No Safe Secret

by Fern Michaels

  He set the brown bag on the long bench in front of the lockers. He took his cell phone from his pocket and took pictures from every angle before returning it to his pocket.

  “That’s a super old bag,” Becky said, and they both laughed. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, tell me.”

  Without touching the bag, she pointed to a faded logo that read LOU’S DINER. “They’re still in business, but I know for a fact these bags aren’t what they use now. They’re located in Cambridge, near Harvard. Believe it or not, I actually attended college there. Studied medicine, but dropped out in my second year. Too gory for me. My father is a doctor. It was expected,” she offered as a way of explanation. “Their take-out bags are plastic now. I’ve been there a few times since. They have the best corned-beef hash in the state.”

  Bryan took his phone out again and used the flashlight app in order to read the logo more clearly. “I think you’re right, Becky. It does say LOU’S DINER, but it’s faded. I’m going to have to take this with me. Evidence. Do you have a garbage bag? I need to keep this as secure as I can.”

  “Sure, you want a giant one or kitchen-sized?”

  “A kitchen-sized bag should work if you don’t mind getting me one.”

  Again, she made fast work of getting him the bag. He carefully placed the Lou’s Diner bag inside. Something was in the paper bag, and it was a bit heavy, not deadweight heavy, but something more spread out. Fabric, maybe. As soon as he secured the bag, he took a few more pictures, then took several of the locker, both inside and out.

  “Becky, I appreciate your cooperation. And because of this I have a buddy I’m going to send your way.” He grinned. “He’s a cop, and he’s got more muscles than Popeye. We call him by his last name, Craig. You’ll know him when you see him. And I will make sure he stops by. He may have a few questions for you.” He nodded, then made his way to the front of the gym.

  Becky trailed behind. “Tell him the first thirty days are free. You don’t like, you don’t buy.” She was smiling.

  “I’ll tell him. Thanks again,” he said. He put the bag in the trunk of his unmarked car and looked around. Where would a woman pulling a suitcase behind her go? At least from the gym. He walked down the street, heading south. He thought this was the most obvious direction, since north led into the business district.

  What had she been wearing? “You’re kidding,” he said to himself and hoofed it back to the gym. Becky was talking to a woman at the smoothie bar. She smiled when she saw him.

  “I forgot to ask the most obvious question. What was she wearing when she left? Do you happen to remember?”

  “She always dressed classy. Nice jeans, a pretty blouse. Her hair was always in a French braid or a neat ponytail. She wasn’t one of those gym pigs. That’s what we call folks who come in their gym clothes and leave in their gym clothes. Ms. M. always showered before she left, and this last time, she showered and dried her hair, which she always does. She really stood out when she left, and I could tell she was trying to make sure no one saw her. She wore her hair up under a Boston Red Sox cap, and she had a pair of faded Levi’s on. Men’s, because I saw the red tag, and a black T-shirt. I didn’t see what kind of shoes she wore, but I assume she had on sneakers.”

  “If you ever want a job, the police department could use someone like you. You have a good memory and an eye for detail. You’re great, Becky, but now I have to get my ass off to work.”

  She waved, and for the second time, he headed south. He walked four blocks when he spied the bus stop. He needed an afternoon bus schedule, which he had back at the station. Running now, he was out of breath by the time he returned to his car. Inside, he took a few minutes to make notes, then he headed toward the station.

  Holden had been absolutely right about his stepmother. He wondered if everything else he said was true as well. Though he’d been stoned, he knew what he was saying; Bryan would bet on it.

  On his way back to the station, he called Vikki. He replayed his visit with Holden.

  “I don’t know if the DA will fall for it, no pun intended, but I can put a bug in his ear.”

  “It can’t hurt. Thanks, Vik, I’ll keep you posted.” Back at the station, he took the bag from the gym and did all the paperwork required to record it as evidence.

  As soon as he was at his desk, he called Boston PD. His ex-wife’s brother was a detective, and they were still friends. He called his cell number, yawning as he waited for him to pick up. Bryan hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. The day was catching up with him. And the night.

