Just Between Us

by Rebecca Drake

  “I know that,” Matthew said in a withering voice.

  “So you can’t call him Benjamin anymore—you have to pick a girl’s name.”

  “No we don’t.”

  “Yes you do.”

  Just another of their escalating and maddening arguments. Daniel settled in between them, not saying much. Aside from occasional outbursts of temper, he’d always been a pretty quiet little boy, something I attributed to being an only child and not having to fight for attention.

  “Mom, do we have to call Benjamin by another name?” Matthew whined, as usual appealing to me to arbitrate the silliness.

  “What did your teacher say?”

  “She said we need to get a bigger house for Benjamin.”

  I laughed out loud. “That certainly seems like the more important thing right now.”

  “You still need a different name,” Lucy insisted. “Doesn’t he, Daniel?”

  Sometimes I wondered if Lucy would grow up to be lawyer. Or a judge. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Daniel wore the look of someone who wished he could be anywhere else.

  “Enough, you two,” I said as I slowed to turn onto the road leading to Heather’s house. “The kindergarten bunny isn’t any of your business, Lucy.”

  “He’s the one talking about it,” she protested. “It’s not my fault his teacher can’t tell the difference between a boy and a girl.”

  “Mrs. Arnold can so tell,” Matthew yelled.

  “Cannot.”

  “Can so.”

  As I slowed to turn left into Heather’s driveway, I glanced again in the rearview mirror and saw Daniel pressing two fingers against his forehead as if he were feeling a headache coming on. I could relate. “Be quiet!” I finally snapped, louder than I meant to, feeling guilty when all three kids jumped in their seats. There was silence for a moment as we climbed the winding drive, sun washing the pavers and burnishing the bare forsythia bushes. It was still cold out, but spring would be here soon. “Let’s talk about something else,” I said in a calmer voice, as we reached the top of the hill. “What else happened today?”

  I stopped talking, struck dumb by the sight of a familiar Ford Taurus parked on Heather’s driveway.

  The short, bald detective from the funeral home was standing on the front steps and he turned to watch us pull up. I fought the urge to flee back down the driveway. There was no sign of Heather’s car—she probably wasn’t back yet.

  As I tried to decide what to do, the detective moved in my direction and I got out of the car, anxious not to speak with him in front of the kids. “I’ll see if your mom’s home yet, Daniel,” I said, turning to the backseat. “The three of you just sit tight.”

  “Who’s that man?” I heard Lucy asking Daniel as I closed the door.

  The detective was shading his eyes from the sun, his feet tapping across the pavers. “Alison Riordan?”

  “Yes?” I crossed around the car, zipping my coat, and trying to look as if I were having trouble placing him.

  “I’m Detective Lou Tedesco,” he said, flashing his badge with a small, meaty hand. “I’m investigating the death of Dr. Viktor Lysenko.” He paused as if expecting me to say something, but I continued to give him a slightly puzzled look. “I think you met my partner, Detective Kasper?”

  “Yes, I spoke with him a while ago.”

  He jangled something in his jacket pocket, flashing a smile. His teeth seemed too large and too white for his face. “I guess you’re here to see Heather Lysenko?”

  “Yes. She isn’t home yet?”

  “No.” He continued to stare at me, an occasional breeze flattening the curl from his gray fringe. “Do you know where she is?”

  “Doctor’s appointment,” I said. “She asked if I’d drop off her son from school because she was running late.”

  “Aah. The doctor.” He said the word as if he were testing it out. “You’re one of Heather’s friends, right?”

  “That’s right. And her husband’s. I was friends with him, too, I mean.” I mentally cursed. Less than a minute in and I was already saying too much. My brother was a cop, for goodness’ sake—I knew that when you were talking to the police, the less said the better. Too much information just raised suspicion.

  “Right.” He jotted something down in a small spiral notebook that he pulled from a jacket pocket. “How long have you known Mrs. Lysenko?”

  For a split second I thought he was talking about Heather’s mother-in-law. “Oh, you mean Heather? About three years.”

