “Of course I’m
keeping it! What kind of question is that?”
“Well, you said you were mad at Dad. I
wasn’t sure how you felt about having his baby.”
“Chris, I loved your father,” she said.
“I want very much to have this baby. I know you and Erin have had
your problems adjusting to me as your stepmother. You’d probably
prefer to go live with Aunt Trish, or have her move here.
But—”
“Aunt Trish doesn’t want us,” he
interrupted. “She told me last night. She’s got her own life, and
she’s going to India in a few months. So you’re it. Nobody else
wants to take us.”
Molly let out a stunned laugh. “Well, I
don’t have anybody else but you guys. So I guess we’re stuck with
each other. Are you okay with that, Chris?”
“Sure, I guess,” he
murmured.
She smiled at him and then uncertainly
put her arms out.
Chris shuffled over and awkwardly
hugged her.
She patted his back. “I really wish you
were happier about this—and about the baby.”
“Give me a little time, Molly, okay?”
he whispered. “Just a little more time.”
He went to bed at 11:20. Molly stayed
up late, getting MapQuest directions from the Internet for the
places she needed to visit in La Conner tomorrow. She got an e-mail
from Rachel at 12:55 A.M:
I’m locking up and going to bed. I
can see your study light is still on. Get some sleep. You don’t
want to get sick again! See you tomorrow 
But Molly didn’t go up to bed. She got
a blanket and slept on the living room sofa. If Natalie’s car came
down the street, she wanted to hear it. And if someone tried to
break into the house, she wanted to hear that, too.
She had her family to
protect.