Blind Spot (16 page)

He picked her purse and keys off the chair and tossed them onto the bed. He lowered himself into the seat. Setting his nearly untouched wineglass on her nightstand, he announced: “Social hour is over. We need to get to work.”

She frowned; so much for the grand seduction. Didn’t matter, she consoled herself. It seemed he didn’t need that extra incentive.

She sat on her bed with an open day-planner on her thighs while he opened a Hudson’s Street Atlas on his lap.

“His flight comes in Wednesday night,” she said. “He’ll work late Thursday so he can catch up.”

“Where’s his business?”

“Mendota Heights,” she said.

He flipped to the back of the atlas and ran his eyes down the index until he found the page number for Mendota Heights, a St. Paul suburb. He flipped to the middle of the book, turned some pages, and found it. “Here it is.”

“His lab is in a business park right off the highway.” She slid off the bed and went over to him. Reaching over with her index finger, she pointed to a sliver of land on the right side of the open Hudson’s. The strip was on the very bottom of the page, just south of Minnesota 110.

He studied the sliver. “I’ve been to that part of town, but I’m not intimately familiar. What’s around your husband’s work?”

“What do you mean? Other businesses? There’s a little strip mall down the road. A McDonald’s.”

“Do you think I plan to go out for burgers?”

“Oh. Okay. Umm. You mean places where you can take and murder him without being—”

“Execute him,” he corrected her. “Innocent people are murdered. Your husband is himself a murderer. He is going to be executed. This is an
execution
.”

“Execution,” she repeated. She disliked the way he was talking to her—as if she were a child reviewing a failed quiz with her teacher.

“I have to use your bathroom.” He stood up with the Hudson’s and dropped it—still open to Mendota Heights—on her bed. “Start looking for some green space. Woods. Something close to his work.”

He walked into the bathroom—his blazer cradled in his arms—and shut the door. She wondered what she had in her bathroom that could cause her problems. What was in the medicine cabinet over the sink? Headache meds and cough meds and a box of tampons. What was in the drawers under the sink? Toilet paper. Tons of cosmetics. Face cream and hand cream. Hairspray and hair gel and a blow dryer. Combs and brushes. On the sink counter—a tube of toothpaste and two toothbrushes.

A ringing phone jarred her out of her mental inventory. She slid off the bed and dashed into the kitchen, scooping the phone off the counter. Staying behind the screen, she kept her voice low as she talked: “I told you not to call tonight…Yeah, yeah…Absolutely certain…Me, too, Cindy.” She put the phone down softly, went back to the bed, and retrieved the open map book.

She heard a flush and water running—undoubtedly sound effects for her benefit, as she was sure he’d spent the time snooping. The door popped open, and as he walked out of the bathroom, he asked casually: “On call at the hospital today?”

She was sitting on the bed again, legs crossed. “My kid.”

“What’s her name, your little girl?”

“Cindy.” She was bent over the Hudson’s, frowning at the open pages.

“What’re you finding?” he asked.

She pulled her eyes off the map. “A nature center has a big chunk of land on the same side of the highway, right next to his place.”

“A nature center,” he repeated.

“Catholic cemetery down the highway, too. A big one.”

“That’s right. I’d forgotten it was in Mendota Heights. I’ve been to funerals there.” He walked over to the bed. “There’s a risk of being seen by someone visiting a grave.”

“What about at night? Like I said, he’ll work late Thursday.”

“Maybe.” He pulled the Hudson’s out of her hands and eyed the distances. “The cemetery
would
be closer to his work.”

She reached over, opened the drawer in her nightstand, and pulled something out. “Here’s what he looks like.”

“Good.” He took the picture out of her hands and examined it.

Chris had snapped the photo. Dressed in trunks, Noah was stretched out on a lounge chair parked in front of a pool. He had a drink in his hand and a smile on his face. He was looking into the camera and holding the drink up for her. He looked so happy in the picture; she hated it.

“When was this taken?” he asked. “Where?”

“Last winter,” she said. “Hawaii. Maui, to be specific. Why?”

“He still looks like this?”

“Right down to the goofy grin. Except in the photo he’s got contacts, and he usually doesn’t bother with those unless he’s got a date. For every day, he wears glasses with black frames. All that’s missing is the tape across the bridge.”

“Can your husband see without his glasses, or is he pretty much blind without them?”

“He can see okay. I actually think he prefers the nerd look.”

“Tell me more about him.”

“What else do you want to know? You already heard about how he smacks me around and—”

“His legitimate hobbies. His interests.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest. “Golfing. Runs, but only enough to stay in shape for the golf. That’s about it.”

“Is there a spiritual dimension to this guy? Does he go to church?”

She laughed dryly. “Could be he prays before a tough shot. I don’t know.”

“May I keep the picture?”

“The
Hudson’s,
too, if you like.”

