She asked, “Why, though? Why did you come here?”
“You’re my wife,” he said. “I love you.”
Tessa simply shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t think a man can love more than one woman?”
“No, Ron,” she said, plenty of acid in her voice now. “I don’t. And if that’s what you wanted, you should’ve told me, so I could’ve made a decision that didn’t leave me heartbroken and betrayed.”
“Sometimes things—”
“Don’t you dare tell me sometimes things just happen,” Tessa said. “They don’t. You choose to do certain things. From that, you choose to feel a certain way.” She looked at him then, hoping her eyes threw fire at him. By the way he dropped his chin to his chest, she thought they did.
“I don’t want you here,” she said in a much quieter voice. “I’m fine without you. I don’t need you.”
“Tessa,” he said.
“Please, Ron.”
“Is that it, then? We won’t talk about it?”
“I don’t need to talk about it,” she said. “You told me everything I needed to know.”
“Are you going to file for divorce then?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” she said. “I’ve been a little busy, in case you didn’t notice.”
He nodded, his eyes hard marbles now too. “Okay. I’ll go. You let me know what you want to do. I can clean out my stuff in the house in a few days at most.”
“I’m sure you can,” she said. “You hardly lived there.”
“You can have the house, if you do decide you want a divorce.”
Tessa bit back a sarcastic reply and simply nodded instead. Ron looked like he might say more, but in the end, he just nodded too, turned, parted the curtain, and walked away.
Fitting, she thought. He’d walked away from their marriage and life together a long time ago. She’d been the one clinging to everything for the past several years. But knowing that didn’t make the betrayal sting any less, and it didn’t make the tears dry up any faster.
Tessa stood back while Janey bent to lift the garage door. She’d endured dozens and dozens of questions, first from the Sheriff and then the Chief of Police. She’d answered everything she could for Janey and Sean once they’d returned to the cottage.
She’d slept a lot the second day, and today, on the third, she and Janey had blocked off their morning for one purpose: to find the trunk full of money Bobbie and Riggs had thought existed on this property.
Janey and Tessa had whispered in the dark about the things they’d been thinking about, and they had two possibilities. The trunk of the Mercedes, and the trunk of garden tools in the corner of the garage.
“Close the door behind you,” Janey said, her voice almost getting whipped away by the wind. Sometimes the weather coming off the Sound wasn’t as quaint as the idea of Nantucket, but Tessa loved the scent of the sea the breeze brought with it.
She followed her sister into the garage and reached for the rope connected to the door. Pulling hard, the door ground against the tracks and filled the space with a grumbling that Tessa hoped wasn’t indicative of what they’d find this morning.
“Do you want to start with the car?” Janey asked.
“Sure,” Tessa said. She just wanted to follow her sister’s lead today. Her brain felt stuffed full of information, coffee, or painkillers, and she didn’t want to lead the search today.
Janey opened the front door and pulled the lever to release the trunk. Tessa reached for it, her heart thumping like she’d find a dead body inside. She waited until Janey stepped to her side, and then she lifted the trunk lid and peered inside.
“It’s empty,” Janey said, bending down to look all the way to the back. There was nothing there. Not even a hint of lint or a speck of dust.
“Do you think there’s a spare tire?” Tessa asked, her eyes tracing the outline of the felt-like rug that sat on the bottom of the trunk. She reached for the edge of it on her side of the car and pulled it back.
It didn’t come easily, and Tessa frowned. “I think you’re supposed to be able to lift this piece up.” She tried again, and a ripping sound met her ears. She stopped pulling and looked at Janey. “It feels like it’s been glued down.”
They stared at one another, several statements being made without a single word coming from either one of them. Tessa slid her fingers further under the rug on her side while Janey reached for the edge of it on her side.
Pulling together, they ripped the rug off the bottom of the trunk.
Where the spare tire should be sat what one would expect to find—a spare tire. Disappointment cut through Tessa, cooling some of the adrenaline racing through her. “Shoot,” she said. “I thought there’d be something here.”
“Does this look like the right spare tire for this car?” Janey asked. She tried to remove it, but five bolts held it in place.
Tessa kept pulling on the rug, removing it all the way to the back of the trunk, which went quite far under the slanted back window. Suddenly, the rug came loose quite easily, and she stumbled backward a step or two before regaining her balance.
She’d heard something too. Something that had sounded like a plastic bag getting wrinkled.
She returned to the trunk and bent down, peering as far back as she could. “I can’t quite see. Can you shine your flashlight back here?”
It took Janey a couple of moments to get her flashlight on, and when she shone it back into the trunk, she bent over too.
“Oh,” Tessa said, holding onto the end of the word for a few long seconds.
“What is that?” Janey asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
Tessa didn’t answer except to stretch toward the white plastic bag that had been revealed with the removal of the rug.
The plastic was thick and smooth, like the bags she used to mail packages to Ryan. This one certainly looked as if Mom had received something in it at the cottage, and she’d torn the perforated tab to get the contents out.
Dark gray duct tape kept the bag closed now, and Tessa straightened as she pulled the bag out. The contents of it shifted, and she knew instantly that she was holding stacks of money. “Janey,” she said. “Feel this.”
