One Little Secret (ARC)

by Cate Holahan

  DeMarco’s near-black irises reminded her of coal briquettes. They seemed to smolder as he dragged a hand over his slicked hair. “While I’m interviewing everyone, what are you going to do?”

  The attitude fueling his question was evident. She was handing the junior detective a lot, and a ton of subsequent paperwork. But his job wouldn’t be as difficult as hers. His interview subjects, after all, were already in the station house.

  “I’m going to track down that party, detective.” Gabby met DeMarco’s steel stare. “I’m going to confront a possible rapist. I’m going to uncover every detail about that fight. And I’m going to determine whether Ben Hansen could have killed his wife.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE DAY OF

  Jenny watched Nadal head in for more wine glasses, wishing she had some excuse to keep him outside. Three was an awkward number of people to leave together, especially when two of them were Ben and Louis.

  “Nice piece of fish.” Louis’s compliment conveniently left out Ben’s effort in preparing it. He grabbed the spatula from beside the dish and cut into the center of the halibut. Steam released, carrying the scents of lemon and salt as he placed a slice on Jenny’s plate.

  “Perfectly prepared,” Jenny added.

  Ben acknowledged the compliment with a slow blink. “I heard you got a bruise?” he said to Jenny.

  “Bug bite.” Louis didn’t look up from plating the white fish. But Jenny caught Ben’s eye roll.

  “Strange. It’s near dusk now.” Ben gestured to the gold-tinted scenery. “I have yet to feel a mosquito.”

  Jenny returned Ben’s probing stare. “I was on the beach.”

  “You’d think they’d breed in there.” Ben indicated the scrub forest on the side of the property. The squat oaks twisted between each other’s limbs, linking to form a dark-green privacy hedge. Ben was right. If there’d been biting insects, they’d have swarmed from the side yard to feast on them already. As it was, Jenny couldn’t detect any bugs save for cicadas, the hum of which was barely audible beneath the ocean’s crash.

  “Well, sand flies breed in sand.” Louis brought a forkful of fish toward his mouth.

  Ben served himself a section of the fillet while continuing to stare. Jenny could feel his eyes scraping the layers of foundation from her skin. “Does it hurt?”

  “It’s fine.” Jenny eyed her fillet like it was a cadaver. She carved off a piece with the back of her fork. “I’m sure it looked bad because I was flushed. I don’t feel anything.”

  The back door opened again, and air filled Jenny’s lungs. The presence of the other houseguests would distract Ben from his interrogation. “Hey,” she said, “you have to try this.” She turned to see Susan and Nadal striding past the pool. “Ben’s a grill master.”

  Louis tensed beside her. In her effort to distract Ben from her face, she was flattering him too much. Jenny brushed Louis’s leg with her bare calf, apologizing for overdoing it with the suggestion of coming physical affection.

  Nadal placed several wine glasses at the center of the table. He then stepped over to the far end of the bench and sat, stretching to dish out some fish. “I never became proficient with the grill,” he said, cutting off a decent chunk of the plated halibut. “Susie’s the grill master, baker, and salad creator in our family.”

  Susan carried a small glass bowl to the table. Gelatinous blue-black blobs of balsamic floated in sparkling oil. In the amber glow, the concoction reminded Jenny of the lava lamp in Ally’s room. She’d gifted the psychedelic light to her daughter on her last birthday, a glowing middle finger to the pastel decor Louis had selected for his little girl.

  “I’d happily relinquish my titles to anyone that wants to take them over.” Susan slid onto the bench beside Nadal and then scooped a large portion of salad onto her plate. She drizzled the oil over the spinach leaves. “I taught Jonah and Jamal how to bake recently. Edible science class.”

  Susan’s motherly presence calmed Jenny. She felt the muscles between her shoulders loosen and her blood pressure recede. Everything would be fine. They’d talk about the kids for an hour, and then, as soon as everyone finished eating, Jenny would excuse herself, blaming her early exit on the antihistamines to reduce her bite’s swelling. Everyone knew that Benadryl wiped folks out.

