Summer Rental (32 page)

“What?” Ellis said. “She just suddenly opened up and confessed? When did all this happen?”

“Last night, while you were out on your hot date with garage guy,” Julia said smugly. “And don’t think we don’t expect a full report about
last night, either, Ellis Sullivan. We want to know why you came home so early. And why you left again and were out past midnight.”

“What are you, Harriet the Spy?” Ellis asked, blushing nonetheless. “It was a date, that’s all. Nothing to tell.”

“Hmmph,” Julia said. “We’ll get back to you later. So, yes, Madison, or rather, Maryn, did open up to me. She came into my room not long after you left, ready to bitch me out because she’d figured out I’d been snooping around her cell phone.”

“She had a right to be pissed at you,” Dorie pointed out. “We’re your best friends, so we expect a certain amount of nosiness, but it’s different for her.”

“She was pissed,” Julia admitted. “But she wanted to know what I’d told her husband, Don, when he called. Then she really grilled me, so I grilled her right back, or tried to. But she wouldn’t tell me much. So now, I’m just going to take matters into my own hands. Watch the front door, okay?”

Julia pulled her cell phone from the plastic case clipped to the waist of her running shorts. “If you see Madison coming, give me a call, and then try to keep her occupied until I can get out of there.”

“Absolutely not,” Dorie said. “You can’t just go rifling through her things. You’ve got no right.”

“Don’t sweat it, Dorie,” Ellis said. “Julia can’t get in there, anyway. Madison locks her bedroom door every time she leaves the room.”

Julia gave a conspiratorial smile. “True that. But I don’t necessarily need a key. Madison sleeps with the windows open. I noticed it when I was out on the beach the other day. There’s an access door onto that widow’s walk on the third floor from the attic. I’m just gonna go out the door, climb onto the widow’s walk, and then crawl in her bedroom window. It’s a teeny-tiny room, it won’t take but a few minutes to check it out.”

Dorie crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t stop you, but I’m not gonna help you, that’s for damned sure. If Madison’s in trouble, we need to help her, not turn on her.”

“I
offered
to help,” Julia said. “She just told me to mind my own business. She says she’s leaving by the weekend, if not sooner. So it’s now or never.”

Julia turned to Ellis. “What about you? Are you in, or are you out?”

Ellis sighed. “Oh hell. I don’t like it, but I don’t like the idea of her lying to us, either. How do we know she’s not the one who ran away because she’s into something illegal?”

“My point exactly,” Julia said triumphantly. “Okay. Cover me, Ellie-Belly. I’m going in.”

Dorie snorted. “You two are crazy as bat-shit. And when Madison comes home, and figures out you’ve been messing with her stuff, I do not want to be around to pick up the pieces.”

But Julia didn’t bother to respond. She took the stairs to the second and third floor at a trot. When she got to the third floor, she twisted the doorknob of Madison’s room, just to make sure. As Ellis had predicted, the door was locked.

Julia went down to the end of the hall and tugged at the door to the attic. But the summer’s heat and humidity had caused the old wooden door to swell. She tugged harder, then braced one leg on the door frame, and yanked with all her might. The door swung open suddenly, throwing Julia backwards, landing on her butt on the splintery wooden floor.

“Damn,” she muttered, picking herself up. She gasped as a wall of heat engulfed her when she stepped into the low-ceilinged attic. She pulled the door nearly shut, to ensure she could make a quick getaway once she’d finished searching Madison’s room.

A single window high in the roof peak illuminated the room. Julia picked her way past piles of cardboard boxes and dust-shrouded furniture, sneezing as she headed for the door onto the widow’s walk. It had to be close to a hundred degrees in the attic, she thought, as sweat poured down her face, back, and arms.

The access door had an old-fashioned slide lock as well as a dead bolt. Julia’s hands, slick with sweat, couldn’t budge the lock mechanism. In frustration, she yanked off her top and used it to grasp the lock and jerk it open. She took a step backwards and kicked the door as hard as she could with her running shoe. The brittle old wood splintered, and the door flew open.

