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LAST TO KNOW
Elizabeth Adler
MINOTAUR BOOKS
New York
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This is a work of fi ction. All of the characters, organizations, and
events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s
imagination or are used fi ctitiously.
LAST TO KNOW. Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth Adler. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information,
address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www .minotaurbooks .com
Designed by Kathryn Parise
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING- IN- PUBLICATION DATA (TK)
ISBN 978- 1- 250- 01992- 9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978- 1- 250- 01994- 3 (e-book)
Minotaur books may be purchased for educational, business, or pro-
motional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Mac-
millan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1- 800- 221- 7945,
extension 5442, or write [email protected].
First Edition: July 2014
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PROLOGUE
This will not be the fi rst time I have killed, though I am not one of
those roaming, spur- of- the- moment serial killers. I am discreet,
careful, choosy in fact, about whom I want to kill, and why.
I am not an evil person; on the contrary I believe I am, if not good,
then certainly kind. I am kind to animals unless they aggravate me,
pleasant with babies because they are not worth the bother of aggrava-
tion, and I know how to use charm well enough to fool most people.
“Murder?” you might be asking. Am I talking casually, seriously,
about murder? That is not the way I would put it. There is a reason I
choose who should depart this life and it is always a logical one. Now I
have picked out the next.
Rose Osborne is not dead yet, but she is going to die. And soon. Later,
I will tell you exactly why.
How can I not be evil, talking so easily about killing someone? Believe
me, I am as normal as you who are judging me.
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Elizabeth Adler
2
You will never know me, never meet me. Not for me the long, fantasy
sexual bites of the vampire. If you want blood then the femoral artery at
the junction of the thigh and the crotch cuts easily while at the same time
giving access to the most intriguing and secret parts of the anatomy.
The knife is my favorite method. I have used it more than once,
though sometimes other, more fi tting methods work better, as you will see
later.
So, be aware I am among you. I am the one who always helps out at
the animal shelter, at the scenes of disaster, with the old people . . . that’s
how “normal” I am. And why you, like Rose, will always be the last to
know.
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1EVE NING LAKE, Massachusetts, 3 A.M.
Harry Jordan’s wooden vacation house was certainly the
smallest, as well as one of the oldest, on Eve ning Lake, a
resort where nothing bad, like murder, ever happened, but which
in recent years had become a little too smart for Harry’s style:
too cocktail- partyish; too many lonely blond wives with hungry
eyes; too many miniature dogs peeking out of Range Rover win-
dows. Mind you Harry’s own car, a classic ’69 souped- up E-type,
British racing green with tan leather seats, was certainly a head-
turner, but then Harry owned that car because he loved it with
a passion, not for show. And the dog usually to be seen gazing
from its windows was a large silver- gray malamute- mix that
looked remarkably like a wolf, but with astonishingly pale blue
eyes.
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Elizabeth Adler
4
The dog’s name was Squeeze and it went everywhere with
Harry. Which, since Harry was a hom i cide detective on the Bos-
ton squad, meant that Squeeze had seen a cross section of hard
life on the streets as well as the plusher environment of Harry’s
own Beacon Hill apartment. Not only did Squeeze know that the
best place to eat in town was Ruby’s Diner near the precinct, he
also knew the locations of the best bars. Squeeze had it pretty
good and so, Harry had thought, did he, until last week when the
woman he was going to marry left him and went to Paris instead.
Which was the reason he was here at Eve ning Lake. Alone. But
for the dog.
Squeeze was Harry’s alarm clock. At fi ve thirty every morn-
ing, even on Harry’s infrequent days off, it waited, eyes fi xed on
the fl ickering green digital display of the clock, zapping it with a
fast paw at the fi rst ring. Usually all that happened was that Harry
would roll over onto his back. After another couple of minutes the
dog would leap onto the bed and lay its massive head on Harry’s
chest, staring fi xedly at him. Another couple of minutes and Harry
would groan under the dog’s weight, open his eyes and stare
straight into the dog’s. It would not move and Harry had no option
but to get up. That was their morning routine. The difference now
was that it was not yet morning.
It was 3 A.M., the darkest hour of the night. And they were
on vacation at the lake. So what, Harry wondered, was up with
Squeeze anyway. He always left the door leading to the porch
open so the dog could push in and out as needed. Something
must be wrong.
He sat up and looked at the dog, standing by the door, taut as
a hot- wired spring, staring intently back at him. Knowing he had
no choice he got out of bed and went in search of his pants.
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LAST TO KNOW
5
At forty Harry looked pretty good, six- two, muscular despite
a lack of serious exercise and his erratic diet of junk food eaten on
the run. There were a few furrows on his brow now and his dark
hair was beginning to recede a bit at the temples and somehow
never looked as though it had been combed, and maybe it hadn’t
if he was in a hurry, which he mostly was; his level gray eyes un-
der bushy brows seemed to notice everything about you in one
sweeping glance and he never seemed to have time for a decent
shave, so sometimes he had a rough beard. Stubble became him.
