The House Guests

by Emilie Richards

  “Oh, God,” Cassie said, as if she knew what was coming.

  Amber nodded. “He raped me.” The words felt like acid in her throat. “Darryl left his gun by Billy’s body, and afterward he couldn’t reach it without letting go of me, so he tried to strangle me...” She paused until she could breathe again. “My hand closed on a rock on the ground, and when he moved enough, I brought it up and smashed the rock against his skull. He fell back and I managed to get up and run. I knew those woods. Billy and I used to meet there after dark. I still don’t know how I did it, but I ran far enough before he was able to come after me, and I managed to escape.”

  “Oh, Amber.” Cassie wiped tears from her cheeks.

  “If Savannah hadn’t gotten the 23andMe test kit for Will?” Amber shuddered again, and suddenly, she was crying, too. “If it weren’t for that, Cassie, I would never know for sure whose son Will really is. When I discovered I was pregnant, I knew if the baby was Billy’s, it was the only part of that sweet young man that was left. So I told myself Billy was Will’s father. But there was always that question, deep down. Now finally it’s been laid to rest.”

  The two women held each other and rocked silently back and forth.

  Finally, Amber pulled away, wiping her eyes and cheeks. “I want Darryl to spend the rest of his life in prison without parole. A former sheriff won’t be popular. Some of the other inmates might even be men he put there. If my word carries any weight, that’s what I’ll ask for.”

  “I hope the judge listens.”

  “I’ll have to ask forgiveness every day of my life for the joy that would give me.”

  “Something tells me God will understand.”

  Amber managed a smile. “Maybe she will.”

  48

  THREE WEEKS LATER CASSIE parked her rental car in front of a small shingled cottage in Westfield, New York, and peered at the numbers by the front door to be sure she had the right address. The house was painted a soft cream, the door a bright red. Brass numbers beside it were large enough to show she had arrived at her destination.

  Westfield was a historic small town with lovely old houses along its main road and sweeping yards dotted with centuries-old maples and oaks. At one time the town had been the headquarters of Welch’s grape juice, and she’d glimpsed vineyards and a processing plant on the trip from the airport.

  A part of her wished the flight to Buffalo, and the long drive here, complete with early April snow flurries, had just been a wild-goose chase. But the cottage was real, exactly where it was supposed to be, and now all Cassie had to do was walk up the long sidewalk and find out why the woman who lived here had shared a savings account with her husband.

  As she locked the car door, she wasn’t sure whether she was grateful or sorry that Amber had discovered a record of the joint account in Mark’s files. Information was sketchy, a few notes jotted along the side of another statement, a letter from an unfamiliar bank that had refused to help when she and Amber dug deeper.

  Mark’s tax form from the previous year, plus some assistance from Cassie’s New York attorney, had confirmed their suspicions. The money that was missing from Mark’s other accounts had found a home in one he’d held with a stranger named Elana Lindquist, and because Lindquist was the joint account holder, the contents were not subject to probate.

  Everyone who knew about this trip had warned Cassie not to come alone. Amber had wanted to accompany her. Travis had advised she hire a local investigator to meet her at the house. Nick had uncovered Lindquist’s conviction for the criminal sale of a controlled substance and advised her to consult the local police. Cassie had listened, but she hadn’t wanted to wait. She needed to know why her husband had ripped open their financial safety net and poured it into the arms of another woman.

  She needed to put Mark and the chaos his death had caused behind her once and for all.

  The steps up to the stoop were slippery, but she was wearing low boots with a thick tread. After months of flip-flops and sandals, the boots felt alien, a memento from another life. At the door she buttoned her wool jacket to ward off gusts of wind whipping down the narrow street. She didn’t intend to stay long enough to take off the jacket inside.

  If she made it inside.

  She lifted her hand to the doorbell before she noticed the sign above it. A handwritten Post-it note taped in place asked visitors not to ring. She took a deep breath and knocked instead.

  Nobody answered, but she thought she heard the television or perhaps music playing inside. She knocked again, louder this time, and stepped back to wait.

  Finally, a young woman opened the door. Cassie made a quick inventory. She was young, late twenties or early thirties, pretty but disheveled. Sandy blond hair held back by a knotted headband fell to her chin. She wore no makeup, but her flawless, rosy skin didn’t need enhancing although her gray eyes sported dark circles. A shapeless sweatshirt fell over jeans that looked uncomfortably tight.

  On the plane Cassie had silently auditioned ways to introduce herself to Elana Lindquist. In the end she chose the simplest. “I’m Cassie Costas. Mark Westmore was my husband.”

  The young woman looked stunned, but not as if she was surprised Mark’s wife was standing on her doorstep, more as if Cassie’s arrival had been anticipated for some day in the future. That and all her impressions were so fleeting Cassie didn’t know if any of them were real.

  “I guess you know who I am.”

  “I’ve come a long way, so I hope you’re Elana Lindquist.” Cassie pulled her coat tighter as another gust of wind tried to send her skidding across the porch.

  “I am. I’m sorry, come in. I’m just... My manners are usually better.” Elana moved to one side to let her in. “How did you find me?”

