“Yeah? And what do you think happens if I’m wrong?”
“If we’re wrong, we need to say so,” she said.
“And then the mob screams for my head.” Owen tossed the newspaper across the desk at her. “You saw this crap. I’m trying to run a murder investigation, and I’m getting second-guessed because of some goddamn soccer championship. That’s what I’m dealing with here. I have to stand up to it. The second I show weakness, I’m done. And if I’m done, you’d better watch your back, because without me here to protect you, you’re next.”
Keisha shrugged, and it could have meant one of two things. A, justice must be served no matter the negative repercussions for our own careers. Or B, you’re the one with the problem, not me, so why should I give a shit? Owen tended to think it was the latter. So much for loyalty, and this freaking job. All he wanted was to do right by Kate Eastman. If he cut a corner here or there, he did it in the interests of justice. But nobody seemed to appreciate that. If they didn’t value his efforts, then maybe they didn’t deserve his service. He wished he could go back to his old job, with real cases and real cops to work them, but it had been filled, and besides, he had to think of the kids. He had another option if things here became untenable. His cousin in Wisconsin was CFO of a big company that made the fluorescent lights that were used in department stores. They were looking for a new chief of security. It paid significantly more than Owen was making as chief of police, and his cousin had kids his own kids’ age. Wisconsin was cold in the winter, but no colder than this hellhole.
The only thing holding him back from quitting was the desire to solve Kate’s murder and put her smug psychopath of a husband in jail for good. Unfortunately, that was proving to be a harder task than he’d anticipated, and he was starting to think it might not happen. He was confident he could make the case against Rothenberg eventually, if given sufficient time and resources. But that was the problem. The resources were sadly lacking. And now, with the kid getting hit by the van, Owen felt the town turning against him, and his time running out. Maybe this case was destined to be his white whale. All the best cops had them, if they’d been on the job long enough. Those cases where you knew in your heart who did it, but for whatever reason, you couldn’t prove it. The ones that got away, they haunted you forever. Would Kate turn out to be that for him?
33
The front doorbell rang around five o’clock, as Aubrey was putting away the groceries from Whole Foods. She had a load of laundry in the dryer. The kids were just home from sports, settling into homework. Ethan was back early from the hospital, as he’d been every night since Kate died. He was upstairs now, crying in the shower.
Lilly, sitting at the kitchen island with her algebra book, looked up in surprise at the sound of the bell. “Who’s that?”
In Belle River, only strangers used the front door. Family, friends, and neighbors came in through the mudroom or the garage, shouting hello without bothering to knock. This must be something official. Aubrey hoped it was the event she’d been waiting for. She felt excited and sick at the same time, like at the cabin, when Logan learned the truth about his dad. Nothing wrong with seeing a person for who they really are. But it was still hard, watching your kids grow up and face the harsh reality.
“I don’t know, honey,” Aubrey said. “Why don’t you go see?”
Lilly came back a moment later, her face white with worry. “It’s a lady from the police. What should we do?”
“Well, if she’s from the police, we’d better let her in,” Aubrey said.
And so the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. Aubrey had been waiting for this moment for a very long time. Ethan’s comeuppance. She never thought she could pull it off, but she did. She shouldn’t have doubted herself. She wasn’t the naïve fool they took her for. She was a magna cum laude graduate of Carlisle (would’ve been a summa if not for freshman spring) whose perseverance had paid off.
After she found out about Ethan and Kate, Aubrey spent months paralyzed with grief and rage. She’d lie awake at night, sometimes with Ethan beside her, sometimes alone, thinking about the two of them together, and wishing them dead. No matter where she was or what she was doing during the day—teaching a yoga class, chatting with the other moms as she waited for Logan to finish soccer practice, making lentil soup, braiding Viv’s hair—in the back of her mind, Aubrey was fantasizing about killing her husband and his mistress (she no longer thought of Kate by her name). Their deaths were always grisly and painful, whether she did it with a gun or a knife, or poison, or ran them down with a car. She visualized the looks on their faces in the moment they realized they were going to die. She played over and over in her head the words she would say to make them understand that she had won and they had lost. It was all she thought about.
