No One Needs to Know (4 page)

Laurie nodded glumly, and stepped inside. “Broken eggs. It’s been a rough night.” She carried the messy bag around the corner into the kitchen. With the faux-wood cabinets and chipped, yellow Formica countertops, it was an ugly work space, but at least the oven was reliable—for an electric.

Frannie licked up the trail of raw egg that was leaking. “Is it okay for her to eat that?” Laurie asked, setting the bag down on the counter.

“Oh, yeah, gives her a shiny coat.” Krista petted the Labrador. “Doesn’t it, girl? You’re the best combination mop and vacuum cleaner in the world. Yes, you are.” She looked at Laurie, and suddenly seemed serious. “You said it was a rough night. Are you okay?”

Laurie unloaded the milk and orange juice. She nodded a few more times than necessary. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine now.”

Krista sighed. “Well, we had a—situation here.”

With one hand in the bag, Laurie stopped and gaped at her. “What? Is Joey okay? When I called two hours ago, you said—”

“He’s fine, went to sleep without a fuss. This is something else—”

“What?” Laurie asked anxiously. She was thinking about Tad and his brother, Ryder. Had they phoned here—or come by before heading to the diner?

“Those lemon bars you made,” Krista whispered. “I ate four of them. They’re like crack. I couldn’t stop. If I end up looking like a beached whale, it’s your fault.”

Laurie sighed, and then worked up a smile. “You scared me for a minute there . . .” She continued unloading the bag. “I made those for you. Take some home to Nate. In fact, speaking of your sweet, understanding husband—”

“Who called twice tonight, by the way,” Krista interrupted. “They’re training a new guy for the midnight to morning shift, so they let Nate out early. He’s heading home now, and ready to chase me around the bedroom—so he claims. I should scram.”

Laurie and Frannie followed her back into the living room. Krista closed up her computer laptop and started collecting her books and spiral notepad. Frannie nuzzled up beside Laurie, and she scratched the dog behind her ear.

“You started to say something about my ‘sweet, understanding husband,’” Krista said.

Laurie had wanted to ask if her sweet, understanding husband would mind if she and the dog spent the night here. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask now. She shrugged awkwardly. “It was nothing. Let—let me pack up some lemon bars for him . . .”

She retreated to the kitchen and put some of the dessert bars into a Tupperware container. She really didn’t want be alone right now. She was wondering if Krista would mind leaving Frannie here for the night. But the dog always went into a barking fit whenever Krista left her, and Laurie couldn’t risk waking Joey. She didn’t have a gun in the house. The next best thing was Brian’s old aluminum baseball bat. She’d had a few nervous nights when she’d slept with the bat at her bedside. It looked like tonight was going to be one of them.

Laurie walked Krista and Frannie to the door and stepped outside with them. Frannie darted over to some bushes to pee. From the front stoop, Laurie gazed up and down the street once again.

“What’s wrong?” her friend asked, hugging her books and the Tupperware container to her chest. “You seem tense. Is everything okay?”

“My last customer at the restaurant was kind of creepy, that’s all.”

“Why didn’t you say something? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Laurie said. She couldn’t tell Krista the whole story. Hell, Krista looked up to her. “Nothing happened. He just—it’s silly. It’s really not worth going into. I’m fine.”

Krista stroked her arm. “Well, lock up, and don’t hesitate to call if you get scared. I mean that. And have a glass of wine to take the edge off. What the hell? Have two.”

Laurie nodded. “This may be the night for it.” She clutched together the front of her cardigan. “Would you do me a favor? Could you blink the outside lights once you’re inside to let me know you’re safe?”

They’d gone through this routine three months back, when someone had been assaulting women on the college campus. The assaults stopped, but they never did find the guy. They’d kept up the blinking lights ritual for three weeks—until Krista had deemed it no longer necessary.

But she agreed to it tonight. She and Frannie headed down toward the end of the cul-de-sac. Biting her lip, Laurie watched from the front stoop as they disappeared behind some bushes near the front of their townhouse apartment. It was quiet on the cul-de-sac, but Laurie didn’t hear Krista’s door open or shut. She nervously rubbed her arms and waited. At last, she saw the outside front lights blink three times.

Laurie ducked inside, closed the door and double-locked it.

