The Last to Know (21 page)

He hates this, all of it. He’s been on edge all day, what with the doorbell constantly ringing and reporters asking for their comments on the case. He’s turned them all away and lowered all the shades at the front of the house to block out the hubbub at the other end of the block—and perhaps the prying eyes of the press, as well.

“He’s a kid, Karen,” her husband is saying. “Kids like to play in the woods. And unless he was carrying a dead body or a bloody weapon—”

“Oh, come on, Tom. . . .”

“Well, was he?”

“Of course not. But I don’t know what he was carrying. He looked suspicious.”

“Are you sure?” Tom asks. “Maybe you’re reading too much into it. You’re upset about what happened to Rachel. She was your friend.”

“I don’t know,” she says slowly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I just thought he was sneaking around. Maybe he’s not up to anything after all.”

“Or maybe you were right and he was up to something, Karen. Like smoking. Or reading
Penthouse
. That could be what was in the bundle. He’s a kid,” he says again, to her irritation. Christ. She wishes she’d never started this. “That’s what kids do,” Tom goes on. “They sneak around and they use poor judgment. But the vast majority of them don’t slaughter innocent women in their beds.”

“But somebody did, Tom. Somebody walked into Rachel’s bedroom and—” She breaks off, emotion clogging her throat.

“I know.” He puts an arm around her, pulls her close. “Take it easy, Karen. Trust the police to do their job. You saw that detective going into the Gallaghers’ house this morning. He stayed a long time. He had to be questioning the kid thoroughly. He’s on top of the situation. If he thought he had a serious suspect, he’d have arrested him or something.”

“I guess.”

“Look, if you’re that concerned, at least tell Fletch or Sharon what you saw first. Let them take care of it. If they think they should go to the police, they will.”

She considers that option.

The baby stirs in her swing, waking up.

Karen goes over to unstrap her.

“So what are you going to do?” Tom asks.

“Right now, I’m going to feed Taylor,” she answers, lifting her daughter and snuggling her warm skin against her neck. “I’ll figure out the rest later.”

J
oel shows up right after Tasha puts Max down for his nap. Hearing the front door open and close, Tasha has a moment of panic, thinking she might have forgotten to lock it and that another reporter has crept in. But when she rushes to the top of the stairs, she sees her husband there in the foyer, locking the door behind him.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, going down the steps toward him.

“I told you I’d be home as soon as I could.” He takes off his trench coat and opens the hall closet. Sliding hangers around, he mutters, “There’s no place to put this.”

“We never have enough hangers,” Tasha says, coming to a halt at the foot of the stairs. “You can hang it on a hook in the kitchen. . . .”

“Never mind.” He drapes his coat over a hanger that already holds one of Hunter’s jackets, and closes the door. “Are Rachel’s kids still here?”

Rachel’s kids
. Just the way he puts it brings a lump to Tasha’s throat. Mara and Noah are not Rachel’s kids anymore. Only Ben’s. Rachel’s gone, and she isn’t coming back.

Funny how Tasha speculated just the other night about their friend leaving them, running off in search of adventure. Her notoriously over-active imagination getting carried away again . . .

Unless it was a premonition. Had some part of her actually sensed that Rachel really would be gone only hours later? Had it ever crossed her mind that Rachel might die?

No.

No, it was just a coincidence.

Thinking back, she realizes that she was afraid for herself, wasn’t she, in those tense days after Jane Kendall’s disappearance? It’s hard to recall now. Everything is such a blur. Lack of sleep will do that. So will traumatic shock.

“Ben’s sister came and got the kids a while ago,” she tells Joel.

“Do they know?”

Tasha shakes her head. “I didn’t tell them. Ben is going to.”

“He’s still home, isn’t he? I saw his car in their driveway.”

“He’s not there. He’s down at the police station. They’re questioning him.”

Joel doesn’t look surprised. “Have the police come here to talk to you yet?”

Tasha shakes her head.

“Well, it’s only a matter of time before they do.”

It’s maddening, the matter-of-fact way he says it. But she knows he’s probably right. Of course the police will want to question her. She was there, yesterday, in the Leibermans’ house. She was one of Rachel’s friends.

