Page 134 of The Homewreckers
“After my last disastrous relationship with that guy I met on Tinder who turned out to be married, she sat me down and asked if maybe I was deliberately sabotaging my own life.”
Hattie smiled. “I just hate it that your mom’s always right.”
“Not all the time,” Cass said. “Remember the time she used that home hair-straightening stuff on me? Or that minivan she bought herself when we were seniors?”
“Who could forget the grocery grabber?”
“Worst car ever. But let’s get back to Davis Hoffman. What made Elise automatically assume you were sleeping with her ex?”
“She says he’s always had a thing for me, going back to high school.”
“I gotta say, I never really liked Davis Hoffman. It always felt likehe was watching you and Hank when you two were together—like a housecat waiting to pounce on a wounded chipmunk,” Cass said.
“Nice image,” Hattie said, recounting the rest of what Elise had told her—about Davis’s finances, and about the two of them being at the Hoffman family’s Tybee house—two doors down from the Creedmores’, on the night of Lanier Ragan’s death.
“Did you tell that to your detective friend?”
“I called him on my way back to Tybee. Cass, this thing keeps getting crazier and crazier. He’s been grilling Holland and his parents, and he finally got Holland to admit that he and Lanier had been meeting up that fall at the beach house. He said the night she disappeared, Lanier texted to say she was pregnant and wanted to meet up with him there.”
“Oh my God,” Cass whispered.
“This next part I’m not sure I understand, but somehow Holland’s mom figured out what was going on and she drove out there too.”
“To save her innocent baby boy from the evil schoolteacher.”
“Here’s where it gets really screwy. Holland swears he went out to the dock house, and waited, but Lanier never showed. He proceeded to get drunk and fall asleep. In the meantime, his mom gets out to Tybee, and she’s fumbling around in the dark and finds a body—which turns out to be Lanier.”
Hattie repeated the rest of the Creedmores’ fantastical account of finding, hiding, and then losing the schoolteacher’s corpse.
“They’re fucking lying,” Cass said, slapping the tabletop with the palms of her hands. “Junior killed her, and his parents literally covered it up. Think about it, Hattie. Who knew that septic tank manhole was there? We sure didn’t. It had to have been them.”
“You’re probably right,” Hattie said. “But what if it wasn’t them? What if Holland and his parents really are telling the truth? What if someone else was out there that night? And what if that someone also had a thing for Lanier Ragan?”
“That’s a lot of what-ifs,” Cass said.
Hattie leaned across the table. “You wanted to know why I wasso creeped out this afternoon? I’ll tell you. I went walking down the seawall, just to see if the Creedmores’ dock house was visible from the Hoffmans’ house. And Davis was there. Mowing the grass.”
“So? What’s creepy about that?”
“He had a big bandage wrapped around his right hand, and I could see a place on his chest that was blistered. He said he’d had a grilling accident. But Cass, I think he was lying. I think he got burned when he started that fire in our dumpster.”
Cass opened the bottle of Chardonnay she’d stashed in the fridge and poured a glass for herself. She gestured with the bottle toward Hattie. “Hair of the dog?”
“God, no.”
Cass sat back down opposite her friend. “Why would Davis set that dumpster fire?”
“To scare us off or make us abandon the project. As long as the Creedmores owned the house, he probably thought his secret was safe. No chance they’d go poking around back there, and if they did somehow discover Lanier’s body, they’d never broadcast that fact because they were complicit in her death. And it could be tied back to Holland.”
Cass sipped her wine. “That’s a huge supposition you’re making.”
“Not really. Davis has called me twice—out of the blue—to ask about our progress on the house. He as much as offered to buy it from me and said if he’d known it was going on the market, he’d have bought it himself. And he’s asked me to dinner twice. Why? After all these years?”
“Face it, kid, when you’re hot, you’re hot.”
Hattie snorted, pointing at her damp, unruly hair and the outfit that was one step away from the rag bag. “Riiight.”
“Okay, suppose Davis did set the fire and suppose he did kill Lanier. How did he hide the body in that septic tank? How did he even know about it?”
