One Little Secret (ARC)

by Cate Holahan

  Louis rounded the car and reached for her hand. Jenny quickly raised it instead, waving good-bye to the patrolman before her husband could grab her fingers. She could feel Louis waiting at her side, his energy tugging at her like a current.

  She broke free of it, jogging past him to the glass front door, framed by the already parted barn doors. Inputting the unlock code took a moment, enabling Louis to slide an arm beneath her dangling purse and grab her waist. He pressed his lips to her temple, inches above the bruise still healing from the prior week. “I love you,” he said.

  Jenny controlled her shudder, murmuring something that he could interpret as her returning the sentiment. Behind them, shells rattled beneath the cruiser’s chassis like change in a dryer. Jenny opened the door, looking over her shoulder to watch the marked car turn onto the main road before entering the house.

  The place felt searched, even though it hadn’t been ransacked. Sand, likely jostled from police boots, littered the cement floor in the great room. One of the couch cushions had been tilted forward. The recycling bin had been pulled from its former spot and the plastic bag with the empty wine bottles removed.

  The scotch, however, still occupied its last known location on the kitchen counter. Jenny wrested free of Louis’s groping presence for the second time and headed toward the near-empty bottle. “I need a drink.” She pointed to the whiskey. “Grab you one for the road, too?”

  Louis hovered by the couch, pulling at his bottom lip as he often did when he wanted to discuss something uncomfortable. Jenny warned him off without words, looking him in the eye and unwrapping the red scarf coiled around her slender neck. She balled the fabric in her fist and tilted her head back, displaying the potato-shaped swellings in purple, yellow, and red. “My throat is killing me. All those questions.” She groaned and picked up the bottle. “I need to steady my nerves. Would you get the bags?”

  Jenny knew that Louis would never refuse a “man’s job” like carrying heavy luggage. He dutifully turned around to the steps and headed to the second floor. She watched him climb. He held the banister as he ascended, releasing it for only a moment at the top step. A buzzing called his attention to his back pocket.

  He answered after he was securely on the landing. “Hello? Hi, Ally!”

  Jenny tried to ignore the stabbing pain in her chest at hearing her daughter’s name. Ally was a daddy’s girl. She’d missed him enough after twenty-four hours to check in. She hadn’t called Jenny at all.

  Jenny opened the dishwasher drawer and withdrew two of the tumblers from the prior night. As she placed their wide, hexagonal bottoms on the counter, she tried to think only of their heft and not what she planned to do with them, of how losing Louis would rip through her daughter’s heart.

  Jenny grabbed the whiskey and filled one glass. She cursed under her breath, pretending to have spilled some in case Louis watched, and then peeled three sheets of paper towels from a roll beside the sink. The bedroom door shut as Louis went to get the bags. Jenny started to work faster, smoothing the paper towels into a pad atop the counter, telling herself all the while that Ally would recover from what she was about to do. A torn muscle, as excruciating as it was, could be repaired. Jenny knew how. And the heart was just a muscle. She’d devote herself to replacing the love and affection Ally missed from her dad, again becoming her daughter’s friend and confidant. And Ally, whether she knew it or not, would grow up healthier and happier without an abusive man in the house.

  Jenny dropped the purse hanging off her shoulder onto the counter. She sifted through it for her prescription bottles and then dug both hands inside to open the sleep aids, afraid that if she put the bottle on the counter, Louis might pop out of the room unexpectedly and see it. As fast as she could, she plucked five from the container, placed them on the paper towels, and then folded the sheets over the white, oblong pills, creating a zolpidem sandwich. A ten-milligram Ambien was enough to put a grown man to sleep for hours. Fifty milligrams wouldn’t kill Louis, but it would make sure he was conked out when she drove him to a deserted beach later, filled his pockets with stones, and dumped him in the water. She’d report him missing after a few hours, saying he’d taken the car after claiming to not be able to live with himself for what he’d done to Rachel. Unlike her, the police didn’t know that Louis could live with himself no matter what.

