Harlan Coben

by Play Dead

  “That’s not it at all. …”

  “How could you do that to Dad? How could you sneak behind his back like that?”

  Mary’s head fell into her hands. For the first time, her voice was above a whisper. “Don’t you think I ask myself that every day? I love your father very much. I never, never had another affair after that.”

  “How big of you,” Laura shot back sarcastically.

  “Back then,” Mary continued, “your father was working at the hospital day and night. I never saw him. I took care of Gloria and sat at home all day watching soap operas. Sinclair came along. He was a handsome, charismatic, worldly man, and I was young and naive. I fell for him. You of all people should understand the attraction. Your David probably possessed similar charms.”

  “Don’t compare what I had with David to your sleazy affair.”

  “I’m not,” Mary replied. “I’m just saying that I was lonely and young. I made a mistake. I don’t expect you to understand, and I don’t want your sympathy.”

  “Good, because you’re not going to get it. But I have another question. Why did you kill Sinclair Baskin?”

  Her mother stopped. “Kill Sinclair? He committed suicide like …”

  “Like who, Mother?”

  “No-nobody. Sinclair Baskin committed suicide. He shot himself in the head.”

  “Another lie, Mother.”

  “No, it’s the truth—”

  “It’s a lie!” Laura shouted. “Sinclair Baskin broke it off with you. You were crushed, destroyed. After all, nobody breaks up with the gorgeous Mary Ayars, right? And according to his secretary, you were the last person to see him alive.”

  “He committed suicide, Laura. Everybody knows that.”

  “Wrong, Mother. Stan Baskin was there. He was hiding behind a couch. He saw his father being murdered.”

  Mary’s body swayed. Her head kept shaking, deny- ing her daughter’s words. “I never harmed Sinclair. I swear it. Yes, we had an affair thirty years ago, but I had nothing to do with his death. You have to believe me. For thirty years, I’ve had to pay for what I did back then. We have all had to pay in ways I could have never imagined.”

  “Including David?”

  “It was never supposed to happen that way.”

  “What way?”

  “David was never supposed to die.”

  Laura stopped in midbreath. “You killed him,” she said in a hushed voice.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Mary cried. “I thought it would all end differently. I thought I was doing what was best for everyone.”

  “You killed David!”

  Mary shook her head. “You don’t understand. It was unplanned, an accident. I thought he’d react differently.”

  “React differently? Did you really think that you could just talk him into leaving me?”

  “Something like that …”

  “You thought he would dump me just like Sinclair Baskin dumped you thirty years ago?”

  “It was a chance I had to take.”

  “And when he refused, you had him killed.”

  Mary’s head snapped up. “No! That’s not it at all.”

  “You hated him because of what his father did to you thirty years ago.”

  “No!”

  “And you didn’t want your daughter to make the same mistake you made. After all, like father, like son, right? You decided he was no good.”

  “That’s not it,” Mary said. “You don’t understand.”

  “How could you be so blind to David, Mother? He was nothing like his father. David was warm, sweet, considerate, caring—”

  “I know!” Mary interrupted loudly. “I know he was a wonderful young man. I know he was nothing like his father. Don’t you see? I never wanted him to die.”

  Laura stopped. Her puzzled eyes locked onto her mother. “Then why, Mother? If you thought he was such a wonderful man, why did you have him killed?”

  “I didn’t have him killed. I never killed anyone.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I caused his death,” Mary explained, “but I didn’t kill him.”

  Laura’s mind spun. “You’re not making sense. You wanted to destroy a relationship between your daughter and a man you just described as wonderful. You wanted to break us up so badly that you flew to Australia, met with him, and begged him to stop seeing me, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then when he refused to leave me—”

  “He didn’t refuse,” Mary said. “David promised me he would never see you again.”

  Laura could not believe what she was hearing. “What are you saying?” she snapped. “You talked David into leaving me?”

  “I guess I did. But I didn’t realize the cost. You were the one who said, ‘Like father, like son.’ ”

  “So?”

  “So David loved you. He couldn’t stand to be away from you. After we talked, I thought he was just going to leave you, disappear from your life. That’s what he promised. And I knew you would be devastated. I knew how much you loved him. But you’re strong and young. You’d be able to snap back from the heartbreak. Your family would help you. Don’t you see, Laura? I just wanted David to leave you. I never wanted him to commit suicide … like his father.”

  Laura felt her knees buckle. “What?”

  “Right after I convinced David to leave you, he drowned. Doesn’t that seem like a strange coincidence to you? I never imagined that my words would make him kill himself.”

  Laura felt blows landing on her head. She tried to fend them off but there were too many and they were coming too fast. She felt dizzy, sick. “Are you trying to tell me that David was so upset about his father’s indiscretions that he committed suicide?”

  “No. That’s not it at all.”

  “Why couldn’t you have just left us alone?” Laura ranted, tears flowing freely now. “We were happy and in love. Why should your disgusting affair have anything to do with us?”

  “Unfortunately,” Mary said sadly, “it had everything to do with you.”

