The House Guests Read online

  “Always. I—”

  “She’s out of the hospital now. Finally. It took them long enough. Anyway, as they say, she’s being rehabilitated. Like as not they’ve got her doing physical therapy, occupational therapy, you name it.”

  Amber spoke quickly before she was cut off again. “Does she remember the accident?”

  “Blessedly no. I’m going to see her this weekend. Want me to tell her you called?”

  Amber thought fast. “Please. Tell her I’m still working on that baby quilt we discussed online.”

  “She’s always glad to know some of her 4-H girls kept on sewing.”

  Amber didn’t know where Betsy’s son was living now. Karl, her only child, was just out of graduate school and had a job that required frequent moves, so he might even be out of state. But Tammy was going to see Betsy this weekend. Hopefully that meant Karl wasn’t too far away.

  She spoke while she had the chance. “Would you mind telling me how to get in touch with her? I bet she has a phone by her bed.”

  “She’s not up to talking on the phone to anybody yet. Not even me. Too hard to hold. Her hand’s a mess. I’ll pop in and see her in person, but not for long. No, better wait for an all clear before you call.”

  “I’d like to send—”

  “Sorry, hon, I’d like to keep talking, but I was on my way out the door. You call back in a week or so, and I’ll catch you up on how she’s doing. Nice talking to you.”

  Amber was left clutching Cassie’s phone with nobody on the other end.

  Betsy had been in an accident, a hit-and-run out of town, at that, which is why it hadn’t showed up in the Croville Chronicle. If Betsy had seen the driver, she couldn’t remember.

  Had Darryl tracked Betsy to her son’s, where getting rid of her would draw less notice? Her friends knew she always walked early in the mornings, before most people stirred. Betsy liked to hear the birds waking up. If she was walking along a road, it would be so easy to swerve, send her sprawling on the grass and continue on. No one would be around to note the license plate or rescue a dying woman.

  The good news was that somehow Betsy had survived. The bad news was that she might have been targeted because she had helped Amber through the years. But why now, and how would Darryl know? Amber couldn’t even guess. She only knew she had to talk to Betsy as soon as possible. It was unlikely that even if she called Tammy again, the woman would volunteer any information about Betsy’s whereabouts. Amber had to locate Karl Garland so she could call every rehab center near where he was living.

  Tonight, once she got home from work, she would search the internet.

  In the kitchen, leaning against the counter, she went into Cassie’s phone settings and deleted all record of the calls she had made. Then she left the phone on the counter and went to get ready for work.

  37

  ALTHOUGH IT HAD ALMOST twice as much square footage as the condo in Battery Park City, the house in Sunset Vista wasn’t large. But when Cassie was by herself, like she was right now, the house felt like the White House or Buckingham Palace. Without other people underfoot, she almost needed a map to find her way from one end to the other.

  Alone, too, the relative silence of the middle-class subdivision made her uneasy. With its constant drumbeat of cars, jackhammers and sirens, New York was never silent. Here, outside noise was rare and didn’t drown each creak of concrete and wood as the house settled. Every time she heard a sound, she imagined sinkholes swallowing the whole block, like the snapping jaws of a horror movie monster.

  She considered turning on loud music, even if it would mask the sound of a break-in or the house collapsing around her. Instead, she settled for a mug of herbal tea and took the bank statements Amber had left for her back to her suite, settling at the computer to call up her online banking website.

  Once she was there, she searched for the checks Amber had marked. As she’d guessed, one was made out to Pfeiffer Grant and the second was made out to the Grandy Rayburn Drug Treatment Center. The date was around the time Mark had filled in there. Mark had been something of a pushover for good causes, and she had loved his generosity. Now she wondered if good causes had anything to do with the disappearance of their financial safety net. Nothing could be discounted.

  The third check was the one for ten thousand dollars, and looking at the statement she remembered that Amber had pointed out two cash withdrawals, one a month later, the next a month after that, for the same amount.

  She located the check and pulled up a copy. It was made out to Rinkel Medical Supplies. She moused over the flip side, which was signed with a scrawl she couldn’t read.

  Cassie leaned back in her desk chair. The company was unfamiliar, although somewhere in her memory she felt a faint tug. She squinted at the signature again, but it was illegible. She doubted the original existed. Unlike Mark, banks probably got rid of paper immediately.

  Could Mark have purchased something for Church Street, instruments or furnishings, using his own money and later filing for reimbursement? She could imagine scenarios. Maybe Mark had needed something right away, but the office had been closed. Maybe he wanted whatever it was to be shipped that day.

  She scanned the statement for a deposit of roughly the same amount in the following week, but nothing showed up. It was possible reimbursement paperwork had taken longer. She didn’t have the next month’s paper statement, but she found the next two online statements and searched. Nothing showed up except the two withdrawals Amber had noted.

  If it hadn’t been for those, she might have sloughed off the check. Mark was a doctor, and the check was for medical supplies. But the two withdrawals worried her. A total of thirty thousand dollars unaccounted for was too much. And Rinkel Medical Supplies still tugged at her memory.

  She tried once more to read the signature. Finally, with nothing to lose, she downloaded the check to her computer and clicked on the file.

