The Homewreckers(115)

“It started with that damned septic tank pit. I can’t stop thinking about Lanier.…”

“By tomorrow morning you’ll never know it was there,” Cass said.

“I’ll always know. And now, I know way more than I wish I did.” Hattie ran her hands through her hair. “Elise Hoffman dropped in at the office to have a ‘chat’ with me today.”

“Who?”

“Davis Hoffman’s ex. Skinny blonde, went to Country Day?”

“What did she want?”

“She wanted to make sure I’m not sleeping with Davis these days.”

“Eew. Gross. Where’d she get an idea like that?”

Hattie filled her in on the Hoffmans’ marital woes, and the $40,000 loan.

Cass’s eyes widened. “You pawned your engagement ring? To buy the house?”

“I had to get the money from somewhere.” Hattie looked down at her plate, out the window, anyplace but directly at her best friend’s unflinching gaze. “I even hit up my dad.”

“Shit. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was embarrassed. To admit the lengths I’d go to just to prove a point to Tug. And the world. That I could make a success of something, after the debacle at Tattnall Street.”

“That wasn’t your fault. Nobody blamed you.”

“Tug did. He lost a lot of money on that house, money he and Nancy can’t afford.”

“What are you talking about? Mom says they’re loaded, and she oughtta know cuz she does the books. He owns like, a dozen rental houses around town, and a strip shopping center in Pooler.”

“That can’t be. He hasn’t bought a new truck in a decade, and he and Nancy still live in the same house they bought when Hank was a kid. He brings a sack lunch to work most days!”

Cass howled with laughter. “That’s because he’s tight as a tick. The Kavanaughs live that way because they want to.”

“Well, damn,” Hattie said. “Here I’ve been worrying my screwup would put them in the poorhouse.”

Cass cocked her head. “It’s always about proving yourself to other people, isn’t it? You’re the smartest, hardest-working woman I know, Hattie, but nobody has a poorer opinion of you than you.”

Hattie tipped the contents of her plate into Ribsy’s bowl, and he pounced.

“When did you turn into such an armchair psychiatrist?”

“Funny you should ask. I’ve started seeing a therapist.”

“Since when?”

Cass began boxing up the leftovers. “It’s been about six months now.”

“Does it help?”

Cass nodded. “I think so. It was Mom’s idea, actually.”

“Zen sent you to a shrink?”

“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 like he 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.”