by Cate Holahan
“Liar.” Spittle gathered in the corners of Louis’s mouth.
“Look at me!” Jenny shouted. “Look what you’ve done to me. You killed her!”
Louis released the banister and stepped onto the stair landing, toward his wife. His legs vibrated. “I hate you, Sabrina. You emasculating witch. I see your broom.”
“Do not come any closer to her!” Gabby looked down her gun slide, targeting right below Louis’s shoulder, the widest part of him as he stood with his side facing her. If she shot too low, the bullet could hit the glass, breaking the wall that kept Jenny from falling twenty feet onto the concrete floor below.
“I see you flying like my mother.” Louis took a stumbling step toward his accuser. “Above us all. You have her powers.”
“Stay back or I’ll shoot.” Gabby changed her position as she shouted, assuming a better spot to put a bullet into Louis before he could lay another hand on his wife—before he could murder another woman.
“I always knew what you were!” Louis pointed a shaking finger at Jenny. “You won’t hurt me. You’ll fly to hell.”
Louis lunged at his wife. Gabby pulled the trigger.
For a moment, the shot’s explosion hushed everyone and everything in the room. It seemed to compress the sound waves, enabling Gabby to hear the bullet’s whizz through the air toward where Louis had stood moments before. Jenny broke the relative silence with a scream so loud it hushed the alarm. The wail had one word: Louis.
He fell forward as the shot still rang out. Jenny extended her arms, as if to save him from going over the balcony. Instead of grasping his shirt, however, Jenny’s palms landed flat on his stomach.
Louis stumbled backward. Gabby watched, helpless, as his heel slipped over the lip of the top step. Suddenly, he was falling off the stair, limbs flailing, desperately swimming in the air. Gabby looked away before he hit the ground. Still, she heard the crack of his head against the concrete, a hammer splitting a melon. It resounded louder than the blaring alarm, Jenny’s sobs, the glass-break announcements, and Gabby’s own panting breaths. She heard it on replay as she approached Louis’s body.
She let her eyes travel from his twisted limbs up his torso. Gabby didn’t see a bullet wound. But blood and brain matter was seeping from Louis’s broken skull. The man was dead. And she’d helped kill him.
PART IV
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE WEEK AFTER
When it came time for her own funeral, Susan wanted a closed casket. She made the decision as she examined Rachel’s waxen face in the open coffin, her pale skin unnaturally tanned with layers of beige makeup, her thin lips sewn into a disapproving line. Rachel didn’t look at peace. She looked pissed.
Susan placed a hand over Rachel’s cold fingers and mumbled a Hail Mary. The prayer was one of the few she remembered from her Catholic upbringing and seemed fitting coming from one mother to another. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, swapping an apology for the amen. “I was so upset about what I thought you’d done, I didn’t realize you were in danger.”
Susan took a breath, rose from the kneeler, and retreated to a small section of unadorned wall. Lilies and white roses overwhelmed the room, springing from baskets and snaking around mounted wreaths the size of small Christmas trees. Their heavy perfume clouded the air like spring pollen.
There were more bouquets than people, Susan thought. Not that the crowd was small. A mix of Rachel’s relatives, coworkers, and real friends filled the room. Many parents in town had shown as well, though not as many as Susan had expected for an involved PTA mom with two kids in the local schools. Summer vacations had likely kept many away. Few could afford to cancel a trip because of the death of an acquaintance.
Nadal sat across the room beside both Jonah and Jamal, whom they’d pulled from camp to support Rachel’s son Will. Jonah looked intently at his hands, hidden by the rows of chairs, likely worrying the silent balls and buttons of the fidget cube in his lap. Jamal stared at the front of the room, studying the adults in line to pay their respects. Both her boys wore charcoal suits, as they likely would have at a trial.
The tears Susan couldn’t shed for the wax figure in the coffin flooded her eyes. A false accusation had come so close to tearing apart her family. Even if Nadal had ultimately prevailed in court, the seriousness of the charges would have kept him in jail until the jury verdict, depriving her sons of a father and her of a husband. And the allegations alone would have inflicted irreparable damage to Nadal’s reputation, undoubtedly forcing his removal as CEO of the company he’d founded and ruining its chances of ever going public, possibly even rendering him permanently unemployable.
