The Last to Know (31 page)

“I know.”

“Daddy says he’ll bring me back a really big present from Chicago,” Victoria announces.

“He didn’t say really big,” Hunter contradicts. “And he’s bringing something for all of us.”

“Even for Mommy, Daddy?”

Tasha watches Joel look at Victoria, then raise his gaze to her. “Even for Mommy,” he agrees. Then he turns away and heads for the stairs.

M
itch watches his father dig into a steaming plate of ravioli across the small, square restaurant table. Shawna, on the side between them, picks at her small green salad—no dressing.

“Can you please pass the cheese, Mitch?” his father asks.

Mitch picks up the glass jar with the grater top, dumps some Parmesan on his spaghetti, and hands the container to his father. He twirls several long strands on his fork, holding the prongs against a spoon, like his father taught him.

“No, it’s like this,” his dad says, putting his own fork down and demonstrating with Mitch’s. “Now, you try.”

Mitch does, clumsily. He manages to get most of it into his mouth in one bite, though, sucking the rest in so that his mouth is smeared with sauce.

Shawna laughs and hands him a napkin.

“Do you like this place, Mitch?” his father asks.

“It’s great.” Dad is big on Italian restaurants. It was his idea to come here for lunch. Mitch had figured they would probably just stay home because the weather is so lousy.

That’s probably why the place isn’t very crowded. It’s small, located not far off the Long Island Expressway exit—the kind of place where there are mints by the cash register and napkin dispensers on the dozen or so tables, and you can hear pots clattering in the kitchen every time the waitress comes through the doors.

Which she does now, to ask if everything is all right.

Mitch’s father orders another Coke for himself and, without asking, one for Mitch, too. Shawna says she doesn’t need another glass of white wine. Mitch notices that she’s barely touched the one she has.

Still, he’s not as irked by her today as he usually is. Maybe because they had a good time playing cards last night, and Mitch won more than ten bucks.

“Mitch,” his father says, when his plate is almost empty, “I want to talk to you about something.”

“About what?” Mitch looks from his father to Shawna, who’s suddenly interested in her wine after all.

“About you coming to live with us for good.”

Stunned, Mitch just looks at him.

“Would you like that, Mitch?”

“You mean . . . I’d move in with you and Shawna instead of living with my mom?”

“Exactly.”

He puts his fork and spoon down, his stomach suddenly churning. “Did something happen to her?” he asks in dread.

“No,” his father says quickly. “Nothing happened to her, Mitch. We just think it would be better for everyone if you came to live here.”

“Mom would never let me do that,” Mitch tells him.

His father looks at Shawna.

Mitch can’t tell what they’re thinking.

“I spent the day yesterday with my lawyer, Mitch. Arranging it so that you can come live with me because your mother can’t—”

Shawna interrupts, giving his father another look Mitch doesn’t understand. “You like it here with us, don’t you, Mitch?”

She reaches out to touch his arm.

He shakes her off and pushes his chair back from the table. “Don’t touch me,” he says, fighting back tears. “You’re not my mom. You’ll never be my mom.”

W
hen the doorbell rings, Fletch looks at Detective Summers, who is seated across the dining room table from him.

“They’ll get it,” he tells Fletch, who knows that “they” refers to the two uniformed officers who accompanied the detective to the house a short time ago.

Fletch leans back in his chair, his arms folded, and glances at David, who is seated beside him. The lawyer shrugs and rubs his beard.

Moments later, Fletch hears a familiar voice in the hall. Then, to his astonishment, his brother is in the room.

“Aidan!” he exclaims, rising and hurrying toward the familiar uniformed figure. “I didn’t expect you to get here so soon.”

“I came as fast as I could.”

To his horror, he feels himself start to sag in Aidan’s embrace. But he regains control quickly, hopefully before the detective—or David—has noticed his weakness. He doesn’t want them to see, to wonder, any more than they’ve already seen and wondered.

He introduces Aidan to the others, then tells him that the girls are safely at a schoolmate’s house. He hasn’t told them of Sharon’s disappearance.

“There’s been no word from Jeremiah?” Aidan asks, sinking into a chair and rubbing his eyes. There are dark circles beneath them, Fletch notices, as though he hasn’t slept.

