You Will Never Know Read online

  YOU WILL

  NEVER KNOW

  A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE

  S. A. PRENTISS

  SCARLET

  NEW YORK

  For my parents

  YOU WILL

  NEVER KNOW

  CHAPTER ONE

  The second worst night of Jessica Thornton’s life began on Tuesday.

  After a long day of teller work at Warner Savings Bank, she came home and prepared dinner for her daughter, Emma, and stepson, Craig. With dishes done and put away, she sat down on the living room couch, aching feet up on a footstool, and glanced through the latest course catalog from the Northern Essex Community College in Massachusetts.

  The shiny pages with the bright-eyed students and promises of a better life caused something inside her to feel a tingle of desire. Even though her home here with Ted was in both their names, she had always felt like an interloper, not earning enough to do her fair share for their blended family. Her house in Haverhill, with her first husband, Bobby, had felt like a home, even though there had been a lot of fights and bitterness in that little one-story ranch. The house here in Warner was more than a hundred and fifty years old and creaked and settled at all hours of the day; the roof needed repairs, and the oil furnace gasped and groaned during the hard New England winters. But this place had belonged to Ted’s family for decades, and she knew he would never leave, never downsize, after his uncle died a couple of years back and left Ted the property.

  Even though his real estate business was in deep, deep trouble.

  She flipped through the pages some more, glanced over at Emma doing homework on the other side of the room, using the MacBook Pro as easily as if it were a toaster oven. These kids . . . When Jessica was not even ten, her first home computer had been a discarded Apple Macintosh Classic from Dad’s work, and things called the internet and the World Wide Web were just stirring. Jessica had started exploring the world of BBS, AOL, and even software design, learning to take apart hard drives and computer monitors, before a certain boy caught her attention and made her focus on other things.

  Her Emma was a star on the school’s varsity track team, and Emma’s coach had already whispered to her that next year Emma should start thinking about college scholarships. Her girl, having a free ticket to college! Having gotten pregnant with Emma by Bobby during the summer after high school graduation, Jessica had never had the chance to go to college, to expand her knowledge of computers or anything else.

  But now it was time for a change.

  Jessica went back to the catalog, read the description for getting an associate degree in business management. It said the program “will prepare you to enter the workforce directly in such entry-level positions as supervisors, management or sales trainees, assistant managers, or administrators.”

  She rubbed the slick pages. After years of plodding along as a bank teller, she now wanted more. Ted owned Warner Real Estate and the real estate market was barely stirring. In the past six months he had sold only an empty storefront lot on Water Street and a condo unit out near the town forest. Three other deals—all homes—had fallen through because the buyers couldn’t get financing. Bless Ted, he tried to keep a cheerful outlook about things—“Trust me, hon, the market’s ready to rebound”—but this week’s news from the famed tony town of Concord, right next to Warner, had really shaken him.

  He and a friend had a proposal to subdivide one of the last available empty lots in Concord, and they had gone before the zoning board of appeals to get a variance. Before leaving for the meeting, Ted had kissed her and said, “My bud says it’s in the bag, we’ll get the variance. Start breaking ground in a month, start selling lots soon after. The income from this project alone will make us fat and happy for years.”

  But hours later Ted had come home deflated, his usually smiling face somber, and had simply said, “They turned us down.”

  Now her husband was out with his partner on this deal, Ben Powell, grabbing cheeseburgers and beer at Harry’s Place in town, trying to brainstorm another approach. Ted had left a message on the landline’s voicemail, the first of two messages. The second message . . . she didn’t want to think about it. That one had been deleted almost instantly. It was from the same man who had called here last Friday and left a nearly identical message.

  Poor Ted.

  Poor her.

  Meanwhile, she wasn’t going to sit on her butt and wait for the real estate market to get back on track. Oh, it wouldn’t pay off for a while, but if she got an associate degree, at least she could be up for a management track at the bank. Earlier today she had briefly talked to the branch manager, Ellen Nickerson, about the bank’s scholarship program for employees, and Ellen had promised to help her out.

  She turned the page in the catalog, winced at the pain in her right shoulder. This morning she and other tellers at the bank had had to bring in cases of copier paper, boxes of forms and paperwork, and pile them up in a supply closet. Not really the job of a teller, but at Warner Savings, her job description and that of the others always had a clause at the end that said, “Other duties as assigned.”

  “Mom?” Emma was moving sheets of paper and file folders from one side of the cluttered corner desk to the other. “I can’t find my blue folder. Have you seen it?”

  Jessica lowered the catalog. “No, I haven’t,” she said. “Could it be in the kitchen?”

  Emma shook her head. She had long, flawless runner’s legs, blond hair down to her shoulders, and a sweet face with a little pug nose and perfect white teeth. Jessica was glad to see she was doing better. Two days ago—Sunday—she had stayed in her room all day, curled up in a ball, saying she just felt lousy, something was going on with her stomach and she had cramps, but by Monday she was ready to go back to school, and last night she had even felt well enough to go to a civic awards banquet sponsored by the Warner Chamber of Commerce, where Ted was the master of ceremonies.