Moreover, a not-guilty verdict had never been guaranteed, despite Susan’s posturing to the contrary in front of the detectives. Court cases, she knew, were about making juries want to believe in a defendant’s innocence as much as they were about facts. Her husband was a wealthy man of visible Middle Eastern descent, with Muslim parents, who worked for an industry reviled for taking jobs from “average Americans,” and he was being sued by the parents of a deceased nine-year-old boy. He was a good man. But the wrong twelve people might not have been able to see that. For a moment at the beach house, Susan herself hadn’t.
She swiped at the drop streaking her cheek and then scanned the crowd for the families that had not been as fortunate as her own. Ben stood at the open entrance to the private room, the somber head of a heart-wrenching receiving line that included his son and a younger woman Susan assumed was Rachel’s sister. His daughter, Chloe, sat with Rachel’s parents across from the coffin, their pale figures like wilting jasmine in a stark black vase.
Susan wanted to say something to them, to beg forgiveness for all the ways she’d failed their mother. She’d been in the backyard with Louis and had watched him go upstairs. Had she not gotten so drunk (she wasn’t drinking nowadays), perhaps she would have heard him leaving the house and asked what he’d been up to. Being seen might have made Louis rethink his plans.
But she couldn’t explain all that. The respectful thing, Susan decided, was to abstain from the receiving line and not remind Chloe of her mother’s final day. Her family would sign the book on their way out, which would be soon. Jonah couldn’t take this many strangers for much longer.
Susan weaved through the crowd and then shimmied past seated guests to the open chair beside her husband. Nadal patted her side as she sat, acknowledging her return. She leaned into him, her chest tight with emotion, and mouthed a thank-you to God for sparing her family the grief that had befallen the others. They’d dodged enough bullets to suggest divine intervention.
Susan followed up her silent thank-you with a whispered plea to help Rachel’s children. She couldn’t say why God hadn’t intervened for Will and Chloe. They were truly the innocent ones in all of this.
A commotion by the door interrupted Susan’s prayers. Ben and Will stood side by side in front of the entrance, barricading the viewing area rather than welcoming people inside. The already quiet room hushed. Susan rose to better see over the turned heads of Rachel’s family members.
Jenny stood in the arched entrance to the room, hunched like a much older woman. A silver cuff shone on each arm, connected to the crutches that supported Jenny’s hands and, judging from her stance, the majority of her weight. She wore a knee-length black dress. A plaster cast protruded below it, covering the length of her right calf.
Susan had heard of Jenny’s injuries through the police. She’d been waiting at the station for Detective Watkins’s return when the desk officer had suddenly begun dispatching units to the beach house’s address, shouting about a man beating his wife half to death.
Hearing of Louis’s brutality, however, had not prepared Susan for the evidence. Jenny’s bottom lip was scabbed and swollen. A jam-colored stain spread beside her mouth. Yellow and green bruises encircled her neck. Her black eye had finally healed, though, allowing an undistracted look into her sad, doe eyes.
“Ally
wanted to pay her respects,” Jenny said.
Susan had missed the presence of Jenny’s daughter. She squinted at the entrance, noticing the young woman partially shielded by Jenny’s frail figure. The girl had ash-blonde curls and an incongruous tan. It was Ally, Susan realized with a start. Jenny’s daughter had bleached the auburn hair she’d inherited from her father.
Ben looked over his shoulder at his own daughter—her face hidden in her grandmother’s chest—and then back at Jenny. His expression befitted a man lashed to the rack. “Chloe knows.” He dropped his head. “Maybe just Ally.”
Susan couldn’t make sense of Ben’s words, though Jenny’s lack of movement while Ally went inside made their meaning clear enough. Jenny wasn’t allowed in. Ben couldn’t welcome the spouse of his wife’s murderer.
