by Alden, Laura
Open utility trenches deep enough to bury small children. Or, more pertinent in this case, a full-sized adult.
A disappearing wife.
Interval of a few years.
A surprise construction project.
Certain exposure and imprisonment.
Another murder.
Dot to dot to dot. The clues had been there all along, I just hadn’t seen them clearly. But now I knew who had killed Agnes. And I knew why.
“Thanks a million, Pete.” I jumped up and gathered my purse and papers.
“Hey, no problem. Glad to help.”
He really was a nice guy. I bent down and kissed him on the cheek. “I owe you one.” I walked out and, out of the corner of my eye, saw his hand go up to his face.
My cell phone rang as I hurried outside. “Hello?”
“Beth, it’s Richard. I can’t keep the children tonight.” He spoke loudly over an odd assortment of background noises.
I unlocked the car and slid in. “It’s Wednesday.”
“Yes, I know, and I’m sorry, but my mom is having heart surgery tomorrow. She went in for a checkup, and now she’s in the hospital. They wouldn’t even let her go home.”
“Richard, I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks.” His voice was rough. “I’m sure she’ll be fine, but . . .”
“You have to go. Of course you do. Give her my best.”
“I will. How soon can you get here? My flight leaves in an hour and a half.”
“You’re at the airport?” Suddenly, the noises made sense. He was rolling his suitcase, and disembodied voices were calling flights.
“The kids are right here with me. We’ll be waiting at the front entrance.”
“I’ll be there as—” But he’d already hung up.
“You two stay here.” After stuffing the car keys in my coat pocket, I half turned to address both children at the same time—Jenna in the backseat, Oliver in the front. “I’ll only be a minute,” I said.
“But I haven’t seen Mrs. Neff all day.” Oliver’s lower lip stuck out. “I want to show her my new drawing.” He kicked his backpack.
“Show her tomorrow.” What I had to tell Marina wasn’t for the consumption of small children, and since Marina’s DH always took Zach to karate lessons on Wednesday nights, I knew she’d be alone. I was still angry with her, of course, but I could ignore that for as long as it took to deliver this news. “Be back in a flash.”
A whoosh of cold, wet air flew in. I got out quickly and shut the door behind me. Inside the car, the kids were already arguing about something. I rapped on the window. “Be nice to each other,” I said loudly.
Before I’d moved two steps from the car, the argument started anew. I shook my head and hurried around the side of the house. For once the gate opened easily; I took it as a good omen. Like I always did, I knocked on the back door as I turned the doorknob. “Marina, it’s me.” But the door was locked. I rattled the knob and knocked again. “Hey! Let me in!”
A ruffled curtain covered the lower two-thirds of the door’s window. I got up on my tiptoes. Marina was at the kitchen table, hands on her lap, staring at the calendar on the far wall.
I banged my knuckles on the glass. “Marina, it’s Beth! I need to talk to you!” Marina was first; then I had to call Deputy Wheeler and then Gus. “Hey, c’mon. Open up!”
Marina shook her head and continued her stare-down with November.
Sunday afternoon’s spat came back with a rush. “Oh, please.” Rain was coming down my neck. The kids were in a car that was growing colder by the minute, and Marina was playing a thirteen-year-old princess.
I hurried off the back stoop and went across the wet lawn. A few months ago when Marina and I returned late from a Friday night movie in Madison, we came back to a locked door. Her DH had bolted it before he went up to bed, and since I’d driven, Marina hadn’t brought her keys. “Not a problem,” Marina had said as she reached for a hidden key. “Swear you won’t tell, okay? The DH doesn’t know.” Now I waded through soggy shrubbery, crouched, and reached under the wooden deck for a key hanging on a nail.
Water slicked onto me as I backed out of the yews. More water soaked through my shoes and into my socks as I crossed the lawn again. Princess Marina was going to have to lend me some footgear before I went home.
Back on the stoop, I banged on the door one more time. “Hey! Are you going to let me in or what?”
Marina, still at the table and still looking at the wall, shook her head.
