Paul was relentless. “Not what? At first I thought she was just nosey but when I learned she’d been married to Finn, the depth of her treachery became obvious—either she’s one of them or she’s FBI. Either way she’s a spy. And what’s worse, if she’s not part of the Society and the Iphiclesians find out you’ve got a government agent sleeping in your bed, they’ll have no choice but to make you both disappear. You know what happened to Gentry’s folks.”
“But I dated Marlie for a year,” Daniel said, his chagrin ringing to the rhythm of defeat. “Why didn’t someone from the Society say somethin’ before now?”
“You think I know?” Paul shot back. “I follow orders same as you. Maybe they wanted you to marry her so she could keep an eye on you—see if you’d be loyal. Or maybe they wanted to catch an FBI agent in the act. Who the hell knows?”
“But if either of those possibilities is true,” Daniel sounded spent, “why try and trip me up?”
“Can’t you see? She pretends to help you, and then she sabotages you. When you’re exposed, you’re vulnerable and she swoops in to save you. She stands by you, plays the supportive wife, and the public loves her. She’s from a middle-classed and conveniently religious family—if that’s even who she really is. Americans love to elect presidents with fairytale marriages, and you’re her prince charming. She wants you to believe she’s a naïve girl while, behind your back, she’s sneaking around, asking questions she shouldn’t, sowing the seeds for her back-up plan.”
“Back-up plan?”
“Blackmail, of course,” Paul said. “Ironically, she can’t trap you with a baby so she needs a way to ensure that she stays permanently in your life, in your son’s lives. Look, you know I’m right. She lied, she led you astray, she went behind your back and leaked to the press, which next time I might not be able to clean up. She’s digging up dirt from your past—harmful secrets. The woman’s an insidious fraud, and she’s got you eating right out of her hands. I bet she’s archiving all this evidence for the day she needs it. The day when she can use the information as leveraged threats. All it takes to ruin a politician is the insinuation of doubt.”
How could he be accusing me of all this terrible deceit? I cupped both hands over my mouth to keep the sound of my mounting emotion from escaping. But Paul wasn’t done yet. “I know this is hard to hear, and it pains me to say it, but I think it’s time you faced facts.”
“Facts?”
“It’s time to take care of her,” Paul suggested.
“No, not again. I can’t,” Daniel refused. “I won’t.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it for you.”
“No, this is my doing.” Daniel’s voice was hollow. “I’ll do it,” he said like a soldier volunteering for a dangerous mission.
Again, Paul played the devoted friend. “Let me. I don’t want you getting your hands dirty.”
“What difference does it make at this point? Besides, she’s my wife, my mistake, my mess to clean up.”
The silence that came next opened a sickening void inside me, and within the emptiness, a question emerged—what had Daniel meant by Not again and and I’ll do it? and Paul by I’ll take care of it?
My fingers were still shaking as I tried a few more combinations—the date Daniel had graduated law school, the day his father died and he took over the company, and then his parents’ wedding anniversary. I got nothing, nothing but the angry red light calling me a fool for thinking I could do this. Frustrated, I threaded my fingers through my hair and pulled until my scalp cried out in agony. I needed to take a breath, regroup, and try again.
Daniel and Paul had left. Hiding in an upstairs guestroom, I’d waited for the sound of Daniel’s hired car tires crunching against the front drive as they drove away. Then I sent him a text telling him I’d taken too long getting the boys settled at camp and had decided to stay the night in a hotel. He’d responded, telling me he was sleeping at the condo anyway. With him away for the night and Electra taking a day off, this was my best chance at getting into his safe. I needed to know what Daniel was hiding. My life depended on it.
Pacing the gleaming tile floor of the entry, I concentrated on slowing my thoughts to match the steady rhythm of my feet. Was it possible Daniel had chosen a random group of numbers? No, he was too organized, too calculated for that. I was his wife, why would he keep the combination from me? Given the conversation I’d just overheard, the answer to that question was obvious—but the thought led me in a new direction.
