Tell Me No Secrets (35 page)

“You tell me,” Jess said, but Adam’s only answer was a smile.

“So you were an only child,” Jess said as they sat on the floor in front of the sofa finishing their dinner.

“A very spoiled only child,” he elaborated.

“My sister always says that children aren’t apples—they don’t spoil.”

“What else does your sister say?”

“That you can’t spoil a child with too much love.”

“She sounds like a very good mother.”

“I think she is.”

“You sound surprised.”

“It’s just not what I expected from her, that’s all.”

“What did you expect from her?”

“I’m not sure. A brilliant career, I guess.”

“Maybe she thought she’d leave that to you.”

“Maybe,” Jess agreed, wondering how the conversation always reverted back to her. “You and your wife never wanted children?”

“We wanted them,” he said. “It just never worked out.”

Jess understood from the way his voice dropped that it was a topic he didn’t wish to pursue. She finished the last of her bagel, lifted the glass of water to her lips.

“What was your mother like?” he asked suddenly.

“What?” Jess’s hand started to shake, the water spilling from the glass onto the floor. She scrambled to her feet. “Oh my God.”

His hand was immediately on her arm, gently pulling her back down. “Relax, Jess, it’s only water.” He used his napkin to wipe up the spill. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

“Then why are you shaking?”

“I’m not shaking.”

“What did your mother do to you?”

“What do you mean, what did she do?” Jess asked angrily. “She didn’t do anything. What are you talking about?’”

“Why won’t you talk about her?”

“Why should I?”

“Because you don’t want to,” he said evenly. “Because you’re afraid to.”

“Another one of my phobias?” Jess asked sarcastically.

“You tell me.”

“Anybody ever tell you you’d make a good lawyer?”

“What happened to your mother, Jess?”

Jess closed her eyes, saw her mother standing before her in the kitchen of their home, tears falling down her cheeks.
I don’t need this, Jess
, she was saying.
I don’t need this
from you
. Jess quickly opened her eyes. “She disappeared,” she said finally.

“Disappeared?”

“She’d found a small lump in her breast, and she was pretty scared. She called the doctor, and he said he’d see her that afternoon. But she never showed up for her appointment. Nobody ever saw her again.”

“Then it’s possible she’s alive?”

“No, it’s not possible,” Jess snapped. “It’s not possible.”

He reached for her, but she pulled away from his reach.

“She wouldn’t abandon us just because she was scared,” Jess continued, speaking from somewhere deep inside her. “I mean, even if she was scared, and I know she was, that doesn’t mean she’d run out on us. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would just walk out on her husband and daughters because she couldn’t face reality. No matter how scared she was. No matter how angry.”

“Angry?”

“I didn’t mean angry.”

“You said it.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“What was she angry about, Jess?”

“She wasn’t angry.”

“She was angry at you, wasn’t she?”

Jess looked toward the window. Her mother’s tear-streaked face stared back at her through the antique lace curtains.
I don’t need this, Jess. I don’t need this from you
.

“I came downstairs and found her all dressed up,” Jess began. “I asked her where she was going, and at first she wouldn’t tell me. But eventually it came out that she’d found this lump in her breast, and she was going to see her
doctor that afternoon.” Jess tried to laugh, but the laugh stuck in her throat, like a piece of bagel she could neither swallow nor cough up. “It was just like my mother to get all dressed up in the morning when she didn’t have to be somewhere till late in the afternoon.”

“Kind of like someone who selects the clothes she’s going to wear the next day the night before.”

Jess ignored the implication. “She asked me if I’d go with her to the doctor. I said sure. But then we got into an argument. A typical mother-daughter kind of thing. She thought I was being headstrong. I thought she was being overprotective. I told her to stay out of my life. She told me not to bother taking her to the doctor’s. I said have it your way and slammed out of the house. By the time I got back, she’d already left.”

“And you blame yourself for what happened.” It was more statement than question.

Jess pushed herself to her feet, walked to the bird’s cage with exaggerated strides. “Hi, Fred, how’re you doing?”

“Fred’s doing great,” Adam told her, coming up behind her. “I’m not so sure about his owner. That’s a shitload of guilt you’ve been carrying around all these years.”