So he could keep his place in the atlas, he tucked the photo into the crack. He closed the
Hudson’s
over his bookmark.

“Want me along?” she asked.

“I work alone.”

She curled her legs tighter up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees. She was excited; this was actually going to happen. “Thursday night, then?”

“Thursday night.”

She ran her eyes up and down his figure. Whatever his name was, the guy was built. “Sure you don’t want another drink?”

“I’ve got to get home. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Church.” Pulling on his blazer, he started for the door.

“Wait,” she said. “Your name. Anna didn’t tell me.”

“Good,” he said. “At least she kept some things to herself.”

“I need to call you something.”

He put his hand on the knob. Without turning around, he said: “Reg Neva.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It’s Danish.” He opened the door, stepped into the hallway, and said over his shoulder: “You should think about going to church.” He shut the door.

Chris waited until the sound of his footsteps disappeared down the hallway. “Sanctimonious asshole,” she said to the closed door. She snatched her empty wineglass off the nightstand and took it into the kitchen to refill it. Her hands shook as she poured. As handsome as he was, Momma’s Boy had still scared the crap out of her.

Sixteen

“Dave Wong’s,” croaked a male voice.

“Food,” Bernadette muttered to herself, and buzzed him up.

The deliveryman—a skinny old guy in need of a shave and a shower—handed her a sack through the doorway. “Here ya go, sis.”

“Thanks for making such a late delivery.” She handed him a twenty. “Keep the change.”

He stuffed the money into the pocket of his purple Minnesota Vikings windbreaker and, with both hands, hiked up his baggy pants. “Thanks, sis.” As he turned and headed down the hall, she noticed he had a slight limp and felt sorry for him. She’d give him an even bigger tip next time—and there would be a next time. Bernadette cooked for herself, but didn’t particularly enjoy it.

She closed the door and carried the food into the kitchen. She fished two white cartons out of the sack, along with a handful of fortune cookies, a handful of soy-sauce packets, two paper napkins, two plastic forks, and two sets of chopsticks. The take-out joints always sent pairs of utensils, and she never bothered telling them the food was for one: she didn’t want to make herself sound pathetic, and she didn’t mind having extras. She took both forks and one set of chopsticks and dropped them into a drawer under the kitchen counter. “My new junk-drawer,” she said, and closed it.

The chicken fried rice and the beef with broccoli were still steaming hot. “You’re my main man, Dave Wong,” she said to the cartons. She dug into each container with the chopsticks while flipping through an old copy of
Motocross Action Magazine.
Her eyes lingered over photos from the Southwick National, a race held in Massachusetts. The competitors and their machines were coated in grit. “Looks like fun,” she said in between bites of broccoli. Another story profiled a champion rider who was pushing forty. “‘Age hasn’t slowed him down one bit,’” read the piece. “Forty isn’t old,” she groused. An article detailing the latest in goggles reminded her that she had yet to unpack her riding gear.

She reached the bottom of both cartons and dropped the chopsticks into one of the empties. She cracked open the fortune cookies one after another, reading and commenting on the prophecies while discarding the cookies themselves. “‘A well-deserved job promotion is headed your way’…That’ll be the day…‘An unexpected prize will be left on your doorstep’…Courtesy of Augie’s dog…‘Your lucky numbers are 3, 15, 19, 27, 35, and 38’…I’ll have to buy a Powerball ticket and try those out…‘The man of your dreams will arrive soon’…I’d have a better chance winning the lottery.”

She cleared off the table and got ready for bed. Digging through a box of medicine-cabinet stuff, she found her over-the-counter sleeping meds. The bottle said to take two, but she’d long ago graduated to three. She refused to go to a doctor and get a prescription for something more potent. In her mind, that would be an admission that she had a bigger problem—one requiring a shrink—and she didn’t want to acknowledge that she needed that kind of help. She swallowed the pills with a handful of water from the tap.

As she spiraled her way up the steps to her bed, she wondered how the moving men had managed to get her mattress and dresser up the narrow, twisting wrought iron. The architectural feature reminded her of the way old westerns portrayed whorehouses; the brothels always had balconies with wrought-iron railings.

She got to the top of the steps and looked around, seeing boxes and bags everywhere. “What a mess.” At one end of the long, narrow space, she spotted a round window, a circle of glass the size of a garbage-can lid. She’d never noticed the portal before. She walked over to the window and stood on her tiptoes to peek out.

Streetlights lined the waterfront and described the gently curving lines of the river. She imagined herself dressed in a frilly nightgown, leaning out the window and calling down to cowboys galloping by on horseback. Then again, since she was on the river, maybe it would be passing towboat crews. “Hey, sailor, want a good time?” she asked the round of glass.

As she shuffled over to her bed, she chuckled dryly. She couldn’t remember the last time sex had been about having a good time.