The image on the TV screen switched to show two uniformed officers leading Lynette’s handcuffed husband into a police car, parked in front of the luxury hotel. Jeremy looked angry. His casual Brooks Brothers clothes were disheveled and his thinning brown hair was uncombed so the bald spots weren’t covered. Behind him, a young woman in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform was being led out of the hotel as well. But her face had been blurred digitally, which of course, made the scene appear even more lurid.
“We’ve protected the identity of the minor,” the reporter said. “But police sources say she is sixteen, and accepted money from Hahn in exchange for sexual favors.”
The picture switched back to the blond reporter in front of the hotel. “I’m told the police found a substantial amount of cocaine in the hotel room — along with some child pornography. This will only add to the number of serious charges Jeremy Hahn is already facing. . ”
On another local newscast, they indicated that Sea-Merit Financial would be investigating if Hahn had used company funds for his sexual trysts with underage girls.
Even though she hated her guts, all Molly could think was, Poor Lynette.
The house was still a disaster area from the party. As she moved into the living room, Molly turned a blind eye to the dirty plates, cups, and glasses on every table. Instead, she gazed out the window at the TV news vans and the people in front of Lynette’s house.
She remembered Lynette coming to her rescue, dropping by with McDonald’s and her take-charge attitude the day after Angela’s murder. Molly still had some food left over from the party. Taking over some dinner to the Hahns would have been the neighborly thing to do. But like Rachel, she was giving Lynette a wide berth today. After all, Lynette clearly blamed her for Jeremy’s arrest — all because some woman had phoned in that tip to the police.
Molly remembered once again something Angela had told her over lunch on the last day of her life: “Someone else is behind this, some woman. . Do you think it’s possible somebody is trying to pit us against each other?”
Staring out at the Hahns’ house, Molly spotted a jogger in a sweat suit running up the street. It was Natalie, from down the block, out for her run — at night this time. She seemed to ignore the news vans and the onlookers outside Lynette’s.
Molly recalled her doing the exact same thing last week, when the TV trucks and gawkers were there because of Angela’s murder. Natalie had jogged by, barely glancing at them.
It was almost as if on both occasions Natalie knew ahead of time they’d be there.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Molly wasn’t thinking when she answered her cell phone.
Since Angela’s murder, she’d been screening nearly all incoming calls on the house line. But this call had come in at eight-thirty that night, and she was dead tired. With some help from Jeff, Chris, and Elvis, she’d cleaned up most of the mess from the party.
She was trying to pay bills online in Jeff’s study but kept nodding off in front of the monitor. She had her cell phone on his desk, so when it rang, it startled her. She grabbed it and switched it on: “Yes, hello?”
“Mrs. Dennehy?” It was a woman on the other end of the line. Her voice sounded raspy, almost demented in the singsong way she talked.
Molly quickly took the cell phone away from her ear and glanced at the caller ID box. The number was blocked.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“Mrs. Dennehy, ask your husband where he was when his ex-wife was murdered.”
Then there was a click.
Molly stared at the phone in her hand. She knew it was the same woman who had called last week. “Ask him where he really was,” had been the message. This time, the woman was less cryptic.
Chances were pretty good the same woman had phoned Angela and threatened her. Maybe she’d also tipped off the police regarding Jeremy Hahn’s clandestine activities, too.
The scary thing about it was this woman had known something about Lynette’s husband that even Lynette didn’t know. What did she have on Jeff?
Molly got to her feet and wandered into the family room. Jeff was asleep in his easy chair in front of a reality show on TV. It had been a long, grueling day for everyone, and she didn’t want to wake him and grill him about where he’d been on the night of Angela’s murder.
Molly remembered the mixup about which Washington, D.C., Hilton Jeff had stayed at that week. He said he hadn’t been at the Capital Hilton that trip, but at another Hilton hotel.
Retreating back to Jeff’s study, she went on the Internet to refresh her memory about the three other Hilton hotels in Washington, D.C. She called the Washington Hilton in Dupont Circle and got the operator.
“Hi, I’m not sure if I have the right Washington Hilton,” Molly said. “But my husband was staying at a Hilton last week. He checked out Wednesday morning. He thinks he left his iPod in his room. I’m trying to track it down. Could you check if I have the right Hilton? His name is Dennehy, Jeffrey.” She spelled it, and waited.
She knew the business, and hotel clerks sometimes got calls like this from wives, trying to get the goods on cheating husbands. If the clerks were smart and discreet enough, they often came back with, “We’re sorry, we can’t give out that kind of information.” But most of the time, the hotel clerk really didn’t give a damn if they were getting some cheating spouse in trouble.
“Mrs. Dennehy?” the clerk said after a minute. “I’m sorry, but we have no record of Jeffrey Dennehy staying here last week. You might try the Capital Hilton on Sixteenth.”
“I will,” Molly said. “Thank you.” Then she clicked off.
The Capital Hilton wasn’t where Jeff had been staying. She knew that much. So Molly called the Hilton Washington Embassy Row on Massachusetts Avenue, and the Hilton Garden Inn on Fourteenth Street Northwest. She gave them the same story and got the same answer.