Aubrey thought constantly about killing them, but she didn’t act, because she was afraid of getting caught. Not on her own account, but for her kids. She couldn’t leave her children alone in the world, with the double stigma of a dead cheater father and a mother who was a murderer. People would talk behind their backs. There would be no more playdates, no more birthday-party invitations, no mom who earned brownie points by serving as room parent or chairing the middle school dance committee. Aubrey had grown up without any of those things, and she knew how much it hurt. She wouldn’t do that to her kids. Leave them to be raised by Ethan’s snooty parents, who would badmouth Aubrey and turn them against her? Never. The punishment for Kate and Ethan had to look like an accident, so Aubrey could escape unscathed and live happily ever after with her children (and, if things went how she hoped, with Griff, who would make a caring stepdad).
But an accident seemed so complicated to arrange. Aubrey thought about it for hours on end and got nowhere. She was not technically inclined. The CSI stuff was sure to trip her up. Any plan she devised would end up overlooking some key detail—fibers or hairs or a computer search on how to dismember a body that she forgot to erase. Eventually she decided that her best option was to get somebody else to do the dirty work. If Aubrey didn’t actually commit the murder herself, they couldn’t trace it back to her. But she was a housewife, a mother and a yoga instructor, not a hardened criminal. She didn’t know how to hire a hit man. You couldn’t just go advertising on Craigslist, could you? It seemed like too big a risk, so she did nothing, except to obsess and get increasingly mad at herself.
One night, after the kids were in bed, when Ethan was out, and Aubrey was drinking tea and feeling alone, she took a frayed copy of the Tao Te Ching that she’d owned since grad school down from the shelf in the living room. The book fell open to a chapter she’d read many times, though not in years. It was a chapter on self-control and self-mastery, and challenged the reader to think about the following question: Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises on its own? That was it, Aubrey realized: the question was the answer. Aubrey needed to wait, to stay positive, and trust herself, and the solution would eventually become clear.
And so it did. On a chill, rainy Wednesday afternoon, a couple of days before Kate met her end in the Belle River, Aubrey happened to see Tim Healy duck into Shecky’s Burger Shack. Something furtive in Tim’s manner caught her eye. Shecky’s was such a Carlisle hangout that an image popped into her mind of Tim carrying on with some college babe. She dismissed it out of hand. The idea of Tim Healy with some nineteen-year-old was ludicrous. He’d always struck her as loyal as a dog. But then she thought, hmm, you never know. And if it was true, well, wouldn’t that serve Jenny right.
Ever since Aubrey learned that Jenny had kept silent about the affair, she’d been rethinking their friendship. Years earlier, when Jenny moved back to Belle River from New York, Aubrey welcomed her with open arms. Aubrey was a young mother, a doctor’s wife, making her life in Belle River. Jenny had grown up and gone to college in town, but she’d never been an adult there. From the beginning, Aubrey invited Jenny to everything—dinner parties, yoga class, the annual benefit at the hospi
tal. Once Jenny and Tim got married and started a family, Aubrey invited Jenny to join her playgroup, her babysitting co-op, her girls’-night-out group, and recommended her to the director of the top preschool in town, which resulted in T.J. getting accepted in a very competitive admissions climate (and Reed, too, since siblings got in automatically).
Aubrey wouldn’t say Jenny was ungrateful for her help, exactly. But neither did Jenny acknowledge that Aubrey was now her equal. Jenny had looked down on Aubrey since the day they met, in Whipple twenty years earlier, when Aubrey walked in with her ratty clothes, her enthusiasm, and her naïveté, and smacked into the wall of Jenny’s condescension. Aubrey had come a million miles since freshman year. She’d done coursework toward her master’s (though admittedly never finished), married a doctor, bought a big house, started a successful yoga studio whose clients worshipped the ground she walked on, and had three amazing children. But as far as Jenny was concerned, nothing had changed. It took that awful Labor Day party to show Aubrey where she really stood with Jenny. The fact was, Jenny still looked down on her, still took their friendship for granted, and would trample on Aubrey’s happiness in order to preserve her own.