  “Her husband, the same length of time?”

  “Yes. I met Viktor through Heather.”

  “How would you describe their relationship?”

  “Happy. They had a happy marriage.” I watched as he jotted this down. “What’s this about, Detective? Why are you asking?”

  “In any homicide investigation we have to ask a lot of questions.” He smiled in what he probably thought was an ingratiating manner, flashing the teeth. They were probably capped.

  “I thought Viktor was killed during a carjacking,” I said.

  “Hmm, yes, well, we have to get as full a picture as possible—it’s all routine. Tell me, do you know much about Heather’s life before she married Dr. Lysenko?”

  Why was he asking these questions? I struggled to look unconcerned. “Not really. She was a model. I know she was doing modeling when she met Viktor.”

  “And before modeling?”

  “Um, I don’t know what you mean—”

  “About her life in West Virginia? Have you ever talked with her about that?”

  “Not really. I know she’s from a small town and her parents still live there.” Where was he going with this? “But Heather doesn’t like to talk much about her past.” As soon as I said it I realized it was wrong; it made it appear as if Heather had something to hide. “She’s so busy with her life now, I mean, she always said she didn’t miss modeling because she loved being a mother.” Okay, that was a lie. I’d never heard her say anything of the kind.

  I glanced back at the car and saw Lucy’s face pressed against the window, staring at me. “Is there anything else?” I said. “I’ve got to be with the kids.”

  “Yes, just one more question if you don’t mind.” Another flash of those teeth. “Did Heather ever mention divorce?”

  “Divorce? No, not to me. As I said, she had a happy marriage.”

  “Hmm, yes, as you said.” There was something skeptical in the way he repeated my phrase. “Of course, Heather had a lot of incentive to stay married.”

  “You mean because of Daniel.”

  “Well, yes, of course, there’s her stepson,” he said. “But I was thinking of the terms of her marriage.” He flipped his notebook shut. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Riordan.”

  He walked briskly toward his car, surprisingly fast and nimble for someone so short and heavyset. I should have been relieved to see the back of him, but I was puzzling over what he’d said.

  “The terms?” I called after him. “What are you referring to?”

  He turned back and gave me a look of clearly simulated surprise. “You didn’t know about the prenuptial agreement?”

  chapter thirty

  ALISON

  A prenup? I couldn’t hide my surprise and, even though I didn’t say anything, the detective smiled again, his big, capped-teeth grin like a fucking Cheshire cat.

  “Thanks again, Mrs. Riordan.” He raised his hand in some cross between a wave and a Hitler salute and continued to his car, his footsteps loud against the stone. I crossed to my own car, but waited until he’d driven away to let the kids out.

  “Was that the police, Mommy?” Matthew asked. “Daniel says that man is the police.”

  “Daniel’s right.” I kept my voice light as I helped all three kids out of the backseat. “Don’t forget your backpack,” I said, handing Daniel the red bag he’d left in the car.

  “Why did he want to talk to you?” Lucy said.

  “He didn
’t. He wanted to talk to Daniel’s mom.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s go inside,” I said, ignoring the questions and ushering them to the first garage door. Heather had texted me the code for the keypad and I typed it in, mind racing. Was it true about the prenup or had the detective been making things up to goad me? But why would he do that? And why was he asking questions about Heather at all?

  I was so jittery that I knocked over some terra-cotta pots stacked inside the garage. One of them cracked wide while another rolled out onto the driveway, and I had to chase after it and put them back into some semblance of order.

  Daniel led the way inside, passing the laundry room into the kitchen, tossing his backpack on the tile floor.

  “What do you do after school, Daniel?” I said. “Does your mom make you a snack?” It felt strange to be there. I hadn’t been in the house since I’d come to retrieve the blackmail letter and then I’d gotten no farther than the entryway. The night Heather shot Viktor seemed a lifetime ago.

