One Little Secret (ARC)

by Cate Holahan

  “So, how are we doing the sleeping arrangements?” Louis set a wine box on the kitchen counter and then huffed over to the staircase. With white steps the same shade as the walls and a single glass side topped with a near-invisible metal banister, the freestanding structure seemed to float above the concrete floor.

  “We don’t know.” Nadal reentered the great room with Ben in tow. “The only claimed space is the wine fridge.”

  Louis gestured upstairs with his chin. “I’ll toss these anywhere, then.”

  He hustled up the steps at a pace that made Susan nervous, given the staircase’s open side. When he reached the mezzanine, he turned a sharp left toward the smaller of the two bedrooms, which offered an ocean view.

  “Um, maybe we should ask what everyone wants to do,” Jenny shouted up the stairs.

  Louis looked down at her over the railing. “I want to ditch the bags, Jen. What did you stuff in here, anyway? Five outfits for every day of the week?”

  Jenny’s red lips pursed.

  “Well a girl’s gotta be prepared for anything,” Susan said, gesturing to the large duffle at her hip, as though it contained only her clothing and not also all of Nadal’s things. “Who knows what we might get up to? Dinners in town. Dancing. Celebrity house parties.” She nudged Jenny, making clear that the celebrity to which she referred was already in the house.

  “I do love my celebrities.” Louis grinned at his wife, eliciting an eye roll from Jenny along with a small smile that said he’d been forgiven. Susan recognized the exchange as the kind of thing that passed between her and Nadal all the time. Someone said something to annoy the other one, the aggrieved party arched his or her back like a hissing cat, and then both people moved on. Marriage was like a poker game in that the stakes increased the longer each player sat at the table. After a dozen years with the same person, the pot became so large that no one could walk away over anything less than a monumental display of cheating. All other grievances had to be shrugged off.

  “So, what are we drinking?” Rachel’s voice snapped Susan’s attention back from the second floor. Her neighbor strode into the great room on heeled espadrilles like a native New Yorker in midtown, oblivious to the sights around her. When she reached Ben, she made pointed eye contact, as though he were the designated bartender. “I need a large glass of something. That call was brutal.”

  Ben pulled the strap of his weekender bag over his head. “I’m going to put our stuff in the downstairs bedroom. My bum knee has been acting up lately. Makes stairs a pain.”

  Rachel grimaced at her husband’s leg and then turned toward the rest of the group. “Jen, maybe you can give him another cortisone shot.”

  Jenny frowned. “Doctors really shouldn’t inject the tissue too often. And I really shouldn’t be giving shots at all since I’m not technically practicing at the moment. There’s a bit of a liability issue.”

  Rachel doubled-slapped her husband’s thigh, a jockey sending a stallion on his way. “That’s why I like having you treat him. If anything happens, I know you’re good for it.” She headed into the kitchen. “So, what’s on tap?”

  Nadal crouched beside the cabinets, unloading bottles into a wine fridge. “Pick your poison, guys,” he shouted. “Sauvignon blanc, Riesling, rosé. Red. Whiskey?”

  The mention of a drink made Susan’s mouth water. Since the move, cabernet had become her antianxiety medication. Without a hefty dose, she’d keep thinking about the twins and worrying about the bedroom sizes, obsessing over whether her husband’s determined focus on the wine bottles—and not on Rachel striding toward him—was because he found their neighbor disconcertingly attractive.

  “We brought champagne.” Rachel glanced behind her, perhaps for Ben with their suitcases. He’d already disappeared down the hallway, though he’d left a pink-and-green-checkered bag on the coffee table that looked suspiciously like it held a bottle of something.

  Red relaxed Susan best, but she knew most people didn’t drink it on sunny days. “How about the rosé?”

  Nadal pulled a bottle of pink wine from the open box. “Wölffer Estate it is. This is a good one. Local.” He pulled a corkscrew from a drawer and slashed the paper at the top of the bottle.

  Susan realized she should be making conversation and not ogling the wine like a dehydrated man before a mirage. She was a former lawyer and Rachel was still one. There was common ground to explore. “So, Rachel, you had a work call? Big case?”