She gave the bag to her older sister, and the recognition lit Janey’s eyes. “I’ll get the garden shears.” Tessa stepped over to the trunk in the corner with all the garden tools, and she pulled out a pair of rusted shears.
She handed them to Janey, who just stood there with the shears in her hand, looking down at the package she’d set in the trunk. The package was about three feet long and two feet wide, and only a single stack of bills high. Long and thin and easy to slide into a suitcase without anyone questioning anything.
“Open it,” Tessa said.
Janey took a deep breath, and she pinched the corner of the package to make the first cut.
The scent of musty money filled the air, and five seconds later, Janey had the bag sliced open down the side, and stacks and stacks of bound bills spilled into the trunk of the car.
Janey panted as if she’d just run a race, and she didn’t look at Tessa. They both stared at the cash, and Tessa’s heartbeat sprinted through her body.
“How much do you think it is?” Tessa asked.
“I don’t know.” Janey started putting the money back in the bag. “I think we should leave it here for right now.”
“Why?” Tessa asked, her fingers tingling and she hadn’t even touched the money yet.
“I just don’t know if we’re secure yet,” she said.
Tessa cast a glance to the closed garage door, wondering if they’d ever know what had happened to Bobbie and Riggs. The boat had been found abandoned at a port in Maryland, and Viola Martin had been rescued. Alive, but a bit shaken up and definitely still a little bit under the influence of whatever drug Bobbie had given her.
She had not returned to Nantucket yet, but Janey had already said she’d go visit
her as soon as she did to get more of the story.
Bobbie and Riggs were nowhere to be found, and police in Maryland were now coordinating with Chief Trivett as they continued to search for the couple.
Janey stepped back from the trunk and closed it. “Let’s go through the gardening tools.”
Tessa went back to the trunk, which she’d left open. She took out small hand rakes, hand shovels, a garden hose, and a bag of potting soil. Janey took something out for every item Tessa did, and soon enough, they’d filled the bench in front of the storage lockers on the side of the garage.
The scent of mold and damp earth and dust filled the air, and the items in the trunk seemed to go on and on. “This this is like Marry Poppins’ bag,” Tessa said, reaching for yet another pair of galoshes. “Why didn’t we throw this stuff away?”
“You said you didn’t want to,” Janey said. “You being a gardener and all. You wanted to go through these things and keep what you wanted, since it belonged to Mom.”
“Mm.” Tessa pulled out another hose that shouldn’t have fit so easily in the trunk. “Oh, my goodness. This trunk goes right into the ground.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, someone’s dug a hole down through the cement and clear into the ground.” She looked up and into her sister’s eyes, her own wide as fear ran through her. “Come look.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Janey stepped next to Tessa and looked into the trunk again. She was absolutely right. The bottom of the trunk had been removed, and the hose Tessa held in her hands had fresh dirt on it. Only a few items remained in the trunk, and Janey pulled a metal watering can from the side.
A cigar box fell down without the support of the watering can, and Tessa sucked in a breath. Janey did too, dropping the watering can on the cement at her feet. She flinched with the noise, but she’d already started reaching for the wooden cigar box that was about the size of a shoe box.
She lifted it out and stared at the top of it. CLARKE had been carved into the lid, and she lifted her eyes to Tessa’s. “Daddy carved this.”
“Looks like it,” her sister said without moving her lips.
Janey lifted the lid, which wasn’t locked, nailed shut, or otherwise sealed closed. “There’s money.” Only a few stacks of hundreds this time, but still probably ten thousand dollars. She moved over to the bench in front of the lockers and sat down, balancing the box on her knees.
“This you can hide in your purse and take to a bank or something,” she said. There was probably a quarter of a million dollars in the back of the trunk, but much less here. Certainly not the “millions” Riggs had indicated would be found here.
She lifted out the four bundles of money and handed them to Tessa. “There’s something else here.” She removed a legal-sized envelope from the box, her fingers shaking slightly.
“I don’t know if I can take it,” Tessa said.
“Hey, it’s not a binder.” Janey smiled at her sister as she took a seat next to her. She breathed and opened the envelope. Inside lay a single sheet of paper, and it appeared to be a map. “It’s a map of the yard,” she said. “Where Mom put her bushes and trees.”
Janey frowned at the map, wondering why this was the most important item in the cigar box. Which had been inside the trunk, down inside the ground. Out in the garage.
“Why couldn’t Mom just leave us a bank account with all the money in it?” she asked, shaking her head. “All of this could’ve been avoided.”
“And Riggs and Bobbie would have it all by now,” Tessa said. “She did what she thought she had to do to keep the estate safe.”
Janey’s phone rang, startling her, and she took it from her pocket to find Dale’s name on the screen. “I’ve been avoiding him,” she told Tessa.
“Answer it,” Tessa said, taking the map from Janey.
Janey frowned, but she did what her sister said. “Hello, Dale.”
“Janey,” he said, and his voice was definitely somewhat more crisp than it had been in the past. “Where are you? At the cottage?”
