Wicked Little Lies- Molly Page 19

  Harper didn’t seem fazed by any of it. He was curled up on the front seat, his gentle snoring lulling some of my anxiety.

  I did however, nearly jump out of my seat when my phone rang loud through the Bluetooth handsfree.

  “Lizzie, you scared the shit out of me!” I placed my hand against my chest, willing my heart rate to slow.

  “Really? I only just pressed dial. Are you that nervous about callers now?”

  “No. It’s been a really stressful night.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m just jumpy.” I pulled the car to a stop at the last red light before I made it home. “What’s up?”

  “I saw Matt’s report on the evening news about how he’s investigating the death of Paul Pritchard and how its connected to the hospital.”

  “Pritchard was supposed to do a story with him before he died.”

  “I just saw a news flash the house of that murdered guy is on fire.”

  I hurriedly explained our evening as I drove the final distance to my apartment building.

  “Molly, that’s awful.”

  On autopilot, I pressed the button on the remote control that opened the security door to the underground parking, then I remembered I was in Matt’s car. He didn’t have an allocated parking spot in the basement, which meant he always had to park around the back of the building in the visitors parking. I was grateful the only cars around were on the street and no one had pulled onto the basement ramp behind me as reversing was never my strong suit. Add that it was uphill, in the dark and I was distracted chatting to Lizzie, and who knew what would happen.

  “I know. I just hope Ed doesn’t get too upset with Matt when he explains what we found and how we found it.” Without a camera to help me I only just avoided hitting the side wall. Ooops.

  “Ed’s a good guy. He won’t want to arrest Matt if there’s any other way around it.”

  “I hope so, or I might have to call in a few favors with you.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Flirt with Ed. Make him forget all the bad in the world.”

  “Molly! I’m not doing that.”

  “Calm down. I was just joking.”

  I heard Lizzie relax down the line. “Okay. Well, if you get stuck let me know.”

  “You’ll talk to Ed?” I asked, surprised.

  “Of course I’ll talk to him, but I’ll get Danny to do all the flirting.”

  “Hahahahaha. Danny will love that!”

  Lizzie giggled, before changing the subject. “We need to catch up tomorrow. There’s been a few changes to your diary, and I want to run it all past you.”

  “Not a problem.” Relieved that I’d completed my reversing maneuver without smashing the back of Matt’s car into the wall, I slowly made my way around the building towards the visitor’s park.

  “Give me a call when Matt gets home so I know you’re all safe.”

  “Will do.”

  Ending the call, I unclicked Harper’s belt and allowed him to be the first out the door. He ran straight to his favorite spot of grass without even waiting for me to follow him.

  I felt his pain as I still hadn’t visited the bathroom and my bladder was complaining with every step I took. Searching my handbag, I found the key I needed to get in after-hours readying myself for a fast trip upstairs.

  It was rare for me to use this entrance and I noted how overgrown the trees were, creating eerie shadows on the cement as they swayed in the light of the moon. The shrubs rustled and a mouse scurried across my path. I shivered and tightened my sweater around my body, willing Harper to hurry up, as once I reached that door, I did not want to have to wait around.

  The night shrouded me and a chill ran all the way to my toes as a crackle of leaves caused me to jump.

  Checking over my shoulder, I saw a shadow disappearing around the building.

  “Harper! Is that you? Come on boy.”

  Gripping my keys so tight it hurt, I quickened my pace as footsteps trailed behind me.

  Someone was there. And the goose bumps dancing down my arms told me they were following me.

  I spun around, straining my eyes in the darkness hoping to get a glimpse of who it was but only shadows laughed back at me.

  “Harper. Hurry up!” I shook my head to clear any negative thoughts and figured pregnancy was playing tricks on my mind. It did things like that, didn’t it? I made a mental note to ask Lara about it and hotfooted to the door, willing Harper to get there before I did so.