  “Did you need to take painkillers?” Ben’s voice. The blood rushed back to Jenny’s head like she’d stood too fast. She felt Ben’s gaze pulling at her, an outgoing tide dragging her down. “I mean, any bruise that requires painkillers is a bad injury, right?”

  Louis stabbed a potato, his eyes finally focused on their neighbor. “Fortunately, she’s married to a doctor.”

  “Fortunately, I am a doctor.” Jenny glared at Ben. “And I’m fine.”

  “Fine.” Ben pushed back from the table, moving the entire bench with Nadal and Susan on it. “I need another drink.” He looked to Nadal. “Want anything?”

  Susan’s eyes darted from Ben to Jenny to Louis, then to the full wine bottle on the table. “I’ve probably had too much already.” She chuckled. “The dangers of day drinking.”

  Ben didn’t laugh at her attempt to lighten the mood. He started toward the house, body puffed up like a linebacker looking to throw someone to the ground.

  “Hey, Ben.” Louis chuckled as he called out their neighbor’s name. Jenny braced herself for whatever words came next, aware that no interruption on her part could block their assault. “Maybe when you go inside you should ask Rachel if she wants anything. You know, pay attention to your wife, instead of staring at mine.”

  Glass shattered. Ben stepped to the side as though Louis had thrown something at him other than the insult. As he did, Jenny saw Rachel. She stood on the strip of tile separating the pool and the lawn. Dark splotches stained her light-colored kimono. Shards of glass shimmered on the pool coping beside her sandaled feet.

  “Don’t move.” Susan shot up. “I’ll grab a broom.”

  If Rachel heard the instruction, she didn’t show it. She charged ahead, refusing to stop despite the broken wine bottle in the grass. “What’s going on?”

  Jenny’s heart raced. Rachel was on the attack.

  “Are you okay?” Ben stepped toward his wife.

  “You’re flirting with Jenny now?”

  Ben’s chin retreated to his throbbing Adam’s apple. “What are you talking about? You’re misunderstanding.”

  “No. I think I understand perfectly.” Rachel looked at Ben as though he were rotting in front of her.

  “I was looking at Jenny’s brui—”

  “I don’t care!” Rachel shouted. “You know what? I don’t care about any of it. I don’t give a shit who you look at, or what you do, or who you did. I don’t. Because you know what I realize, Ben? You don’t do a damn thing for me.”

  “Are you kidding me right now?”

  Rachel rushed toward her husband, stopping centimeters away. Spitting distance. She tilted her head up, a furious David daring Goliath to use his height and weight against her.

  “Nothing,” she sneered. “You do nothing for me. I support our entire family while you’re at home doing God only knows with—”

  “What are you talking about?” Ben retreated from his wife. “Did you drink too much or something?”

  Rachel’s kimono billowed behind her. “Me! Drink too much. You think you can blame—”

  “I’ll tell you what I do for you, Rachel. I care for our family while you are at work. I take the kids to school and to activities and complete a million other tasks on your to-do list.”

  Ben threw his hands out, shifting from defense to offense. Louis jumped up, but Jenny grabbed his arm. Her husband taking Rachel’s side would only make things worse. Ben wouldn’t hit his wife, Jenny was sure of it. But he’d relish socking Louis.

  “You’ve taken advantage of me for far too long,” Rachel shouted. “Leeching off of me while—”

  “I’m your husband. I took the hit in my career so that you—”


  “Your career? What career?”

  “Writing is a career, Rachel. Not everything is about money. A marriage isn’t about money.”

  Rachel pushed both her hands into Ben’s chest. “No. It’s about give-and-take. And you just take. Ever since you failed at being a football star, it’s all been taking and taking from me, you ungrateful asshole.”

  Ben stared down at his diminutive challenger, clenching his fists. Nadal stood from the table and walked toward him, palms up, arms extended, a crisis counselor approaching a man on a ledge. He glanced back at Susan. “Hey, I think we should all calm down—”

  Ben focused back on Rachel. To Jenny, he looked like a man about to lay bare everything weighing on his mind and his soul. Please, shut up. She tried to project her thoughts into Ben’s brain, to urge him to step back from the fight and let them all try to somehow salvage the vacation.

