“Yes,” she said and placed her hands in her lap.
Erin danced a graceful ballet behind the bar, then handed her the tumbler full of icy bourbon.
“Mack put a lot of effort into this,” Caryn said.
“He really did. He was up late every night this week getting the details just right.”
He certainly wasn’t visiting me, Caryn thought angrily. Before taking a sip, she oozed, “You are so lucky, Erin. Mack is the best. And I’ve wanted to meet you forever.” Only Caryn knew why Mack wasn’t a hundred percent devoted to his wife.
Erin asked. “How did you meet him?”
“Mack and I met during an audit twenty-two months ago.” This wasn’t true.
A confused look passed over Erin’s face. “When was that? I don’t remember The Rapture getting audited.”
Just in time, a bearded man bellowed from the far end of the bar, “Hey, Erin, another cranberry and vodka down here?”
Erin excused herself to tend to the opposite end of the bar.
Mack would go crazy to see Caryn here, and she knew it. She scanned the crowd for her lover, anticipating his discomfort with the excitement of a child at her birthday party. Right on cue, the man of the hour appeared across the room, holding a tray of dessert cups filled with colorful creamy fluff. When he spotted her, his eyes grew wide as dinner plates. He stumbled, tipping the tray, but righted it and turned away.
As she watched, Mack handed out desserts and socialized with his employees. Now and then, he glanced Caryn’s way with a panicked and pained expression. Had he told Erin about their affair? She suspected that he was ignoring her, so Caryn picked up her drink and slinked toward him.
Once within earshot, she hailed, “I came as soon as I could, darling.”
Mack flushed. “What are you doing here?”
A couple nearby smiled awkwardly. As Caryn introduced herself to them, Mack set the tray of desserts on a table.
The woman greeted her with a delicate handshake. “I’m Marian. This is Greg.”
“What department are you in?” Greg asked.
“Bedding.” Caryn winked at Mack, who blushed bright red.
Mack whispered into Caryn’s ear. “Fix your dress. It’s too low.”
Caryn saw that her dress had slipped, exposing her red bra above the plunging neckline. Greg ogled and Marian elbowed him.
Behind them, Erin approached. Her timing was perfect. Caryn slid her arm around Mack’s and used it for support. “Oops!” she said, suppressing a smile. “I might have had too many.” She lifted her drink and deliberately sloshed it on the floor.
Mack’s eyes widened as his wife stepped into the group. “How’s everyone doing? Are you enjoying the party?” she asked.
A true hostess, Caryn thought. “Lovely,” she said, lifting her glass in a toast. She snuggled up to Mack and asked in a syrupy sweet tone, “Aren’t you going to introduce me, Mack?”
He peeled Caryn’s hand off his arm, then pushed her away. His neck went red as he said, “Erin, this is Caryn.”
Erin covered for him, “We met at the bar.” But her eyelids lowered when she took a step between them. “Who is she, Mack?”
“Erin.”
Caryn dipped her shoulder and let the strap fall. “We’re lovers, Erin. I really have heard so much about you.”
Erin stiffened, then looked at her husband.
Mack wiped sweat from his brow with a white linen napkin. In a firm voice, he told Erin, “We’ll talk about this later.”
The other couple, Greg and Marian, slinked away.
Taking Caryn by the arm, he pulled her out into the hallway. It attracted way too much attention, which was exactly what Caryn wanted.
He snarled, “What are you doing here?”
“I was upset you didn’t invite me, baby.” Caryn draped a hand over his shoulder.
“Stop that.” He brushed her away. “I mean it. What the hell are you doing here?”
“I wanted to share the good news.”
“What good news? What are you talking about?” Irritation colored Mack’s tone.
“I’ve taken care of my brother.” Caryn pretended she was tipsy, drawing a few onlookers.
Mack shook his head, looking at the bystanders. “How?”
“You’ll see,” she sang, giving it a flourish. “The police are on to him now.”
“Has he been arrested?”
“Not yet. But keep an eye on the news, Gilroy dear.” Caryn knew Mack hated being called by his first name.
