All the Secret Places

by Anna Carlisle

  If Gin was honest with herself, there was something incredibly appealing about Tuck, period.

  She thought of the way he’d watched her leave his office, replaying his words in her mind. “If you knew me better,” he had said, “you’d know that I never do anything unless I give it my all.”

  Had he been talking about her? Or only about the case?

  She turned away from the window, impatient with herself. So Jake hadn’t come home tonight—that wasn’t an excuse for mooning over another man.

  She undressed quickly and turned out the light, no longer in the mood to read. But sleep didn’t come easily. And as she tossed and turned, she had to work very hard to stop herself from thinking about Tuck, alone in his own bed, just a few miles away.

  21

  In the morning, she left the house before Jake returned home, not bothering to leave a note. She stopped to put gas in the Range Rover and bought a large Styrofoam cup of coffee. Then she put the address of Marlene’s friend’s clothing shop in her phone.

  Traffic was light, and she arrived in forty minutes. Steubenville was a town of several thousand people, with a picturesque main street that belied the statistics Gin had found online. One would never guess the rates of drug use and unemployment from the old-fashioned streetlamps, the charming shop fronts, and the festive strings of holiday lights. But based on the news articles she’d skimmed, no fewer than a dozen meth labs had been shut down in the neighboring countryside in the last two years—and posters for support groups and treatment centers were tacked up in some of the shop windows.

  Gin felt a little apprehensive as she parked and walked down the street toward the dress shop. The story she’d invented—that she was considering a career change and needed interview clothes and her new acquaintance Marlene Sykes had recommended her friend’s shop—seemed like a shaky one once she arrived in front of the shop windows. The store appeared not to carry anything appropriate for a job interview. The mannequins all wore clothes in tight-fitting styles and eye-popping shades, many featuring suggestive touches like cutouts and sheer panels, slits and bare necklines.

  “Come on in, it’s freezing out there,” a voice called as she hesitated in the doorway. Gin recognized Karin from Facebook as she emerged from behind the counter, patting her teased blonde hair, a welcoming smile on her face. Marlene’s friend was more attractive in person, she decided, without the theatrical poses that she struck for many of her online photos. “Are you looking for anything in particular today?”

  “Well, a job interview, actually,” Gin said, attempting to ad-lib. “My friend Marlene said you might be able to help.”

  “Marlene Sykes?” Karin asked in surprise. “You drove all the way here from Trumbull?”

  “Well—Marlene convinced me that you’d have what I was looking for. The position I’m interviewing for is to be an events manager at a high-end nightclub. I’ll be meeting with clients and vendors who are expecting me to look like I belong there. I know I can do the job, but I’ve never been very good with fashion. All I know is that my wardrobe could definitely use some color and style.”

  “I think I can help with that. What sort of work did you do before?” Karin asked politely, beginning to sort through racks, pulling out items for Gin to try.

  “Oh, I was a—I worked as a receptionist for a medical examiner’s office, actually,” Gin said. Sticking close to the truth might keep her from tripping herself up, but saying the words out loud made her feel unaccountably self-conscious.

  “That’s fascinating!” Karin exclaimed. “I love crime dramas—I bet you hear this all the time, but I always wonder if it’s really like on TV. You know, solving murders and cold cases and all.”

  Gin grinned wryly. “Mostly I just dealt with the families and helped with records and schedules, but I have to say that none of the pathologists I worked for seem to think it was that exciting. In truth, being a medical examiner seems to have the same issues as lots of other jobs—lots of paperwork, long hours, and constant budget cuts.”

  “How did you meet Marlene, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “My, uh, boyfriend works with Gus.” Gin blushed, wondering how long it would take her to stop tripping over that word. “They came over for dinner not long ago.”

  “Oh, I see,” Karin said. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “I’m glad she’s making some new friends there. I know they haven’t been able to spend much time together, given his hours.”

  “Yes, he and Jake have been putting in some long shifts at the jobsite.”

