Slice

by William Patterson

  Rose volunteered that she had never been convinced of his innocence.

  “Well, neither was I, Rosie. Come on, you can’t put anything over on Gertrude Gorin. And I think the police must have felt the same way. Not finding any evidence to convict him isn’t the same as finding evidence that exonerates him.” She snorted. “And given how rip-roaring angry he was when he got back from police questioning last night, I’d say Manning was once again given a thorough grilling down at the station.”

  Rose asked her why, then, did she think it was more likely that drug gangsters involved with Emil Deetz, instead of John Manning, had killed the poor girl?

  “It was the way she was killed,” Gert said. “Slitting her throat like that. Remember, that was the way Deetz killed his victim. I think it was a warning to Jessie that they weren’t through with her.”

  Rose argued that Deetz was dead.

  “But I’m sure he still has cronies out there. And who knows? I’ve always thought Jessie knew more than she was saying. Maybe in fact there are drugs still stashed over there—or money. She may have stolen drug money from them, and this is their way of pressuring her to give it up.”

  Arthur had walked into the room then, still in his pajamas. He hadn’t slept well after the commotion last night, and now his wife’s blabbering on the phone so early in the morning had woken him up again.

  “Enough with all your cockamamie speculation,” he grumbled. “Why isn’t coffee on?”

  “I’ve got to go, Rose,” Gert said. “The Kraken wakes.”

  She hung up the phone.

  “Forty years of marriage and still you don’t know how to make coffee.”

  Gert placed a filter into the bowl of the coffeemaker and then scooped in the ground coffee. She could use a cup herself. The adrenaline from the night before was starting to wear off, and she’d need a burst of caffeine to finish all her calls. She had to call Sylvia Rush, and Randi Phillips, and Darla Hood, and Samantha Stevens. . . .

  As the coffee began to drip into the pot, Gert lifted her eyes and looked out the window into her backyard. Three decades ago, Arthur had erected a little gazebo out there. That was before he’d retired from the post office, when he’d spend his weekends doing little projects like that around the house. Nowadays, he spent every day—every hour, practically—in front of the television set. But Gert remembered a time when, during the period when they’d still hoped to have children, she and Artie would sit out in the gazebo with a bottle of wine, a romantic little interlude before coming inside to make love. The gazebo might have been prefab—with imitation brick and an aluminum weather vane on top—but it had been their little cozy hideaway. Gert couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat out there.

  But now, looking out the window as the sun’s first pink rays filled up her backyard, Gert saw someone else was using the gazebo.

  A little boy sat there, all by himself.

  Gert poured a cup of coffee for Arthur, who sat groggy-eyed at the table. “Here’s your coffee,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  For some reason she didn’t tell Arthur about the boy. She pulled her robe tighter around her and stepped out the back door. The birds were chattering in the trees, excited by sun. But the boy just sat there, staring straight ahead, unmoving. He was wearing just a white T-shirt and blue shorts. Gert noticed he was barefoot.

  “Hello,” Gert called, approaching the gazebo.

  The boy didn’t turn to look at her.

  As Gert neared, she saw that his shirt and face and feet were dirty. Finally he lifted his eyes to look at her.

  “Hello,” Gert said again.

  “Hello,” the boy replied.

  His voice was friendly, but rather disinterested, as if Gert had just interrupted him in deep thought. He couldn’t have been more than four or five or six. . . . Gert wasn’t good at determining kids’ ages, but he wasn’t very old.

  “Can I help you with something?” Gert asked the boy.

  He looked at her oddly, as if he didn’t understand the question. Then he shook his head no.

  “Well, where do you live?” Gert inquired.

  He pointed toward the woods. Gert nodded. They had built a whole section of new housing on the other side of the woods. She didn’t know any of the families there, but had heard there were a lot of kids. She sometimes heard them playing through the trees.

  “I think you should run along home,” Gert told him. “This old gazebo isn’t safe anymore.”

  She glanced at the old structure. The wood was rotted, the imitation brick colorless from thirty years of winters, the weathervane bent and broken and rusted.

  But the boy didn’t budge.

  “Really, sonny, move along,” Gert repeated. “Go home. It’s not safe out here today. There’s a bad man on the loose.”

  That caused the boy to turn his eyes sharply to her. It seemed to wake him up, frighten him. Gert was glad. Better the boy be scared than out by himself where the maniac who’d slit poor Inga’s throat might get him. Suddenly the child bolted from where he was sitting and ran past Gert into the woods. She could hear the leaves and branches crunching under his feet. A flurry of crows flew out of the trees.

  Really, Gert thought as she headed back into the house. What kind of mother lets her kid run around without any shoes?

  NINETEEN

  “Have a good first day in school, baby,” Jessie called to Abby as the little girl, her pink backpack strapped over her shoulders, toddled off with the other children into the classroom. Jessie could feel the tears wanting to pop out of her eyes.

  But Abby was smiling and waving happily. She had already made friends on the playground with another little girl, and together they walked hand in hand behind their teacher, excited to be starting their first day of kindergarten.

  “I remember your first day of school,” Aunt Paulette told Jessie as they walked back to the car. “I went with your mother to bring you.”