“Hey, whatever happened to our pact?” Jess asked, swiping at her tears, refusing to look at him, concentrating all her attention on the small yellow bird. “No secrets, no lies, remember?” She made awkward chirping noises against the side of the cage.

“Do you ever let him out?” Adam asked.

“You’re not supposed to let canaries out of their cages,” Jess said loudly, hoping to still the shaking in her body with the sound of her voice. “They’re not like parakeets.
Parakeets are domestic birds. Canaries are wild. They aren’t meant to be let out of their cages.”

“So you never have to worry about him flying away,” Adam said softly.

This time the implication was too blatant to ignore. Jess spun around angrily. “The bird is a pet, not a metaphor.”

“Jess …”

“Just when did you give up psychiatry for selling shoes?” she demanded bitterly. “Who the hell are you, Adam Stohn?”

They stood facing one another, Jess shaking, Adam absolutely still.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked.

No, she thought. “Yes,” she said.

He walked slowly to the door.

“Adam,” she called, and he stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “I think it’s probably a good idea if you don’t come back.”

For an instant she thought he might turn around, take her into his arms, confess all. But he didn’t, and in the next instant he was gone and she was alone in a room full of ghosts and shadows.

B
y the end of the week, the medical examiner’s report on Connie DeVuono was in and the jury in the Terry Wales murder trial was out.

Connie DeVuono had been raped, then beaten and strangled with a piece of thin magnetic wire that had sliced through her jugular and almost severed her head from her body. Forensics had determined that the wire that caused her death was identical to wire found in the factory that employed Rick Ferguson. A warrant had just been issued for Rick Ferguson’s arrest.

“How long do you think the jury will be out?” Barbara Cohen was asking when the phone rang on Jess’s desk.

“You know better than that,” Jess told her, reaching for the phone. “Could be hours. Could be days.”

Barbara Cohen checked her watch. “It’s already been over twenty-four hours.”

Jess shrugged, as anxious as her assistant but reluctant to
admit it. She picked up the phone, brought the receiver to her ear. “Jess Koster.”

“He’s disappeared,” Don said instead of hello.

Jess felt her stomach lurch. She didn’t have to ask who Don was talking about. “When?”

“Probably sometime in the middle of the night. My guy just called. He’d been watching the house all night and when he didn’t see Ferguson leave for work this morning at the usual time, he got suspicious, waited awhile, finally did some snooping around. He could see Ferguson’s mother either asleep or passed out in bed; Ferguson was nowhere to be seen. My guy called the warehouse, and sure enough, Ferguson hasn’t shown up. It looks like he picked up on the tail, figured the police were about to arrest him, and climbed out one of the back windows while it was still dark.”

“The irony is that the police
were
about to arrest him,” Jess admitted. “We issued a warrant this morning.”

Don’s tone became instantly businesslike. No longer the concerned ex-husband but the ultimate professional, carefully attuned to the rights of his client. “What’ve you got?” he asked.

“The wire used to kill Connie DeVuono was the same kind of wire found in the warehouse that employs Rick Ferguson.”

“What else?”

“What else do I need?”

“More than that.”

“Not to bring him in.”

“Any prints?”

“No,” Jess admitted.

“Just a flimsy piece of wire?”

“Strong enough to kill Connie DeVuono,” Jess told him. “Strong enough to convict your client.”

There was a slight pause. “Okay, Jess. I don’t want to get into all this now. We can talk about the case against my client as soon as the police bring him in. In the meantime, I’ve asked my guy to keep an eye on you.”

“What? Don, I told you I don’t want a babysitter.”

“
I
want,” Don insisted. “Indulge me, Jess. Just for a day or two. It won’t kill you.”

“And Rick Ferguson might?”

His sigh echoed against her ear. “You won’t even know you’re being watched.”

“Rick Ferguson knew.”

“Just do this for me, will you?”

“Any ideas where your client went?”

“None.”

“I better go,” Jess told him, already thinking ahead to what she would tell the police.

“I take it the jury’s still out in the Crossbow case?”

“Over twenty-four hours.”

