She Loves Me Not (27 page)

But it's overwhelming, all of it. How can she possibly cope?

I need Sam,
she thinks desolately.
I need big, strong, fearless Sam. He's the only one who can help me through this, and he's gone. I'm all alone.

“Rose, I have to go,” Bill is saying. “The police are here and they need to speak to me.”

The police. Of course. They'll need to speak to Bill. Will they think he did it, too? He doesn't like Luke.

Didn't,
she amends. Bill
didn't
like Luke. Luke is dead.

She swallows hard.

Her throat hurts.

And she's all alone.

You could call Hitch,
a voice says, somewhere inside of her suddenly aching head.
He's big, strong, and fearless. And he really seems to care about you and the kids.

She
should
call Hitch. He said he'd stop by on his way back from the city. If he comes and sees the police cars and the crime-scene tape . . .

He'll be worried.

Yes, she has to call him. Just . . .

Not yet.

A chill slithers over her.

Be careful, Rose. Don't tell anybody where you're going . . .

Maybe Bill is right. Maybe she shouldn't tell anybody else. Not until the police at least narrow down the suspects . . .

Not until she knows there isn't the slightest chance that Hitch might be among them.

Chapter Twelve

“B
en . . . where the hell are you?” Christine croaks into the phone when her husband's office voice mail picks up yet again. “Why aren't you calling me back? I need you. I've been trying to reach you all afternoon. And I need you to pick up more Advil for me on your way home.”

She left several messages and he never returned any of her calls. Nor did he call to check in at lunchtime. And whenever she dials his cell phone, it clicks right into voice mail, which means it isn't even turned on.

Meanwhile, here she is, alone, burning up with fever, too sick to drive, and their neighbor's yard has turned into a bloody crime scene.

The victim was a middle-aged man, no relation to the Larrabees, according to the police officer she questioned—who then turned the tables and questioned her.

Right. As though she could possibly summon the strength to wield anything more deadly than a tissue at this point.

Her gaze falls on the fireplace poker propped against the coffee table within arm's reach. She put it there, just in case, when the police officer advised her to be cautious.

Apparently she had convinced him not only of her innocence, but that she didn't see or hear anything, because he beat a fairly hasty retreat back to the other side of the shrubbery. Or maybe he just doesn't want to catch this horrible flu.

Christine tosses the phone onto the coffee table and leans her head against the couch pillow again, gazing at the television with eyes that feel as though somebody boiled them.

She's anxious to find out more about the murder, but the first evening newscast is still more than an hour away. Without cable, they don't get the local Long Island station. The teasers the New York stations have aired throughout the afternoon have mentioned only the snow that is now falling over the entire metropolitan area. With a foot on the way, that's sure to be the top story, but they should at least mention the murder.

Ironic that Christine has no other way of gleaning information when she's a stone's throw from the scene of the crime. Every time she worked up her courage and dialed Rose's number, the line was busy. It's undoubtedly been taken off the hook.

From her living room, through a dense curtain of falling snow, Christine can see news trucks parked at the curb in front of the Larrabees' house, their camera crews and reporters held at bay by the police and a saw-horse barricade. A few times, they rang Christine's doorbell, but the police quickly put a stop to that.

Though the police presence is reassuring, she made sure all the windows and doors are locked. She even chained the front door from the inside, something she habitually did in the city. It always seemed unnecessary out here, but now . . .

When Christine pressed the police officer for details, such as the victim's name or relationship to Rose, the cop was frustratingly tight-lipped, saying he wasn't at liberty to discuss those details. All he would say was that the victim must have startled a prowler; there was a scuffle; the victim was stabbed.

She told the officer about the other night, when she thought she saw somebody lurking in the bushes. He took notes, then told her that the detective in charge of the case would want to speak at length with both her and her husband.

Terrific. Ben is going to love that.

Now, in the wake of the news that whoever she glimpsed lurking in the neighbors' yard that night might have been a cold-blooded killer, she sits here brooding, deathly ill, alone, becoming more furious with Ben by the minute.

Logically, she knows it isn't his fault that an armed prowler is terrorizing this charming neighborhood where Christine is supposed to feel so safe.

But other things are his fault.

That she has this lousy flu.

That she
doesn't
have cable television.