“Nothing yet,” Fletch tells him. “But there’s something else. . . .”

“What?” Aidan looks from Fletch to the detective. “What’s wrong?”

“Your sister-in-law is also missing,” Detective Summers says grimly.

“Sharon’s missing?” Aidan’sjaw drops. “Since when?”

“She hasn’t been seen since last night, and her car was found abandoned in the commuter parking lot. They’re going over it for prints now.”

Aidan touches Fletch’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

Fletch shrugs. “I know it’s not likely, because of her car being found . . . and because of what’s happened here in town. But I keep thinking that maybe she went off by herself. I was just telling Detective Summers that Sharon has certain . . .
friends
. . . I’ve never met. Some of them are men.”

“In other words, she was having an affair,” the detective bluntly tells Aidan.

“Or affairs,” Fletch agrees.

Aidan looks shocked—or perhaps just pretends to, for the detective’s benefit. “
Sharon?
”

“You’re surprised, then, Mr. Gallagher?” the detective asks.

Aidan mumbles something, sinking into a chair beside Fletch. He looks at his brother. “You okay, Fletch?”

How is he supposed to answer that question? He decides not to, shifting his attention back to the detective.

Summers takes a sip from the takeout paper cup of coffee he brought with him when he arrived. It has to be lukewarm, or even cold, by now. Fletch idly wonders if he should offer to make a fresh pot in the kitchen.

But he doesn’t even know how. That’s something Sharon has always done, if they have company. She has always been responsible for getting beverages, putting things out on plates, asking people if they need anything.

As it hits Fletch that she’s not here to do that today, he waits for it to hit him—some kind of heartache or sense of loss.

But there’s nothing.

He’s only numb.

He looks up to find the detective watching him intently and quickly shifts his gaze away, hoping the older man can’t read his mind.

“J
oel!” Tasha calls to him from the doorstep as he prepares to get into his car and drive off to the airport. “You forgot to leave me your itinerary!”

He glances up, rushed. “I don’t have one this time.”

He doesn’t have one this time? Tasha is momentarily caught off guard. When he leaves town on business, his agency’s travel department always gives him a printout listing all the pertinent information: his flight numbers and times, the rental car confirmation, the reservation information and phone number of the hotel where he’s staying. His ritual is to put it under one of the magnets on the refrigerator door so that Tasha will know the details if she needs to locate him in an emergency. Plus, there’s something reassuring about knowing his flight number so that she can call the airline’s toll-free telephone number or check on the Internet to see that he’s landed safely. Joel is supposed to call her whenever he reaches his destination, but sometimes he forgets. And she always worries when he flies.

This time, however, as he’s been preparing to leave home, her worries have nothing to do with air safety issues. After he packed, there was barely time for hasty good-byes to her and the kids in the foyer before he dashed out the door with his briefcase and overnight bag.

Now Tasha watches helplessly as Joel climbs into his car on the driveway. “I’ll call you when I land and give you the hotel number,” he calls to her. “It’s the Park Hyatt.”

“What about the flight?” She raises her voice to be heard above the rain.

“I don’t know the number off the top of my head, Tash.” Now he looks faintly annoyed.

“Well, what airline?”

“United. From La Guardia.”

“To O’Hare? When do you take off and land?”

“I take off in about an hour and a half, and I have to check my bag, Tash”—he looks at his watch—“and I’ve got to go
now
! Good-bye!” With that, he slams his car door shut.

She watches him back out of the driveway, headlights on, wipers waving.

“Mommy?”

She looks down to see Hunter beside her on the doorstep.

“You’re all wet,” he observes, and she realizes he’s right. The wind-driven rain has dampened the front of her jeans and sweatshirt.

“Come on, sweetie, let’s go back inside,” she tells him.

“I wish Daddy didn’t have to go away on an airplane.”

So do I, she thinks, closing the door and making sure the lock and deadbolt are both solidly turned.

Aloud, she tells her son, “Don’t worry, Hunter, he’ll be back before you know it.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“Before my bedtime?”

“I don’t know.” Why didn’t he leave an itinerary this time? Does he really not have one?

Well, of course he really doesn’t. Why would he lie about that?