  “No,” Emma said. “I’ve got my knapsack right here and I didn’t open it until now. Oh, damnit . . .”

  Jessica said, “Language, young lady.”

  Emma swiveled in her chair. “Craig and I were leaving school to catch a ride home with Heather and her boyfriend, and we bumped into a couple of kids. Me and Craig dropped our stuff. I bet the folder’s with Craig.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Mom . . .” Emma rolled her eyes, biting her lower lip. “Would you mind going up to Craig’s room to see if he has it? Do you mind?”

  “Nope, not at all,” Jessica said, getting off the couch as her daughter turned away. Yet in that simple request, something more than just the reluctance of going up to her stepbrother’s bedroom seemed to bother Emma. Jessica had that mother’s sense that something was going on with her daughter, weighing on her mind. Just the look on Emma’s face—there was more going on there than concern over a missing folder.

  Jessica decided not to say anything and walked by her hardworking girl.

  After going up the narrow creaking staircase—one of the joys of living in a home built when Lincoln was president—Jessica took a right, knocked on Craig’s bedroom door. The upstairs was small and confining, with the main bathroom at the top of the stairs and with Emma’s room right across from her stepbrother’s.

  No answer, which wasn’t a surprise.

  She knocked again, harder.

  Nothing.

  Jessica sighed. She didn’t want to go back and disappoint Emma, so she opened the door and walked in. The smell of a boy’s room struck her. There were clothes on the floor and magazines and an empty pizza box, and there was an unmade bed, posters on the wall for bands she had never heard of. Craig was sitting at a small desk, looking at his computer scre
en, earbuds in, and—what the hell was on that screen? Could it—

  Somehow he sensed she was there, and with one push of a key the computer screen went blank. He turned and slowly blinked twice, as if he were an old turtle that had been surprised. Craig tugged out one earbud and then the other.

  “Yeah, Jessica, what is it?”

  Three years in and she still wasn’t used to him calling her by her first name. Jessica had encouraged him many times to call her Mom but had given up about a year ago. She had tried her best, had even spent a couple of hundred hard-earned dollars on books about blended families. Nothing seemed to work. Some days he was cheerful and upbeat, and other days . . . well, she had heard tales of moody teenage boys, and lucky her, when she had married Ted three years ago, she had gotten one right out of the box.

  “Emma’s doing homework. She’s missing a blue folder. She said you and she bumped into some kids while you were leaving, that you dropped some stuff. Could you have it?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Could you look?”

  “I don’t have to look. I know I don’t have it.”

  “Craig, please,” she said, and then he looked at her again, oddly, as if he were seeing her for the very first time in his life.

  “Tell me again what Emma said?” he asked.

  Jessica felt that by entering this boy’s room, she was stepping into a place that held dreams, fantasies, and frustrations she could never understand. “Emma said the two of you bumped into some kids while you were leaving school.”

  “Bumped,” Craig repeated with a smirk on his face. He was tall, gangly, with a rough complexion and a thick thatch of brown hair that was never combed. “The two of us got jumped by our own little group of alt-right clowns—the wrestling team—and they decided to have some fun with us. There was no bump. Just a bunch of elbows and hands flying around, and our stuff dumped on the lawn.”

  “Craig—”

  “I don’t have her precious folder.” Craig put the earbuds back in and went back to his computer.

  But he didn’t do anything.

  The screen was still blank. Jessica was suddenly nauseated, as if she had just bitten into a crisp-looking apple and tasted soft mush instead. Because of what had been on Craig’s monitor when she had opened the door: a shaky video of a young woman’s face with an erect penis dangling over her half-open mouth, her eyes closed. Jessica backed out, closed the door, and went back downstairs, stomach still slowly flip-flopping, rehearsing what she would say to her daughter, but Emma beat her to it.

  “Found it!” she said, holding up the blue folder. “It must have gotten slipped into this envelope.”

  “Good girl,” Jessica said. “I’m so glad. But Emma . . .”

  Emma started tidying up her papers and folders. “Yeah, Mom?”

  “Craig said that you weren’t bumped into by accident. That it was members of the wrestling team picking on you.”

  Emma turned, made an exaggerated rise of her eyebrows. “Oh, please, Mom. Craig’s a boy, but sometimes he can be such a diva asshole. It was an accident—no big deal. Honest.”

  Jessica smiled. “Language once more, young lady.”

  She spent the rest of the evening watching Real Housewives—how could anybody look at those rich, Botoxed, pampered women and call them housewives with a straight face?—and flipping through the thin pages of the Warner Daily News. That paper was a half-and-half mixture of advertisements for Warner and local places like Concord and Carlisle and some reprinted press releases.

  She checked the time. Shouldn’t Ted be home by now?

  Jessica next went to the police logs.

  “11:12 A.M., Saturday: police dispatched to the town dump and waste transfer station, responding to a call of a fight in progress. Arriving officer reported no fight was involved, just a petition signer and a local resident getting into a heated discussion over a petition to ban plastic shopping bags in town.”

  “Mom?”

  Her head snapped up. “Yes?”

  Emma was putting her papers and folders into her blue knapsack. “I’m done. I’m going up to bed.”