A lump rises painfully in her throat at the thought of Rachel. How can she be gone? She was just here, breezy, irreverent, beautiful. Now she’s lying in a morgue someplace, cold and dead. Unrecognizable, Ben had said.

She doesn’t want to think about what he saw when he walked into the bedroom and found her. And she doesn’t want to think about—or see—Rachel dead.

Tasha knows that they’ve taken her body out of the house. She sneaked a peek at the latest television newscast upstairs in the bedroom just now while she was rocking a cranky Max to sleep. She found herself sobbing at the prerecorded image that mercifully she hadn’t happened to glimpse when it happened live outside her own window—a bulky, covered stretcher being borne out the Leibermans’ front door. Caught off guard by the macabre image, she tried to muffle her sobs and kept the volume on the television turned low so that Hunter and Victoria wouldn’t hear.

She hasn’t told them yet. Oh, God, how is she ever going to tell them? They’ll be so upset. Worried. Afraid.

Maybe Joel will do it.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” Tasha tells him, peering out the window beside the door for the hundredth time that day. The street is still crawling with media. “Did the reporters attack you on the way in?”

He nods. “I just said no comment and ordered them off our property. It’s a mob scene out there. Have they tried to talk to you?”

“All day. Every once in a while one of them rings the doorbell.”

“You didn’t say anything to anyone, did you?”

She thinks about Paula Bailey, the local reporter. Should she mention to Joel that she spoke to her? No. He won’t like that. He said not to talk to the press, and he wouldn’t understand that Paula is different. That Tasha found herself wanting to help her, if only because she’s local, and a fellow mom, and she knows what it’s like to have a fussy child permanently attached to your hip.

“No, I didn’t say anything to anyone,” Tasha tells Joel.

“So how’s Ben holding up?”

She shrugs. “He’s having a hard time. Who wouldn’t?”

“What did his sister say when she came?”

“That she’ll call and let us know when the funeral will be.”

“Tomorrow, won’t it? That’s the custom,” says Joel, who, like the Leibermans, is Jewish.

When his grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack the year they were married, Tasha marveled at the way the death ritual is handled in Judaism as opposed to Catholicism. The morning after Grandpa Jake died, they found themselves shoveling dirt on his casket after the long trek to the cemetery on Long Island.

By contrast, Tasha’s father’s funeral happened three days after he died. Thank goodness for that, because they had to travel to Ohio with the kids, which took almost a whole day in itself. Joel was frustrated by the two days and nights of wake before the funeral. He said it only dragged things out. Tasha, on the other hand, found it comforting.

“Rachel’s funeral won’t be tomorrow, Joel. The police haven’t released—” she hesitates, then manages, “the
body
for burial yet. It’s a murder investigation. I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

He nods. “I hadn’t thought of that. Well, I hope I’ll be here for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve got a business trip this week, remember? I have to fly out to Chicago on Sunday night. I’ll be gone until Monday night.”

She had momentarily forgotten about that.

For a while, they’re both silent.

“So how’d it go today?” she asks, now that the specter of his job has reared its head.

“Hmm?”

“Your shoot,” she reminds him. “In the city. With the supermodel.”

“Oh, that. It was fine,” he says, and heads for the stairs. “I’m going to go change my clothes.”

“Good luck finding something to wear,” she calls after him.

He pauses. “What do you mean?”

“I still haven’t been able to do the laundry. The washing machine is broken, remember?”

He tilts his head back, as though he’s exasperated. “It hasn’t been fixed yet?”

“Nope.”

He sighs. “Okay, I’ll go down and take a look at it. Where’s the manual?”

“In the drawer in the kitchen.” She still hasn’t had the chance to take it out and check out the troubleshooting chart. It seems like years ago that she went down to the basement and found out the machine wasn’t working. Has it really only been a few days?

Back then she was preoccupied with the Jane Kendall disappearance.

Now there’s Rachel.

The fleeting television reports Tasha has managed to see today seem to assume that one has something to do with the other, although the police haven’t actually come out and confirmed a link between the two cases.

Tasha doesn’t know what to think anymore.

Well, Joel’s home now
, she reminds herself.
You should feel safe—at least for the moment.