Gasping for air, Julia stepped out onto the widow’s walk,
dressed only in her shorts and sports bra, the tank top tucked into the waistband of her shorts. The temperature outside was already in the mid-eighties, but the air was refreshingly cool compared to the blast-furnace atmosphere in the attic. And the view was spectacular. The beach spread out below, and Julia believed she could see all the way to Currituck, to the south, and Corolla, to the north. But there was no time for sightseeing. She had a job to do.

The wooden widow’s walk was narrower than it looked from the beach, only four feet wide, with a wooden railing that stood not quite hip high. The railing was rotted in places, as was the decking of the walkway. She glanced down and gulped. If she fell, it was at least a fifty-foot drop.

But she wouldn’t fall. She edged down the walk until she came to the window outside Madison’s room. It was propped halfway open. Julia grasped the window sill and pushed upwards. Stuck. She gritted her teeth and pushed harder, and slowly, the stubborn window inched higher. When she’d raised it a full eighteen inches, Julia managed to wriggle into the room, feet first.

“Gaawwwd,” she groaned, falling in a heap onto the floor.

She was struck, instantly, by the clinical neatness of Madison’s room. In contrast to Julia’s own room, with its unmade bed, discarded magazines, empty soda cans, and clothes strewn haphazardly over every surface, Madison’s room reminded her of a nun’s cell. Or an army barracks.

The worn cotton sheets were pulled taut on the narrow iron bed, two pillows were stacked atop each other, the faded chenille bedspread was folded in a crisp rectangle at the foot of the bed. The nightstand held a lamp and a dog-eared paperback romance novel. The top of the wooden dresser was bare, except for a black vinyl zippered cosmetic case.

But a wooden chair beside the door held an open duffle bag, filled with a stack of neatly folded clothing. Madison hadn’t been lying about that, Julia thought. She really did intend to leave. And soon.

Julia opened the armoire door. A couple of inexpensive cotton sundresses and some blouses still hung there. Lined up on the floor were a pair of black canvas espadrilles, a pair of pink flip-flops, and the Louboutins. On the shelf sat a black leather laptop case. Julia tugged it down. She unzipped the case and lifted the computer out.

Julia stared down at the laptop. In the movies, the heroine always managed to power up the computer, figure out the passwords, and instantly uncover all the data locked within in a matter of seconds. But Julia’s knowledge of computers was mostly limited to reading her e-mails and playing games of Freecell when she was bored. She had neither the time nor the necessary expertise to unlock Madison’s secrets. Reluctantly, she slipped the computer back into the case and hefted it back onto the shelf. She tried sliding it all the way to the back of the shelf, but something was back there.

She grabbed the wooden chair and dragged it over to the armoire, climbing up to peer inside. She reached up to move aside whatever was at the back of the shelf. Her fingers closed on a stack of paper.

When she saw what she’d grabbed, Julia nearly fell off the chair. It was a stack of money. Hundred-dollar bills, bound by a paper bank wrapper. She took the laptop and set it down on the floor, and reaching in with both hands, grabbed an armload of similar money bundles. Thousands of dollars.

“Whoa,” Julia breathed. “What the hell are you into, Madison?” Her fingers itched to take all the bundles down, to count it and examine it, but there was no time for that. Hurriedly, she shoved the money to the back of the shelf, then set the laptop in front of it.

She closed the armoire door and moved quickly to the dresser. The drawers were half empty, the clothing within neatly folded and stacked. As Julia rifled through the clothing she reflected that for a person with all that money stashed in her closet, Madison’s clothes were appallingly cheap, most of them apparently purchased either at thrift or discount stores. So how did that jibe with the Prada pocketbook, the Louboutin sandals, and the honking big diamond ring?

Mildly disappointed that the dresser didn’t hold any more money, Julia searched the nightstand’s single drawer for more clues to the Madison puzzle, but all she found was a plastic bottle of aspirin.

Julia glanced around the room. There was nothing much else to search. She flopped down onto her belly and peered under the bed, halfway expecting to find another suitcase full of cash. But the only thing she found was a single white sock.

She scooted onto her knees, and as a last thought, did what they always do in the movies. She lifted the thin, worn mattress and ran her hand under the space between it and the box spring. When her fingertips closed on the cool, smooth, metal object there, her mouth went dry.

