You Will Never Know Read online

  But Ted didn’t cross that line. “The hell it isn’t true!” he said. “You made three calls, right? Did you ask about Craig? Did you? No, it was all about Emma. My boy’s gone too and you didn’t care. All you cared about was accusing him of doing something bad, just because he did something every teenage boy with a computer does—look at porn.”

  “Ted, I called Craig’s cell phone.”

  “And what else did you do? Did you ask me for his contacts so you could call him while I was out looking for both him and your daughter?”

  “So this is my fault now?”

  They were still arguing when the door shuddered open and a drenched Emma and Craig came in.

  It was three A.M.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Observed from an iPhone screen being held in the south hallway, first floor of Warner High School, Wednesday morning, 9:05 A.M.:

  From Craig: hey

  From Emma: what?

  Craig: need to see u

  Emma: no.

  Craig: PLEASE

  Emma: why?

  Craig: u know why

  Craig: still there?

  Craig: Emma?

  Emma: cafeteria, third period

  Craig: K

  Emma: K

  Craig: u shld know, Randy’s pissed about car

  Emma: so what

  Craig: he’s pissed

  Emma: its a shitbox. Later

  Craig: K

  Craig: do u think we’ll get caught?

  Craig: Emma?

  Craig: u there?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next day was rotten, start to finish, and the only way Jessica was able to function at Warner Savings Bank was because she was fortified with three cups of morning coffee instead of her usual one.

  Rhonda Monroe gave Jessica a long hard glance once they had both logged in to the bank’s computer system. She was twenty years older than Jessica and was her best friend at the bank. Rhonda was still married to her high school sweetheart and had two adult boys, four grandkids, assorted nieces and nephews. She had a sweet smile and her hair was black (with help from her hairdresser) and trimmed short. She always wore out-of-style pantsuits and had been working in this same branch for years, going through at least three takeovers, and seemed content with what she had. Some days Jessica envied her and her simplicity, and she could remember her being distressed only one time, when a previous manager had taken a dislike to her and nearly had her fired.

  “Christ on a crutch, Jessica, what happened to you last night?” Rhonda asked. “I’d say you look like death warmed over, but that’d be an insult to death.”

  Jessica checked her teller area one more time, with forms, pens, and stamps ready, next to three framed photos: one of her and Emma when her daughter was just ten, one of Emma winning a track meet in junior high, and one of her and Ted on their wedding day. She felt chilled, looking at the happy woman in that last photo. That day had been full of delight and promises of the future, but never could she have imagined what had happened last night, with an empty house and a husband who suddenly seemed to gain an equally empty soul.

  “Rough night,” Jessica said. “One of the roughest I’ve had in . . . well, a long time, Rhonda.”

  Since she had arrived at work, rain had started again in downtown Warner. From the rain-swept outside came the sound of a siren as a dark-blue Warner police cruiser raced past the downtown buildings, blue lights flashing, splashing up water from the street.

  Rhonda reached over, touched her wrist. “Hon, what happened? Are you okay? Was it something Ted did?”

  She shook her head. “No. It was Emma . . . and Craig. Somehow, and I don’t know how, they both slipped out of the house last night. Stayed out until three A.M. Drove Ted and me crazy. Didn’t leave a note, didn’t answer their phones. It was so scary.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Rhonda said. “What were they up to?”

  Jessica turned to Rhonda, the anger from a few hours ago racing once again through her. “That’s the thing! Some stupid scavenger-hunt game that they were playing! They just said that they had to go out, that they were sorry, and that it would never happen again. I grilled Emma, Ted did the same to Craig. They wouldn’t tell us who ran the hunt, how they learned about it, what they had to do. Finally it got so late we had to send them to bed so at least they could go to school later without falling asleep in class.”

  Rhonda studied her. “But sweetie . . . I mean, you’ve told me that the two of them, they don’t get along that well. What were they doing out together at that time of the night?”

