I killed the lights and the engine. “Let’s have a look-see.”
I grabbed a flashlight I kept under the seat. Grace was out of the car by the time I got around to her side. Tentatively, the two of us walked up the driveway.
“I never wanted to do this,” Grace whispered, taking hold of my arm, clinging to me. “You have to believe me.”
I said nothing. There was a part of me that wanted to go ballistic. To ask her what the hell she’d been thinking. To scream at her until I went hoarse. But not now. It was important that we both make as little noise as possible. Lectures would come later, but I feared a stern talking-to was going to be the least of Grace’s worries.
“Where did you go in?”
“Around back,” Grace said. “Stuart knew this trick, this thing he did, so the alarm wouldn’t come on. He was pretty good at it.” She turned to see whether I was looking at her, and I was. “Maybe he’s done stuff like this before.”
I still resisted the urge to scold, but my look conveyed the message. Her head slunk down lower on her shoulders.
Once we were around the back and the double garage was visible, I clicked on the flashlight. First I shone it through the garage windows, saw a red Porsche and another car in there. I’d wondered whether, after Grace had fled, Stuart had continued with his plan to take the car.
Assuming he was okay.
The fact that the car was there was not a good sign. But then again, was it a bad sign?
I turned the flashlight on the house and saw the open basement window. The first thing I looked for was a gun on the ground.
No sign of one.
“That’s where we got in,” Grace said.
I got close to the window, shone the light down into the basement, saw some shards of glass down there on the carpet.
“Let’s see if we can look inside without going in,” I said. I wanted to look through the kitchen windows. Most houses had the kitchen at the back of the house. The first-floor windows sat up some, the sills hitting me around the base of the neck. Low enough to get a peek.
There was flagstone right up to the wall’s edge, so I didn’t have to step into any gardens to put my face up close to the glass. A set of blinds covered the entire window, but they were turned to let the sun in, so I was able, at least in theory, to peer between the slats. I held the flashlight over my shoulder and angled it to shine light through them and into the house.
It worked. I was looking at the kitchen. There was a large granite-topped island, a fridge on the far wall.
“Can you see anything?” Grace asked.
Problem was, from my angle I couldn’t see below the level of the countertops. If someone was on the floor, I wasn’t going to be able to tell from out here.
“Not really,” I said.
There was one obvious solution, of course: call the Milford Police. They’d be able to get into this house without going through a basement window. They’d know how to contact the security firm that monitored the house. They’d know how to handle things properly.
They’d also have questions for Grace. About her and her boyfriend’s plan to steal a Porsche. About breaking into this house.
On the off chance that things were not as bad as they seemed, I wanted to keep the police out of this mess as long as possible. Preferably forever. I had a feeling Grace would accept whatever punishment her mother and I dished out if it meant she wasn’t spending time behind bars.
Stop going there.
I lowered the flashlight and backed away from the house a couple of steps. “I really can’t see anything,” I said. “And that’s just the kitchen. Maybe whatever you heard happened someplace else.”
I had to make a decision. Call the police, or—
“I’m gonna have to go in,” I said, glancing over at the open basement window.
“I can’t,” Grace said, eyes wide with fear. “I can’t go in there.”
“I’m not asking you to. You stay by the window. Better yet, call me on your cell. We’ll be connected the whole time I’m in there.”
We both got out our phones. I instructed her to mute the ring, and I did the same. Grace dialed mine, it buzzed in my hand, and I accepted the call.
“Okay. If there’s a problem out here, you just give me a shout.”
She nodded as I slipped the phone into my shirt pocket. Close enough that if she called out to me, I’d hear her.
I got down on my hands and knees and worked my way back through the open basement window.
FIFTEEN
CYNTHIA Archer was pissed.
Why wouldn’t Terry let her pick up Grace? Why did he insist on doing it? He had to know it was important to her. He had to know that she wanted her daughter to know that even though she was taking a break away, she still loved Grace and wanted to be there for her.
Even for something as simple as a lift home.
Was Terry angry with her? Was this about the beer? About her being rude? Did it have anything to do with Nathaniel? Did Terry pick up some kind of vibe from him, even in the few seconds they’d spoken? Maybe Terry wasn’t upset about anything that had happened today, but just generally fed up about the whole time-out.
Or maybe it was something else.
Maybe it was something to do with Grace. Maybe Terry didn’t want Cynthia picking up Grace because the girl was in some kind of trouble. Not necessarily something big, just big enough that it might set Cynthia off.
Was that how they saw her? she wondered. Like she was dynamite? Handled incorrectly and she’d explode?
It depressed her.
Terry and Grace were always trying to protect Cynthia, shield her from anything that might raise her anxiety level. Well, really, it was just Terry trying to protect her. Grace was probably more interested in protecting herself whenever she kept something from her mother.
The problem was, the more they tried to keep her from worrying, the more she worried. When she suspected this was what they were up to, Cynthia couldn’t stop thinking about what it was they were hiding. Was Grace having trouble at school? Was she skipping classes? Failing to turn in her assignments? Staying out too late? Getting into trouble with boys? Smoking? Drinking? Drugs?