  “You know what, Rachel? I’m sorry.” Ben shrugged. “I don’t make you happy. Maybe you’re right. I take from you and don’t give back what you need. It’s not fair. It’s not. So feel free to go ahead and give someone else a try. It’s summer. The kids are at camp. We can take a vacation from one another. Maybe it’ll make the heart grow fonder. Or maybe it’ll tell us something else.”

  Rachel stumbled back from her husband, blinking as though she’d been sucker-punched.

  “We should probably all call it a night, huh?” Susan’s voice sounded an octave higher than normal. “We all woke up super early to get the kids to camp this morning, and then we had those long drives. We’ve been in the sun all day, drinking. I barely know my own name, let alone what I’m saying right now. We should all get some rest.”

  Everyone was standing—except for Jenny She rose as slowly as possible, her heart threatening to break through her rib cage.

  “Dr. Louis.” Susan’s operatic voice trembled with vibrato. “What’s your professional opinion? Sleep, right?”

  Louis grabbed Jenny’s hand. Too rough. His fingers dug between her knuckles. She looked up at him, searching for facial clues to explain the pressure. He kept his eyes trained on Ben. “I’m all for turning in early,” he said.

  Rachel stepped toward her husband, a fighter returning to the ring. “Do you know what, Benjamin Hansen?” She imitated Ben’s speech pattern, patently mocking him with the rhetorical question as he had done before. The way she spat his full name turned every syllable into a four-letter word. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer.” She strode to a lawn chair, ignoring the possible glass chips in the grass. She grabbed her handbag off a cushion. “Maybe I already have.”

  The comment hit Ben hard. Jenny watched his eyes widen in surprise, his jaw hang open. “What?”

  Rachel didn’t respond. She stormed toward the path leading to the beach, stomping a straight line from the lawn through the scrub grass. The setting sun turned the swath of sand between the bushes into a gold rivulet, running toward the ocean. Rachel strode atop it without a glance back for her husband. For any of them. Jenny couldn’t help but feel a swell of female pride for her. Rachel didn’t give second and third and fourth chances. To Jenny, she looked as though she walked on water.

  PART II

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE DAY AFTER

  Fiona O’Rourke was the kind of girl Gabby had warned her kids about. She looked innocent enough, thanks to a youthful, round face and rash of cinnamon freckles beneath her prairie-blue eyes. But the defiant swish of her long hair as Gabby explained Mariel’s shaken condition told a different story.

  “I saw her before I left. She looked fine.” Fiona stretched an arm out to lean against the doorjamb, further barring Gabby from entering the modest gray house on the mansion-lined block.

  Gabby hadn’t demanded an invitation inside. The potential for gossip about Mariel’s case was high enough given Dina’s notoriety without alerting more local homeowners to the allegations. Even so, Gabby didn’t relish standing on the slight porch in the afternoon heat, her hushed interview at the mercy of an easily slammed door.

  “Completely fine,” Fiona repeated, her head tilted at an annoyed angle over the strap of a too-tight tank top. The door moved a centimeter forward.

  Gabby placed a hand on her hip, pulling back her suit jacket in the process to bare the sergeant’s badge pinned to her belt. “What do you mean by fine?”

  “Grand—not like she wanted to go home.” The young woman cocked her head to the other side, implying that Gabby was dense. “Mariel was clinging to one of the guys renting the place. Andy, I think. Green eyes. Brown hair. Fit.”

  The description was similar enough to the one Mariel had provided, Gabby thought, and Mandy could very well have been Mariel’s mishearing of his name. The au pair could have committed the American name to memory with a Pinoy twist.

  “When you say ‘clinging,’ ” Gabby asked, “was Mariel walking along holding his arm, or hanging on him like she couldn’t stand up by herself?”