Ally approached the coffin, head down to avoid the crowd gawking as though she’d been a coconspirator in her father’s crime. Her frail shoulders shook with sobs. The line waiting to have a look at the mortician’s work retreated, allowing her to cut in front. Ally dropped to the kneeler with a choked groan.
Jenny looked on, her bruised mouth wrenched in pain, unable to soothe her daughter without causing Ben’s suffering family more grief.
Ally bawled as though her own parent lay in the casket. A murmur rippled through the seats. Female voices mumbled about appropriateness and decorum. Imagine how hard it is for Chloe, seeing her. It was her father.
Susan shuffled from her row and then walked around the viewing line. Gingerly, she placed a hand on Ally’s shoulder. She wanted to tell her she wasn’t responsible for her father’s actions and that she didn’t need to feel ashamed. But she also didn’t want to presume to know how Ally was feeling. Sometimes, silent support was the best kind.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Hansen. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Ally’s apologies dribbled out between sobs. Susan helped her stand, wrapping an arm around her side. She guided her back to where her mother had stood moments before, beside a frightened-looking Ben.
Jenny had already left the room. Susan spied her hobbled form over Ben’s shoulder, heading toward the exit. She released Ally to follow. Before the girl could hurry toward her mom, Ben stopped her with a pat on the arm. “Hey, Ally.” A smile materialized on his strained face. “No one blames you, kiddo. I hope you know that. What happened is not your fault.”
Ally lifted her head for the first time since arriving, looking directly into Ben’s dark-blue eyes. “I know, Mr. Hansen. I know it’s not my fault.” She pointed in Jenny’s direction. “But what happened to my mom is yours.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE WEEK AFTER
Gabby leaned against a column supporting the covered entrance to Dina Collette’s home, the lab report rolled in her right hand like a riot stick. Mariel’s urine had tested positive for the prescription sedative zolpidem. The technician with whom Gabby had spoken that morning had insisted that the levels he’d detected were typical of drug abusers, or those who had developed such a tolerance to the medication that they required multiple pills to sleep. Mariel hadn’t struck Gabby as either an addict or an insomniac.
Dina emerged from the front door, her long legs extending from the white skirt of a tennis dress. The day was right for the sport. Bright, sunny, with little humidity and a firm breeze off the water. For once, Gabby wasn’t sweating in her suit jacket as she waited outside. Annoyance, however, had prickled the hairs on her neck. She hadn’t asked the housekeeper for Dina—she’d asked for Mariel.
“Detective Watkins. Good to see you again.” Dina extended her hand for a shake, forcing Gabby to shift the paper baton to her nondominant side. “I read that you saved a woman from being murdered by her husband after he’d killed their neighbor. Kudos to you. You’re a real hero.”
Gabby’s neck grew hot. The h-word had been bandied about to the point where it had become embarrassing. As far as Gabby was concerned, a hero would have brought Louis in to answer for his crime, not watched him fall fifteen feet, headfirst, onto concrete. The other detectives in the department, however, didn’t have as high a standard. When DeMarco and her colleagues called her “sergeant,” they no longer sounded snarky.
“I was fortunate that I got there in time,” Gabby demurred. “I’d hoped to speak with Miss Cruz. The toxicology reports came back, and it’s looking like she was drugged, as you believed. There was zolpidem in her system.”
Recognition flashed in Dina’s eyes. “Zolpidem. That’s Ambien, right? I have a prescription for that to help me sleep. Ever since having the twins, the slightest creak wakes me.”
Gabby tried to keep the disappointment from her face. Though she highly doubted that Mariel would have known the contents of Dina’s medicine cabinet—much less have stolen from it—any access she’d had to the drug would be a boon to the defense. Andy Baird’s attorney would argue that his accuser had sneaked one or two before coming to his party.
“You’re not missing any pills, are you?”
A pink flush crept up Dina’s slender neck. “Oh, I wouldn’t know unless the whole bottle was gone. I don’t take it every night, only when I really need a solid eight hours. You can’t drink on them.”