At least that’s what women thought. They found him attractive.
His colleagues did not agree. They called him “the Prof ” because
of his Harvard Law degree, earned the hard and, for Harry, bit-
terly boring way. He’d given it up years ago and become a rookie
in the police department instead. The reason he’d used was that
he didn’t want to waste his time getting criminals off on legal
technicalities for large fees; he would rather be out on the streets
catching them.
Harry had worked his way up from patrol cars to se nior de-
tective. And he was good at what he did.
What very few of his colleagues knew about Harry— because
to him it was not important, and besides it was nobody’s business—
was that at the age of thirty he’d inherited a trust fund set up by
his grandfather that made him rich. At least, rich enough to buy
the brownstone on Boston’s Beacon Hill, which he’d converted
into apartments. He rented out the three top fl oors but kept the
apartment on the garden fl oor for himself. He redid this to his
own specifi cations, walled in the garden, and later bought him-
self a pup. The malamute.
Harry’s fi ancée had not enjoyed sharing her man with a very
large, very present dog. She objected when Squeeze jumped fi rst
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Elizabeth Adler
6
into the Jag and sat shotgun next to Harry, while she was ex-
pected to struggle into the small space in the back that almost
could be called a seat. She also had not liked Harry’s hours, espe-
cially the nocturnal ones. “You never take me out to dinner any-
more,” she’d complained, though she did like it when Harry
cooked.
For a man who existed on food eaten on the run Harry hap-
pened to be a very good cook, though only old- fashioned things
like pasta Alfredo, scampi Livornese, spaghetti Bolognese— all
recipes taken directly from his rare and trea sured copy of the
Vincent Price cookbook with its menus and recipes from some of
the great restaurants of the world, circa 1970. Exactly Harry’s era,
taste- wise. Forget today’s avant- garde chefs and what Harry called
tortured food: he liked it simple and, if he was lucky, good. If not
then a burger was just fi ne.
He was fussy about his wine though. Harry enjoyed a good
Claret. He never called good red wine “Cabernet,” nor did he
trust “Chardonnay”— he preferred a Graves or white Bordeaux.
Anyhow, Harry thought now, swinging his legs out of bed and
gazing out the window at Eve ning Lake, glimmering blackly on
this moonless night; anyhow, the fi ancée whom he’d loved dearly,
Mallory Malone, the girl of his dreams, had had enough. Paris,
she had told him, would be more fun than another night alone in
Boston waiting for the phone to ring or sharing more takeout
fried chicken and a bottle of his good red. “I can share a bottle of
good Bordeaux with anyone I like in Paris,” she’d added.
Harry had seen the tears in Mal’s eyes as she walked out the
door for the last time, not slamming it, though he guessed she had
every right to. He had not gone after her. It would not have
worked; he knew it, and she knew it. Not the way things were,
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LAST TO KNOW
7
with him dedicated to his work. While she had given up her own
successful special investigations TV show, which looked further
into unsolved crimes of the past, for him.
He’d called his best buddy and colleague, Carlo Rossetti, bro-
ken the news, and for the fi rst time in his police career said that
he needed to take time off. He needed a break. He wanted time
out from stabbings and shootings and killings on the streets. He
needed to rethink his life. He needed to be alone and the old gray
wooden fi shing shack on the lake that had been his grandfather’s
was just the place.
It consisted of two sparsely furnished rooms, a corner kitchen
with a hot plate and a micro wave, a white- tiled shower that needed
regrouting— a job Harry promised himself to do while he was
there— a porch with an old three- legged orange Weber barbecue
with a lift- up lid and several years’ worth of burned- on grease.
