No One Needs to Know (40 page)

Adam checked the corridor to make sure they wouldn’t have an audience. About six doors down, an elderly man in a robe stood outside his room with the help of his walker. He was out of earshot. Otherwise, the hallway was empty.

“So, what’s going on, kid?” Marty asked. “You need help paying for the funeral?”

“Probably,” Adam sighed. “But that’s not why I wanted to talk with you, Uncle Marty. It’s about this—
thing
Dad was supposed to have done at one time or another, this deep, dark secret. I think I have a right to know what it is—especially if it has something to do with why Dean and Joyce were murdered. After all, I—”

“Christ on a crutch, would you lower your voice?” Marty hissed. He glanced up and down the hallway.

Adam had been whispering. He couldn’t help rolling his eyes.

“And don’t give me that look,” Marty growled. “Things that happened forty-some-odd years ago, before you were even a gleam in your old man’s eye, you don’t need to know about.”

“You mean like
forty-four
years ago?” Adam asked in a hushed tone. “Was Dad somehow mixed up in the Styles-Jordan murders?”

“Just because some nutcase randomly picked your poor brother and sister-in-law, and decided to kill them that sick way, it doesn’t mean—”

“Don’t they have a laundry service in this place?” Doris called out. “All of these shirts are filthy!”

“He has some Izod sport shirts in the dresser!” Adam called back. Then he turned to Marty. “The other day you said that if I knew about this—
family skeleton,
my life might be in danger.”

“That’s right. I wasn’t just saying that to hear myself talk, kid.”

“Uncle Marty, last night, somebody broke into the apartment where I was staying. So, my life is already in danger.”

Marty’s dark eyes narrowed. “Have you been talking to anyone else about this
family secret
business—recently?”

Adam thought of Laurie Trotter. She was the only one he’d mentioned it to since Uncle Marty had given him the gag order on Monday night. He looked at Marty and shook his head. “Listen, if you tell me, I promise not to talk about it. So, are you going to clue me in or what? I mean, I’m going crazy here, Uncle Marty. You say knowing about this could get me killed. But I think I’m far more likely to get myself killed by
not
knowing about it.”

“Now is not the time,” Marty whispered. “Maybe after the funeral, okay? For now, keep your mouth shut, and watch—”

“And watch my back,” Adam interrupted. “Yeah, I know.”

Marty gave his shoulder a gentle punch. “Wise ass,” he muttered. Then he headed back into the room.

“It’s plain and boring, but it’s clean,” Doris announced, gesturing toward Adam’s dad, who sported a pale blue shirt she’d found for him. “Now, you won’t look like a bum at lunch and the game, Dino. Adam, you need to go through his closet and get half that stuff cleaned.” She leaned over the desk and scribbled something on a notepad. “You also need a girlfriend . . .”

“What?” he muttered. “Where’s that coming from, Aunt Doris?”

“My friend Mary Agnes has a lovely daughter, Jill, single, pretty, and she lives right here in Seattle. You should call her up.” She tore the page off the notepad and thrust it in Adam’s hand. Then she turned and patted her husband on the shoulder. “I’m starved. Are we going to get moving or what?”

Adam was about to shove the piece of paper in his pocket, when Doris frowned at him. “Call her!” She nodded at the note. “I mean it. Look at that, and act on it!”

With a sigh, Adam glanced at the note—written in Doris’s perfect penmanship:

Meet me at the big Ferris wheel
on the Pier at 1:15.
I’ll tell you what you want to know.

He looked up at her, and she just nodded.

“Okay, Aunt Doris,” he said.

Thursday, 11:32
A.M.

“Don’t these beets look beautiful?” she asked.

Cheryl held out the big, stainless steel bowl for Laurie to see. It was full of multicolored beets, fennel, and herbs.

“Gorgeous,” Laurie muttered, barely glancing in the bowl. She stood at the stove, flipping the burgers they made ahead of time and kept warm for the lunch rush.

Maybe it was due to her lack of sleep last night, but she was cranky today—and not very patient with Cheryl’s “food talk.” Within the last few days, they’d had the copycat murders and Dolly Ingersoll’s fatal “accident.” Cheryl herself, upon her own admission, wasn’t exactly a low insurance risk. All of these things were linked somehow—along with the Styles-Jordan murders. But Cheryl refused to talk about it.

