Lemon Tart (20 page)

Chapter 19

Sadie knew
the back door would give her better cover, but she couldn’t make herself walk
that close to the field where Anne’s body had been found. It was dark back
there. She wondered if the police had figured out she’d given them the wrong
key yet. Certainly Detective Madsen would have read her the riot act if he’d
discovered her deception. She hadn’t had any idea she’d be doing this when
she’d switched keys—but she was glad she’d thought ahead.

Putting the key in the lock, turning it, pushing the door open
and then pushing it closed took her less than ten seconds. Once inside, she
took a deep breath and caught herself before she leaned against the closed
door. She looked around the darkened house; its eerie emptiness gave her the
creeps. She felt the familiar anxiety of being where she knew she shouldn’t be.
But I’m not hurting anything,
she told herself, clasping her hands behind her back as Detective Cunningham
had told her to do earlier.

I just need to
check the calendar—that’s all. Still, her mouth was dry
and she wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. She pushed away her
trepidation, ignored the strange shadows in the corners, and headed into the
kitchen. The calendar was on the fridge, just as it had been that morning. She
began thumbing through the months, heading for January to find Anne’s birthday
and touching only the very edges of the thick paper. October, November,
December—then nothing. A sliver of light shone in from the
streetlamp outside, barely enough for her to read by.

“What?” she said quietly, scrunching her eyebrows together. And
then she realized that like most calendars, this one ended in December.

Okay, she
said to herself, I’ll look at last
January. She had to take the calendar off the fridge in order to thumb
backwards. She reached January and clenched her teeth—it was
completely blank. She moved forward one month at a time. Everything was blank
until March—the month Anne had moved in. She hadn’t brought the
calendar with her, she’d bought it when she moved in.

“Doggone it,” Sadie muttered. She put the calendar back on the
fridge and was heading for the front door, dejected, when the bookshelf near
the fireplace caught her eye. Remembering the book Anne had checked out and
then paid for before it was overdue, Sadie stepped toward the shelves. There
was something about that title that had been familiar to her, but she wasn’t
sure what it was. She wondered if she had seen it at Anne’s house sometime. Or
maybe she was just being fanciful to think it was somehow important. It was a
romance novel for heaven’s sake.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness it was easier for her to
read the titles if she squinted enough. She had scanned three of the four
shelves when she saw it: My
Father’s Eyes.

Bingo!

She pulled the book from its shelf. On the back it still had
the sticker for the Garrison City Library. Anne had
kept it. But why? It looked like an ordinary paperback novel. What made
this one any different from the other books Anne had checked out? And then she
remembered why the title had struck a chord. Just a month or so after Anne had
moved in, the two of them had gone for a walk and Anne had asked Sadie how to
dry out a book.

“What kind of book?” Sadie had asked.

“Just a paperback,” Anne had said. “I dropped it in the tub
last night—I guess that’s what I get for reading in the bath.”
When they returned from the walk, Sadie had gone to Anne’s and inspected the
book. It was an older book, shelf-worn and still damp, with a
dramatic cover Sadie hadn’t looked at too closely. Some of the wrinkled pages
had already stuck together. She’d recommended that Anne lay it outside in the
sun, going out every few minutes to turn the pages, then she should press it
between other books to help flatten it once it was dried out.

“It won’t ever be as good as new,” Sadie had said. “But it
might be legible. Then again, for a little paperback like this it’s probably
worth the six dollars to buy a new one.”

“It’s been out of print for awhile,” Anne had said. “I bet it’s
hard to find, but it’s a great book.”

“Oh, well, if the drying doesn’t work, you can always check the
library—they have a very extensive inventory for such a small
town and can do special orders from Fort Collins if you want to pay a couple
dollars for interlibrary loan.”

Sadie had never seen the bathtub-book again, and they
hadn’t talked about it. But it had been important to Anne. Sadie tried to read
the description printed on the back, but gave up after just a few seconds.
Without her reading glasses the small type was impossible, especially in the
dark. She’d have to take it home, secretly glad that her breaking and entering
hadn’t been for nothing.

She headed back toward the door. Her hand was on the doorknob
when she thought about all the notes she wrote on her own calendar at home.
Phone numbers, appointments, family birthdays. She turned and looked into the
darkened kitchen. Maybe Anne did the same thing.

She knew she couldn’t simply sit down and go through it right
now. But what if she took it home and looked at it? She could bring it back as
soon as she finished—and she might find something that would be
important. I’d be removing it from
a crime scene, she told herself. But if the police hadn’t taken it, then
they must not have wanted it. Besides, she was already stealing the book. What
was one more item? After only a few more moments of hesitation she hurried
toward the kitchen. She was just steps away from the fridge when a band of
light crossed the floor in front of her.

Sadie froze and she snapped her head up to see the source of
the light. The corner of the doorway prevented her from being able to see the
windows or the sliding glass door at the back of the house. The light waved
past again and she flattened herself against the wall, keeping herself out of
range of what she realized must be a flashlight. Were the police looking for
her? Did they know she was here? The light disappeared and for a moment she
thought she’d escaped, then she heard a key in the lock.

