No One Needs to Know (37 page)

“Oh, by mail, thank you,” Laurie said. “Thank you for all your help.”

Once she clicked off the line, Laurie immediately made another call. It rang three times, and then someone picked up: “Hello?”

“Hi, Tammy, it’s Laurie. Something’s come up. Would it be a huge imposition if I asked you and Hank to look after Joey for the next hour or two?”

“Jesus, what’s with the traffic in this city?” Laurie muttered.

She was catching every stoplight on Aurora Avenue, and inching along between them. It started to drizzle, and Laurie switched on the wipers. She’d been in the car nearly an hour and had driven only nine miles. She hadn’t factored in rush hour when she’d impulsively jumped into the Camry and started for Maureen’s storage locker in North Seattle.

Ever since leaving La Hacienda, Laurie couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following her. She kept checking her rearview mirror, but didn’t see a silver minivan in back of her. Perhaps she was still on high alert, because she’d had a false alarm earlier—after pulling out of the lot at Evergreen Manor. A silver minivan had followed her for at least two miles, but she’d lost them turning down Lake Washington Boulevard.

She had to remind herself once again that Ryder McBride had no idea where she was. She had Detective Eberhard keeping tabs on the situation. If anything had gone awry in Ellensburg, she would have heard from him by now.

Laurie felt she might now have another ally in Adam Holbrook. And it wasn’t just because she found him attractive either.

The visit with Adam and his father had helped her realize something. The food truck explosion, the copycat murders, Dolly Ingersoll’s death, and whatever Cheryl was hiding—all of it had seemed connected to the movie being made. At least, that had been what she’d thought. But why would Maureen Forester be doing “homework” on Cheryl months before they’d even signed on to cater the movie? If Maureen’s blue folder was indeed in locker number 163, there couldn’t be anything about the
7/7/70
movie in it.

The killings had started before the movie had even gotten the green light. Lance Taylor had promised that his screenplay would “rip the lid off” the Styles-Jordan murder case, and “stun even police investigators.” Soon after he sold that script, he wrapped his sports car around a phone pole. Dolly Ingersoll had used that exact same expression when she’d announced on CNN that she would “rip the lid off the case.” The night that broadcast aired, she broke her neck falling down the Howe Street Stairs. How many of the “accidents” on that “cursed” production were really accidents—and not sabotage?

Someone was trying desperately to keep the lid
on
the Styles-Jordan murder case.

People weren’t dying because of a movie. They died because they claimed to know something new about those old murders from forty-four years ago. Dean and Joyce Holbrook didn’t have anything to do with the movie being made. Did Dean have some inside information about the Styles-Jordan murders? Was that why he was meeting with Cheryl?

Laurie thought about this afternoon, when she and Joey had left Evergreen Manor. Adam had walked them to the door, and then out to her car. “I think my dad might have been involved in something shady a long time ago,” he admitted.

“By a long time ago, do you mean like in 1970?” Laurie asked.

“Maybe, I don’t know. I’m not certain. Dean used to carry on like he knew something pretty sordid about our father. But—well, I shouldn’t even be telling you this. I just met you. Hell, I barely know you.”

“I’m taking a chance with you, too,” Laurie said, stopping beside her Camry. “You could rat me out to my boss—or worse, rat my boss out to the police.”

“Looks like we’re just going to have to trust each other,” he said with a hint of a smile.

“What were you talking about back there when you said someone was
getting even
killing your brother and sister-in-law that way?”

“I didn’t say it, my dad did—a couple of days ago.” Adam shrugged. “It could have been his dementia talking. I’m not sure. I’ve been trying to get an explanation out of him. If I find out anything, I’ll call you . . .”

They exchanged phone numbers, and he helped her secure Joey into his car seat. It was so much easier with two people doing it.

Laurie remembered looking at him in her rearview mirror as she’d headed toward the lot exit. He’d ambled back toward the rest home entrance, and started talking with the old folks gathered out there.

The sky grew darker, and the rain began to come down heavier. Laurie turned the wipers to high speed while she waited at another traffic light on Aurora. In the rearview mirror, all she could see was a blur of headlights beyond the water cascading down the back window.