  “I make my own snack,” Daniel said with a casualness that clearly impressed Lucy. He climbed on a stepstool to reach a cupboard, getting out a package of cookies, which he brought over to the island to share with Lucy and Matthew. She was equally impressed when Daniel produced his iPad and brought up some Japanese anime for the three of them to watch.

  “Your house is fun,” she said, shooting me a look that said I needed to up my game.

  I got out some milk and poured them each a glass, noticing the fridge didn’t have much in it beyond some Chinese take-out containers, and there were dirty dishes stacked in the sink. Clearly the household’s exacting standards had died along with Viktor.

  My phone pinged with another text from Heather: Be there soon—sorry! A smiling emoticon. While the kids chattered over their snack and video, I walked out of the room and called Sarah. “Did you know that Heather had a prenuptial agreement?”

  “Really? I guess it doesn’t surprise me.” She sounded distracted and I could hear children in the background.

  “You don’t think it’s odd that she never mentioned it? Especially when we were trying to convince her to leave Viktor?”

  “It’s pretty common in a certain income bracket,” she said, adding grimly, “You and I just aren’t in that bracket.”

  “No wonder she wouldn’t consider leaving him—she’d get nothing.”

  “She might have been able to contest it—maybe used the abuse as leverage—but it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

  “Well, the police certainly seem interested.”

  “What?” Now I had her attention. “How do you know that? What’s going on?” She listened intently as I described running into Detective Tedesco on Heather’s doorstep, before asking me to repeat what he’d said. “He’s just fishing—if he knew anything they would have made an arrest.”

  “They know it wasn’t a carjacking.”

  “We don’t know that. And it doesn’t matter. We just have to hold tight and not say anything. You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good. Good, then we’re fine.” One of Sarah’s children started wailing in the background. “Look, I’ve got to go, but whatever you do, don’t tell Heather what he was asking.”

  “Why?”

  “It’ll just scare her. We don’t want her making any stupid moves. We just have to stay the course.”

  She hung up and I paced nervously around the house, unable to sit still. If the police were looking into Heather’s background, what else could they know? We shouldn’t have been talking about it over the phone. Could the police listen in on cell-phone conversations? Could they have planted cameras in the house?

  I thought I heard a noise from upstairs and suddenly remembered Viktor’s mother. Could she have arrived while Heather was out and Tedesco didn’t mention it? What if she was upstairs lurking, listening in on my conversation? I hurried up the stairs, unable to stop myself from checking all the rooms. It was quiet on the second floor, my footfalls sinking in the plush carpeting. The bed in the guest room was neatly made and there weren’t any clothes hanging in the closet. Clearly Anna had left. Could she be the reason there had been a prenup? She didn’t seem to trust Heather at all.

  I glanced in the master bedroom and saw that the bed was unmade, covers thrown back and rumpled. There were clothes tossed over a chair, as if Heather hadn’t been able to decide on an outfit. Daniel’s room seemed equally untidy, the bed a tangled mess of sheets, LEGOs, and other toys cluttering the floor. What had happened to the cleaners?

  There were family photos lining the upstairs hall, and I was surprised to see one of a dark-haired woman holding an infant. She looked vaguely familiar and I suddenly realized it was Janice Lysenko, Viktor’s first wife, with Daniel in her arms. How had Heather felt about having the first wife’s picture on display? It would have bothered me. And there was something odd about the photo. Janice was smiling, but there were dark circles under her eyes and what was it about the hair? I peered at it closely. Could that be a wig? I remembered that colleague of Viktor’s at the post-funeral luncheon. “She died of cancer.” I hadn’t believed him. I’d thought he was just confusing Janice with someone else or that Viktor had told people a lie to cover up the abuse, but not now, not looking at that photo, at the fake hair and that hollowed face. Could it have been true? Had Janice Lysenko died of cancer?

  The noise of a car engine startled me and I hurried down the stairs as I heard the faint whir of the garage door opening. Back in the kitchen, the kids had eaten nearly the entire package of cookies. Matthew gave me a slightly guilty look as he swallowed the last of his milk, his mouth ringed with crumbs. His sister and Daniel were staring, glassy-eyed, at the anime playing on his tablet.

