No One Needs to Know (53 page)

After what had happened to Dean Holbrook, Sr., the Seattle Police put an officer on guard detail at Evergreen Manor. Adam had a feeling the cop was there more to watch him and his dad than to protect them.

“I feel a bit like I’m under house arrest,” he told Laurie on the phone. He’d broken away from his dad for a few minutes, and now sat on a rowing machine in the rest home’s physical therapy room. He had the place to himself. A large window looked out at the lobby, where the desk nurse and security guard were on duty.

Aside from leaving each other messages last night, this was the first chance they’d had to talk since their respective ordeals on Saturday. For the last day and a half, Laurie had also been busy answering questions from the police. She and Adam had agreed that for a while, they best not be seen together. Otherwise, the authorities might indeed figure out a link between the two abductions in Medina Saturday. He and Laurie didn’t want them reopening the investigation into the Styles-Jordan murders, not just yet. Just two weeks ago, neither one of them had known much about the forty-four-year-old slayings—and now they each had a personal stake in what had happened back then. Suddenly they were the ones who needed to keep a lid on the case. Adam didn’t want his sick father harassed. But he wasn’t quite sure why Laurie felt the need for secrecy.

“Gil Garrett asked me not to say anything,” she explained over the phone. “He made it clear if I agreed to keep quiet, he wouldn’t press charges against Cheryl—and he’d swear that I was forced to go along with her. Anyway, I sort of feel like I made a deal with the devil . . .”

The story on the news had Cheryl abducting Gil and taking him to the Gayler Court house, because she knew it would be empty. It had nothing to do with the Styles-Jordan murders. Supposedly, she was upset at Gil Garrett, because after serving him up a spread of her best food, he’d told her he wasn’t interested in hiring her to cater an important event at his house. “I guess I was a bit tactless about it,” Gil had told reporters. “I didn’t realize she was under so much pressure.”

The flimsy reason given for his abduction seemed entirely credible considering the frequency of workplace, school, and mall shootings over things equally trivial.

“There’s a part of me that really hates perpetuating the lie that Cheryl was nothing more than a crazy, unhinged cook,” Laurie told him, “especially after everything she’s been through. But Gil and Cheryl seemed to reach some kind of understanding at the end. He kept telling her, ‘Let me handle it.’ Handle what, I don’t know. Anyway, so far it seems to be working. Everyone is buying the cover story. Of the three of us, no one got seriously hurt. Joey and I are together, thank God. Cheryl isn’t facing any serious charges. I’m just out of a job right now—and in the public eye, something I very much didn’t want to be. On the plus side, the police are watching the apartment complex in case Cheryl returns—and they have a description of Ryder McBride and his two women.”

“Still, aren’t you scared?” he asked.

“A little,” she admitted. “But I don’t think he’s going to try anything so soon after I was on the news—with reporters and police hanging around here.”

“I wish I could be there to keep you company,” Adam said.

“Me, too,” she replied. “But right now, you’re under house arrest and I have a gag order. But I do have to tell you something, Adam. It’s about your dad and that group suicide at Biggs Farm. Cheryl was there, and she confirmed your dad was there, too. From the way she told it, your father really couldn’t do anything to stop what was happening. But he saved her life—and the life of Elaina and Dirk’s baby . . .”

As Adam listened to her account of Cheryl’s experience, he wondered how his brother could have been so unforgiving toward their dad. Did Dean know that their old man had at least saved a couple of lives that day? Maybe their dad had never told Dean about that. Maybe all Dean knew was that their father had worked for mobsters—and he was involved in the murder-suicides at Biggs Farm.

Adam and Laurie talked for twenty more minutes—until Joey started getting cranky. Adam told her to call him later if she got scared. “Can I call you if I
don’t
get scared, too?” she asked.

He told her he’d like that.

After he clicked off the phone, Adam walked down the dimly lit corridors to his father’s room. He found his dad asleep on his Barcalounger with the remote in his hand. A
Cheers
rerun was on TV. He snored a bit louder with the bandage across the bridge of his broken nose. He had two black eyes, and his sprained left arm was in a sling. There was also a food stain down the front of his shirt.

Adam gently kissed him on the forehead.

Then he quietly pulled a chair up beside the Barcalounger, sat down next to his father, and watched TV.

