The Last to Know (34 page)

What he has admitted to, however, is being a pervert.

No surprise there.

Look at his grandfather.

Fletch hasn’t spoken to Aidan since he went down to the station after Jeremiah turned himself in. He doesn’t blame his brother. He wouldn’t want to face anyone with that kind of story, either. It was Detective Summers who told Fletch about his nephew.

Fletch wonders if Sharon ever suspected the kid of sneaking into her lingerie drawers, of stealing her panties, her bras—of trying them on, even.

Apparently, he did the same thing at Rachel’s house the night he babysat.

Sure enough, his prints showed up all over her room.

And after the detectives badgered him long enough, the kid reportedly directed them to the spot in the woods where he had buried the bundle containing not just Sharon’s and Rachel’s undergarments, but Melissa’s, too.

Jeremiah broke down and admitted to keeping the stuff stashed in the woodshed behind the house, saying that he figured nobody would find it there. That nobody would stumble across him prancing around in women’s underwear.

Fucking fairy.

Fletch slams his hand down on the desk, shaking his head in disgust.

He should be grateful that he knows.

There isn’t enough evidence to convict Jeremiah of murder—not yet—but there’s more than enough for the police to hold him for a while.

And there’s more than enough evidence for them to shift their investigation away from Fletch, thank God. They’ve finally left him alone, the new widower, to grieve in peace.

By now, they have begun checking out his alibis. Making sure that he really was where he said he was yesterday, at the Station House Inn—which Jimmy backed up—and then at the gym. Apparently, he had hidden his intoxication well, or else Michael, his trainer, didn’t mention it to the police. If he had, that bastard Summers would definitely have brought it up.

Fueled by liquor and pent-up fury, Fletch had had a hell of a workout.

Liquor.

He could use a stiff drink right now. But not a workout. Just a drink—or two—and then bed.

He spins in his chair, reaching into a low cupboard behind the desk. As he takes out a bottle of single-malt scotch, an unexpected sound pierces the silence.

The telephone is ringing.

T
asha awakens to a loud pounding.

Startled, she sits up in bed, trying to gather her thoughts.

Did she take Tylenol PM again before bed? She must have. The last thing she remembers is watching the news. The television is still on, she notes vaguely, seeing the bluish glow in the room.

Her head feels fuzzy, and she’s having trouble waking up. . . .

That pounding sound again. What is it?

Facts come tumbling back at her. Joel is gone. . . .

She’s alone in the house with the kids. . . .

There’s a storm. . . .

Rachel.

Jane.

Sharon.

The ten o’clock newscast . . .

“Sharon Gallagher’s body has been found at an undisclosed location . . .”

More pounding.

Dazed, she realizes somebody’s knocking on the door. It’s directly below her window.

That means the side door facing the driveway, not the front door.

She gets out of bed.

Goes into the hall.

Something nags at her subconscious as she hurries down the steps. . . .

Something she should be noticing.

Remembering.

Filled with inexplicable apprehension, she can’t grasp whatever it is; her mind is too fuzzy, her head still too heavy with sleep.

This must be Joel knocking, she tells herself in the kitchen, trying to calm her fears as she reaches for the doorknob. Nobody ever uses the side entrance but the two of them. You can’t even see it from the street. Surely one of those reporters wouldn’t be so brazen as to prowl around the house and knock on the side door at this hour. . . .

Which hour?

Glancing at the illuminated dial of the clock on the stove, she sees that it’s past one in the morning.

The dead of night she thinks, not liking the phrase even as it settles into her muddled brain.

Well, of course it must be Joel. That’s why he wasn’t at any of the hotels.

An entire scenario flits into her mind. Stacey got it wrong about the personal day. Maybe the perfect secretary isn’t so perfect. Maybe Joel flew to Chicago, then realized he couldn’t stay. He was too worried about her. He tried to call, but the phone was off the hook. So he flew back home. Along the way, he lost his keys.

Yeah, right
, she tells herself, poised in front of the door. She can see a silhouette outlined against the frosted glass, and it’s not tall enough to be Joel’s.

