The Way You Look Tonight (9 page)

‘I'm looking for whoever was walking around up here earlier.'

‘But you were awake.' Deborah heard her voice becoming more high-pitched. ‘No one could have gotten up here without you seeing them.'

‘There's more than one way into this room.' Joe turned off the flashlight and pointed with it to a small window on the back side of the house. It was open.

‘You mean you think someone came in through the
window
?' Joe nodded.

‘No,' Deborah said, starting to shiver. ‘We're on the second floor. Maybe Steve came into the room this afternoon. He could have opened the window.'

‘In an uninsulated room when it was thirty-five degrees outside? Besides, there's a ladder leaning against the house beneath the window.'

‘A ladder?' Deborah repeated numbly.

‘Yeah. Take a look if you don't believe me.'

Deborah did believe him, but she went to the window anyway, oblivious of the feel of the cold, dusty floor against her bare feet. She looked out at the tall wooden ladder whose top was only inches below the window. ‘We have one just like it.'

‘That
is
your ladder, Deborah. I know because I borrowed it last summer and I noticed the top step has a big nick in it.'

‘Steve dropped it against the chain-link fence,' Deborah said distractedly. ‘What's it doing here?'

‘Providing a way into the house,' Joe said grimly. ‘What I want to know is
who
got in and why they were hiding in this room next to yours.'

One

Deborah didn't sleep the rest of the night, turning restlessly in bed, filled with fear and despair. She knew Joe stayed awake, also. About every half an hour she heard him pacing through the house, checking rooms and windows like a sentinel. At six in the morning she came downstairs and fixed coffee. Barbara arose soon afterward, and by seven she and Deborah and Joe were on the second pot of coffee while Brian and Kim watched cartoons and ate microwave oatmeal after asking over and over, ‘Where's Daddy?'

‘Do you two want toast?' Deborah asked Barbara and Joe, although her own stomach was clenched so tight she knew she couldn't eat a bite.

‘Deborah, you look ready to drop,' Barbara said, coming to help her. ‘I'm not much of a cook, but I can at least work a toaster. You sit down.'

Barbara appeared more familiar today, her lips now bearing her usual muted copper-toned lipstick instead of the hideous bright pink she'd worn to the party, her short dark hair combed neatly into place. Deborah, however, sported puffy eyelids and hair carelessly pulled back with a rubber band. Steve liked her hair back, but suddenly she found it unbearable and tore out the rubber band, letting it fall black, straight, and shining halfway to her waist. Joe looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and surprise in his gray eyes, and she realized he'd never seen it down before. She gazed back at him defiantly. ‘I know I look awful,' she snapped.

‘You don't look awful, you just look so different,' he answered easily. ‘I didn't know how long your hair was.'

Embarrassed by her flare of defensiveness, Deborah murmured, ‘It
has
gotten pretty long. I guess I'm due for a cut.'

Joe shook his head. ‘When I was growing up, our housekeeper on the ranch, Ramona, sometimes let her hair hang free. It was just as black and just as long as yours. I always liked it.'

‘I didn't know you lived on a ranch,' Deborah said, suddenly self-conscious at the oblique compliment.

‘Yeah. Three hundred acres down near the Mexican border. We raised horses and cotton.'

‘Do you miss it?'

‘Sometimes.' No, all the time, Deborah thought, judging by the tone of Joe's voice. But he quickly got up to pour another cup of coffee and the subject was dropped.

At eight o'clock Evan arrived, looking as if he hadn't slept all night. His eyes were slightly sunken, his skin not as golden-brown as usual. He dropped his coat on a kitchen chair, took a cup of coffee from Barbara, and looked at Deborah gravely. ‘Kids upstairs?' he asked.

‘Yes. They're getting ready for kindergarten. Joe said he'd take them this morning.'

‘Then they can't hear us.'

Deborah's spine stiffened. ‘No. What's happened?'

‘The state police found Steve's car about five o'clock this morning. It was parked near Yeager Airport.' He hesitated. ‘There's blood inside.'

Barbara gasped and Deborah's heart began a slow, steady thudding. Her vision darkened, then cleared. ‘Blood?'

Evan nodded. ‘Not a lot. Just a streak on the back seat.'

‘Oh, God.'

‘Take it easy. Be calm and think. Do you know Steve's blood type?'

‘B positive. I know because I lost a lot of blood when the twins were born. Steve wanted to be my donor – he always had this fear of AIDS being transmitted by transfusions in spite of all the screening they do these days – but we had different blood types. I'm AB positive. That's the rarest type. We weren't compatible.'