Laurie had just finished talking with Adam when the text alert sounded on her mobile device. She had Joey in his playpen nearby. Now that she was off the phone, he’d stopped fussing and crying, which was typical. She checked the message. The sender number was blocked, and she immediately thought of the blocked calls to the town house apartments back when Tad had been harassing her.

Warily, she opened the text—with a picture of the Space Needle. The message said: U did d rght tng. Stik 2 yor story. 4giv me. Natalie.

Laurie still didn’t have a clue what was discussed between Gil and Cheryl. And she had no idea how Maureen Forester fit into all of this. There was a lot she still didn’t know. But she was pretty sure of one thing, because of the Space Needle photo that came with the text.

Cheryl was still in Seattle.

For the first time since running away from her uncle’s home at fifteen, Cheryl dyed her hair.
Dark Chestnut
was the color listed on the L’Oreal box, and it looked slightly ridiculous on her. She was too old to pull it off. But it really didn’t matter. Very few people saw her anyway—and those who did might have noticed that makeup didn’t quite conceal a bruise over her eye. She hid out at a Best Western on Aurora Avenue, and lived on Starbucks and deliveries from Pagliacci Pizza and China First. She watched the news, went online, and made it her mission to keep tabs on the activities of Mr. and Mrs. Gil Garrett.

If she’d learned anything from the events on late Saturday afternoon, it was that all this time, she’d been wrong about Gil. She’d seen it on his face the moment he’d figured out who had ordered the murder of his great love, Elaina Styles. Early on, he’d told her and Laurie,
“It’s easy to keep secrets from my darling wife, since I rarely see her anymore—except in public. It’s an arrangement that suits us both.”

Apparently, it was just as easy for Shawna Farrell to keep secrets from her husband.

Cheryl had realized Shawna had masterminded Elaina’s murder at about the same time Gil had. It was when he’d said Shawna wanted to buy the
7/7/70
script. Why would she be interested in that project? There certainly wasn’t a major role in it for her. She hadn’t made a movie in years.

No one could have had a better motive for doing away with the beautiful Elaina. Gil had never stopped loving her. He’d even first offered Elaina the film role that eventually went to Shawna and won her the Oscar. And it was a film part most actresses would
kill for.

Obviously, it had to grate on Shawna’s nerves to know her husband preferred this other woman to her—both personally and professionally. None of Gil’s associates were familiar with his underworld connection, Arnie Shearer. But his wife knew him.

Gil and Shawna had been at the same party as Trent Hooper a year before the slayings. He swore he’d never met Trent. But perhaps Shawna had. Maybe she’d made up her mind that night about who would do her killing for her.

Cheryl remembered Trent and the henchmen at Biggs Farm referring to “Gil’s people.” Certainly, Mrs. Gil Garrett was one of Gil’s people.

“You just figured it out, didn’t you?” Cheryl had whispered to him while Laurie had gone to get him some water. “Well, that makes two of us. It was your wife who had Elaina killed, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe,” he’d replied. “But you can’t do anything about it.”

“Can’t I?” Cheryl had said.

According to an article Cheryl had read online this morning, Gil was on his way to Los Angeles to present a film award tonight. He wasn’t going to be home.

One advantage to having been inside Gil and Shawna’s kitchen was that it had given her the opportunity to copy down some of their staff contact numbers from a list by the phone. Two hours ago, Cheryl had put on a nice dress and taken one of her rare trips out of her room at the Best Western. She’d gone to Chandler’s Crab House on Lake Union. There, she asked the hostess if she could use her phone to call the other people in her party. The woman obliged. Cheryl phoned the young housekeeper at Gil’s Medina mansion. “I’m calling about Ms. Farrell’s reservations today here at Chandler’s Crab House,” she said.

“There must be some mistake,” the girl said in her thick accent. “Ms. Farrell—I mean, Mrs. Garrett—is staying at the Bainbridge Island house tonight.”

Now Cheryl knew where to find Shawna Farrell that evening.

On the hotel’s white-and-green-palm-tree-pattern bedspread, Cheryl had laid out everything she needed for her visit to Gil’s wife tonight: the gun, a knife, some rope, duct tape, her satchel, the tape recorder, a black pullover, and black slacks.

The next ferry to Bainbridge Island was at 7:20.

And Cheryl would be on it.

Monday, 7:38
P.M.