Erin perched her hands on her hips. Marian and Greg walked past on their way to the coatroom. Mack smiled, pretending nothing was going on, so Caryn threw herself at him. She plastered her arms around his large frame and hung there. While she kissed his chin and neck, he tried to scrape her off. The struggle made a much bigger scene, causing others to stop and watch.
“Goddammit, Caryn.” Mack shoved her backward.
In her high heels, she toppled, landing on her butt on the floor. She broke the fall with her hands, already scraped from hitting Ekhard’s sidewalk. The scabs on her palms opened up. “You can’t treat me this way!” she shrieked, holding up her bleeding hands.
Onlookers had formed a semicircle around them. Mack looked at them, unsure what to do.
Unsteadily, Caryn tried to stand. “You can’t humiliate me this way! After all we’ve been through. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
Erin had followed them out to the hallway. She glared at them with her arms crossed. “What did you promise her, Mack?”
“I haven’t made any promises.” Mack’s brow puckered in confusion. Sweat dripped down his temples as he stooped to help her up.
“I’m calling the cops.” Erin said.
“You do that. Mack attacked me!” Caryn clamored. And as Mack helped her to her feet, Caryn saw a familiar person standing near the elevator. She spun around to get a good look at him. A tall man with a beard and mirrored glasses, he wore slacks and a suit jacket. Looking right at her, he removed the glasses. His amber eyes bored into her.
Mack was fawning over her. “I didn’t mean to. Are you okay?”
“Okay?” Her bleeding palms oozed dark blood where the scabs were torn off. Caryn held them up for others to see just as she craned her neck toward the elevator. It had closed. He was gone.
“Don’t call the cops, Erin.” Red-faced and tense, Mack said, “It was an accident. Are you okay?”
The man in the elevator had distracted her. A call from home. Every nerve felt exposed. The room grew smaller as Caryn decided she had to leave. She had to get out of here. He had seen her. Ekhard was here.
CHAPTER 54
CARYN
Caryn turned tail and ran past Erin’s angry stare. Mack had begun pleading for forgiveness. Telling lies.
When Caryn saw Eks’s amber-brown eyes homing in on her, she feared for her life. She had arrived home ignited by anxiety infused with a good dose of adrenaline. Her brother was following her.
Caryn smiled.
Ekhard had left home on the day Caryn graduated from high school. With a new identity, he became chief financial officer of Klemmins’ Grocery in the late nineties, and then, a year later, of Goldman’s Department store. The two corporations both foreclosed because of procedural inadequacies. Later, after he’d changed his name to Larry Milhouse, he worked for CPA Mike Pritchard. Three more businesses collapsed. In searching the details, she found that those three businesses had assigned Ekhard to be chief financial officer. Before him, the three together had generated over $1.6 million in revenue per year before going bankrupt.
She had followed him ever since he left. Ekhard.
Numbers told the story better than any written word. Organized in neat lists and tidy rows, they were precise. Common threads were negative numbers in the thousands and Ekhard Klein—aka Nathaniel Johnson, Larry Milhouse, Derek Smalls, to name a few. Ekhard had caused the ruin of several businesses and innocent people.
He probably h
ad enough money to disappear forever. Where would he go now? More importantly, how would Caryn find him again?
Pacing in her kitchen, not knowing what to do, she opened her refrigerator door. Less than desirable frozen choices faced her. But she hadn’t eaten all day so didn’t care what went in her body. Using a knife, she cut open a cold box, pulled out the meal tray, and stuck it in the microwave, setting the timer for six minutes.
The motions of preparing dinner were automatic. A plate, a fork, a glass of soda … She remembered Ekhard cooking for her when Theo got sick.
Absentmindedly, she picked at the wound on her left palm. The bleeding had scabbed over again, but not the bitter anger.
The best thing Eks did was to drive away. But Caryn could never forgive him for abandoning her. She had needed him. And he betrayed her by taking all their belongings with him. He’d left her with nothing. It hadn’t been the betrayal that wounded her ego the most. What hurt more than anything was what he had said. Eks told her she was just like Mom. Mom, who abandoned us. Mom who beat us. Mom, who Caryn could never forgive. He’d said I was just like her.
