I hit the button. “Hello?”
“I want to come home,” Kelly said urgently, her voice nothing more than a whisper. “Come and get me now, Daddy. Please hurry.”
SIX
Belinda Morton had told George she had a house to show tonight. “You know, that listing I just got, that couple moving to Vermont?”
George was watching Judge Judy at the time and didn’t pay her any attention. All she needed was an excuse when she walked out the door, and when you were a real estate agent, you expected to have to head out at all hours. But just to be sure he wouldn’t ask questions, she waited until her husband’s favorite show was on. George loved Judge Judy. At first Belinda thought he was fascinated by all the various disputes—fights over unpaid rent, jilted lovers who keyed cars, girlfriends who wanted their men to pay back money they’d spent to bail them out—but she’d come to the conclusion it was the judge herself who kept George transfixed in front of the set. He had a thing for her. He was mesmerized by her stern nature, the way she dominated her court and everyone inside it.
Although, if George had been paying attention, he might have noticed that Belinda hadn’t actually been going out that much lately. The real estate market was in the toilet. No one was buying. And people who needed to sell—like the ones who’d lost their jobs and spent months without success trying to find new ones—were getting downright desperate. The hospital was closing beds, laying off nurses. The Board of Education was talking about laying off dozens of teachers. Dealerships shutting down. Even the police department was letting a couple of officers go due to budget cuts. Belinda never would have guessed she’d see the day when people would just walk away. Let the bank have it, we don’t give a shit, we’re out of here. Just packing up their things and leaving their homes behind. Some houses, you could hardly give them away. Down in Florida, they had condo developments almost entirely empty, buyers from Canada coming down, picking up a $250,000 vacation spot for $30,000.
It was a world gone mad.
And how great it would be, Belinda thought, if a collapsing real estate market were all she had to worry about these days.
A few weeks ago, falling house prices, hardly any buyers, and no fat commissions going into the bank account had her tossing and turning all night. But at least back then, all she was worried about was her financial future. Keeping a roof over their heads, making the lease payments on the Acura.
She wasn’t actually scared for her personal safety. She wasn’t worried that someone might hurt her.
Not like now.
Belinda still needed to find a way to come up with $37,000. But even that was just in the short term. Ultimately, she’d have to get her hands on the whole $62,000. She’d maxed out her credit cards with cash advances totaling ten grand, put another five on her line of credit. And she was going to have to pay back her friends the eight thousand they’d kicked in. If they could get another fifteen or twenty for their truck, put that toward the debt, that’d be great, but Belinda would still have to reimburse them. She’d rather be in debt to them than their suppliers.
The suppliers wanted the money that was owed them. They’d made that very clear to her friends. And they didn’t care whose fault it was.
But Belinda had been the one taking the blame. “This is your fault,” they told her. “You don’t fuck with these people. They want that money from us, and we want it from you.”
Belinda had pleaded that it really wasn’t her fault. “It was an accident,” she kept telling them. “It was just one of those things.”
Hardly an accident, they told her. Two cars hitting each other for no reason, that’s an accident. But when one of those drivers makes a decision to do something very, very stupid, well, that’s a bit of a gray area, isn’t it?
The car burned up, Belinda said. “What the hell do you want from me?”
No one was interested in excuses.
One way or another, she had to come up with the money. All the more reason to unload the stuff she still had. A few hundred here, a few hundred there—it all helped. If only these assholes would just take the product back. That would help wipe out a good chunk of the debt. But they weren’t Sears. They had a “no return” policy. They just wanted their money.
She had a few deliveries she could make tonight. One guy in Derby who needed Avandia for his type 2 diabetes, and another customer only a couple of blocks over who was taking Propecia for baldness. Belinda wondered about pocketing a few of those herself, mashing them up and putting them in George’s cream of wheat in the morning. The comb-over thing he’d been trying for several years wasn’t fooling anybody. The other side of town there was a woman she delivered Viagra to, and Belinda wondered whether she was doing just that. Pulverizing the pill and hiding it in her husband’s Heavenly Hash ice cream. Getting him ready for bedtime. And she thought she should place a call to that man in Orange, see if he was getting low on lisinopril for his heart.
She was going to set up a website, but she’d found word of mouth had been working pretty well for her. Everyone needed a prescription of one kind or another, and these days everyone was looking for a way to save on drugstore prices. Considering hardly anyone had a drug plan, and those who did were wondering how much longer they’d get to keep it, there was a demand for what Belinda had to offer. Her prescription drugs—which, by the way, were available without a prescription—were made God knows where, somewhere in China, maybe in the same factories that cranked out those fake Fendi bags Ann Slocum hawked. And just like those purses, they could be had for a fraction of the cost of the real deal.
Belinda told herself she was doing a public service. Helping people, and helping them save money.
Not that she felt good enough about this sideline to tell George about it. He could be a real tight-ass about the sanctity of trademarks and copyright protections. He’d just about had a fit one time when they were in Manhattan, about five years ago, and Belinda tried to buy a counterfeit Kate Spade bag from a guy selling them out of a blanket around the corner from Ground Zero.