  The door from the garage opened. “Hello, hello!” Heather rushed in to the kitchen, her arms loaded down with a purse and a shopping bag. “I’m so sorry I’m late.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and then dropped a kiss on Daniel’s head. “Oh, I’m glad you found something to eat. This has been such a crazy day.” She placed her bags on the free stool at the island and brushed strands of hair off her face.

  She looked effortlessly beautiful as she always did—a leather jacket open over a cream-colored sweater and jeans, diamond studs in her ears, a simple gold bracelet dancing from her thin wrist. “Remind me never to hit Nordstrom and the doctor in the same day again,” she said with a light laugh. “Foot pain followed by pelvic pain.” She unzipped her high-heeled suede ankle boots and wiggled her toes, sighing with relief.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked, nodding at her belly, conscious of the kids. At some point she was really going to have to tell Daniel.

  “Great, I feel great. Everything’s fine so far.” She patted her still nonexistent stomach and gave me a secret smile.

  She seemed so relaxed, and her skin seemed to glow in the afternoon sun streaming through the kitchen window. It felt oddly surreal, as if I’d imagined everything bad that had happened in this kitchen, in that garage. As if I’d conjured up that grinning detective. My gaze fell on the shopping bag. She was shopping at Nordstrom—what if the detective had seen her with the bag? It wasn’t exactly standard grieving widow behavior, and I wondered what Sarah would make of it, when she’d had to sell furniture to raise her $5,000.

  “C’mon kids, it’s time to go,” I said, clapping my hands to pry their attention away from the screen.

  “Just five minutes,” Lucy pleaded, still staring at the anime. “We’re watching something.”

  “Two minutes—we’ve got to get going.”

  “Thank you so much for picking up Daniel,” Heather said. “I’m sorry to interrupt your afternoon.”

  “I was happy to help out,” I said. “By the way, you had a visitor.”

  “Who?”

  “Lou Tedesco. That short detective.”

  “Oh, Jesus, not him again.” She sounded more annoyed than concerned. “What did he
want this time? Did he say?”

  “I don’t know.” I hesitated, thinking of Sarah’s warning, but she hadn’t seen how Heather was acting—cheerful and relaxed, going out for a day of shopping as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “He was asking a lot of questions—so be careful.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “About your marriage. Was it happy.”

  Heather’s eyes widened at that and in her nervousness she bumped against the stool, sending the Nordstrom bag sliding. I shot out my hand in a futile attempt to stop its fall just as Heather bent to grab it, and we connected, my hand grazing her face.

  “Sorry,” I said, flustered, as she put the bag back on the stool, but she didn’t flinch, focused on what I’d said to the detective.

  “What did you tell him? I hope you told him yes.”

  “Of course I did. But you should be careful—you don’t want to attract attention.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t do certain things,” I said in a low voice, feeling uncomfortable. “Things that could be interpreted as you not mourning your husband.”

  “Are you talking about shopping?” she said, incredulously, not bothering to keep her voice down. “What am I supposed to do—just sit at home wearing black? I was buying new pants for Daniel. Are you saying that makes me look bad?” I glanced at the kids, concerned they might be listening, but they seemed absorbed in their show.

  Heather blinked rapidly, her eyes glistening, as if she was on the edge of tears. It made me feel awful, but so had the detective. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said, speaking as quietly as I could. “All I’m trying to say is that we need to watch out because the police are watching us.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit paranoid?” she said with a tiny, nervous laugh.

  “Maybe, but why is he asking questions?” I said. “If he wasn’t suspicious, he wouldn’t visit your house, right?” And he wouldn’t have mentioned a prenuptial agreement, I thought, but chose not to say.

  * * *

  I said it to Julie instead, calling her once I was back home and the kids were occupied. The minute she answered, I blurted out the same question I’d asked Sarah: “Did you know that Heather had a prenup?”