  “But I had Monica a grade ahead of me, and she was always there to help me find my way,” Jessie lamented. The tears finally came as she slid behind the wheel of the car. “Abby’s all alone in that big school.”

  “Abby is a very resilient little girl,” Aunt Paulette said.

  Starting the ignition and backing out of the parking space, Jessie had to agree. Abby had received the news of Inga’s death with a certain calmness. She had cried a little, and said how much she’d miss her, but she’d also said that now she had a guardian angel to watch over her, and that she’d see Inga in her dreams. Of course, Jessie hadn’t told Abby how Inga had died—she said she’d merely had an accident on her way back to the house—and Abby hadn’t asked for more details. If she made the connection with the scream she’d heard the night before, Abby didn’t mention it.

  The school psychologist had counseled Jessie that eventually she might have to provide Abby with more of the truth. Now that she was at school, she might hear details of the murder from other kids. At that point, Jessie had to be ready to help guide her gently through all the questions she would have.

  The crime-scene tape had come down, and although police cars still cruised up and down Hickory Dell a few times a day, there was no longer the around-the-clock watch. News crews had traipsed all through the neighborhood for a few days. Now they, too, had disappeared, as Inga’s murder faded off the front pages. Police announced they were pursuing several leads, but Jessie knew they had nothing specific. They’d been back to question her a couple of times, and she’d seen police cars over at John Manning’s, too. But it was coming to seem as if Inga’s killer had gotten away scot-free.

  They’d had a little memorial service for their beloved nanny in the backyard. Jessie, Abby, Aunt Paulette, and Todd had all picked daisies and lit candles and said a prayer. It had seemed to provide Abby with the kind of closure she needed, at least for the time being. Monica had been invited to their little ritual, but she’d had a basket class to run. It was just as well; the murder had made Monica edgy
toward Jessie. The sisters had barely spoken since that terrible night. Jessie felt Monica was upset that, just as Jessie had returned home, terrible things had started happening all over again. She’d tried talking to Monica about it, but Monica was always too busy. She was clearly keeping Jessie at arm’s length.

  Todd, however, had understood. “You can’t blame yourself,” he’d told Jessie. “This was a random act. A terrible coincidence. All we can do is move forward.”

  Jessie was grateful for Todd’s words. But she had to admit, sometimes she didn’t blame Monica for her reaction. Inga’s death didn’t feel like a coincidence to Jessie. As she pulled into their driveway, Jessie averted her eyes from the spot where Inga’s body had been found. She hadn’t been able to bear looking in that direction since she’d found her body there. She got out of the car and, after thanking Aunt Paulette for going with her to drop Abby off at school, walked quickly into the house, looking straight ahead.

  Inside, she poured herself a cup of coffee and settled into Mom’s chair to think. In the immediate aftermath of Inga’s death, Jessie’s impulse had been to leave Sayer’s Brook and go back to Manhattan. She had felt safe and anonymous there. But here . . . it was as if coming back here she had somehow awoken Emil’s ghost. She knew it sounded crazy, and her rational mind rejected the idea. But deep down in her heart, she was convinced that Emil had come back from the dead to kill Inga as a way of having revenge on Jessie. The police might not have any leads, but Jessie felt she knew who the killer was.

  What convinced her had been the return of the dreams.

  The dreams of the baby—Emil’s son—that she had wished dead.

  The son she had killed.

  She’d be sleeping, only to be awakened by the sound of a baby crying. And Jessie would get out of bed and hurry to Abby’s room, only to see, instead of her daughter, a baby boy covered in blood.

  Only then would Jessie realize she’d dreamed the entire thing.

  She’d had this same dream five times now. Aunt Paulette said it was normal. Of course the trauma of Inga’s death would bring back the trauma Jessie had experienced with Emil. To appease Jessie, her aunt had done a tarot reading, saying all she could see was the need for continued perseverance, and the promise of eventual liberation from fear. She insisted that if Emil’s ghost had returned—Aunt Paulette didn’t discount the possibility of ghosts—she would have sensed it.

  Jessie wasn’t sure how much she believed in the tarot or Aunt Paulette’s psychic abilities. She didn’t disbelieve, but, like Mom, she was never entirely convinced either. Still, it did give her some consolation that her aunt saw no ghosts and no looming threats when she worked her magic. It was better than the alternative.

  Jessie took a deep breath and stood from Mom’s chair. She had decided the best way to move forward, as Todd had described it, was to finish what she and Inga had started. She would get back to painting and tiling the kitchen and the bathroom. And after that, she’d paint the upstairs. It was what Inga would have wanted her to do. Jessie glanced up at the photo of Mom on the wall and the inscription she’d left there:

  There is nothing you can’t accomplish when you put your mind, heart, and spirit into it.

  Jessie took another deep breath and got down to work.

  TWENTY

  Heather made her way up John Manning’s driveway, past his Porsche and his Bentley. She knew the security code to the front gate; she didn’t have to wait to be buzzed in. Still, John insisted that she always let him know whenever she was coming; if he was writing, he hated to be disturbed. But lately whenever Heather had texted him, suggesting a rendezvous, he’d always claimed to be too busy. This time she was coming unannounced.

