I sorted through each stack, searching for the time and date stamp on every receipt. It felt like it took forever, but it couldn’t really have been more than five minutes before I finally found what I’d been looking for. There, at the bottom of one stack, were several receipts from Asheville, North Carolina, dated from October 22, 23, and 24. There was a Starbucks receipt from North Carolina dated October 23. I was shaking as I pulled out my phone to text Sarah and Julie.
* * *
They showed up together, both of them arriving in Julie’s car, and I could tell why when I smelled the alcohol on Sarah’s breath as she approached the front door where I stood waiting. She sounded surprisingly lucid, if peevish, as she demanded, “Where’s Heather?”
“Come inside,” I said, ignoring her question. “Hurry up.” Julie seemed positively spooked, looking all around before she brushed past me to get inside. I locked the door behind them.
“What the hell are we doing here?” Sarah demanded. “The police could be watching, you know.”
I led the way into the kitchen, where I’d laid out the receipts along the smooth white marble island. “What’s wrong?” Julie asked, scanning the room. “Where’s Heather?”
“She’s picking up Daniel,” I said. “I needed to show you these.” I held out the receipts.
Julie peered at them before passing them to Sarah. “What is this? I don’t understand.”
“I went to the hospital the other day,” I said, and recounted my conversation with the personal assistant and what I’d learned about Janice Lysenko’s cause of death.
“Cancer?” Julie said. She looked confused. “I thought she fell down a flight of stairs—didn’t Heather tell us that’s how she died? Viktor pushed her—I mean, Heather might not have said that, but we all thought it, right?”
“Heather led us to believe that,” I said. “She led us to believe a lot of things.”
“I don’t understand—what does that have to do with these?” Sarah said, waving the receipts.
“Look at the dates,” I said.
She pulled them too close to her face and then back a bit as if she were having trouble focusing. “October twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fourth. So what?”
“Do you remember what happened on October twenty-third?”
“I don’t know,” Julie said, looking confused as she took the receipts back from Sarah and studied them again. “It was around the time of the fall play—but wasn’t that on the twenty-seventh?”
“October twenty-third was the day Viktor trashed this kitchen,” I said. “Remember? Only he couldn’t have trashed it because he wasn’t here. He was in Asheville, North Carolina, at a medical conference.”
Sarah stared at me, then down at the receipts. “Wait, that’s not—I mean, how can that be—” She struggled to form a coherent sentence.
“I don’t think that was the same date,” Julie said. “It must have been the week before.”
“It wasn’t. I checked against my own calendar. We had a playdate at Heather’s house that afternoon, remember?”
“This has got to be some sort of mistake,” Julie said, shaking her head. “Maybe the receipts are wrong, or maybe Viktor trashed the kitchen before he left on the trip?”
I shook my head. “There are other receipts—look at the dates, he was gone for days.”
“I don’t understand,” Sarah said. “If he didn’t do it, then who the hell did?”
Before I could say anything, we heard the garage door whirring open, and a minute later Heather appeared in the kitchen doorway. “What are you doing here?” she said, clearly surprised to see me, not to mention Julie and Sarah. She wore that same beautiful leather jacket over a loose blouse, with full makeup, and hair that looked professionally blown-out. Hardly the image of the tired, stressed-out, pregnant mom she’d sounded like on the phone.
Sarah spoke first, looking past Heather. “Where’s Daniel?”
“He’s at his grandmother’s.”
“I thought you were picking him up,” I said. “Or was that a lie, too?”
“What are you talking about?” Heather said, looking from one to the other of us.
Julie’s voice was hurt. “Why did you lie to us?”
“I didn’t lie,” Heather said. “He wanted to spend the night there so I let—”
“Viktor’s first wife died from cancer?” Sarah interrupted her, speaking loudly.
Heather’s gaze jumped to her, but she didn’t otherwise react. “So?”
“So you told us that she died from a fall.”
