No One Needs to Know (14 page)

“Y’know, I don’t care what you do with your personal life,” Celia had told her. She’d been leaning against the kitchen counter, waiting for her order. “But when it affects me, I need to say something. Ever since you got your name in the papers, my tips have been terrible.”

“And you’re blaming me?” Laurie had asked, hovering over the stove. She’d tried her damnedest to sound like she didn’t care. “Maybe you’re just a terrible waitress.”

“Well, one thing I know, you’re a terrible mother. That’s what everyone’s saying.”

Laurie had swallowed hard. “Celia, I’ve never punched a woman. And I don’t want to now. So you need to shut your mouth and get the hell out of this kitchen right now.”

“Don’t push your luck, Celia,” one of the other waitresses had chimed in. “Just look at what happened to the last person who crossed her.”

Celia had made a hasty retreat out the saloon doors. Laurie’s waitress friend had seemed to think it was pretty funny. But Laurie had been shaking inside. With her head down, she’d focused on her cooking.

Maybe Brian’s old coach thought she was a terrible mother, too. Then again, she was hypersensitive lately. She felt onstage all the time, so certain everyone was judging her. She could hardly wait to move to Seattle, where no one knew her. She could keep a low profile for a while and then start all over. She just wished she had a job waiting for her there.

A navy blue Wildcats banner was stretched across the ceiling in the long corridor of the athletic department. Laurie could hear a basketball bouncing and feet stomping on the court next door. Between every other office door was a trophy case. Laurie stopped in front of the one that had Brian’s photo in it. In the eight-by-ten he wore his muddied football uniform, and carried his helmet under his arm. His brown hair was matted down with sweat, but he was smiling. Laurie couldn’t help tearing up as she looked at him. Attached to the photo, a label with black calligraphy was starting to curl at the edges:

Brian Patrick Trotter

1988–2014

A copy of the certificate that came with the Distinguished Service Cross was beside the picture. Laurie figured there was room in the display case for a few of his trophies.

“Look, Joey, there’s Daddy,” she said, pointing to the photograph.

Brian had never uttered those words, “I forgive you,” to her, but he’d let her know in gestures. The way he’d held and nuzzled Joey didn’t change at all in those last three days of his furlough. The doctor had been able to put a rush on the test results, and they’d gotten proof of paternity the day before Brian had left. He’d never even looked at the document.
I know whose son he is,
he’d said.

He’d spent two nights sleeping on the couch. The evening before he shipped out, he’d set up the sofa again with his pillow and a throw from Restoration Hardware. But within minutes, he’d wordlessly returned to their bed. Laurie had clung to him and cried. They’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms. The next morning, they’d made love—for what would be the last time.

Four months later, he was dead.

He’d volunteered for a reconnaissance mission to locate a group of rebel insurgents in some place called Sangin. A sniper’s bullet had gotten him in the throat.

Despite his endearing letters and e-mails, the love talk during their phone calls, and the Skype sessions with him happily tearing up at the sight of his baby boy, Laurie couldn’t help wondering if somehow, a lingering disappointment in her had made Brian volunteer for that dangerous mission. That uncertainty would probably gnaw away at her until she was dead, too.

“There’s your dad, sweetie,” she said again, a little quiver in her voice.

Laurie moved on down the hall in search of Coach Reynolds’s office. She found his name on a plate beside an open door. Poking her head in the doorway, she saw two desks, side by side, in the little room. A thirtysomething baby-faced man with a crew cut and a goatee sat at one of the desks. He wore a tight Izod knockoff polo shirt that revealed a slightly paunchy build. He was arranging hole-punched pages into a ring-clip binder. Behind him was a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases with books, binders, and trophies. Over to the right, Laurie noticed the door to another room ajar, which must have been the head coach’s office.

Joey let out a little yelp, which made the man look up from his work.

“Hi,” Laurie said. “Are you Gordon Poole?”

He smiled. “Yeah . . .”

“I’m Laurie Trotter. I think Coach Reynolds might have told you I was coming by.”

The smile withered on his face. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. Then he went back to his work with the ring binder, papers, and the hole puncher. He nodded to an empty, hard-backed chair in one corner. “Well, have a seat. I’m going to be another couple of minutes here.”