Seattle

The cop in the unmarked sedan parked outside the front gate of La Hacienda was a good-looking man in his early thirties with blue eyes, receding blond hair, and a square jaw. He was in plainclothes: a plaid button-down short-sleeve shirt and jeans. He had the car window open and was listening to John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses” on his iPad when Laurie approached him.

He smiled at her and turned down the music before she reached his window. She carried a large baggie with two of her homemade cupcakes. She also had the portable baby monitor in her hand. She’d put Joey to bed—without too much fuss on his part—about ten minutes ago. “Hi, I’m Laurie Trotter,” she said.

He nodded. “Yes, I know.”

“Well, I brought you these,” she said, handing him the bag of cupcakes. “And I just wanted to make certain you know about Ryder McBride . . .”

He assured her he’d been briefed on McBride and his two female companions. He also thanked her for the cupcakes. His name was Kurt, and his shift ended at two in the morning. He gave her his cell number to call if she had any concerns. Laurie told him to buzz her if he was hungry, thirsty, or needed to use her bathroom.

“Well, thanks to you, this detail just got a helluva lot more pleasant,” he said.

Once back inside her apartment, Laurie checked on Joey, who was fast asleep. Then she decided to examine Maureen’s files—for the umpteenth time. She sat on the floor and looked over the articles about the often-forgotten victim in the Styles-Jordan murders, Gloria Northrop—and her boyfriend, Earl Johnson. Laurie was still bothered by a thought she’d had the other night. Studying the pictures of Gloria and Earl in the articles, Laurie could have sworn she’d seen other photos of them somewhere else. And it wasn’t online. She remembered turning pages. Had she seen their pictures in a magazine?

Then she remembered. She wasn’t turning the pages—Vincent was.
“That’s Maureen with the brown hair, and that’s her brother. I don’t know who the other girl is . . .”

The faded color snapshots in Maureen’s photo album had shown two teenage girls, a young man slightly older than them, and a baby. They looked like they were playing in a park.
“I don’t know whose baby that is,”
Vincent had said.

Was Maureen the sister of Earl Johnson? Laurie remembered seeing the old income tax records in the file cabinet at E-Z Safe Storage.

Her name on the forms read
Maureen Johnson Forester.

“Well, hi, Laurie. Where’s Joey?”

Vincent had answered the door in a Mariners T-shirt and sweatpants. Laurie could hear the TV in the background.

“Joey’s asleep,” she said. She took her baby monitor out of her purse and showed him. “I’m listening to him on this—only the sound isn’t so good, on account of how far away I am. So I won’t stay long, I promise. I’m really sorry to barge in on you like this, Vincent. But could I see that photo album again?”

“Sure, come on in.” He led her into his living room, picked up the remote, and put his movie on pause. “I’m watching
Batman Begins
again!
”
he announced. “I own the DVD.”

Laurie watched him grab the photo albums from the lower shelf of his coffee table and set them on the sofa. From her purse, she fished out one of the articles about Gloria Northrop and Earl Johnson from Maureen’s files. It was the article with the clearest photo of them both. “I’m looking for those pictures you showed me the other day—of Maureen in the park with her brother, a girlfriend, and a baby,” Laurie told him.

“Oh, yeah, I know where those are,” Vincent said, bent over the albums on the sofa. He paged toward the beginning of one of the big books. “Are these the ones?”

Laurie gazed at the shots of the two girls in the park—with their bellbottom jeans and long hair. She looked at the young man with the dark hair and the goofy smile, who was in one of the snapshots with the girls. It was Earl Johnson—with his girlfriend, Gloria Northrop, and his sister, Maureen.

But Laurie realized she was wrong about the locale. They weren’t in a park. In the far edge of one shot, she could see the side of a house. It was the house on Gayler Court.

They were on the front lawn, playing with the baby.

The other day, Vincent had said he didn’t know whose baby it was.

But Laurie knew.

She remembered Tammy Cassella mentioning that Maureen had found out something about Cheryl that made them
almost like family.
Obviously, she’d helped her friend Gloria babysit Baby Patrick. And from that “missing” flier in her files, it was obvious Maureen had discovered that Cheryl—aka Charlene—had looked after Baby Patrick as well. Cheryl had mentioned Patrick’s birthmark—and it was also listed as part of “Buddy’s” description on the “missing” flier. Was that the discovery Maureen had made?