  “Perfect!” The downloaded file could be magnified to almost any size. She slid her cursor to the right until the signature was legible. “Ilsa...Victoria Rinkel.”

  Something in her memory tugged harder now. She closed her eyes and repeated the name silently. Ilsa Victoria Rinkel. IVR, like IVF, which brought back unhappy memories.

  She and Mark had not been able to conceive a child together, which had made Savannah even more precious to both of them. Mark’s sperm count was low, and Cassie’s periods irregular. They had tried IVF when nothing else had worked.

  They had tried three times, and Cassie had been the one to decide not to try a fourth. None of their attempts had resulted in a positive pregnancy test, much less a baby. She hadn’t been willing to continue the onslaught of hormones, the waiting, the hopes that this time, this time...

  IVF. IVR. Ilsa Victoria. IV.

  And then, she knew.

  “Ivy.” She opened her eyes and stared at the screen, but now she was seeing something else entirely.

  The first time she’d met Ivy Todsen, the nurse had been celebrating with other hospital staff at a Christmas party. For some reason she and Ivy had ended up in a corner together, over a plate of crackers and green cheese laden with flecks of pimento for the season. Ivy had been wearing a tight, spangled dress and too much makeup. She had made a point of introducing herself, as if she thought that Cassie, as Mark’s wife, might be important to know.

  “Ivy, that’s a lovely name,” Cassie remembered saying.

  “Is Cassie short for something?”

  “Cassandra. I guess Ivy can’t be short for anything, can it?”

  Ivy laughed too loudly. Without a doubt she’d spent too much time chatting up the bartender who was mixing drinks in the corner. “It sort of is,” she said. “It’s actually my initials. IV. Ivy. My given name sounded like I was born somewhere else instead of right here. So I go by my initials.”

  Cassie had been surprised,
as well as mildly offended, that anybody would worry their name sounded foreign. She had insisted on keeping Costas when she married Mark, because she was proud of her Greek heritage, and she had stood firm.

  Now Ivy was divorced and had probably taken back her maiden name. But did her ex-husband own Rinkel Medical Supplies? And if he did, why was Ivy’s name on the back of the check?

  She went to her search engine and typed in Rinkel Medical Supplies with no success. She looked a little closer at the endorsement and noted that the check had been deposited in a New Jersey bank.

  Hours later, after chasing websites and frequently-asked-questions on how to proceed, she knew that the registered agent for Rinkel Medical Supplies, LLC, in North Bergen, New Jersey was Ilsa Victoria Rinkel. Nothing else about the company appeared online, and no one else was listed. For all practical purposes, there was nothing except an address.

  “And a bank account.”

  She heard a light rapping and then Amber’s voice. “You’re talking to yourself.”

  Cassie hadn’t realized so much time had passed. She had been at her computer for hours chasing a shadow. She faced her friend. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “I could have dropped a bomb on your head and you’d have been slow to react. I didn’t see any dishes in the kitchen. Did you eat dinner?”

  “I got...busy.”

  “Sure seems like you did. Luckily I brought home half a pan of kolokithopita. Roxanne got a deal on fresh zucchini. It’s out of this world.”

  Cassie remembered eating the zucchini and feta dish sandwiched between buttery sheets of phyllo dough at her grandmother’s house. She realized how hungry she was.

  “And I have chicken souvlaki, too,” Amber added. “But we need to beat Will to the kitchen. He’s out in the garage checking our tires.”

  “I don’t want to eat Will’s dinner.”

  “Are you kidding? Between tables tonight he ate his weight in both dishes. You’ll be doing him a favor if you get to the leftovers before he does.”

  Cassie followed Amber to the kitchen, where she dished up a plate for each of them. “Unlike my son, I did not have a break tonight,” Amber said. “It’s still warm.”

  Cassie pushed paperwork to the side and they took seats. She was too hungry to speak for a few minutes, and they sat across from each other and shoveled in the food. Will came through and greeted them, but he must have been full, because he went to his room to study and left them alone.

  “What kept you so busy? How did the interview go?” Amber asked.

  Cassie swallowed more than kolokithopita. She suddenly missed Mark the way she might miss a limb. Grief swept over her in a wave. He had always asked about her day and listened with interest while she recited where she’d gone and why, who she’d run into, what she’d planned for dinner. Those were the little things about a marriage that went unnoticed until they disappeared.

  Now, in addition to missing Mark, she was ridiculously grateful that Amber was there to listen. But she was feeling much more, too. Because as she pondered her reaction, she realized that Mark had stopped listening by the end of their marriage. When he had forced himself to make the effort, he’d seemed annoyed, as if the small details of her life were deflections from the weightier details of his own.

  In those final months together, she had stopped recounting her days. She had asked about his, listened to his brusque replies, and then watched as he turned on the television, to drown out the thoughts they were no longer voicing.

  “Cassie?”

  She’d left Amber’s question hanging. “I’m sorry. It’s been some night.”

  “The interview didn’t go well?”

  “It might lead to something better if they offer it to me.” She asked about Amber’s evening, but Amber cut her off.