  “That’s what doesn’t make sense,” Jessica said, watching the rain lash the old brick buildings of downtown Warner. “They can barely stand sitting together for dinner at night. I can’t believe they’d try to sneak out of the house together. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  One of the two younger tellers, Amber Brooks, went out through the lobby, her young curves swinging and swaying under a lacy white blouse and tight black slacks, and Jessica didn’t feel envy, just sorrow, thinking about what kind of future waited for this sweet young girl, now unlocking the main door, who so wanted to meet a Prince Charming to take care of her and her future kids.

  Not many princes left, Jessica thought, and then Rhonda said, “You know I’m always here to help. Always.”

  “Thanks, Rhon,” Jessica said.

  “I mean, I remember those rough times back—”

  “Well, I was happy to help,” Jessica said, which was one hundred percent true.

  Rhonda asked, “How did your meeting go yesterday with the Ice Queen?”

  Even with her exhaustion and cold thoughts of last night, Jessica gave a short laugh at Rhonda’s insult. Their branch manager was tall, slim, and always looked hard, as if she had been carved out of marble, and it seemed like she never smiled.

  “Not bad,” she said. “Ellen confirmed there was a scholarship program, that it was available for certain employees who proved themselves, and said that while she would help where she could, I had to do my part.”

  Rhonda sounded puzzled. “Like what? You’re usually first one in and last one out. Crap, I can’t remember the last time you didn’t balance your drawer.”

  “Well, Rhon, there’s more than that now. Upper management is looking at how well tellers do in upselling stuff. I need to increase that for her to put in a recommendation.”

  “Bitch,” Rhonda said as the first customers came in, shaking off the rain from their umbrellas and raincoats. One went up to the lobby desk. On the wall was a framed black-and-white photo of Larry Miles, a manager who had died two years ago in a climbing accident up in the White Mountains.

  “Bitch squared,” Jessica agreed.

  Then they both shut up as Ellen Nickerson strode in, tan raincoat belted tight against her waist. She joined the customers in tossing the water off, then she undid the coat belt and came over. Her hair was red, cut short and severe, and she stood just a bit under six feet. Her high heels clicked hard on the lobby surface as she walked. She always wore the latest fashions as declaimed by the Style section of the New York Times, but they never softened her hard look.

  Jessica held her breath as Ellen came closer.

  “Jessica?”

  “Yes?”

  Something approaching a smile slid across Ellen’s severe face. “I made a call to corporate,” she said. “Pled your case.”

  Jessica nodded.

  Ellen said, “You do your part, and Warner Savings will do the same.”

  She turned and headed to her office, and Jessica breathed again, and Rhonda smiled at her and whispered, “Jess, you better start upselling that pretty butt of yours, and quick.”

  Jessica whispered back, “My boobs, too, if it helps,” which resulted in a quick snort of laughter from her friend.

  She took a long, deep yawn, tried to feel more awake. Even with everything that had happened in the past ten hours, maybe—just maybe—things were looking up. A Warner fire truck and ambulance
roared by, splashing more water along the road.

  But Jessica’s second miserable day in a row was about to take shape.

  With the heavy rains that morning, the foot traffic in the lobby was nearly nonexistent, but the drive-up was busy, with five or six cars in line. At the drive-up window, Percy Prescott was sliding out the drawer to a customer driving a beat-up black Ford Escort. Percy was twenty years old, wore horn-rimmed glasses, and had finely trimmed light brown hair, and he wore the same clothes every day: dark gray slacks, cordovans, and a light green-and-white shirt with a green necktie, highlighting the corporate colors of Warner Savings, as well as his nametag and a bank lapel pin.

  “You have a great day now, all right?” he said into the microphone as the drawer slid out, his smiling face bright. Then he flicked off the microphone with a disdainful move of his slight fingers. “And for Christ’s sake, the next time you make a deposit, wipe the bills on your ass. They’d smell better than that cologne.”