Gabby imagined Dina repeating the same damning sentence to the county prosecutor. The drugs were the only evidence keeping Mariel’s case from being he-said/she-said. Dina suggesting that her pills could have disappeared without her knowledge might make the county pass on the case altogether.
“I didn’t realize they could be used as a date-rape drug,” Dina continued. She shook her head in disgust. “Those bastards.”
Bastards with money for a good lawyer that will probably get away with it, Gabby thought. The eagerness to speak with Mariel that Gabby had felt minutes earlier started souring, a fruit going bad after one day too long in the basket. She needed to salvage it. If Mariel sensed that the detective on her case didn’t have hope for getting her justice, the girl would just give up. “I should speak with Mariel. Is she in her room?”
Dina brushed her palm over a sleek side of her blonde ponytail. “I’m sorry. I thought my housekeeper would have told you. She’s not here anymore. She went back to the Philippines on Wednesday, four days ago. With everything that happened, she really wanted to be with her mother, which I could understand. I wanted her to fight, but she was going to have her mother send money to bring her home and they don’t have much. I bought her the first ticket I could.” Dina’s hand went to her clavicle, worrying the prominent bones like invisible pearls. “I feel so bad about what happened. I know she’s eighteen, but you and I both know how young that really is. Maybe I should have warned her about the kind of things that can happen to girls here. I didn’t want to scare her. In retrospect, I should have prepared her better.”
“Is she coming back?” Gabby asked even though the emptiness in her gut had already told her the answer.
“No. She’s staying with her family. Before she left, I explained that the police might need her if they press charges.” Dina sniffed. “She didn’t seem at all excited about that. I got the sense that she’d prefer never to see that man again and forget about it. You remember? She didn’t even really want to discuss what had happened with you.”
Gabby looked down at the rolled report that she knew wouldn’t ever be labeled an exhibit. She sighed and asked Dina for a telephone number to contact Mariel, just in case. Dina had only an email address connected with Mariel’s au pair account. “I think she’s taken her profile down, though,” Dina said. “I’ve been scouring the site these past few days for replacement childcare, and I haven’t seen her on there.”
Gabby swallowed the swear rising in her throat. She asked Dina for the au pair service’s name and scribbled it in her notepad, aware that the chances of the business tracking Mariel down if she didn’t want to be contacted were slim to none. Disappointment slowed her stride as she walked back to her car. Gabby stopped and closed her eyes, picturing Mariel’s tearful reunion with her mother. She
imagined herself as that mother, and Kayla as the girl.
Rage obliterated all her other feelings. Andy and his friends could not get away with drugging and raping young women. She couldn’t let it end like this.
She slid into the unmarked Dodge’s driver’s seat, turned the ignition, and flipped on the hidden siren and flashing lights. Andy had claimed to be subletting from a friend that let him use the place some weekends. The weather was perfect for surfing—and for putting a couple of smug assholes on notice.
* * *
Different cars were parked on the shell driveway than before: a gray Subaru along with a long blue Volvo topped with a roof rack. The SUV’s Maine plates and barcode on the window kept Gabby from giving up on finding Andy. He’d probably rented the same model in blue the prior week.
She checked the time on her phone as she slipped between the brush barricading the beach house. It was midday, aka surfer nap time. Low tide to midtide was when the water was glassy and the swells were biggest. The water level at the moment would be too high for big waves.
Gabby charged up the path to the glass house. Inside, four men gathered around a kitchen table, their wet suits unzipped and pulled down to their waists. Gabby banged her badge against the glass, causing a commotion inside. She watched it like a sitcom: the guys rising all at once, the quizzical looks on the new faces, Andy’s gesturing explanation followed by Chris’s nervous scratching of his sunburned scalp. One of the new guys, possibly the actual summer renter, headed to the door.
As soon as the glass wall retracted a few inches, Gabby barged through the opening, taking advantage of the ease with which her small frame could slip through cracks. She ignored the man shouting about warrants and calling the “real” cops, storming instead toward the sandy-haired, green-eyed man in the kitchen. Andy’s bare stomach was braced for a hit.