Jeff wasn’t staying at any of the Hilton Hotels in Washington, D.C., on the night of Angela’s death.
Molly kept thinking about that woman with the raspy voice.
Ask him where he really was.
She waited until morning to ask him.
Jeff had finished with his shower, and he was shaving in front of the mirror with a towel around his waist. Her arms folded, Molly stood in the bathroom doorway in her nightgown. She studied his reflection in the steamy mirror. He kept wiping it with his hand every few moments. He still had shaving cream on one side of his jaw and on his neck.
“I was at the Hilton on Dupont Circle,” he said, eying her in the mirror for a moment. He worked the safety razor under his chin. “They just don’t give out information like that. Jesus, Molly, I can’t believe you called all the Hiltons in D.C. Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Because I think you’re covering something up — something really horrible,” she admitted.
His reflection gazed back at her with a raised eyebrow. “Like what? Don’t tell me you think I killed Angela. . ”
“No, but the police might think that,” she replied steadily, “especially if they realize you’re lying about where you were that night. Jeff, what’s to keep this woman from calling the police and saying to them what she said to me?”
He nicked himself. Blood oozed from the cut along his left jaw. “Oh, crap, now look what you’ve made me do,” he grumbled. He plucked a Kleenex from the dispenser on the counter and dabbed it on the cut. “Here we go with that whack-job woman caller again. I told you that we’d get some crank calls—”
“Jeff, Angela was getting calls the week before she was killed — from a woman, telling her that she was going to pay for what she did.”
“Well, what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jeff countered, dabbing the cut again. “What exactly did Angela do? Are you telling me this crazy woman caller is somehow working with the Cul-de-sac Killer?”
Molly hesitated. She didn’t know how to answer him.
“You told me yourself that Angela lied to you during that lunch. Didn�
�t she give you some song and dance about not telling anyone about your brother?”
“Well, maybe not everything she said was a lie,” Molly murmured.
He washed off his face, grabbed another Kleenex, tore off a piece, and applied it to his cut. “Listen, Molly.” He sighed, pat-drying his face. “Do me a favor and screen all your calls from now on. You’re letting this nutcase get to you, and I’m sorry, honey, but I don’t need this shit, not now.”
Molly stepped aside as he brushed past her in the bathroom doorway. He whipped off his towel and tossed it on the bed. After pulling a clean pair of boxer shorts from his dresser, he slammed the drawer shut. He stepped into the shorts and let the elastic banding go snap against his torso as he finished putting them on. “Yesterday, I buried the mother of my children, and now I have to schlep my ass to work. Can we cease and desist with all the questions? I wouldn’t have told the police I was at the Hilton in D.C. if I wasn’t really there. They seemed to believe me. Why the hell can’t you?”
Molly opened her mouth to speak but hesitated. She retrieved her robe from the foot of their bed and put it on. “I’ll go start the coffee and make sure the kids are up.” She sighed. Then she headed out of the bedroom.
It was strange to see Courtney behind the wheel of her Neon without an iPhone in her hand.
Chris had been surprised to hear her car horn honking this morning. He’d figured after her father’s arrest yesterday afternoon, she wouldn’t be showing her face at school today. But there she was, waiting in the driveway for him.
“I know everybody will be gossiping about me,” she muttered, pulling out of the cul-de-sac. “I was going to stay home for a day or two, but then I figured I might as well go to school and get it over with. Plus my mother’s driving me crazy. I’m ready to kill her.”
Courtney may have texted and Twittered up a storm at his mom’s funeral, but her family’s public humiliation had shut down all communications since yesterday afternoon. Courtney’s last Facebook update had been two nights ago. She was very subdued today. She wore a black pullover sweater and jeans, and her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. It looked like she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. Chris kind of liked her better without it.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” he said, slouching in the passenger seat. “Must have been a real shock for you. That’s a raw deal.”
“I wasn’t too shocked,” she said, eying the road ahead. “I mean, he never did anything weird with me, nothing I remember, at least. Still, I’ve always suspected my father had a — a thing for young girls. But it was just too creepy for me to even think about. I didn’t tell anybody — except Mr. Corson.” She glanced at him briefly. “Can I confess something to you? I was kind of jealous of what you and Mr. Corson had. I could have used a — a regular father figure. I was kind of hoping Mr. Corson would pay more attention to me if I dug deep and told him something really, really personal like that. Then again, I guess we all spilled our guts to him, didn’t we?”
“I wouldn’t mind having Mr. Corson to lean on right now,” Chris said — almost under his breath.
If Courtney heard him, she didn’t say anything.
They approached a stoplight. Courtney came to a stop, and she let out a long sigh. “Well, I guess between your mom getting murdered and my dad getting arrested, you and I are going to be the focus of attention at school today.”
Chris smiled sadly. “You usually like being the center of attention,” he remarked.
“Not this time, Chris,” she replied. “Not this time.”
“You can’t rush genius,” he said. “This is a very delicate operation.”
