The Last to Know

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  But didn’t she check the deadbolt several times before going to bed?

  Well, didn’t she?

  She tries to think clearly, but it’s impossible. Her mind is still foggy.

  Paula stands on the step, bundled into a dark-colored parka that glistens with rain. “I’m so sorry to wake you,” she tells Tasha. “I tried calling, but your phone is still . . .”

  Still what? Oh. “I know. Off the hook.” She yawns. Her brain just isn’t working. It’s that damned Tylenol PM. When did she take it? She has no recollection. How long before it wears off?

  “Can I come in?” Paula is asking. “Tasha, I’ve just found out something you’re not going to believe.”

  Mitch bunches his soggy pillow beneath his head, sniffling and listening to the storm.

  His father is out in this.

  And so is his mother.

  Shawna told him that Dad had gone to try and find her to tell her the news.

  About Grandpa.

  The nursing home has tried calling her at home a couple of times and has left messages. She hasn’t returned their calls. She hasn’t answered her cell phone, either, Shawna said.

  Somehow, the nursing home figured out that they should call Dad’s house to say that Grandpa died quietly today in his sleep.

  Mom is going to be so upset when she finds out.

  There’s no way Mitch can leave her alone after this.

  No way he could ever come to live with Dad and Shawna . . .

  Not that he wants to, he reminds himself hastily.

  Tasha hands Paula a towel from the downstairs bathroom and watches her rub it over her face and hair. She’s soaked and shivering.

  “Are you all right?” Tasha asks.

  “I’ll be fine. I just need to warm up for a minute,” Paula tells her. “Do you . . . look, you can say no if you want, and I’ll understand, but can I please smoke a cigarette?”

  The first thought in Tasha’s mind is that it would bother Joel to see somebody smoking in their house. He hates cigarettes.

  “Go ahead,” she says, finding a coffee mug in the sink for Paula to use as an ashtray.

  “Thanks. It’s a disgusting habit, I know, but I haven’t managed to quit yet.”

  Tasha watches Paula light a cigarette and take a deep drag.

  Then, stifling another huge yawn, she asks, “What is it that you found out?” She’s still so sleepy . . .

  But bed is the farthest thing from her mind, especially after Paula’s next words.

  “It’s about Fletch Gallagher, Tasha.”

  “What about him?” she asks nervously, struggling to keep her voice level.

  Does Paula know?

  About her and Fletch?

  Tasha’s mind whirls back to that day more than two years ago. It was August. One of those blazing hot days when there isn’t a breath of wind or a cloud in the sky, and the heat shimmers off the pavement

  Tasha was outside, washing the car, wearing shorts and a bikini top.

  Joel was at work. Hunter was in preschool, Victoria napping in her crib.

  He strolled down the street with a dog on a leash. She recognized the black Lab, but not the man. Usually Sharon Gallagher, whom Tasha knew well enough only to say a casual hello, walked that Lab.

  This, she learned when he stopped to introduce himself, was Sharon Gallagher’s husband. She had heard all about him, of course. Fletch Gallagher was the star baseball player turned sportscaster.

  It was all she could do to keep her eyes focused on his face as he chatted with her, mentioning that he was glad there was no Mets game today because he really needed a day off.

  He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of faded denim cutoffs, his tanned chest, washboard stomach muscles, and bulging biceps like something out of a male pinup calendar.

  The next thing she knew, she was inviting him in for lemonade. Or maybe he invited himself.

  And soon after that, she found herself in his arms in the kitchen, with him kissing her. She doesn’t know how it happened. It certainly hadn’t been her intention when she let him into her house. Somehow, they were talking one minute, and then he just leaned closer, and his lips were on hers before she could protest.

  Okay, so it wasn’t one-sided.

  She had responded instinctively.

  She definitely kissed him back, and Joel and the kids were the farthest thing from her mind.

  He was just so damned sexy. He made her feel incredibly desirable.

  And it had been so long since Joel kissed her like that. There had been the first baby, and then the house, and then the second baby, and his job, and her exhaustion. . . .

  She still remembers the erotic heat of Fletch Gallagher’s lips on hers, the smell of the coconut sunscreen she had applied earlier wafting up as her bare, damp skin slid against his.

  It didn’t lasted long.

  Just as she realized what they were doing . . .

  Just as alarm bells went off in her head and she commanded herself that she had to stop, remembering who she was, that she was married, they both were . . .

  His wife arrived.

  Sharon Gallagher had come looking for her husband. Seeing the dog tied to the lamppost in front of the Banks home, she had knocked at the screen door. The inner door—the one with no window, the one that would have blocked Sharon Gallagher’s view of the interior of the house—was wide open that day because of the heat.

  Tasha and Fletch were in the part of the kitchen directly across from the front door.

  Sharon Gallagher had seen everything.

  Tasha will never forget the expression on her face.

  She didn’t look particularly shocked, or even disturbed. She simply said, “There you are, Fletch.”

  Then she turned and walked away.

  “It’s okay, I’ll call you,” Fletch whispered to Tasha before hurrying after his wife.