  I hated standing in the dark waiting for him. Every sound made me jump, every shadow shot fear to my heart, but as I heard his woof a sigh of relief left my lips.

  I gave a shaky laugh and spun only to see a huge shadow looming overhead as something heavy smashed into my skull. The world darkened until it closed in on me, my mind racing over my babies, and Harper and what was about to happen. Only I had no control over any of it as the shadows faded to black.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My head throbbed and the disgusting smell of manure hit me hard.

  My eyelashes fluttered open, the blast of light flashing my retinas and a shooting pain hit my already pounding head.

  “Argh!”

  “Oh look, she’s waking up.” The tinny female voice sounded familiar, but not in a good way. “Does it hurt?” She prodded my skull as she spoke. The tinkle of her charm bracelet sounded a hundred times louder than it actually was and I had to fight the urge to throw up.

  Despite the pain, I forced my eyes open and winced. Swatting at her, I slapped her hand away and looked up into the face of Matt’s stalker, the woman in the green wagon.

  “What?” I moaned. “What have you done to me?”

  “Well, I hit you.”

  “Too damned hard,” another female voice boomed.

  This voice was deeper, older and one I instantly recognized.

  “Adele?”

  “Well at least I didn’t kill her,” the stalker snarled.

  “Adele, what’s going on?” I went to rub my eyes but found my hands were bound to the chair I was on.

  “You got a bit too nosy,” she explained. Her boots stomped against the cement floor, and as she came in closer, I could make out the dark rings under her eyes, her hair messy like she’d just gotten out of bed.

  “I don’t understand. Where am I? What am I doing here?”

  Dust played in the dim overhead light as the pungent aroma of grease and fuel clogged my sinuses. The tin walls caused their voices to echo around me, and I noted the mower pushed into a far corner, bags of fertilizer stacked alongside it. Watering cans and hoses competed for space with the garden tools and a bottle of weed killer swung from stalker lady’s hand.

  “Am I in your garden shed?” I asked, as fear shot through my heart at lightning speed. My stomach twinged and fear for my babies skyrocketed.

  “Don’t be stupid. I wouldn’t bring you to my own house,” snapped Adele. “No. This shed belongs to that sweet little barista friend of yours.”

  The pain in my head heightened, my lips trembled, and confusion muddled my mind.

  “Are you talking about Tom, from Café by the River?”

  “Yes. That’s him over there.”

  I looked over my shoulder and screamed. Tom was curled up unconscious on the hard floor, blood pouring from a wound on his temple, his mouth bound.

  “Tom!” I yelled.

  “I told you this was the right plan,” said stalker lady, dropping the bottle near the mower.

  “Yes Brooke. You were right. I’m very happy that I went to all that trouble and found you to do my dirty work. Your plan to blame all this on the little love interest is genius.”

  Brooke giggled. “I told you I was worth the money.” She moved to Tom, kicking him with her toe. “When I learned about his crush on Molly, I just knew he was the scapegoat we needed.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, my heart rate settling slightly when I noticed Tom was breathing.


  “He’s in love with you and wants to break you and Matt up by making it look like he’s having an affair. Well that’s the story we’re spinning anyway.”

  “No one would believe that,” I spat, knowing I had lost my trust in Matt for a moment there.

  “As if,” scoffed Brooke. “I’m not the only one who’s seen Tom all googly eyed staring at you. So, when we needed to switch to plan B, I put the pieces of the puzzle into play.” She giggled. “I sent the messages and the photos of Matt with that woman, and staged his bedroom to look like she’d been there.”

  “But why?”

  “So, when this is all over and we kill you all, everyone will believe that it’s a love triangle gone wrong. Great plan, right?”

  “One that wouldn’t have been needed if you’d kept out of things that didn’t concern you.” Adele death-stared me as she moved to stand next to Brooke.

