“I’m sorry,” Max said without an ounce of remorse. This was a business—where was the customer service?
Max put the box in her backseat, but brought the letter and journal up front. The woman made her leave the parking lot—she had to lock the gate—and Max parked down the street.
She opened the letter. It was after seven, and the sunlight was nearly gone. She turned on the overhead light in the car.
Max—
I’m sure you remember Lindy’s diary and what a scandal it caused when Mrs. Frauke found it. It’s a double standard, you’d say. It’s expected that men have affairs, practically tolerated, but women wear a scarlet letter for life.
Lindy started another diary after you exposed her mother’s affair with Brooks Revere. I don’t think she could help it—she was obsessed with information, with knowing who was doing what, who was lying, who was cheating. It was like … a religion for her. Every time she found out something bad, she’d tell me, “See, so-and-so is a hypocrite, just like I said.” She’d be high-and-mighty, but deep down she was hurt. It’s like she wanted to hurt herself knowing all the bad shit about everyone.
I always assumed that the diary was in police evidence and nothing ever came of it. But last summer, when I finally cleaned up my act enough to ask my attorney for his records, I learned they’d taken everything, but never logged in her diary.
If it was still around, I thought it would be in her clubhouse. When Gerald and Kimberly were out of town, I used the old gate and searched, but the journal wasn’t in her clubhouse. So I put myself in Lindy’s shoes. Where would she hide it?
It took a while for me to find it, but it was in plain sight—in Gerald’s private study among the old books. He probably didn’t even know it was there.
I don’t understand most of it. It’s in code. I know what she’s saying, but not who she’s talking about.
But if you look at the last entry, it says that Hester is back. Lindy saw her going into a doctor’s office and followed her. I thought she might have meant Mrs. Frauke, but I tracked Mrs. Frauke down and she’s retired and living in Vermont. All her entries were like that. She was obsessed with The Scarlet Letter, remember? She’d spray-painted a red A on her mother’s new Jaguar when she first found out about her affair with your uncle.
Kimberly was having another affair, but she didn’t name names—she called the participants by nicknames. I only knew she was talking about Kimberly because she called her Joan Crawford. You know, from Mommie Dearest. Someone was embezzling from her father’s company, but Gerald wouldn’t listen to her. She had been cheating on me almost the entire time we were dating, but she wrote, “There’s a phrase in the Bible that says you reap what you sow. I cheated, so I’m not surprised I’m being cheated on.” That was two weeks after we broke up.
You have to read it. I was going to send it to you, but I didn’t want it to get lost, and I was afraid you’d throw it away without opening it.
I’m sorry about everything. I should have told the truth from the beginning.
—Kev
P.S. Consider my suicide a mercy killing. I destroyed my body with drugs, and there’s no coming back. I would have been dead by the end of the year.
Dead? Was Kevin dying? How? He was hardly old.
But she couldn’t think about that now. Her heart beat rapidly as she realized exactly what she had in her hands. This was what she needed. She knew Lindy better than anyone, and she knew she could figure out Lindy’s code. It was a puzzle, and she would put every last piece in place and finally know what happened thirteen years ago. The diary was Lindy’s last days, what she knew and who she knew it about.
What if she hadn’t been raped? What if the police assumed she’d been raped because she’d had sex with William before she was killed? Max’s heart thudded. Was William the one cheating on her? William said she’d broken up with him because she didn’t want to go public with their relationship—was that the real reason? Or an excuse?
Max needed to do this at her hotel, with better light and room to spread everything out. She put her car into gear and glanced in her rearview mirror.
A van was speeding up the street and looked like it would sideswipe her. She waited for it to pass, and then the van’s lights temporarily blinded her as the driver turned and aimed right for her car. She had no place to turn, no time to get out of the way or get out of the car.
The van slammed into her trunk. The air bag popped open and her face slammed against it at the same time. All air left her lungs, and she took a deep breath and started coughing from the powder in the air.
Diary.
She felt around but it had fallen from her hands. She tasted blood as it dripped down her nose.
A shadow crossed her window. A quick glance showed a masked man. He tried the door and found it locked. She saw the hammer just in time to turn her head and shield her eyes as the glass shattered.
He reached in through the broken window and opened the door, then grabbed her and tried to pull her from the car. Her seat belt resisted him. He grunted, leaned over, and unbuckled it.
Max wasn’t going to let him take her without a fight. She pounded his body with her fists as he yanked her from the car. She tried to scream, but her throat was raw from the air bag’s chemicals and it came out raspy. She saw the hammer coming down toward her head and grabbed his wrist. She was strong, pumped with the adrenaline of survival, but he was on top and had muscles that didn’t seem evident from his slender build.
She kicked him in the groin, but didn’t get close enough to do serious damage. He backhanded her, her head hit the pavement, and she lay stunned. Her attacker went back into her car, and then sped away in the van that had hit her.
She pushed herself up on all fours, but fell back down, dizzy. She shook off the vertigo and crawled to her car. Her purse was still there.
Lindy’s diary was not.
This wasn’t a robbery.