Kiss Her Goodbye (38 page)

But making him the prime suspect in a homicide?

After a few minutes, the door opens again; the detective strides back into the room.

“Mrs. Gattinski, I think we've covered everything. Unless you have anything else to tell me, I'm going to have to cut this short.”

“You're not taking me seriously, are you?” Stella asks. “You don't think my husband had anything to do with this case. You think I'm here to get back at him for what he did to me.”

“Mrs. Gattinski—”

“Let me tell you something, Detective. Kurt is very good at making people think he's innocent. It took me ten years to figure out that he's not. I can't believe you aren't even going to—”

“We checked out your husband a month ago, Mrs. Gattinski.”

Stunned, she asks, “You . . . you did?”

“Did you honestly think we would leave loose ends in a murder investigation?”

“But . . . I guess I'm surprised that I didn't know.”

“You didn't know because he wouldn't tell you. And neither would we. Your marriage is your business. Checking alibis is ours. Your husband told us where he was that night. We looked into it. There are reliable witnesses who can corroborate his story. He's not a suspect.”

“Oh.”

She can think of nothing else to say until he's halfway to the door again.

Then she calls after the detective, “Where was he? That night, I mean.”

The man hesitates, then flashes a sympathetic look. “You'll have to ask him, Mrs. Gattinski.”

She nods, knowing she won't.

It doesn't matter now.

Their marriage is over.

Kurt is a philanderer, but he isn't a killer.

Case closed.

At least, as far as Stella is concerned.

Slowly, she makes her way out of the room as sirens begin to wail ominously outside.

 

 

Kathleen's cell phone rings as she's heading down the thruway in the left lane at eighty miles an hour.

Her first thought is that she can't answer it. Not at this speed. She has to focus on the road, on getting herself back to Jen in one piece.

Her next thought is that she has to answer it. What if it's Detective Brodowiaz calling back?

She fumbles for the phone on the passenger's seat where she tossed it after she hung up with him a few minutes ago. It isn't there.

It rings again and she locates it on the floor beside the passenger's side door. Keeping one hand on the wheel and her eyes on the road, she swoops down to retrieve it, praying that it's the detective again; then praying that it isn't.

He promised he'd get a patrol car right over to the house.

If he's calling back, he might have good news . . .

Or he might have tragic news.

But isn't it too soon for him to be calling her back at all?

Maybe it's Jen.

But she wouldn't be able to get to the phone . . . which, Kathleen has been trying to assure herself, is why there was no answer when she tried to call home.

Bearing down on a double semi in her lane, she flips open the phone, blindly jabbing at buttons until she hits the right one.

“Hello?” she yells into the receiver.

“Kathleen?”

“Matt!”

“Are you okay?”

She breaks into tears. “Matt, where the hell have you been?”

There's a pause. Then he says tightly, “With the police.”

The word is like a cannonball launched directly at her, slamming into her and obliterating fragile hope.

“No!” Kathleen wails, instinct alone guiding the struggle to keep the car between the white lines even as her emotions swerve out of control. “Please, no. Not Jen.”

Oh, God. The police. She's too late. The police are with Matt, telling him their daughter is—

“Kathleen,” Matt's urgent voice rises above the roar of panic sweeping through her, “what are you talking about? It's Maeve. Not Jen.”

“Maeve's dead.”

“But . . .” Foot on the brake, heart still accelerating, Kathleen instinctively steers into the right lane.

Bewildered, she tries to focus on what Matt is telling her, all the while thanking God that it wasn't Jen; then blaming God for stealing her friend.

“She killed herself.”

“Gregory found her this morning. The police came to question me because—because . . . Kathleen, you have to believe me. I had nothing to do with this.”

“Matt . . . what are you talking about?”

“Maeve . . . she called me. At work. Yesterday. They must have hit redial on her phone.”

“Who?”

“The police, the detectives, whoever—they found out she called me, and they came down here to talk to me.”

“Matt, you're not making any sense. Maeve called you at work? What did she—”

“Kathleen, I swear, nothing happened between us.”

Yesterday. Matt was late getting home. He was acting so cagey, so distant this morning . . .

“Kathleen, she killed herself. Or maybe she didn't. All I know is that I had nothing to do with it. I wasn't there. I told her I couldn't—”

“Were you having an affair with Maeve?”

“No! Christ, Kathleen, aren't you listening to a word I'm saying? Do you actually think that I would—”

“I don't know what you would do, Matt, and right now I don't care. Jen is in trouble.”

“In trouble? What happened?”

“I can't explain. Just get home, Matt. Get over there now. Please, Matt. Hurry.”

“I can't go anywhere, Kathleen.”

“Why not?”

“The police—”

She doesn't stay on the line long enough to listen to what he has to say. Disconnecting the call, she throws the phone, shaking in fury, in terror.

Maeve is dead . . . and the police are questioning Matt?

Do they think her husband is capable of murder?

Chilled to the bone, Kathleen presses the gas pedal once again, speeding toward home.

