Untold Story (36 page)

Grabber pressed his fingers to his temples. He gave them a little massage. If he came out and said it . . . could he make the guy listen seriously? He knew the answer to that. All it would earn him, if he tried to explain, was the possibility of a psych report. “Forget about her. She’s not relevant, nothing happened, forget what I said before.”

The suit kept on nodding, as though to say that they were finally getting somewhere, as if the entire matter had been cleared up at last. “Certainly, if those are your instructions, Mr. Grabowski,” he said. “And how do you intend to plead?”

“Not guilty,” he said. “Now, how fast can you get me out of here?”

“You’ll be able to post bail after the arraignment.”

“And when will that be?”

“Court’s a little backed up. I’d say you’re looking at Monday or Tuesday, possibly next Wednesday.”

“I’m not staying in here for a week,” said Grabowski.

The lawyer scratched under his chin with his pen. “You can pay bail with a credit card or I can arrange a bail bond, let me know and I’ll do what’s necessary. Let’s hope it’s not a whole week, look on the bright side, could be a day or two sooner than that.”

For the next hour he paced his cell, frying with indignation. What had happened to the breaking and entering allegation? Now he looked like a crazy person, someone who attacked the police at random in the street. She must have called it in hoping he’d get picked up, and then called back and said it was all a mistake. It wasn’t as though she would ever want to face him in court.

This wasn’t justice, this was a travesty. It was an outrage. His human rights were being abused and there was nothing he could do about it, there was nobody who would listen. And she’d toyed with him, trapped him, cornered him like an animal. A person had a right to go about his business without interference from anyone, a person had a right to walk the street free from . . .

The door swung open. The desk sergeant who had taken his fingerprints filled the frame. “Someone up there likes you,” he said.

“What?” said Grabowski. “Are you transferring me now?” He knew he’d be going to the county jail until the day of the first court hearing.

“Said someone up there likes you,” the sergeant repeated. “Or you are just one lucky motherfucker.”

The Pontiac was parked outside the bed-and-breakfast and the taxi pulled up behind it. Grabowski paid and stepped onto the sidewalk. He used his front door key. Mr. Jackson was in his chair but didn’t stir as Grabowski crept up the stairs. He wanted to get out of there without having to chat to his landlady about where he’d been for the last two nights.

He went straight to the desk and opened the left drawer. Of course it wasn’t there. He’d known it wouldn’t be. Even so, it didn’t prevent the crash of disappointment. She’d beaten him hands down. He changed his clothes and packed up. The car key was on the desk. Perhaps he should think himself lucky, like the sergeant had said. Officers Johnson and Nugent had withdrawn the charges and he was free to go. They’d filled in the paperwork incorrectly, that pair of knuckle-draggers, and when the trial came up it would have got thrown out on a technicality. “I was you,” said the sergeant, “I’d try to avoid running into those two. They ain’t gonna be happy, they ever see your face again.”

“Yeah?” Grabowski had said. “How happy they going to be when I sue?”

He wasn’t going to do that, there were better things he could do with his life than spend it with lawyers. In any case, he had actually hit the cop, and if you hit a cop you got arrested, it was inevitable.

He put some cash in an envelope for the nights that he owed, left it on the bottom stair, and snuck out.

There were two cars in the drive, no sign of the Sport Trac. He couldn’t leave without checking that she’d actually gone. He walked up to the house. A woman was coming out of the front door that stood open. She was writing something down on a clipboard as she walked and it took a moment for her to look up and notice him.

“Hi, can I help you?” she said.

“I’m looking for Lydia.”

“I’m Lydia’s Realtor, Tevis Trower. I’m afraid she’s not here.”

“Oh, right,” said Grabowski casually. “She putting this place on the market, then?”

“Yes, I’ve just been measuring for the brochure.”

“Will she . . . be back later, do you think?”

“She had to go overseas at short notice, dropped off the keys this morning.”

“Ah,” he said, “where’d she go?”

The Realtor shrugged.

“Do you think the crockery and glassware should be packed before or after the open house?” The voice called from inside the front hall.

“I’m just coming, Amber,” said the Realtor.

But Amber, the little rabbity blonde from the boutique, came out on the porch. “Oh,
hello,
” she said. She tucked her hair behind her ears. “How are you?”

“I’m great. I was going to drop by your store later on.”

“Oh, do,” said Amber. “My assistant will be there, she’s got a good eye, she’ll be able to help you. I’d come and help you myself, only I’ve got to get Lydia’s house sorted out. I’m not actually doing it today, I’m just making lists of what needs doing and then if I get some time on Sunday, I’ll come in and make a start. The clothes to Goodwill, whatever she’s left behind, the lamps and so on to the antiques store on Fairfax, the crockery we haven’t decided what to do with . . .”

She burbled on and he listened, and waited for a chance to steer the conversation.

The Realtor checked her watch, anxious to get moving, but Amber, in full patter, didn’t notice. “ . . . The furniture we decided we’d leave and see if we could include it in the sale. If not, there’s an auction house I know and can go there. Of course the cost of shipping it all the way to South Africa is prohibitive. Anyway, we’ll all miss her.” She fidgeted with the tie of her wraparound dress. “Did you not know that she’d gone? Were you hoping to see her?”

“There was something,” said Grabowski, “that I was wanting to talk to her about. Did she leave a forwarding address by any chance?”

Amber shook her head. “No, she’s going to be in touch just as soon as she’s settled.”

He looked at the Realtor, who was dangling the clipboard, swinging it slightly, growing more and more impatient. “Guess she’ll be keeping in touch with you because of the house sale,” he said.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said. “I need to get back to the office.”

“Didn’t mean to keep you. If you’ve got a phone number, an e-mail address, anything?”