  “Bry, my friend, what the hell is up?” Thomas finally answered as he was about to hang up.

  “I need a favor,” Bryan said.

  Thomas laughed, the sound deep and throaty. “You’s always needs a favor. What now?” He spoke with a heavy Boston accent. Bryan thought some of it was for show, but now wasn’t the time to rag him about it. “There’s a diner by the college. Lou’s. You heard of it?”

  “Hey, everybody’s heard of Lou’s. It’s a freaking institution around Harvard. Why? You hungry?” Thomas laughed, and Bryan did, too.

  “Ever the comic, I see. Nothing’s changed. Actually, it’s about a case I’m working on.” For the next ten minutes, he filled him in on as many details as possible.

  “I’ll send someone over now. As soon as I have any news, I’ll call ya, and Bry, don’t be a stranger.”

  “Same for you,” he said, then clicked off.

  Next on his list was the bus schedule. He pulled a copy from his drawer and found three possibilities that worked within the time frame Molly left the gym. He called the supervisor—he couldn’t remember his name, but they had spoken a few times in the past. He explained what he needed.

  “That’ll be either Ron, Keith, or Stu. I’ll call ’em now and get back to you.”

  “Thanks,” Bryan said, amazed how cooperative people were. But there was a missing woman, a mother, and if that didn’t touch your heart, then as far as he was concerned, you didn’t have one.

  Bryan stood up, stretched, and yawned. He needed java. In the break room, several of the guys coming on duty poured paper cups of coffee. The room reeked of cheap cologne and masculinity. Any other day, he’d hang out and shoot the breeze, but not today. He waved and hurried back to his desk. Something nagged at him, as usual, something the doctor said the night he’d called to report Molly missing.

  He took great pride in his memory, but it failed him now. He raked his hand through his hair. He needed a shower and a shave, but it would have to wait. He sipped the coffee, the bitter brew returning as acid. He took a roll of Tums from his desk, popped two, and chewed them. They were almost as bad as the acid, he thought as he took another sip. The night he’d gone to the McMansion the doctor had rambled, was all over the place. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he would. He always did.

  He turned around just in time to see Craig and Rodriguez heading his way.

  “I can’t believe you drink that toxic stuff,” Craig said. “It’s deadly.”

  Rodriguez sat on top of his desk. “I spoke to the housekeeper a while ago. Sally. Nice old gal. Said she’s worked for the McCanns since the daughter was small; she couldn’t recall how long, only that it’s been a very long time. Her words.

  “Says the doc is an asshole. Again, her words. The sons are pricks, still her words. According to her, and I have no reason to doubt her, the doc beats the crap out of his wife. Said Molly tried to act like it wasn’t so, but she knew. Said the twins were abusive, too. Verbally. She told us about the dinner party, but she left before the action started. When I told her the wife was missing, she smiled. Said if she was missing, it was because she wanted to be. Said she was too smart for the doc, and he hated that. Made fun of her because she didn’t have a college degree. Sally said he always referred to her as ‘that waitress from the dump.’ ”

  “That’s it,” Bryan said slowly. “I’ve been trying to remember what it was he said that kept
nagging me. He said Molly was working as a waitress when he met her.”

  The pieces of the puzzle were slowly coming together. He would bet his last nickel, as always, that Molly had carried that brown paper bag from Lou’s around with her for a very long time.

  “The doc’s story on the kid’s car checks out. Barry’s Automotive. Said it’s been ready for days, and no one’s picked it up. The mom and daughter dropped off the car for a tune-up,” Craig said, his hands crossed over his broad chest.

  “At least he’s telling the truth about something,” Bryan said dryly. “Before I forget, Craig, I met a girl today, actually she’s a lady, a very nice lady. She owns All Night Fitness. Her name is Becky. I told her you were looking to join a gym. Said you needed to meet someone. Go there, ask for Becky, and tell her Bryan sent you. Don’t ask. Just do it.”

