The Bone House - Brian Freeman [12]
'OK,' Cab said, waiting for more.
'Troy told me that we needed to talk to the husband before he skipped town. He claimed that if there's anyone in the hotel who might have done this to Glory, it's Mark Bradley.'
Cab raised an eyebrow. 'Yeah? Based on what? Does this guy have some kind of connection to Glory?'
'Not to Glory,' Lala told him, 'but to her sister. According to Troy, everyone in Door County knows Mark Bradley. He was a teacher at the high school until he was let go under a cloud last year. The police couldn't bring statutory rape charges, because Tresa wouldn't say a word against him on the record. But the story is, he was having sex with her.'
* * *
Chapter Four
Hilary Bradley sat motionless on the sofa in their hotel room as Mark paced in and out of the dusty stream of light through the patio door. They hadn't spoken. She studied the stricken expression on her husband's face. His breathing was fast and loud through his nose; he was scared. It was like a rerun of the previous year, when they'd sat together in their Washington Island home and confronted the rumors about Mark and Tresa.
Not again.
They didn't need to talk to each other to know what was going to happen. Hilary could see it all too clearly. Accusations were about to rain down on Mark like a storm. There would be a knock on the door. Questions. Suspicion. This one would be even worse than the previous year because Mark's name was already linked to teenage girls and sex - and because there was no doubt this time about whether anything bad had really happened. There would be no he-said, she- said this year.
A girl was dead on the beach. Someone killed her.
Mark stopped in the middle of the carpet. He'd closed the glass door to the beach, and the air in the room was cold and sterile. Their eyes met. She saw anger and anxiety fighting in his face. He took two steps in his long stride and knelt in front of her. He took both of her hands and squeezed them hard. 'I need to say something.'
Hilary was calm. 'Go ahead.'
'I didn't do this,' Mark said. 'I never thought I'd have to ask this again, but I need you to have faith in me. You have to believe me.'
'I do.'
He stood up again, relieved, and she hoped he didn't doubt her sincerity or wonder if she was hiding something behind her face. She wasn't lying.
A year ago, her friends had called her naive when she told them that she didn't think that Mark had slept with Tresa Fischer. He denied it; she believed him. They'd both been foolish in letting Tresa get closer to them than their other students, which was a mistake Hilary had always sworn to herself she'd avoid as a teacher. But she and Mark were new to Door County and anxious to fit into small-town life. Tresa was sincere, smart, quiet; she was pretty, but she wasn't wild or sexual like her younger sister Glory. They'd paid attention to her, and Tresa, who didn't get much attention at home, thrived on it.
Hilary had realized quickly that Tresa was developing a schoolgirl crush on her husband. It wasn't the first time. Women young and old were drawn to Mark, but he'd never shown any inclination to cheat. She hadn't seen Tresa's emotions as a threat, because she knew the girl too well and didn't believe Tresa would ever try to act on her feelings. Her affection for Tresa made her forget her first rule of teenagers, which was that they weren't girls growing up to be women; they were women in girl's clothes. She also never expected that Tresa's fantasies alone could get her husband into trouble.
Then Tresa's mother Delia found her daughter's diary.
When Tresa wasn't dancing, she was writing. Mark was her English and art teacher. He'd encouraged her to write short fiction, and he and Hilary had both read several of her stories, in which she'd created a teenage detective who was a lot like herself. What neither of them realized was that Tresa had been writing other stories