by Jeff Abbott
Grant takes a deep breath. “I want to tell you something, but I shouldn’t. Not now. Not with everything you’re dealing with. Did Peter tell you what I asked him for help with?”
Mike slowly shakes his head, and Grant remains silent. Grant can hear the quiet ticking of the clock in the breakfast nook. It’s an old timepiece Mike brought from Slovakia. He laughed at Grant when Grant once told him he wasn’t sure his family owned a clock, what with clocks already in their phones and ovens and cable boxes.
“You tell me and make me forget my troubles, OK?”
“Someone emailed me anonymously. They told me to look somewhere I used to hide toys and stuff. In the woods. I went there and they’d left a note for me. It said Mom and Dad were lying to me.”
“Lying about what?”
“I don’t know.” He drums his fingers on the table, nervous.
For a few moments Mike is silent. “Why send you to the tree? Why not just tell you in the email?”
“I think they wanted to show me they know about my life. You’d have to know us pretty well to remember that tree was my hiding place.”
“Was there anything else in the tree?”
Grant bites at his lip. He doesn’t think he should mention the money. He doesn’t want the money, but he doesn’t want to give it up.
Mike says, “You’re not telling me something.”
“There was money. A thousand dollars in cash. I didn’t tell Peter this part. He’s looking at my laptop to see if he can trace the email. Don’t be mad. I asked him not to tell you.”
Mike blinks. “What…? Why would someone be giving you a thousand dollars?”
“To prove that they’re serious.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
Grant swallows. “The morning Danielle was found. I mean, even as it was happening. I was by the tree when the police sirens started.”
Mike drags a hand across his unshaven chin. “We have to tell your parents.”
“What if they really have lied to me?”
“It’s easy for some anonymous person to be accusing them of lying.”
“But why would they? What reason would the Sender—that’s what I call this guy—have?” Grant says.
“Your parents may know that.”
“Which is why we can’t say anything.”
“I am not comfortable keeping this from Iris and Kyle,” Mike says. “I can’t.”
“Please. I know Peter will be able to find out something and then we can tell them together.”
“Peter says he can track the email?”
“He might be able to find their internet provider and then their address. We have to see.”
“All right. So, what, you want to wait and talk to your parents about this after Peter finds out more information?”
“They could deny this. They could tell me anything and I don’t know anything, so I don’t know if it’s truth or lie.”
“Your mom and dad are not liars. You know this.”
“But the Sender gave me a thousand dollars to prove their point; it must mean something.” He doesn’t mention the bracelet. Or what the Sender said about Dad having done something bad. It’s all wrapped up together, but he can’t tell Mike that part. He can’t make his father look bad.
Mike is silent for ten long seconds. “I’ll stay quiet until we see what Peter finds. But then we tell your parents right away.”
“I didn’t know what to do.” His sense of relief in having told an adult is palpable. “But I’m trusting you not to say anything.”
“I’m glad you told me,” Mike says. “Do you want some of this food your mama brought me?”
“No.” Grant wipes his hands on his jeans, feeling sweaty. He has a hunch Mike will call his parents the moment he leaves.
“You are sure you have told me everything? So he said your parents lied. Did he say anything about Danielle?”
“No. Nothing.”
Now Mike’s face is grim. A man who lost the woman he loved. “Are you sure? I need to know if this person knows something about Danielle.”
“Nothing. I swear.”
“If you tell me this, I believe you.”
Grant just nods in agreement so it feels less like he’s lying. “Can I talk to Peter, see if he’s found anything?”
“He’ll call you when he knows something. He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s working.” There’s something sour and sad in Mike’s voice now, and Grant realizes he’s made a mistake. He’s held back, and Mike realizes it.
He has made Mike suspicious of people he trusts. What if Mike or Peter find the Sender and the Sender tells them the bad thing his father did?
Mike might want his own revenge.
“OK, I’ll go home now, Mike,” he says in a small voice. “Please don’t tell my parents this. Not yet.”
Mike doesn’t say anything now.
Grant walks home in the fading light. He glances back, and Mike is watching him from his front door. Mike raises a hand in a wave. But he’s not holding a phone in his hand, calling Mom or calling the police. Not yet.
He has never done this to his parents, turned to a different adult in an hour of need. He’s never needed to. But he can’t push away the thought in his head.
He thinks if Mike reads the threat against his dad in the email, he’ll know it’s a lie. He’ll dismiss it.
Dad is one of Mike’s best friends. But what if he doesn’t think it is a lie? What has he done to his own father?
27
Julia
The abandoned house. It’s surprising that in a neighborhood of homes all worth well above a half million, there’s one that often stands empty. In Winding Creek you say the words “that house” and people know which one you mean. Among the well-maintained yards and the immaculate porches, that house sits there, like a child alone every day at a school lunch table.
That house, at the end of the lane.