  Jenny picked up an empty tumbler and brought the heavy base down hard against the bump in the paper towels. She slammed it down a second time, twisting afterward to really crush the pills into a powder. Using the paper towel like a funnel, she poured the flecks into the glass and then tossed the sheets into the sink’s garbage disposal drain. She poured water on the paper and then flicked the switch affixed to the backsplash, grinding up the evidence that wouldn’t be dissolved by liquor. Finally, she poured three inches of whiskey over the powdered pills.

  The liquid’s alcohol content was sufficiently high that she didn’t even need a spoon to dissolve the pieces. Swirling the glass for a few seconds did the trick. The resulting amber mixture reminded her of Louis’s hair in the sunlight.

  Jenny ignored the emotional cramp that accompanied the observation. Pain didn’t matter. She needed to get to the end of this.

  Jenny downed her unadulterated shot for courage and then gingerly climbed the stairs, holding Louis’s tumbler tight to her chest. The drugs would take about ten minutes to hit his system. After that, he’d become sluggish and sloppy. His speech would slur. His eyes would glaze. He’d say things that only made sense to his subconscious.

  “Louis.” Jenny called to him through the master bedroom door as she ascended to the second floor. “Honey, are you ready?” She knocked. “Are you still talking to Ally?”

  The door flung back. Louis barreled from the room like a beast under attack—nostrils flared, eyes wild with fury. He charged at Jenny, driving her back toward the floating staircase. She struggled to find the root of his anger. Had he told Ally about Rachel and she’d become upset? Had he accused Ben and Ally had refused to believe it? Why was he looking at her like that?

  Jenny extended the glass in her hand. “I poured you that whiskey.”

  Louis grabbed the drink and threw it back like a shot of tequila. He smacked his lips together and then brought the crystal up to his face. For a moment, he seemed to admire its craftsmanship, checking out the angles of the thick walls, weighing its solid base. “You fucked him, didn’t you?”

  The question registered just before Louis smashed the glass into the side of her head.

  “She saw the whole thing, you whore.” The words wafted over to Jenny, cushioned in white noise. A fizzing rushed through her ear canal. She saw shoes: leather moccasins dyed a deep indigo that she’d bought Louis specifically for the vacation. He loomed over her. He was saying something. Yelling something.

  “Chloe and Ally were in the fucking backyard. They saw everything. You and him. Right there in the window.”

  The right shoe lifted and pulled back. Instinctively, Jenny wrapped her arms over her bleeding head and brought her knees to cover her vital organs. She screamed, a reflex to the pain that she knew was imminent. The foot swung down, slamming into her shins with a fury.

  “Right there in the fucking window.”

  Jenny heard the snap of her splintering fibula. Her body reacted to the break as though it had plunged underwater. Instinct took over, trapping the air in her lungs. Blood rushed to her head with all the pain of a brain freeze.

  “Chloe wanted to wait to tell her mom until they’d gone to camp, apparently, so she wouldn’t be around them fighting. Ally didn’t even want me to know at all. She had to beg Chloe not to tell Rachel it was you.” A second kick landed in the center of her solar plexus. Pain burned the air in Jenny’s lungs. She gasped and coughed as she curled into a tighter ball. “But when Chloe told her that Rachel was dead, Ally was afraid you were running off with her best friend’s dad.”

  Needles stabbed into Jenny’s bare skin. As she brough
t her arms to cover her face, her skin seemed to shimmer with glitter. No. Not glitter. Glass. The tumbler had shattered. Louis had drunk before it had broken, hadn’t he? She couldn’t think straight with the throbbing in her rib cage and the pounding in her head. Either way, the pills would take time. And she wouldn’t survive ten minutes of this.

  She pressed her left hand into the shrapnel-covered ground and twisted her knees under her, trying to stand on her good leg. Before she could rise, Louis grabbed her hair, yanking her back onto her haunches. He crouched in front of her, his features twisted into a gargoyle’s expression. “You must think you’re really special, huh? You can have any man you want. Is that it? Even the married playboy next door.”

  A stinging slap on her mouth sharpened her understanding. Chloe and Ally had known about the affair. The call had been Ally telling Louis. And Louis was going to kill her.