I slid the key into the lock, turned the dead bolt, and went in.“What’s wrong with you?”Wind came inside with me, and I turned around to push the door shut. “Geez, it’s like December out there. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe what I found out. I know who killed—”
I faced Marina and suddenly nothing I had to say mattered.
“Beth.” Her voice was strained.
It made sense that her voice was tight. Mine would sound like that, too, if a long and very sharp knife were being held against my throat.
Chapter 21
There I was, standing in Marina’s kitchen, as I had hundreds of times before. We’d baked cookies, roasted turkeys, and broiled fish in this kitchen. I could almost smell the sugar we’d burned last winter when we’d tried to make caramel. A killer with a knife couldn’t possibly have been in this room. Could he?
“Women!” Don Hatcher said. “Why can’t you leave well enough alone?”
Much too late, I remembered seeing a white van parked in the driveway next door—Don’s, with the magnetic signs for Lakeside Dry Cleaners peeled off.
“Because men keep messing things up,” Marina said.
Panic shot through me. I was still standing by the door, at least fifteen feet away from the tip of the ten-inch chef’s knife. No way was I going to be able to move fast enough to save Marina from that sharp edge. I shut my eyes.
“Only reason men mess things up is women are always nagging at them. Do this, do that.” Don pitched his voice high. “Why did you put the margarine on the left side of the fridge? Why don’t you ever take me anywhere? Why haven’t you painted the living room yet? Nag, nag, nag.” He returned his voice to normal. “You’re all the same.”
Slowly, I opened my eyes.
“I’m the same as Catherine Zeta-Jones?” Marina put her hand to her chest and fluttered her eyelashes. “How very nice of you to think so.”
Don’t make him mad, I begged silently. My dear sweet silly best friend, don’t, don’t, don’t make him mad.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Don snarled. “You’re about as like Catherine Zeta-Jones as I am.”
Marina cast off a heavy sigh and slid a glance in my direction. “Dashing my hopes and dreams, Don. Just dashing them to bits.”
I licked my lips. The fear I’d felt in the basement was nothing next to the fear that was now shredding my heart. Somehow I had to distract Don long enough for Marina to get away from that knife, long enough for us both to get away.
“You didn’t mean to kill Agnes, did you?” I asked.
“Another woman who couldn’t leave well enough alone. Like this one here.” He made a slight move. Marina gasped, and a slow trickle of red started running down her neck. “And you, too, Miss Bookstore. Why were you in Agnes’s house the other night? All I wanted was to figure out a way to stop that school addition. Why did you have to get in the way?”
My breaths sounded loud in my ears. “Like your wife?”
“Tanya.” The knife sagged away from Marina’s pale skin. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. She kept on and on about moving to Florida. If it hadn’t been during the Packers game, I might have listened.” He sounded as if he believed it. “But, no, she had to stand in front of the TV right in the middle of a beautiful pass. Okay, it was a preseason game, but still, I had to shove her out of the way; I had to. Wasn’t my fault she fell and hit her head on the corner of the coffee table. All those years I thought she had a hard head, and turns out it was soft.”<
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“And the digging for that new water main was right there,” I said.
“Yeah. Like an omen or something. They’d just laid the pipe next to the school, and the dirt was nice and easy to dig. After, I told people she took off for Florida. Everyone believed me. No one would have known except that Agnes Mephisto had to get a bug in her head to build an addition. Couldn’t leave well enough alone, see? I went there that night to talk some sense into her. I mean no one wanted that addition, no one. But she wouldn’t listen.” He swore. “I got a little mad and tapped her on the head. Had no idea there were so many people with soft skulls.”
“Then here I come with WisconSINs!” Marina sang out.
I made urgent shushing gestures, but she paid no attention. Why was she doing this? If she kept this up, we’d both die. I’d never see Jenna or Oliver again. Or Marina. Or my mother and my sisters. Or Evan.
“Yeah, that stupid blog,” he said. “Most of your suspects were dumb. Randy Jarvis? How stupid.”
