by Joy Fielding
“Oh, Ted,” Bev said, giggling like a schoolgirl.
“Eventually we formed a business together,” he continued, “and the success of our company was due, in no small measure, to my brother’s input and tireless work ethic…”
In no small measure, Joan repeated silently, understanding by the renewed stiffening of Paige’s shoulders that her daughter was thinking the same thing. The success of the brothers’ company had been due almost entirely to Robert’s input and tireless work ethic, his brother having largely tagged along for the ride.
“Robert was the yin to my yang. He was the practical one, I was the dreamer,” Ted continued. “He was the calm, I was the storm; his was the voice of reason when my voice was off on multiple flights of fancy; I had big ideas, he knew how to make those ideas a reality. Together, we built a great company.”
Wow, Joan thought. Talk about revisionist history. She’d underestimated her brother-in-law. It took talent to give with one hand and take with the other, to praise and demean at the same time. In a few broad strokes, Ted had painted himself as a man of imagination and vision while relegating his dead brother to the more boring realms of reason and common sense.
“Here’s to you, Bobby,” Ted concluded, using the diminutive Robert had always hated. He lifted his wineglass into the air, the rest of the room quickly following suit. “I miss you, brother. How I wish you were here.”
Tears filled Joan’s eyes. She’d been wishing the same thing every day for the past two years.
“I’d also like to extend my gratitude to Robert’s wife, Joan, for being the best wife my brother could have hoped for, and to their children, Michael and Paige, who made him proud every single day. Michael, a big thank-you to you and Deborah for flying in from New Jersey to celebrate with us tonight, and Paige, what can I say? You know that I’ve always considered you more a daughter than a niece.”
Joan watched the already stiff smile freeze on Heather’s face.
“Thank you for being here tonight, and know that Bev and I are always here for you.” He returned his notes to his tuxedo’s inside jacket pocket. “And that’s it, everyone. Enjoy the rest of the evening. Coffee and birthday cake are on the way.”
“Excuse me,” Joan whispered, rising from her seat as a waiter approached with plates of something chocolate and gooey. She couldn’t sit there another minute. She couldn’t breathe. She needed air.
“Where are you going?” Michael asked. “Are you okay?”
“Is she okay?” Paige echoed.
“I have to pee, if that’s all right with the two of you.”
“I’ll come with you,” Paige said.
“Stay right where you are. I’m perfectly capable of peeing on my own.” Joan marched purposefully from the room, locating the women’s washroom off the main lobby and locking herself in a stall, lowering the lid of the toilet seat, and sitting down. She took a series of long, deep breaths, the last one emerging as more of a strangled cry.
“Are you all right in there?” a voice asked from one of the other stalls.
Damn it. She hadn’t realized anyone else was in the room. “Yes, thank you. Quite all right.”
There followed the sound of a toilet flushing and water running. Seconds later, a door whooshed shut and Joan was finally alone. “Goddamn it,” she whispered. She had to get a grip, give her brother-in-law the benefit of the doubt. It was possible he’d meant well. He couldn’t help that he was such a self-centered bonehead. She had to pull herself together, especially for Paige. She had to set an example, be gracious and resilient, show her daughter that there was life after loss.
Joan took another deep breath, then exited the stall and left the washroom. It was time to go home. Maybe she could get a ride with Paige and Sam. But when she returned to the ballroom, she saw that her daughter’s chair was empty. “Where’s Paige?” she asked Sam.
He looked uncertain. “I assumed she was with you.”
Joan glanced around the room. People were finishing their dessert and starting to take their leave. Some were approaching Ted’s table to say their goodbyes. She watched her brother-in-law rise from his seat to shake their hands and kiss their cheeks, reveling in the attention. She saw his two sons graciously thanking everyone for coming. She saw Bev basking in the ongoing compliments. She saw Heather twisting from side to side, her eyes conducting a subtle scan of the premises.
And she saw something else: Just like Paige, Noah was nowhere in sight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“You remember what happened to poor little Tiffany Sleight, don’t you?”
Chloe sat cross-legged on her bed in her pink-striped cotton pajamas, her laptop balanced on her knees. It was nine o’clock; the kids had finally settled down and given in to sleep; there’d been no more disturbing calls to her landline. All was quiet.
Except for the threatening voice that continued whispering in her ear.
“You remember what happened to poor little Tiffany Sleight, don’t you?”
In fact, Chloe was only vaguely aware of what had happened to the young woman, other than that her body had recently been discovered in a landfill outside the city. She’d avoided delving into the gory details, knowing they would only upset her. There was only so much unpleasantness she could deal with at a time, and she’d decided to concentrate on those things over which she had at least a semblance of control.
“Don’t do it,” she whispered now, her hands hovering over the keyboard. Yet, even as she was saying the words, her fingers were already zeroing in on the letters, pressing T-I-F-F-A-N-Y S-L-E-I-G-H-T into the search box, and watching as the screen filled with photographs and articles about the slain woman.