There was a narrow wooden jetty and a small rowboat with a
little outboard motor. Powerboats were not allowed on the lake,
only sails and boats like Harry’s. A copse of birch trees, trunks
gleaming silvery in the night, protected him from the sandy road
that led around the lake, giving him privacy, though he did have
an excellent view of nearby houses, much larger and grander than
his own, and also of those on the other side of the lake, the larg-
est of which was owned by a fl ashy blonde with a daughter who
looked about eigh teen, though when Harry glimpsed them in the
mini- market, he thought that with her pale straight hair and elu-
sive blue gaze, she might be closer to thirteen. It occurred to him
looking across the lake now, that it was odd, with such a big house,
so little entertaining was done. Unlike with the rest of the summer
people there were no cocktail parties, no barbecue nights, no boozy
laughter. And apparently no friends for the young daughter. Quite
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Elizabeth Adler
8
different from the Osborne family who lived a couple of houses
away. He’d encountered Rose Osborne on his early morning
walks. She too, seemed always to be alone. They’d exchanged
morning pleasantries. She’d said please come by, they kept open
house, but Harry never had. He found Rose attractive: a sumptuous-
looking woman, round and full and . . . welcoming . . . was the best
word he could use to describe her, with her wildly curling long
hair, often pulled in a messy ponytail, her intense brown eyes, her
long legs and— of course he had noticed— her slender ankles. She
always seemed last- minute thrown- together in a sweatshirt, capris,
and sneakers, and sometimes she was on her bike: “Getting my
morning exercise in,” she’d call cheerfully in passing, throwing
him a smile that, lonely man that he was now, Harry really appre-
ciated. Still, maybe because he was attracted to her he had never
taken Rose up on her offer, never gone by for that cup of coffee or
that eve ning drink. He respected marriage and married women
were not his style. Besides, he was still a man in love. With Mal-
lory Malone. Or at least he thought he was. Thought maybe she
was too, in love with him. Maybe a little bit.
Every now and then, though, he would see other members of
the Osborne family dashing in and out, a remote- looking college-
age son, who gave off “keep away from me” vibes that spelled a
problem to Harry; a couple of fl uffy teenage girls; and a boy, elev-
enish, small, skinny, ginger- haired and, unlike the rest of that busy
house hold, always alone. Harry noticed things like that and it
made him wonder why the kid was always alone. He also noticed
that the boy would hide up in the fi g tree where a branch led, he
guessed, to his bedroom window. So the kid sat up there and
spied on his family and the rest of the world. He would probably
make a good detective.
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LAST TO KNOW
9
And then there was the husband, Wally Osborne. The famous
writer. Wally wrote scary novels that could make the hair stand
up on the back of your neck and which were made into fi lms that
made you want to shout out loud, “Look behind you, the killer’s
there!”
You might expect a writer of evil books to look evil, or at least
a bit mad. Wally Osborne looked neither. He was tall, lean, and
handsome with permanently tousled blond hair, deep blue eyes,
and a light summer tan which, Harry knew, must send the local
women into raptures. He thought Rose Osborne probably had a
hard time keeping tabs on a husband like that. But that was none
of his business.
Anyway, he was at Eve ning Lake, it was three in the morning,
and he was climbing into the sweatpants he wore to the gym and
a soft dark blue sweater, a present from his ex, thrusting his feet
into sneakers, grumbling as he laced them up, glancing at the
dog, still expectantly waiting.
“So, okay, let’s see what’s up, Squeeze,” he said resignedly. He
wasn’t sure what it might be but the dog surely knew something,
and since he was still a cop, even though he was thinking about
quitting, Harry needed to investigate.
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The Osborne house nearby Harry’s sat squarely on the edge
of Eve ning Lake. “Sat” rather than “perched” because this
was a solid house, built to last, ninety years before by a genera-
tion that respected solid workmanship and the art of a true
craftsman.
It still sat, rather than perched, all these much- lived- in genera-
tions later, a white clapboard structure, raised on stilts at the
waterfront with a veranda, or “porch” as it was always to be called,
running the length of it lakeside, and a jetty where variations of
small boats were moored. Omar Osborne was one of the fi rst set-
tlers and certainly one who voted for the irrevocable rule that no
motorboats be allowed. Eve ning Lake would remain unpolluted,
he hoped, for his descendants.
New houses now edged the lake, some of them Gatsbyish in
their size, but local laws kept them to “simple” splendor, and many
2
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Elizabeth Adler
12
of the fi rst old shacks were still there, the brown wood faded to a
silvery gray, a reminder of times past though still lived in and
enjoyed.
The house was traditional. A row of French doors opened onto
the porch, fronting a spacious light- fl ooded room with oversized
“lived- in” sofas covered in nut- brown heavy linen, and comfy
chairs with rarely plumped- up cushions, covered in cream bro-
cade, obviously brought from some other house to join the mix-
and- match melée, because this house had never felt the hands of
a “decorator.”
“It all simply came together, the way it should,” was what Rose
Osborne told her visitors, apologizing for the trek up the wide
creaking wooden staircase— she never knew when asked whether
it was oak or chestnut, and was always surprised by the question
because she was too worried about guests having to march up
three fl oors to their rooms.
The main guest room was on the second fl oor and had gables
jutting like eyebrows over the short windows. Rose’s favorite color
was turquoise, and she’d had the gables painted that cheerful
color, though now because they weren’t too keen on having the
upset caused by repainting every three years they had faded to
what Rose called her “passionate blue.”
“Why ‘passionate’?” guests would ask and be rewarded with a
smile and Rose’s answer that many people had asked her that,
but it was her secret. Hers and her husband, Wally’s. She had
never even told her three children what it meant. Which, in fact,
was that it was exactly the color of the pure silk nightgown her
husband had surprised her with on their honeymoon, bought in
some outrageously expensive boutique and which they certainly
could not afford, but that he’d said he’d just known would look
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LAST TO KNOW
13
wonderful on her and that he wanted to make love to her wear-
ing it.
