The End of The Road (15 page)

He licked my hand, assuming that I was back to normal.

When he wanted down I lowered him to the floor, got up, and went into the kitchen. There I readied the pot with water and coffee, put away the few groceries I had brought home, then stood staring out the window at nothing in particular as the pot made its usual gurgles and sighs. When it fin ished working I took a cup of it back to the table. There, I sat looking out through the glass doors onto the deck, the bay, and the snow-covered mountains to the south, letting my mind review the situation, assessing what I had found and knew, and what I wanted to know, letting go of the resentment and suspicion for the moment.

Someone, without my permission or knowledge, had somehow entered and used my house—my private, familiar, and safe place—as if it were a hotel. She had felt free to cook in my kitchen, watch my television, relax in my living room, sort through my office, and, as I had discovered was the last straw, had slept in my very own bed.

When? I wondered.

While I had been gone, obviously.

But for how long?

Then I realized what I had said to myself in making assumptions.

I had said
she
!

Aside from that hint of unfamiliar fragrance that had risen from the sheets on my bed as I pulled back the covers, there was nothing I could think of that had told me for certain it had been a woman. But somehow I simply knew that it had been. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind, but I had no way to prove it, had I?

None at all!

FOURTEEN

AS I SAT THERE AT THE TABLE, feeling uncertain in my own home, far from easy in the well-known space, the phone rang, and without thinking I went to the counter and answered it.

“Maxie?”

“Yes.”

“This is Andy at the bookstore. I’ve been trying to reach you for the last few days. You must have been out of town.”

So that solved one or two of the blinks from the answering machine.

“I was in Wasilla, visiting friends,” I told him. “Got back just this afternoon from Anchorage.”

“Oh—well, glad you’re back. Hope you had a good trip.”

“I did, thank you.”

“Well, I’ve got something I want to show you—something I found in one of those books you returned. Could you come over to the store?”

I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide if I wanted to leave just then, after finding that an unknown someone had been staying in my house. Thinking I might—probably should—call the police about it.

Andy waited for a few seconds, then said, “I think you’ll want to see this. It’s something Walker probably used as a bookmark, that he must have left in one of those books by mistake.”

That quickly made up my mind.

It would not take long to drive across our small town and see what it was he had found. I could be back in about half an hour.

“Okay, I’ll be there shortly,” I told him.

After calling Stretch, who I had no intention of leaving at home alone, I put my coat and boots back on, took my purse under one arm, Stretch under the other, and went out, closing and locking the door securely behind me.

As I moved onto the driveway, heading for my car, I glanced to my right along the side of the house and stopped abruptly, frowning at a thing I hadn’t noticed on arrival.

Along the side of the building, in its shadow, lay a light and now sublimating layer of snow that the winter sun, low in the south this time of year, could not reach to warm and melt. Imprinted in it clearly were the prints someone’s boots had left. In a fairly straight line they continued to the northeast corner of the house and disappeared around it.

Without releasing Stretch, I followed, stepping carefully to one side so as not to disturb the prints to and around the corner, then continued along the east side of the house. Where enough sun had reached to melt the snow from the frozen grass of my lawn, they had disappeared, but clearly someone—probably the same someone I had found evidence of inside—had walked around, probably to see if they could gain entry from the opposite side.

I returned to the front driveway, put Stretch into his basket, went around the car, and was about to climb in myself when a thought stopped me.

How had this woman opened my back door? It had been not just unlocked, but slightly open when we arrived home—evidence of her leaving in a hurry perhaps. But how had it been opened?

I went back to take a closer look at the door and found no scratches around the lock or breakage of the frame that would be evidence of force used to gain entry. So she must have been very clever at picking locks, or . . .

I had taken the house key with me on the ring with my car key and a couple of others that were less often used. One of them was for a lock on a shed on the west side of the drive, though it was seldom used unless I was going to be gone for a long time and hadn’t been secured before I left for Anchorage. This building had been intended as a garage, but through the years it had filled up with extraneous tools and gardening equipment that eventually came to have their home there: bags of grass seed and fertilizer, the lawn mower, hoses and sprinklers, shovels, rakes, hoes, flowerpots, screwdrivers, hammers, saws, and so forth.

I looked in that direction, reminded that inside the door to the shed I had pounded a nail into the wall to hold an extra house key, should I ever lose my keys or find myself locked out for some other reason. I went quickly across the drive, opened the door, and found that nail . . .
empty
!

That solved the mystery of her uninvited entry. Whoever it was who had used my house as a place to stay had looked for and found the extra key and used it, obviously. But where was that key now? Clearly, as Stretch had been able to push the house door open when we arrived, she hadn’t used it to lock the door when she left and I hadn’t found it anywhere inside.

Should I have the house door lock changed? It seemed advisable. But it was Sunday and there would probably be no one to call until the following day. So I decided that I would find someone to do the job the next morning and, in the meantime, should go to and come back from Andy’s as quickly as possible, shouldn’t I?