So why don’t you?

O
pening the door to the apartment, Paula expects to hear the television. Instead, there’s a pronounced silence, marred only by the refrigerator’s hum.

“Mitch?” she calls, surprised.

No reply.

She steps into the living room and looks around. No sign of her son. She doesn’t have to check the bedroom, kitchen, or bathroom to know that the place is deserted. The first thing Mitch does any time he walks in the door is turn on the TV. If it’s off, he’s not here. It’s that simple.

She frowns, glancing at her watch. It’s a little past three. Though she’s seldom around when Frank picks him up on Friday afternoons, she knows Mitch doesn’t usually leave until after four. In fact, that’s been a bone of contention between Paula and her ex-husband, because it means Mitch needs to be at home by himself for more than an hour after school on Fridays while Paula’s working.

Granted, he’s alone other times. But Paula can’t understand why Frank can’t just get here an hour earlier on Fridays, especially after making such a big deal about getting full weekend visitation rights, rather than the single day Paula offered. He had some excuse about not being able to leave work that early. But Paula’s no fool. Frank’s self-employed, right? She doesn’t doubt that he could get here by three if he really wanted to, or even pick up Mitch at school at two forty-five, as she had originally requested.

He’s just pushing her buttons at their son’s expense, knowing the visitation situation infuriates her in the first place.

So if Mitch isn’t here, and it’s too early for Frank to pick him up, where is he?

Miss Bright probably made him stay after again, Paula realizes, striding to the phone. Too anxious to waste time looking up the telephone number in the Townsend Heights directory, she dials information for it, then accepts the extra charge to be directly connected rather than dialing the number herself.

Come on, come on. . . .

She only stopped home to change her clothes before going back over to Orchard Lane. She found out her friend Brian Mulvaney is on duty guarding the Leiberman house, and she’s going to request a little favor from him. She wonders what it will take for him to let her inside the house—just for a quick walk-through of the murder scene. She knows it’s off-limits to the press, but she’s local. And Brian’s her buddy.

Besides, he owes her a favor.

Didn’t she keep his name out of the paper last year when he came close to being arrested in a bar brawl in the next county?

As she listens to the phone ring in her ear, she kicks off her pumps and wiggles her toes. Those shoes pinch. She really needs a new pair—

“Townsend Heights Elementary School. May I help you?”

“This is Paula Bailey. My son, Mitch, is a student there. He hasn’t come home from school yet. May I please speak to his teacher, Miss Bright?”

“Just a moment, and I’ll see if she’s still here, Mrs. Bailey.”

“It’s
Ms.
,” she says through clenched teeth.

She lights a cigarette, then goes into the bedroom, tucking the receiver between her shoulder and her ear while she picks out another outfit. Something warmer and more comfortable than the skirt and blouse she put on this morning. There’s no telling when she’ll get back here tonight, and the temperature is supposed to drop into the thirties.

The phone clicks. “This is Miss Bright.”

“Is Mitch there with you?” Paula asks without preamble.

A slight pause. “No, he’s—”

“You didn’t keep him after school again?”

“No,
Ms.
Bailey, I didn’t,” the teacher says crisply. “His father picked him up this morning. He said there was a family emergency.”

“And you let him take Mitch?” Paula shrieks in disbelief.

“He’s the parent, Ms. Bailey. He’s authorized to pick up your son at school. You signed the form yourself.”

“That’s because I had originally thought he’d be picking him up after school on visitation days. Not because I wanted him to have permission to just pull Mitch out of class whenever he feels like it!”

“Well, you’ll have to resolve that with your ex-husband.”

“Believe me, I will.” Steaming, Paula hangs up without even saying good-bye.

She takes a deep drag on the cigarette, striding across the bedroom, cursing Frank under her breath as she exhales the smoke. Who the hell does he think he is?

Worry flits into her mind, and then right out again. Of course Mitch is fine—and of course, there’s no family emergency. And even if there were, what does she care about Frank or his idiot wife? All that matters to her is Mitch—and keeping him away from her ex-husband’s influence. Frank is going to do everything in his power to turn Mitch against her and convince him to come live on Long Island.