She drew the front window curtains, and then turned on the TV for some soft background noise—and a little bit of company. A
Frasier
rerun was on. She headed toward Joey’s room to check in on him. But something near one end of the sofa caught her eye. It was one of Krista’s textbooks, half-hidden by a throw pillow.

Laurie figured Krista wouldn’t need it anymore tonight. She set the book on the coffee table, and made a mental note to call her about it in the morning—if Krista didn’t call her first. She peeked into Joey’s bedroom. It was the nicest room in the place: new blue carpet, all new furniture from Ikea, including a rocking chair, and a night-light that created a starry pattern on the ceiling. Joey was asleep under a yellow blanket with cartoon elephants on it.

The home-line phone rang, breaking the silence. Laurie quickly headed toward the kitchen to grab it before the ringing woke Joey. She figured Krista must have needed her book after all. She snatched up the receiver. “Yes, you left your book here,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d want it tonight.”

There was no sound on the other end.

Laurie hesitated. “Hello? Krista?”

She heard a sigh. “I no your loan now,” he whispered.

Laurie didn’t understand. There was a click on the other end, and then the line went dead.

Her hand still clutching the receiver, she looked at the caller ID box: NUMBER BLOCKED.

What had he said? Was it Tad? Then she realized.

“I know you’re alone now.”

For a moment, Laurie couldn’t move. She wanted to phone the police. But what would she tell them? And if she called Krista, she’d have to explain to her about Tad—and his brother.

She quickly checked to make sure the windows were locked. She kept telling herself that Tad was just screwing with her head, trying to get her attention. She knew him. She’d dealt with him before. He would never hurt her or Joey.

But then, she didn’t know his brother.

Laurie didn’t bother going to bed that night. She knew she’d never fall asleep. A glass of Merlot didn’t help. She nodded off only briefly, forty-five minutes at the most.

She spent the entire night in the rocking chair in Joey’s room—with her dead husband’s aluminum baseball bat across her lap.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

Friday, May 30, 12:25
P.M.

Seattle, Washington

“O
kay, so what’s the situation here?” Maureen asked, stepping inside the food truck.

It was like walking into a sweatbox. Despite the vents blowing at full speed, the trailer was twenty degrees hotter than the mid-60s temperature outside. The savory aroma of caramelized onions and meat on the grill always smelled so good at first. But by the end of her four-hour shift, the stench would saturate Maureen’s clothes, and she’d be sick of it.

“God, you’re a lifesaver,” said her boss, Cheryl, turning from the grill to smile at her. She held a spatula in one hand and a salt shaker in the other. “Thanks for doing this. The ‘situation here’ is we’re out of the Philadelphia cheesesteak, and some customers are mighty pissed off about it . . .”

“Well, they’ll live,” Maureen said, stowing her purse under the cash register. “I’ll put a sign by the order window—
If you want a cheesesteak sandwich, you’re shit out of luck. Go to Philadelphia.
”

On the grill, six buns were toasting. Maureen could tell at a glance what else was cooking: a teriyaki chicken and Swiss, two cheeseburgers, two pulled pork, and a turkey cranberry.

This was supposed to be her day off. Fridays during the summer, a lot of office people worked a half day and skipped having lunch downtown. So Cheryl had decreed that one of them would get every second Friday off, while the other worked alone. It was hectic, but manageable. The rest of the week, the workload would have been impossible for anyone to handle by themselves. It wasn’t just about cooking the food, which was tough enough. They had to take orders, collect money, and get that food to the right customers.

Though she’d only had the job for three months, Maureen had learned fast. She and Cheryl had work chemistry. They usually fell into a perfect rhythm together whenever they had a mad rush.

Except for the cheesesteak crisis, Cheryl seemed to have things under control. Maureen had checked the crowd outside on Fourth Avenue, by the downtown library. Five people waited in line at the window of the pale green truck. They didn’t look too restless.

On the side of the vehicle was their logo—a fifties-inspired cartoon of a plump, middle-aged waitress holding up a tray of food with one hand. Alongside this illustration, it said in big letters:

GRILL GIRL

Your Lunch Break Starts Here!

Sliders, Sandwiches, and Burgers to Die For!