That she
doesn't
have a baby.

Well, technically, that might not be his fault. It might not be either of their faults. Maybe something is wrong. Maybe there's some physical reason they can't conceive.

But when she brought up the prospect of seeing a fertility specialist, Ben hit the ceiling. He said they haven't been trying long enough to resort to a specialist, and that the insurance won't cover it, and they can't afford it.

Money.

With him, it always comes back down to money.

She sighs, and tries to focus on the television.

A teaser for today's
Oprah
catches her attention. It is followed by another local news teaser, as a reporter surrounded by whirling snow says, “Coming up at five, the metropolitan area is bracing for a major winter storm. How much of this white stuff are we going to get before it's all over? Then, we'll take you to a peaceful suburban town, where residents are shocked by a brutal murder—and the killer is still on the loose.”

There! There it is!

Christine sits up on the couch abruptly and watches intently as the scene shifts from the reporter to a long shot of a suburban house.

But it's the wrong house, modern and ugly and in a remote area, surrounded by thick woods. It's the wrong town. The wrong murder.

Christine leans back against the pillows, disheartened.

What a lousy world we live in. Lousy, and scary, and
—

Suddenly, she hears a commotion at the front door.

She bolts upright again on the couch just in time to see the door thrown open, then halted abruptly by the chain.

With a trembling hand, Christine reaches for the fireplace poker and calls out, “Who's there?”

“I
wish Mommy was here,” Leo says, his little chin trembling as he looks around the living room.

“She'll be here soon, sweetie. She just has to finish talking to the nice policemen.” Leslie goes around flipping switches, turning on every light in the room, but it still has an oddly murky feel.

It would be so different if Mom and Dad were here, where they belong,
Leslie thinks angrily.
First Sam abandoned us, and then they did. It isn't fair that I'm the only one around to take care of Rose and the kids.

She tried calling her parents several times from Rose's house, to tell them what's going on, but she got no answer. They're probably out playing bridge or hunting for early bird specials or whatever it is that's important enough to keep them a thousand miles away from home.

“I don't wike it here. Why can't I go to school to see Mist-o Gwegg?” Leo asks, as he has repeatedly all day.

“I told you, Leo, you can go to school tomorrow.” At least, that's what she overheard Rose telling Candy Adamski when she called the director earlier. She quickly explained what happened, and then Candy seemed to be talking her ear off before she finally made an excuse and hung up.

“It's so cold in here, Aunt Leslie.” Still wearing her red down jacket, Jenna shivers. Snowflakes cling to her hair and eyelashes. It's coming down hard out there.

Rose insisted that Leslie take her SUV to drive the children over here, and she's going to come later in Leslie's car. It's less than a mile, but she has to go out on the highway.

I
should call Peter and tell him to go get her in the truck,
she decides. He's coming over anyway, just as soon as he finishes working and goes home to check his mail. When she reached him on his cell phone to tell him about the murder at Rose's, he was shocked. She expected him to drop everything and come to her, but he called back to say that Arty wouldn't let him go. Peter and the other carpenters were racing against time to shore up the bungalow's roof beams, worried it might collapse under the weight of the coming snow.

“I'll be there as soon as I can, babe,” he promised. “I'm just glad you're okay.”

“And I'm glad you're okay.”

“Me? Why me?”

“For a minute I was worried that it was you lying out there dead on the ground,” she admitted.

“But I was at your place last night.”

“I know you were. I'm just . . . I'm so relieved you're safe.”

She wanted to tell him, right then and there, how much she loves him. How she no longer has a doubt in her mind about marrying him.

Then she realizes that he has no idea she was ever in doubt. As far as Peter knows, she's been enthusiastic about their coming marriage from the day he proposed.

“I'm freezing, Aunt Leslie,” Jenna complains, sitting on the piano bench, her arms huddled miserably into her jacket.

“It's warming up in here already,” Leslie tells her, hearing the telltale groan of the basement ductwork. “I turned the thermostat up to seventy. It just takes awhile.”

“I want my Mommy,” Leo says.

So do I,
Leslie thinks, her gaze falling on a framed family portrait, one that was taken in her childhood. I
want my Mommy and my Daddy, and my big brother. I want somebody to make everything okay.

When Peter comes, she'll feel better. She always feels safe with him nearby.

