by Dave Conifer
“Somebody on Facebook. And I never said I had them. I said I’ve seen them.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t exactly know,” she admitted. “But I saw the pictures. I don’t care where they came from. It was somebody using a made-up name. I think it was one of your friends.”
“What?” he sputtered. “One of my friends? Some friend. Which one of them would make this up and go behind my back? And you believe it?”
“Pictures don’t lie,” she said calmly.
“You’re serious about this? Somebody you don’t know feeds you this bullshit and you gobble it right up? What happened to trust?” When she didn’t answer he continued. “This changes things. You’ve got a lot of nerve coming up with this shit. I’ve put up with a lot of crap from you lately but this is too much.”
“It’s okay, Steve,” she finally said. “It’s not the end of the world. I’m just worried about Allie. That’s the only thing for me.”
“So some mystery person sends you some pictures over the internet, says they’re me with a chick, and you fall for it? Just like that?”
“I know what I saw,” she said simply.
He scowled at her and threw up his hands. “Fuck this,” he said before stomping out of the room.
He was back thirty seconds later. “Jane, whatever you saw, this isn’t true. It just isn’t. How can I prove it to you? I can’t prove a negative.”
“Let’s talk about it later,” she said. “I don’t want Allie to hear anything.”
“Anything like what? Do you want a divorce?”
“I don’t know. That might be too much for Allie to handle.”
“Except for that you’d want a divorce?” He shook his head and raged out of the room even more loudly than he had the first time.
At least it’s out in the open, she told herself. That’s got to be worth something.
Chapter 15
The next morning was a repeat from the day before except that for Jane it began with a trek up the stairs from the living room couch and into the shower. Steve stirred while she was putting her makeup, on but didn’t get out of bed. Jane guessed that he didn’t want a confrontation any more than she did. Although she wasn’t completely certain that he would remember to take Allie to school, or even get out of bed in time, she gave in to the temptation for a quiet exit and didn’t wake him up. Allie might miss a day of preschool, but that wasn’t something that would ever matter much. When she left for work her husband and daughter were both still in their beds.
~~~
“I’m shocked,” Eddie said when Steve dialed his number later that morning. “It’s not even nine o’clock and you’re awake. You got a job interview or something?”
“No, I just couldn’t sleep. Goddamned Allie was clanging around looking for something to eat. Jane’s already gone.”
“So what’s on the schedule?”
“Nothing much. I think I was supposed to take her to school but I already missed that. Oh well.”
“You can kiss college goodbye,” Eddie joked. “She’ll never get in now.”
“I was wondering if I could ask you for a favor,” Steve said.
“Sure,” Eddie replied. “What do you need?”
“I hope you can do it. I left some real important personal stuff in my office,” Steve began. “I know it’s a long shot but I thought maybe you could swing by there and if it’s open, grab a file for me.”
“Whoa,” Eddie said. “That’s a heavy request. I’m sure it’s locked up.”
“Maybe it isn’t. Could you check?”
“I guess I can work it in. It’s a fifteen minute walk across the campus, though. It’ll be a while before I can get to it,” Eddie warned him.
“Can you do it today?” Steve asked. “I’m afraid they’ll trash it or shred it soon, if they haven’t already.”
“You know, they’re supposed to give you your personal stuff. Why don’t you just call HR and ask for it?”
“Well, let’s put it this way,” Steve answered. “They might take a look at it and decide it isn’t so personal and not give it to me. That may be why they didn’t give it to me in the first place.”
Eddie laughed. “Don’t say another word. You’re just dying to get in as much trouble as possible, aren’t you?”
“It’s in the file cabinet by the window, top drawer. A file labeled Narvatek.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Eddie asked. “What do you want that for? I’d think you’d want to forget it. That project turned out to be a major fuckfest for you.”
“Yeah, but Cindy was right there with me. I was thinking—“
“Don’t even say it. I know where you’re going with this. Man, give it up. She won. You lost. You’re just making everything worse.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Steve said. “You have a job. Come on. I need your help on this.”
“Too bad you didn’t keep that file at home.”
“I have one at home, too, but all the good stuff was in the one at work.”
The line was silent, followed by a long sigh from Eddie. More silence. “I’ll walk through and see what your office looks like. Then I’ll call you back. That’s it. No promises. I’m not risking my own job by smuggling out your file unless the coast is one hundred percent clear. And leave me out of the rest of it. I’m already doing a lot. Okay?”
“Okay,” Steve agreed. “Just call me back when you know something and we can work it out from there. Maybe I’ll have this stuff by the end of the day, right?”
“I wouldn’t count on it but we can always try.”
~~~
“What are you doing here?” Kristie asked when she looked up from the paperwork she was starting her workday with. “You’re off today.”
“I know,” Jane said, shrugging. “I’m here on my own time. I have more research I wanted to do.”
“Why are you wearing your scrubs if you’re not working?”
“If Steve thinks I have to work I don’t have to do any explaining. Otherwise he’d complain about getting stuck around the house. Not that he’d go anywhere, anyway. Can I use NetReach again today?”
