Disturbed

by Kevin O'Brien

  Her mom’s sense of humor and fun seemed to have died along with her dad. Whatever was left must have died with Charlie.

  That was something Angela’s hired snoop couldn’t know about her family.

  Molly tried to pay attention as Chet Blazevich talked about what they should do to better protect their homes against intruders. But she was still fighting the nausea and light-headedness. She felt even sicker as she imagined Angela sharing the detective’s findings with her gal pal, Lynette, and the new girl on the block, Jill.

  “Excuse me,” she whispered, unsteadily getting to her feet.

  Chet Blavevich stopped talking for a moment. But Molly didn’t look up at him — or anyone for that matter. Eyes downcast, she retreated toward Lynette’s powder room, through a hallway off the kitchen. Her legs were wobbly, and once Molly closed the bathroom door, she dropped down to the tiled floor and sat by the toilet. She took a few deep breaths and managed to hold back. She didn’t want to throw up in Lynette’s fancy powder room with its gold fixtures, pedestal sink, and shell-shaped mini-soaps. She rode it out, splashed some cold water on her face, and then sucked on a peppermint Altoid from her purse. She started to feel halfway human again.

  By the time she emerged from the bathroom, the detective had finished his talk. Lynette and Jill had migrated to the kitchen, Courtney had disappeared completely, and Chet Blazevich was standing by the buffet table.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Lynette asked, with a raised eyebrow.

  “Just a headache,” Molly lied. “I hope you don’t mind if I cut out early.”

  Lynette frowned a bit. “Of course, if you’re not feeling well.”

  Molly brushed past her and worked up a smile for Chet Blazevich in the dining room. She signed his Neighborhood Watch attendance form. “I’m sorry I missed the end of your talk,” she said.

  “It’s okay, you didn’t miss much.” He smiled at her. “I was hoping you’d baked cookies again. Those were really good last time.” He turned toward the spread of food on the table. “Which dish is yours? Is it the pasta salad?”

  “How did you guess?” Molly asked.

  “It’s the one thing on the table that appears untouched. I remember the last time, they didn’t eat your chocolate chip cookies, either.”

  “Good memory,” Molly told him.

  “So — still not part of the clique?” he said in a quiet voice.

  She just shrugged and shook her head.

  “Well, it’s their loss.”

  Molly smiled. “Can I interest you in taking home some delicious pasta salad?”

  He nodded. “You certainly can.”

  In the kitchen, she retrieved the Tupperware container in which she’d brought over the pasta salad. Lynette smirked at her. “Well, Molly, I see you weren’t so headachy that you couldn’t stop and chat up our good-looking, green-eyed guest,” she said under her breath.

  “I’m just being polite,” Molly replied. She held up the empty Tupperware container. “I’m giving him the pasta salad to take home, since neither one of you touched it. And by the way, Lynette, that recipe for Angela’s ‘fantastic’ dill dip? It’s Nalley low-fat dill dip, which you can buy at any old Safeway. Angela had a meltdown and dropped the hors d’oeuvres tray on my kitchen floor. I’ll be cleaning up spilt hummus when I get home. I rinsed off the vegetables that had been on the floor and, as for the bread — I blew on it, Lynette.”

  “What?” Lynette said, scowling at her. “Are you crazy?”

  “That’s disgusting,” Jill muttered, a hand on her hip.

  “If you want details about Angela’s meltdown, you’ll just have to ask Angela,” Molly said. “I’m sure she’ll tell you. And she’ll probably tell you all about my family, too — if she hasn’t already, Lynette.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lynette shot back. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Just my patience — with you, with all of you,” Molly grumbled. She marched into the dining room, where Chet Blazevich gaped at her.

  “What’s she talking about?” she heard Lynette saying.

  Molly handed him the Tupperware bowl and lid. “Here you go,” she said briskly. “Take as much as you want and keep the container. Thank you for the talk.” She touched his shoulder. “I think you’re very nice,” she whispered, and then she headed for Lynette’s front door.

