No Safe House (26 page)

She was going to go up to the door and let herself in and damned if she was going to knock.

Hey, thought I’d join you for breakfast. Coffee on?

So at six-fifty she stepped out of her apartment and headed for the stairs. But there was a man there, about four steps down, blocking her path. She nearly screamed.

“Good morning, Cynthia.”

It was Barney. He had a screwdriver in his hand, and an open red metal toolbox was perched one step down from the top. The wooden hand railing, which was normally secured to the wall with metal brackets, was half off.

“You scared me half to death,” she said.

“Sorry about that. I decided to come over this morning, check in on Orland. I popped my head in—he’s fast asleep, but I’m going to hang around until he wakes up. Figured I’d get some work done in the meantime. I’ve been meaning to fix this railing for a while. It’s pretty loose, not safe. Let me get out of your way here.”

“Thank you. I hope everything’s okay with Orland.”

“It might be he was just having a bad day. I’ve known him a long time. Went to high school together. Where you off to so early?
Wait—let me guess. You’re doing a restaurant inspection. See if somebody’s serving bugs with the home fries.”

“Just have a lot to do,” she said. She started to squeeze past him when there was the sound of a door opening in the first-floor hallway. Then, Orland shouting, “What’s all the racket?”

His face appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looking up through smudged glasses, hair all over the place. He was dressed in nothing but a tattered blue bathrobe and socks. “Barney!” he said. “What the hell you doin’?”

“Fixing this railing, Orland. Maybe you’d like to give me a hand?”

“I look like I’m dressed for work?”

“So get dressed. How you feeling today?”

“I feel fine,” he said, then coughed. He looked quizzically at Barney and said, “Where’s Charlotte?”

Barney sighed tiredly. “Charlotte’s passed away, Orland. Years ago. You know that.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. How long were you two married?”

“You’re confused, Orland. Charlotte was never
my
wife.”

Orland scratched his head. “Oh, that’s right.” He chuckled. “What the hell was I thinking?”

Cynthia gave Barney a weak, sympathetic smile. “I have to go,” she whispered.

“Sure thing,” Barney said.

“Have a nice day, Orland,” Cynthia said as she scooted past the man and headed out the front door. Seconds later, she was in her car.

As she turned off Pumpkin Delight Road onto Hickory, she saw Terry’s Ford Escape backing out of the driveway. She hit the brakes and eased the car over to the curb and watched as he headed off in the other direction, toward Maplewood.

Where the hell was he going this early? It wasn’t as if he had a job to go to in July. She was pretty sure there was only one person in the car, which meant Grace was still at home.

Why would he head out so early? What kind of errand could he be running? A donut and coffee run? Was he fetching Grace an Egg McMuffin? That didn’t sound like Terry.

Could he be sick? Was he off to the drugstore for some medicine? Could it be Grace? Was she sick? The CVS pharmacy out on the Boston Post Road would be open this early, she thought. It was a twenty-four-hour location.

She might as well follow him and find out.

Cynthia gave her husband a good head start, then took her foot off the brake.

He wasn’t heading for the CVS. He was heading across town, ending up on Naugatuck. Parked across the street from some place that fixed busted appliances. But it wasn’t even open, and Terry had said nothing about a broken washer or dryer or—

He wasn’t going to the repair shop. He was going up a flight of stairs on the side of the building. To what looked like an apartment.

What the hell was he doing there?

Terry happened to glance in her direction, just for a second, and suddenly Cynthia felt vulnerable. What if he spotted her? She was pretty sure he hadn’t just now, but what if he did the next time he looked her way? It was one thing to be caught spying on them at home, but how would she explain following him all over Milford?

She turned the car around and started heading back. To the house. She’d play dumb. Let herself in, find Grace, ask her where her father was.

As she rounded the corner, she noticed there was a car parked on the street, just down from their place, that had not been there when she’d gone by minutes earlier. A man was crossing the street, right out front of their house.

Cynthia slowed, steered over to the side of the road.

The man walked up their driveway, approached the front door.

Rang the bell.