  To her utter amazement, he did. He called her the next day. And the next. It took him a while to get the hint that she had absolutely no intention of getting involved with him. And then he was gone when the Mets left town again, and by the time he came back, she had learned to avoid him.

  Tasha will never forget those first tense days after the kiss, when, shaken by her own indiscretion, she lived in utter fear that Joel would find out. That Sharon Gallagher would tell him, or would tell somebody else, and that sooner or later it would get back to Joel.

  But it never had.

  As far as Tasha knows, nobody besides her and Fletch and Sharon is aware of what happened that steamy August day in this very kitchen. For whatever reason, Sharon Gallagher apparently kept what she had seen to herself.

  And now she’s dead.

  Now only Tasha and Fletch know.

  Unless Fletch told somebody else . . .

  Rachel.

  Fletch could have told Rachel. They were together. They were lovers.

  But if Rachel had known about Fletch and Tasha, she never let on. She kept quiet about it. Which wasn’t Rachel’s style . . .

  “Tasha,” Paula Bailey is saying.

  Tasha shifts her attention to Paula, idly watching a wisp of cigarette smoke floating around her head.

  “Tasha, Fletch Gallagher had an affair with Jane Kendall, too. It wasn’t just Rachel.”

  “It wasn’t just Rachel?” Tasha echoes.

  Jane Kendall. Perfect pretty Jane. She had been involved with another man? With someone like Fletch? But how . . . ?

  But Tasha knows how. She’s been there. Left behind by a busy working husband, lonely in her suburban house day after day, vulnerable to a man like Fletch Gallagher, a man who was so clearly looking for trouble . . .

  “But . . .” The truth sinks in. “Jane Kendall is dead, too.”

  “I know. And so is Melissa Galla
gher. His brother’s wife. The one who died in that fire.”

  “Are you saying he was involved with her, too? That the fire was no accident?”

  “That’s what I’m—what’s that?” Paula asks, breaking off in mid-sentence.

  Tasha follows her gaze.

  She’s pointing at something on the tall counter that separates the kitchen from the family room area.

  The countertops are so neat, Tasha vaguely notes. Joel tidied everything before he left this morning.

  There’s nothing on the counter Paula’s pointing to except the canisters and the paper towel holder and . . .

  And . . .

  What’s that?

  Slowly Tasha crosses the room toward the flat, rectangular object in front of the row of cannisters.

  Her heart is pounding.

  She sees what it is.

  A puzzle. A big cardboard one, assembled on the counter.

  A puzzle isn’t unusual. The kids have so many puzzles. . . .

  Except that the counter is high above their heads.

  And it wasn’t here when she went up to bed.

  She distinctly remembers cleaning the kitchen, throwing the pizza box in the garbage, wiping everything down, turning off the light.

  Okay.

  So maybe one of the kids . . .

  The kids.

  Tasha’s heart beats faster.

  Again, she tries to grasp the nagging thought that darted into her mind earlier, and then out again. Struggling to capture it, she stares at a puzzle she’s never seen before. A nursery rhyme puzzle.

  Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep . . .

  The familiar rhyme is lost in the roar that fills Tasha’s head as she snags the elusive thought at last.

  This morning she came downstairs to find that Joel had taken the children, and she knew it before she finished searching.

  She knew it instinctively then, on the stairway, as she knows it now.

  The house is empty.

  The children are gone.

  Chapter 15

  “How much farther?” Tasha asks from the seat beside Paula, well over an hour later.

  “Not much, I don’t think,” Paula tells her, checking the speedometer. She’s going over sixty. The speed limit on this mountainous stretch of highway is fifty-five, and the rain is coming down in torrents. She doesn’t want to risk an accident. She’s not used to driving this big a vehicle—a truck, really—but here they are in Tasha’s Ford Expedition. She told Tasha the Honda would never make it where they are going.

  “Do you think the cops are there by now?” Tasha asks for the millionth time.

  “I told you, I called the local police on my cell phone and explained the situation while you were throwing your clothes on upstairs.” The wet road reflects the glaring headlights of the car behind her, blinding her in the mirror. She flips it up, keeping her gaze on the windshield, looking for the sign.

  “What did you say, exactly?”

  “That your children weren’t in their beds,” Paula says patiently, focused on the slick, deserted road snaking ahead. She craves a cigarette, but she doesn’t dare light one. Not here. She needs both hands on the wheel. The wind keeps slamming into the SUV, as though in an effort to push it off the road.

  “What else?” Tasha asks, with a mother’s intense need to know everything, every detail.

  “I said that I thought Fletch Gallagher had taken them, and that I was pretty sure where he had them.”

  “I just don’t understand why he would take my kids,” Tasha says tearfully.

  “He’s desperate, Tasha. He’s about to be arrested for three murders.”

  “So he’s using them as hostages?” Tasha sobs. Outside, lightning flashes. “But why my kids? It doesn’t make sense. . . .”

  When she trails off and falls silent, Paula darts a glance at her. Tasha’s face is turned away. She’s gazing out the window.

  “Two of the women Fletch murdered were his lovers, Tasha,” she says quietly, over the distant rumble of thunder. “Three, if you count Melissa. The police seem to have overlooked her, but I haven’t.”

  “Have you told them?”

