Chava had traded in her purple leisure suit for a black tailored jacket and a pair of blue jeans. Lugging a handbag that could double as living quarters for a family of five, she’d also swaddled herself in my old down jacket, appropriated from my hall closet. It fit her like a puffy tent.
“Maybe I should buy myself a good winter coat,” she said, dropping into the passenger seat with the extra fabric of the garment billowing out around her.
“Maybe you should consider a warmer climate,” I said to be helpful.
She tugged her seatbelt on and reached out to the dashboard to crank the heat on high. Chava and I definitely had different internal thermostats.
“I feel like I’m in a convection oven,” I said, reaching out to turn the heat back down.
“You don’t even know what a convection oven is,” she said, turning the knob back up a couple of notches.
“Neither do you,” I said, turning the knob back halfway. I could see how things were going to go between us, give and take back and forth until neither one of us was happy.
On the way over to the Hallings’s address, I explained the situation to Chava—how the dead woman I’d told her about was the mistress we’d talked about earlier. Instead of sobering her up, the news just piqued her curiosity.
“Well, isn’t that interesting,” she said, and I saw her lean forward a bit in her seat, eager to get a glimpse of the Hallings’s house, embroiled as the residents could be in mayhem, infidelity, and murder.
I’d started to regret bringing her along.
People with new money often flocked to the renowned Chuckanut Drive, where fancy houses lined the bluff five hundred feet above Samish Bay. The rest built McMansions on Lake Whatcom—also the source of drinking water for the City of Bellingham. I tried not think too much about people riding around on boats, or worse yet, skinny dipping, through my tap water.
Though my house and the Hallings’s estate weren’t that far apart geographically, our economic statuses didn’t exactly overlap. After driving slightly north, then curving east around the lake, we arrived at the address, a substantial lot covered in trees fronting the lake. A tall, stucco wall, with wrought-iron details and decorative lamps that hid the majority of the grounds from public scrutiny. A red tile roof peeked out, the only hint of the enormous house that lay beyond. I was surprised to see a “For Sale” sign in the yard. Kendra never mentioned they were relocating, and I wondered at her leaving that little detail out of our conversations. It was possible they were downsizing—the house was enormous—but the sale could also point to money problems.
“You will stay here,” I said to Chava as I parked down the street.
“Why can’t I come with you? I’d love to get a look inside a place like that.”
“Which is exactly why I’m not taking you. I can’t work and keep an eye on you at the same time.”
Chava started to argue, but I took the keys and slammed the door. I didn’t want her getting antsy and driving off, leaving me behind.
And no, I wouldn’t put it past her.
The gate to the property stood open, which seemed to defeat the purpose of having one in the first place, but I appreciated the easy egress. The house, when it came into view out of the darkness down the long drive, stood two stories tall along the low bank of the lake. The warm, sand-colored stucco of the Italianate home glowed bright in the spots of outdoor lighting artfully hidden in the shrubbery. The red terra cotta roof tiles glinted through the stately Madrona trees surrounding it, the distinctive, peeling red bark a nice contrast against the other evergreens in Hallings’s mini forest. Walking up to the front door, I could see a security camera mounted on the wall over the door under the portcullis. Its red eye seemed to glare balefully at me, though I always wondered how often these things were just a front and not actually connected to anything.
I knocked. Rang the bell. Waited. Knocked again. Rang the bell.
The Hallings had a live-in maid, so I expected someone to be home, even if Mr. Hallings was at the dealership and Kendra was in the wind.
After waiting a few more moments, I rang the bell one last time and decided to do a little reconnoitering around the property. I stepped off the porch and wound my way through dense vegetation to peek into the windows of the front room. The rhododendrons were tucked into themselves, buds well hidden until spring—the bushes large enough to be a barrier, but leggy enough that I could push myself through. Looking into the front room, I could see the place was in disarray. The coffee table was strewn with papers, and there were blank spaces on the walls where lighter patches outlined missing art work. A chair was overturned.