“Of course. You still have the password, right?”
“Did I tell you what I found yesterday? Of course I didn’t. When could I have?” She described the article about the Maine car crash. “You were right. This NetReach thing is exactly what I needed. I couldn’t believe how much it turned up. Are you sure you don’t mind if I use it again?”
“Knock yourself out. Are you going down there right now?”
“Yeah. Today I want to find out what happened to the Creedmoors. I have a feeling nobody survived that accident but I want to know for sure.”
“Jane, I have to ask. What difference does it make? You don’t even know the Creedmoors. Why do you care?”
“After being in that house I just have to find out what happened. And if something happened to Richard Creedmoor, isn’t it my responsibility as a nurse to, you know, make sure he’s okay and all?”
“No, it isn’t. Absolutely not. That’s for the police. You’re starting to worry me. Your handyman is gone. Why can’t you just leave it alone? Get back to your own life.”
“What life?” Jane asked. “My whole life is falling apart.”
“And this is going to help?”
“I’m just curious,” Jane insisted. “Maybe it’s nothing more than that. And I’m still worried about what Rob might have done.”
“But that’s just what I’m talking about. Who cares? You don’t even know him. To you he’s no different than anybody else that might have committed a crime.”
“I know,” Jane said. “It’ll just be this one last time.”
“Keep snooping if you have to, but please, think hard before you do anything. You’ve never come right out and said it but I know what you’re afraid of. You think Manteo killed Creedmoor. And if you think that, why do you want to get involved?”
“Who says I want to g
et involved? I just want to know what happened.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m not even sure that Creedmoor’s dead. The cops told me he’s alive and well.”
“But I know you,” Kristie whispered back. “You don’t believe that.”
“It’s a little sketchy. I think that whoever Sergeant Rockingham sent to knock on that door didn’t know Creedmoor from anybody else. How would he know who it was that answered the door? Rockingham said they asked for ID, but it’s Creedmoor’s house. How hard could that have been to find? So yeah, I have my doubts.”
“All the more reason for you to stay out of it. Just thank your lucky stars that nothing happened while he was in your place. He’s crazy from all the steroids he took and he thinks he’s dying. Who knows what he might do? Why are you trying so hard to get mixed up with him?”
“I know, Kristie,” Jane said. “Really, I know. I think part of it is that I feel sorry for him. And there’s got to be a connection between Creedmoor and Rob. He couldn’t have picked that house randomly.”
~~~
“What’s up? It’s Eddie,” Steve heard after he picked up the phone. Halfway through the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he was making for Allie, his hands were sticky and wet. If not for caller ID he wouldn’t have subjected the phone to his jelly-smeared hands at all.
“Hey,” he replied. “What’d you find out? Did you get my stuff?”
“It’s gone. Your office is wide open and there’s nothing in there. It’s like Regal Pharmaceuticals never even knew you were alive. Sorry, buddy.”
“Damn. I’m not surprised but it was worth a shot.”
~~~
What am I really looking for here, Jane asked herself as she settled in at the computer and logged in to NetReach. Unsure whether it was okay to have coffee with her, she took a healthy sip and pushed it out of view behind the monitor. The first order of business, she had already decided, was to find out what had happened to the wife and daughter. She hadn’t stopped thinking about what Kristie had said earlier. She’s right, Jane admitted to herself. I do think something happened to Richard Creedmoor and I’m afraid Rob had something to do with it. All I’m doing here is checking the facts. The math was simple. If Jessica and Sara Creedmoor died in the hospital there were two fewer bodies unaccounted for.
She started with the same search query she’d used the day before, but this time plugged in the names of the accident victims. The crunching took longer and there were fewer results, but there was still plenty to look at. She clicked on an article from The Gorham Messenger in Maine.
Woman and Daughter in Comas Following Snowy Car Wreck
-- Gary Moyock, Staff Writer, Posted November 19, 2005.
A twenty-nine year old woman and her four-year old daughter are both in comas at The Medical Center at the University of Southern Maine at Gorham after a serious crash on Wednesday. Police say that the driver, Jessica Creedmoor, was not wearing a seatbelt and was thrown partially out of the vehicle after it slid off an icy road and collided with a tree. Sara Creedmoor was belted into a child car seat which was torn from its straps and apparently careened through the interior of the SUV, a 1999 Ford Explorer, during the crash. The accident occurred around noon on Narragansett Street at the height of the first significant snowstorm of the season.
Both passengers suffered severe head injuries as well as numerous cuts and scrapes. Jessica suffered two broken legs, neck and pelvic fractures and was treated for spleen damage. She has undergone at least two surgeries.
A CT scan indicated that Sara’s head injuries were so critical that immediate surgery was performed to remove a bone flap from the left side of her skull to alleviate pressure. In addition to head injuries, Sara sustained a broken arm, a broken leg and a collapsed lung. Her coma was described by a surgeon as “profound.”