  Rachel was also watching Nadal. She turned her focus from him as he jammed the screw into the stopper. “I’m not out for blood or anything, but it could be. I’m hoping to settle it amicably before it goes to court and ends up a big thing in the papers.”

  Nadal yanked the cork out like he was mad at it. “Honey, grab some glasses.”

  Susan opened the cabinet above the wine fridge, the obvious location for them. A line of thick wine glasses stood on a bottom shelf. She grabbed one, realizing as her nails struck the stem that it had been constructed out of plastic. Susan slipped the stems of two glasses between the fingers of her right hand and then reached in for more. “A big thing in the papers, huh?” She raised her voice so that Rachel could hear her. “Did someone get really injured?”

  Rachel groaned. “Died, actually. A nine-year-old boy.”

  Susan’s breath caught in her chest. She imagined her sons’ faces from that morning, Jamal’s winning smile and Jonah’s searching eyes. The wine no longer seemed appealing. “Oh my God. That’s horrible.” She turned her full attention back to Rachel. “What happened?”

  Nadal set the bottle on the table with a hard thud. The cork was in his hand, speared through by the screw. Rachel glanced at him and then quickly shifted her gaze back to Susan. “I shouldn’t even be talking about it. Attorney–client privilege. And we’re on vacation, right? No work talk.”

  Discussing dead children, admittedly, wasn’t a way to start a vacation, but Susan did want to know what had happened to the poor little boy. Hearing about the case had set her mind racing with all the dangers facing nine-year-old kids—dangers that she, hundreds of miles away, couldn’t protect either of her twins from.

  Susan set four glasses on the counter beside Nadal. “Sorry to bring up work. It’s just, God, that poor boy. His poor mother …”

  Rachel’s irises blurred into a watery blue. “I know.” She sniffed. “Every time I talk to her, I think of Will. It’s—”

  “So, vacation!” Nadal said it with forced enthusiasm, an umpire calling a strike. He lifted the wine dramatically and began filling the row of glasses. “Some view, huh?”

  Rachel murmured her appreciation as Susan returned to the cabinet for two more glasses, resigned to dropping the subject. She’d asked Nadal not to bring up work. Grilling Rachel on her new case wasn’t exactly playing fair.

  “No wine for me yet.” Susan looked up to see Jenny hovering by the wall of windows.

  “I’m going to check out the beach,” Jenny continued. “Tell Louis?”

  Before Susan could answer, Jenny was through the French doors in the glass wall. The sound of them shutting was followed almost immediately by the slide of the first-floor bedroom door. Ben’s heavy footsteps thudded on the concrete floor. The house carried sound throughout the great room, Susan realized. She hoped it wouldn’t make sleeping difficult.

  Susan brought a fifth glass from the cabinet, in case Louis also wanted a drink when he came downstairs. Nadal stopped pouring and handed her a glass. He grabbed his own and raised it in the air.

  “To my wife.” His mouth spread in a sappy smile. “I know this year hasn’t been easy with the move and not having the right school for Jonah or the family help that we’re used to—not to mention me working around the clock to expand the company. Yet you still planned this vacation for all of us. I hope you have a chance to truly enjoy it and relax. You deserve it.”

  The saccharine speech embarrassed Susan. Nadal knew that she didn’t enjoy being the focus of attention. Rachel was
staring at her with one of those gluey grins. Susan might have planned the trip, but Rachel—like Nadal and Jenny and Louis—had worked to pay for it.

  Susan said a quick thanks and raised her own glass. “To new friends and taking a leap of faith going in on this sublet with us for the week. I hope this vacation is the first of many.”

  Rachel’s real smile unlocked as their plastic glasses tapped together. Nadal set his untouched wine back on the table. For a second, Susan could have sworn she’d caught her husband scowling at her toast. “I should see if Louis needs a drink.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE DAY AFTER

  The shore was a surreal place for a crime scene. Something about the reflection of the sky in the encroaching ocean, the way the unbroken blue above shimmered at the water’s mirrored edge. It disoriented Gabby, made her feel flipped upside down.