So she didn’t keep the drugs around the house.
Belinda kept them at the Torkin house.
Bernard and Barbara Torkin had put their house on the market thirteen months ago when they decided to move across the country to live with her parents in Arizona. He’d accepted a sales job at his father-in-law’s Toyota dealership when GM killed its Saturn division and the dealership he’d worked at for sixteen years shut down.
The Torkins had a small two-story that backed onto a school playground. The house on one side was owned by a man who kept three dogs that never stopped barking. On the other, a guy who repaired motorcycles and listened to Black Sabbath 24/7.
Belinda could not unload the place. She’d advised the Torkins to drop their price, but they wouldn’t budge. Damned if they were going to sell for forty percent less than they paid. They’d wait for the market to rebound, and then sell.
Don’t hold your breath, Belinda thought.
The good news was the Torkin house made a great place for Belinda Morton to hide her product. And tonight, she would head over to her “pharmacy,” as she liked to think of it, and fill some orders.
She was careful going down the cellar steps in her heels. It was cool down here, and she was losing the light as the door from the kitchen slowly started to swing shut. She reached, in time, the pull chain in the middle of the room that turned on the bare overhead bulb, but the corners of the room remained cast in shadow.
The basement wasn’t much of a selling point for prospective buyers. Cinder-block walls, open stud ceiling. At least the floor was concrete and not dirt. A washer and dryer and a workbench were down here but not much else, except the furnace. It was behind there that Belinda headed.
She lowered her head to clear a heating duct, then squeezed into the three-foot space between the furnace and the wall. There was a gap at the top of the cinder blocks where the wooden beams rested. She stuck her hand up and reached in. She kept
the jars just out of sight. There were fifteen of them in here, just the most popular stuff. Heart medications, drugs for acid reflux, diabetes, hard-ons. There was so little light back here she had to bring out the jars and set them on the worktable to sort out just what she needed.
She realized she was shaking. She knew that, even with a few sales tonight, she’d probably only make five hundred or so. She was going to have to come up with a better plan.
Maybe, she thought, she could talk the Torkins into some repairs. Send them an email in Arizona, tell them she thought she could sell their house if they did a few minor upgrades. A bit of paint, replace the rotten boards on the front porch, get someone in to clear out the junk in the far corner of the property.
Tell them she could get it all done for a couple of thousand. Keep the money herself. What were they going to do? Hop a plane and come back to Milford to see if the work got done? Not likely.
She had two other out-of-town clients she might be able to talk into some repairs. Once she got out from under her debt, if she had to, she’d find a way to get the actual work done. If she got wind the owners were going to be back in the neighborhood, she’d have to move on it. Truth was, Belinda would rather explain to those people why the work wasn’t done than have to explain to those other people why she didn’t have their money.
She held the first jar up to the light so she could read the label. Those magical blue pills. George had tried them, once. Not these ones, not the knockoff variety. He’d gotten a prescription from his doctor, wanted to see what they’d do. What they did was give him one hell of a headache. The whole time he was on her he griped that he needed some Tylenols before his head exploded.
Belinda was unscrewing the lid when she heard the floor creak above her head.
She froze. There was nothing for a moment. She told herself she’d imagined it.
But then it happened again.
Someone was walking around in the kitchen.
She was sure she’d locked the front door when she’d come in. She didn’t want anyone walking in on her while she conducted her dispensing duties. But maybe, somehow, she’d forgotten. Someone had seen the For Sale sign out front, her Acura parked at the curb, noticed the business card she kept on the dash, and decided this was an open house.
“Hello?” she called out tentatively. “Is there someone there?”
No one answered.
Belinda called out again. “Did you see the sign? Are you here about the house?”
If whoever it was upstairs was here for some other reason, like looking for a place to crash, or make out, or vandalize, they’d know now that someone was already here. And if they had half a brain in their head, they’d take off.
But Belinda hadn’t heard anyone running for the front door.
Her mouth was dry and she tried to swallow. She needed to get out of here. But there was only one way out, and it was up those stairs, and the kitchen was at the top of those stairs.
She decided to call the police. She’d whisper into her cell phone, tell them to get here fast, that someone was in the house, someone was—
Her cell phone was in her purse. A fake Chanel bag she’d bought at one of Ann’s purse parties. And it was sitting upstairs, on the kitchen counter.
The door at the top of the stairs opened.
Belinda considered hiding, but where would she go? Behind the furnace? How long would it take someone to find her there? Five seconds?
“You’re trespassing!” she said. “Unless you’re interested in buying this house, you’ve got no business being here.”
A man’s silhouette filled the doorway. He said, “You’re Belinda.”
She nodded. “That’s—that’s right. I’m the agent for this house. And you are?”
“I’m not here about the house.”
With the kitchen lights illuminating him from behind, his face was difficult to see. But Belinda determined he was a good six feet tall, thin, with short dark hair, and wearing a dark tailored suit and white shirt, but no tie.