  “But why?” Laura demanded. She was on the verge of striking out physically at her mother, of punching and kicking until she dropped from exhaustion. “David was an infant when Sinclair Baskin died. He was nothing like his father—you yourself said that. Why was it so important for you to destroy my marriage?”

  Mary swallowed. She stood upright, her spine rigid. She turned to face Laura as if she were preparing to receive a terrible blow. Her body trembled. “Because,” she said slowly, “you were married to your brother.”

  29

  “THIS way, miss.”

  Estelle followed the president of First National of Hamilton into the bank. It was late, well past closing, but Estelle had managed to get him to come down and open the bank for her. How? Trade secrets. Estelle knew how to network better than anyone. She had taken the simple ritual of talking on the phone and transformed it into an art. Give her a telephone and a local directory and Estelle could locate anybody or anything—like the truth behind Judy’s mystery key.

  “Please have a seat. May I have the key, please?”

  Estelle handed him the key.

  “And the notarized letter?”

  She passed him the notarized letter Laura’s attorney had drawn up giving Estelle full access to whatever the key might open.

  The banker headed down the hallway. He returned a minute later with the box under his arm.

  “Here it is.”

  He handed her the box. Estelle opened it and skimmed through the contents. A lot of old bonds. An employment contract from Colgate University. Insurance claims.

  On the bottom, Estelle found a diary from nineteen sixty. Laura’s words came back to her.

  “What exactly do you expect me to find, Laura?”

  “I don’t really know. Something to do with the past.”

  “The past?”

  “Nineteen sixty to be more precise. Something happened to my aunt that year and I need to find
out what.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “Neither do I. Don’t worry about it. Just keep your eyes open for anything involving nineteen sixty.”

  Without further delay, Estelle poured everything from the box into a small bag with the other items. She thanked the banker and hurried to the taxi. The chartered jet was fueled and waiting for her at the airport. Estelle looked at her watch. With a little luck, she could be back at Laura’s apartment with the diary in just over two hours.

  FOR more than a full minute, the kitchen remained silent. Only the sounds of Mary’s sobs penetrated the stillness that surrounded the two women. Laura was too stunned to move, too stunned to allow the truth to go any deeper than the periphery of her mind.

  “My brother?” she was finally able to utter. “David was my brother?”

  Mary nodded. “Sinclair Baskin is your real father.”

  “No,” Laura said with a dull voice. “That can’t be.”

  “It’s true. God, I wish it wasn’t, but it’s true.”

  “But how … ?”

  “Because I was stupid and careless. During my affair with Sinclair, I became pregnant.”

  “Maybe Dad was the one. Maybe Dad got you preg—”

  Mary shook her head. “Your father and I had not slept together for nearly two months.”

  “You became pregnant?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you tell Sinclair?”

  “Of course I told him. Like I said before, I was young and confused. I thought we were in love. I was prepared to leave your father and start life anew as Mrs. Sinclair Baskin.”

  “So what happened?”

  “When Sinclair found out that I was pregnant, he threw me out.”

  “Just like that?”

  Mary nodded. “Sinclair said that he didn’t care what I did with the baby as long as I just got out of his life right away. I was so scared, Laura. Terrified. I never felt so alone in all my life. I had nobody to turn to. I’d never had many girlfriends except on a superficial level. They thought I was pretty and popular but no one ever wanted to know me. I mean, there were no flesh and blood and feelings in pretty Mary. I was just a beautiful painting or landscape for people to stare at and admire. Nothing more. You must know the feeling.”

  Laura did. “So what did you do?”

  Mary went over to the sink, turned on the faucet, and filled a glass. “I cried a lot. And then I sat down and tried to think it through. What was I going to do? Abortion was not a real option back then. I mean, you could get one if you had the money but James handled all of our finances. He would know in a second.

  “I considered telling James the truth, but can you imagine what would have happened? He is very possessive. If he had ever learned what had happened—Well, I don’t know what he would have done to me.”

  “Probably divorced you.”

  “Probably,” Mary agreed.

  “So what did you decide to do?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she asked. “I pretended the child was his.”

  “How? You just said that you hadn’t slept together in months.”

  “The night after Sinclair threw me out, I started seducing James. Almost every night for months, we made love.”

  Laura felt sick to her stomach. “Seduction was always the answer for you, wasn’t it, Mother?”

  “I wish there had been another solution, but what else could I do? I had to make him think you were his child. It was not easy. You were a very difficult pregnancy. For weeks I was sick as a dog and delirious. I vomited every morning. I was bleeding profusely. I thought I was going to miscarry, and God forgive me, I wanted to so badly. Days went by that I spent in the grips of a fever and could barely remember anything.”

  “But you still managed to seduce him.”

  “I had to, Laura. I had to make him think the baby was his. There were two big obstacles standing in the way of my deception: timing and family resemblance. You see, if everything kept on schedule, you were going to be born nine months after I became pregnant by Sinclair, which would have been a month or two too soon if you were really James’s baby.”

  “How did you get around that?”

  “I figured that in the basking light of parenthood, I could gloss it over as an early arrival. But luckily, you were a very late baby anyway. I didn’t need to lie.”