“Turn right ahead on One Hundred Eighteenth Street,”
her navigation system announced. Laurie could barely hear it past the rain beating down on the roof.

Tightening her grip on the wheel, she took the turn. A crack of thunder startled her. They didn’t get thunderstorms or lightning too often in the Pacific Northwest. She slowed down. She could barely see anything. The hammering on the car roof became even more intense. White icy pellets bounced off the windshield and hood. Her headlight beams caught them as they covered the road. She felt the tires skidding.

This was a first for her. She’d never driven in a hailstorm before.

“Your destination is on your right in approximately one hundred feet,”
the navigation system said.

Laurie maneuvered the turn, and came to a gate in a tall, chain-link fence—with a coiled roll of razor-serrated wire along the top. There were security cameras mounted on either side of the gate. With the rain and hail pouring down so hard, Laurie could just make out the long, sprawling, one-story, windowless buildings—one after another. The place resembled photos she’d seen of POW camps in World War II—everything but the guard towers. By the gate, on the driver’s side, they had a little station with a callbox. She flicked the switch on her armrest, and the window descended, letting the rain and hail in.

Laurie squinted at the callbox contraption and saw a keypad and a screen with the message repeatedly running across it: Press # to Access Entry. Laurie hated these things. They never worked for her.

“Shit,” she muttered, getting her hand wet as she reached out and pressed the pound sign.

Another message came up on the little screen: Using keypad, enter the first three letters of last name.

For a moment, she blanked out on Maureen’s last name. The woman on the phone with E-Z Safe Storage didn’t tell her she’d have to do any of this. Laurie’s entire arm was now drenched. She could barely make out the letters corresponding with the numbers on the phone keypad. Her wet hand was shaking as she pressed 3-6-7 for
F-O-R.

Enter account number, said the message running across the screen.

She nervously glanced at the bill on the passenger seat. Shadows of raindrops on the windshield fell across the document.

“Damn it,” Laurie hissed. Rainwater and melting hail kept blowing through the open window, soaking her left side—from shoulder to thigh. The steering wheel was getting wet. Flustered, she hesitated, and then pressed 7 for the
S
part of Maureen’s account number, and then the other digits.

Nothing happened for a few moments. The message running across the little rain-beaded screen said Please wait.

At last, Laurie heard a buzz. The message over the phone pad read Welcome, proceed ahead. To her utter relief, the chain-link gate in front of her began to slide open.

As she drove past the gate into the compound, Laurie couldn’t help wondering what kind of ordeal she would have to go through to get the hell out of this place. She took a deep breath, and flicked the switch on the armrest to raise the window. The hail started to dissipate. Laurie checked the rearview mirror to make sure no one had followed her into the facility.

A sign up ahead pointed to the South Yard. Driving past the buildings—and the parking areas—she counted only three cars. She wondered where this guard on duty was.

Laurie found building 5, and parked beside the entrance. She hadn’t brought along an umbrella. With Maureen’s bill in her hand, she ran from the car to the door of the warehouse. The doorway was just deep enough to protect her from the downpour. A keypad with a little red light was on the door above the push handle. Squinting at the digits on the bottom of Maureen’s bill, Laurie punched in the numbers.

A tiny green light above the keypad started blinking, and she pushed down the door handle. Inside, the rain patter on the roof echoed. The place had the damp, musty smell of a cellar. It was cavernous and dark, with only small pools of light from distantly spaced, single-bulb fixtures overhead. She could barely see anything. “They’ve got to be kidding,” Laurie murmured. Then she noticed a light switch and a call button by the door.

She flicked on the switch. The number of lights on overhead suddenly doubled. But it was still gloomy in there—with shadowy pockets amid the rows of chain-link cages. Rain-soaked, Laurie shuddered from the cold as she started hunting for locker 163. She finally found locker 160 around a corner. But she saw something nearby that made her heart stop.

At first, it looked like a man standing in there behind the chain-link door.

Then she realized it was a life-size clown mannequin. This one was a bozo-type clown with a red-ball nose and a big, maniacal grin. Any minute now, she expected it to move.