  She hurried down the block toward the house. Fallen leaves drifted across the road, and Molly kept her arms folded to fight off the chilly breeze. She couldn’t believe the crazy things she’d just said to Lynette and Jill. What the hell was wrong with her? Raging hormones, she told herself, just part of the pregnancy package.

  That handsome cop probably figured she was crazy.

  Heading up the walkway, Molly pulled her keys out of her purse. She was still a bit shaky, and wasn’t looking forward to cleaning up Angela’s mess on the kitchen floor. She was almost at the front stoop when she stopped dead.

  Someone had bashed in the faces of their pumpkins.

  “Oh, shit,” she murmured. “Who would do this?”

  She thought about Angela, but as nasty as she could be at times, Jeff’s ex wouldn’t have done that to her own child’s jack-o-lantern. Erin would be devastated.

  Molly wondered if Lynette’s brats might have been the responsible parties. After all, they got their kicks throwing dirt balls at passing cars from the vacant lot at the edge of the cul-de-sac. Smashing pumpkins seemed like a perfect outlet for the little shits. But Lynette’s brother had taken them to a Seahawks game today — along with Jill’s son.

  Bending down, Molly ran her fingers over the bashed-in face of Erin’s smiling jack-o-lantern. It was beyond repair. With a sigh, she straightened up and started to unlock the door. But then she balked.

  The door was already unlocked.

  Molly could have sworn she’d locked the door after leaving the house two hours before. She hesitated and then stepped into the front hall. The house was quiet. She glanced around to make sure nothing was different, and no one was lurking. She headed into the kitchen. As she moved around the island of kitchen cabinets, she looked down at the floor, where Angela had dropped the tray earlier.

  The floor was clean — no globs of hummus or shards of glass from the broken dipping bowl, no stray broccoli crowns or baby carrots.

  Molly frowned. All she could think was that perhaps Angela had snuck in and cleaned everything up. Maybe Angela still had an old key.

  But Angela wouldn’t have smashed those pumpkins.

  So it must have been someone else.

  She turned toward the sink and saw something that didn’t seem like Angela’s work at all.

  On the clean granite counter, three baby carrots were carefully arranged in the shape of a smile — below two broccoli crowns that might have been eyes.

  The raw vegetables had been scattered over her kitchen floor earlier.

  Now they formed a jack-o-lantern’s grin.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  She glanced over the top of her Vanity Fair magazine as the elevator door opened. Ensconced in the cushioned love seat across from the front desk, she’d been waiting forty-five minutes. The W Hotel’s lobby was all black and gray, with sleek steel and glass. She blended in well in her black power suit and tan trench coat.

  She was there for Jeremy Hahn’s last-minute “business meeting” that Saturday — the day before Halloween. Jeremy’s meeting must have ended a few minutes ago. The person with whom he’d been doing business was just now stepping off the elevator.

  The thin, nubile blonde in the Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform was a prostitute named Tara. She was sixteen, but trying hard to look even younger. Lynette’s husband met Tara once or twice a week in the same room at the W Hotel in downtown Seattle for an extended lunch hour.

  “Why always the same room?” she’d asked Tara a while back.

  “Cuz in that room, he’s got like four or five porn magazines stashed under the mattress — in the middle,
where the maid can’t see ’em when she changes the sheets,” Tara had explained. “He likes to take ’em out, look at ’em, and warm up before I get there. Usually, by the time I come knocking, he’s so horny and coked out, he practically attacks me.”

  It hadn’t made sense why Jeremy planted his porn in the hotel room — rather than just bring it with him. But Tara had enlightened her: “If he was caught with that shit on his person, they’d lock him up and throw away the fucking key. Jeremy likes ’em young — illegal young, if you get what I’m saying. I mean, shit, I’ll be too old for the son of a bitch in a year. Anyway, if anybody finds the porn in that room, Mr. Hahn can always say it’s not his. Ha! He’s a lot less nervous about toting around all the coke he puts away.”