  Police tape, neon yellow in the white morning, pulled at spikes cordoning off a square area in front of a wall of black boulders. The jetty extended into the sea like the enormous fin of some prehistoric whale. Detective Jason DeMarco stood outside the designated area, identifiable, despite Gabby’s distance, by the black hair shining like sealskin atop his skull. His head bobbed along to the gestures of two khaki-clad officers semi-camouflaged by the sandy landscape. County had apparently sent a forensic team.

  Gabby’s clunky pumps sank into the loose sand as she tried, and failed, to jog toward her colleague. Each step kicked hot grains up beneath the hem of her pants. It would have been easier barefoot. But she couldn’t show up to her first murder looking like a misguided tourist.

  By the time she reached the trio of officers, her calves itched from the sand pasted to her skin. She ignored the feeling as Jason introduced her to the County team as “Detective Sergeant Gabby Watkins.” The addition of her full name added heft to the title, as did the authoritative tenor of Jason’s dropped voice.

  Neither forensic officer shook her outstretched hand as they provided their names and ranks. Gabby dropped her arm without taking offense. Both men wore bright-blue latex gloves, and touching her bare, sweaty palm could unwittingly transfer her DNA onto the body.

  “She was killed late last night.” Captain Dennis Lee remained standing for his explanation while his partner crouched to snap photographs of the scene with the massive digital SLR hanging from his neck. Lee was evidently the elder statesman, with his gray-streaked black hair and hooded, downturned eyes, the skin at the corners exploding with lines as he squinted in the bright sun. He also outranked Gabby by two degrees, which meant she shouldn’t interrupt his update with questions.

  Gabby pulled out her notebook from an interior pocket of her navy suit jacket, along with a pen. She flipped over several pages, skipping the scrawled thoughts she’d jotted down earlier that morning in Dina’s house, and stared at Lee, ready to take dictation.

  “We can’t determine the exact time of death yet,” he went on, “because we don’t know how long she was in the water. The ocean would have brought down her body temp pretty quickly. Given her location, I figure she was killed a couple hours before high tide when there was water here. So, say around midnight. Certainly no later than one.”

  Gabby turned her attention from Captain Lee to the victim. The woman was petite, more the size of a girl than a grown adult. She was propped up against the jetty, her head drooping as though she read an invisible book on her lap. Her silvery-blonde hair gleamed in the sunlight, long dried from whenever she’d been underwater. If police tape hadn’t surrounded the woman, Gabby might have passed her by, assuming she’d simply nodded off while sunbathing in her white one-piece.

  Closer inspection, however, betrayed that something was very wrong. One strap of the victim’s white bathing suit had been snapped from her shoulder. Her fair skin had been rendered near translucent with faint blue lines, like cheap notebook paper. Gabby took a step toward the other side of the body in hopes of spying the signs of a water death that were so apparent to Lee. The victim’s thighs, she realized, were porcelain only on top. An eggplant color crept from underneath where the blood had settled.

  “Did you detect water in the lungs?” Gabby asked.

  Lee said something to his younger, stockier partner in medical terms too fast for Gabby to fully comprehend. The man put his gloved hand beneath the victim’s chin and raised it an inch. So many red and purple splotches dotted the neck that the pale skin between looked like a baroque pearl necklace.

  “She was clearly asphyxiated, though determining whether from drowning or strangulation will have to wait for the autopsy. Judging from the size of the neck bruises and the abrasions on her knees, she was likely held underwater by a larger—or at least significantly stronger—assailant standing behind her with his palms pressing on the clavicle and fingers against her windpipe.” Lee transferred his attention from the body to Gabby. “Unfortunately, she’s only about your height and obviously petite, so that doesn’t narrow the field much. The average American man is five foot ten and the typical female is still a couple inches taller than the victim. Overpowering her wouldn’t have taken much strength.”

  Lee nodded decisively, as if to dismiss her. Gabby turned toward her fellow detective. Jason had been listening to the forensic expert while grinding his bottom lip beneath his top teeth. He glared at the victim as though she’d ruined his afternoon.