The timer on the microwave counted backward: 4:49, 4:48, 4:47. She sipped warm bourbon. 3:57, 3:56, 3:55. And as if expecting it, Caryn turned toward her door. It clicked and began to open.
“Mack?” His warm body next to her would help her sleep.
“No, sister. It’s me. You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked. Even those pesky police won’t keep out the riffraff.” Ekhard stepped out from behind the open door. His beard, dyed dark, was longer than the last time and trimmed to perfection. His elegant suit looked expensive. Caryn thought again about the money he’d stolen.
Ekhard set a heavy suitcase on the floor, closed the door, and locked the deadbolt. “I followed your neighbors in through the front door. They’re friendly girls, aren’t they?”
Caryn held her breath. Now that he stood in front of her, he appeared taller than she remembered. She noticed his shiny leather dress shoes, his good sense of style.
“Did you miss me?” he asked.
Words didn’t come. Caryn was, for once, speechless.
“Why don’t you pour me a drink? And pour yourself another while you’re at it. You’ll need it.” Eks removed his long coat and hung it on the coat hook beside the door.
The microwave beeped. She slid a clean glass toward her brother. Then, with a towel around her hand, Caryn removed the dish from the microwave. She set it on the counter and pushed it away. She’d lost her appetite. Her heart was thumping so hard it made her nauseous.
“Oh.” Eks looked down his nose at her dinner. “After all the years I tended to you …”
Was he referring to her cooking? Or the mess?
“I did everything for your survival. I cooked for you, cleaned up after you. Didn’t you learn anything?”
“I learned about betrayal,” she hissed at him. Whatever Ekhard had up his sleeve, she didn’t care for it to go on long.
Ekhard pulled a long object out of his coat pocket. “I brought you something, sister. Sorry, I didn’t have time to wrap it. Consider that a throwback to the way old Theo celebrated Christmas. It’s a gift in honor of our reunion,” he said.
As Eks set a blue-handled rip claw on the counter, Caryn calmly mirrored him and set her glass beside it. It was a thirty-two-ounce framing hammer with a checkered pattern on its face. Overkill.
I saw this one in the store and it spoke to me. It made me think of you.”
Caryn said, “Honestly, Eks, you shouldn’t have.”
“Use it well.” He took three long strides into the kitchen and opened the bottle of bourbon. “You see? We are both creatures of habit. This is the same brand Theo used to drink.”
“What are you doing here, Ekhard?”
“I came to see my baby sister one last time. That’s all.” He poured three fingers without ice and drank it down. “You’re looking good. You’re aging gracefully … considering.”
“And look at you.” She shook her head.
He tipped his chin, enjoying the downward view of his own body. “This? The expensive suit is a small pleasure of mine.”
“They’re looking for you in four or five states. The U.S. Marshals have taken over the investigation. Your picture will be posted all over the country. Think of it, you’re famous.”
“You’re famous,” he corrected.
“Bonnie Parker?”
“No. Aileen Wuornos. Patricia Hearst. Hell. Dennis Rader.”
“Why are you here, Eks?”
One at a time, he placed ice cubes in his glass, then poured more bourbon. “I needed to see you one last time.”
“So you can leave me again? Abandon me? Again?” she spit.
His gaze pierced Caryn.
“It took years to get back on my feet.” Her hands in fists, Caryn’s fingernails dug into sore flesh.
“And look at you now,” he said. “It’s true, you know? You’ve grown up to be just like our mother. A cold-hearted, psycho bitch.”
Caryn spat, “To think I missed you, brother.” Her lips curled.
“There we go. There’s my Ceecee. Am I pissing you off, darling? Because I am. Trying. To piss you off.” His hand smoothed his dyed black hair.
Caryn looked forward to messing it up.
Ekhard spat through his front teeth. “You set me up. You called the police and sicced them on me.”
Fury rose from deep inside her. “You stole from me.”
“Suzanne was my girlfriend, you bitch,” he said, escalating the argument.
“It was my trophy.” Caryn had turned, placing her right hip against the counter.