“Is that what this is about?” Heather sounded annoyed. “That I forgot to tell you that Janice had cancer?”
“You forgot?” Sarah scoffed. “How do you forget something like cancer?”
Before Heather could answer, if she was going to answer, Julie picked up the receipts and rushed to her side. “But Viktor trashed your kitchen that time, right? Look at these receipts—Alison says they prove that he wasn’t here that day.”
Heather made no move to take them, not reacting at all as she glanced at them. “I don’t remember when it was,” she said in a calm voice, “but you’ve obviously confused the date.”
“No, I haven’t,” I said.
“I’m sure that’s it,” Julie said. “I’m sure you’ll remember if you just check the dates.” She pushed the receipts into Heather’s hand, but her fingers wouldn’t close around them and the slips of paper fluttered like snowflakes to the floor.
“How can you accuse me?” Heather said, tears welling in those blue eyes, her lips trembling, “After everything I’ve been through, after everything we’ve been through together—”
“Oh stop it,” I said. “Just stop lying.” I hadn’t even raised my voice, but my tone must have been enough. She stopped talking and froze, holding that wounded-deer expression that had moved me countless times, the doe-like vulnerable eyes, the flushed face, the hands nervously cradling her body. But I’d caught a tiny flicker in her eyes, a split-second calculation, and that was when I knew. Up until that moment I’d skirted along the edges of it, focusing on names and dates, specific lies, unable to face the big lie at the core. “Viktor never hit you, did he?” I said quietly.
She brought her hands up to shield her face, making a sound that might have been a sob, though everything she did was suspect to me now. Her muffled wail was clear enough: “How can you say that after everything he did to me?”
Julie shot me a nasty look. “Why are you treating her this way, Alison?”
“She’s lying,” I said to her, and then to Heather, “I knew it that day with the Nordstrom bag, but I didn’t want to face it.” She let her hands drop and looked at me, clearly confused. I walked closer and without warning I raised my hand as if I was going to strike her.
Julie cried “No!” but Heather didn’t even step back—she stood there, still looking wounded, the paper evidence of her lies at her feet.
I gave her a hard smile. “You didn’t flinch.”
Sarah said to me, “What the hell are you playing at?”
“She didn’t flinch. Not now, not the other day—not ever. If Viktor had been beating her, she’d flinch when someone came near her like that. That’s how abused people react.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then, to my surprise, Heather started to cry, not fake sobs this time, but real tears glistening like raindrops on her soft, rose-petal cheeks. “He hated it when I flinched,” she spat, swiping at her eyes. “It took a lot of practice, but he trained me not to.”
Julie gasped and said, “God, Heather, I’m so sorry,” moving in to comfort her. She shot me a dirty look over her shoulder. Sarah also seemed concerned, and I felt a different sort of doubt rise within me. What if I was wrong about the dates? About the abuse? Maybe the only lies were the ones I’d invented? But I’d checked those dates. I’d double-checked.
The buzzing of my cell phone stopped me before I could say anything. It skittered across the marble
island just as Julie’s and then Heather and Sarah’s phones all beeped or chirped. “What on earth?” Julie said.
It was a text from a number I didn’t recognize, but the message was familiar: $20,000 in 3 days or I go to police.
chapter thirty-four
SARAH
Immediately after the text came two photos. The first was the same grainy shot of the four of us by Viktor’s car. The second was another photo from the same night, but this one included a clear shot of Julie’s car, license plate visible.
“Oh my God,” Julie said, dropping her phone on the island as if it were toxic. “How did he get our numbers?”
“We don’t know it’s a he. You couldn’t tell, remember?” Alison said. “Maybe it’s a she.” She looked accusingly at Heather. “Did you send these?”
“What are you talking about? I got the same text,” Heather said, holding out her phone so Alison could see. I believed her, but then I hadn’t stopped believing her—it was Alison who suddenly doubted her story. Maybe Heather hadn’t told us everything about Janice, but that didn’t mean she was lying. As for the receipts, Julie was probably right and Alison had confused the dates. Although that didn’t sound like Alison—I didn’t know what to think about it.
