The Last to Know

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “You could’ve fooled me,” Paula mutters. She grips the edges of the seat with her hands, seething.

  “Please calm down, Ms. Bailey.”

  “I am calm,” she snaps.

  “I think that if we work together, we can come up with some solutions so that you can help to steer Mitchell back on track. Believe me, we want the same thing, you and I. We want Mitchell to thrive and to succeed. I’m sending home another worksheet that you can work on with him tonight. And perhaps we could meet again, with his father next time, so that—”

  “His father is out of the picture,” Paula interrupts.

  The teacher raises her white eyebrows. “He is? But I thought—”

  “He’s out of the picture,” she repeats.

  “Mitchell talks about him as if—”

  “As if what?” she cuts in, trying to quell the fury that rises in her gut.

  “As if he sees his father often.”

  “Well, he doesn’t. His father can’t be bothered with him.”

  “In that case, Ms. Bailey, you have your work cut out for you.”

  “Believe me, Miss Bright I’ve always had my work cut out for me. It isn’t easy raising a child single-handedly and moving forward in a competitive career like mine.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t.”

  “I’ve worked my butt off to get where I am.”

  There’s a commotion in the hall—chattering voices, footsteps, locker doors slamming.

  “The children are back from gym,” Miss Bright says. “We haven’t even begun to discuss the various ways in which Mitchell needs help. Perhaps you can come—”

  “I’ve got it covered, Miss Bright,” Paula says grimly, rising and walking to the door.

  “But we need to talk about—”

  “I’ll take care of it Miss Bright.”

  Knowing, and not caring, that it’s rude not to say goodbye and thank the teacher for her concern, she steps out into the hall and glances at the throng of third-graders waiting to come back into their classroom.

  Mitch isn’t among them. Why not?

  She grabs the arm of a freckle-faced blond kid who looks vaguely familiar. “Hey, you’re a friend of Mitch’s, aren’t you?”

  “Mitch S. or Mitch B.?”

  “Mitch B.”

  “I used to be,” the kid replies, “until he stole my Pokemon card.”

  “Until he stole . . .” Paula echoes, and shakes her head. What the hell is going on with Mitch? “Look, do you know where he is? Why isn’t he here with everyone else?”

  “He had to stay after in gym.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause he tripped some kid during the relay.”

  Paula turns away, her heart pounding as she walks slowly down the hall, clutching her car keys in hands that are shaking in fury.

  At Mitch . . .

  At Miss Bright . . .

  At Frank Ferrante . . .

  Oh hell, at the entire world.

  Tasha gingerly descends the steep basement stairs with a heaping laundry basket, thankful that Max is finally asleep. He must be cutting a tooth, she thinks, stepping around the double baby stroller with the broken wheel Joel has been planning to fix for months now.

  Poor little Max. If it isn’t a tooth, something’s been making him cranky. Maybe he’s picking up on Tasha’s anxiety over Jane Kendall’s disappearance.

  He wept so pitifully when she put him into his crib that she couldn’t bear to leave him there to fall asleep on his own. Joel would probably say she was spoiling him, but she had taken him out and sat in the rocker by the window, rocking him for almost an hour. Even then, he seemed a little fussy.

  Finally, she gave him some Tylenol and put him back into the crib. He whimpered, but moments later he was silent, meaning either he finally wore himself out, or he really has been in pain from teething.

  Now she has only Victoria to contend with for the next hour or so.

  Victoria, and enough laundry to clothe an island nation.

  She sorts it by color on the concrete basement floor, then stuffs all the towels she can fit into the washer. There are still half a dozen left over. When was the last time she did laundry? How does she manage to let household tasks like this get away from her these days?

  There was a time when her every waking moment felt productive—when she sewed, wallpapered, and cooked dinners made from recipes in The Joy of Cooking. Now, she’s lucky if she has a minute to run into the bathroom and pee.

  She dumps a capful of detergent into the washing machine, closes the lid, and pulls the knob.

  Nothing happens.

  Frowning, she pushes in the knob, then pulls it out again.

  No accompanying sound of water pouring into the machine.

  She opens the lid. Peers inside. Closes it. Pushes and pulls the knob again.

  Nothing.

  She hears pattering footsteps overhead, and then a voice calls down from the kitchen.

  “Mommy?”

  “What’s the matter, Victoria?”

  “You said you would do my puzzle with me.”

  “I will. In a minute.”

  “What are you doing?” Victoria wants to know. Now she’s on the basement steps.

  “Get back up there, Victoria. You only have socks on, and it’s dirty down here.”

  “Well, when are you coming up to do my puzzle with me?”

  “As soon as I figure out why the washing machine won’t start.” Tasha jiggles the plug, making sure it’s firmly inserted into the wall socket. It is.

  Now what?

  Why can’t this have happened when Joel is home?

  Well, she can’t wait until he gets back tonight. Who knows when that will be?

  She considers calling him at the office to ask, then quickly dismisses the idea. He still hasn’t returned the message she left this morning. He doesn’t even know that Jane Kendall is missing.

  Well, when he calls back, she can tell him about that and about the broken washing machine.