“I'll be back in a few seconds,” she tells the kids, heading toward the kitchen, turning on more lights as she goes.

The first thing she'll do is put on some water so that Rose can have tea when she gets here. Then she'll call Peter and tell him to swing by and get her sister-in-law.

The instant Leslie steps over the threshold into the kitchen, somebody begins pounding on the piano's bass keys.

“Aunt Leslie!” Jenna shrieks. “Leo is giving me a headache!”

“Play gently, Leo,” Leslie calls back, taking the empty teakettle from its home on the stove's back burner.

“I
am
pwaying gentwee!” He continues to pound the keys in ear-shattering discord.

Not for the first time, she wonders how Rose manages to keep her sanity, alone with two small children all the time. It's not that they're bad kids, even, Leslie thinks, pressing the button to flip open the cap on the teakettle's spout.

They're just . . . noisy,
she thinks, as the treble keys are added to the cacophony in the next room.

“Aunt Wes-wee! Jenna's ruining my song!” Leo bellows.

“No, she's not. It's a duet,” Leslie calls back, peering into the teakettle, then sniffing it. It smells clean, but she should probably wash it out before using it.

She picks up the phone on the way to the sink, dialing Peter's cell phone number. He picks up on the third ring, just as she's reaching for the hot water tap.

“Peter? It's me. Can you pick up Rose in your truck? The roads are bad and I don't want her driving over here alone in my car.”

“Yeah, but I'm not ready to leave yet.”

“That's okay. I'll tell her to wait until you get there. How long do you think it'll be?”

“I can't tell. We're still working on the roof. Tell her I'll call when I'm leaving.”

“Page her instead. She took the phone off the hook because the press kept calling and bugging her.”

“What's her pager number?”

She gives it to him. “Be careful driving, Peter.”

“I will. Are you okay over there with the kids, Les?”

“We're fine . . . except, there's no water. Damn!” She tries the cold water tap. Nothing. “The pipes must be frozen.”

“You'd better get a plumber over there right away if Rose is going to be staying there with the kids. She can't be there without water.”

“I know. I'll tell her to call Hitch. Maybe he can come tonight.”

“Aunt Leslie!” Jenna yells. “He's hogging the bench!”

Leslie sighs. “I've got to go, Peter. Love you.”

“You too.”

He hangs up.

Funny how the absence of the word
love
on Peter's tongue doesn't bother her nearly as much this afternoon as it did last night, she thinks, dialing Rose's pager.

T
he Land Rover's wipers beat a fast-paced rhythm that seems entirely at odds with the creeping traffic on the Long Island Expressway. David taps the steering wheel anxiously in time with the wipers, peering through the windshield at the string of red taillights dotting the sheet of swirling snow.

He should have headed south when he came off the Whitestone Bridge from Westchester. He could have taken the Southern State to Sunrise Highway, the way he and Angela used to do when they went out to visit friends in the Hamptons. He never takes the L.I.E. Why did he get on it today?

He's only at exit thirty. He's got over thirty more to go. At this rate, that's going to take hours.

But you might have days. Months, even.

After all, more than a year went by between Olivia McGlinchie's and Isabel Van Nuys' murders. There's no reason to assume that Rose Larrabee is in imminent danger.

For all David knows, Olivia's and Isabel's deaths were tragic coincidences.

No,
he tells himself firmly, remembering the letters in his study. The letters that revealed the names of the organ recipients. The letters that somebody opened and read.

Olivia's and Isabel's murders were connected, somehow. Connected to each other, and to Angela.

David is as certain of that as he is that Angela's mysterious lover has something to do with both deaths.

If only he had that picture of Clarence from the McGlinchies' photo album, so he could show it to Rose. He intended to make a detour to Staten Island to get it after he left Woodbury Hills, but by the time he reached New York the snow was coming down hard and traffic was a mess. He was afraid to go anywhere but straight to Rose Larrabee, driven by the urgent instinct to warn her.

So strong is his conviction that she's in danger that he even considered going to the police.

Yes, and they‘ll throw me in jail as a suspect the minute they figure out that I was up in Woodbury Hills this morning asking about Isabel Van Nuys, and that Olivia McGlinchie's body was found near my property, and both women have Angela's organs.