Gentry. Everything seemed to circle back to her death. Daniel had secrets he needed to keep from me, but had he kept secrets from her? Somehow I doubted he ever hid a thing from his first wife.
In the formal living room, I switched on a lamp and sat down on the arm of the sofa. The light ignited the portrait above the grand fireplace in a hazy yellow glow.
“Okay Gentry,” I said, staring up into her honey-colored eyes, “I need your help. I know it’s wrong to spy on one’s husband but something is going on, something that has to do with you. If there’s anything you can tell me, please, please, find a way.” I laced my fingers together in front of my heart, my gaze reaching up to hers in earnest. “Please Gentry, if Daniel is involved in something he shouldn’t be, it could be dangerous, not only for me, but for the boys,” I added, hoping to appeal to her as a mother.
I waited.
Nothing.
I doubled my effort to reach her with an unblinking stare into hers. “All right, I know that was a low blow, using your boys as leverage to get you to betray your husband, but,” I stopped myself. This is crazy. Closing my eyes, I strained my ears against the silent creaks and moans of the house, the rain now pelting the walk and bushes outside the window, to hear something, anything helpful.
Nothing.
Puffing out my cheeks, I blew a breath, absently reaching down to scratch my ankle. As my fingernails dug into the skin around my ankle bone, the itch intensified, taking me back to the last time I’d sat in this very spot. The day I’d been suffering from chigger bites. The day Cooper had reminisced about Gentry and Daniel’s courtship, and how they’d gotten engaged on the same day of the month as our wedding.
The date of one’s engagement?
It was an optimum date to use if one wanted to remember a set of numbers everyone else would likely forget. Only, the date of Daniel and Gentry’s engagement was the same as our wedding date, and I’d already tried it. I expelled another sigh, rolling my shoulders over when another idea came to me. I bolted upright.
What about the date Daniel had asked me to marry him, the day he chased me down in the airport? It was worth a try. I don’t know why, but I had a very good feeling about this.
Hopping from the couch, I blew a kiss up to Gentry. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll get to the bottom of this. And I promise I won’t let you, or the boys, down.”
The red light flashed green. I stared at the limey glow, welcoming me to proceed. The sight was bittersweet. Daniel had changed the combination of his safe to the date of our engagement. At some point in our short marriage, he must have expected it to last. He must have truly loved me.
But that’s melancholic musing best left for another time, I told myself as my thoughts took another turn. I should call Anna-Beth. I’d promised to inform her if I found anything. My hand reached to my back pocket for my phone while my eyes remained fixated on the inviting green light. After the last few months speculating as to the contents of this safe, I now stood on what felt like a precipice.
“All right, Marlie, it’s time you had some answers,” I urged myself on. “You want to know, you know you do, and now it’s a matter of life and death.” A bit dramatic, but it worked because before I had a chance to think twice about the consequences, I’d popped open the door to the safe, slid out the pile of folders and dumped them onto the center of Daniel’s desk.
Turning back, I hesitated before reaching in to retrieve the final contents. My fingers closed around etched metal and I cautiously w
ithdrew a black pistol with polished steel accents. XD-40 5.25 was embossed into the slide. The absence of sufficient weight told me that it wasn’t loaded. Upon closer examination, the hollow grip confirmed my suspicion.
Where’s the magazine? I muttered, my mind turning over random memories until the one I needed rose to the surface. The key!
The tips of my searching fingers pinched metal, and I withdrew a tiny golden key from between the leather folds of Daniel’s desk chair. Unlocking the drawer, I spied the magazine right where I’d remembered seeing it the day the boys and I had almost crashed in the rain. Now all I needed to do was load the thing.