  Fiona glanced to the right, either trying to remember how Mariel had looked or struggling to invent a description that wouldn’t highlight how she’d callously abandoned her friend. Pupil movements, as much as psychologists touted them, rarely revealed lies—at least in Gabby’s experience. Hands, however, often betrayed nervousness, and Fiona’s knuckles were white as she gripped the doorjamb.

  “They were wearing the face off each other, to be honest. Kissing and groping in front of everyone.” Gabby caught the spark of schadenfreude in Fiona’s eyes before her dark lashes batted it away. “I was a bit surprised, since Mariel had only met him an hour earlier. Some girls are like that when they come here, though. They think they’ve got a temporary visa to behave wh—”

  Gabby raised her eyebrows before Fiona could finish suggesting that her supposed friend slept around. The girl cleared her throat. “Wanton. You know, since no one back home will hear about it, they think it’s okay to be that way.”

  Gabby suspected Fiona was really talking about herself. “But you were still surprised at the public display of affection because Mariel didn’t seem the promiscuous type, right? She’d even suggested leaving the party? She’d thought the guys were too old?”

  Fiona snorted. “Well, that didn’t last long, did it? An hour and a glass or two of wine.”

  Gabby gave the woman a warning look. Abandoning a younger friend at a party with older men that were likely to take advantage, after said friend had expressed concerns about staying, was bad enough without the added snark. If Fiona continued to imply that Mariel had gotten what she’d asked for, Gabby might threaten to charge her. Fiona had known her fellow au pair was too young to legally drink, but that hadn’t stopped her from bringing the girl to a booze-fest. At a minimum, she’d contributed to the delinquency of a minor.

  Fiona’s smirk faded into an obstinate frown. “If I’d thought she’d been smashed, I would have interrupted. But I’d been outside with her the entire time and hadn’t seen her have more than a few sips of wine. I was in the queue for the loo five minutes, tops, and out in ten. That’s not much time to get drunk. As soon as I rejoined the party, though, she was pressed against Andy like a wetsuit.”

  What Fiona had apparently viewed as Mariel’s sudden change of heart, Gabby saw as a clear sign of drugs. Out-of-character actions were typically evidence of outside influences. “So you really didn’t find it at all odd that Mariel would go from barely drinking to making out with a guy that she’d complained was too old for her an hour earlier? She hadn’t appeared at all inebriated?”

  Some of the pink drained from Fiona’s face. She glanced over her shoulder, perhaps checking to see if her bosses would be coming in from their backyard pool soon to investigate why their au pair was taking so long with the deliveryman. Fiona’s hand dropped from the doorjamb. “Mariel might have seemed unsteady.” Fiona lowered her voice to a near whisper. “She was stumbling and hanging on Andy, kind of giggling and telling him nonsense. I overheard her saying that his eyes looked like snails
’ shells, all green and spinning. But I thought she was doing the drunk thing for show. If she acted sloshed, then Andy might not dismiss her in the morning as that kind of girl.”

  As she talked, Fiona pulled at a necklace resting at her clavicle. The pendant was a Trinity knot. One of Kayla’s friends had the intertwined triangles etched on the back of her shoulder. She’d told Gabby that the symbol had originally represented the cycles of a woman’s life: mother, maiden, and crone. The Catholic Church had taken it over, though, and morphed it into a representation of the Holy Trinity, hence the name. Was Fiona worrying it, Gabby wondered, because she felt like a bad Christian for leaving Mariel or a poor female friend?

  “Lots of girls do that, you know. Pretend to be drunk.” Fiona’s blue eyes begged to be believed. Gabby looked away. She didn’t really trust that Fiona had thought Mariel’s tipsiness an act. The girl had convinced herself that Mariel was behaving loose because she’d been jealous. That was why envy ranked up there with wrath, Gabby thought. Coveting sapped people of human compassion.

  “I need the address of the party.” Gabby folded her arms across her chest, signaling that she wouldn’t budge from the porch until she got it.

  Fiona started to shake her head. “I know those guys, and it was at their private—”

  “Of course, I could charge you as an accessory to date rape.” Gabby reached into her pants pocket as though prepared to withdraw cuffs. She stepped toward the open door, assuming her full height and the authority of her badge.