Sex?
There was no end of things to make yourself crazy about when it came to teenage girls.
Cynthia knew better than anyone. She was willing to concede she was a terror at that age. But she also knew, despite the headache she must have been to her parents—at least while she was still in their lives—that she was a pretty good kid. True, she made some stupid choices, like all teenagers. She shouldn’t have been out that night with Vince Fleming, who was seventeen and had what they called back then a “reputation.” It wasn’t just that he liked to raise a little hell, drove too fast, drank too much. His father was a known criminal, and, to recollect a phrase both her mother and her aunt Tess used to say, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Even though she was half in the bag at the time, she could recall every detail of that night back in May 1983. At least the parts before she got home and passed out. She remembered her father tracking her down, finding her in that Mustang with Vince, how he dragged her out, drove her home. The ugly scene that followed.
And the horrible, horrible events that happened after that. Waking up the next morning to an empty house, and not knowing for another two and a half decades what had happened to her mother and father and brother. And then struggling to come to terms with knowing her family—that family, the one she grew up with—was now forever gone.
But none of it was her fault.
After all these years, it was one of the few things she’d finally accepted, thank you very much, Dr. Naomi Kinzler. The irony was, her bad behavior that night when she was fourteen, her excessive drinking, undoubtedly saved Cynthia’s life. She’d passed out, missed the whole thing.
Stop dwelling on the past . . .
But that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? She couldn’t stop. When you suf
fer a trauma in your teens, it never really leaves you. She knew these deep-rooted anxieties fed her worries about Grace, and Terry, too. It wouldn’t matter how perfect their lives were—she’d always be steeling herself for what was around the next corner.
There were medications she could take, of course. But she didn’t like how they made her feel, and really, wasn’t it a good thing to always be on guard? To be ready for whatever bad thing that might come along? You couldn’t allow yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security, right?
Except it was no way to live.
And she didn’t want to live here, in this apartment, nice as it was. A combined living room and kitchen, plus bedroom and bath. Nathaniel across the hall. Downstairs, Winnifred the librarian and Orland, the lonely old guy. Not exactly a place where you had to be worried about loud parties.
The only one she’d really gotten to know was Nathaniel Braithwaite. A very distinguished name for a man who made his living taking people’s pets for a stroll while their owners were at work.
Cynthia chided herself for mocking him in her thoughts. Nathaniel was a nice man. Thirty-three, jet-black hair, slim. From the looks of him, walking dogs got you in as good a shape as if you went to the gym. He told her he covered probably ten miles a day. Plus, all that bending over to clean up after them—well, it was the next best thing to calisthenics. Lots of stretching.
He’d had his own software company in Bridgeport, designing apps for that cell phone company that went bankrupt a couple of years back. He’d had the fancy car, a condo overlooking the sound, a place in Florida. But when his major client went under and failed to pay Nathaniel’s company the millions he was owed, his company got dragged down with it.
Nathaniel didn’t just lose the company and the condo and just about every dime he had in the bank.
He lost his wife, too. She’d met Nathaniel as he was riding the wave and had grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle. When it ended, so did the marriage.
And then, as he’d told Cynthia during the chats they’d had in the hall or when they met on the stairs, he lost his mind.
He called it a nervous breakdown. A mental collapse, with a dollop of depression thrown in for good measure. Lasted the better part of a year, even spent a week in the hospital when he went through a suicidal period. When he finally emerged from the darkness, he opted for a simpler, less ambitious, much less stressful existence.
He might not get back into the proverbial fast lane for six months, or a year. Or maybe never. He got his small apartment, then began considering ways to keep food on the table and beer in the fridge.
Nathaniel liked dogs.
He’d always had them as a kid. He wasn’t about to go back to school for several years to become a veterinarian, but he was pretty sure he didn’t need a degree to walk them. He acquired several clients whose dogs needed to be liberated from the house to do their business every day.
Cynthia liked Nathaniel. She tried hard not to feel sorry for him. He claimed to be happy, that he wasn’t looking for pity, but he always seemed to be on the edge. She couldn’t help but feel a tenderness, an almost motherly feeling toward him. He was, after all, thirteen years younger.
A handsome man.
But right now, at this moment, she wasn’t thinking about Nathaniel. She was thinking about why Terry didn’t want her to give Grace a ride home.
Something was going on.
She could feel it.
The question was whether she should do anything about it, and if the answer was yes, then what? At the very least, she could call back in half an hour and make sure Grace had gotten home safely. She paced the apartment wondering what she should do.
Make a cup of tea and go to bed. That’s what you should do.
As if that would happen. She had tossed the pamphlets warning about household mold on her small dining table—just the sort of thing she wanted to read while eating dinner—and now picked one up to reread the copy. She’d written it, and now that she was looking at it again, she realized she could have used simpler, less technical language—and that was when she heard a noise in the hall.