  Jenny didn’t waste her energy on excuses. Nothing she said would matter. Her only hope was to wrestle free of her husband’s grasp and somehow escape down the stairs before he could shove her, headfirst, onto the concrete floor below. Though she thrashed in his grasp, he managed to hold on, despite the drugs coursing through his system.

  “How many times did you go over there for a lay, Jen?” Louis brought his face closer to hers. Jenny wrenched herself back in one final attempt to break free. Louis held on and screamed in her face. “How many fucking times?”

  He’d beaten her so many times. She needed it to end.

  “Well?” Hair ripped from her scalp as Louis yanked her upright. Her broken leg buckled, bringing her back down to her knees despite Louis’s grip on her hair. “You don’t deny it?”

  He dragged her toward the stairs. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She remembered her husband as he’d been once. The young doctor who, after nights of interrupted sleep and sewing people back together, had come home to stroke her pregnant belly and assuage her nerves. The father who had built dollhouses, sat for tea parties, and taught Ally to ride a pink bike with a Hello Kitty bell. The husband who had carried her over the threshold of their home, caressed her, taken care of her. She’d loved that Louis. But he’d died long ago. And now he wanted to take her with him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE DAY AFTER

  Susan talked with her hands when excited. Gabby sat in her office chair, trying to maintain a concrete expression as she watched Susan’s emphatic air chops. A petty part of her hoped to end the conversation in the same abrupt way of their earlier interview—this time with Gabby thanking Susan for outlining the opposition’s “ridiculous” case. A larger part of her wanted to usher the woman from her room, drive with the sirens blaring to the bed she’d abandoned eighteen hours earlier, and collapse atop the mattress.

  Trumping all those selfish desires, however, was an ache to arrest the right person. Though Gabby’s head told her that the businessman in lockup was the most likely culprit, her soul lacked faith that she’d put away the right man. Slapping cuffs on Nadal should have felt righteous. Instead, she’d felt wrong—not to mention worried that the prosecutors’ office would agree.

  She didn’t know whether arresting Louis would feel any different. At the house, the redhead had been true to stereotype, hot-tempered and quick to hurl accusations. It was possible he’d killed Rachel in a rage about the lawsuit, had his wife cover for him, and then fingered Ben to deflect blame. But since Gabby hadn’t personally interviewed him, her sixth sense was silent on the matter.

  “Louis’s whole ego is wrapped up in being this great doctor,” Susan continued. “The prospect of losing his license would have driven him crazy. Believe me. He killed Rachel. You can’t charge Nadal.”

  Gabby rotated her chair a couple of centimeters to either side, using activity to fight off the sleep she desperately needed. “Reasonable doubt is for trials, Mrs. Ahmadi. We have a case against your husband.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Gabby stood, signaling the end to Susan’s audience. “I’ll talk to Louis first before filing my report on Nadal’s arrest. That’s the best I can offer.”

  Susan’s arm flung toward Gabby’s bookcase. A clock sat on the indicated shelf. “You better hurry. One of your officers already drove him and Jenny to their car.”

  “What?” Gabby rounded the desk. She’d told Detective DeMarco not to let anyone leave. He must have thought Nadal’s arrest had changed things. “I’m on it.” Gabby opened the door, letting Susan out first. “I’ll let you know.”

  With the siren wailing, Gabby reached the house in five minutes. Two vehicles sat outside the rental. Gabby exited her cruiser and approached the entrance. The late-afternoon sun reflected in the house’s windows, preventing her from seeing inside. She pressed the bell on the electronic lock. Through the door, she heard the buzzer and what sounded like a man shouting. Pressing her face to its tinted glass panels revealed nothing save for a darkened view of the empty foyer and tunnel-like hallway. She heard the sound again. A man was definitely yelling.

  She hustled around the side of the house and into the backyard, keeping her right arm bent by her holster, hand angled in the ready position. The glare that had blinded her in the front now illuminated the view through the glass wall. Gabby saw the white couch, its pillows askew, and a whiskey bottle atop the kitchen counter. The male roar was louder, though its source remained hidden.