“Friday, I’m going back to the farm,” she said, stirring the beet salad. “I want everything we make for Gil to be fresh. I’ve been trying to land an audition with him for nearly a year now. That’s what this is, an audition
with food.
Thanks to you, it’s finally happening.”

“The job here—with this movie,” Laurie said, with a glance at her boss. “You had to work to land this job, too, didn’t you? Was it Maureen’s idea? I mean, did she have a special interest in the subject matter?”

“No, Maureen didn’t even know about it,” Cheryl replied, focused on her work. “No, when I heard they’d be filming here in Seattle, I thought it was a prestigious job and started campaigning for it. That was months back.”

Laurie figured Cheryl had to be lying once again. Maureen had collected a mountain of documentation about the Styles-Jordan murders. Yet it was Cheryl who ended up catering the
7/7/70
movie—without Maureen having a thing to do with it. That was too much of a coincidence.

“So, how long have you been campaigning for a special catering gig at Evergreen Manor?” Laurie asked.

Cheryl stopped and stared at her. She shrugged. “A while . . .”

“Dean Holbrook, the man who was killed in those copycat murders on Monday, his father is a resident at Evergreen Manor.” Laurie paused. “But then, you probably already knew that, didn’t you?”

Cheryl didn’t say anything. With a sigh, she turned and headed toward the refrigerator with the bowl of beets.

“I understand you ladies make some really good grub,” said someone at the order window.

Cheryl turned toward the window.

Past the sizzling burgers and the vent whirling, Laurie heard her gasp.

The stainless steel bowl slipped out of Cheryl’s hands and fell to the floor with a clatter. Beets spilled all over the rubber walking mat.

The young man at the window had dirty, shoulder-length blond hair and dark whisker stubble. His blue eyes were intense and haunting. There was something both oddly attractive and vile about him. For a moment, Laurie thought it was Trent Hooper grinning at them.

“God, I’m sorry!” the man laughed. “I didn’t mean to scare you guys. Four stars for the makeup team, huh? I’m Tom Noll . . . T. E. Noll. I’m playing Trent Hooper, but I guess you already figured that out.”

Laurie nodded. “Hi,” she said, getting her breath back. “Are they—are they filming the murder scene today? They didn’t tell us . . .”

“Yeah, the home invasion and the murders,” he said. “It’s on the docket for this afternoon, all day tomorrow, and the beginning of next week. Should be an intense few days.” He squinted at Cheryl. “Are you okay?”

Cheryl didn’t seem to notice she’d dropped the bowl full of beets. She backed toward the door, opened it, and hurried outside. She shut the door behind her.

“Jesus, I’m really sorry,” T. E. Noll said. “I didn’t mean to upset your friend. I was just having a little fun. I’ve scared a few people today with this makeup job, but she’s the first one who seemed to take it personally.”

“It’s all right,” Laurie said, working up a smile. “She’s just on edge. She’ll be okay.”

“Will you apologize to her for me?”

She nodded. “Come on back at lunchtime.”

As T. E. Noll wandered off, Laurie quickly returned to the grill and took off the burgers. They could go in the well-done stack. She stepped over the stainless steel bowl and opened the door. She found Cheryl sitting on the bottom step—of three that led up to the truck door. Her back was to Laurie. Hunched forward, she seemed to be rubbing her forehead.

“He apologized for upsetting you,” Laurie said, staring down at her. She suddenly pitied Cheryl. But at the same time, she felt a lingering resentment toward her. She was tired of her boss’s evasiveness and secrecy.

Cheryl didn’t move. “I feel like such an idiot,” she murmured.

“He gave me a pretty good scare, too,” Laurie said. “He sure looks like the genuine article, doesn’t he?”

Cheryl didn’t answer.

Laurie folded her arms in front of her. “Then again, I never saw the genuine article in person.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Have you, Cheryl? Something tells me you have.”

Cheryl didn’t turn around. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Could you see if there’s anything left to salvage of the beet salad?”

Laurie gazed down at her. “For God’s sake, what’s going on here, Cheryl?”

“What’s going on is we have to serve up lunch in twenty minutes,” she said, finally standing up. “And we’re nowhere near ready.” She turned toward the door, but wouldn’t look up at her.