So he had. They had. And the nightgown was still there,
wrapped in special tissue to preserve the silk, in the second
left- hand drawer of her vanity, under lock and key. A memory
preserved. Occasionally, dreaming of the past, Rose would un-
lock the drawer, take out the package, carefully unwrap the tis-
sue, and look at the most beautiful garment she had ever owned.
Its pale champagne lace trim was as delicate as ever, its blue as
turquoise as the Mediterranean on a summer eve ning when that
coast turned luminous in the fading light.
In back of the house a forest of birch mounted the hill, silver at
dawn and eve ning, blank and peeling in the full light of day. Atop
the hill, brambles tangled at a walker’s feet, thorns scratched
childish hands seeking blackberries, and old wells, dry now but
once the area’s only source of fresh water, crumbled, away from
the main paths with warnings posted to “take care.”
The small town of Eve ning Lake, only a village really, lay two
miles down the sandy road that led behind the house, which
had a sharp gravelly turnoff that you had to watch out for or you
would miss it. There was a lean- to on the left where cars could
park, and a would- be vegetable garden struggled on the right where
tender Boston lettuces pushed through the sandy earth and rad-
ishes grew to giant size and where, if left un- netted, birds or ani-
mals ate all the tiny sweet tomatoes that here were more true to
their fruity origin than mere salad fi xings.
Two chimneys sat atop the Osborne house and in winter smoke
plumed straight up. The builder had done a good job on those
fl ues, as he had on everything else.
There was a “mud room” to the left of the front door. It was
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Elizabeth Adler
14
called the “front” door because it faced onto the road, though no
one ever used it, they always walked directly into the kitchen by
the side door, now painted Rose’s turquoise blue. Fishing tackle
and wellington boots, tennis rackets, dog leads and raincoats, a
vacuum cleaner, buckets and a whiskery old broom were stored
in there.
Rose and Wally’s “boudoir” was above the living room, a spa-
cious sprawl with a big old brass bed. Dylan’s song “Lay Lady
Lay” (across my big brass bed) used to be Wally’s favorite song:
they had played it endlessly on their old hi- fi in those early days,
so of course Wally had fi nally had to buy his big brass bed. A long
white chaise stood under the window where Rose would read;
there was a pretty vanity against the wall where the light fell per-
fectly onto the mirror; and a smallish bathroom in pale marble
with a tub deep enough for soaking, and big enough for two.
Beyond that, down the hall, was the twins’ room, a girly pastel
horror of dropped clothing, still- plugged- in curling irons, spilled
powder and abandoned tubes of lipstick. The cat they had rescued
from the side of the road as a minute kitten that had to be fed by
an eyedropper slept on their beds. Now hefty, he was called Baby
Noir because of his luxuriant black fur, and he scared the hell
out of everybody who came near him, except, of course, Madison,
whose beloved he was. There was also Peggy the Pug: beige, fl at-
black- nosed, soppy and snoring, and Frazer’s best friend.
Roman rarely allowed anyone into his room, which he kept in
almost total darkness. He had the whole top fl oor to himself, ac-
cessed by a stairway leading from the kitchen, as well as from an
outside fl ight of, by now, rather rickety wooden stairs, something
Rose had always had her doubts about, especially with a teen-
ager. When he was younger she had locked that door and pock-
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LAST TO KNOW
15
eted the key. Now Roman was eighteen and objected to “being
locked in.” His father had come out on his side and the key had
been handed over, though not without misgivings on Rose’s part.
“What if he escapes at night, runs off in the dark, partying,
drinking . . . doing lord knows what?” she’d asked Wally. But her
husband had laughed her fears off with the same old same teen-
ager get- out card.
“Look at him,” he told Rose. “He’s a quiet, well- behaved, re-
sponsible young man. He works hard, gets good grades, he’s on
course for a scholarship to a good college, let him have his fun.”
It was Wally’s opinion that his son was far too quiet and could
use a bit more “fun,” and should get out alone more. He stayed
home too much, hung around the house, always on his phone or
his tablet, always somewhere else in his head.
“That’s teens for you,” Wally emphasized to Rose. But Rose
wasn’t buying in to that cliché and she worried. She wished he
was more like the twins, outgoing, lovable, touchable, hugs and
kisses all round. As well as “teens” she guessed “boys would be
boys.” In fact all the clichés seemed to suit her son. Right now,
that is.
A big house, then, though never grand. A true family house,
fi lled with friends and people of all kinds. This was the Osborne
house. Charming, calm, friendly. Until that night. When every-
thing would change.
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