Maybe Terry had decided to drop by with Grace. Was there a chance of that? That they might decide to surprise her with a late-night visit?
But then she heard raised voices. Two. Both men, although neither sounded like Terry.
Cynthia swung open her door to see Orland from downstairs trying to open the door to Nathaniel’s apartment. He kept twisting the knob, but the locked door wouldn’t yield.
Cynthia guessed Orland was in his seventies. He was sapling thin and had probably been over six feet tall at one time, but now, round shouldered, he was no more than five-nine. His thinned, wispy hair was all over place, as if he’d just taken off a hat, but there was none in evidence. His eyebrows were bushy and there was hair sticking out of his ears. His silver-framed glasses were askew.
Nathaniel was ten feet away at the end of the hall by the top of the stairs.
“Orland?” he said. “Can I help you?”
Orland’s head craned around. “Huh? Yeah, you can help me. You can help me get this damned door open.”
He made a fist, banged on the door. “Honey? Open the damn door!” He turned and looked at Nathaniel again. “My wife’s locked me out. Goddamn bitch.”
Cynthia stepped out into the hall and gently placed her hand on the man’s shoulder. His head moved around and he eyed her over the top of his glasses. “You’re not my wife.”
“It’s me, Cynthia. Your upstairs neighbor. I think you’re on the wrong floor.”
“Huh?”
“Orland,” said Nathaniel, “why don’t you let us take you downstairs, to your place.”
“My wife’s moved?”
Nathaniel and Cynthia guided him toward the stairs. Nathaniel led and Cynthia followed. The door to Orland’s apartment was unlocked. They settled him into his La-Z-Boy chair in front of the television, which was already on.
“I was watching TV,” Orland said.
There was no one else in the apartment, and Orland took no notice of that. The hunt for his spouse was over, for now.
“You going to be okay?” Nathaniel asked.
“Sure, I’m fine. What are you doing here?”
“Good night, Orland,” Cynthia said as she and her upstairs neighbor slipped out of the apartment and closed the door.
“I’ve never seen him like that,” she said.
“Me, neither,” Nathaniel said. “Good thing I got home when I did. He might have got into my place and I’d have found him in my bed.”
When they’d returned to the second-floor hallway, she said, “I wonder if I should let Barney know. I mean, if Orland’s starting to lose it, he could set the place on fire or something.”
“Jesus, I hadn’t thought of that.”
They’d reached the door to his apartment. “Listen, you want a coffee or something? I feel a little, I don’t know, wound up.”
“It’s late,” Cynthia said.
“I was going to make decaf, if you’re worried about not being able to get to sleep.” He smiled, flashed his perfect teeth, and opened the door. “Take two seconds.”
She knew she should go back into her apartment and close the door. But it would be nice to talk to someone, anyone, about just about anything. She hadn’t realized, when she decided to stay here, just how lonely she’d feel at times. How even turmoil was a form of company.
Talking to Nathaniel might ease the anxiety she was feeling about what Terry and Grace might be keeping from her.
And the things that she was keeping from them.
“Sure,” Cynthia said. “A cup of decaf sounds great.”
SIXTEEN
TERRY
I pushed my legs into the house, let them dangle a second, then dropped in. It was barely a one-foot drop to the basement floor. I surveyed the room with the flashlight. All the things you might expect. Big couches. TV. Dartboard on the wall. Bookshelves jammed with as many
DVDs and old VHS tapes as actual books. I shone the light around my feet looking for glass, not wanting to step in it even with shoes on. Shards could get caught in the treads.
But it was impossible to avoid, and broken glass crunched beneath my shoes.
“What is it, Dad?” Grace asked, appearing to me only from feet to knees, her shoes just beyond the window.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just glass.” I got the phone back out of my pocket and put it to my ear as I hunted for the stairs up to the first floor. “You hear me?” I said.
“I hear you,” Grace whispered, still close enough that there was a slight echoing effect in my ear. “It’s making a weird noise, like your voice is repeating. It did that before tonight, when I got out of the house. My phone might be wonky.”
“It should go away once we get farther apart,” I said.
Phone in one hand, flashlight in the other, I found the stairs and ascended to the first floor. The stairs brought me off to the side of the front hallway. One of the drawers on a shallow table pushed up against the wall was half open. I raised the flashlight, cast the beam ahead into what looked to be the kitchen.
It would have been nice to turn on all the lights, but I knew that wasn’t an option. Couldn’t afford to have any of the neighbors spotting me wandering around in there.
“What do you see, Dad?”
“Nothing yet.” The echoing had stopped.
Three hours earlier, I’d been sitting in front of the TV watching Jeopardy! Now I was exploring, illegally, the house of someone I did not know with a flashlight, in the dead of night, hoping not to come across a body.
At that moment I thought of those two retired people slain in their home. What it must have been like for them to find a stranger—assuming it was a stranger who killed them—in their house.
That’s what I was now. I was the stranger. And while I knew I didn’t pose any threat, if I confronted someone in this house, they wouldn’t know that.
I hoped to encounter no one here—dead or alive.