“Then who is sending these?” Julie demanded. “We already gave him money—is he just going to keep asking for more and more?”
“Well, I don’t have another five thousand dollars to give,” I said.
“We don’t have to,” Alison said. “This can end today. Now. We can go to the police.”
“Are you crazy?” Julie said. “We can’t go to the police.”
“Why not? She’s the one who shot her husband,” Alison said, pointing at Heather. “Let’s see if the police believe her story.” Grabbing her phone and purse from the island, she started out of the room, heading for the front door.
“You can’t tell it’s me in the photos with the body,” Heather said in a shrill voice. “If you talk, I talk, and I’ll tell them that you shot my husband.”
Alison pivoted in the doorway. “What’s our motive for killing him?” she scoffed. “They’d never believe you.”
“Oh really? The gun wasn’t even mine. It would be easy to convince the police that one of you shot him because you were trying to help me.”
Julie looked like she was going to be sick. “Alison, they’ll think I killed him.”
“We could tell them the truth,” Alison said. “You gave her the gun because Heather claimed she was being abused.”
“How is that going to work?” I said. “They’ll arrest all of us.”
“It’s three of us against Heather—she’ll get arrested, but if we tell the police the truth, then it will be three statements against hers. They probably won’t charge us at all.”
“Do you really think they’d believe any of you?” Heather said. “They’ve been watching all of us, not just me. Julie stole the gun, Sarah isn’t sober, and what do you think the police will make of your history, Alison?”
I opened my mouth to protest the smear, but stopped, distracted. What did she mean about Alison? I started to ask, but Julie spoke first. “She’s right, Alison,” she said in a pleading voice. “Even if they didn’t charge us everyone would find out—I’d lose my business, you could lose your job, too.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Alison said, but that was clearly just bravado speaking.
I sank into a kitchen chair, my head pounding. “What are we going to do?” I said. “I don’t have any more money.”
“Don’t look at me,” Heather said, and I saw that she was glaring at Alison. “The insurance company won’t pay until the police investigation is over. I don’t have the money either.”
“Pawn some more of your jewelry,” I said.
“I don’t have that much to pawn—Viktor didn’t give me that much.”
“That bracelet has to be worth something,” I said, looking her over. “And those earrings. I’m sure we could get something for those.” I stood up again, filled with a sudden manic energy. “Let’s go through the house—I’m sure we can come up with twenty thousand dollars’ worth of things here.”
Heather looked slightly panicked, but Julie started nodding, and I could see the fear wrestling with her usual Julie can-do positivity. “Yes, yes, we could sell the furniture for starters. That would raise the funds. People wouldn’t notice—not if you said you were downsizing.”
“And then what?” Alison said. “Say we come up with this twenty thousand dollars, who’s to say that the blackmailer won’t ask for another twenty-thousand-dollar installment and another after that?” She’d inched slowly back into the room, but she was still holding on to her purse.
“Surely he’s got to realize that we’re not made of money,” Julie moaned, as if she were talking about a bill collector. I had a sudden memory of my mother complaining this way about her children when we were young and left lights on throughout the house. “We’re not made of money,” she’d say in a tone that carried exactly that same sense of futility.
“If we could just find out who this asshole is,” I said.
Alison made a funny noise, like she’d just realized something, and, dropping her purse on the kitchen table, began typing away on her phone. “We can Google the number,” she said, tapping two-thumbed with a speed I envied. “Cell numbers aren’t listed, but it might show up somewhere.” She paused, staring intently at the screen.
“What is it? What did you find?” Julie asked.
“Hold on, it’s still loading.” There was a brief silence in the room. “This is interesting—it shows up for some insurance salesman.” She held up the phone to show us, and Julie and I clustered around her to look.
Heather approached more slowly, but self-interest overcame self-pity and she said, “Who is it? Do you have a name?”