“Word on the street says your closing argument was a classic.”

“Juries are notably impervious to classics,” Jess said, anxious now to get off the phone.

“I’ll call you later.”

Jess hung up without saying good-bye.

“Detective Mansfield just called,” Neil told her. “Apparently Rick Ferguson’s skipped. They’re issuing an APB for his arrest.”

The phone rang on Jess’s desk.

“Looks like it’s going to be one of those days, “ Barbara said. “You want me to get that?”

Jess shook her head, answered the phone. “Jess Koster.”

“Jess, it’s Maureen. Is it a bad time?”

Jess felt her shoulders slump. “Well, it’s not the best.” She could almost see the disappointment in her sister’s face. It seeped into the air around her, like an invisible poison gas. “I can spare a few minutes.”

“Barry just told me this morning that you called on Monday,” Maureen apologized. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why should you apologize for Barry’s mistakes?”

There was silence.

“Sorry,” Jess said quickly. Couldn’t she ever leave well enough alone?

“He’s been so sick all week. He could hardly think straight, he was so stuffed up. The doctor was afraid it might be pneumonia, but whatever it was, the antibiotics killed it. He went back to work this morning.”

“I’m glad to hear he’s feeling better.” Jess immediately pictured the urine-soaked letter filled with pubic hair she had received in the mail, wondering again whether Barry could have sent it.

“Anyway, he just remembered about your phone call as he was walking out the door this morning. I almost killed him.”

“A lot of killing going on in your house these days,” Jess remarked absently.

“What?”

“So, how’ve
you
been?”

“Me? I don’t have time to get sick,” Maureen said, sounding very much like her younger sister. “Anyway, I know
how busy you are, but I didn’t want you to think I was ignoring your phone call. I’m really so glad that you phoned. …” Her voice threatened to dissolve into tears.

“How’s Dad?” Jess asked, realizing she hadn’t spoken to her father in weeks, feeling the familiar pattern of guilt and anger. Guilt that she hadn’t spoken to him, anger for her guilt.

“He’s really happy, Jess.”

“I’m glad.”

“Sherry’s very good for him. She makes him laugh, keeps him on his toes. They’re coming for dinner next Friday night. We’re going to put up the Christmas tree and decorate the house and everything.” She paused. “Would you like to join us?”

Jess closed her eyes. How long could she go on hurting the very people who meant the most to her? “Sure,” she said.

“Sure?”

“Sounds great.”

“Great?” Maureen repeated, as if she needed the confirmation of her own voice to accept what she was hearing. “Yeah,” she agreed, “it
will
be great. We’ve missed you. Tyler hasn’t stopped playing with that toy airplane you bought him. And you won’t believe how much the twins have grown.”

Jess laughed, “Really, Maureen, it hasn’t been that long.”

“Almost two months,” Maureen reminded her, catching Jess off guard. Had two months really elapsed since the last time she’d seen her family?

“I better go now,” Jess told her.

“Oh sure. You must be swamped. I heard on the news that the jury in that Crossbow killing thing retired yesterday. Any word?”

“None yet.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

“See you next week,” Maureen said.

“See you next week,” Jess agreed.

“Something wrong?” Barbara asked as Jess replaced the receiver.

Jess shook her head, pretended to be studying a file on her desk. Almost two months! she thought. Two months since her last visit to her sister’s house. Two months since she’d hugged her nephew and cradled her infant nieces in her arms. Two months since she’d seen her father.

How could she have let that happen? Weren’t they all she had left? What was the matter with her? Was she so self-centered, so self-absorbed, that she couldn’t see past her own narrow little world? Was she so used to dealing with scum that she no longer knew how to act around decent people who loved her, whose only crime was in wanting to live their lives as they saw fit? Wasn’t that all she’d ever wanted—no, demanded—for herself?

Wasn’t that exactly what she’d been fighting about with her mother on the day her mother disappeared?

Jess threw her head back, feeling the muscles in her shoulders cramp. Why couldn’t she stop obsessing about her mother? Why was she still a prisoner of something that had happened eight long years ago? Why did everything ultimately have to hark back to the day her mother had vanished?