  But in the meantime, she’ll have to check the booklet that came with the machine when they bought it. She keeps all that stuff in a drawer upstairs. With a sigh she goes up the steps, hoping the booklet will have one of those troubleshooting charts and an easily remedied explanation for why the washing machine refuses to work.

  Victoria is standing on the second step from the top. Her face is smeared with something brown.

  “What is that?” Tasha scoops her up and sets her on her feet in the kitchen. “What did you get into?”

  “Nothing,” Victoria says, swiping at her mouth with the sleeve of the white shirt she’s wearing under the pink overalls that are still spattered with dried juice stains from this morning.

  Great. More stuff to wash in the machine that doesn’t work.

  Tasha glances around, searching for the source of the mud-colored ooze her daughter is sporting. Her gaze falls on the fridge. The door is open. On the floor in front of it, a plastic bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup lies on its side, the contents pooled across the pale yellow linoleum.

  “Victoria! What did you do?”

  “You weren’t here, Mommy, and I was starving.”

  “I was here, Victoria. I was downstairs for all of two minutes. If you were hungry you should have waited until I got back up here. Look at that mess.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Victoria looks anything but sorry. Her lower lip is curled under in a “that’ll teach you to leave me alone” expression.

  Tasha grabs the sponge from the sink and bends to wipe up the mess. She puts the bottle of chocolate syrup back into the fridge and closes the door.

  Victoria promptly whines, “I wanted that.”

  “Well, you can’t have it,
” Tasha snaps.

  Then, instantly feeling guilty, she softens her tone. “It’s just that you can’t eat that all by itself, Victoria.”

  After all, it’s not her daughter’s fault that the washing machine won’t work or that Jane Kendall is missing or that somebody brought up Fletch Gallagher today.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Tasha says, wetting a paper towel and gently wiping the chocolate smudges from her daughter’s face, “after I figure out what’s wrong with the washing machine, we’ll have some ice cream with chocolate syrup on top. Okay?”

  Victoria seems to mull that over. “With whipped cream?”

  “I don’t think we have whipped cream.”

  “I want whipped cream.”

  Tasha takes a deep breath. “Well, we don’t have any whipped cream. But,” she adds quickly when Victoria opens her mouth to protest, “we do have maraschino cherries.”

  “I don’t like those.”

  Don’t push me, kid, Tasha thinks grimly. Not today.

  Through clenched teeth she says, “Then you can just have sprinkles. Okay? You like sprinkles. Everybody likes sprinkles.”

  “Okay,” Victoria says, unexpectedly breaking into a smile. “I love you, Mommy.”

  “I love you, too, sweetie.” Tasha breathes a sigh of relief and pushes a black curl away from her daughter’s face.

  Victoria looks so like her daddy, with the dark hair, intense features, and pale skin. But she doesn’t have his chestnut eyes or his mellow nature.

  Her blue eyes are courtesy of Tasha. As for her intense personality—well, Tasha might not be as laid-back as Joel, but she certainly isn’t responsible for Victoria’s high-maintenance character. She probably has her mother-in-law to thank for supplying that particular trait to the family gene pool.

  Which reminds her: there was a message from Ruth on the answering machine when she got back from Starbucks earlier. She and Joel’s father, Irv, want to come over on Saturday—“if it’s all right with you, Tasha.” She always makes a big point of asking permission, as though she assumes her son and grandchildren will welcome a visit anytime, and it’s only her daughter-in-law potentially standing in the way of a happy get-together.

  Yeah, right. As though Tasha has ever told them not to come.

  In fact, in the early days of her marriage, she was the one who insisted to Joel that they see his parents every week. With her own family so far away, she had done her best to nurture the relationship with her husband’s family. She used to go all out, cooking and cleaning for their visits, making sure that they had the Cel-ray tonic Irv drinks, and Sweet ’N Low for Ruth’s tea. But after a while, when it became clear that her in-laws weren’t going to like her no matter what she did, she stopped knocking herself out.

  Now, when Ruth and Irv come over, they go out to eat, or get take-out.

  Of course, that doesn’t thrill the in-laws any more than Tasha’s homemade latkes and rugelach ever did. Last time they came, Tasha went to the kosher deli over in Mount Kisco to get a cold-cut platter and some rice pudding.

  “Oh, you have seeded rye,” Joel’s mother said when she picked up a piece of bread to make a sandwich.

  “Don’t you like seeded rye, Ruth?” Far be it from Tasha to call her “Mom.” Ruth had never asked her to, and she had never dared offer.

  “No, I buy the seedless. I always have. Joel only likes seedless,” she said resolutely.

  Naturally, Joel, who had one eye on the Yankees game, hadn’t heard her. Or maybe he pretended not to so that he wouldn’t have to tell his mother that he does, indeed, like seeded rye—and that he was, in fact, the one who bought it that day at the bakery. . . .

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes?” Tasha asks absently, looking down at her daughter.

  “Why do you look so mad?”

  “Do I look mad?” She tries to smile. “I’m not mad, Victoria. I’m just thinking about something.”

  “About what?”

  “Never mind. You know what? Let’s have that ice cream now. We can deal with everything later.”

  “What do we have to deal with?”