“Both Jessica and Sara are in comas, but are breathing on their own,” hospital spokesman Ken Brevard said in a statement. “They remain under constant observation in the Intensive Care Unit.”
- Contact Gary Moyock at [email protected] -
Jane jotted down the contact information for the reporter even though she realized it was five years old, and moved on. She now knew that as of November 19, 2005, two days after the accident, both of them had still been alive. But not by much. She keyed through four more pages of search results. Most had nothing to do with the Creedmoors and probably appeared only because her query was too vague. Finally she tried a new search after adding the words ‘die’ and ‘death’ to the search criteria. The answer came quickly after that.
New Jersey Mother and Daughter Pass Away After Thirteen Weeks in Comas
-- Gary Moyock, Staff Writer, Posted February 9, 2006.
Jessica and Sara Creedmoor, who had been in comas since a November 16 automobile accident, passed away within minutes of each other at approximately 2:00 a.m. on Monday morning at The Medical Center at the University of Southern Maine at Gorham. Jessica, 29, and Sara, 5 (4 when the accident occurred) were traveling northeast on Naragansett Street when the car skidded off the road, struck a tree and turned over. In addition to severe head injuries which caused the comas, the victims each suffered broken bones, bruises and lacerations.
Because of the severity of the head injuries, neither had been expected to emerge from their comas. Both were capable of breathing on their own but neither showed even remote brain activity.
While the comas were of similar nature and seriousness, hospital spokesman Ken Brevard had no explanation as to how the deaths occurred at almost the same time. “Something like this is easier to explain for somebody who believes in God,” he remarked. “Other than that, I’d attribute it to coincidence.” He later mentioned that the mother and daughter had been expected to live indefinitely, but in a vegetative state.
Jessica Creedmoor, originally from South Windham, was arriving with her daughter for a holiday visit with friends and family when the accident occurred. They are survived by Richard Creedmoor of Chesilhurst, New Jersey. No arrangements for funeral services have been announced.
- Contact Gary Moyock at [email protected] -
So they had hung on for thirteen weeks. That must have been hard for Richard Creedmoor to live through, but it didn’t really have anything to do with Rob. Kristie was right, Jane realized as she chewed on the end of her pen. The best thing she could do was forget about the whole thing. It would go away as soon as she let it. There were plenty of problems in her life that she could dwell on. Plenty. This wasn’t one of them.
Her thoughts took her back to the day she’d caught up with Manteo in that bedroom, which she now knew had been Sara’s. It was hard to imagine that creepy mansion as the home of a living, breathing family. It seemed more like a haunted house when she was inside. Knowing she had a few more minutes before she had to get home, she entered one last query: “Richard Jessica Creedmoor 621 Falling Run Road.” Three search results came up. Two seemed to be dry, real estate listings but the third, an article from the Homes section of The Hammonton Bulletin, was full of exactly the kind of information she was craving.
Renovations on Chesilhurst estate Nearly Complete
-- Charlotte Mecklenberg, Hammonton Bulletin, Posted August 12, 2005.
When Richard and Jessica Creedmoor purchased the house at 621 Falling Run Road in 2001 they thought they knew what they were in for. Turns out they didn’t. Although structurally sound, the expansive house had fallen into a marked state of disrepair, with sixties and, gasp, seventies era décor at every turn. They envisioned several years of dust, heavy lifting and quite a few how-to courses at Lowes and Home Depot. In the end that was the way it turned out, but it was much more challenging than the twenty-something couple had expected. Neither could bring themselves to answer in the affirmative when asked if they would do it all over again had they known how difficult the process would be.
Richard, a tall, slender man and local business owner, took responsibility for the major aspects of the work. Jessic
a, a full-time mother who gave birth to a daughter, Sara Creedmoor, during the first months of the renovation, took care of the finer points whenever she found the time. “Rich had it the hardest,” she said modestly. “We vowed to do most of the work ourselves so he spent a lot of time learning and then a lot more time doing. He did sheetrock, redid the floors, installed appliances, a lot of woodwork, you name it. He even fixed the sprinklers, reseeded the lawn and replaced the landscaping.”
Right on cue, Richard listed the parts of the renovation that Jessica handled. “If I had to decorate the place it would have looked worse than before we started. She told me what to paint and what color to paint it and I just followed orders. I got so I was pretty good with a brush and roller.”
When asked what they had done to celebrate when the house was finally finished both Creedmoors laughed. “Nothing,” Jessica said. “We sat in the house quietly and enjoyed it. We were very proud of what we accomplished.”
“There’s nothing like doing it yourself,” Richard said. “Not a day goes by where one of us doesn’t look at a piece of woodwork or a refinished banister or something and start reminiscing.”
The article included more pictures than text but it was next to impossible to see them clearly on the computer screen. She recognized parts of the house, including a view from out front. The Creedmoors themselves were even more difficult to make out than the house itself in the grainy photographs, but Jane could see their shadowy images, one of which was holding a toddler on her lap. Her stomach churned when she thought about what was in store for the family four months later.