She was a pretty girl, Chloe thought, studying a close-up of the young woman’s face, her shy smile presaging no hint of the horrifying fate awaiting her. Long brown hair, a pleasant if narrow face, almond-shaped eyes, a slight overbite. Twenty-eight years old and a graduate of Boston University, she’d worked as an executive assistant at Google, whose head office was located mere blocks away, in Kendall Square. Had they ever crossed paths? Chloe wondered, bringing the screen closer to her eyes, staring at the young woman’s face until it degenerated into a series of black-and-white pixels.
Tiffany had recently broken up with her boyfriend, the various articles confirmed, and had a reputation as a loner. “She was really quiet,” one coworker confided, declining to give her name. “She kept to herself most of the time.” Her coworkers had reported her missing when she’d failed to show up for work. “She was meeting some guy for drinks,” another colleague offered, which seemed to be all anyone knew. Tiffany had volunteered nothing about the man she was meeting and no one had asked. Police had questioned her former boyfriend, but he had an airtight alibi for the night she disappeared and was not considered a suspect. No one had reported seeing her the night she vanished. Her body had been discovered purely by accident when a hungry dog went foraging through a landfill for food.
Chloe closed her laptop, not wanting to read the details of how Tiffany died, then opening it again when curiosity got the better of her.
She read that despite the decomposition, there was still enough left of Tiffany Sleight to determine she’d been raped and tortured before being strangled and repeatedly stabbed. Both her neck and wrists bore telltale ligature marks, and signs of petechial hemorrhaging behind her eyes revealed she’d been rendered unconscious, then revived, several times before being mercifully finished off.
How awful those final hours, Chloe thought. How terrified that poor girl must have been!
What kind of man was capable of such monstrous behavior?
There were rumors of a possible serial killer, but so far, police were playing down such conjecture. Should she call them? she wondered, glancing toward the phone beside her bed.
And say what exactly?
That sh
e’d been the victim of an obscene phone call, that the caller had known her name, that he’d alluded to Tiffany Sleight, that he could well be the monster they were looking for?
She pictured them trying to keep a straight face. Do you have any idea how many women get calls like that every day? she heard them ask. Then, Didn’t you phone the station just last week to erroneously report your husband had kidnapped your children? No, she couldn’t call them, she decided, knowing they would likely dismiss her as a hysteric, the female equivalent of “the boy who cried wolf.”
She closed her laptop and grabbed her remote from the night table, flipping on the TV. After an hour of the mind-numbing antics of assorted Kardashians, she felt her anxiety start to lessen. What she needed now was a large bowl of strawberry ice cream.
She turned off the TV and climbed out of bed, tiptoeing down the stairs and into the kitchen. Flipping on the light, she grabbed a large spoon from the cutlery drawer and opened the freezer, eating the ice cream directly from the carton.
The phone rang.
Chloe’s body went as cold as the ice cream slithering down her throat. Don’t answer it, she told herself, her hand already reaching for the receiver. Please let it be Paige calling to report on her evening, she pleaded silently. “Hello?”
“Enjoying your ice cream?” the voice asked.
Chloe’s head spun toward the window at the back of the house as her hand shot toward the light switch on the wall, throwing the room into darkness. She fell to her knees, her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
“Oh, Chloe. Why’d you go and do that?” the voice said in her ear.
“I’m calling the police,” she said, her heart beating wildly.
“The police can’t help you, Chloe.”
The line went dead.
Chloe immediately called nine-one-one. To hell with whether they dismissed her as hysterical. Someone was watching the house. She was in danger.
Two officers arrived ten minutes later, Chloe opening the door before they could knock, the details of every call pouring from her mouth before they’d stepped inside. They did a quick search of the grounds, but found nothing. They asked if she was married and she told them that she and her husband had recently separated, and no, they weren’t on the best of terms. They asked if she thought he could be behind the calls, and she said she honestly didn’t know. They asked if she thought he was dangerous and she said she didn’t know that either. “Did your husband know Tiffany Sleight?” they asked.
My God. Did he?
“I don’t know,” she told them. Was there no end to the things she didn’t know?
The officers jotted everything down and said they’d pay Matt a visit. They brought up the possibility of her taking out a restraining order against him.
“Can I do that?” she asked.
“I’d certainly look into it,” the older of the two officers advised, promising to drive by the house at intervals throughout the night.
Chloe watched as the men returned to their patrol car, then locked the door, fighting the urge to call Paige, beg her to come over and spend the night. “Sure,” Chloe admonished herself, doing a quick check of the downstairs rooms before returning to the second floor. “Put your best friend’s life in danger, why don’t you?”
She checked on the kids and was gratified to find them sleeping soundly. “Thank you, God,” she whispered, turning off the lights in her bedroom and peeking through the closed curtains onto the empty street below.