  “From financial records more or less hidden in Mark’s files. Nobody’s invisible anymore. Were you trying to be?”

  “I didn’t know if you’d look.”

  “Surprise.”

  Elana led her into a tiny living room with just enough space for a blue sofa and dark coffee table, a chair and a modest television on a bookcase. Cassie got a glimpse of a galley kitchen and a den beyond that with a brick fireplace. Elana lifted a remote from the table, and the television went dark.

  She motioned Cassie to the sofa. An old-fashioned granny square afghan was thrown carelessly over the back, and two cushions of the sofa fabric were piled at one end. She had been napping.

  After Cassie sat, Elana stood over her. “Would you like hot tea? It doesn’t feel like April.”

  “I don’t think either of us wants to talk about the weather, do we?”

  Without answering, Elana took a seat across from Cassie and silently folded her hands in her lap.

  “Was Mark’s death a shock for you?” Cassie asked.

  “Yes. But I hadn’t seen him for—” she shrugged “—months. Word got to me well after the fact.”

  “Then the bank didn’t notify you? But I suppose why would they? Maybe they don’t even know.”

  Elana shrugged again.

  Cassie wanted to reach over and slap her shoulder. “I’m told the bank can’t interfere with you keeping all the money that should have gone to Mark’s daughter and me, although my attorney tells me I can take you to court.” She didn’t add he had also advised against it. A lawsuit was unlikely to yield anything except more bills, unless Elana was convicted of extortion.

  “How much do you know?” Elana asked.

  “Why? Do you want to embroider a pretty story to go with my facts?”

  “I understand why you’re angry.”

  “I really doubt you understand the full weight of it.”

  Elana looked away. “I don’t want to embroider anything. I guess I was asking how much you knew or wanted to know.”

  “Hit me with your best shot.”

  Elana picked at a thread on the a
rm of the chair. “Mark was really good at hiding things.”

  “You, for instance.”

  Elana tried to find a way into the conversation. She started once, and then stopped. After another try, she managed a sentence. “Do you remember when he injured his back?”

  Now Cassie realized where the hesitation had come from, and she was surprised Elana hadn’t just paraded Mark’s addiction in front of her. “I know he became addicted to painkillers, although I didn’t know it at the time.”

  Elana let out a long breath. “Okay.”

  “Next are you going to tell me you were supplying him? Out of the goodness of your heart?”

  “No!” Elana jumped up and began to pace. “It was nothing like that.”

  “Or nothing you’d want to admit to. You’ve sold drugs in the past.”

  Elana whirled. “I didn’t even know Mark until we both landed at the Grandy Rayburn Center. The court sent me there after two years of using and selling to feed my habit. My last shot at redemption.”

  Cassie knew enough about drug rehabilitation to also know that treatment centers could still be a hotbed of drug abuse. “You used your time there to help other addicts?”

  “Never, at least not the way you mean. Mark wasn’t sent by the courts, the way I was. He told me somebody he worked with made him come or his addiction would be exposed to the world.”

  “As it should have been! The administration at Grandy Rayburn should have done it themselves.”

  “You’re right. I’m sure they knew Mark’s history and background, but Grandy is very loose, more or less experimental in their approach. They stress community, meditation, facing the worst parts of ourselves. They pride themselves on anonymity so we can start new lives. We were even encouraged to find nicknames that represented the person we wanted to be.”

  Cassie was trying to imagine Mark in a facility that sounded like a rehash of sixties encounter groups. “He was serving a sentence imposed by a colleague. I doubt he went to seek enlightenment.”

  Elana began to pace again, but slower. “Sometimes we get things we don’t expect. None of the patients knew he was a psychiatrist. I’m not even sure the therapists did. He was never addressed that way. He was just Mark, and we had no idea if that was his real name or his new name. He was quieter than anyone else, and when he did speak, he tried to help other people gain insight. I could tell either he’d had a lot of therapy or was in one of the helping professions. Of course the group leaders always turned his comments back on him. Eventually he started talking about himself a little.”

  “Can we get to the part when he turned over our savings to you because you were enabling him?”

  Elana sat, grabbing the pillow on the chair behind her and holding it in front like a shield. “Without drugs and with so much stored up denial, Mark finally fell apart. Unfortunately, it happened in the middle of the community, with everyone watching. Falling apart was common enough, but not for somebody like him. When he shattered, he didn’t know how to pick up the pieces, something the rest of us had done a dozen times. I helped him back to his room that night. The staff should have, but I don’t think they understood how profoundly devastated he was.”

  Cassie leaned forward. “They left other patients to pick up the pieces?”

  “It’s a place like any other. Some staff were outstanding, some mediocre, some well trained, some winging it. Mark and I had become friends. I didn’t know anything about him except that he needed somebody to stay with him that night. So I did. And...” She held the pillow tighter. “I held him, and then he held me and things got out of hand.”

  Cassie closed her eyes. She’d known that sex had to be part of the equation. Mark had fallen prey to Elana in a moment of weakness or maybe Elana had been the one to fall prey. Apparently Cassie herself was no judge where her husband was concerned.