Deborah ran out of words and breath at the same time. Suddenly air flooded painfully back into her lungs and she gulped, then knocked over her coffee. Barbara was beside her, wiping up coffee with a paper towel and crooning softly to her, as if she were a child. ‘Deb, it's okay. Just take it easy, honey. This doesn't mean anything.'

‘Doesn't mean anything?' Deborah cried, ignoring her reddening hand and the hot coffee dripping down on to her white terry-cloth robe. ‘My husband has been missing for almost twenty-four hours, his car turns up abandoned with blood on the seat, and it doesn't
mean
anything?'

Joe's face had taken on a stony look, the gray eyes more narrow than usual although his voice sounded steady and offhand as opposed to Evan's, who was barely able to mask his intensity. ‘How close to the airport was the car?' he asked Evan.

‘Half a mile.'

‘Was there any damage to it?'

‘Not a scratch.'

‘And they're checking flights?'

‘Sure. Nothing so far.'

‘Checking
flights
!' Deborah exclaimed. ‘What do they think? My husband left the car a half-mile from the airport, smeared blood on the back seat, then took a
flight
?'

Evan looked distressed. ‘Deborah, checking departing flights is—'

‘Standard procedure. I know. But none of his clothes except what he was wearing is missing.'

‘But the money is gone from his desk—'

‘Two hundred dollars. Where is he going on that? Rio? Paris? Rome? Besides,
why
would he go away?'

‘Deborah, please calm down,' Evan said.

‘Why should I calm down?' Deborah's voice rose. ‘Isn't what happened to Steve obvious? Artie Lieber got him. He may have killed him!'

‘Somebody killed Daddy!'

Everyone looked, appalled, at Brian and Kimberly standing in the doorway, dressed for kindergarten, their mouths open, their eyes wide. ‘Oh, gosh, no, kids,' Barbara said quickly. ‘No one killed your daddy. Your mommy is just upset.'

‘Who's Artie Liter?' Brian demanded.

‘No one important.'

‘He's a mean person and he killed our daddy!' Kim cried. ‘You're just not telling us.'

Deborah was too horrified by what she'd said and the looks on the children's faces to move. Evan, however, bent and wrapped his arms around them. ‘No one killed your daddy.'

‘How do you know?' Brian asked fearfully.

‘I just know. I've got instincts about these things, and believe me, I'm right about this.'

‘That's true,' Barbara added. ‘Your daddy is one of Evan's best friends. Best friends
know
things about each other. We don't know where your daddy is right now, but he'll turn up and have an exciting story to tell all of us about where he's been.'

Kim's thumb immediately plunged into her mouth, the way it had until last year when the habit was finally broken. She asked around it, ‘Will Daddy be here for Christmas?'

Barbara was still in command. Her voice rang with certainty. ‘Honey, don't suck your thumb like a baby. There's no reason to be scared. I'm sure your daddy will be back for Christmas. Now, are you two ready for school?'

The children were pale and Deborah noticed that Brian's shirt was buttoned unevenly while Kim wore her skirt backward. They still needed help dressing, which she usually gave, but this morning she'd been too upset to supervise them. She had actually wanted them to skip kindergarten this morning, feeling they shouldn't be out of her sight under the circumstances, but Barbara had reminded her that keeping them home would only frighten them more. ‘Let them follow their normal routine,' she'd said. ‘They only stay half a day anyway and when Joe takes them this morning, he can tell the principal what's going on, have everyone keep a special eye on them. I'll take the day off from work and pick them up at noon.'

Deborah had reluctantly agreed, and she now felt the routine
would
have been the best thing for them if only they hadn't overheard her blurting out the possibility of Steve's being killed. She could have kicked herself, but the damage was done. She smiled with what she hoped was a semblance of normalcy. ‘There's nothing to worry about. You two just have a good day and think about all the fun we're going to have at Christmas.'

‘You're not lyin', are you?' Brian asked suspiciously.

She had never lied to the children. How could she expect them to be truthful when she filled their heads with falsehoods? But this situation was different. It would be cruel to inflict the same kind of fear as she was feeling on to two small children. ‘I'm not lying. Everything will be all right. I want you to put this right out of your heads. Isn't your school Christmas party today?'

‘Yeah,' Kim said, slowly removing her thumb from her mouth.

‘Then you two have to be in a party spirit. I left the gifts for you to exchange with the other kids on a table by the door and Barbara will straighten up your clothes before you go out.' Taking her cue, Barbara immediately began turning Kim's skirt around before she moved on to Brian's shirt. ‘When you get back, we'll know a lot more about where Daddy is and when he's coming home,' Deborah said with false cheer. They immediately detected the insincerity of her tone and looked at her with large, doubting eyes, although they said no more.