“Like that diamond ring on your finger? Is that your trophy too?”
Caryn admired the back of her hand and Hallie’s sparkling diamond engagement ring. “I like to collect things.”
“Things that belonged to them.”
“I didn’t realize how much she’d led you on until she told me you’d proposed.” As she leaned toward him, Caryn’s right hand traveled back toward the hammer that lay on the counter. The hammer that Ekhard had given her.
“I loved Hallie.” Ekhard leaned back with the drink in his hand. His lips curled as he hissed, “You psychopath.”
“You have no idea what you’ve put me through.” Caryn’s fingers curled around the hammer.
“And you’re just like Mom.”
No I’m not!
CHAPTER 55
CARYN: 22 Years Ago
The moment Miss Popular’s heart stopped beating was the moment Caryn first noticed the sound of her own. It beat a dance rhythm against her chest. She was alive.
The woods had grown dark, but she could sense everything. She smelled the earth and the damp leaves on the ground. She smelled the perfumey scent of the girl’s clean, blond hair. Mixed into the potpourri was an odor so overpowering Caryn could taste it: the rich metallic iron from the blood glistening on Suzanne’s face.
Silence consumed the forest. Suzanne Aiken was warm-dead. Not even the crickets mourned her death. When Eks began crying, the sound was an explosion.
“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God …”
The sniveling crybaby, Caryn thought. The hammer slid from her fingers.
“What have we done? What have we done?” He rocked back and forth on his knees. Leaves crunched beneath him.
“Where’s the flashlight?” Caryn asked.
“What?”
“The flashlight.” Her warm hands were wet and slippery with blood. She wiped her fingers on the blanket spread under Suzanne and cleaned off the handle of the hammer.
“No. No light.” His head swung from side to side in dramatic emphasis. “I don’t want to see it. Her. I …”
Caryn picked up the hammer and turned to face Ekhard. “Give me the flashlight.” At that moment, she would have struck him too. She had nothing left to lose.
He stood, wobbly, and backed away. “We need to get out of here.” He fumbled, digging an object out of h
is deep jacket pocket.
The flashlight clicked on. Ekhard sprang backward, dropping it.
It landed near Suzanne’s face, illuminating her gruesome expression. Her wide eyes bulged out of their sockets. Red splatters of blood pooled where her nose used to be. Her lip was torn where the hammer had hit her. Caryn wanted to see her shattered teeth. How many were broken? She reached for the light.
“Oh God. Oh God,” Ekhard sobbed.
Suzanne’s chest and North Side High School sweatshirt were soaked. The blanket cradling her held a pool of her blood.
Ekhard’s breath came in short gasps. He buried his face in his hands.
“It’s a little late to decide that you liked her. Come on, we need to clean up.” Caryn handed him the flashlight and pushed leaves aside. She cleared the ground so they could dig a hole, then rolled the body in the blanket.
Caryn decided she was in charge. Her older brother had lost it. “Get the shovel, Eks. Start digging.”
Suzanne was way out of Ekhard’s league, everyone knew that. And when she blackmailed him to do her homework, Ekhard became her little slave. In Caryn’s mind, that had to end. Suzanne wasn’t university bound. Her agenda had more to do with making babies. But Eks would never have gotten that far with her. Suzanne would have used him and spit him out when she was done. She would have dragged this on until she graduated, then left Eks heartbroken and miserable. That will never happen now.
Ekhard had been there to take care of Caryn when their mother left. Dad, too, had been unavailable. Unhelpful. Useless. This was a way for Caryn to help Ekhard launch. The only way she knew how.
Ekhard wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“What’s your problem?” Caryn put her hands on her hips the way she remembered their mom doing.
“Shut up, Ceecee. Just shut up.” He plunged the shovel into the soft earth.
They could only find one shovel in the garage or Caryn would have helped. She flopped onto the ground in the leaves beside Suzanne’s body and picked up a plastic pink jelly shoe. Caryn played with it and poked her finger through one hole. “We have to talk about our alibis. Everyone knows you were dating her. Tell me where you were tonight.”
Best Kept Secrets Page 24