You don’t trust him
, Tasha acknowledges grimly.

“What are we going to do while Daddy’s gone?” Hunter asks.

“Why don’t we play Fishin’ Around?” she asks.

“That’s for babies,” Hunter complains.

“But Victoria can play, too,” Tasha points out, although she’s certain it won’t be a selling point for Hunter. She manages to convince him and promises that she’ll take them all out for dinner later, too.

Anything to take their minds—and her own—off the fact that Joel is gone and they’re alone.

T
he news of Sharon Gallagher’s disappearance reaches Paula via her cell phone when she’s driving back to town from the nursing home. The first thing she does is join the crowd of reporters that have migrated to the opposite end of Orchard Lane like ants on a sidewalk moving on to a fresher, tastier dropped crumb than the last.

A press conference has yet to be announced, so there isn’t much to do but stand in the rain, stare at the house, and wait. Every so often a police officer or detective arrives or leaves. One of the recent arrivals, a young rookie Paula vaguely recognizes, shows up with a cardboard tray loaded with takeout coffees from the deli in town. A few of the reporters tease him as he passes, and his ears go red below his cap, poor kid. Paula tries to catch his eye, to show him that she isn’t one of them, but he keeps his gaze on his shoes until he has disappeared into the house.

George DeFand is there. Paula manages to avoid him until she feels somebody tapping her on the shoulder about an hour into the stakeout.

“You need a bigger umbrella,” is his greeting.

Naturally, he has a big, expensive one with a tentlike spread and a hooked wooden handle. Seething, she clutches hers, with its straight plastic handle and one broken spoke, and asks, “Why? I’m perfectly dry.”

He shrugs. “So how’s it going? Get any leads? After all, you’re a local. You have the inside track, don’t you?”

“You don’t really think I’m going to scoop you, do you, George?” She keeps her tone light, but her expression should show him she’s deadly serious.

“Looks like we’ve got a serial killer on our hands,” he comments. “Three victims.”

Four
, she mentally amends, wondering how long it’ll be before somebody else looks more closely at Melissa Gallagher’s death. Considering these bloodhounds, not long. She has to work fast, or she’ll lose her edge.

“If you’ll excuse me, George, I’ve got to go make a phone call.”

“Don’t you have a cell phone?”

“I do, but the battery’s dead.”

“Here, use mine.” He produces the high-tech flip model she saw the other day and holds it out to her.

“No, thanks. I’ve got to make this call in private,” she tells him.

She uses a pay phone in front of the pizza place a few blocks away. She hadn’t intended to make this call until a little later, but any excuse to escape that smug bastard George DeFand.

The Bankses’ phone beeps busy.

She lingers for a while under her dripping umbrella, trying again, and then again.

Still no luck.

Finally she decides there’s only one thing to do. Show up on Tasha Banks’s doorstep and hope for the best.

E
loise Danforth Knowles has visited her late husband Norbett’s grave every day, rain or shine, since he passed away six months ago after a lengthy battle with colon cancer.

On days like this, with the chilly, wind-driven rain that’s been falling incessantly and is predicted to grow worse, Eloise wishes that her husband were entombed in the mausoleum, rather than out in the open. That way, she could spend more time talking to him, telling him the latest developments with the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

As she carefully parks her big black Lincoln Town Car on the deserted gravel cemetery lane, she promises herself she’ll only stay a few minutes. The roads are wet and it gets dark earlier and earlier every day. She doesn’t want to be caught out on the highway in this storm.

She ties her rain bonnet snugly beneath her chin, then takes the red rose from the seat beside her. She brings Norbett a rose every day, snipping them each morning from the plants he had so loved and nurtured in the vast greenhouse on their Bedford estate.

As she makes her way across the marshy grass, clutching her black umbrella above her head, she’s glad she changed from the pumps that she wore to church earlier. Now her feet are cozily encased in fur-lined boots.

She passes the series of monuments emblazoned with familiar surnames, telling herself that if she doesn’t have word before the end of this week about the stone she ordered for Norbett, she’ll call and inquire again. He deserves something more than the temporary metal plaque that marks his grave. Something as grand as this stone belonging to the Bancroft family. Or the next, belonging to the Armstrong—