The Realtor had her car keys out, she was striding down the drive. Grabowski pursued her. “Sorry,” he said, “but she can’t be selling the house without keeping in touch.”

She had her car door open. “Not that it’s any of your business,” she said. She got in the seat. “Not that it’s any of your business, but she signed over power of attorney for the sale. I believe there’s been some kind of family crisis, but I don’t know, I didn’t pry.” She closed the door.

He knocked on the window and she opened it. “What happens to the money then? How does she get that?”

“What’s it to you?” She started the engine.

“All I’m saying is, you must have a way of getting hold of her if necessary, and if you could just . . .”

“The money will go into a client account and then when she’s ready she’ll claim it. Anyway, in this market that’s many months off. Maybe a year.” She raised the window and backed the car down the drive.

Amber was at his shoulder. “If you like,” she said, “I’ll tell Lydia you’re wanting to speak to her. When I hear from her, that is.”

He felt sorry for Amber, the way she’d been duped by the woman she thought of as a friend. “You won’t,” he said.

“Won’t what?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Listen, I’ve got to get going. Don’t think I can make it to your store after all. I’ll have to pick up something for my wife at the airport.”

“Oh, are you leaving us?” said Amber. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay in little old Kensington. Perhaps you’ll come back one day. I know there’s not a great deal that goes on here, but it’s a very friendly place,” she said, smiling up at him. “I hope you’ve found it that way.”

He managed to get a window seat in coach on a direct flight. There was some turbulence on the ascent and he looked out at the scudding black clouds. The plane jolted and shuddered as if it were scraping along a hard surface. And then they were clear and the clouds were below, draping a tattered veil over the earth.

She had a brother in Cape Town. He knew that the chances were slim but he had to try. If she was there and he watched the house day and night, it was possible that he’d find her again. There was no guarantee that she was in South Africa, just because that’s what she’d told her friend. The reality was she didn’t have any friends, they didn’t know her, but he knew her and if he gave it long enough, thought hard enough, never gave up, he’d find her in the end. She’d beaten him once but it wasn’t over yet, he would find a way to track her down.

He had to get some sleep on the flight. Grabowski closed his eyes and tried to float on the sound of the engines, allow the deep vibration to fill his consciousness so that he could drift away. He saw her, she came to him, sitting on her bed. The sun slanted in through the window, lighting her up beautifully, and she was radiant and calm and he stood there transfixed, drinking her in.
Were you looking for me?
He could see the longing, the yearning, in her eyes.
It was an accident,
he said. She nodded in encouragement and he took a step forward, lifted his camera, and she lifted the gun and held it to her head.

Chapter Twenty-nine

The cabin stood a spit away from the lake, tucked in among the pines. It had been around two thirty in the morning when she arrived and she hadn’t made it as far as either of the bedrooms, lying down on the dusty couch in the moonlight with her hands between her knees, and waking with a crick in her neck and the sun lapping around her ankles. She was hungry. Yesterday she hadn’t eaten. Amber had packed provisions, and she walked outside to retrieve them from the car.

On the seventh attempt she got the stove lit and set the kettle to boil. While the water was heating she ate a bread roll, scattering crumbs everywhere. Rufus sat at her feet, waiting with exaggerated patience. She didn’t have dog food but she had half a meat loaf from Amber’s refrigerator. She found a saucer in the cupboard and chopped up a slice for him.

After breakfast she put on her boots and they walked through the pine trees on a bed of needles that was springy damp, a few mushrooms sprouting here and there, the occasional fern glowing emerald green against earthy brown. From time to time they came to a clearing painted with wildflowers, dabs of pinks and whites and yellows across the grass canvas. She kept the lake just in view in the distance to her right so that eventually they would come full circle, back to where they’d started.

When she’d hung up the phone yesterday before it had connected to Amber’s number, she’d driven around to say good-bye in person. They’d all been there, waiting for her. She’d intended to stay for a short while but hadn’t left until after midnight, while all the plans were being worked out.

She walked out of the pines toward the lake, Rufus scampering ahead to the slate shore. They’d been out three hours and had come two-thirds of the way around, another hour and a half to get back to Tevis’s cabin, she could see the long sloping roof, like a letter A written in the trees. They’d passed a few other houses and crossed a couple of tire-made dirt tracks that suggested more cabins deeper in the woods, but they had seen no one. She looked out across the shimmering water, the dense green of the forest, to the blue hills smudged across the horizon. A shadow passed overhead and swooped to the lake and rose up in slow and silent commotion, the fat silver fish wagging in the eagle’s claws.

She’d told them something had happened that meant she had to leave and wouldn’t be coming back.

“Why don’t you let us help you?” said Esther. “Maybe we can fix it.”

“There are things I can’t tell you,” Lydia had said. “And I don’t want to lie to you.”

“What you can’t tell us we don’t need to know,” said Esther. “Tell us what needs to happen now.”

She walked to the edge of the water, sat down on a rock, and pulled off her socks and boots, her jeans and T-shirt. The slate was sharp on her soles and then gave way to shingle that massaged her feet as she waded into the water, bright insects skimming the surface, chasing trails at her fingertips. She tried to keep her feet on the bottom as she went deeper, the water at her waist, sternum, clavicle, she wanted to walk until it was over her head but her feet were rising, her hips lifting weightless in the water and she started to swim.

When she grew tired she turned on her back, stirring her wrists and ankles to keep herself afloat, staring at the flat blank blue overhead. She flipped over and swam back to shore and sat on the rock to dry.

Last night, Suzie had called her husband and he had called back as soon as he’d picked up Grabowski and taken him in. “You feel bad about what you did?” said Suzie. “Man breaks into your house, comes into your bedroom, he needs to get what’s coming to him.”