“What do you want?” she asked. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“You’re running out of time.” His voice was even, almost no inflection at all.
“The money,” she said, her voice a whisper. “You’re here about the money.”
The man said nothing.
“I’m working on it,” she said, struggling to make herself sound enthusiastic. “I really, really am. But just so you understand the situation. About the accident. There was a fire. So if the envelope was in the car—”
“That’s not my problem.” He descended a step.
“I’m just saying, that’s why this is taking some time. I mean, if you folks took checks,” and here she tried a nervous laugh, “I could write you one on my line of credit. Maybe not for all of it, not today, but—”
“Two days,” he said. “Talk to your friends. They know how to reach me.”
He turned, went back up the one step to the kitchen, and disappeared.
Belinda’s heart fluttered. She wondered whether she was going to faint. She felt herself starting to shake again.
Just before she dissolved into tears, she realized that she’d just said something that had never occurred to her before.
So if the envelope was in the car—
If.
She’d always assumed it was. Everyone had. This was the first time she’d even considered it might not have been. Was there a chance in a million it still existed? And even if it had been in the car, was there the same chance it didn’t go up in smoke? The car had burned, but from what Belinda knew, the fire had been extinguished before it was completely destroyed. Belinda’d heard the casket was closed more out of concern for the little girl than because the body had been consumed by flames.
There were questions she’d have to ask.
Hard questions.
SEVEN
I was back at the Slocum house in five minutes.
I thought Kelly would be waiting at the front door, watching for me, but I had to ring the bell. When no one showed up after ten seconds, I leaned on it again.
Darren Slocum, opening the door, looked surprised to see me. “Hey, Glen,” he said, his eyebrows slanted down quizzically.
“Hi,” I said.
“What’s up?”
I’d assumed he’d know why I was there. “I’m picking up Kelly.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. She called me. Can you get her?”
Hesitant. “Yeah, sure thing, Glen. Wait here a second and I’ll go see what’s going on.”
I stepped into the foyer without being asked as he headed off through the dining room to the left. I stood there, looking around. To the right, a living room with a big-screen TV, a couple of leather couches. Half a dozen remotes lined up on the coffee table like prone soldiers.
I heard someone coming, but it was Ann, not Kelly.
“Hello?” she said. She looked as surprised to see me as Glen had. I didn’t know whether I was reading her right, but she seemed troubled, too. She had a black cordless phone in her hand. “Is everything okay?”
“Darren’s gone to find Kelly,” I said.
Was it alarm that flashed across her face? Just for second?
“Is something wrong?”
“She called me,” I said. “She asked me to come pick her up.”
“I didn’t know that,” Ann said. “What’s wrong? Did she say what was wrong?”
“She just said to come and pick her up.” I could think of any number of reasons why Kelly might have decided to bail on her sleepover. Maybe she wasn’t ready to be away from home this soon after her mother’s death. She and Emily could have had a fight. Maybe she’d had too much pizza and felt sick to her stomach.
“She never asked to use the phone,” Ann said.
“She has her own.” Ann was starting to irritate me. I just wanted to get Kelly and go.
“Yes, well,” Ann said, and seemed momentarily distracted. “
Eight-year-old girls with their own phones! It wasn’t like that when we were kids, was it?”
“No,” I agreed.
“I hope the girls didn’t have an argument or anything. You know how they can be. Best of friends one minute, mortal enemies the—”
“Kelly!” I shouted into the house. “Daddy’s here!”
Ann raised her hands as if to shush me. “I’m sure she’s coming. I think they were watching a movie in Emily’s room, on the computer, for a while. We told her she couldn’t have a TV in there, but when you have a computer, who needs a TV, you know? You can watch all the TV shows online now anyway. And I think they were writing a story, making up some sort of adventure or something like—”
“Where’s Emily’s room?” I asked, starting for the dining room, figuring I could find my way through the house faster than the Slocums could get Kelly to the door.
But then, suddenly, she appeared, coming from the living room, with Darren trailing after her. Kelly seemed to be making an effort to stay ahead of him.
“Found her,” he said.
“Hey, Dad,” she said sullenly.
She had her jacket on, backpack in hand, and stopped at my side, pressing into me. The backpack hadn’t been fully zipped, and one of Hoppy’s ears was sticking out.
“You okay, sweetheart?” I asked.
She nodded.
“You sick?”
She hesitated a second, then nodded. “I want to go home,” she insisted.
“I don’t know what her problem is,” Darren said to me, like Kelly wasn’t even there. “I asked her and she wouldn’t say a thing.”
Kelly wouldn’t look at him. I mumbled a thank-you and guided her out to the front step. Ann and Darren muttered something in return before closing the door behind us. I stopped Kelly and leaned over to zip up her jacket. Inside the house, I could hear voices being raised.
Once I had Kelly buckled in and was pulling away from the Slocum house, I asked, “So what happened?”
“I don’t feel good.”