  “You’re going to have to be more specific,” I added, swallowing against the nausea rising in my throat. “Is this all about you wanting Matt for yourself?” I asked Brooke. “That’s why you were stalking him. I just don’t know where Adele fits in.”

  “No! I’m not a stalker!” she protested. “Even though, on second thoughts he is pretty cute. Maybe I could stalk him.”

  “Brooke!” Adele snapped, clicking her fingers. “Focus.”

  Pieces of the puzzle started to filter through my pain. “Are you the same Brooke who booked me for a vow renewal and never turned up?”

  “Ahuh. Only the vow renewal was never real. I made it up.”

  “Why? You cost me time, and I could have been on another job.” I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious but to my knowledge no one knew I was missing, which equated to no one searching for me. So as much as I really didn’t care about the job Brooke had cost me, I needed to keep her talking until I came up with a plan.

  “Did you have another booking?”

  “That’s not the point,” I snapped.

  “Then what is the point?”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I needed to make sure you were out of the apartment so I could plant a listening device.”

  “It’s a bug,” scoffed Adele, her impatience with Brooke evident.

  “I’m a professional! How do you expect people to take me seriously if I don’t use the correct terminology?”

  Ignoring their banter memories of Brooke snooping around Matt’s housed whizzed through my fog. “That’s what you were doing at Matt’s! You were planting bugs.”

  “How do you know about that?” Brooke’s lip pouted as she twirled her grey blonde hair around her finger.

  “My brother and I were hiding in the wardrobe.”

  “Huh. Well that was a bit sneaky.”

  “Have you two finished?” snapped Adele, the toe of her suede ankle boot tapping the cement as she crossed her arms.

  Brooke smirked and moved to the back of the shed, fondling a handsaw laying on a work bench.

  “Can you please tell me the full story?” I begged. “My head hurts far too much to figure this out.”

  “We’ve told your boyfriend to bring us that diary.”

  I chewed my lip and thought about the events leading to this place.

  “You were the one at the Pritchard house?” I asked, my eyes narrowed at Brooke.

  She winked. “I’ll give Matt his due, he’s pretty clever. It took me a while to figure out the tracking device I’d planted on you both were found and you weren’t at the beach like I thought. I had to track him down the old-fashioned way. Took me bloody ages and by the time I caught up with you, you were already inside the house.”

  “But how did you know we took the diary?”

  “I found a few loose diary pages on the floor near the window. That made me look closer at the bookshelves and I saw there was a vacant spot where it looked like a book had been taken. Checking the books either side of it I saw they were diaries. After that, it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.”

  “Did he find the hospital records?” Adele asked me, her voice hard.

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you. Brooke tell her what you’ll do if she doesn’t start telling the truth.”

  “I start cutting off your fingers. Same goes if Matt doesn’t bring us what we want. I’ll send him the video of you screaming.” Brooke flipped the handsaw from one hand to the other, her smile laced with a sickly look of glee.

  “You sound pretty happy about that.” I was going for brave, but the truth was I was swallowing down bile with every breath.

  “Every job has its perks.”

  “Did you kill Pritchard?” I asked.

  “No. That was all her.” Brooke turned to Adele.

  “It was an accident!” Adele spat, her eyes wide and filled with horror.

  “Hitting him with a rock was an accident, was it?” Brooke sneered.

  “Shut up!” Adele’s face reddened as her anger ramped up.

  “Can you please start at the beginning and tell me what the hell is going on?” I screamed. I spotted quite a few tools which could help me fight them off, but before I could get to them, I needed to free my hands.

  Adele’s breath stretched, the sound coming from deep in her diaphragm as she gritted her teeth and closed the gap between us.

  “I really thought you were a smart woman, Molly. I thought you would have figured this out by now.”

  “Humor me.”

  She rolled her eyes before straightening her back. “Just so you know, I never meant for any of this to happen.” Her emotions burnt bright in her eyes. “It was a mistake. It was all a mistake which just kept getting worse and worse.”