  “Who placed the call?” Gabby asked.

  Jason rotated toward the grass-covered dunes dividing the houses from the beach. A man stared at the crime scene from the sand in front of the vegetation. He was dressed for a run in a T-shirt and tight bike shorts. Gabby put his height at over six feet. His size, coupled with his apparent athleticism, heightened her senses. The man could be a threat if he wanted to be. He could hold a woman underwater.

  “Nadal Ahmadi,” Jason said. “Says he’s renting a house with the victim, her husband, another couple, and his wife—the woman Officer Kelly is over there watching. She was pretty worked up.”

  A few feet behind Nadal, the shorter uniformed patrolman was sitting with a woman who must have been the wife. She had long mouse-brown hair and skin that was reddening in the sun. She wore shorts and a T-shirt. Her head was drooped toward her lap, perhaps to avoid seeing her friend’s body.

  “You said they found her on a jog?” Gabby started toward the couple, knowing that the sooner she spoke with them the better. It wasn’t unusual for people who called 911 to be guilty of something, or to know more than they’d told the dispatcher. She needed to talk to them before they conferred about their story—assuming they hadn’t already.

  “I gather they went out around eight.” Jason pointed in the opposite direction of the people. “Their rental is about a quarter mile that way.”

  More grains of sand sprayed Gabby’s calves as she moved away from the packed sand towards the victim’s friends.

  Jason withdrew his own notebook from the duty belt visible around his hips. Most detectives didn’t bother with the heavy getup, opting to clip their gun holster and cell phones onto a regular leather belt and pocket a couple of zip ties for emergency arrests. But Jason seemed comfortable with all the artillery around his waist, despite the added weight and the overbearing heat. Gabby was secretly glad one of them could stand it.

  “The victim is Rachel Klein,” he said. “The man is Nadal Ahmadi. He claims he checked for a pulse on the neck and didn’t find one. His wife, Susan Ahmadi, has calmed down from earli—”

  Jason abruptly stopped talking as they drew within ten feet of the pair. Gabby copied the names into her notebook, peering over her colleague’s bent arm to check spelling. When she finished, she tilted her head in Susan’s direction. Women often did better talking to other women, particularly when they were afraid. “You take the husband.”

  Gabby made eye contact with the uniformed officer and pointed to Jason, indicating that he should follow his lead. She then continued toward Susan, holding her notebook out to deemphasize the gun strapped to her hip. �
�Ms. Ahmadi, I’m Detective Gabriella Watkins. I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  The eyes that met Gabby’s were noticeably dry, though the red lines snaking from the woman’s hazel-green irises suggested she’d shed tears at some point. Gabby thought her attractive in a kind of girl-next-door-got-married-and-had-a-couple-kids way—the same way Gabby considered herself attractive. She and Susan didn’t have the dewy complexions and Pilates bodies of many of their Hamptons counterparts. But they’d been born with a certain appeal and had more or less maintained it.

  “I understand that the victim is Rachel Klein. How do you know her?”

  “She’s our neighbor.” Susan pressed her fingers into her temples and slowly circled them, massaging away a headache. “Her son, Will, and my boys are friends. We’re all renting a house together.”

  “You and who else?”

  “Jenny and Louis Murray, our other neighbors.” Susan kept rubbing her forehead.

  “You all live on the same block?”

  Susan lifted her left sneaker from the sand and stamped the sloped ground in front of her. She leaned over to carve an X with her index finger into the grains. “We moved here.” She scrawled another X in the sand beside it. “The Murrays, Jenny and Louis and their daughter, are there.” Behind the second letter, she made another mark. “Rachel and Ben live behind them with their two kids. Our backyards all touch.” She coughed and covered her mouth, taking a moment before continuing. “We thought, with the kids all in camp, we could pool resources and get a house on the beach for the week.”

  “When was the last time you saw Rachel?”

  Susan unfurled her folded legs and placed a hand on her stomach. With her limbs stretched out, Gabby could tell she was tall. If Susan stood, she’d tower over her. “Rachel was with us all last night.” Susan took a deep breath. “She went out for a walk around ten.”