“It could have been Randy.” Marina narrowed her eyes. “His car was in her driveway lots of nights.”
“Because he was driving her to hockey games in Minnesota. What’d you think—they were a couple?” He laughed. “Women are so dumb. So dumb that you’re making me do this. Sooner or later you were going to get too close to the truth.”
“I was?” Marina turned a blank look into a smile. “Of course I was. But how did you know the WisconSINista was me? I’m dying to know.”
I winced at her word choice.
“Everybody knows.” He leered down at her. “‘Daahling. ’ You’re the only one in Rynwood who says that. ‘Daaahling,’” he mimicked. “It was all over WisconSINs. You’re the worst anonymous blogger in the history of blogdom.”
Marina sat straight. “I am not!”
“Shut up.” Don grabbed her hair and yanked her to her feet. “You’re both coming with me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Marina crossed her arms. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“No?” Don pulled her head back and inserted the tip of the knife into her ear. “I bet you do exactly what I tell you,” he said in a low, quiet tone. It was the scariest thing I’d ever heard. “Beth, I need string.”
“Beth, don’t you dare.” Marina’s tone brooked no argument, but I wasn’t going to argue. I just ignored her.
“She keeps string here in the kitchen,” I said. “Right of the dishwasher, third drawer down.”
“Get it.”
“Beth,” Marina said, reason at the forefront. “It’s best to keep a kidnapper from taking victims away from the original scene. If we let him move us to a location of his choosing, there’s—”
“Shut up!” Don Hatcher and I said simultaneously.
I held my hands out in front of me—palms up, no threat to anyone—as I went to the cabinet. Don, with the knife blade back at Marina’s throat, came behind me.
She was right about the moving thing, but there was one very good reason to get as far away as possible from this house—two reasons, actually, two small, child-sized reasons.
I opened the drawer and took out the ball of string.
“Hands behind your back,” Don ordered Marina.
“I would rather not,” she said, and for the first time, she sounded scared. Up until now, she obviously hadn’t taken the situation seriously. Don Hatcher, balding, bow-legged, and teller of knock-knock jokes, was no one’s idea of a vicious killer. But putting your hands behind your back was a kind of surrender, and Marina wasn’t ready to give up. “Surely we can work something out.”
Her Southern belle accent was weak, but still charming. Tears stung my eyes. Marina was doing all she could. Why couldn’t I come up with—
“Tie her hands,” Don barked. “Good and tight. Maybe the pain will get her to stop talking.”
“Sorry, Marina,” I said. “This is all my fault.”
“Your fault?” She hung her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m the one who talked you into running for secretary of the PTA. I’m the one who started the blog. You told me to stop posting, but did I? No. I had to keep going and going and—”
“Shut up!” Don roared. The knife blade moved, and Marina squeaked in pain. “Tie her. Now!”
Marina’s hands, shaking with the palsy of fear, went behind her back. I gripped her fingers briefly, trying in one brief instant to transmit courage and grit and a shared determination to get out of this alive.
“Faster,” Don snapped.
My own hands were shaking as I started to wind string around Marina’s wrists. There had to be a way out of this. There had to be. We’d find one, and we’d come up with a plan.
Those hopeful thoughts were interrupted when the back door banged open.
And everything changed.
“Mom! What’s taking so long?” Jenna ran into the kitchen.
“Yeah, we’re freezing!” Oliver dodged his sister and came to an abrupt halt. He looked up at Don Hatcher. “Oh. Uh, hi.”
If I’d thought I’d been scared before, I’d been greatly mistaken. Great gulps of panic overtook every part of my body. My hands shook, my teeth chattered, my heart pounded, and the single breath I sucked in seared my lungs with horror.
“No!” To whom I was shrieking, I had no idea. To my children, as a shorthand way of telling them to run? To Don, as a begging plea? To the heavens above, as a prayer? “Don’t!” But whoever it was I’d called upon, he didn’t respond.
Don’s expression of surprise turned crafty and sly. “Perfect,” he said. The knife left Marina’s neck and she stumbled back, sending us both bumping against the kitchen range.