  “What kind of mistake?”

  “You have no idea what it was like working in the maternity ward in the 1960’s. We had two nurses and one student nurse, and that year was a baby boom for Westport. We were in charge of twenty-seven babies!”

  I shuddered at the idea of it but remained silent as Adele shifted into a memory.

  “I remember that morning like it was yesterday. Carol was the closest thing to a sister I’d ever had.”

  “Wait! Carol? Grannie Carol?”

  “Yes. Carol Fuller. I knew about her affair with a married man and her subsequent pregnancy. She went into labor earlier than expected and came into the hospital where I was working. Things were touch and go there for a while but when she delivered a healthy baby boy, I was relieved. Then she hemorrhaged. There was so much blood. It was everywhere. I’d really thought we were going to lose her. Of course, she wasn’t aware of it because she was sedated, thank goodness.”

  “Why was she sedated?” I asked, horrified.

  “It was common practice. Most mothers were asleep or unaware of what was happening when they gave birth. Afterwards they were briefly shown their babies before the child was taken to the nursery for the cot cards to be written.”

  “So, the mother never got to hold her baby?” I asked, my eyes almost bulging at the idea.

  “No. It was very different then. For the mothers and the nurses.” She shook her head, the haunting memories dancing in her eyes.

  “The day Darryl was born the attending doctor was called to help save her. He knew of our friendship and could see I was struggling so he told me to take the baby to the nursery to write up his cot card, and to send the other nurse Emma in to help him. But what you don’t know is there was another baby boy born at the same time, delivered by Emma. As she took my place in with Carol, she asked me to take her baby to the nursery along with Darryl. I took both cribs, but as I walked in one of the day-old girls started to choke and I left the two boys to help her. Once I had her settled, I went back to the boys, but I’d muddled them up. I had no idea which baby was which.” Adele placed her head in her hands, her anxiety at the memory evident as she pulled her hair between her fingers. “When Emma came rushing in, I grabbed the nearest crib and said it was Carol’s baby and was about to swaddle him. She took the other baby and no one was
any wiser.”

  “But you knew.”

  “Yes. It haunted me for a long time, but I thought I’d gotten away with it. I mean, I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right! And when I thought about it logically, I realized everyone was happy. All the mothers had a baby. It’s not like I’d stolen one. And anyway, I knew that Carol was giving her baby up for adoption, so I figured it didn’t matter anyway.”

  “But why not just confess to the error now? Yes, it was horrible, but it was a mistake.”

  “Because of my family,” she sneered, her nose wrinkled and her eyes narrowed. She thought I was an idiot. “My husband was the most eligible bachelor in Westport at the time I met him. He was an up and coming doctor and I couldn’t believe it when he fell in love with me. I did everything I could to help his career and to protect my gorgeous children. When they both decided to follow in their father’s footsteps and become doctors, I knew they would be as successful as they both are. And my husband is now in charge of the hospital. Can you imagine what would happen if everyone found out I was the one who had failed so terribly? The shame that would be brought down on them would be unbearable. And poor Lara. She’s worked so hard to become a respected obstetrician. No one would trust her if they knew what I had done.”

  “I think you’re wrong on that one. Sure, what you did was horrible. The worst, but that’s on you. Not your family.”

  She released a long-suffering breath. “How very modern of you, Molly. But you’re stupid if you believe that crap.”

  “I guess I’m stupid then.”

  Adele snarled. “It’s irrelevant anyway. It’s too late now. Things went too far a long time ago.”

  “How did you know you hadn’t given the right baby to the right mother?”

  “I didn’t for a few years. But at age four Darryl was admitted with an illness and his blood was taken. That’s when I knew. Or at least I thought I did. His blood group was AB negative. Carol was O positive. There was no way Darryl was her child. Still, the adopted parents weren’t to know that. They accepted Darryl’s blood group was AB negative and never questioned it further. My mistake could still be kept a secret.”