If Tim Healy was doing something nefarious, Aubrey wanted to know. Tim hadn’t spotted her. Aubrey waited for a couple of minutes before following him in, so it would look like a coincidence.
The inside of Shecky’s hadn’t changed in decades. It still had the long counter with the stools that turned, and the stainless-steel backsplash with the pies rotating in glass cases. The smell of the place—a combination of overly sweet pie, burnt grease, and undergraduate sweat—never failed to bring back memories of freshman year, when she’d spent so much time here. The all-nighters before exams, the plates of home fries after a frat party to ward off a hangover. And of course, the day that Lucas Arsenault died. None of them had come to Shecky’s much after that.
The place was packed at three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon with Carlisle kids laughing it up. Go ahead, be happy while it lasts, you’ll learn the hard way, she thought. Tim sat at the counter, next to a girl in skinny jeans with a long ponytail who was giggling and sipping a soda. As Aubrey watched, the waitress placed two vanilla milkshakes on the counter in front of them. Well, well. Tim Healy, buying a young girl a milkshake, who’d’ve thought. Men were beasts.
The stool on Tim’s other side was empty. Aubrey slipped into it.
“Hey, Tim. Fancy meeting you here,” she said.
“Aubrey. Hi.”
She wished she had her phone out to capture the look on his face. He literally blushed. Caught in the act for sure.
“Is this your friend?” she asked, nodding toward Miss Ponytail.
Tim looked confused. “What?”
Aubrey realized that the girl with the ponytail was actually talking to the guy on her other side, who looked about eighteen and wore a Carlisle Rugby T-shirt.
“Um, I was wondering why you have two milkshakes,” Aubrey said.
“It’s something I like to do on Lucas’s birthday,” he said sheepishly. “Years ago, when I used to work here, before I had a car of my own, Lucas would pick me up at the end of my shift and give me a ride home. I’d always spot him a vanilla milkshake for the trouble. It was kind of a ritual for us. So every year on his birthday, I order two and I drink one. The other is for his memory.”
“Today is your cousin Lucas’s birthday?” she asked.
“He would’ve been forty,” Tim said. “I can’t wrap my head around that. To me, he’s forever young, like the day he died. It was right here, you know, right at this counter that I talked to him last. From what I remember, anyway. I miss him every day.”
Tim stared across at his reflection in the backsplash, and Aubrey had the distinct impression that he was visualizing Lucas sitting beside him. And there it was, the moment of insight she’d been waiting for: Tim Healy was hung up on his dead cousin. He’d never recovered from Lucas’s death. The night at the bridge was real to him still, always playing in the background the way Ethan and Kate’s affair did for her. Aubrey realized in that moment that Tim wanted Kate dead as much as she did. Or, if he didn’t, it was only because he didn’t know the truth about Lucas’s death, and she could fix that. Tim was the sort of person who might actually do something about it, too. He had anger-management issues. Jenny blamed it on the severe concussion he’d suffered years ago trying to save Lucas’s life, and swore he was gentle as a lamb with her and the boys. That was probably a lie. There had been rumors of incidents over the years—a fistfight on a jobsite, a confrontation over a parking space at the Walmart outside town where a security guard had to intervene. Tim had actually been ordered to court-mandated counseling over that one. The anger was there. All Aubrey had to do was figure out how to channel it, and maybe she could finally get her revenge without taking the risk.
She glanced around the crowded room. The place was jammed to the gills, the volume deafening. Nobody would overhear what she was about to say. She leaned toward Tim.
“I remember Lucas, too. How could I forget? I was there that night. I witnessed his death. I’ve always felt that justice was never done.”
Tim’s eyes flew to her face. “What do you mean?” he asked, and she saw him hold his breath as he waited for her to answer. She had him now.