Chapter 20

No!
She screamed in her head for the second time that day, clenching her eyes
closed. Not again! She
opened her eyes to find herself staring down the hallway, straight into Anne’s
bedroom. Not knowing for sure if she’d been seen or not, she headed for the
first hiding place she could think of.

By the time the back door slid open, she was hiding under her
second bed of the day—and the last three decades.
Impossible.

Luckily Anne’s bed was not only higher off the ground, but
since it had also been pushed against the wall on one side, Sadie felt much
more secure. She tried to avoid the area where the filing cabinet had been, not
wanting to interfere with the indentation, and scooted as far away from the
edges of the bed as possible, glad that Anne didn’t keep as much stuff under
the bed as Ron did. In fact, other than a few socks, some candy wrappers, and a
toy car, it was uninhabited. And the dust wasn’t nearly as thick—something
her sinuses thanked her for. But she pulled the sweatshirt to her nose just in
case—not impressed with all the tricks she’d learned about
hiding under beds.

The footsteps were nearly silent. Unlike Ron in his own home
that afternoon, this person was being cautious, careful, taking his or her
time. She wondered who it was. Detective Madsen? Did he know she was here? Or
maybe it was Ron coming back for something. Whoever it was had a key; she had
thought she was the only one with a spare. Who else would Anne have trusted
with a key to her house?

She’d barely finished the thought before two shoes appeared at
the end of the bed, in front of the small closet. Men’s shoes. Black leather.
The door to the closet opened, creaking on its hinges, and then stopped as if
the intruder—the other intruder beside herself—was
waiting to make sure nothing answered to the noise. After a second, the door
creaked opened even further. The sound caused Sadie to shiver. She knew better
than to hold her breath this time and focused on keeping her breathing even in
hopes of keeping her anxiety at bay. She hated hide-and-seek!
How come she kept being forced to play?

A voice in her head reminded her that if she would mind her own
business she wouldn’t be in this situation. Too
late. This was her
business, and besides, now was not the time to reflect on her own
stupidity.

She heard the shuffling of boxes, the movement of hangers on
the rod, and wondered what the intruder was after, grateful it wasn’t her.
Several boxes tumbled to the ground, and the intruder cursed. It was a man’s
voice, though too much of a whisper for her to determine if it was Ron or not.
One by one the boxes were picked up, but just as the last one was moved out of
sight, another pile crashed to the floor, and this time the flashlight fell
with it. It spun around until it was facing her, staring at her—ratting
her out.

Sadie held her breath, staring at the eye of light that was
giving her away. She backed closer to the wall and squinted against the bright
light. A hand, a man’s hand with the cuff of a blue dress shirt showing at the
wrist, reached down and grabbed the flashlight, a glint of gold flickering
quickly in the light. A ring? She hadn’t seen enough to tell for sure, but if
it was a ring then this man wasn’t Ron.

She wished she could have been able to tell for sure if it had
been a wedding ring—but what other kind of ring did a man wear?
Could she have been mistaken and it was a watch? She began to breathe again
once the spotlight was off her face, and she tried to remember everything she
knew about whoever was in the room with her—a ring or a watch,
black leather shoes, a blue dress shirt, and she knew he was a man.

The boxes continued to disappear from view. She could make out
that one was an old shoe box, another was a used priority box from the post
office—she wished she could read the address it had been sent
from. Another box, the biggest one she could see, had once contained a waffle
maker. She shook her head. Why had Anne kept that—or any of the
boxes? Being a pack rat was completely at odds with being a good
homemaker.

She watched as the waffle box was lifted up, but instead of it
being put in the closet with the others, she heard a different sound. Like the
box being shaken. And there was definitely something inside. The bed squeaked
as the intruder sat down. Because of the box springs, she didn’t lose any space
this time. She could hear the box being opened, and then she assumed it was
turned upside down because several photographs and papers fell to the ground. Anne kept pictures in a waffle box?

Two hands appeared, quickly gathering up the pictures—what
Sadie wouldn’t do to have them. But she knew what she wouldn’t do—anything.
She was terrified of being caught by this new threat. She kept perfectly still
and hoped that the pictures were what he was looking for so he would leave. She
thought she saw a wedding ring again on one of the hands gathering the photos,
but with so little light it was impossible to be certain.

Apparently the items in the box were exactly what the intruder
wanted. He quickly replaced the box in the closet and, much faster than he had
entered the room, he hurried into the hallway where he stopped. She watched the
light from the police spotlight scan the room and marveled that the cops didn’t
know there was not one, but two people in the house. They definitely should
have done a better job at surveillance. A few minutes passed and she heard
footsteps again, heading toward the back door. The sliding glass door opened,
then shut, and he was gone. She’d dodged a bullet twice today.

After waiting a few minutes to be sure she was alone, she
pulled herself out from under the bed. The intruder had left the closet open
and she realized that if she could find a way to tell Cunningham she knew
someone had been here, he might be able to lift fingerprints from the door
handle. She looked into the darkened closet, trying to find that priority mail
box in hopes of reading the return address. But without a flashlight of her own
she couldn’t tell which box was which and she didn’t want to get her own
fingerprints on anything the intruder might have touched.