  The drawer clattered back and Amber sauntered over, started chatting with Percy. They were young, single, and had gone to Warner High School together. Amber leaned over to point something out to Percy, revealing a tattoo on her lower backside that she claimed was a Chinese character representing the word “courage.”

  One day, bored and with not much to do, Jessica had sketched the Chinese character and showed it to the owner of the Szechuan Taste restaurant in Warner, and he had laughed and said the character meant “smelly.”

  Jessica knew she would never tell Amber the truth. She knew how to keep secrets.

  About two hours into her morning, luck seemed to appear in front of her—like getting a dollar lottery ticket that was worth a hundred bucks—in the form of an older man taking his time coming up to her window.

  “Good morning,” she said. “How are you today?”

  The man shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Soaked, like every other poor bugger out there. I’d like to cash this, please.” He was in his sixties, wearing a rain-soaked dungaree jacket and dirty dark-green chinos, reading glasses that were perched halfway down a prominent nose, and a filthy Red Sox baseball cap, also soaked through.

  “This” was a rebate check from Staples, and she recognized the customer—Gus Tremblay. Just to make sure his account was still current, she typed his name into the bank’s system and saw his account profile pop up.

  Oh my, Jessica thought. Gus dressed like a slob, but that was the uniform for the wealthy in this part of Massachusetts. It just wasn’t done to flash one’s wealth, especially if your family had lived for decades in Warner or nearby Concord and Lexington, and Gus was certainly keeping that tradition alive. He had more than $35,000 in his checking account and nearly $300,000 in a passbook savings account.

  It came to her like a flash of lightning. Upsell Gus right here and now, do a couple more before the end of the week, and then go back to Ellen, tell her that she was on the way to holding up her end of the bargain. Make that scholarship request go through, sign up for the associate degree from Northern Essex, and get running on the path to do her part to help her family, just like Emma was running for her future.

  “Hey, ma’am?” Tremblay asked.

  “Yes?”

  “My money?”

  “Yes, right away,” Jessica said. She ran the check through the teller terminal, saw again that it was for fifteen dollars, and then took a ten and a five out of her drawer. She slid them over and said, “Mr. Tremblay, I see you have substantial assets here at Warner Savings Bank. Have you ever considered transferring some of those funds to our valued customer money market accounts? Or taking out a home equity loan to make some needed improvements? If you have a moment, I can set up an appointment with our—”

  Tremblay took the five and the ten, carefully examined them, and slipped them into a worn leather wallet. “Ma’am, I came here to get my cash. I got my cash. Please don’t waste my time.”

  “But—”

  “Jesus, ma’am, you don’t goddamn hear well, do you?”

  He turned and started walking out, and other customers started coming in, and in a quiet voice so he wouldn’t hear, Jessica surprised herself and said aloud, “Have a nice day, Mr. Tremblay. I hope you get hit by a truck.”

  Then she nearly jumped a foot when Amber, stationed right next to her, started whispering “No, no, no,” and her first thought was, Crap, did she just hear me chew out a customer?

  But in a few seconds she knew it was much worse than that.

  Jessica turned and so did Rhonda, and even Percy Prescott at the drive-up looked over. Amber was now sobbing, holding up her iPhone. “I just got a text from my mom! Sam Warner’s dead! They found his body over at the Warner Town Forest! Oh, my God! My brother Jack’s on the wrestling team with him. Oh, Sam!”

  Rhonda said, “Jesus Christ, you mean Sam, Bruce and Donna’s kid? The captain of the wrestling team?”

  Because Amber was crying, it was hard to make out what she was saying, but Rhonda put a hand on her shoulder and looked over the text.

  “Oh, no,” she said, “not Sam.”

  “What happened?” Jessica asked. “Do they say how he died?”

  Percy had shouldered his way in to read the text messages on Amber’s phone, whistled, and shook his head. “Huh, now it makes sense.”

  Rhonda said, “What makes sense?”