The morning was blustery, wind whipping bare tree-limbs around and catching at the children's hair when Joe took them out to his Jeep. They were unnaturally subdued, and Deborah's heart ached for them, but there was no way she could comfort them now.

After Joe had driven away with them, Deborah told Evan about the intruder in the spare room the night before.

‘What time?' Evan asked.

‘Around one o'clock. I heard boards creaking.'

‘Did the dog bark?'

Deborah shook her head. ‘No, but she heard something. She was awake. She
would
have barked if the creaking of the boards hadn't been so faint. If I'd been sound asleep, I'd never have heard them myself.'

‘But Joe heard them, and he was downstairs,' Evan said, frowning into the coffee Barbara had poured for him.

‘Joe was in the kitchen,' Deborah explained. ‘The room was right above him.'

‘Ummm.' Evan took a sip of coffee. ‘Was it your ladder propped against the side of the house?'

‘Yes. It was the one we store in the gardening shed.'

‘Was the shed locked?'

‘No. This is such a quiet neighborhood, Evan. We've never had anything stolen. We've never had trouble of any sort until the night before last, when that man was hiding in the evergreens. But he didn't steal anything. At least, I don't think he did. We didn't check the shed. But I find it hard to believe he made off with any gardening equipment.'

‘And nothing was missing from the storage room last night?'

‘Not that I could tell. The light was bad and I don't go in there often, so something could be gone and I wouldn't immediately miss it, but I don't think so.'

‘But you think you heard creaking for at least ten minutes and Joe claims he heard it longer.' Evan looked up from his coffee, his eyes suspicious. ‘
Why
would someone go to all the trouble of climbing a ladder into the house, then do nothing but lurk in that room?'

Deborah ran her hands through her hair. ‘I don't
know
. It doesn't make sense.'

‘No, it doesn't,' Evan said emphatically. ‘I'll let the police know. They'll want to check for evidence, if Joe didn't contaminate the scene too much last night.'

‘Joe is a trained investigator,' Barbara interrupted in a chastizing tone. ‘Certainly he was careful. And he already called the police.'

‘Well, pardon me,' Evan said frostily.

Barbara blushed, clearly realizing she'd come on too strong again, and Deborah added hurriedly, ‘They told us not to touch anything and they'd be here this morning. Of course, they didn't know about Steve's car then.' Her voice broke. Barbara's forehead creased in distress, as if she were frantically trying to think of the right thing to say. Deborah took a deep breath, forcing herself to pull her spiraling fear back to earth. ‘I should go upstairs and get dressed before the police get here. If they come before I get back downstairs—'

‘I'll take care of everything,' Barbara said.

‘As usual.' Evan flashed her a resentful look.

Trouble in paradise, Deborah thought vaguely as she left the kitchen. But at the moment, she couldn't be concerned with Evan and Barbara's conflicts. She had her own much more serious situation to handle.

She hurriedly pulled on a pair of jeans and a heavy sweater, forgetting about make-up or pulling her hair back into its neat French braid. When she got downstairs again, Barbara was already talking to uniformed state troopers. Because Steve's car had been found outside the city limits, this was their investigation now, not that of the city police. ‘The ladder is still propped against the house, just as it was left,' she was saying. ‘We haven't even let the dog out there to mess things up.'

‘We'll take a look outside first,' the man said, smiling falsely beyond Barbara at Deborah. ‘And you are?'

‘I'm Mrs Robinson,' Deborah said, realizing she'd let Barbara take over completely and the troopers had mistaken her for the lady of the house. ‘It's my husband who's missing.'

‘I see. Well, you two stay inside. Cold out today, isn't it?'

Deborah knew he was trying to minimize the situation just as she had with the children, but his empty comment grated on her. As if she'd even noticed the weather. Barbara said, yes indeed, it was cold, and shut the door behind them.

‘Thank God you're here,' Deborah sighed. ‘I'm no good in situations like this.'

Barbara smiled compassionately. ‘How many people ever get in situations like this? Besides, it's not my husband who's missing or my house that's been invaded. Quit criticizing yourself. You're doing fine, everything considered.'

Dear Barbara, Deborah thought. She'd been a loyal, if sometimes bossy, friend for years. Her domineering personality had often gotten on Deborah's nerves, just as it was apparently working on Evan's, but now she was grateful for it. Barbara could manage anything. Deborah had never had much faith in her own ability to handle serious matters.