Authors: Sara Rosett
How had Cass phrased her comment about Gwen at the barbeque? She had something to tell me that was so “not Gwen.” Had Cass known something about Gwen that Gwen didn’t want anyone to know? Her meeting in the parking lot certainly seemed clandestine, but maybe it was just the rain, the overcast atmosphere, and her raincoat.
My cell phone rang. It was Mitch. “Hey,” he said. “I’m over at Nick Townsend’s. His car battery’s dead and I’m going to let him borrow my car this afternoon. Could you come pick me up?”
“Sure. Where does he live?”
“You’re not going to believe this. A block over from us.”
“I should have known. Why did I even ask?”
Mitch’s laugh sounded down the line. “It’s a garage apartment on the corner of Twentieth and Birch.”
I found the garage apartment and pulled into the driveway behind a Mustang. My headlights flashed on the
AFPILOT
license plate. I hit power on my phone to call Mitch, but it responded with “Battery Low, Recharge.” I unbuckled Livvy’s car seat and rushed through the heavy raindrops and up the steps to the apartment.
Nick jerked open the door, greeted me while ushering me inside. “Want something to drink?” Nick asked.
“Sure. Water would be great.” Nick pulled a water bottle out of the fridge while I took in the apartment. It was a typical bachelor pad with a coffee table, a single bar stool, and a worn couch that looked like the twin of the couch in the squad’s break room. An oak entertainment center with every piece of high-tech sound and
video equipment imaginable showed where Nick spent his money. A SportsCenter anchor detailed the latest baseball stats from the large-screen TV. What Nick lacked in the furniture department he made up for with his wall hangings. Framed posters of every type of Air Force plane covered each wall. Even the niche above the sink had a plane. Nick could check out the details of a C-5, a massive cargo hauler, while he washed dishes.
I took a sip of the water. A huffy sound came from the car seat. Mitch drained his Gatorade and stood up.
“We’d better go. Livvy’s going to be hungry when she wakes up,” I explained to Nick. “Thanks for the water.”
Mitch took the car seat from me and started bouncing. “Call me when you get the new battery. I’ll walk over and pick up my car.”
“Nah. I’ll drop yours off and walk back if the rain’s stopped. It’s only a block. Thanks.” Nick smoothed down his Air Force Academy sweatshirt and opened the door again.
Back in the car, I gestured to the vanity plate. “He’s a little overboard on the Air Force.”
Mitch shrugged and backed out of the driveway. “He likes to fly, no big deal.” The Cherokee’s movement lulled Livvy back to sleep, so we could talk without shouting.
“Don’t you think he’s a little extreme?” I asked. Mitch liked flying, but his identity wasn’t solely wrapped up in the wings he wore on his flight suit. “He had his Air Force Academy yearbooks out as coffee table books.”
“Yeah,” Mitch conceded with a grin. “That’s a little weird, but Nick’s a little hyper. He goes overboard.”
I told Abby about Nick’s extreme decorating style when she dropped by after school to help me price things for the garage sale.
“It figures. I set up a friend, a teacher from school, with Nick. She said all he could talk about was how great flying was and every trip he’d ever been on. She was ready to bolt by the time the appetizer arrived.”
“Sorry,” I said after I yawned. “It’s not you.”
“Did Livvy sleep last night?” Abby asked as she flicked through a pile of videos.
“No. Maybe she’s teething. I bought some Orajel today.” I described the weird parking lot encounter I’d seen between Gwen and the man.
Abby dragged a box across the garage floor, pulled out the masking tape and a pen, and asked, “Do you think she’s having an affair?”
“What?” I asked, surprised that idea was the first thing that came to Abby’s mind, but I’d wondered, too. I hadn’t wanted to put it into words, even in my own mind. Leave it to Abby to put it into words. She always says what she thinks.
“Well, it sounds like it. They meet in a parking lot. Leave one car there and take one to a hotel. That way both cars aren’t at the hotel, in case anyone notices.”
“But there aren’t any hotels close to here.” I marked a beanbag chair five dollars.
“She lives down the street, maybe he lives around here, too. And downtown isn’t that far from here.”
“Now I really wish I’d circled back to see what happened, but it’s kind of unlikely, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not.” Abby could tell I wasn’t convinced. “Listen, when my mom and dad divorced we found out things you wouldn’t believe. The finer points of sneaking around were broadcast around the house during
the fights.” Her voice was joking, but her eyes were serious and sad.