  He started back to his station just as a dark-blue Volvo station wagon stopped in front of the drive-up. “All those sirens from before,” Percy explained. “The cruiser and the ambulance. It says Sam was murdered in the town forest.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Emma Thornton was in the Warner High School cafeteria at 10:41 that Wednesday morning, one minute after it opened for the day, and she found an empty table at the far end, dumped her knapsack, and yawned. Crap, she’d been yawning ever since she had gotten to school, and she hoped she’d be alert enough for that afternoon’s track practice. She looked at the other kids coming into the cafeteria, yapping and texting, to see if Craig had shown up.

  Nope. Not yet.

  This was her study period and she was sorely tempted just to stretch out and plop her head on her knapsack and take a nap. She was sure she’d fall asleep in about sixty seconds, but then one of the noisy teachers who served as cafeteria monitors would come over and ask her if everything was all right and why she was napping, and maybe she’d be sent to see Mrs. Morneau, the school nurse.

  Right, and that would mean a phone call or email message to her mom, and after last night—shit, just a few hours ago, right?—Emma didn’t want anybody from the school reaching out to Mom.

  “Hey.” Her goofball stepbrother sat down across from her, dropping his knapsack on the cafeteria table. Emma knew she didn’t look so hot after so few hours of sleep, but he looked even worse. His hair resembled a big thicket that could be a nest for a field mouse or a chipmunk or something just as stupid, and knowing Craig, he probably could have a mouse crawl into that hair mess and he’d never know.

  Emma said, “What do you want?”

  “Like I said, Randy’s pissed about his car.”

  “Did he get paid?”

  “Well, yeah—”

  “It broke down. It’s a shitbox. He should be happy we’re not asking for a refund.”

  Craig looked around and leaned over the light-green cafeteria table. “I still can’t believe last night. I mean—”

  “Shut up,” Emma said quietly. “We both agreed not to talk about this at school, or anywhere else where somebody might hear.” She yawned again, put her hand in front of her mouth. Jeez, with track practice this afternoon she’d have to beg a Red Bull from somebody just to make sure she didn’t take a wrong turn and end up in Concord or something like that.

  “But last night . . .”

  “Okay, it didn’t go as planned. Shit happens, right?”

  “Emma, c’mon, you know your mom and my dad are super pissed.”

  “They’ll get over it,” Emma said. “You the smartie
, me the best runner—eventually they’ll overlook it. That’s what parents do. Relax.”

  Her stepbrother leaned further over the table. Emma saw dirty pores around his nose. “I’m trying to relax,” he whispered, “but after last night . . .”

  “Keep to the story,” she said. “Stop worrying. You keep on worrying and your dad will notice.”

  “But what happens when—”

  “Shut up,” Emma said.

  He blinked his eyes, sat back, and then said, “One other thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You made a promise.”

  “I did.”

  “You gonna keep it?”

  Emma said, “What do you think?”

  His face flushed. “So, when?”

  “Never,” Emma said. “How does never sound?”

  His face grew even redder, the poor slob. “But you promised!”

  That last sentence was loud enough so a couple of the closer students turned their heads to see what was going on. Snoops, she thought.

  Emma said, “Keep it down, Craig, or I’ll change my mind and start talking. And who do you think is going to be believed? The star runner? Or the computer creep who needs to take a shower?”

  Emma thought he was going to argue more, but instead he pushed the dark-green knapsack around and unzipped it and then slowly opened it so Emma could see what was inside: the stock of a gun, half wrapped in a white towel, the separated oily-looking metal barrel resting next to it.

  “Jesus Christ, Craig, zip it shut!”

  He zipped it shut as ordered and said, “Well, what now?”

  “Get rid of it. Warner River, down a storm drain, over at Woods Quarry. But get rid of it, you idiot.”

  He scowled and picked up the knapsack and pushed his way back from the table, making his chair squeak really loudly. He stormed his way out through the nearest double door.

  Big deal. He would do what she told him to do.

  She yawned again. Christ, where could she get a Red Bull before track practice?