The little I knew about guns I’d learned from my brother-in-law, gun enthusiast extraordinaire. With the magazine in my left hand, the pistol in my right, I slammed the magazine into the handle. Palming the grip the way he’d taught me, I pulled the slide back and then released. A sliver of metal rose on the top of the slide indicating that a bullet had entered the chamber. There was no thumb safety so I knew that gripping the handle would depress a built-in safety switch. A second safety would release when my finger pulled back on the trigger. Rock-n-roll. A shudder riveted through my timorous heart. Was I prepared to shoot someone if it came to that? I prayed I wouldn’t have to find out.
I set the gun off to the side and turned my attention back to the files. Twisting my hair up in the back, I slid in a pencil to hold it and closed my eyes. I took a breath, blew it out, opened my eyes again, and with trembling fingers, turned back the cover of the first folder.
There was nothing earth shattering, just a copy of mine and Daniel’s prenup, our marriage license, and the social security documents we’d used to change my name to Cannon. Closing it, I set it off to the side. The next few folders held contracts and agreements pertaining to Cannon Records. Beneath those folders, were more holding birth certificates for the boys, social security cards, and immunization records along with various other medical records.
Satisfied there was nothing out of the ordinary, I added the boy’s information folder to the pile I’d already gone through and returned the stack back into the safe. I fingered the next folder, the one Daniel had held the night he’d visited the unmarked grave, the one that had appeared to cause him great emotional distress.
A glance around the shadowy study told me what I already knew; I was alone, and no one knew I was here. It was time I paired answers to the questions I should have known all along. Hesitating a moment longer, I adjusted the folder to the center of the blotter. Then, as if the file were an ancient document of great value, I eased the front fold open and scanned the first page. My latent suspicion curled its gnarled fingers around my heart and gave it a firm squeeze.
Laying on the very top was the death certificate for Unidentified Woman 1. The information on the form included her approximate age—almost an exact match to Gentry’s at the time of her death. Cause of death—drug overdose. Height, weight, hair color, all matching Gentry’s. The only box left empty was the one pertaining to eye color.
The tightness in my chest increased as I remembered what Detective Ripley had said about how the woman in the alley was missing her eyes. Evidence, though not conclusive, that the woman from the alley and the woman whose grave Daniel had visited were more than likely one and the same.
Turning the death certificate onto its face, I scanned the next page, a yellowed page torn from a newspaper. It showed the accident site where Gentry had run her car off the road. I lifted it for a closer look. Her car sat mangled next to the golf tee mailbox. The same mailbox I had looked up and seen when I’d nearly crashed that day in the rain. An eerie feeling ran down my back.
Next, there were clippings from her funeral. The boys looked so small in their dark suits, their hair combed back from their little sad faces. Daniel stood stoically at their side, his hands clinched together, knuckles glowing white in the afternoon sun as they hung down in front of him. Was I mistaken, or was his expression more agitated than forlorn?
Under more newspaper clippings sat the final content of the file—a blue folder with a case number stamped on the top and tab. The seal of the Metro Police Department was embossed across the front. This was what I’d been looking for, the piece of evidence that would finally reveal the identity of the woman found dead in an alley. It might put a face to Unidentified Woman 1.
My stomach curled into a fist as my worst fears were confirmed. My husband, the man I’d been sleeping next to for the last three months, was caught up in something unseemly—something illegal—something he might kill to keep quiet. Did I really want to know what that something was?
Before I had a chance to change my mind, I flipped the cover open and ran my eyes down the first page, speed reading the details of a death I’d already heard about from Detective Ripley. A lump slipped into my throat, growing to a nasty pressure in my head as I turned back the next few pages and came face to face with a dead woman. Laying in an unnatural tangle on a heap of garbage bags in a dirt-stained alley, a woman in a tattered satin blouse, fitted skirt, ripped stockings, and only one black pump with a red bottom, looked like a rag doll a child had tossed away for something better.
The next pictures showed the gruesome scene from different angles, close-ups of her fingernails, splintered and ragged along the edges, the sleeves of her left arm pushed up to show a descending history of drug use. When I came to the close up of her face, I had to grip the desk to keep from dropping to the floor.