  His cell phone went off. “Detective Whitmore.”

  “Hey, one of my guys remembers that woman. Ron. Said she sat in the first seat behind him. Thought she was a man at first, but when he saw her face, he knew better. Said she was pretty but paranoid, if you know what I mean? Dropped her off at some storage facility where they store classic cars. Said she went inside, and that’s the last he saw of her. That help?”

  “You can’t imagine how much it helps. I owe you one. You get pulled over, tell them to call Bryan Whitmore.” He hung up. Both Craig and Rodriguez shook their heads.

  “Don’t say a word,” he warned, grinning.

  He relayed the bus supervisor’s information to one of the patrol cars in the area. “Check the place out, and I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  “You two keep an eye on the doctor, watch his place. If you see anything funky, I don’t have to tell you what to do.”

  As soon as Bryan left the station, his cell phone rang again. “Whitmore,” he said. He was tired, and it was starting to show. He was always courteous when he answered his phone.

  “This is Officer Edwards. I have a woman here at the storage house who says she’s got video footage of your victim leaving the lot.”

  Hot damn!

  “I’m on my way.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Molly was hot and sweaty and wanted nothing more than to take a hot shower. She needed to cleanse the filth from her body, and not just the physical kind. She needed to cleanse the images she’d just witnessed from her soul.

  She asked God for forgiveness as she drove out of Blossom City. Words that prior to now had crossed her mind, but only just now spewed out of her mouth like a geyser. But, in a sad way, she felt as though she’d been purified.

  Confronting Marcus had been the worst. His life choices had left him in a wheelchair, and his lack of parental guidance and education had turned him into nothing more than a dirty bag of rot. He used to be so handsome, and now he was barely recognizable. She felt no pity for him when she recalled what he’d done to her. He certainly hadn’t felt any pity for her.

  She hated him, truly. This was something she would have to live with, but she could. She had for decades.

  But what freed her the most was knowing she hadn’t killed any of those bastards. She had spent her entire adult life thinking she was guilty of a horrid crime, murder, or, at the very least, maiming those worthless bastards. And when she saw Marcus in the wheelchair, she’d at first felt guilty, believing she’d crippled him when she ran into them, but she hadn’t. He had done it to himself. And the others. In a sick way, justice had been served. When she found out that all but one of her attackers had been killed in that car accident, she thought that Lady Justice had exacted her revenge.

  And then there was Dr. Kevin Marsden. He was still alive. And living quite luxuriously, she was sure. But with only Marcus as a witness to what had happened that night twenty-one years ago—and she knew he would never come forth unless he were forced to, and even then he would probably lie—she had her hopes pinned on the dress she had worn that night. The dress she had sworn to burn a dozen times. But something always seemed to stop her. And now she knew why that was. Again, in mysterious ways, Lady Justice was at work.

  She smiled and gave Ace a fluff between the ears. She couldn’t wait for Kristen to meet him. She loved animals, and Tanner was such an ass that he would not agree to the kids having a pet growing up.

  Tanner. Holden and Graham. She would have to deal with all of them when she returned, and she would.

  First, she was going to contact her friend and old roommate, Sarah Berkovitz, to see if she could recommend a good divorce lawyer. Then maybe when life settled down, they could renew their friendship. Molly decided she would like that. Other than Sally, she had no real female friends.

  The women she saw occasionally at the gym were just people she saw once a month. In ten years, she’d never really allowed any of its members to befriend her, and a few of them had tried. Tanner didn’t like her having friends, didn’t like it when she left the house. She would’ve loved to work for Gloria, even if it was just part-time. The homey smells, the environment, not to mention the food—all were so appealing to her. Trips to Gloria’s were always the highlight of her week. Besides her daughter. She’d sent her a text message when she’d calmed down. She couldn’t talk to her yet, but she’d been thrilled when Kristen answered her right away, telling her how much fun she and Charlotte were having and how much she missed her. She missed her, too, but Kristen needed to experience what a young woman her age should.