Alison read it off the screen: “‘Kevin Sullivan, Insurance Broker, 126 Whitcrest Road.’”
“Let’s go get the bastard.” I gathered my purse, ready to charge, but Julie stopped me.
“Don’t be silly, we can’t just show up at this Kevin Sullivan’s door—wait a minute. Did you say Whitcrest Road?”
“Yes, number 126.”
“I think I know that address. That’s Terry Holloway’s house. Her husband is Kevin Sullivan. Their daughter—Megan?—is in the third grade at the elementary school. Not Owen and Lucy’s class—another one. Don’t you know who I’m talking about, Alison? We served with her on that soccer fund-raising thing a few years ago, remember? I can’t believe it.”
“You’re sure that’s her address?” Alison asked. “Sullivan is a common name.”
“I’m pretty sure. It makes sense—who else would have our phone numbers except someone we know through school? And she showed up at Heather’s house after Viktor died—remember, Heather? I should have guessed it was her. That bitch!”
“But it’s his phone,” I said. “Maybe Kevin Sullivan is the one blackmailing us.”
“Or he could have given her the phone if he has more than one,” Alison said.
Heather shuddered and at my quizzical look said, “She could be out there, right now, watching us.”
“Let’s go and get her phone,” I suggested.
“It’s not just the phone,” Alison said. “She probably saved the photos to a desktop or laptop.”
“Then we have to get them off her computer, too,” Julie said. “If we can somehow get you in her house, I’m sure you could erase the files.”
Alison looked as if she was torn between being flattered that Julie thought so highly of her skills and skeptical that she could live up to the endorsement.
In the end, the rest of them reached the same conclusion I had from the beginning—we would drive to the address on Whitcrest Road, find Terry Holloway, and figure out a way to get her phone and computer. We took Julie’s car, reasoning that if the police or anyone else spotted us, we could claim that she was showing us houses.
Jul
ie drove with Alison riding shotgun, while I rode in the back with Heather. She hadn’t wanted to come, trying to argue that the police could be watching, but Alison had insisted.
“You’re in this up to your eyeballs—you’re going with us,” she’d said, but she wouldn’t sit next to Heather in the car. It was like being with a divorced couple, neither of them speaking to the other, while Julie and I tried to pretend we didn’t notice.
Whitcrest Road was in a pretty, tree-lined residential area with houses that Julie ticked off as ranch or two-story or Victorian or gingerbread. Number 126 was toward the beginning of the block and conveniently catty-corner to a Presbyterian church, a large brick building with an austere white spire. We turned into the church parking lot and pulled into a spot with a view of the house. There were a few other cars in the lot, so we weren’t too noticeable, and Julie’s car was partially obscured by saplings that someone must have recently planted to brighten up the medians serving as row dividers.
We’d tried to come up with a plan as we drove, deciding that the first thing to do was to figure out if this was even Terry Holloway’s house before we attempted to lure her out so Alison could sneak inside.
It was sunset, long shadows creating a glare off the home’s windows, making it impossible to tell if anyone was inside. As we sat there debating whether someone should knock on the door, we got lucky. A car turned onto the block and then into the driveway at 126, while we slunk down in our seats, trying to hide our faces as it pulled past us. We could hear the car doors slamming and the distant chatter of voices followed by a woman’s laughter.
Julie leaned forward as a couple came into view, the woman trotting ahead of the man, who had a large briefcase swinging from his shoulder.
“That’s her, that’s Terry.”
“You’re sure?” Alison asked, trying to peer at the figures now cast in shadow on the porch.
“Yes, definitely. Call her! Call the number.”
Alison hurriedly pressed the call button and we watched, breathless, waiting for Terry Holloway, or her husband, to pick up their phones. Terry dug in her purse and I thought, Gotcha, but she produced a key ring instead and unlocked the front door. Her husband was behind her, yawning and switching his bag to the other shoulder as if it were too heavy.
Just Between Us Page 27