Maureen often wondered if their customers thought the cartoon waitress was her—or possibly Cheryl, who owned Grill Girl. They were both full-figured blondes. Pushing sixty, Maureen was flattered whenever patrons mistook her for her boss. Cheryl looked like her much younger sister, but their age difference was only three years. Cheryl had a slightly careworn, still pretty face. She was sexy in an earth mother sort of way.

Maureen was having her over to dinner tonight. In fact, she’d been in the checkout line at Safeway with a cart full of provisions for the lasagna dinner when she’d gotten Cheryl’s distress call. Her boss had an “emergency meeting” with a potential client for some big catering gig. The people wanted to meet at 1:30, and Cheryl needed Maureen to finish up the last hour with the lunch crowd.

“By the way, you owe me thirteen bucks for cab fare,” Maureen announced, rolling up the sleeves of her lightweight pink pullover. “I’ll start bagging while you finish up this batch. Then you can get the heck out of here . . .” She started examining the orders on the chef’s clipboard. Maureen got the side portions of garlic green beans and mixed balsamic veggies out of the refrigerator and into the microwave. Then she started stacking up the refrigerated six-ounce containers of Cheryl’s homemade coleslaw and potato salad.

“So this catering job thing, who’s the big, important client you’re meeting?” she asked.

“I don’t want to jinx it by saying,” Cheryl answered, hovering over the grill.

“It’s not Gil Garrett and Shawna Farrell, is it?”

She noticed her boss pause for a moment.

Gil and Shawna were on the top of Cheryl’s wish list for special catering gigs, a list that included notables like Bill and Melinda Gates, Paul Allen, and Jeff Bezos, and for reasons Maureen didn’t fathom, a perfectly nice but nothing-special rest home called Evergreen Manor.

Gil and Shawna were almost an obsession with Cheryl. They lived in one of those Medina mansion-fortresses on the lake with all the other multimillionaires. Gil was a retired major film producer, and his wife, Shawna, had won an Oscar about forty or so years ago. Now she had a line of yoga and exercise attire for women. They had one of her stores in Bellevue Square and another at Pacific Place, downtown. Maureen imagined only the most hoity-toity malls had Shawna Chic stores. Shawna Farrell wouldn’t deign to sell her wares next to an Applebee’s. And there was no way in hell a health nut like Shawna was going to hire Grill Girl to cater her next soiree.

It was obvious that Cheryl figured differently. And maybe she was right. With a profile on the Food Network, and write-ups in the
Seattle Times
and
Seattle Met
magazine, it wasn’t totally out of left field that Grill Girl might land a catering job with Mr. and Mrs. Gil Garrett. Cheryl had certainly tried hard enough to make it happen. She’d sent flyers and coupons to Gil’s house, and had even gone to Shawna Chic in Pacific Place and left sample containers of her best, low-cal lunches for the sales staff. She’d also gushed about Gil and Shawna in the
Seattle Met
piece, making no bones about the fact that she wanted to cater an event for them.

Maureen stopped to stare at her boss, and wondered if all of Cheryl’s campaigning had paid off at last. “Well, did we finally land a catering job for the Garretts?” she asked again.

Cheryl gave an evasive shrug. “Let’s just say this potential gig is very ‘movie-related.’” With her spatula, she set two more sandwiches on foil wrappers laid out on the counter. “I’ll give you the whole scoop at dinner tonight, I promise. We’re still on, aren’t we?”

“You bet,” Maureen said, wrapping the hot sandwiches. “Six-thirty, my place.”

Maureen had a scoop for her, too—a revelation actually. It was why she was having this dinner. Whatever Cheryl might disclose about this potential catering gig, the news would pale in comparison to what Maureen had to tell her.

Before she left for her big meeting, Cheryl took off her apron and gave it to Maureen to put on. Cheryl’s name tag was still pinned to it.

For the next hour, while Maureen worked alone, several customers—even a few semi-regulars—mistook her for Cheryl. She probably could have taken off the name tag and made things less confusing. But Maureen left it on.

It was strange how some people could come to a place again and again, and never really notice the person serving them. That was especially true of the texters and cell phone talkers. Flattering as it was to be mistaken for Cheryl, at times it was kind of irritating. It was as if she and Cheryl were just a couple of faceless blobs inside a truck filling food orders.