Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

Bill Gaynor closed his eyes and breathed in slowly.

“I noticed you have a security system,” Duckworth said.

He opened his eyes. “Yes. But Rose only turned it on at night when she went to bed. She didn’t have it on through the day. Every time she’d go out, to go to the store, or take Matthew for a walk in his stroller, she’d have to disengage it before she opened the door. So she only put it on at night.”

“Okay. What about just locking it?”

A fast nod. “That she almost always did. She’d turn the dead bolt every time she came back in the house.”

“What about friends? Did your wife belong to any clubs? Like a university women’s club or a gym? Anything like that?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

“And I have to ask, Mr. Gaynor, whether it’s possible there could have been anyone else.”

“Anyone else?”

Duckworth said nothing, just let the question sink in.

“Oh, no, God. I mean, we were devoted to each other, and she just had a baby. She’s hardly— That’s a terrible thing to ask.”

“I’m sorry. Any kind of trouble with the law?”

“Are you serious? Of course not. Okay, she got a speeding ticket a week or so ago, but I’d hardly call that being in trouble with the law.”

“Nor would I,” Duckworth said gently. “Do you have family in town?”

“No. We don’t really have any extended family at all. I was an only child and my parents passed away when I was in my teens. And Rose, she did have an older sister, but she died years ago.”

“How’d that happen?”

“Horseback riding. She fell off a horse and broke her neck.”

Duckworth winced. “Parents?”

“Like me, Rose’s mother and father passed away fairly early. I think she lost her mother when she was nineteen, and her father when she was twenty-two.”

“So there’s no parents, in-laws, who might have keys to the house.”

“No, just Sarita.”

“Who’s Sarita?”

“The nanny. I don’t know where she is. She should be here. I’m pretty sure this is the day she comes in the morning.”

“What’s Sarita’s last name?”

Gaynor’s mouth opened but nothing came out.

“Her name?” Duckworth repeated.

“I don’t... I don’t think I’ve ever known Sarita’s last name. Rose, she took care of that end of things.” His face reddened with embarrassment. “I know I should know this.”

“That’s okay,” Duckworth said, keeping his disapproval to himself. “But what can you tell me about her?”

“When we had Matthew, I thought it would be a good idea for Rose to have some help. She’s had... health problems over the years. So if we had someone come in a few times a week to help out... Sarita isn’t exactly a nanny, although she’s got training and has worked with children. But even if she could be here just to spell Rose. Give her a chance to get out of the house. Do some shopping without having to lug Matthew and the car seat and all that. Plus, Sarita helped out with other things. Cleaning, getting the laundry caught up. Cooking. That kind of thing. All before she headed off, if she had a shift.”

“A shift?” Duckworth asked.

“Yeah. She pulled a few shifts at a nursing home or a hospital or something. I don’t know exactly what it was.”

“How did you find Sarita? To hire her?”

“It wasn’t me who did it. I told Rose I thought it’d be a good idea for her to have help, but she did the actual looking. I think she saw an ad online somewhere; there was a phone number. She called and Sarita came out for an interview and Rose liked her and that was that.”

“And you’re sure you don’t know her last name.”

Gaynor shook his head.

Duckworth was thinking that Rosemary Gaynor would probably have a number for the nanny in the contacts in her phone. Failing that, it would probably be written down somewhere. Then he had another thought.

“How’s Sarita paid? You must have some canceled checks. There’ll be a name on those.”

“It was... cash,” he said. “We always pay Sarita in cash. She’s not, strictly speaking... I’m not sure whether Sarita is here legally.”

“Okay. Where’s she from?”

“I didn’t even think people from Mexico came this far north, but she might be from there. Or she might be from the Philippines. She doesn’t look really, you know, that foreign, like maybe one of her parents was an American. Like, a white American.”

Duckworth said nothing, made a note.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure about this. Does it matter where she’s from? I mean, you’ve got that insane woman who had Matthew. That’s who you need to be talking to.”

Duckworth said, “Can you excuse me for five seconds?”

He left the dining room, waved over Officer Gilchrist. “Find out where Marla Pickens lives and seal that house off. No one gets in. Right now.”

“Got it,” he said.

Duckworth went back to his living room chair. Gaynor had a cell phone in his hand. He wasn’t making a call or checking mail. He was simply staring at it.

“I feel like I should be calling someone,” he said. “But I can’t think who.”

“Let’s get back to Sarita. You say she should have been here today. Is that right?”

“Yes. I’m certain this is her morning to come. And yesterday. She was supposed to be here yesterday.”

“Okay,” Duckworth said. “If she’s supposed to be here, and she isn’t, that raises a couple of possibilities, Mr. Gaynor. One is that she may have something to do with this, or know something about what happened here. And...” Duckworth hesitated a moment. “And it may mean that she’s in some kind of trouble herself.”

Bill Gaynor blinked. “Oh, my God. This Marla woman didn’t just kill Rose. She’s killed Sarita, too, hasn’t she?”

Thirteen

I’d put Marla back in my car, up front in the passenger seat. I got behind the wheel, but we weren’t going anywhere. Officer Gilchrist had ordered me to surrender my keys earlier, and then he was back asking to see Marla’s driver’s license, as if he wanted to know where she lived. He got on his radio to pass along some information, then kept watch on us to make sure we didn’t leave the scene. Agnes had gone down the street, to where they’d strung the police tape, to watch for lawyer Natalie Bondurant.

“Remember coming up to the cabin?” Marla asked. The question came out of nowhere.

“Wow, that was a long time ago,” I said. “I only went up half a dozen times, when I was sixteen or seventeen? Eighteen maybe?”

Marla was referring to a place her parents owned on Lake George, barely an hour’s drive north of Promise Falls. And to call it a cabin was to do the place a disservice. It was a beautiful home. The property had been in Gill Pickens’s family for several generations, and long ago there had been a simple cabin and an outhouse on the site. Gill’s parents tore it down and built a house in its place, but it never stopped being called “the cabin.”

Back when Agnes and my mother were getting along better than they were now, my family was invited up there for a few weekends. I swam and waterskied and went searching up and down the lake in Gill’s boat for teenage girls. Marla was a little kid then, probably six or seven.

“I had a crush on you,” she said quietly, looking down into her lap.

“What?”

“I mean, even though you were my cousin, and, like, ten years older, I really liked you. Don’t you remember me following you around all the time?”

“You were my shadow,” I said. “I remember anytime I wanted to go anywhere, you wanted to go with me.”

She smiled weakly. “Remember that time I found you? With what’s-her-name?”