Laurie sighed. “Listen, tomorrow’s going to be my last day here. I’ll work with you on Saturday, when we visit Gil, but that’s it.” She slowly shook her head. “I can’t keep doing this. I have a child. I need to make sure he’s safe . . .”

“He is!” Cheryl insisted, locking eyes with her at last. “Do you think I’d let anything bad happen to that little boy—or you?”

“It’s kind of hard to believe that when people around you are getting killed—and every other thing you tell me is a lie. I’m sorry, but I think Dolly Ingersoll was right about you. You’re not just here to serve food. You wanted this gig—you campaigned for it—with something else in mind, an ulterior motive . . .”

“It hasn’t anything to do with you,” Cheryl whispered. “You don’t need to know . . .”

“And I don’t need this job either,” Laurie replied, “not when it puts Joey and me in harm’s way. I’m sorry, Cheryl. Like I said, I’ll stick it out with you through tomorrow and Saturday. Then we’re done.”

She glanced over her shoulder into the food truck. She stared at all those beautiful beets from the farm in Duvall, now scattered across the dirty rubber mat.

What a sad, horrible waste,
Laurie thought.

Thursday, 1:13
P.M.

Aunt Doris had picked a lousy day to go up in the Seattle Great Wheel—if that was her intention. A misty fog hovered over Elliott Bay, and it had just started to drizzle. Only about twenty people waited in line to ride the huge Ferris wheel on Pier 57.

Doris wasn’t in the line when Adam spotted her. Under a purple umbrella, she stood by a railing at the edge of the pier. Seagulls buzzed overhead. She waved at Adam as he approached her. “Hey, honey!” she called. “Do you think we’ll be able to see anything from up there in all this rain?”

Before Adam could answer, she hugged him. Some water from her tilted umbrella dribbled down the back of his neck. “Did you notice anyone following you here?” she whispered in his ear.

“No,” he said, confused. He didn’t know he was supposed to be on alert for someone tailing him.

“Come on, let’s get our tickets and grab a place in line,” she said, wrapping her arm around his. “I’ll see if we can get one of these pod thingies all to ourselves.”

“You said you might be able to tell me something about my dad—”

“Wait until we’re alone.” She nudged his ribs with her elbow. “And keep your eyes peeled for anyone who might be watching us.”

She was starting to sound like Uncle Marty with his “watch your back.”

At the head of the line, Doris gave the employee her sweetest smile. “Could my nephew and I ride alone, young man? The cancer medication I’m on gives me vertigo sometimes, and he’s here to talk me through it. I wouldn’t want to make any other passengers uncomfortable. . .”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be going on the ride, ma’am,” murmured the young, blond man in the
Seattle Great Wheel
rain slicker. He looked concerned.

“Oh, but it’s on my bucket list of things to do before I die. Please, honey, could we ride alone?”

The employee sighed. “Well, seeing as there aren’t that many people here today . . .”

The gondola tilted and rolled a bit as Adam sat down across from his aunt. Once the employee closed the hatch, Adam frowned at her. “That poor guy, he thought you were dying, Aunt Doris.”

“Hey, I’ve survived cancer twice,” she said. “If that doesn’t allow me to use the cancer card once in a while, I don’t know what does. And it worked, didn’t it? Besides, we could both be dead soon if it leaks out that we had this conversation.”

The big wheel moved for a moment, then stopped as the gondola behind them was unloaded and took on new passengers.

“So, I’m not sure what you know,” he said. “But Dean used to act like Pop had some kind of dark secret from his past. It kind of soured him on Pop, too. Anyway, I guess this thing about my dad is pretty damn serious.”

“It is, honey,” she said.

“Then you know about it . . .”

“Of course, I know about it.” She sighed. “Lord, I’ve spent most of my life pretending to have my head in the clouds, not aware of a blessed thing. When you’re married to a nice man who has some pretty shady business associates, you learn to act dumb. In some cases, it’s better to know the score and act clueless than not knowing a damn thing. You keep your mouth shut and your eyes peeled for land mines. That’s how I survived back when your uncle Marty was doing business with the mob.”

Adam gaped at her. When they were younger, Adam and his brother used to joke about Uncle Marty possibly having ties to the mafia.
“Don’t forget the cannoli, Marty,”
was Adam’s twist on the
Godfather
line, which always got Dean laughing. Still, Adam was surprised to hear Doris admit it now.