  Karin raised a well-shaped eyebrow. “Marlene says he barely comes home.”

  “Mmm,” Gin said noncommittally. She wondered if Marlene had confided in Karin about her lover. If not, maybe she was exaggerating Gus’s job responsibilities to deflect suspicion away from herself. “That’s a shame. It must be difficult for both of them. Does Gus, um, handle the stress well?”

  “Gus?” Karin laughed. “We used to call him The Rock—not like that actor, but because he never gets upset. He’s, like, the most even-keeled man I’ve ever met. Tell you the truth, I was surprised when Marlene hooked up with him—she always had a lot of drama with men in the past. I guess I figured she liked it that way.”

  “But Gus is . . . devoted to her?” Gin had to be careful; if she went past idle curiosity to outright snooping, Karin was bound to notice.

  “Oh, yeah. They’re good for each other. I mean, sure—he doesn’t do a thing around the house, and he can be kind of uptight. Of course, the way she spends money, they kind of balance each other out.”

  “She was saying she misses going out,” Gin said, taking a chance. “I get the feeling she’s got a little cabin fever.”

  “Well, yeah, she’s a girl who needs a lot of attention.” Karin smiled fondly. “Before she met Gus, she used to date a couple of guys at a time. She loved the excitement, but it got old for the rest of us, because she was always using me as an excuse for why she couldn’t see one or the other—and then she’d cancel on me and sneak off with the other one. Which, I know, makes her sound awful, but it really was all in fun. I never thought she’d settle down.” Karin shrugged. “Shows what I know.”

  “When the baby comes, she’ll be in for a whole new level of settling down.”

  Karin looked at her in surprise. “She told you she was trying to get pregnant?”

  “I, uh, thought she already was . . . ?”

  “Oh, no. They’re having the hardest time; she just can’t seem to conceive. And Gus wants a baby bad. So they’re trying. I keep telling her they should look into adoption, but—oh, listen to me, it’s totally none of my business. Just the other day she was telling me I should be a shrink so people would pay me to hear my opinions.” She laughed and pulled a lime-green blouse from a display. “Okay, how about I’ll shut up, and we’ll get you a room to try on all these cute things, okay?”

  “Of course,” Gin said shakily.

  “I can totally see you in this,” Karin said, holding up a fuchsia sheath dress with an asymmetric hem. “This shade is called peony. You know what? I think you just might be a peony kind of girl.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Gin was heading back home, a shopping bag containing her new clothes on the passenger seat. She’d ended up purchasing the pink sheath dress and a pair of matching sandals, as well as a sweater and faux leather leggings. Karin had turned out to have a keen eye for fashion, and the clothes fit Gin so well that the effect was flattering rather than over the top.

  Karin truly did seem to care deeply about Marlene—even if the two had clearly not been sharing all their secrets. Gin replayed the conversation in her mind as she drove. Why wouldn’t Marlene tell her best friend that she was pregnant? The obvious answer was that she wasn’t sure who the father was.

  Or—

  Maybe the reason she hadn’t been able to conceive had to do with Gus, not her. If that was the case, and Gus discovered that Marlene was still seeing her love
r, he might have been enraged that the baby wasn’t his. Angry enough, maybe, to want to destroy both his cheating wife and her lover’s child?

  It was a pretty farfetched conclusion, Gin had to admit. Tuck would laugh her out of his office if she came to him without any evidence to support the theory. And Stillman probably wouldn’t even take her call.

  Gus had seemed so easygoing whenever Gin met him. “The Rock” seemed like an apt nickname. But she really didn’t know him at all. And she couldn’t even begin to guess what a man like Gus, a man who’d given up everything to make a fresh start with his wife, would do if he discovered he’d been cuckolded a second time.

  22

  When Gin pulled up the hill to Jake’s house at a little before six, she was momentarily startled to see her mother’s Lexus parked in the drive.

  Then, with a sense of mortification, she remembered: when she’d had coffee with her parents the morning of the fire and the discovery of the body, she had invited Madeleine and Richard to come to dinner. She had meant to write it down—but then in the turmoil that followed, she had forgotten.

