After waiting for a minute in order to listen to the house, I made my way to the kitchen. Inside the refrigerator there were two bottles of chardonnay, one opened, with about a half bottle left, and one still sealed. There was also a large plastic bottle of vitaminwater.
Before Joan returned, I was able to look at the rest of the house. It was a strange mix of dated furniture and high-end new pieces. The walls were all painted the same beige, and the kitchen had been remodeled at some recent point, the floor a dark slate, the backsplashes subway tiles. Both Joan Grieve and her departed husband, Richard Whalen, had grown up in the area and this was clearly one of their parents’ houses. There were four bedrooms upstairs, the master plus three small rooms, one of which had been converted into a storage area, filled with boxes and old furniture. That was the room I waited in, creating a comfortable nook between the far wall and an unused bookshelf.
I didn’t hear the car in the driveway, but I did hear the front door slam. It was midafternoon, and I settled in to wait.
She came upstairs once in the afternoon, probably to change, and then went back downstairs. I wasn’t nervous. There was absolutely no reason to think she’d decide to pop into this particular room. Even if she did, I was ready.
Sometime around seven I could hear the distant sounds of the television. After three hours I decided she had most likely passed out in the television room but told myself to wait another twenty minutes just to be sure. With five minutes to spare, I heard the television turn off then listened to Joan’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. She went down the hallway, away from the room I was hiding in, toward the master bedroom. The light in the hallway went out. I waited another hour.
It was midnight when I stood above her in her bedroom. She’d left the light on in the adjoining bathroom and the door cracked so I could easily see her. She was on her back, one hand pressed against a cheek. It looked as though she’d spun around at one point, the sheets twisted diagonally across her chest like a toga, her left breast exposed.
After removing the stun gun from my bag, a weapon I absolutely did not want to use, I said her name, softly at first, then loudly. She didn’t move. Then I tapped gently at her face. Her eyes squinted a little but that was it. I held her by her shoulders and shook her. Again, nothing. I had spiked the half-filled bottle of wine and the vitaminwater with enough chloral hydrate to drop a football player. She’d clearly had either the wine or the water or both. I was amazed she’d made it up the stairs and into her bed. She was a fighter, I could see that, and for a moment I almost felt bad for her. But then I reminded myself that she’d always gotten someone else to do her dirty work for her.
I put the stun gun on the bedcovers within easy reach, just in case. Then I reached back into my backpack and removed the five-inch length of piano wire, its end sharpened and bent.
Chapter 38
Joan and Richard
Twenty-four hours after they had pushed Duane Wozniak off the Kennewick jetty and into the ocean, Joan and Richard had met at Uncle Murray’s Book Nook at the Windward Resort. It hadn’t been planned but neither was surprised that the other was there. They’d talked rapidly about what they’d done, and when they’d decided that they each needed to get back to their rooms they’d stood facing one another.
Joan blinked rapidly, smiling and showing all of her small, perfect teeth. “This is amazing,” she said. “I feel so close to you.” They hugged. “I can’t believe we did what we did.”
“I believe it,” Richard said.
She was nodding. “This is going to sound like a strange thing to say, but it’s almost like we’re married. Secretly married. And instead of some stupid ceremony we did something so much more amazing. Does that sound weird?”
“No, I know what you mean. I feel the same way. Let’s just say that we’re married.”
“Okay,” Joan said, and he could see all the different strands of color in her eyes. It was a whole world in there. “We’re married now, in a way that is more important than a real marriage. And only you and I will ever know about it.”
Richard nodded.
“Let’s kiss,” Joan said. “Do you want to? Otherwise the last person I kissed will have been Duane.”
“Okay,” Richard said, but didn’t immediately move his head. Joan stared up at him. She really did want to kiss him in a way she’d never wanted to kiss someone before. Kissing boys was usually about wanting to feel power, wanting to feel someone else’s desire. But with Richard, at that moment, she wanted to kiss him purely for the physical sensation, to get closer to his body and his face. She stepped up onto his feet and pulled his head down to hers and pressed her lips to his. He was surprised by how warm her mouth was, how soft her lower lip felt against his. Richard thought a lot about that kiss in the ensuing years, and how it had actually felt like a wedding kiss, one that had sealed them together forever.
When they stopped kissing, they both laughed, and Joan said, her voice a little hoarse, “You’re good at kissing.”
“I’ve never done it before.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s nice, but strange.”
“That’s what I think. I liked how it felt with you but most of the time I think how strange it is that humans want to put their mouths together.”
“Very strange,” Richard said. His eyes suddenly moved because there was a distant sound, like a door shutting somewhere in the hotel.
“We should go before anyone comes in here,” Joan said.
Richard nodded.
Before she left, she looked at him and said, “My secret husband. I think I like that.”
Richard nodded again, and Joan said, “Do you take me as your lawfully wedded wife, your secret wife?”
Richard, smiling, said, “I do.”
“Ask me now.”
“Okay. Do you take me as your lawfully wedded secret husband? Through sickness and in health? Until death do us part?”
“Oh, fancy,” Joan said.
Richard shrugged.
Joan said, “I do.”
Chapter 39
Lily
Four days after I’d returned to Monk’s House I read that Joan Whalen Grieve had been found dead in her house, and that the cause of death appeared to be natural. I took a long afternoon walk through the woods to a small pond I liked, one that I’d named McElligot’s Pond when I’d been young, after the Dr. Seuss book. It had been a particularly dry summer and my pond was now more of a swamp, but I sat quietly at its edge and thought about Joan and wondered if there would be more to the story, and if I would ever know about it. I was amazed to think she might be buried with no one knowing she’d been murdered in her bed. If so, she had devised her own death, and she had done so flawlessly.
It was cold now, almost every day, but I sat for as long as I could, my hands and feet growing numb. I recited a list of names to myself—Chet, Eric Washburn, Miranda Severson, Brad Daggett, Joan Grieve Whalen—then thought about Henry and how close he came to being on that list.
I have no regrets in my life even though I’ve killed people. I’ve always had a reason—a good reason—for what I’ve done. But I do think that if Henry had died on that cemetery on a hill that I would have regretted what I’d done. I hoped I wasn’t just telling myself lies to make myself feel better, but who knows.