  Tara wasn’t adverse to a bit of cocaine herself. That was how the woman in the tan trench coat got her cooperation. She started out by giving Tara eight hundred dollars and two grams of quality cocaine for some information on Jeremy Hahn — and the promise to keep her informed about when these sessions at the W were scheduled. That had been three weeks — and four “business meetings”—ago. Tara could be pretty reliable if the payoff was another gram or two of coke — something the dealer called an eight ball, whatever that was. She just knew it cost over two hundred dollars a pop.

  The woman in the lobby thought it was rather amusing that she now consorted with killers, drug dealers, and prostitutes. Just a year ago, she’d been happily married with two children, and she made a little money on the side custom-building dollhouses for people in the neighborhood and their kids.

  She stood up as Tara walked through the lobby. She wondered if Jeremy liked Tara to stay dressed in the white blouse, Black Watch plaid skirt, kneesocks, and saddle shoes while they did the deed. But as she seriously thought about it, she really didn’t want to know.

  She followed Tara into the ladies’ room. Another woman was in there, putting on some lipstick in front of the mirror. Tara ducked into one of the stalls.

  The woman in the trench coat waited until the other woman left. Then she dug the little Baggie out of her purse and slid it under the stall door. She watched it get snatched up. “Anything new to report?” she asked.

  “Well, I guess he scheduled me today because he knew his wife would be busy with some block-party meeting or something,” Tara replied. “He wants to see me again on Thursday at one.”

  “That’s it?” the woman asked.

  There was a silence on the other side of the stall door, and then she heard Tara snorting. According to Tara’s earlier descriptions of her sessions with Jeremy Hahn, the two of them did quite a lot of coke up in that room. She couldn’t believe the girl wanted yet another hit of the stuff. She listened to her snorting again — and then, a long sigh.

  “He bought us a bottle of champagne from room service,” Tara finally said. “It cost like two hundred and fifty bucks. I saw the bill, and asked how he could afford it. He said he was charging his company. Isn’t that funny? I wouldn’t be surprised if he puts me on the company expense account, too. Some of these executive pricks think they can get away with just about anything. . ”

  In her head, the woman listed the possible charges against Jeremy Hahn: Statutory rape, supplying drugs and liquor to a minor, solicitation, possession of drugs and illegal pornography, and now corporate theft.

  “Y’know, I was thinking,” Tara said, “I don’t really understand how you’re friends with his wife, and why you’re keeping tabs on him. I mean, I remember you saying they had an open marriage, but still. .” There was a click, and the stall door opened. Tara was face-to-face with the woman. Her head cocked to one side, Tara stared at her inquisitively. For a moment, she looked eleven years old. “Anyway, I just don’t get it. . ”

  The woman in the trench coat smiled. “His wife just wants to make sure he doesn’t get himself into too much trouble,” she explained. “And besides, dear, you don’t have to ‘get it.’ Just call me whenever he schedules you for a session. See you on Thursday.”

  She gently pinched the girl on the cheek, and then headed out of the women’s room.

  The three murdered teenagers from Federal Way — that was all everyone talked, Twittered, and texted about at school that Monday after Halloween. As he walked down the crowded hallway toward his locker, Chris overheard people chattering. Apparently, a lot of kids from James Monroe High knew Rob Sessions, Sarah Manning, and Luke Brosco.

  During first period, they’d announced over the intercom that any students who wanted to attend a group counseling session led by Mr. Munson in the auditorium during sixth period had to sign up by lunchtime in order to be excused from class. Touchy-feely Munson was slated to talk about grief, loss, fear — and how to cope.

  Chris didn’t sign up. He didn’t know any of the kids who were murdered.

  Courtney started texting and Twittering about it late Friday night, when people first found out about the latest cul-de-sac killings:

  I’m pretty sure I met the 3 kids who were murdered. I went to a lot of parties w/that crowd from Federal Way last year. It’s a scary time 4 us people who live on cul-de-sacs!