With the exception of cuts and bruises and general lack of color, her face was an exact match to Gentry’s. Heart-shaped with a mole to the left side of her nose, her bow lips were parted and parched, her eyes closed and hollow-looking with dark circles beneath. Her dark hair was matted and strung out like a shredded oriental fan over the garbage bags.
Gently, I touched my fingers to the glossy photo. Tears for a woman I’d never known leaked from my eyes as I tried to wipe the dirt from her beautiful face. She didn’t deserve this! I felt a sudden outrage that someone had thrown her away like a useless article that had outlived its purpose. As I wiped at my eyes, another thought crossed my mind. If she had died in that car crash, how could this be Gentry? But then I remembered earlier when Daniel had furiously asked Paul whose body was in Gentry’s grave.
Gentry’s grave? The missing autopsy report from the hospital? Slapping the police file closed, I pushed it out of the way to expose one more file. A Vanderbilt Medical Center ME file. Inside were pictures of a dark-haired woman lying under a white sheet. Y shaped stitching peeked over the drape. Her face was bloodied beyond recognition.
The image brought back memories of the cadaver and the night my life had taken a sharp turn into the unknown. The report indicated that this woman had been a similar height and weight to Gentry, but there was no way to determine her identity without a DNA test. Further scrutiny of the file showed no evidence that such a test had been performed. But there had to be something in this file that proved she wasn’t Gentry, or else why would the report have had to disappear?
According to the evidence sitting before me, there had been six months between the deaths of these two women, and yet, somehow they were connected.
I needed help. Someone who understood all this medical jargon. Someone with the authority to exhume a body.
It was time to take what I knew to Anna-Beth. She wouldn’t be happy, and not just because I’d been ignoring her calls since her goon had kidnapped me; but by opening the safe and going through its contents, I’d already reneged on our agreement to back off my investigation. I reached into my back pocket, pulled out my cell phone, and then hesitated. Something didn’t feel right. Less than an instant later, I knew why.
His words splintered the air between us. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Paul’s voice warned. Like a silent predator stalking its pray, he materialized from the darkness. “Put the phone down, Marlie, before you do something stupid.”
Chapter Twenty-five
My entire body turned t
o stone. “How did you know I was here?”
“Your purse,” he said, lifting his chin toward the door where, just beyond, my purse lay heaped right in the same spot I’d dropped it earlier. “You must have forgotten it after you finished listening in on a private conversation.” Paul glided across the room, keeping to the shadows like an aberration.
“The conversation was about me. I think that warrants concern on my part. Don’t you?” I said, matching his derisive tone.
“Oh, Marlie, so obstinate even in the face of defeat. I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were one of those meddling do-gooders. You should have listened to the cadaver and gotten out while you still could.”
I thought back to the sick prank from the ball. “That was you?” I asked, and with the slightest of nods, he confirmed my assumption. “How? Why?”
“Because I needed to keep you away from Daniel. I saw the way he was looking at you, just like he used to at Gentry, and I knew if the two of you got together there’d be trouble. Complications I didn’t want to deal with—again.”
“Again?” I asked, but he ignored me.
“You’d been acting a little skittish all evening, like any minute you expected to see a ghost . . . or an ex-husband, maybe?” I flinched at the mention of Finn. “I saw you eyeballing the service exit and figured it was only a matter of time before something, or someone, sent you running for cover. Being that Daniel was on the medical school’s board of directors, I knew about the cadaver the students stole to make into a prop; quite an ingenious contraption they hooked up to that poor dead soul, don’t you think? I could move its mouth and even make it blink.
“All I had to do was sneak away from the table, position the cadaver, and then come back in and wait. I did my best to chase you off but Daniel got in the way. When I saw him kiss you, I thought I was too late but then you made for the door and well . . . you know the rest,” he finished as he approached the desk. Resting both hands on the side opposite from where I stood, he added, “And the why is not what’s important at this point, but what matters now is that you think you can still beat me.”
Replacing Gentry Page 20