  “No.” She exhales. “It’s just a guess. But I’m sure I’m right. And the last woman he killed was his wife—presumably because Sharon found out what he’d done.”

  Tasha says nothing.

  Finally, Paula comes right out with it. “Think about it. What reason could he possibly have for wanting to hurt you, Tasha?”

  For a time, the steady, rapid beating of the windshield wipers is the only sound inside the car.

  Then, taking a deep breath, Tasha turns away from the window and finally admits what Paula has already known, ever since she sat beside Sharon Gallagher on the couch little more than twenty-four hours ago.

  “There was something between me and Fletch, once, Paula.”

  “What happened?” Paula asks, feigning surprise. “Did you have an affair?”

  Tasha’s answer catches her off guard.

  “No. Not an affair.”

  Trying to hide her surprise, Paula asks, “Then what happened?”

  “We kissed. Just once. Nothing more than that. It came out of nowhere. I’d never even met him before, and I’d never done anything like that . . . Maybe it was because I was stuck in the house with a new baby, and Joel was starting to get busier at work, and I didn’t feel very attractive because of the weight I’d gained with pregnancy . . . whatever it was, Paula, it happened only once. I wouldn’t let it happen again.”

  “But he wanted it to?”

  “He tried calling me a few times. Then I guess he moved on. To Jane. Or Rachel. Or someone else.”

  Or someone else.

  Paula clenches the steering wheel tightly as she guides the Expedition around a sharp curve.

  “What about that puzzle?” Tasha asks suddenly. “You said something about it back when we were home, but I was too far gone to even hear you.”

  “I’ve been investigating, Tasha. There were similar puzzles linked to every murder. All nursery rhymes. One was in Sharon’s car. A nursery rhyme. Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater . . .”

  “Had a wife and couldn’t keep her,” Tasha murmurs, quoting the rhyme her mother taught her when she was a child.

  “Sharon had a lover, too, Tasha. Did you know that?”

  She shakes her head. Of course she didn’t know that. But nothing could surprise her at this point.

  “Not many people knew, but I’m guessing Fletch did,” Paula says. “ ‘Had a wife and couldn’t keep her.’ Do you know the rest of the rhyme?”

  “ ‘So he put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.’ ”

  “Sharon Gallagher’s body was found stuffed into a pumpkin that was growing in the garden behind the ruins of Aidan Gallagher’s house that burned down.”

  “But . . . How do you know that? I saw the news last night and they didn’t say where—”

  “I’m a reporter. I have sources. That’s my job. A puzzle was found in Jane Kendall’s carriage, too. That one was Humpty Dumpty. ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall . . .’ ”

  “ ‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall . . . ’ ” Tasha says in a faraway tone. “My God. He’s sick. So her sister didn’t kill her after all.”

  “But the cops haven’t figured that out yet. They’ve overlooked the puzzle. They probably thought it was one of her daughter’s toys. They don’t realize infants her age are too young for that kind of puzzle.”

  “How could they have missed that?”

  “It’s the kind of thing a mother notices, Tasha.”

  “But I missed it, too. Paula, I saw a puzzle on Rachel’s table. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now I wonder why I didn’t. Her house was always so clean. Not a toy out of place. Why would tha
t puzzle have been on the table? Now I understand what it means. ‘It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring.’ ” Her voice trails off in a shuddering sigh.

  “ ‘He went to bed and he bumped his head and he couldn’t get up in the morning.’ ” Paula finishes it for her, quietly. “And then I saw the puzzle on your counter. And I knew right away that he’d taken the kids. ‘Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them. Leave them alone and they’ll come home—’ ”

  “But we know they won’t,” Tasha cuts in, her voice wavering. “Not if we leave them alone. I hope to God the cops are there ahead of us. My babies . . .”

  She breaks into another sob. She’s not hysterical anymore, as she was in the kitchen back home, but she’s been crying since they sped away from Orchard Lane. More than once she has said she wishes she could call her husband, but that she doesn’t know where to reach him. That she doesn’t have the phone number of the hotel in Chicago.

  Now she says, “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before now. We can use your cell phone, Paula. To find out from the cops whether they called the FBI, like you said. This is a kidnapping.”

  “I know, Tasha. I know. Stay calm, okay? I already thought of calling, but I left my phone on your kitchen table after I called the police. I just wasn’t thinking straight. All I wanted to do was get on the road so that we can get to the kids on time. . . .”

  Her words hang in the air between them, along with those she leaves unspoken.

  We can get to the kids on time . . .

  Before Fletch Gallagher harms them.

  “Thank God you knew about his cabin,” Tasha says shakily. “But what if they’re not there?”

  “They will be, Tasha,” Paula assures her. “I’ve been looking into every angle of Fletch Gallagher’s life. It makes perfect sense. That cabin is his getaway. Hardly anybody knows about it.”

  “Why do you?”

  The question isn’t suspicious. Tasha sounds more curious than anything else.

  Still, it catches Paula off guard.

  Should she tell Tasha the whole truth? Here? Now? Is there any way she can possibly avoid it?

  “You were involved with Fletch Gallagher, too, weren’t you, Paula,” Tasha says softly.