No One Needs to Know (44 page)

“How about Maureen Forester?” she pressed.

He shrugged. “Sorry. Then again, Adam might have told you, my memory lately isn’t what it used to be.”

Adam pulled the straight-backed chair closer to his father and sat down. “You’re doing great, Pop.”

“The other day we were talking about Trent Hooper,” Laurie said.

“He was sure a rotten apple.”

“That’s right,” Laurie said, pulling Joey onto her lap. “Did you ever meet him or see him in person?”

Adam’s father nodded. “Once—I saw him once, and that was enough.”

“Where?” Adam asked. “When was this, Pop?”

He hesitated. His mouth twisted over to one side.

“Was it on a farm?” Adam asked.

His father nodded. “Hell of a mess,” he muttered. “The place was in a shambles.”

Adam glanced at the gruesome photocopies in his hands. He didn’t want to upset his father too much. He hesitated, and looked over at Laurie.

She nodded soberly.

“Pop, some people died on that farm. Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” his father murmured, gazing down at the floor. It seemed like he was starting to retreat into another time and place.

“Were you there when it happened? Were you there when they died?”

“I was there,” he whispered.

“Pop, did you kill anyone?”

His father turned to him with a wounded look. He slowly shook his head.

“I’m going to show you a picture here,” Adam said. “And maybe you can tell me exactly what happened.” He found the least shocking image in the batch of black-and-white Xeroxed photos. The shot was taken at a slight distance with the picnic table and corpses clearly visible—and a barn in the background. “Do you remember this, Pop? Can you tell me what happened here?”

His father looked at the photo and winced. Tears came to his eyes. “They’re all dead. I—I couldn’t do anything.” He started to weep. “I tried, but . . . I couldn’t . . .”

Adam reached over and rubbed his father’s shoulder. “Pop, I’m sorry, but I need to know what happened there.”

All at once, a loud buzzer went off in the hallway. It frightened Joey, who let out a startled wail. Laurie wrapped her arms around him. “What’s that?” she asked—having to shout over the incessant noise.

Adam got to his feet. “It’s the fire alarm,” he yelled. “It goes off at least a couple of times a week here—people pulling the lever by mistake or trying to leave by one of the side doors.” He helped his father to his feet and gave him his cane. “But we have to evacuate . . .”

He saw that his father was still upset and handed him a Kleenex from his pocket. He snatched up the Bartell bag and stashed the photos in it. As they filed out of the room, he grabbed his jacket off his father’s bookcase. The gun was still inside it. He stuffed the jacket into the bag as well.

In the crowded hallway, the residents—many with walkers or in wheelchairs—moved at a snail’s pace. Some were in their bedclothes or robes. Nurses and a couple of security guards were herding them toward the lobby and the main doors. “Calm down, everybody,” the copper-haired nurse, Jodi, announced. “You people know the drill! We’ve all been through this before—like two days ago! Vera, button up your robe, honey. Everyone, just keep moving . . .”

Adam kept hold of his father’s arm. He leaned in close to Laurie so she could hear him over the persistent alarm. “This won’t take long. Are you wearing your visitor’s pass? They won’t let you back in without a pass.”

She nodded, and shifted Joey aside long enough for Adam to see the visitor’s badge on the front of her pullover. She pressed Joey’s head to her chest and covered one of his ears to muffle the noise. He was still crying.

They merged with the throng into another crowded hallway.

“C’mon, folks,” the husky, black, fifty-something security guard called out. He was on the other side of Adam’s dad, directing the residents like a traffic cop.

Someone behind Adam slammed up against his back—almost as if he’d been pushed.

Adam glanced over his shoulder at an old man in a robe, who looked peeved. Just in back of the crusty old guy was a woman in her thirties with black hair and a long, pale face.

Adam turned forward again, and kept moving with the horde. It took him a moment to remember where he’d seen that severe-looking woman before. She’d been on the pier—at the Great Wheel yesterday.

She’d been watching him.

He swiveled around again. The woman had pushed her way forward so that she was right behind him. Adam froze.

She wore a black T-shirt and jeans. On one arm, she had some kind of leather cuff. She reached for something inside it.