My own upbringing was so far from anything like that description that I didn’t know what to say. Most people I knew had divorced parents. The fact that mine were still together, and happy, made me almost a freak. My family was so normal it was almost abnormal. “I’m sorry.”
Abby shrugged and pulled a hand mixer out of her box. “It was a long time ago.”
I shifted to another subject. “Did Cass ever say anything to you about Gwen? That she knew something about her?”
“No.” Abby’s forehead wrinkled together in thought. “No. I think I’d remember something like that.”
“She and Steven seem very close. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would have an affair.”
“You never know.”
I pushed my bangs out of my eyes and hurried to the door, shushing Rex’s volley of deep barks. Late morning sunlight streamed in through the front door, silhouetting Diana’s trim form and highlighting my grubbiness. The Orajel hadn’t worked wonders and if Livvy hadn’t already been on antibiotics I’d be making another doctor appointment for her right now. It was all I could manage to throw on some gray sweats, tuck my hair behind my ears, and rub the sleep out of my eyes this morning.
“I had an appointment cancel this morning.” Diana flinched as Rex let out one more sharp bark. “I thought I could help you price things for the garage sale, but if it is a bad time …” Her voice trailed off. In contrast to my
slob-around-the-house ensemble, Diana wore a crisply ironed pink oxford shirt, navy slacks, and leather penny loafers. She looked like a mannequin from the Ralph Lauren display. Not exactly what I would pick to work in the grime of my garage, but Diana looked like she buffed and waxed her garage floor, so she probably thought she was dressed appropriately. Even though my garage would probably shock her, I wasn’t about to turn down her help.
“No. It’s not a problem. Livvy’s not sleeping well. Just let me show you where everything is and I’ll be there in a minute.” I led the way through the house and down the steps to the basement garage.
“You keep the dog inside?” She quick-stepped past the baby gate that confined Rex to the mudroom.
“For now.” I sighed, resigned to the new arrangement.
Diana eyed Rex warily. “I’m more of a cat person, but we don’t have pets right now. I can work by myself if you have other things you need to do,” Diana said.
Like shower, she was probably thinking. I went to the garage door on the right and I heaved it up and over my head. Our older neighborhood didn’t have many two-car garages and few with garage door openers. The left-hand side door stuck so I left it down and clicked on the single overhead light. Digging out the box of pricing materials, I explained the different areas where we had grouped similar things. “I left the box cutter right here.” I patted the top of a book box and looked on the floor. “I’ll get some scissors.”
“Here. I have a Swiss Army knife.” She pulled it out of her compartmentalized purse and neatly lined it up next to the black marker. I stifled another sigh. Trust her to look perfect and be prepared. Diana, the good
Girl Scout. It irritated me that she looked composed and was prepared while I felt out of control. I was supposed to be the organized one, damn it. I rubbed my greasy bangs and said, “I left Livvy in her swing.” I could see the warning sticker clearly in my mind,
NEVER LEAVE CHILD UNATTENDED.
“Let me put her down for her nap and I’ll be right back.”
“I will be fine. And really, if you need a little time, take it.” She pulled a box toward her and began removing gardening tools. “I remember that—having a newborn.” She smiled. “Wonderful and overwhelming at the same time.”
I took her at her word and quickly showered and slapped on some makeup after putting Livvy down. When I returned to the garage, I blinked. The boxes in the corner where Diana had been working were arranged with prices boldly marked. Now she was sorting books into neat piles.
“Wow, you’ve done a lot.”
“It always surprises me how much I can get done when there aren’t any kids under my feet.”
I sat the baby monitor on a box and sorted through clothes, hanging them on wire hangers. “Can I get you anything? Would you like a Coke or ice tea?” I asked.
Diana pointed at her bottled water next to her purse. “I’ve got water. It’s all I drink, besides green tea.”
“Oh.” I certainly didn’t have green tea, so I turned the conversation. “How many kids do you have?”
“Two. Gavin is five and Stacy is four. I just dropped her off at preschool.”
A few scratchy halfhearted cries came through the monitor and I tensed, listening for more. When there were no more sounds I went back to work saying, “She’s not sleeping well. I’m not sure why.”