  Sadly, Molly had missed out on so many things, but she was still fairly young. Her life was ahead of her now, and she could pursue anything she wanted. Maybe she would take Gloria up on her offer.

  What she couldn’t do was stay in that house that held so many bad memories. As she’d done in Blossom City, she would exorcise that house—from her past and her future. Something told her that when Kristen left for college, her life as an adult woman, an adult mother, would truly begin.

  She checked the gas gauge and saw that the tank was nearing empty. She stopped on the outskirts of Haines City, at a Flying J’s, a reputable truck stop. She filled up, checked her oil, fed Ace, and walked him in an area exclusively for animals, where he attended to his private business. Inside she paid for her gas and handed over an extra twenty dollars to use the showers they offered to truckers.

  Unsure of what to do with Ace, she stuffed him inside her suitcase, leaving room for him to peek out. She pulled the suitcase behind her, but no one said anything about a cat’s peering out. Inside the women’s showers, she let Ace roam for a few minutes, then he curled into a ball and fell asleep on top of the suitcase.

  As she scrubbed herself clean with the fresh-smelling body wash provided in a mounted container, she relished the feeling of soap suds running down her body. Using the shampoo in the container, she washed her hair, then washed it a second time. She lathered conditioner into her hair, massaging it all the way to the ends. She thought she might cut her hair. Tanner demanded she keep it long. It was heavy and too much work. As soon as she could, she would get one of those new haircuts that were short in the back and angled sharply on the sides. It would look good on her, she thought, as she rinsed the conditioner out of her hair.

  When she returned to Goldenhills, she would not be the same woman who had left. She’d shed that pitiful skin in Blossom City. She often wondered how such a dreadful, ugly city wound up with such a pretty name. There wasn’t the first hint of a blossom, unless you considered the orange trees. Maybe that’s where its name originated. It didn’t matter anymore, she thought, as she let the warm water cascade down her back and legs. She couldn’t remember when she’d enjoyed taking a shower this much. That fancy tub in the master suite couldn’t hold a candle to this single-stall public shower. At least that is what she thought. Perhaps it was because, in a sense, this was the first shower she had ever taken as a free woman, as someone with no guilty secrets needing to be hidden.

  She scrubbed down one more time just because she could, and let the hot water wash the last two days
away. She would feel hot and grimy later, but right now, she felt as fresh and clean as a hothouse daisy, which happened to be her favorite flower.

  Molly removed a pair of jeans and a red T-shirt from the luggage, Ace making it known she was disturbing him with a super loud “meow.”

  Hurrying so she could get back on the road, she dried off with the towel they’d provided with the shower fee, dressed, and felt almost human. Until she looked in the mirror. She took her makeup kit out of the luggage. Blush and mascara, then a swipe of peach lip gloss at the very least, added a bit of color to her face. She combed out her hair and pulled it back in a ponytail.

  She bought two hot dogs, a bag of pretzels, and a large Coke before she left. When she was back on the interstate, she munched on the food and cranked the radio up to a station that played happy tunes. For the first time in her life, she felt that the burden of guilt had been lifted, as though an angel had brushed it away. The emotional release brought tears to her eyes.

  Happy tears. Like the radio station.

  Epilogue

  Two months later

  Molly was so excited as she waited inside the terminal for Kristen’s plane to arrive. So much had happened in the months she’d been in France. She’d told her bits and pieces over the phone, but sometime in the near future, before Kristen left for college, Molly planned to sit down with her and tell her all about her past. She had no reason to keep it from her anymore. She had every reason to let Kristen know who her mother really was, and now, since filing for divorce last week, she no longer had any reason to fear Tanner. They would always share a daughter, but that was the only thing they had in common anymore.

  Tanner had gone insane when she had come home.

  She’d pulled into the long driveway in her red Mustang, music blaring and Ace sitting on her lap. The driveway was full of vehicles, two of which were police cars. At first she had thought something had happened to Kristen, but she’d just spoken with her, so it had to be something else.