She pulled the object out and stared down at it. A gun! Julia knew a little bit about guns. Her father and brothers were hunters, stalking deer in the piney woods of Georgia and quail at a friend’s South Carolina plantation. This was a revolver, a Smith & Wesson. Her hands trembled badly as she fumbled with the barrel.

Briiing! Briinng!
Startled, she dropped the revolver onto the bed. Her cell phone vibrated in its plastic holder at her waist.

She fumbled again, trying to get it out of the holder. The screen told her Ellis was calling.

Julia flipped it open.

“She’s coming!” Ellis whispered. “Madison just rode up on her bike. I made Dorie go out and stall her, but you know Madison isn’t chummy. Get the hell out of there!”

“Shit!” Julia said. “Do something. Anything. Keep her downstairs. Ellis—Madison’s got a gun under her mattress. And a shitload of money hidden in the back of her closet.”

“Oh my God,” Ellis breathed. “Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. She’s coming in the house. I think I’m gonna have a heart attack. Or pee my pants.”

“Don’t you dare!” Julia clicked the phone closed. She started to shove the revolver under the mattress, but then, thinking better of it, shoved it in the waistband of her shorts. She smoothed the rumpled bedcovers, then ran across the room, hoisted herself out the window, and closed the window back to its original position.

This time around, she didn’t linger long enough to consider the view, or the possibility of falling to her death. She scurried back inside the attic door, pulled it shut, and a moment later was taking the stairs, two at a time, back to her own bedroom on the second floor.

33

It was Dorie who saved the day. It was Wednesday, trash-pickup day, and even though they’d theoretically discarded Ellis’s chore chart, it was Dorie’s turn to take out the trash. She was just wheeling the overflowing plastic bin down to the curb, muttering to herself about
certain people
who couldn’t be bothered to separate recyclables from the real trash, when Madison came pedaling down the street towards the house.

And then, despite all her protestations to the contrary, she found herself an unindicted co-conspirator.

“Madison,” Dorie called, her mouth going dry with fear. “Hey! You’re up early today. How was the bike ride?”

Madison coasted up to where Dorie was standing and braked. “It was fine,” she said briefly. “I like to get out before all the tourists wake up and start clogging the roads with traffic.”

“How’s the ankle?” Dorie asked, glancing at Madison’s leg. It was neatly taped with the Ace bandage.

“It’s fine,” Madison said, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow. “Thanks to you and your ice and ibuprofen.”

She started to wheel away.

Dorie swallowed, trying to think of something to say, a way to stall Madison and keep her from going up to the house where Julia was, right now, rifling through Madison’s belongings.

“Do you like that bike?” Dorie asked. Dumb question. Really dumb question, but it was all she could think of. Could pregnancy really do this to a person? Could the baby growing inside her really be siphoning off all her normal intelligence? She remembered a couple of the teachers at school joking about the dumb stuff they’d done while they were pregnant. Mommy minds, they called it, and Dorie always thought they were exaggerating, but now she knew different. She was dumb, and she was pregnant, and yes, pregnant by her gay husband, which made her just too stupid to live.

“The bike’s all right,” Madison said. “It’s cheap, but it rides pretty good.”

“I’ve been thinking about buying myself a bike,” Dorie babbled. “It’s supposed to be such good exercise, everybody says. But God, I don’t think I’ve ridden a bike since I got out of college. I bet I wouldn’t even remember how.”

“Sure you would,” Madison said. “That’s why they always say what they say about riding a bike.”

“What do they say?” Dorie asked. She was blanking, she really was. This baby better be a friggin’ rocket scientist, she told herself, because it had already sucked out every brain cell Dorie had ever possessed.

Madison shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. “People always say something easy is like riding a bike, because you supposedly never forget how to ride a bike.” She leaned closer and peered into Dorie’s eyes with something like concern.

“Dorie, are you all right? You seem kind of, uh, spacey this morning.”

“The teachers at school say it’s something to do with your elevated hormone levels,” Dorie explained. “Sharon? She’s teaches freshman English? She was pregnant last fall, and not once, not twice, but three different times she got me to give her a ride home from school, and then remembered that she’d actually driven to school that day. I had to turn right around and take her back to school to get her own car.”

“Yeah, that’s crazy,” Madison said. “Well, anyway, it’s just a temporary condition, right?”