Adam automatically stepped between her and his father.

Then someone put a hand on her shoulder. It was the security guard. “Miss, do you have a visitor’s pass?”

She jerked away from him.

From the expression on her face, it looked as if she was about to punch the guard. Instead, she shoved aside an elderly lady and bolted through the crowd. The old woman hit the floor with a feeble cry.

“Wait!” Adam yelled. He wanted to chase her down, but his dad was leaning against him and the frail old woman was at his feet. He was trapped. “Hold it! Somebody, stop her!”

But no one did anything. They probably didn’t even hear him over the alarm.

The woman seemed to vanish. Adam anxiously searched for her, but he couldn’t spot her in the crowd. All he saw was a winding trail of startled, jostled people she’d left in her path. It looked like she’d headed down the next corridor—and maybe out the side door.

Adam helped the old woman to her feet. He glanced at Laurie and Joey to make sure they were okay. She gave him a bewildered look. She kept hugging Joey—and kept moving with the crowd.

The guard turned to Adam. “Do you know that woman? Was she with you?”

“No, but I think she’s trouble,” Adam said over the staccato alarm. “I think she might have come here to hurt my father.”

“Well, it’s okay, she’s gone now,” the guard said distractedly. Then he raised his voice again. “All right, people! Keep moving!”

Adam took his father by the arm again, and he looked at Laurie. They kept moving toward the lobby with the others. But he was still shaking over what had just happened—or had almost just happened.

The guard was wrong. It wasn’t okay. And the woman may have gone.

But Adam was certain she’d be back.

Friday, 11:20
P.M.

“I’m in my dad’s bathroom,” Adam was saying on the other end of the line. “I don’t want to wake him. So I’m fully dressed in his bathtub with the curtain closed to help muffle the sound of me talking. I’m sitting on one of those shower stools old people use. It’s really quite depressing.”

Laurie laughed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—it’s not funny.”

But the truth was, she needed a laugh tonight.

She was lying in bed—with Joey asleep in his little annex. She had her doors double locked downstairs and Brian’s baseball bat at her bedside.

Earlier tonight, Adam had told her about the woman he’d spotted in the crowded hallway during the fire alarm. He’d been worried about her and Joey driving home alone. He’d been worried about his dad, too.

Once everyone had filed back into the building, she and Adam tried to ask his dad about Biggs Farm again, but he just got confused and disoriented. Adam walked her and Joey out to the parking lot, and waited there until after they’d driven off. At his insistence, she called him once she safely arrived home.

She baked several different types of cupcakes and mini-pies for Gil Garrett to sample tomorrow. There was a whole batch for each different dessert sample. She decided to send a small package to Duncan, since he always liked her desserts. She’d use her old address in Ellensburg for the return address. Maybe by the time Duncan received the parcel, the police would have caught up with Ryder and his disciples. Then she could come out of hiding.

The remaining mini-pies and cupcakes were going to Don Eberhard’s widow. With funerals, there was always some sort of brunch. Laurie figured the desserts would get eaten—if Mrs. Eberhard saw it in her heart to forgive her. Then again, maybe a package from her was just about the last thing Mrs. Eberhard wanted right now.

She’d been lying in bed thinking about that when Adam had called. Laurie had told him she would be up baking until midnight.

“Listen, about tomorrow,” he said. “If I can’t talk you out of this showdown with Gil Garrett and Cheryl, at least I can be close by—just in case you get into trouble. I went online, and checked. Medina Park is about two minutes by car from Gil Garrett’s house. I can take my dad there tomorrow around two-fifteen. I’ll stay there until you call and give me the all clear. In fact, not to tell you what to do, but maybe you should put my number on speed dial. If I don’t hear from you by four, I’ll call you.”

“You don’t have to do all this,” she said, sitting up in the bed.

“I know, but I want to—if it’ll help.”

“Yes, it’ll help,” she replied. “That would make me feel a lot better. Thanks, Adam.”

He asked her to call him in the morning, and she promised she would.