  “Okay, hon, sleep well.”

  As her daughter got to the bottom of the stairs, Jessica remembered that earlier odd look on Emma’s face when she had asked for Jessica’s help. She called out, “Emma, you know you can talk to me about anything. Right? Anything at all.”

  There was a pause. She could sense that Emma was thinking about something. Was she thinking about telling her mom what was really going on behind those bright blue eyes?

  Her daughter turned her head, put one foot on the bottom step. “Night, Mom.”

  When Ted came home, she was startled. Had she dozed off on the couch?

  He dropped his soft leather briefcase on the floor by the closet that held his golf clubs and gun locker, pulled off his short leather coat, dropped it on a nearby chair, yawned, and came her way. The sound of him banging the sticky door open had stirred her. Sometimes it took three or four tries to shove the door either closed or open. Jessica checked the time. It was nearly eleven thirty. Had he really been out that long with his business partner?

  “Hey,” he said, rubbing at the back of his head, smiling. He was five years older than she was, with thick black and gray hair that was always trimmed closely, bright blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion that suggested he spent a lot of time outdoors, which he did, with his golfing, hunting, and fishing. “What’s up?”

  What’s up? Jessica thought. She wondered if she should bring up catching seventeen-year-old Craig looking at porn and thought, No, Ted’s got enough on his shoulders, and what teenage boy doesn’t look at porn?

  “Nothing,” she said. “Pretty quiet night. The kids are both upstairs. You?”

  He shook his head. “Things still don’t look good. They look . . . well, they look pretty rough.” Another yawn. “But Ben says not to give up. He’s got a couple of ideas and I’m going to let him run with it.”

  “Good.”

  Ted came over, leaned down and gently kissed her, saw the community college catalog on the couch next to her. “Hey, so you’re really going to do it, huh?”

  She laughed, gestured to the television screen. It was still on Bravo and its Real Housewives franchise, but this one was in Melbourne, not Orange County. “You know it,” Jessica said. “If I can get moving better with my career, such as it is, I’ll be ready for the day when Bravo starts filming Real Housewives of Warner.”

  Ted smiled, kissed her again. “That’s a dream worth going after, hon. Hey, I’m going upstairs to take a shower, then come back down and hit the sack.”

  He went up the narrow stairs, and she heard Ted’s murmuring voice, doors opening and closing, and then it sounded like he went into the bathroom. She picked up the remote, toggled the cable channel guide. Good. This episode was running fifteen minutes over, and then Ted would be done with his shower and they could go to bed together. Tomorrow she’d fill out the paperwork to apply for that associate degree program, get things moving in the right direction.

  Ted came running down the stairs, calling out, “Jessica!” The tone of his voice startled her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  But he went into the kitchen and dining area, then to their bedroom and even their small downstairs bathroom, and her heart started racing. Her mouth was quickly going dry, as if the humidity in their house were suddenly escaping, and she yelled out, “Ted! What’s wrong?”

  He came into the living room, breathing hard. “Jessica, the kids—Emma, Craig.”

  “What?”

  “Where are they?” Ted asked.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Some years back, Jessica had been a bank teller in the dying old mill city of Haverhill, set right up against the New Hampshire border. A widow with an eleven-year-old daughter. One deep and dark secret Jessica had always kept was that she had been on the road to divorcing Bobby Thornton before he died in a drunk-driving accident on
I-95 up in York, Maine. Bobby had been a car salesman, flashy and full of himself, but his drinking and anger and the slaps to Jessica’s face had gotten worse over the years. While she had shed real tears at his funeral, what she had cried over was the lost opportunity for Bobby to give Emma at least a decade’s worth of child support before a trust fund he had set up for her was available for disbursement by Jessica when Emma turned twenty-one, with Emma having rights to the whole thing when she turned thirty.

  After his death things had been tight, always tight, with lots of clipped store coupons and ramen noodle dinners for many dreary months, the thought of that trust fund hanging out there like a distant mirage. Oh, there had been a life insurance policy, but Jessica had used most of the money for unexpected bills, like having to buy a used car when the engine crapped out on her Honda and paying for private track lessons and coaching for Emma. Even as a struggling widow, Jessica had been determined to do whatever it took to give her daughter a better life.

  Then one Saturday she and other bank employees had been at a charity softball event when she met Ted Donovan. He was working for a nearby real estate agency and was the captain of his group’s softball team. He had on shorts and a T-shirt; his legs and arms were tanned and muscular. But it was his smile, and his jokes, and his laughter and gentle teasing, that had attracted her to him.

  Ted played that day to have fun, and truth be told, Jessica had dressed to play and get attention as well. She had worn a pair of black Spandex shorts and a light blue sports bra with a center zipper she made sure was lowered some, and Ted had definitely given her a good, pleasant stare when they were introduced.

  Later that warm and special day, when both of their teams had been eliminated, he offered to help her use a beer tap to fill up her red plastic drinking cup. The damn thing had been oozing out foam, and he watched her struggle with the hose for a few moments, then softly asked, “Can I help?”

  Weeks later, after they had first made love in his condo in Andover, she had said, “You know what really made me want to go out with you?”