 

 

The winding streets of Orchard Hollow are quietly deserted at this hour on a wintery weekday. Most parents are at work; most children are in school; most stay-at-home mothers are cozily inside their large houses watching over napping babies and toddlers.

Pulling up in front of 9 Sarah Crescent, Lucy spots a familiar car parked in the driveway.

John's car.

“Oh, God, no,” she whispers, throwing the gear into Park and jumping out of her own car.

She breaks into a frantic run, halfway to the front door when she realizes that the car in the driveway isn't empty.

John is there, behind the steering wheel, looking as stunned to see her as she is to see him.

He rolls down the window and leans out.

“What are you doing here?”

They say it in unison.

John begins to speak, but Lucy won't let him.

Seething with barely controlled rage, she blurts, “It was you. You tried to kill Margaret.”

“No.”

“Yes. Don't lie. No more lies, John.”

“Lucy, what are you—”

“You were the one who wanted her dead, John. You were the one who killed Father Joseph because he tried to protect her. And now . . . what? You're sitting here spying on her house?”

“No! Not spying. I—I just got here. I was about to get out of the car when you pulled up.”

“Well, why are you here? To finish the job? I swear to God, John, you'll have to do it over my dead body.”

“No, Lucy.” His voice is ragged; his face is etched in despair. “I would never hurt you, and I'd never hurt her. She's my daughter. She's my baby girl. I'd do anything to protect her . . . you know that.”

His fervent tone sends a chill down her spine. She wants to believe him. She so wants to believe him. But she can't ignore the lies.

“You promised me that fourteen years ago, when you took her from the hospital that day. You promised you'd keep her safe. And then . . . what? What the hell happened, John?”

He remains silent.

“Deirdre told me she was dead. You knew she wasn't, didn't you? You knew, and you let me believe it for all those years.”

“I thought it was the best thing, Lucy, for all of us. You couldn't keep her. Not with Henry. And I couldn't keep her, either. Not with—”

He breaks off; Lucy finishes the sentence for him.

“Deirdre.”

He remains silent.

“You told me Deirdre wanted to raise her. You told me she accepted her.”

“She did! She did accept her, Lucy.”

“Then why did you put her in foster care?”

John takes a deep breath. “I didn't put her in foster care. Do you know what happens to kids in that system, Lucy?”

She doesn't.

But she knows that he does. She'll never forget the horror stories he told her about his own childhood—stories that made her cry for the frightened, abused little boy he'd once been.

“I couldn't do that to her,” he tells Lucy. “So I—I brought her to the church.”

“To the
church?”
she echoes in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

“I left her on the steps at Saint Brigid's with a note. I figured God would watch over her, and Father Joseph would see that somebody—”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I was afraid to. I was afraid you'd insist on keeping her, and I was afraid of what Henry might do to her. To both of you. And I couldn't keep her either. She wasn't—she wasn't safe with me.”

“Why? She was your daughter, John. You just said you would do anything to protect her.”

“You don't understand.”

“I'm trying.” She looks into his eyes, frightened of what she sees there. “Did Deirdre try to hurt her, John? Did Deirdre try to hurt our baby?”

“No.” His voice is a strangled whisper.

“You're lying.”

“No. Not Deirdre.”

“Then who? You?” She holds her breath, anticipating the answer, trying and failing to see the man before her as capable of hurting anyone, much less a helpless child.

“No, Lucy. Not me.”

She's so relieved to hear his answer—and to realize that she believes it—that she almost misses the rest of it.

But she doesn't miss it. And the single, whispered word—just a name—sends a fresh storm of foreboding roaring through her.

“Susie.”

“Who are you?” Jen asks incredulously, staring into the crazed eyes that seem oddly, hauntingly familiar.

“You know who I am. I'm Sissy.”

Jen shakes her head. That's not why she's familiar, this insane woman whose face is mere inches from Jen's. It's something else. Something . . .

“Don't you remember me, Margaret?”

Margaret? Who's Margaret? And why—

“I'm your big sister.”

Jen shakes her head, whispers, “I don't have a sister.”

“Sure you do. You mean you don't remember?”

“Sissy—”

“Sissy. Isn't that perfect? That's what he started calling me after he brought you home.”

“Who?”

“Daddy. Who else?”

Daddy.
The word lands hard in her gut, bringing with it a fierce longing.

Shaking beneath the blankets, envisioning Matt Carmody bursting into the house at any moment, Jen resolves to keep the lunatic talking.

Jen settles on the first thing that pops into her mind.

“Is his name Quint?”

“Whose name?”

“Your—our—father's name,” she forces herself to say.

“Quint? No. Not Quint. It's John. And I'm Susie. Susie-Q—that's what he always called me. Until he showed up with you.”

She's deluded. She has Jen mixed up with someone else. Margaret, whoever that is.

“When you came along, he started calling me Sissy, when he bothered to talk to me at all. He said that was what you would call me, when you were old enough. Sissy. He was so wrapped up in his wittle tiny new baby girl,” she says in a mimicking singsong tone, her face a grotesque caricature.