Shuddering, Laurie hurried past it to locker 163 next door. She stopped to look at what Maureen had stored in the dim compartment: an old standing lamp, a big, stuffed chair, a file cabinet, boxes, and a couple of wardrobe bags. Laurie focused on the combination lock, and prayed this long shot paid off. Anyone could have written those numbers inside the back of the kitchen drawer:
2-16-47.
Even if Maureen had written them, the numbers could have meant a score of other things. Biting her lip, Laurie turned the dial on the lock and then gave it a tug.

Nothing. “Shit,” she grumbled. She didn’t want to call the guard on duty to come cut off the lock. She doubted he’d do it anyway—even if she tipped him extra. They wanted a photo ID. She doubted he’d settle for her just showing him Maureen’s bill.

She gave the lock another spin and tried again. Then she held her breath and gave the lock a tug.

It opened. “Thank you, God,” she whispered.

She found a switch just inside the chain-link door, and realized each locker had its own overhead. She flicked it on. The wardrobe bags hung on a pole that ran along near the top of the cage. It was silly, but she always thought wardrobe bags looked like vertical coffins—the perfect place to stash a dead body. To put her mind at rest, she unzipped the bags and found men’s clothes—including a policeman’s uniform. She remembered what Vincent had said about Maureen’s husband—that he was a sheriff. A couple of the boxes were open on top. One had old Christmas decorations, and another held LPs.
The Best of Bread
was at the top of the stack.

Laurie eyed the file cabinet, and hoped it was unlocked. She also hoped her second long shot about this venture would pay off. She pulled the file cabinet’s top drawer, and it stuck—but only for a second. Inside, she found folders of old letters and old income tax records for James Clark Forester and Maureen Johnson Forester that went back to 1980.

The next drawer down had more folders, crammed with clippings, glossy photos, and pages torn from magazines—all having to do with Barbra Streisand. The clippings went all the way back to the mid-sixties. But Maureen seemed to have gotten over her Barbra obsession sometime in the early eighties, because Laurie didn’t see anything in there for
Yentl
or any of Barbra’s later movies.

She started to get discouraged, and figured someone had destroyed the file on Cheryl. She opened the next drawer down and saw two thick files—in accordion-style pale blue folders. What stuck out among all the documentation was a copy of
Life
magazine. Laurie expected to see Barbra Streisand on the cover. But when she pried it out, she found the cover was dated July 17, 1970. It showed a slightly blurry black-and-white photo of the same gate Laurie had driven past today—and several times this week. A bloodied garment was tied to one of the spokes. All it said on the cover was THE SEATTLE MURDERS.

She wondered if both files were full of data about the Styles-Jordan killings. Maureen must have been collecting this data for years. And she’d only known Cheryl for a few months. Was this what Vincent thought was her “Cheryl homework?”

Laurie reached in the middle of the second file and blindly pulled out a sheet of paper. She winced at the old Xerox photo showing several people—mostly women, along with a couple of children—lying dead on the ground by a picnic table. Most of the women wore cutoffs and tank tops. Some were wearing body paint. They looked like hippies.

Laurie turned the paper over and read something scribbled on the back:
Biggs Farm—Hooper’s Followers—7/13/70.

She remembered that most of them had drunk cyanide-laced lemonade. Trent had shot his friend, and then himself.

Past the rain patter on the roof, she thought she heard a door shut.

Laurie froze. She wondered if it was a distant clap of thunder. Or had someone just stepped inside the warehouse?

Rattled, she quickly stashed the
Life
magazine and the Xerox back into the thick file. Then she dug both accordion folders out of the drawer and set them on top of the box of LPs. Though she wanted to get out of there, Laurie couldn’t leave without checking the next file drawer down. It squeaked as she pulled it opened. She found the drawer was full of high school and college yearbooks.

She heard someone whispering. Then a second person shushed the other one.

All at once, most of the overhead lights went off.

Laurie reached over and switched off the locker’s individual light. She didn’t want them to know where she was. For a few moments, she stood perfectly still.