Janey didn’t want to say yes, but she had a feeling she better not lie. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”
“Joan and I are here, and we need to speak to you and Tessa, if at all possible.”
Janey got to her feet. “Here? Right now?”
“The cab just dropped us off,” he said. “We knocked and rang the bell, but no one answered.”
“We’re out on the beach,” she said. “We’ll come in.”
“Could we go in the house, by chance? Joan doesn’t do well in the wind.” He spoke in a much softer and quieter voice now, and Janey’s heart wept for him.
“Of course. We put a new doorknob on the front door, and it has a code. It’s 3-2-8-4.”
“Thanks.”
The call ended, and Janey turned to face Tessa. “Dale and Joan are here. Remember I said he had something to tell me?”
“Here?”
“I said we were on the beach.” She glanced down the bench where all the tools sat. “Let’s put that in the trunk with the other money and go see what they want. We can try to make sense of it once they leave.”
With that done, the trunk locked, and the garage closed tightly again, the two sisters went around the back of the garage to the beach side of the house and approached the cottage from the direction of the Sound. No one seemed to be watching for their approach, and Janey entered the house first to find Joan leaning back on the couch while Dale made coffee in the kitchen.
“Joan,” Tessa said in a placating, professional voice, and Janey went to greet Dale.
“You should’ve said you were coming.”
“I did, in one of my messages,” he said. “Why didn’t you answer?” He cast a glance toward Tessa and Joan in the living room.
“We’ve been dealing with a lot here,” Janey said. She didn’t have to explain anything to him, and she lifted her chin as if challenging him to ask her another question. He seemed to get the hint, because he simply got down two more mugs and offered them both coffee.
“No, thanks,” Janey said, but Tessa accepted a cup. Janey perched on the edge of the love seat with Dale, and everyone looked at Joan.
“I just found out about Lydia,” she said, her voice shaky. “I didn’t know she’d died.”
“A few months ago now,” Tessa said gently. “I know you two were good friends.”
“I’ve been so ill,” Joan said. “I don’t even know what day it is most of the time, especially with the treatments and medicines I’m taking. But I heard Dale on the phone a few days ago, and I realized she’d died.”
She gave her husband a weak smile, and though she clearly had more to say, she didn’t continue.
Dale returned his wife’s smile. “Joan reminded me that the two of us were your legal guardians should your mother and father pass away while you were still minors.” He looked between the two sisters. “And Joan remembered something Lydia had specifically asked her to do upon her death.”
“Even now?” Janey asked. “We’re not minors.”
“No matter when she passed,” Joan said, her voice half the volume it had been previously. “She told me who your father was, Janey, and she asked me to tell you once she’d gone.”
The air in her lungs seized, and Janey had a hard time pushing it out to get more. “Who?” she practically gasped.
“It’s not Riggs,” Joan said. “Or Dale. Or Greg. It was a man she’d met on a weekend trip to Long Island.”
“Long Island?” Tessa asked, looking from Joan to Janey.
Long Island, where Mom had a secret house on Shoreline Way.
“Yes,” Joan wheezed. Her eyes drifted closed. “His name is Ryan Harper. He’s still alive, I believe, and he still lives in Southhampton.”
Janey opened her mouth to say something, but she had no idea what. Her brain misfired, and she ended up simply gaping at Joan.
“So Janey’s father is not Riggs Friedman,” Tessa stated,
hope dancing in her dark eyes. Janey felt it moving through her too, along with a heavy dose of what she could only describe as relief.
“No,” Joan said. “Lydia gave me a picture of your dad.” She nodded to Dale, who reached into the inner pocket of his sports jacket. “She wanted you to have that too. She said he never knew about you, but that you should know.”
Dale handed Janey a black and white photograph of a man with a strong jaw and a bright light in his dark eyes. She felt like she was looking into a mirror, recognizing the shape of her face in this man’s, and the way her eyes crinkled the way his did.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, not sure what to do with the information. Should she contact this Ryan Harper and reveal her identity to him? Why hadn’t Mom told him about his own daughter? Had Daddy known?
Janey looked up at Dale. “Did you know about this man?”
“I did not.” He shook his head. “Lydia went to Long Island a few times that summer. She said her step-sister lived there. She’d go for a day or two and come back. I never suspected anything.”
Janey nodded and looked back at the photograph again. “Thank you,” she said again, not sure what to do now.
“Would you like to stay for lunch?” Tessa asked, rising to her feet. “I can call The Glass Dolphin and order a delivery.” She glanced at Joan, clear worry on her face.
Janey let her take over, because she couldn’t think quite clearly enough at the moment to play the perfect hostess.
She now knew who her father was, and she had to figure out what to do about it.
“I’m really sorry, Milford,” Janey said, watching the waves come ashore only a few feet away. In a few hours, the tide would be up, and if she still stood in this position, the waves would cover her feet and rise to her ankles.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” she said. “I need some time to myself to figure it all out.”
“I understand,” Milford said, but Janey wasn’t sure how he could. She barely understood why she needed to break-up with him. She’d spoken true—she had no idea who she was.
The Cottage on Nantucket Page 30