  Grabbing her purse and opening the door, Gin’s heart pounded with anxiety. Though the four of them had had dinner together several times, either at Gin’s parents’ house or a restaurant they liked that had opened up downtown, this was to have been the first time her parents came to dinner at Jake’s house, the first time that Gin and Jake entertained them as a couple.

  It was, in fact, the first time that Gin had ever invited her parents to dinner with a man. At the time, it had felt thrilling—a prelude to something deeper, she had hoped: nothing so formal as an engagement, but a subtle shift in the relationship.

  Now instead, she had not only forgotten to tell Jake about the invitation, but she’d done no preparation. No shopping, no menu planning, no arranging flowers or putting fresh hand towels in the bathroom or setting the table. And to make matters worse, she and Jake had barely spoken in two days.

  All in all, Gin had screwed up royally.

  But as she stepped through the door, she could hear her father’s voice, animated and full of life the way it was when he was telling a story. The house was filled with the aromas of garlic and herbs, and a classical guitar recording played softly in the background.

  “Virginia!” Madeleine walked out of the kitchen, the sculpted planes of her face flushed with happiness. She was holding a nearly empty wineglass by the stem, and behind her, Jake was uncorking a second bottle of wine, and—shockingly—her father was bent over a cutting board, fastidiously slicing a carrot into rounds.

  “Dad!” Gin exclaimed. “You’ve never cooked anything in your whole life!”

  “And you’ve never forgotten my birthday, or your mother’s, or our anniversary,” her father countered cheerfully. “But today you somehow forgot that you invited your poor old parents to dinner.” He gave the end of the carrot a decisive chop for emphasis.

  “Oh, Dad . . . I’m so sorry, truly, it’s just been such an incredibly busy—”

  “Don’t worry,” Madeleine interrupted, tilting her glass so Jake could fill it. “Jake has the situation well in hand.”

  Gin met Jake’s eyes. For a moment, neither looked away. Rather than the tense, distracted expression he’d been wearing for days, he looked relaxed and slightly amused.

  “I’m so sorry.” She tilted up her face for a kiss, then suddenly felt awkward and turned away. She had never kissed Jake in front of her parents. “God, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.”

  “Luckily, you’re dating a culinary genius,” Jake said. “One who’s not above hiring some cheap labor to do the scut work while I put the finishing touches on . . .”

  He turned dramatically toward the stove and flourished a sizzling sauté pan.

  “Mélange de fruits de mer al Crosby,” he announced.

  “Oh, my gracious, that smells divine,” Madeleine sighed. “How on earth did you come up with it on such short notice?”

  “Eh, it’s just whatever I had on hand. I had shrimp and cod in the freezer, and saffron and Arborio rice from when we made paella a few weeks ago, plus whatever was in the veggie drawer—you get the picture.”

  Richard raised his glass for a toast, wiping his free hand on the apron that Jake had lent him. “To the men in this family,” he announced. “We’re good-looking and highly intelligent, obviously—”

  “And modest!” Madeleine interjected, laughing.

  “—and surprisingly skilled in the kitchen, but our greatest accomplishment is finding women who are too good for us and put up with us anyway.”

  Everyone raised their glasses, the ruby wine glowing in the light of the pendant lamps, and Gin wondered if maybe, just maybe, their luck had finally turned.

  * * *

  They were finishing a dessert of frozen pound cake with a sauce Jake had whipped up from mandarin oranges simmered with rum, Madeleine and Richard arguing good-naturedly about a trip to Mexico they’d taken when Gin and her sister were eight and ten years old, when there was a knock at the door.

  Jake looked at Gin quizzically. “Any other surprises up your sleeve, Gin? More guests you forgot to tell me about?”

  “No,” Gin said, getting up from the table and checking the time: 8:54 PM, late for a casual drop in. She peered out through the decorative square pane.

  Bruce Stillman was standing there, holding his badge aloft.