The arrogant punk was in his late twenties and went by the name Wolf. He had short, buzz-cut black hair — except for his long bangs, which fell over one side of his face. She’d given up counting how many piercings he had besides the big hole in his stretched-out right earlobe. There were rings in his lip, his eyebrow, his nostril — and probably a lot more below the neck. He wore a ratty gray jacket that had YOU SUCK stenciled on the back.
Even if they weren’t conspiring to commit murder right now, she wouldn’t have wanted to be seen with him. Driving together to James Monroe High School, she’d barely tolerated his wretched body odor and his blasting heavy-metal music on her car radio. She kept reminding herself that Wolf had come highly recommended.
She made him turn off the radio once she’d parked the car near the high school’s playfield. A bunch of boys in their school sweats were playing soccer. She could hear them grunting, yelling, and laughing. Every few minutes, the coach blew his whistle. Stepping out of the car, she instructed Wolf to stay put and leave the radio off. They didn’t want to call attention to themselves.
By now, she’d become very skilled at maintaining a low profile. She was pretty certain no one had noticed her in the girls’ locker room earlier. But she’d noticed Courtney Hahn — and the location of Courtney’s locker.
Almost two weeks before, she’d managed to cut the padlock off Chris Dennehy’s locker in about forty seconds. With the same pair of fourteen-inch bolt cutters, she’d had Courtney’s locker door open in twenty-five seconds.
But it seemed to take Wolf forever to fulfill his part of the plan. He sat in the passenger seat of her car with a tray in his lap, working on the iPhone, which she’d removed from Courtney’s purse. With the precision pliers and a tiny-head screwdriver from his tool kit, he manipulated some wires and charges, which he set inside Courtney’s cell phone. He seemed to know what he was doing. Every once in a while, he’d brush the bangs away from his face and pull out one of those jeweler monocles and check on the progress of his work.
Sitting behind the wheel of the parked car, she studied the little patch of black fabric she’d cut from the bottom of Courtney’s pullover. She figured Courtney wouldn’t notice. And if she did, there wouldn’t be much time or opportunity to tell anyone about it before she was dead — or at least, severely maimed.
She carefully folded up the cutting and slipped it inside a plastic bag. She’d already bought a little blond doll that resembled Courtney.
With a sigh, she glanced at her wristwatch. “I know I ‘can’t rush genius,’ ” she said. “But I need to return that phone to her locker in five minutes. If that doesn’t happen, you don’t get paid, genius.”
He had it finished in two minutes. “Done,” he said, handing her the cell phone.
She studied the phone, felt its weight in her hand. She’d seen how tiny the charges were, and couldn’t help wondering out loud. “Will there really be that much damage?”
Wolf started putting his instruments away in his little kit. He nodded distractedly. “When she presses the Talk button, I wouldn’t be surprised if she blows her hand off, maybe even part of her arm. And if she’s holding the phone anywhere near her head — well, let’s just say, it’s not going to be pretty. We’re talking closed casket here.”
Leaving him behind in the car, she stashed Courtney’s cell in her coat pocket and started back into the sports wing of James Monroe High School. She paused at the double doors to the smaller gym, where Courtney was playing volleyball. She peeked through the windows — with crisscrossed chicken wire — in the doors.
Her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, Courtney was looking pretty, bored, and a bit forlorn as she sat on the sidelines in her pale blue gym uniform. About a dozen other girls shared the bench with her while the two teams scrimmaged on the court. One of the girls near the net kept yelling: “Set it up! Set it up!”
The woman moved on, heading toward the girls’ locker room. She thought about how much damage Courtney had done to her former guidance counselor with all the talking, texting and Twittering she’d done on her iPhone.
She couldn’t help thinking, Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Courtney had only played the last five minutes of gym period, but for that brief interlude, she’d forgotten all about her father’s arrest. She’d forgotten about the kids at sch
ool today, looking at her and whispering to each other.
She’d spiked two balls over the net, and her team had won.
She was still on a high about it as she headed into the locker room with the other girls. Their laughter and chatter echoed off the tiled walls. Rounding the corner to her locker row, she started to unbutton her gym uniform.
Then Courtney saw her locker and stopped dead.
Considering the day she’d had so far, she should have been expecting something like this. She should have figured some asshole might want to rip her off or just screw around with her head — now that she was feeling so vulnerable.
“Damn it,” Courtney hissed, taking the broken padlock off the locker handle.
She quickly opened her locker, wondering what had been stolen. But all her clothes were there, along with her shoes and her purse. She reached inside the purse and found her iPhone — and her wallet. The money was still in the wallet.
She wondered if some narc in school administration had decided to search her locker for drugs — now that her dad was a known cocaine user. Maybe that was what had happened.
Courtney quickly shoved her wallet back in her purse. But she held on to her cell phone. She wanted to call her friend, Cindy, and tell her what happened. Maybe Cindy already knew something about this. After all, no one could keep a secret around this crummy school.
The phone suddenly vibrated in her hand, giving her a start.
The caller ID lit up: Incoming Call: Blocked Number. Courtney decided to answer it anyway. Maybe it was the asshole who had broken into her locker.
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