Now I really had a dilemma. If something untoward had taken place in the Hallings’s residence, I should probably call the police. I thought about the possibility that Kendra had been telling me the truth about being in danger from the man. Would he hit his wife when she was pregnant even though he’d never been violent before? Maybe the baby wasn’t his. Or had Kendra lied to me about him being violent?
I contemplated the likelihood that if I called the police I’d manage to escape talking to Chance Parker in person and decided to do a little more reconnaissance before I did anything rash. Continuing around the side of the house, I hoped once again that the video surveillance was either a fake or there wasn’t a security firm monitoring it 24/7. I figured it was most likely a live feed, not a recording, though if a security company called in to the police about an intruder it would solve my problem about whether or not to contact them about the mess inside the house. I decided to let fate dictate my actions.
The farther I got from the front door, the less outdoor lighting I had to contend with. Walking around the side of the house, I discovered the Hallings’s home had no outdoor lighting in back at all except for a few low path lights leading down to the water’s edge. Hallings’s dock did not have a boat tied to it as I’d anticipated. Maybe he’d sold that too.
If the Hallings had a dog, I doubted it would be loose with the front gate open. Other than Kendra’s current pregnancy, I knew they didn’t have children, so there wouldn’t be tiny faces watching me through the windows, fingers primed to call 911 if they saw a stranger wandering around. The houses were far apart and the property was heavily wooded. That meant there was a natural break between their house and the closest neighbor—another huge home built on what looked to be a double lot. Moving farther around the house, I discovered the stucco wall fronting the street didn’t actually go around the entire property. The fence ended some twenty feet or so after making a 90-degree turn toward the lake. So much for actual security.
Hallings’s house and his neighbor to the right were both tucked into a small bend in the lakefront. Though other houses on the lake were visible from their neighbors across the water, these two homes were less exposed, making it easier for me to venture unnoticed into the backyard. Between the cloak of night and the curtain of trees, I felt sufficiently invisible; besides, it was still cold and I doubted anyone was hanging around outside.
The house sat much closer to the lake than the road, with the backyard strip of land mostly taken up by a patio that extended the length of the house. I crossed the colorful, Venetian tiles, threaded my way through a complicated set of patio furniture, and almost fell into an open fire pit before edging up to look inside the back of the house. A gourmet kitchen opened up in front of me, and a living room spread out on my left, maximizing the views from the downstairs windows, while I assumed the master bedroom took advantage of the additional height upstairs for even better views across the lake. The kitchen looked undisturbed, and I wondered if the mess in the front room had nothing to do with anything nefarious, like a dead mistress, and everything to do with the Hallings moving out.
Walking down the length of the glass door, I found that by standing on one foot and leaning out as far as possible, I could almost catch a glimpse into the dining room on the other side of the kitchen. The house sported an open floor plan and I could see the shadows of furniture in the middle room. Balanced precariously on one leg, gripping the edge of the doorframe, I could see through to the front door.
“Find anything interesting?”
The voice, coming from the darkness of the trees, startled me so badly I lost my balance and tipped over into another large bush.
“Holy crap, Chava, what are you trying to do? Give me a heart attack?” I rolled myself out of the hedge with as much dignity as I could muster under the circumstances, which was fairly little.
“See? Stealthy as a cat. You never even heard me coming.”
She had a point, but that didn’t exactly make me want to congratulate her.
“You aren’t supposed to be sneaking up on me at all.” I said. “I thought I told you to stay in the car.”
“Your phone’s been ringing off the hook. I figured you’d want to know.”
Chava handed me my cellphone, which I’d left plugged into the charger. Running my fingers around the dots in the correct order—I had set up a lock on the screen so my mother couldn’t poke around on it without my knowledge—I went to the home screen and saw an unfamiliar local number but no voicemails.
“Ringing off the hook? There was only one phone call,” I said.
“But it might be important.”
Since no one appeared to be home or have called the police, I decided to sit myself down on Mr. Hallings’s posh patio furniture and find out who’d called.
“Probably some salesman wanting me to buy insurance I don’t need,” I said, clicking on the redial button. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard a familiar voice answer after the third ring. Definitely not someone I expected to have a chat with.
But, now that I was, perhaps I’d learn something useful. If nothing else, it should be interesting.