  “What on earth—” Gin opened the door.

  “I’m here for Jake,” he said before she could say a word.

  Jake came to the door, pushing past Gin. “What the hell do you want now, Stillman?”

  “I need you to come with me, Crosby,” Stillman said. “We can talk about it on the way.”

  Her parents had also come to the door, Richard digging his glasses from his shirt pocket.

  Jake didn’t budge. “You talk to me about it right here.”

  Stillman sighed. “You sure that’s what you want, Jake? Hello, Madeleine, Richard.”

  “What are you doing here, Stillman?” Richard said. “You’re interrupting a private family gathering. Whatever you want, surely it can wait until tomorrow.”

  Gin knew that her father’s outrage stemmed, in part, from the fact that he himself had falsely accused Jake in the past, a wound that had only recently healed.

  “Just tell us what it’s about,” she pleaded.

  Stillman kept his eyes on Jake. “It’s about the insurance policy you took out right before the fire,” he said. “And the two million dollars you stand to collect if they shut down your project.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Jake snapped. “My policy won’t pay a fraction of that.”

  “We both know that’s not true; only I just found out about it. Pretty clever, how the insurance payout comes no matter what happens with the dead guy. They can make the whole place a historic site tomorrow and start selling snow cones and dressing up in bonnets, and you will have already gotten out whole. I guess this entire mess is kind of your lucky break.”

  “I don’t know what you think you know about my finances,” Jake said, “but you’re wrong. My insurance barely covers my tools and my truck. The money I’ve got tied up in there is mine.”

  Richard cleared his throat, and everyone turned to him.

  “There’s, ahhh . . . something I maybe should have told you,” he said. “I tried to tell you the other day, Gin, honey. Madeleine and I . . . which is to say, really, it was me. I took out some insurance, Jake. On your business. When, er, things began to look serious between the two of you.”

  Gin gasped. The conversation she’d had with her father the other day, the one she hadn’t let him finish—that was actually the second time he’d tried to talk to her about her relationship with Jake. There had been a rare invitation into his study weeks earlier, where he’d poured them each a scotch and asked how things were going with Jake. At the time, she’d found it charmingly old-fashioned. Richard had asked about Jake’s business,
his plans for the future, his ideas about growth, and whether he would ever move the business away from Trumbull.

  And, just in passing, about his insurance coverage.

  And Gin had admitted that Jake probably didn’t carry enough insurance. She’d said it laughingly, affectionately even; it was proof of the reckless zeal Jake still had for his work. It didn’t surprise her that he would put his money back into the business rather than into extra insurance. It was part of what made Jake who he was.

  Other people, though—especially someone like her father, who was not only conservative and careful by nature, but who had helped found a medical center and sat in on countless discussions about insurance—might see Jake’s choices as irresponsible. And Richard would never want to see someone gambling with his daughter’s future.

  “Dad,” she gasped. “Did you . . . without even telling either of us?”

  Richard shrugged uncomfortably. “It wasn’t something I thought you’d ever need to know about,” he said. “When the paperwork came through, I planned to sit down with you, son. I hoped you’d consider it a token of my faith in you.”

  It had been Richard’s way of giving his approval, of blessing the relationship.

  “Richard, I can’t believe you never discussed this with me,” Madeleine said.

  “Well, now you know,” Richard said, addressing Stillman. “So that’s the explanation.”

  Stillman shook his head. “What I know is that insurance was recorded on Jake’s company only a few days before the fire, and according to the guy I talked to at the insurance company, the payout could go as high as two million dollars. We’ll want to talk to you too, sir.”

  “Wait, wait,” Madeleine said. “I think we all need to take a step back here. Detective, please, you’ve got to see how ridiculous this is. You don’t live in Trumbull, you can’t know—”

  “I may not live here, ma’am,” Stillman said, an edge to his voice. “And I appreciate the fact that we’ve been wrong about your family in the past. But don’t for a minute think that buys any free passes. I don’t plan to screw up twice.”