“Two for the price of one.” Don wrapped one arm around Jenna’s slender neck and the other arm around Oliver’s. “Just do what I say, kids, and no one will get hurt.”
It was a lie. The man had already killed twice. What were a few more bodies? All he had to do was stuff us in that white van, then find some rope and a few concrete blocks. There was plenty of deep water in Wisconsin for him to dump us. Pain flared raw in my chest, followed quickly by spasms of guilt. All this was my fault my fault my fault. . . .
“Now we’re going to be real quiet, right?” Don tightened his grip around the necks of my children. “Any noise and this is going to get cut off.” The knife’s point waved in front of Oliver’s pale nose.
Jenna’s eyes stretched wide. She opened her mouth.
And screamed.
The rage that had been building inside me—anger at Agnes’s murder, anger at the way money had ruined her life, anger at my entrapment in the basement, anger at the drips of blood on Marina’s neck—erupted as my daughter screamed. The sound electrified my body and catapulted me into action.
Jenna’s scream had made Don wince. The knife dropped away from Oliver. I hurled myself forward and grabbed Don’s wrist, digging with my nails into his skin and twisting with all the strength a mother could summon. “Drop it!” I yelled. “Drop it now!”
The knife clattered to the floor.
“Hiii-yah!”
There was a dull clunk, and Don sagged against me. I sidestepped his weight, and he sank to his knees. Another clunk, and he fell all the way to the floor. Marina stood over him, brandishing the cast-iron pan that lived on the range top.
Instantly, I dropped down, jamming my knees into the small of his back. I grabbed Don’s wrists, pulling them up behind him. “Marina,” I commanded, “sit on his legs. Oliver, get me the ball of string. It’s there on the floor. Jenna, open the tool drawer and get the duct tape. The wide silver tape. And a pair of scissors.”
In moments, Don Hatcher was bound and gagged. Oliver brought Marina her cell phone, and she dialed 911. While we waited on our lumpy and struggling sofa for the dispatcher to send cars and trucks and lights and sirens, Marina looked me up and down. “Wow, Beth. I didn’t know you had that in you.”
Smiling shakily, I held Jenna and Oliver close.
“I knew you’d save us,” Jenna sa
id into my shoulder.
“Yeah,” Oliver said. “You promised.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, every night, when you kiss me good night. You say, ‘Sweet dreams, and may tomorrow be your Beth day forever.’ Your name is Beth. It’s like a promise, right?”
“That’s not what she says.” Jenna said. “It’s ‘May tomorrow be your best day ever.’ ”
“Oh.” Oliver drooped, then brightened. “Well, it’s like the same thing, isn’t it?”
Marina was beaming at me, and my arms were full of living, squiggling children. All was right with the world. “Yes,” I said, “it most certainly is.”
One Year Later
“Can everyone hear me?” Mack Vogel’s voice boomed out across the crowd. Our esteemed school superintendent tapped the microphone, and everyone flinched at the loud popping noise.
“We’re here today,” Mack said, “to open what Agnes Mephisto began so many months ago.”
I tried to listen but couldn’t quite manage to do so. The absurdly warm weather was too nice to spend listening to run-on sentences. Besides, somewhere in this mass of people was the man I’d recently started to call my boyfriend. Evan was joining Jenna and Oliver and me for a Saturday afternoon of cautious togetherness, and I was trying not to be nervous.
Joanna Vogel, a burbling infant in her arms, stood near me, alternately smiling at the baby and smiling at her husband. Debra O’Conner was almost unrecognizable as a natural brunette. She looked relaxed and content. The two of us had gravitated toward a monthly lunch date, and it was strange not to feel incompetent around her. Maybe someday I’d tell her so.
Julie Reed, the PTA’s vice president, held on to a small twin-sized stroller as her husband held the hands of two seven-year-olds. Two parents, four children—Mom and Dad would have to work on a zone defense instead of man-to-man. They looked tired already, and it wasn’t even noon.