  “Look, what’s up? You were pretty engrossed in whatever you were doing on the computer. I’m listening if you want to talk.”

  Cassie pushed her plate away. “That ten-thousand-dollar check you found? It was made out to a medical supply company.”

  She explained how she had figured out the details, summing it up at the end. “Ivy, the nurse on the behavioral health unit? The one who’s been calling me to chat? She signed the check. She’s the agent for the LLC. I think she’s the only person connected to it. Her married name must have been Rinkel.”

  Amber didn’t say anything, as if she was waiting for Cassie’s interpretation.

  Cassie went on. “It’s pretty obvious that Mark paid her ten thousand dollars that month. And then maybe by the next month, he worried a check might draw my attention if I ever looked at our account, so he withdrew the next ten thousand in cash, and then another ten the next month. I don’t know how anybody takes out that much cash at one time. But he obviously managed it.”

  “You can’t say for sure the money went to Ivy.”

  “The check and then the withdrawals are exactly a month apart. Three months, thirty thousand dollars. Ivy’s name is on the check.”

  Amber spoke with such care Cassie knew she was trying to be a sounding board. “I suspect you’ve been coming up with possible reasons Mark would give Ivy thirty thousand dollars.”

  “You come up with them first. You’re not emotionally involved, so you’ll be more logical.”

  Amber ate the rest of her dinner, then she, too, pushed her plate away. “Most of my logical reasons are not flattering to your husband.”

  “I figured.”

  “You won’t shoot the messenger?”

  Cassie shook her head. “Can I cry?”

  “Be my guest. One, he was having an affair with Ivy and helping her financially. Maybe she needed a nicer apartment for their trysts.” She looked up to see how Cassie had taken that one.

  Unfortunately for Cassie, the thought wasn’t new. “Go on.”

  “Two, Ivy knew something about him. A mistake he’d made with a patient, maybe? Mistakes are inevitable. It might have been a bad one, though, bad enough that he paid her to keep quiet.”

  “So...blackmail.”

  Amber nodded. “Three. She was in a jam, and he just agreed to help her. You said she’s divorced. Maybe her ex was up to something? Or maybe Ivy was the one with a gambling problem, or she needed medical help or a procedure her insurance wouldn’t cover.”

  “Mark was generous, but I think he would have told me.”

  Amber’s expression said she agreed. “She was fired from the unit recently?”

  “That’s right. She implied she was fired because she was asking around about why Mark left the practice. She said Fletcher was responsible.”

  “That explanation is grist for the mill, as they say, Cassie. She was fired. It’s not easy to fire anybody these days without risking a lawsuit. So a hospital would be very careful. They would need plenty of evidence she wasn’t doing her job well. Or...”

  “Or?”

  “Or they would need something to hold over her, so they could be sure she wouldn’t come after them later.”

  Cassie’s head was swimming now. “How on earth do I find out what this was about? And do I need to know? A lot more than thirty thousand dollars is missing. That’s a drop comparatively.”

  “I hate to say it, but what we’ve found might be just the first drop. The one that leads you to the rest of the missing money. Is there anybody who might know more about this? Anybody in New York?”

  Cassie had already asked herself the same question, and she didn’t like the answer. “Valerie.”

  “The old friend who went missing?”

  “Maybe I finally understand why she did. She knew something and she didn’t want me to know it.” She made a decision. “I’m going to New York and I’m going to confront her, no matter what. And then, I’m going to see Ivy.”

  “By yourself?”

  Cassie remembered how une
asy she’d been alone in her own house at the beginning of that evening, but she knew she was stronger and braver than she gave herself credit for. “By myself. Because I’m the one who has to find out the truth.”

  “I would come if I could.”

  Cassie never quite forgot what a chance she had taken by allowing a woman with so many secrets to live in her house. Some people might say she was a fool, but Amber and Will had proved themselves to be honest and hardworking while enriching her life and Savannah’s, too. Amber was the best kind of friend, the kind she was going to need to get through this.

  Cassie wasn’t a fool—she was lucky.

  * * *

  She was just getting ready for bed when her cell phone rang. She checked the display and saw that Savannah was the caller. She clutched the phone a moment before she answered, praying she would handle whatever was to come with patience and love.

  “Savannah,” she said in greeting. “I’m glad you called.”

  “Cassie...” Savannah cleared her throat. “I know you’ve been calling.”

  “I have. First tell me how you’re doing?”

  “I’m okay. Spring’s a good time to be here, before it gets too hot.”

  “Are you enjoying your new school?”

  “Gen thought I ought to wait and register after spring vacation ends here. Their breaks and ours in Tarpon Springs are different.”

  Cassie wondered how much school Savannah could miss without serious repercussions, but the problem was no longer hers. Savannah was no longer hers.

  A weight settled across her shoulders, and she felt them sag. “Are you doing some sightseeing?” she asked, hoping the question was neutral enough that her daughter wouldn’t throw her phone across the room.

  “We did a little hiking, and I’ve walked around some on my own. Gen has a little pool, nothing like ours, just kind of a place to sit and soak. I’ve done that a few times.”

  Cassie told herself that “ours” was just a figure of speech and meant nothing. “A good way to beat the heat.”