“Who the hell is that, this bloody early?” Cynthia said to herself. “Don’t answer it, Grace. Do not answer that door.”

She reached into her bag for her cell phone. She’d call Grace, tell her not to go to the door. But before she could place the call, she saw the man knocking. Hard enough that she could almost hear it through the windshield.

“Just go away,” Cynthia said. “Go now. Get.”

What she saw next—well, she almost couldn’t believe her eyes. The man reached into his pocket and took out … It was a key.

Before he inserted it, he looked over his shoulder to check whether anyone was watching him. He failed to spot Cynthia sitting in her car, so he turned back to the door, slid the key into the lock.

Cynthia hit the gas.

The car leapt forward, the tires squealing. She didn’t even wait until she reached the driveway before turning hard right. The car bounced up over the curb and charged right across the yard, the spinning tires digging up sod and dirt as Cynthia aimed the car for the front door, her hand pressing so hard on the horn it felt like it would go through the steering column.

The man whirled around, saw the car heading straight for him, and dived out of the way. Cynthia hit the brakes, the bumper coming to a stop about six feet from the door.

The man was running flat out now, heading for that blue car. Cynthia threw open her door and shouted, “Hey! Hey you!”

She debated running after him, but then she heard the familiar
whoop
of a house alarm. Cynthia spun around to see Grace, dressed in one of her oversized sleeping shirts, standing in the open doorway of the house.

Grace screamed, “Mom! Mom!”

Grace shot forward, arms outstretched. She fell into her mother’s arms, weeping, and Cynthia clutched her tight, holding her like she’d never ever let her go.

I
wasn’t expecting to see what I saw when I got to the house.

Tire tracks across the lawn, Cynthia’s car, door wide-open, nosed up to the house, Grace and her mother locked in an embrace on the front step.

Grace sobbing. The security alarm
whooping
.

I slammed on the brakes, left the car in the street, and ran to them. Grace saw me through watery eyes. “Dad!”

“Grace! Grace! Are you okay?” I asked her once, then at least five more times.

Cynthia used my arrival to pry herself free of Grace—not, I suspected, because she didn’t want to comfort her, but because she wanted to see where the man who’d been trying to get into the house had gone.

She ran halfway down the driveway, looking up the street into the distance.

“Shit,” she said.

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” I said to Grace, hugging her, trying to be heard above the alarm.

“He didn’t get in,” she said. “Mom came. Almost ran him down.”

A woman who lived across the street, still in her housecoat, had stepped out of her house with a mug of coffee in her hand. She called over, “You okay?”

I shouted back, “We’re okay, thanks.”

“Should I call the police?”

Cynthia started to shout yes, but I stopped her with a firm shake of the head. “No, it’s okay!” I yelled. “We’ve got this.”

Cynthia shot me a look. “Are you kidding?” she said. She started walking toward me at full tilt. “Someone tries to break in and attack our daughter and you don’t want to call the police?”

“Let’s get inside,” I said. First thing I had to do was enter the code to stop the alarm from screeching. I didn’t know whether the alarm had been activated by the man getting the door open or Grace opening it herself when she saw her mother.

“What the hell is going on?” Cynthia asked.

She went to her car—the engine was still running—and reached in to shut it off and grab her purse. She had her cell phone in her hand.

“If you’re not calling the police, I will.”

“No, Mom, wait,” Grace said.

That got Cynthia’s attention. “What?”

“Please,” I said. “Let’s go inside. You may be right—we may have to call the police. But first I want to make sure Grace is okay.”

Her sobs had turned to sniffs. “I’m okay. I am. I told you.”

Cynthia took that as permission to make the call, but again I stopped her. “
Please
, not yet.”

We went into the house and closed the door, at which point the alarm, only annoying up to this point, became deafening. I went to the security panel, entered our four-digit code to cancel it. Once it was silenced, we could hear the phone was ringing. That’d be the security monitoring service. I ran to the extension in the living room and snatched the receiver off the cradle.

“Hello!” I said. “Alarm, right?”

“Is this Mr. Archer?” A man enunciating very carefully.

“It is.”

“Are you having an emergency?”