I closed the shed door, got into the car, and headed for the bookstore.

Andy was talking to a customer when I arrived. One I was glad to see—Lew Joiner.

They both greeted me with smiles.

“I’m glad you’re here, Lew,” I told him. “I picked up a couple of books for you at Annabel’s in Wasilla—ones I don’t think you have on the Revolution. Why don’t you stop by on your way home for them?”

“So you’ve been up to the big city and beyond,” he said with a smile. “I’d be glad to stop, but I want to go upstairs and peruse Andy’s history section first. Will you be home by then?”

“Yes, definitely. I’ll leave the door unlocked, so just come on in.”

Lew headed upstairs and we heard his footsteps overhead as he went directly to the history books he loved.

I turned to Andy, who had picked up one of the books I had taken to him on Monday, almost a week ago. He laid it on the counter and I could see that he had put a marker about halfway through it.

“I was flipping through this, like I always do to make sure books are in good shape before I shelve them. About halfway through it, between the pages I found this.”

He opened the book and I saw that the marker was a color photograph the size of a three-by-five filing card.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to me. “See what you think, if anything.”

The picture showed the head and shoulders of an attractive woman with dark hair and brown eyes who was wearing a blue sweater over a white blouse with the top two buttons open, a silver hoop earring. She was looking back over her right shoulder at whoever held the camera with a pleasant, if slightly surprised, smile. There were trees in the background and a bit of grass. Between and beyond the trees were a couple of tall buildings.

There was nothing to identify the location, but there was something vaguely familiar about it. The feeling faded as I stared at her.

“Turn it over,” Andy instructed.

I did as directed, and as I flipped it the hint of a familiar scent wafted up to tickle my nose—lavender. Someone must have sprayed perfume on the back’s more absorbent paper, for there was a slight stain near one lower corner and the scent was strongest there.

There were words on that side as well, in small and neat handwriting:

That was all. There was no name to identify the subject, no date, no indication as to where the picture had been taken, who had taken it, or who it had belonged to. But since the book had been John Walker’s, I thought that either it had been his or he had found it and left it in the book. Somehow I doubted the latter.

I couldn’t help feeling that it
had
been his. That not only had he carried it with him from wherever he had come from, but that this woman had been important enough in his life to make him keep it as one of the few things he carried, and carefully, where he could look at it often. She had meant something special to him, as had the scent of lavender he had associated with her.

“Well?” Andy questioned. “What do you think?”

“I think I should give it to Trooper Nelson,” I told him. “Though I doubt it will do him much good. And that was all, right? There wasn’t anything in the other book, was there?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I went through both of them twice, but there was nothing but that.”

“And you’re sure this wasn’t left by some previous reader?”

“Very sure. I flip through all of them before I put them on the shelves. Sometimes people leave odd things that they’ve used for bookmarks. Last winter I found Jake Leary’s daughter’s birth certificate in one he brought in. These days a lot of people use Post-it notes, but mostly I find that whoever buys a book uses the purchase receipt. It’s already tucked into the book, so it makes a convenient marker.”

I put the photograph in my purse and took it with me.

When I returned to the car, I found Stretch snoozing in his basket, but he woke immediately, glad to see me and, as always, eager to be off.

“You are a wonky bitser, you are,” I told him, using one of my Daniel’s Aussie expressions. He stood up in the basket, ready to see whatever there was to see. He never tires of traveling around with me. Nor do I with him, for that matter.

On the way home I swung by Ulmer’s to pick up a new lock for my door, having decided that with the key missing from the shed I would be wise to replace it as soon as possible. Besides, Lew would soon show up, and maybe I would ask him to do the replacing in exchange for the books I had brought him from Annabel’s.

I found a new lock with a couple of new and different keys. It seemed pretty much like the old one, and so would require little or no refitting in terms of the door. I knew that I could have done it myself, but Lew would do it better and likes helping sometimes. It makes him feel useful to be asked.

Shortly after I reached home and had established that no one had made use of my house in the hour I was gone, Lew showed up and cheerfully agreed to replace the lock, which he did in just a few minutes, using my tools.

“There you go,” he said when finished. “All secure. But there really didn’t seem to be a thing wrong with the old one.”

“I know and there wasn’t. But there’s a lost key floating around somewhere and I’ll feel better knowing I have complete control of the lock and won’t have to consider hitting some burglar with a cast-iron skillet.”

He laughed at that image, agreeing that whatever made me feel better was worth it, and we sat down for the coffee I had poured while he worked and the books I had brought from Annabel’s.

I saw no reason to tell him about the unwelcome visitor who had used my house while I was away. Lew, like a lot of men I know, tends to be protective of women, and knowing about it would make him uneasy, even now that he had rectified the problem with the new lock.