No one’s living there now. It used to be the Carlyle house, back when Roy and Laurie lived in it, before Roy left Laurie for his assistant at his advertising firm and Laurie took an overdose of sleeping pills. It didn’t kill her, but it left her in limbo, a coma that she’s been in for two years. Roy and the new wife moved to Houston because he couldn’t live with the silent shaming of his neighbors. He never sold the house. Is he keeping it for Laurie in case she wakes up? Or for his two kids, who will always hate him? Maybe he thinks giving them the house they grew up in will buy him their love. Or out of a sense of guilt? No one knows.
The house usually sits empty, except when Roy’s nomadic brother moves in for a few weeks, sometimes for a couple of months. This often happens at Christmas and Easter. The lawn gets cut regularly by a work crew, but nothing can make the house look lived in except people actually living there. Roy’s brother moves back and forth between Austin and Albuquerque, and no one knows quite what his business is.
What matters is that the house is empty, and Ned Frimpong gave her a key just minutes before they found his mother’s body, back when the world was still full of promise.
He used to babysit for the Carlyles. Laurie gave him a key and Roy forgot that he had it in the wake of their overwhelming tragedy. Ned forgot he had it, too, until he needed it.
Ned appears to have forgotten her as well; he’s ignoring her texts and her voicemails. Or maybe his father’s taken away his phone. She’s scared to go to this meeting by herself, but this is the only way to find a path out of this for her and Ned.
The house has a back deck. She goes up its steps, carefully, trying to make sure the wood doesn’t creak. She doesn’t want a neighbor to hear her. She opens the back door with the key and goes inside. She’s there before Marland. The rooms are still furnished—a sofa, chairs, a few books on the shelf. The power is on, still paid for; she hears the gentle hum of the heater. She doesn’t dare turn on a light; the neighbors would think the nomadic brother was back, but there’s no car in the driveway and they might investigate o
r call the police. She wonders if Laurie Carlyle might ever wake up and wander back in, unaware of the time she’s lost, unaware that the house sleeps as well.
She hears a noise.
Someone is already here.
She sees him in the doorway leading to the kitchen.
“Hello, Julia. Thank you for coming. It looks like Ned couldn’t make it.”
She doesn’t say anything to that.
“Did he lead you on? Encourage your feelings? He seems the type.”
What does this man know about her and how does he know it? She finds some courage and uses it in her voice. “And what would you have done if I’d brought the police and they arrested you for trespassing?”
“I’m a professional. I would have submitted myself to arrest, my lawyer would have me out in a matter of hours, and then you and I would still have to come to an understanding.”
“I can’t do what you want me to do. I can’t be your point of contact for these drug sales.”
“It’s risky to approach someone else. You already know the business.”
“Only because he confessed it to me and I tried to talk him out of it, mister, please,” she says, her voice rising.
“But you still helped him. You couriered, what, merchandise four times for him.”
“He didn’t tell me that’s where I was driving him until later.” She was mad at him about that, but he shrugged it off, telling her as long as she hadn’t seen the drugs or touched any cash, she wasn’t involved. She was pretty sure now a lawyer or police officer would disagree.
“Then it’s his word against yours, isn’t it?”
“Please. I want out.”
“I just need you for a little while. Ned’s been the middleman. I need to be…not dealing directly with consumers. They’ll trust a fellow student. Me, not so much. But you, you’d be golden. No one would suspect you.”
“I can’t. I won’t tell the police on you, for Ned’s sake, for my sake, but I can’t be involved. I shut it down for Ned.”
“You’re going to restart it,” Marland said in a steady voice. “You have his account password for the game.”
“Fine, yes. And I’ll give it to you if you’ll leave me out of all this.”
“What do you think happened to his mother?” Marland asked suddenly.
The shift scares her. She’s alone in this house with this man. Her parents and most of the neighborhood are at a meeting about security and the Danielle investigation right now. If she screams, likely no one will hear her.
She doesn’t answer him.
“It’s an absolute tragedy,” Marland says. He sips at his bottle of water, offers her a cold one on the counter. She just shakes her head. “I understand she was an adoption consultant. There must have been so many families she brought joy to. But, see, there’s one family that would be really upset with her. Yours.”
“What…?”
“I mean, Ned pulls you into this business. Even on the edge, it’s bad for you if you’re caught. You’d be arrested. You’d be charged. You probably can’t get a lawyer as good as mine.”
She waits. She tries to remember to breathe.
“What if your dad or mom found out about that and went to talk to Danielle about it? Maybe at some time when you and your brother and Ned wouldn’t be around to witness it?”
The air has all gone from the house. Marland stands like something out of space and time. “You’re just making this up.”
He holds up a phone and turns the screen toward her. A video. She sees her front porch, a dark figure emerging from the house in her father’s coat, hood up, walking to Danielle’s house, and Danielle coming out in her coat and scarf and the two of them walking together. Toward the park.
“That’s not real,” she says.
“It is,” he says. “I lucked into your dad showing himself, what with keeping an eye on Danielle so she didn’t interfere. So, if I show this to the police, your father has a problem. If I don’t, no one has a problem. I need a kid in this operation. You’re the only one Ned confided in. Be mad at him, not me.” His voice softens. “It won’t be so bad. I’ll keep all your earnings in an account. That account will be the front for a small company that ends up giving you a full scholarship to the college of your choice. You’ll never have to touch the money; your parents will never know. If there’s no money to trace back to you, you’ll likely be safe.”