“Hasn’t Jenny told you the truth?” Aubrey asked innocently, remembering very well Jenny’s confession that she hadn’t.
“The truth?”
She lowered her voice an octave. “Didn’t she tell you that Kate pushed Lucas off the bridge? That we both saw it, and lied about it to the police because Mr. Eastman pressured us to?”
“No.” He went limp, leaning heavily against the counter. “That’s what I always suspected, but Jenny swore he jumped. So did you, Aubrey. You’re telling me you’ve both been lying all these years?”
She touched his arm. “Oh, Tim, I’m sorry. I never would’ve said anything, except I thought you knew. You were standing right next to me that night. You saw everything.”
“The concussion wiped out my memory. You knew that.”
“Somehow I thought you got it back.”
“No. I can’t remember a thing after Jenny and I left the parking lot. It’s like the rest of that night never happened.”
“And your wife didn’t set you straight? But what am I saying, Jenny’s not the bad guy here. Kate is. Don’t get me started on Kate Eastman.”
“What did she do, Aubrey? Please, I’m begging you. Tell me,” he said.
“Well, to put it plainly, when Lucas tried to break up with her, she pushed him off the bridge,” Aubrey said.
“I knew it. I always knew in my heart that it was her. That bitch,” Tim said, then caught himself. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. You have a right to be angry. If Lucas was my cousin, I swear, I’d kill Kate for what she did.”
“Tell me exactly how it happened,” Tim said, clenching and unclenching his fists. The rage gathering on his face was just what she hoped for.
“Lucas told Kate it was over, and she started screaming like a banshee, and pounding him with her fists. He was walking backwards to get away from her, and she pushed him right through that gap in the bridge. Trust me, it was no accident. She knew the hole was there. Jenny and I were in complete shock. I think that must be why, when Mr. Eastman showed up, he could manipulate us so easily. We were both traumatized. I still am, to this day. I bet Jenny is, too, and that’s why she could never bring herself to talk to you about it. But Kate? Didn’t bat an eyelash. I’ve never once heard her say she’s sorry. You’d think she’d feel at least a little guilty. But no. She kills a man, and flies off to Europe like she doesn’t have a care in the world. Life is sweet when Daddy’s there to clean up the mess.”
“It’s so unfair,” Tim said. “He’s dead and she got away with it. Not only got away with it, but lived like a queen off Griff Rothenberg’s money.”
“Oh, Kate’s living it up to
this day on other people’s money. Think about it. Living in Daddy’s house. Never worked a day in her life. You should really confront her. Tell her you know what she did. How you feel about it. What you think of her. It won’t bring Lucas back, but at least you’ll be calling her on her bullshit. Somebody ought to.”
“She’d never agree to it,” Tim said. “Kate knows I hate her guts. She’d never sit down with me to discuss this.”
Aubrey nodded. “I hear you. Kate is very good at avoiding unpleasantness. If you want, I could act as a go-between and see if I can arrange a meeting.”
“You’d do that?” Tim asked.
“Yes, but on one condition. That you don’t tell Jenny. I had no idea she never told you, or I wouldn’t’ve opened my mouth. If you confront her now, she’ll figure out it came from me, and that could ruin our friendship.”
“All right, if you insist. I won’t say anything to Jenny.”
Lying awake that night thinking about logistics, Aubrey had a brainstorm. Her biggest worry was that Tim Healy didn’t have the balls to commit actual murder. Aubrey could imagine a scenario where she got the two of them together, and they traded a few choice words and agreed never to cross each other’s paths again. She wasn’t going to all this trouble to arrange a polite spat. The idea was, get Tim worked up into such a rage that he actually killed Kate. That might require an extra push, a bit of stage management to trigger his temper. If Aubrey could arrange the meeting to happen at the old railroad bridge, the very place where his beloved cousin died, Tim would be primed for violence. Getting them to the bridge was key. If anybody found out she arranged the meeting, Aubrey would say she was trying to help two old friends work out their differences. Nobody would fault her for that.
It's Always the Husband Page 30