  “And family resemblance?”

  “You ended up looking just like me. No one noticed if there was a similarity between you and James. We moved to Boston a year later. My secret was safe. With Sinclair dead, the only other person who knew the truth was my sister.”

  “You told Judy?” Laura asked in disbelief.

  “I needed to trust someone, Laura. I couldn’t do this by myself. So I confided in the one person I could always depend on.”

  “Wasn’t she still furious at you for stealing Sinclair from her?”

  “We were sisters, Laura. Just like you and Gloria. Judy could no more turn her back on me in a time of crisis than you could turn yours on Gloria. Without her help, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  “So Aunt Judy knew everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she was going to tell me, wasn’t she? That was why she called me the other day.”

  “Yes,” Mary said slowly. “I think she planned on doing just that.”

  “So you killed her, too.”

  “What?”

  “You set the fire.”

  “She was my sister… .”

  “The same sister you stole men from?”

  “That’s different. I loved Judy—you know that. And she loved me.”

  “So tell me why Judy chose to betray your trust all of a sudden?”

  “I don’t know, Laura. I wondered that myself. I know how it must look, but I did not set that fire. I swear. Try to understand. I was only trying to do what was best. And if you look at it from a distance, wasn’t it working out, Laura? Until you fell in love with David, everything was wonderful. James loves you more than anything in the world.”

  “No, Mother. He loves a lie.”

  “Don’t say that. He loves you. Biology doesn’t mean a damn thing. If we had adopted you, he’d still love you just as much, right?”

  “But you didn’t adopt me. You created a lie.”

  “A lie that was working just fine until you stopped listening to me.”

  “Stopped listening to you?”

  “Once I realized that David was Sinclair’s son, I begged and pleaded with you not to see him. Why didn’t you listen to me, Laura? Why didn’t you stay away from him? I tried to stop you. I was sure I could. But then you ran off to Australia and got married. So I followed you. I had no choice.”

  “Why couldn’t you just tell me the truth?”

  Mary’s eyes never left her daughter’s. “My deception was thirty years old by then, Laura. The lies were snugly wrapped around this family. I was afraid of what would happen if they were suddenly removed. So I went to Australia to talk with David, to tell him the truth. I told no one I was going—not even Judy. When I arrived, I called David at your hotel. He was surprised of course, but he agreed to meet me in my room at the Pacific International Hotel. We talked for a very long time. Oh, Laura, it was the most awful thing. David was so confused. One minute he was furious and storming about the room. The next he was crying. Every word I said tore him apart. He was so devastated. Remember, you’re hearing it after the fact. But David had to decide what to do. He loved you. He couldn’t live without you. But he also knew how badly you wanted children and how dangerous it would be to ignore the truth. Suddenly, his whole world was anchored to ice. And my words were pulling up that anchor. When I spoke to your father a few days later and he told me David had drowned, I knew that my words had been the cause of it. I just wanted him to leave you, Laura. You have to believe me. I wish there had been another way, but there wasn’t. I couldn’t just sit back and let you marry your brother. You see I had no choi
ce, don’t you?”

  Laura fell back. She let the tears spill down her face. Oh, David, I don’t care what the world thought. We could have made it work. We could have adopted kids, for chrissake. Or you could have just left me. Anything but what you did.

  A new voice chased away her thoughts.

  “Hello?” James called out. “Anybody home?”

  Laura and Mary both spun. James stood in the doorway, his medical bag in one hand, his briefcase on the floor by his foot. His eyes widened in surprise and concern as he looked at both his wife and daughter.

  “What is going on here?” he asked.

  “Nothing, honey,” Mary answered quickly.

  James turned toward his daughter and studied her face. “Laura,” he began, “is there anything wrong?”

  Love and sadness rushed through her. Laura wanted so much to hug him, to put her arms around him and tell him how much he meant to her. How many times had he comforted her when she’d needed it? How many times had he sacrificed his own wants for hers? Countless. She glanced briefly at her mother and wondered if she should tell him the truth, if she should tell him just what kind of a woman he had married. But what good would it do? It would only hurt him. He had lived with her and loved her for more than thirty years. If he was still blind to her faults, it was because he chose to be.

  “Nothing, Dad.”

  “You look upset. You both look upset.”

  “We were just having a heart-to-heart,” Laura said. “It got a little emotional, that’s all.”

  Mary looked at her daughter gratefully, but Laura did not give her the satisfaction of being acknowledged.

  “I see,” James said but his tone said otherwise. “Serita’s car is outside. Do you want to invite her in?”

  “No, I have to go.” Ignoring her mother completely, Laura picked up her coat, put it on, and kissed her father good-bye.

  “I love you, Dad,” she said to him.

  His smile seemed sad. “I love you, too, sweetheart.”

  “I’d better go now.” Without another word, Laura walked down the corridor. When she reached the door, she turned one last time and looked back at her parents, both staring at her worriedly. They seemed so small, so vulnerable, and yet it was a familiar, comforting picture to Laura. James and Mary Ayars. Her mother and father.