She flicks the light switch beside the door to illuminate the step, but nothing happens. It must have burned out again, she thinks vaguely.

“Who is it?” she calls, her hand poised on the doorknob.

“It’s me. Paula Bailey,” a familiar voice calls back.

Relieved—and perplexed—Tasha opens the door.

As she does, she realizes that the deadbolt hasn’t been locked. Only the one on the knob, the one that, if it’s turned, locks automatically when you close the door.

But didn’t she check the deadbolt several times before going to bed?

Well, didn’t she?

She tries to think clearly, but it’s impossible. Her mind is still foggy.

Paula stands on the step, bundled into a dark-colored parka that glistens with rain. “I’m so sorry to wake you,” she tells Tasha. “I tried calling, but your phone is still . . .”

Still what? Oh. “I know. Off the hook.” She yawns. Her brain just isn’t working. It’s that damned Tylenol PM. When did she take it? She has no recollection. How long before it wears off?

“Can I come in?” Paula is asking. “Tasha, I’ve just found out something you’re not going to believe.”

M
itch bunches his soggy pillow beneath his head, sniffling and listening to the storm.

His father is out in this.

And so is his mother.

Shawna told him that Dad had gone to try and find her to tell her the news.

About Grandpa.

The nursing home has tried calling her at home a couple of times and has left messages. She hasn’t returned their calls. She hasn’t answered her cell phone, either, Shawna said.

Somehow, the nursing home figured out that they should call Dad’s house to say that Grandpa died quietly today in his sleep.

Mom is going to be so upset when she finds out.

There’s no way Mitch can leave her alone after this.

No way he could ever come to live with Dad and Shawna . . .

Not that he wants to, he reminds himself hastily.

T
asha hands Paula a towel from the downstairs bathroom and watches her rub it over her face and hair. She’s soaked and shivering.

“Are you all right?” Tasha asks.

“I’ll be fine. I just need to warm up for a minute,” Paula tells her. “Do you . . . look, you can say no if you want, and I’ll understand, but can I please smoke a cigarette?”

The first thought in Tasha’s mind is that it would bother Joel to see somebody smoking in their house. He hates cigarettes.

“Go ahead,” she says, finding a coffee mug in the sink for Paula to use as an ashtray.

“Thanks. It’s a disgusting habit, I know, but I haven’t managed to quit yet.”

Tasha watches Paula light a cigarette and take a deep drag.

Then, stifling another huge yawn, she asks, “What is it that you found out?” She’s still so sleepy . . .

But bed is the farthest thing from her mind, especially after Paula’s next words.

“It’s about Fletch Gallagher, Tasha.”

“What about him?” she asks nervously, struggling to keep her voice level.

Does Paula know?

About her and Fletch?

Tasha’s mind whirls back to that day more than two years ago. It was August. One of those blazing hot days when there isn’t a breath of wind or a cloud in the sky, and the heat shimmers off the pavement

Tasha was outside, washing the car, wearing shorts and a bikini top.

Joel was at work. Hunter was in preschool, Victoria napping in her crib.

He strolled down the street with a dog on a leash. She recognized the black Lab, but not the man. Usually Sharon Gallagher, whom Tasha knew well enough only to say a casual hello, walked that Lab.

This, she learned when he stopped to introduce himself, was Sharon Gallagher’s husband. She had heard all about him, of course. Fletch Gallagher was the star baseball player turned sportscaster.

It was all she could do to keep her eyes focused on his face as he chatted with her, mentioning that he was glad there was no Mets game today because he really needed a day off.

He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of faded denim cutoffs, his tanned chest, washboard stomach muscles, and bulging biceps like something out of a male pinup calendar.

The next thing she knew, she was inviting him in for lemonade. Or maybe he invited himself.

And soon after that, she found herself in his arms in the kitchen, with him kissing her. She doesn’t know how it happened. It certainly hadn’t been her intention when she let him into her house. Somehow, they were talking one minute, and then he just leaned closer, and his lips were on hers before she could protest.

Okay, so it wasn’t one-sided.

She had responded instinctively.

She definitely kissed him back, and Joel and the kids were the farthest thing from her mind.