After they hung up, Laurie slid back under the covers, and then she started to cry. She had such an awful, doomed feeling about tomorrow. She was worried about Adam. A part of her felt like she didn’t deserve his help and kindness.

She was also thinking about Don Eberhard, the last man who had tried to help her.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-
TWO

Saturday, July 12, 2:20
P.M.

Medina, Washington

“I
’m missing the Mariners,” his father said—for the third time since they’d crossed the 520 Bridge.

“Pop, you’re really working on my last nerve here about the Mariners game,” Adam said, pulling into the parking lot for Medina Park. “You’ve got to let that go. We’re here at the park now, and we’re going to have fun, okay?”

He glanced in his rearview mirror to see if the dark blue SUV was still following him. The vehicle had been about two or three cars behind him since he’d gotten on the floating bridge over Lake Washington. For all he knew, it had been tailing him since he’d left Evergreen Manor.

He didn’t mean to snap at his dad. But what with the SUV on his ass, he didn’t need the old man suddenly obsessing over a missed Mariners game. Adam had asked him twice in the morning if he wanted to walk around Medina Park, and his dad had been all excited to go. He’d said he didn’t care about the damn game. And now he acted like he was missing the Second Coming.

Of course, what really unnerved Adam was the idea of Laurie letting her boss drag her to Gil Garrett’s house. Laurie was walking right into a trap—especially if she was right about Gil. He could very well have been the L.A. big shot who had hired local mobsters to conduct a special investigation into the Styles-Jordan murders. The investigators were dead, the people they were investigating were killed, and almost everyone with any kind of inside knowledge of what happened was now dead.

Adam had just met Laurie, and he liked her a hell of a lot. He’d already lost two people very close to him this week. He didn’t want to lose her.

“Okay, Pop, let’s get out and soak up the scenery,” he said, parking the car. With his jacket folded up and tucked under his arm, he climbed out of his Mini Cooper. He went around to the passenger side and opened his father’s door. Helping him out of the car, he handed him his cane. Adam thought about it for a moment, and then stashed his jacket—with the gun in it—under the passenger seat. Pressing the device on the key, he locked the car doors.

With his father by his side, he looked at the picnic grounds, and the people walking their dogs along the winding trails. He heard kids laughing. In the distance he could see what looked like a lagoon—and trees everywhere. Adam glanced over his shoulder toward the parking lot.

He didn’t see it. He let out a sigh of relief.

He figured maybe he was wrong about the dark blue SUV.

The woman at the wheel of the SUV had pulled over just outside the entrance to Medina Park. Her cohort in the passenger seat had been preoccupied with something on his mobile device ever since they’d left Evergreen Manor. The woman didn’t ask him what was so fascinating. She didn’t care. She’d been busy keeping a discreet distance behind Dean Holbrook, Sr., and his son.

In the SUV’s backseat, among other things, she had a thermos and Adam Holbrook’s laptop computer—both stolen last night from the basement apartment of his dead brother’s home. It was almost criminal how lax police security became on a crime scene after just a few days. Adam Holbrook’s thermos was full of Country Time Lemonade—and enough cyanide to kill an entire family.

In this case, it just had to kill a father and son.

On Adam Holbrook’s laptop, she’d composed a letter that would be sent to everyone on his mailing list:

To All My Friends,

You now know that it is true. I killed my brother, Dean, and his wife. I am Trent Hooper Incarnate. Like Trent, I am an unappreciated artistic genius. I have chosen to die as Trent did, and I’m taking my father with me. This world is not worth living in.

Adam

The e-mail was in his
WAITING TO BE SENT
file.

The woman had already chosen a remote woodland spot where Adam and Dean Holbrook, Sr., would be found.

The e-mail would go out in about two hours, while the Holbrooks were still alive. The friends on his mailing list—and there were many—would be concerned, of course. But there wasn’t a thing they could do.

After all, finding the bodies could take days.

“Just a reminder,” Cheryl said, at the wheel of the food truck. “Don’t tell him my last name or mention the Grill Girl. I want him to taste the food first. Let’s sell him on that before he puts it together that I’m the one who’s been pestering him and his wife for a catering gig lo these many months.”