Likely, she thinks. “There is another explanation,” Julia says. “My dad would never hurt her. Or anyone. I know him. I know the man he is.”
“You think you do, but people disappoint us all the time. To protect you, he’d kill. Nearly every parent would.”
She thinks quickly. The whole point was to extricate herself from this mess. But everything has changed. She has to get that video from this man, destroy it and every copy he might have. And she can do that only by getting closer to Marland.
Choose and change the course of your life, she thinks.
“I want Ned’s phone he used to contact me in exchange for this video,” Marland says. “And then we can peacefully coexist.”
“Ask Ned for it.”
“His mother took it from him and Ned hasn’t found it. I can’t exactly be around him right now and he can’t come to me.”
And did you kill her before you could get that phone back? Julia’s terrified. But this is her chance.
“All right,” she says. “I’ll help you.”
28
Iris
Iris gets home and calls Francie back. She doesn’t have long to talk. There’s a community meeting tonight at the Winding Creek pool clubhouse about the investigation and security in the neighborhood. Mike is speaking at it, as are the investigators from Travis County and Lakehaven PD.
“I found the family that threatened her,” Francie says. “Their name is Butler. Steve and Carrie Butler.”
Butler. She’s heard the name before, but she doesn’t remember where. Think. Think.
“How did you find them?”
“I remembered she complained about them in an email to me and I found it from months ago. I’ll forward it to you.”
It arrives in her in-box seconds later, and Iris scans it:
Yeah, this older couple was mad about being declined. Steve and Carrie Butler. They were just problematic. China and Uganda both said no and I think it took them really by surprise. They don’t know what they want to do yet, but they’re blaming me. My heart breaks for them but they don’t get to be terrible to me. This isn’t my fault. In other news Ned is about to make me tear out my hair, but life with a teenager, even so how lucky I am to have him.
“Should I give this to the police?” Francie asks.
Iris thinks. “No,” she says after a moment. “I will, if that’s OK. I already know the detective. It’ll be easier coming from me.”
Francie says, “I looked the Butlers up on Faceplace. He works for a software company, and she’s a pediatric nurse. They should have been stellar candidates.”
“But they weren’t. Did she say why?”
“No. I was surprised she even told me their names. Confidentiality—you know that was crucial to her.”
“Yes,” Iris says in a flat tone.
“I think she told me their names because if something happened to her, someone else would know they had threatened her.”
“But had they? Threatened her? Or just been mad at her?”
“Look at the email.”
Iris reads the end of it:
Hey thanks for listening to me vent. It’s fine. They’re disappointed and I’m disappointed for them but not everyone that asks us for help is a good match for overseas adoption and I think that they just don’t want to accept the verdict. We tried to prep them best we could, help them adjust their thinking. I’m only telling you this not to bring up my name if you cross paths with them. I’m their least favorite person right now. Just so you know. I wish them well.
“There’s no other time she mentioned th
em to you?” Iris asked.
“No,” Francie said.
“So it wasn’t like they were harassing her.”
“No,” she said. “Well, whatever ‘be terrible’ means. She mentioned about her car getting keyed. But she didn’t say they did it.”
“When?”
“Last month.”
“Francie.”
“I’m just saying she never specifically mentioned them. So you’ll tell the police?”
“Yes,” Iris said. “I’ll take care of it. They may want to talk to you, though.”
“Sure.”
“Thanks, Francie.”
She’ll track down the Butlers tomorrow. She can find them via Faceplace or her network of Lakehaven volunteers, with careful asking that doesn’t tip her hand as to her interest. The Butlers might be the answer to this whole terrible mystery. But as a successful adoptive parent, she’ll have to consider how she talks to a family that was turned away. Their resentment could be powerful. Hi. I’m here to talk to you about a murdered woman you blamed for your greatest unhappiness. She would have to be careful.
Now she has to get ready for this neighborhood meeting. All her neighbors, all talking about Danielle, all expecting her to be a voice of compassionate leadership, of calm and order, and Iris wants to run away from this awfulness and not think about what secrets her husband is keeping or why her daughter is more worried about a boy than her own family and why her son asked her the questions she’s always feared: if she had ever lied to him.
29
From Iris Pollitt’s “From Russia with Love” Adoption Journal
2002
Feliks drove us to the orphanage. The interpreter, Pavel, sat up front with him. Pavel was—pardon your mom for saying this—hot. Maybe twenty-five, blond hair, broad shoulders, square jaw. Seriously, he could get a modeling job. Back when I wrote songs, I knew people in modeling because of the models who dated the more famous musicians I knew—I could probably connect Pavel. Danielle whispered to me, “Pavel can be very charming with the administrators. He’s one of my secret weapons. His mother taught English at Saint Petersburg State University, so he was raised speaking both.”