He was just so damned sexy. He made her feel incredibly desirable.

And it had been so long since Joel kissed her like that. There had been the first baby, and then the house, and then the second baby, and his job, and her exhaustion. . . .

She still remembers the erotic heat of Fletch Gallagher’s lips on hers, the smell of the coconut sunscreen she had applied earlier wafting up as her bare, damp skin slid against his.

It didn’t lasted long.

Just as she realized what they were doing . . .

Just as alarm bells went off in her head and she commanded herself that she had to stop, remembering who she was, that she was married, they both were . . .

His wife arrived.

Sharon Gallagher had come looking for her husband. Seeing the dog tied to the lamppost in front of the Banks home, she had knocked at the screen door. The inner door—the one with no window, the one that would have blocked Sharon Gallagher’s view of the interior of the house—was wide open that day because of the heat.

Tasha and Fletch were in the part of the kitchen directly across from the front door.

Sharon Gallagher had seen everything.

Tasha will never forget the expression on her face.

She didn’t look particularly shocked, or even disturbed. She simply said, “There you are, Fletch.”

Then she turned and walked away.

“It’s okay, I’ll call you,” Fletch whispered to Tasha before hurrying after his wife.

To her utter amazement, he did. He called her the next day. And the next. It took him a while to get the hint that she had absolutely no intention of getting involved with him. And then he was gone when the Mets left town again, and by the time he came back, she had learned to avoid him.

Tasha will never forget those first tense days after the kiss, when, shaken by her own indiscretion, she lived in utter fear that Joel would find out. That Sharon Gallagher would tell him, or would tell somebody else, and that sooner or later it would get back to Joel.

But it never had.

As far as Tasha knows, nobody besides her and Fletch and Sharon is aware of what happened that steamy August day in this very kitchen. For whatever reason, Sharon Gallagher apparently kept what she had seen to herself.

And now she’s dead.

Now only Tasha and Fletch know.

Unless Fletch told somebody else . . .

Rachel.

Fletch could have told Rachel. They were together. They were lovers.

But if Rachel had known about Fletch and Tasha, she never let on. She kept quiet about it. Which wasn’t Rachel’s style . . .

“Tasha,” Paula Bailey is saying.

Tasha shifts her attention to Paula, idly watching a wisp of cigarette smoke floating around her head.

“Tasha, Fletch Gallagher had an affair with Jane Kendall, too. It wasn’t just Rachel.”

“It wasn’t just Rachel?” Tasha echoes.

Jane Kendall. Perfect pretty Jane. She had been involved with another man? With someone like Fletch? But how . . . ?

But Tasha knows how. She’s been there. Left behind by a busy working husband, lonely in her suburban house day after day, vulnerable to a man like Fletch Gallagher, a man who was so clearly looking for trouble . . .

“But . . .” The truth sinks in. “Jane Kendall is dead, too.”

“I know. And so is Melissa Gallagher. His brother’s wife. The one who died in that fire.”

“Are you saying he was involved with her, too? That the fire was no accident?”

“That’s what I’m—what’s that?” Paula asks, breaking off in mid-sentence.

Tasha follows her gaze.

She’s pointing at something on the tall counter that separates the kitchen from the family room area.

The countertops are so neat, Tasha vaguely notes. Joel tidied everything before he left this morning.

There’s nothing on the counter Paula’s pointing to except the canisters and the paper towel holder and . . .

And . . .

What’s that?

Slowly Tasha crosses the room toward the flat, rectangular object in front of the row of cannisters.

Her heart is pounding.

She sees what it is.

A puzzle. A big cardboard one, assembled on the counter.

A puzzle isn’t unusual. The kids have so many puzzles. . . .

Except that the counter is high above their heads.

And it wasn’t here when she went up to bed.

She distinctly remembers cleaning the kitchen, throwing the pizza box in the garbage, wiping everything down, turning off the light.

Okay.

So maybe one of the kids . . .

The kids.

Tasha’s heart beats faster.

Again, she tries to grasp the nagging thought that darted into her mind earlier, and then out again. Struggling to capture it, she stares at a puzzle she’s never seen before. A nursery rhyme puzzle.