  Just a few minutes ago, as the school day ended, Courtney was really milking the situation with her latest and extremely lengthy Facebook status update:

  When I think of my friends Rob, Sarah & Luke, I just want to cry. Munson’s meeting was no help at all, a waste of time. Some of us living on cul-de-sacs are really scared. My dad mentioned over the weekend that he’s thinking of moving us to a hotel until this killer is caught. But we’re sticking it out at home. If we moved or changed our lives around, then the CDS Killer would win.

  It was funny about Courtney. She didn’t seem to realize what a major phony she was. Chris remembered all her postings on Facebook and all the texts she’d sent when her “best friend forever” Madison was burying her mother. But once Madison moved in with her dad and her much-loathed stepmother, Courtney saw a lot less of her. And Madison’s dad didn’t live all that far away, either. By the time Madison started senior year at Roosevelt High School in another part of town, Courtney already had a new “best friend forever,” Cindy McBride, whom Chris couldn’t stand.

  Of course, why should he have been surprised? Courtney had gotten over him pretty fast, too.

  Yet he still had a thing for Courtney, maybe because she was so beautiful — and insecure. She’d admitted to him once that by the time she’d turned thirteen her dad seemed to lose all interest in her. “He used to make me feel so special,” she’d said. “I was his little girl. Now that I’m older, I feel like I’m turning into my mother, and he hates her.”

  Chris couldn’t fathom what that was like. As screwed up as his parents were, at least he felt loved.

  He walked around a couple who were making out by his locker and then he stopped dead. The combination lock was gone. Chris glanced at the number again: 216. It was his locker, all right. “What the hell?” he murmured. He squinted at some fresh dents and silver scratches near the handle, where the combination lock had been. Someone had knocked it off.

  Chris carefully opened the locker door, not sure what to expect. Everything appeared just as he’d left it before last period. His school jacket hung from the hook. His backpack was stashed at the bottom of the locker, and on the upper shelf were his books.

  He glanced around the corridor to see if anyone was watching him. Maybe the culprit was still around. The couple making out by his locker had moved on, and the crowd of students had thinned out. But there were still some stragglers by their lockers.

  Chris pulled his backpack out and rifled through it. Nothing seemed to be missing. He wondered if maybe the cops had gotten a bad tip, and they’d broken off his lock to search his locker for drugs or something like that. But wouldn’t they have told him?

  “This sucks,” he muttered. Now he’d have to clear out his locker if he didn’t want anything stolen tonight. He stuffed the books in his backpack. Then, as he put on his jacket, Chris felt somethin
g in the inside breast pocket.

  With two fingers, he fished out a folded-up piece of spiral notebook paper. He unfolded it. In an almost childlike handwriting, someone had written a brief, cryptic message:

  Ask your stepmother about Tina Gargullo and Nick Sorenson.

  Baffled, Chris stared at the note in his hand. He slowly shook his head.

  Then something else caught his eye. It was along the red, ribbed cuff of his school jacket.

  Someone had cut out a perfect, small square of the material.

  Most of the Google results for Nick Sorenson were articles about a Cleveland Browns defense back, Nick Sorensen. It wasn’t even the same spelling. There was another Nick Sorenson from Des Moines, Iowa, on Facebook. He had 231 friends, and neither Molly nor this Tina Gargullo person was listed.

  With a sigh, Chris glanced up from the computer screen. Only a few other students were still in the school library at this hour, most of them using the computers. There was a row of monitors and keyboards on a long table by the big windows. Outside, it had started to get dark already — a typical autumn afternoon.

  He wondered who had written that weird note about Molly. The only person he could think of was Courtney. She never had anything nice to say about his stepmother, but she was always pretty open about it. Why would she break into his locker to pass along this bizarre message? And why cut off part of the cuff to his jacket? Already one small thread had unraveled along the freshly cut edges.

  He tried searching for Tina Gargullo on Google. But a message popped up along the top of the results. Google asked: Did you mean Tina Gargiulo?