“Everything’s okay.”

“We need your password, Mr. Archer. Otherwise we will be dispatching the police.”

I was so flustered it took me a second to remember it. “Telescope,” I said. “Our password is telescope.”

“Okay,” he said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“We—we forgot the alarm was on and opened the door,” I said. “We’re very sorry.”

“Not to worry, Mr. Archer. The good news, your system’s working. You have a great day now.”

I put down the receiver and saw that Cynthia was back to holding Grace. My wife was looking at me fiercely.

“Why weren’t you here?” she asked.

“I was out for a few minutes,” I said.

“Doing what?”

I shrugged. “An errand.”

“To an appliance repair place?” she asked. “At seven in the morning?”

I looked at Grace. “Did you tell your mother where I was going?”

She shook her head.

I looked back at Cynthia. “Were you following me?”

She broke away from Grace and took a step toward me and pointed a finger. “You said you’d look after her. But something’s going on and I want to know what it is.”

“How about answering my question? Were you following me? Have you been spying on us?”

When Cynthia hesitated, Grace said, “Jeez, is that true, Mom? You’ve, like, got us under surveillance?”

Cynthia must have decided a good defense was a good offense. She bristled and said, “Good thing, too! If I hadn’t been, that man—he’d have gotten into the house!” Back to me. “And who was he? If you don’t want me calling the police, does that mean you know who he was?”

“I don’t,” I said. “Grace, you sure you’ve never seen him before?”

She shook her head.

“Could he have been the man in the house?” I asked.

“There was a man in our house?” Cynthia asked.

“Not our house,” I said.

“He might have been the guy,” Grace said, “but I don’t know. Even if it was him, how could he have a key, Dad?” she asked.

“Maybe he didn’t,” I said. “Maybe he had one of those, whaddya call ’em, lock-picking sets.”

“But it didn’t take him anytime at all. I heard a key go straight in and the lock started turning.”

“I saw him use a key,” Cynthia said. She looked at me. “Who did you give a key to?”

“No one,” I said. “Did
you
give a key to anyone?”

“Of course not.”

I looked at Grace. “Are you kidding?” she said. “You think I’m an idiot?” I gave her a look that suggested her last twelve hours made that a risky question.

I said, “Okay, the only people who have a key to this house are each of us, and Teresa.”

“Well, that sure wasn’t Teresa trying to break in,” Grace said.

“Why would someone have a key and want to get in here?” I asked. I was looking at Grace.

“Like you said. I’m a witness.”

Cynthia looked dumbstruck, trying to get her head around what we were talking about.

“Yeah,” I said. “But what are the odds the person who was in that house would have a key to ours?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just—I don’t know, Dad.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Cynthia asked. “What the hell is going on?”

I took a second to compose myself, let the proverbial dust settle around us. I said, “We’ve got some trouble.”

SITTING
at the kitchen table, Grace and I told her everything, from the beginning. We didn’t leave anything out. When Grace neglected a detail, I filled in a gap, and vice versa.

Cynthia, to her credit, mostly listened, asking only the occasional question, letting the story unfold. If it had been me hearing all this, I’d have been interrupting every ten seconds.

I finished by telling her where I’d just been, how I had hoped maybe I’d find Stuart Koch at home.

“So you still don’t know what happened to him,” Cynthia said.

We both shook our heads.

Grace said, “I know you probably want to chew me out and all that stuff, but Dad’s sort of done some of it, and right now I really have to go to the bathroom, so can it wait until I get back?”

Cynthia nodded.

As Grace got up from the table, her mother grabbed her arm and pulled her in to give her another hug. Grace wrapped her arms around her mother’s head and said, “I’m glad you’re home. Even if it’s just for a visit. And everything’s going to shit.”

Cynthia looked like she wanted to say something, but held back. All she said was, “Go.”

When Grace was gone, Cynthia looked at me.

“You could chew me out now instead,” I said.

She reached out and gripped my hand. “What a mess.”

“What’d Tommy Lee Jones say in that movie? ‘If it ain’t, it’ll do till the real mess gets here.’ Yeah, this is bad.”