“I remember that stage. Gavin decided he did not want to sleep when he turned four months old. Just like that. From one night to the next, he stopped sleeping. We tried everything—pacifiers, feeding, music, night-lights, no night-lights.” She laughed.
It sounded like our last few nights. Maybe I’d laugh like that someday, but right now I was getting desperate with sleep deprivation. “What did you do?”
“We let him learn to go to sleep on his own. There’s a really good book on it. I could lend it to you.”
“That would be great.” I was ready to try anything at this point.
“It wasn’t easy. We basically had to let him cry. He had to go to sleep on his own.”
“Oh.” I hated for Livvy to cry.
“Some people think it sounds cruel, but it’s not. They have to learn sometime and it makes everything else go so much smoother, especially when they get older. I’d much rather teach a baby to sleep on their own than a two-or three-year-old. I know some people who still let their kindergarteners sleep in bed with them.” She radiated disapproval. Her tone sounded like she was describing a person who let their kids eat raw eggs.
“I’ll read the book,” I said, but with some reservations. I searched for something to say, but couldn’t come up with anything else, so we worked in silence. Diana seemed to be one of those people who didn’t feel they needed to make conversation, but silence felt awkward to me.
“Oh, look at this,” she said after a while. She flipped through a book.
“Television’s First Families
,” she read. I caught a glimpse of the Beav and then Lucy, her mouth bulging with chocolates. “I’m going to take this with me
right now. I love those old shows. Remind me to pay for it on the day of the sale.”
She set the book aside and continued until she finished with the books. I noticed her perfect pale pink nails when she pushed back her cuff and checked her leather-banded watch. “I have to go now.”
As I walked to her car with her, I crossed my arms to hide my hangnail on my right hand and smothered a sigh. I couldn’t keep up with women like Diana. How did she maintain her polished image, flawless hair and makeup, and outfits that matched her nail polish? And she didn’t have a speck of dirt on her. I brushed at a smudge across my knees. “How do you always manage to look so perfect?”
Diana’s eyebrows went up and then she self-consciously tugged at her shirt cuffs, straightening them. “Oh. I, uh, don’t know. I never feel like I look that great.” She quickly turned the conversation before I could protest. “Did Cass have anything else that we need to move over here?” Diana asked before she opened the door of her pristine white SUV.
“No. We moved everything over here before …” I faltered at the words “Cass died.” Diana nodded her head and I substituted, “the squadron barbeque.”
“You found her?”
I nodded, hoping she wouldn’t ask how Cass had looked.
“Was she still alive?”
No one else had asked me that question. My surprise must have shown on my face because Diana continued in her even, reasonable tone, “She hadn’t been gone very long before we heard the sirens. It seemed so fast.” Her eyes, clear and light blue, gazed at me unblinkingly.
“No. She was dead when I found her.” I said the word I had avoided earlier. Diana’s unflinching translucent-blue gaze and detached approach had infected me. Since Diana seemed to be in the information-gathering mode, I asked her a question: “Did you talk to her that day?”
She tossed the book inside the SUV and hopped lightly into the driver’s seat. “Not that I remember.” Diana studied the trees arching over her car with leaves tinged red and gold. Her gaze cut back to me. “She talked to Gwen. Gwen looked furious. They didn’t get along, you know.” She slammed her door and rolled down her window.
“Did you see anyone around her van that day? Anyone that’s not usually at the squadron?”
Her eyes seemed cold and remote as she studied me. “Interesting that you asked the same question as the police.” The earlier rapport we’d shared while talking about our children was gone. I shifted my feet and tried to come up with a suitable response, but Diana continued, “You should leave it alone. Give her family some peace.” Her window glided up, she turned toward the road, and didn’t glance back.
It didn’t look like she’d offer to help me again.
The next morning, Thursday, I cruised down the steep winding street of Rim Rock Road, one of the first roads cut into Black Rock Hill near the turn of the century when the town was a logging center. Commerce thrived around the river that rushed through downtown. Nearby, the residential area of lower Black Rock Hill boasted addresses of the town’s wealthiest residents. Our house, located farther up the hill, had been
built later. Driving through the oldest neighborhoods with the gingerbread-trimmed Victorians made me a little sad. So many of the historic homes were divided into apartments and a few looked like a good shove would send them tumbling.