“Well, ah, I can’t really sit down with this,” she explained, with a thumb pointing to Joey. “I’m carrying precious cargo.”

Gordon Poole didn’t even look up. He stayed intent on his work. Laurie watched him insert—with painstaking deliberation—one slim stack of pages after another into the ring binder. Joey started to fuss a little. But Poole didn’t look up. He punched holes in a new group of pages. Then he started to empty out the paper puncher.

Laurie finally cleared her throat. “Listen, I can come back when you’re not so
terribly
busy.”

At last, he gazed up at her, a bored look on his face. “You had some trophies for us?”

“Yes, they’re in the car,” she said, over Joey’s babbling. “I’d have carried them in myself, but the box is pretty heavy. And I’ve already got twenty pounds strapped to my back. I was hoping you might help me.”

He put two more sections of pages into the binder, and closed it. Then with a sigh, he got to his feet. “Parked out front?” he muttered.

“Yes, thanks,” Laurie said. He brushed past her, and she followed him out the door. She thought about saying, “It’s nice of you to do this for me,” but then she thought,
Why?
The guy was a total jerk, making her stand there and watch him do mindless busywork for nearly ten minutes.

He walked a few steps ahead of her down the corridor. Without looking back, he pointed to Brian’s photo in the display case. “There’s your late husband,” he said, and then he muttered, “Not that you give a shit.”

“What?” Laurie said, stopping dead. “What did you just say?”

He kept walking. “Nothing,” he grumbled with his back to her.

Laurie trailed after him. Sometimes it still took her by surprise when people were rude or nasty toward her. Her first thought was always,
What did I do to you?
And then she’d realize what all the nastiness was about.

He slowed down as he approached the exit, and let her go first. Laurie figured he just didn’t want to hold the door open for her.

She went through the doorway and headed to her car. She didn’t look back at him. Pulling out her keys, she pressed the device to unlock the Camry’s doors. She opened the back door, where Joey’s car seat was. Then she reached inside and locked the front passenger door. She unfastened the clasps to the backpack and took her sweet time transferring Joey to his car seat.

“Are those the trophies in there?” Poole asked, nodding at the box on the passenger side floor. He tapped his foot impatiently.

“Yes,” she said, barely looking at him. She buckled Joey into his car seat. “I’m going to be another couple of minutes here.”

He reached for the passenger door handle and gave it a tug. “It’s locked.”

“Yes,” she said. Laurie brushed past him with the empty backpack in her hand. She moved to the other side of the car, opened the back door, and set it on the floor.

“You think I could collect those trophies now?” he asked, an edge in his voice. He tapped on the car window.

Laurie opened the driver’s door. But she stopped to look at him. “Please tell the coach for me that I changed my mind.”

“What?” he growled.

“You see, I do care about my late husband, Mr. Poole,” she said coolly. “I do
give a shit.
And I don’t want to entrust his awards to an asshole like you.”

He shook his head at her, and started to back away. “Fine,” he muttered. “Goddamn smart-ass slut . . .”

One hand gripping the top of the car door, Laurie stared defiantly at him. She tried to keep from shaking. She didn’t feel victorious. She felt degraded. And worse, a part of her figured she deserved everything she got. She waited until Poole turned and retreated into the pavilion. She still had the jitters from confronting him, and her heart beat wildly.

She heard Joey making a fuss again.

“Okay, honey,” she said, a tremor in her voice. She climbed into the driver’s seat, then reached back to hand him Sparky.

When she turned around again she noticed something taped to the middle of the steering wheel. It was a close-up photograph of Tad McBride on the morgue slab. A sheet had been pulled down just below his chest. His eyes were closed, and there was a black-and-crimson gash in his neck.

Laurie let out a gasp. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe.

In a panic, she looked around the parking lot for whoever had left this grisly photo. She expected to see the beat-up silver minivan parked nearby. But there was no sign of it. How had they broken into her car? Hadn’t she locked it?

She knew it must have been Ryder. Who else could have had access to his brother’s body in the morgue? She wondered if he was still around, watching her reaction.

“Will you play with me?” Sparky said, twice in a row.