She’d been against the move to Cambridge when Matt first suggested it, wanting to remain in Boston proper. But Matt had been adamant that such a move would be great for their marriage, as well as for their children. He’d argued that Cambridge, home to both Harvard and MIT, was one of the most sought-after housing markets in the northeast US and that due to decreasing land space and escalating prices, they’d make a killing, financially, when they did decide to sell. He’d promised that if she was unhappy, they’d move back to the city.
Just another one of the promises he’d broken over the years.
Chloe lay down on top of her bed and closed her eyes, doubting she’d sleep. But seconds later, she found herself wandering through a crowded street fair, trying to keep a wad of pink cotton candy from sticking to her hair. “Look, Mommy,” Sasha squealed from somewhere beside her. “A clown!” Chloe looked up to see a faceless man running toward her. “Out of the way, bitch,” he shouted, knocking her to the ground.
The phone rang.
Chloe bolted up in bed. She grabbed the phone, bringing it to her ear without speaking.
“Chloe?” a man shouted. “Chloe, are you there?”
“Matt?”
“What the hell are you trying to pull now?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The police were just here. You told them I’ve been harassing you, that you think I’m some sort of serial killer…?”
“I never said that.” Chloe tried to explain the events of the evening, but Matt wouldn’t listen.
“For your information, I’ve been with clients the whole goddamn night,” he interrupted, “going back and forth with offers, busting my ass trying to make a living to support my children and my crazy-ass wife. I’ve got half a dozen people willing to vouch for me, happy to swear I never left their side, and that the only phone calls I made tonight were business-related. I come home, exhausted, to find the police at my door, asking me questions about some girl named Tiffany Sleight!”
“Someone’s been calling me, threatening me,” she explained again.
“And you automatically assumed it was me?”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
“Well, if you think you have trouble now, just wait till I—”
Chloe reached down and pulled the phone plug out of the wall before Matt could say another word. Then she burst into tears.
“Mommy?” Sasha said from the doorway, Josh appearing behind her.
“Oh, sweeties. I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?”
“Was that another wrong number?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Sasha ran toward the bed, climbing in beside Chloe. “I’m scared. Can I sleep with you?”
In response, Chloe pulled down the bedspread and beckoned Sasha underneath the covers. “You, too,” she told her son, who was hovering in the doorway. She watched him push one reluctant foot in front of the other, allowing himself to be coaxed into her bed.
“You should call Daddy,” he told her.
“No. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“He could protect us,” Josh said.
“He has a gun,” Sasha announced.
“What?”
“Daddy has a gun,” she repeated.
“No, of course he doesn’t have a gun,” Chloe said.
“Yes, he does,” Josh said. “He showed us.”
“Daddy showed you a gun?”
“It’s very heavy,” Sasha said, snuggling into Chloe’s side.
“He let you hold it?” Chloe could barely contain her horror.
“It wasn’t loaded,” Josh said.
“I don’t care. You shouldn’t be anywhere near guns.”
“It’s for protection,” Josh insisted.
“We don’t need protecting,” Chloe said, managing to sound much surer of herself than she felt.
Someone was threatening her.
Matt had a gun.
Seconds later, both children were asleep, their warm little bodies pressed against hers. Chloe lay between them, afraid to close her eyes, the clock beside her bed ticking off the seconds till morning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Paige hadn’t meant to look at him, to acknowledge his presence in any way. And she hadn’t. Not until about five minutes before, when she’d s
wiveled around in her chair at the same moment he’d swiveled around in his. And their eyes had connected, and his lips had creased into a tentative smile, and she’d turned away before hers could do the same.
“You okay?” Sam asked.
“Will you excuse me?” she asked in return. “I want to check on my mother.”
And maybe that had been her intention when she fled the ballroom. But instead of checking on her mother, she found herself cutting through the lobby, imagining Noah chasing after her, his hand reaching for her shoulder as she stepped outside to gulp at the warm night air. “Paige,” she heard him say, his voice floating through the soft breeze of her fantasy to graze the back of her neck.
“Paige,” the voice said again.
She spun around.
And there he was.
“Noah,” she said, her voice almost inaudible over the pounding of her heart.
“I’ve been hoping for the chance to speak to you,” he said. “How are you?”
“Fine,” she said, not capable of words more than one syllable. “You?”
“I’m good. You look beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ve always liked that dress.”
Had she known that? Paige wondered. Was that why she’d picked it? “You look nice, too,” she managed to spit out, choosing not to think about it.
Noah patted the black leather lapels of his tuxedo jacket. “This was your choice. As I recall, I thought it was way too radical. You had to work hard to persuade me.”
“Oh, I can’t take too much of the credit,” she heard herself say. “As I recall, you’re pretty easy to persuade.” She watched him wince and glanced quickly away, biting down on her bottom lip and noting that several of the party guests had come outside and were now waiting by the valet stand for their cars.
“Okay. I guess I deserved that.”