  If she rang the front bell, or even just barged in, she’d have to deal with that annoying Caleb. John’s young, protective assistant would surely play interference, insisting that his boss was writing and couldn’t be disturbed. So Heather wouldn’t go through the front door. She knew John usually wrote in his little, mostly glass casita out in back, where he had a view of the woods. The wooden fence that ringed the property protected him from overzealous fans—but his fans didn’t have the security code for the front gate. Now that she was inside the compound, it would be easy for Heather to slip around the side of the house and surprise John in his writer’s lair.

  Hidden by bushes, Heather stealthily made her way toward the backyard, hoping Caleb wouldn’t spot her from a window.

  She knew she was being foolish and rash, and that John deplored foolishness and rashness. She should be home at this very moment, baking bread and pies, because she was catering the Sayer’s Brook Historical Society’s quarterly meeting tonight. But Consuela—who was housekeeper and catering assistant as well as nanny until they could find one who’d put up with Piper and Ashton—had things under control. And the kids were at school and Bryan was at work, so Heather finally had the opportunity she’d been waiting for. She would spring up on John unannounced and demand to know why he was avoiding her.

  She was Heather Wilson Pierce—head cheerleader of Sayer’s Brook High, don’t forget—and she would not be ignored.

  It had all started the day of Jessie’s fucking picnic, the day that German girl got murdered. Heather had texted John earlier, hoping to see him that night, when Bryan left to play basketball with friends. John had agreed tentatively, telling her it depended on how much work he got done. He was working on a new book and had a deadline to meet. So Heather had been very surprised to see him saunter over to Jessie’s yard, and even more surprised to see the attention he’d paid to that girl. How Heather had hated her, right from the start. Now that she was closer to thirty than to twenty, Heather hated just about any female who was younger than she was, especially when they were as pretty as Inga had been.

  But Inga wasn’t pretty anymore. She was dead—her throat cut from ear to ear.

  Bryan had been certain that John Manning was the killer. But Heather had coyly suggested another suspect. “Maybe Jessie did it,” she offered. “After all, she seemed mighty put off by John’s attention to the girl, and then when you made your ridiculous pass, you just pushed her over the edge.”

  Bryan told her she was crazy.

  Maybe she was. Heather knew sneaking around someone’s backyard wasn’t exactly sane behavior. But she didn’t care. At the moment, all she cared about was confronting John. Ever since they’d begun their affair about a year earlier, John had been all Heather could think about. She was obsessed with him. With the way he smelled, the way he spoke, the way he felt, the way his eyes seemed to bore into her. She’d divorce Bryan in an instant if John only gave the word. Heather had thought she meant something to him, too. She had thought those passionate nights up in his tower bedroom, the moonlight streaming in from the window, had been more than just sex. She had thought John was in love with her the way she was in love with him,

  Apparently she’d thought wrong. And the realization enraged her.

  Coming around the side of the house, she spied John in his little glass house, staring down intently at his titanium MacBook.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the row of pine trees on the other side of the security fence. That was where Inga had died.

  She couldn’t help the small, satisfied smile that turned up the corners of her lips.

  With that smile on her face, Heather walked boldly out of the trees and across the yard. It was too late for Caleb to stop her now.

  She noticed John look up and spot her as she approached. He grimaced.

  “Good morning, darling,” Heather said, opening the door to the casita and walking in. “Or is it afternoon yet? Are you hungry? Can I fix you some lunch? I’m known for my culinary skills, remember. As well as other talents.” She giggled aggressively. “But I do think you’ve forgotten all of my good attributes.”

  Heather smiled wider and sat down on the small leather couch opposite John’s desk. She crossed her legs.

  John glared at her. “You know I don
’t like being disturbed when I’m writing.”

  Heather’s smile grew even wider. “You know I don’t like not having my texts and phone calls returned.”

  “I’ve been very busy. I have this deadline I must meet. I’m writing every day—”

  “And entertaining visitors from the Sayer’s Brook Police Department, I see.”

  John glowered at her. “More interruptions I don’t need.”

  “Do they really think you killed that girl?”

  He averted his eyes from her, looking once again at his computer screen. John was wearing a plain black, short-sleeved oxford shirt, with several buttons undone, over a pair of cut-off black denim shorts. He was barefoot.

  “I don’t know what they think,” he said.

  “Well, they must think something, because they’ve been back here so many times.”

  “Asking the same questions, for which they get the same answers.”

  Heather leaned forward on the couch. “You can tell me the truth, John.”

  His eyes flashed over to her.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Did you do it?”

  His expression grew stern. “Did I do what?”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “And if I did,” he asked, a smile now blooming on his own face, “do you think I’d confide in you?”

  Heather sat back on the couch, her lower lip protruding. “When did you suddenly tire of me, John? I don’t recall a quarrel. The last time we were together, in fact, it was quite nice, as I remember.” Her eyes narrowed at him. “I did that thing with my tongue that you like so much.”

  John stood from his desk with a sigh. “Look, Heather, I’ve just been very busy.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “And yes, this past week has been particularly difficult, with the girl’s death and the police making such nuisances of themselves.”