Laurie anxiously dug into her purse and took out her cell phone to call Detective Eberhard. But all at once, the phone rang in her hand. She let out a startled little cry, which prompted Joey to imitate her.

He tossed Sparky aside and banged his fists on the sides of his car seat.

Laurie clicked on the phone. Somehow, she knew it was Tad’s brother. “Yes?” she said into the phone.

“Hi, is this Laurie?” a woman asked.

“Yes,” she said, her heart still racing. She reached back and rubbed Joey’s shoulder to quiet him. All the while, she kept looking toward the pavilion and around the parking lot.

“This is Cheryl Wheeler in Seattle,” the woman said. “You sent me a delicious orange cake about ten days ago—”

“Yes,” Laurie said numbly. She found herself nodding—even though Cheryl couldn’t see her. She kept stroking Joey’s arm. He began to quiet down.

“Well, I’ve started a catering business,” Cheryl said on the other end. “I need a good cook working with me. I have a very prestigious job coming up before the end of the month. It’s a seven-week commitment. I was wondering if you could come to Seattle, so that we could meet in person.”

“Yes,” she said once again. “Yes, of course, I could do that.”

Laurie didn’t feel elated—just dazed and still scared. She kept looking around the lot and the surrounding area. She was convinced Ryder was here somewhere watching her. She glanced once again at the photo of Tad on a slab in the morgue.

Cheryl Wheeler was throwing her a lifeline. Yet Laurie couldn’t feel safe until she got out of Ellensburg.

Joey started crying again, louder this time.

“Well, I’ve got your e-mail address,” Cheryl said, raising her voice to compete with Joey. “I’ll get in touch, and we’ll set up a meeting here in Seattle.” She chuckled. “Sounds like I might not have caught you at a good time . . .”

“It’s—it’s okay,” Laurie heard herself reply. With a shaky hand, she kept stroking Joey’s arm. “Actually, your timing’s perfect, just perfect . . .”

C
HAPTER
T
EN

Saturday, June 14, 2:55
P.M.

Seattle

“D
on’t screw up,” Laurie whispered to her reflection.

She stood in front of the mirror in the washroom at the Elliott Bay Café. The wood and brick coffee bar was near the back of a huge bookstore on Capitol Hill. It was the meeting spot for her job interview with Cheryl Wheeler.

She’d just driven nearly two hours, and then spent another fifteen minutes trying to find a parking space near the bookstore. Joey had slept in his car seat most of the time, but he’d become a bit cranky in his stroller as she’d pushed him the two blocks to Elliott Bay Book Company. She’d found Cheryl waiting for her at a four-top table in the café.

Thank God the café had a high chair—and vanilla pudding in the food display case. She’d figured bringing a ten-month-old along for a job interview would be a recipe for disaster. Hell, some people maintained even salting your food before tasting it during a lunch-interview could cost you the job. And here she was inflicting a toddler on her prospective boss. But Krista and Nathan hadn’t been able to babysit—and this was her only day off from the diner this week.

Fortunately, Cheryl was crazy for Joey. Outside of some get-acquainted talk while Laurie had gotten Joey situated, they hadn’t really started the interview yet. She’d needed to pee since exiting I-90 forty-five minutes ago. So Cheryl had volunteered to feed Joey his pudding while Laurie used the lavatory.

She felt a bit hesitant leaving her baby with someone she’d just met. But she knew it was Cheryl Wheeler, and she didn’t want Cheryl thinking she didn’t trust her with her son. It was almost like the salt test during the lunch interview.

While in the bathroom, she kept imagining Joey spitting pudding in Cheryl’s face or loading his diaper in honor of the occasion. Then it occurred to her that she could very well botch the interview herself, without Joey’s help.

So far, it hadn’t come up yet that she’d killed an intruder in her home a little over a week ago. The news had made the
Seattle Times,
but they’d buried it near the back pages. Cheryl might not have known about it. Laurie kept wondering if she should tell her. That meant explaining to her about Ryder McBride, too. On one hand, it had nothing to do with her capabilities as a job candidate. But there might be court dates coming up. Plus, this was a catering business, and they’d be working closely together. She could be putting Cheryl’s life in danger—if Ryder tracked her down here.