  Tasha hesitates. “Just . . . oh, a bunch of yucky stuff, Victoria. Be glad you’re only three.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you’re three, you don’t have to deal with yucky stuff.”

  “I do so. There’s a lot of yucky stuff. Like when Max poops and—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Tasha says, grinning. “Come on, let’s make a couple of big sundaes.”

  Satisfied that the kids are absorbed by the Winnie the Pooh video she just started for them, Rachel goes into the kitchen and picks up the phone.

  She dials a familiar number, then, as it rings, pulls a pack of Salems from her purse. She puts it back just as quickly, realizing that if she lights one here in the house, Ben will sniff it out and realize she’s smoking again. He’ll eventually figure it out, of course, but she doesn’t want him to realize it before the end of next week, when they leave for their long weekend in the Abaco Islands, just the two of them—her reward for kicking the habit.

  Again the phone rings on the other end of the line. Rachel walks over to the counter and squirts some rose-scented lotion from a white porcelain dispenser into the palm of her hand.

  There’s a third ring as she starts rubbing it in, the receiver cradled between her ear and her shoulder. Her hands are starting to look chapped after a day of diaper changing and raw, rainy weather.

  “Hello?” a masculine voice says, picking up on the other end.

  “Hi.” Rachel pauses. “Is this Jeremiah?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Jeremiah, my name is Rachel Leiberman. I live down the street, in the white house with black shutters.”

  “Which one?”

  Is the kid being a smart-ass, or is the question sincere? It’s hard to tell.

  Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she chuckles and says, “I know, they all kind of look alike, don’t they?”

  “Kind of. I mean, I know there are a couple of white houses with black shutters up that way—”

  “We’re number forty-eight. End of the block. The one with the basketball hoop and the three-car garage.”

  “Uh-huh,” he says, and it isn’t clear if he knows which house she means—not that it matters. He’ll figure it out.

  “I was wondering if you’d be interested in doing a little babysitting for me,” Rachel says. “Our nanny just quit”—well, actually, firing her will be the next phone call I make—“and I’m kind of stuck for someone to watch my kids until I find a replacement.”

  “Well, uh, I have school—”

  “I can work around your school schedule. I can pay you whatever the going rate is.”

  “I have no idea. I don’t really babysit much. I mean, ever. But—”

  “How about if I give you twelve bucks an hour, then.”

  “Twelve bucks an hour?” he echoes, stunned. “That would be great.”

  “Good. Can you come tomorrow?”

  “After school?”

  “At around dinner time. If you’re available.”

  “I’m available,” he says quickly.

  “And I would need you to stay until later in the evening. My husband is working.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Wonderful. Is there anything you want to know before I hang up?”

  “I guess. I mean, uh, are your kids . . .”

  He trails off, clearly not sure what to ask. Rachel helps him out. “Noah is thirteen months, and Mara is four. My husband is a pediatrician and he has office hours several evenings a week, to accommodate working parents.”

  “And you work evenings, too?”

  “Me? No. I don’t work. But I have an . . . appointment.”

  In the backg
round, on Jeremiah’s end, she hears another voice asking him who’s on the phone.

  “Just a second,” Jeremiah says to her, and then there’s a muffled sound as he apparently covers the receiver with his hand. His words are still clearly audible. “It’s some lady from down the street Uncle Fletch. She says she wants me to babysit tomorrow.”

  “Babysit?” Rachel hears Fletch Gallagher repeat.

  “Uh, y-yeah,” Jeremiah tells him. Rachel notes the stutter. She can practically see him squirming. She can just imagine the look on his uncle’s face.

  “What lady from down the street?” Rachel hears him ask.

  “W-what did you s-say your n-name was?” Jeremiah asks, taking his hand off the receiver.

  “Leiberman,” Rachel says, squirting more lotion into her palm and swirling it in a circular motion into her skin. “Rachel Leiberman.”

  Jeremiah repeats her name for his uncle.

  “No problem,” Fletch Gallagher says.

  “M-my uncle s-says it’s fine with h-him,” Jeremiah reports to Rachel.

  “Good,” she says, her mouth curving into a small smile. “Then we have a date.”

  “I’ll make this as easy on you as possible, Ms. Armstrong,” the burly detective says gruffly. He’s a short, round man whose face is damp with perspiration even though it’s drafty in the room. “Are you ready?”

  Margaret nods, seated across from him in the small back parlor of her sister’s house. They’ve all taken a turn in this chair: Owen, his parents, the housekeeper, and now her. The police want to question absolutely everyone who might be able to shed light on Jane’s disappearance.

  “First off, did your sister have any enemies that you are aware of?”

  Margaret shakes her head. She gazes at the white-painted molding surrounding the brick fireplace, her eyes tracing the ornately carved swirling pattern.

  “So you can’t think of anyone who might want to hurt her?”

  “No.”

  “How did she spend her time?”

  “Taking care of Schuyler,” she answers readily. “I mean, that’s what I assume.”

  “Were you close to her?”

  She considers the question. “I live about a half hour away from here.”

  “That isn’t what I mean, Ms. Armstrong. I mean your relationship—were you close?”