  And maybe it wasn’t just a moment. Maybe there had been more. What she hoped was that Elana had instigated this, maybe waited until he was at his most vulnerable. And now?

  She opened her eyes and focused on Elana’s face. “So you blackmailed him with the affair. You knew a lot more about him than you’ve said. Maybe you even knew we had a daughter who would be horrified and ashamed. More money.”

  Tears were trailing down Elana’s cheeks. “Of course that’s what you would think. Anyone would. But that wasn’t it. I never threatened him. I never tried to get anything from Mark. I really didn’t know—”

  A wail sounded from the other room, the unmistakable cry of a child, a young one, waking up. Cassie looked from Elana to the hallway beyond. She tried to find words, but they lodged in her throat.

  “I’m so sorry.” Elana was struggling to control her tears. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  And then Cassie knew.

  Elana rose. “He’s sick. I have to go to him. I think you should leave.”

  She hurried down the hall, and Cassie sat stunned. If she left now, could she forget what she’d heard? Move on and pretend this day had never happened? She knew the answer. After a moment she got up and followed.

  The first bedroom off the short hallway was a nursery. A child of about a year was standing in a crib, his arms outstretched, vocalizing. “Ma—ma—ma.”

  Elana felt the little boy’s forehead and didn’t like what she found. He was chubby cheeked, like his mother, but he had a mop of hair the same cocoa brown as Mark’s and Savannah’s. Even so young, his features were as asymmetrical as his father’s.

  He was the child she and Mark had never had together.

  “Come here, pumpkin.” Elana lifted the little boy in her arms and turned, but she pressed his head against her shoulder, as if to hide him from Cassie. “He has an ear infection, and the antibiotics haven’t kicked in yet. You really should leave.”

  Cassie watched her rock the little boy in her arms. Then she turned and retreated into the living room.

  Half an hour passed before Elana returned. Cassie had listened to wails, to crooned lullabies, to periods of quiet when the baby was being rocked and probably fed. But now, he seemed to be asleep again.

  Elana took her chair again. “He’s been up for two nights. He only sleeps in spurts.”

  “Mark’s?”

  She didn’t nod, but the truth was written on her features. “About two months after I left Grandy, I had to face the fact I was pregnant. Mark was well and truly gone by then, of course. Neither of us had expected or anticipated I might get pregnant. After...that night he told me not to worry, that he was unable to father a child. Then he avoided me during the weeks before he left, even changed therapy groups, claiming he needed a different kind of leader. From that point on I’m guessing he probably faked his recovery. The drugs were out of his system. Grandy had nothing to hold over him, so they discharged him.”

  “Was that when you came after him for money?”

  Elana’s face was drained of color, and she spoke without inflection, clearly exhausted. “A staff member let his name slip. When I found his bio online, I saw he was married and had a daughter. In the meantime I was fighting hard not to fall back in the gutter. My family was practicing tough love. My friends were tired of my struggles. Before addiction, I’d almost earned an associate degree in dental hygiene, so when they discharged me Grandy helped me find a job as a dental assistant. But I was hardly making enough to support myself, much less a baby.”

  “So you went to Mark.”

  “He was devastated.”

  Devastated herself, Cassie could still imagine how her husband had felt. In that final year of his life, mistakes had piled up, one on top of another. Suddenly his whole image of himself had shattered. Mark had discovered that he was, after all, only human.

  “And then?” she asked after a long pause that neither of them wanted to fill.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever hear from him, and I wasn’t up for a legal batt
le. I didn’t know what to do. I considered not having the baby, but even then, I wanted to. I believed if I tried hard enough, I could get my act together and be the kind of mother a baby needs. Then a few days later Mark asked me to meet him.”

  Cassie had run out of questions. She waited.

  “He told me...” Elana grabbed the same pillow. “He told me he could never be a father to our baby. He said you and his daughter meant everything to him. He begged me not to tell you. As if that was ever my intention.” For the first time she sounded bitter.

  “It wasn’t?”

  “I never, never would have gone to you. What happened the night our son was conceived was one friend comforting another. But when he said that, when I realized he actually believed I might tell you about the baby just to extort money? I realized we didn’t know each other, except as victims of the same terrible disease. That one night and our illness were all we ever had in common.”

  “The money?” Cassie asked at last.

  “He said he would give me a sum large enough to support his son if I promised never to contact him again. It was more than I’d expected, but I was crushed he wanted to buy me off. A part of me wanted to walk away, but pregnancy and pride are mutually exclusive. He opened an account in both our names. I was astounded at how much he put into it.”

  “Did he tell you where the money came from?”

  “He said it was money he could earn back before he retired. The amount was more than enough to allow me to finish my training as a hygienist, and then take a job here and buy this little house. The rest is in savings for...my son. My job is part-time now, but I can go full-time in a few years when child care won’t be so much of a problem.”

  Cassie wasn’t sure what she was feeling, but in the jumble, truth was emerging. “Mark lost his job. He started using drugs again sometime after he left rehab, at least for a while.”

  Elana looked stricken. “Maybe knowing he fathered another child sent him back over the edge.”