  A female scream drew Gabby’s attention to the second floor. Louis stood on the mezzanine level, his right leg bent behind him as though he were about to kick a soccer ball. By his feet, Jenny lay curled in an armadillo defense—bony arms covering her face, hands spread over the top of her head, knees tucked to her chest.

  “Stop! Police!”

  Gabby’s command went unheeded. Louis’s foot slammed into Jenny’s leg, sending her rounded form several inches closer to the open stairwell. Gabby watched through the windows as though she’d stumbled upon a drive-in theater showing a horror flick. Louis crouched beside his wife and wrapped his fist in her hair. He began yanking her upright, pushing her toward the open stairs.

  He’s going to toss her over. A surge of adrenaline overcame Gabby’s paralyzing shock. She ran to the door and its electronic lock. Four numbers, she remembered. A date in history. One of them had been a nine, she thought.

  Her overwhelmed and exhausted brain would never deliver the correct digits. Louis’s curses pierced the windows. He was dragging Jenny by her hair toward the staircase, screaming epithets and questions.

  “How many times, Jen? How many fucking times?”

  Gabby grabbed her gun, aimed the muzzle at the glass, and pulled the trigger. The explosion was followed by a sharp crack. A perfect circle punctured the tempered glass. An alarm screamed to life, alternating tones like an ambulance siren between blaring robotic warnings. “Attention. Glass break detected. The police have been called. Attention …”

  Gabby wrapped the hem of her jacket around the Glock’s hot barrel, holding the pistol like a tomahawk. She rammed the grip against the bullet hole. This time, glass sprayed. She switched her weapon into her left hand and stuck her right through the opening she’d created. Shards scratched white lines into her brown knuckles and tore at her sleeve as she stretched down to the handle.

  The door lock released. Inside the house, the alarm was as loud as if Gabby had been outside her cruiser with the siren blaring. She rushed into the great room, added her right hand to the left already gripping the Glock. Her index finger found the trigger. “Police. Step away,” Gabby screamed, loud and shrill as the alarm. “Step away or I’ll shoot.”

  Louis released his wife’s hair but remained standing over her, positioned to send Jenny hurtling down the staircase with a hard kick to her side.

  “Step away!” Gabby brought the gun up higher and gazed down the barrel, signaling to Louis that he was in her sights.

  “She did it!” He pointed to the mangled person at his feet. “She killed Rachel.”

  Jenny appeared incapable of hu
rting anyone. Her arms wrapped around her torso as though holding her ribs together. Blood matted her dark hair and dribbled down the right side of her face. Deep purple welts encircled her bare neck.

  “I was trying to protect her,” Louis shouted, ignoring the contrary evidence in front of him. “I lied and said she was with me last night. But she was out there.” The finger accusing Jenny flung toward the wall of windows. “I saw her fighting Rachel from the balcony. She tossed her into the water.”

  Jenny pressed a hand to the floor, pushing herself up on her side. She tried to say something, but all that emerged were a series of sputtering coughs. Gabby didn’t need the woman to defend herself. From Gabby’s vantage point, it was clear who was the killer.

  Louis grasped the railing atop the mezzanine’s glass wall. “I thought she’d found out about the suit and confronted Rachel. I thought I had to cover for her. I thought she’d done it for me. For us.” Louis’s shoulders shook. For a moment, he looked as broken as his battered wife.

  “Come down.” Gabby gestured with her weapon to the open staircase. “Come down and we can talk about it.”

  He took a step toward the landing, keeping his hands glued to the banister. Gabby lowered her gun to her chest, ready to aim again should his anger return. Tears squeezed from Louis’s squinted eyes. “She was sleeping with Ben!” His voice rose another impossible decibel. “She did it. But she didn’t do it for me.”

  Gabby again shouted for him to come down, adding noise to the cacophony. The alarm, the mechanical alerts, the anguished shouts—it all condensed in the room’s double-height ceilings before pouring on top of her.

  Louis turned toward Jenny. As he’d accused her, she’d managed to inch backward from the landing and grasp the top of the glass knee wall. “You’re lying.” She pulled herself upright, leaning heavily against the partition. “You did it. You! I was afraid of you!”