After a day’s hard work on Tuesday, I made a late-afternoon run to the grocery store in town; I was running low on food and had used the last of the coffee trying to caffeinate myself into productive alertness. Plus, I was going to need more alcohol. And chilis — definitely chilis. Bizarrely, the Andersens had nothing spicier than ground white pepper in their kitchen cupboards.
What had once been my father’s mom-and-pop grocery store on Main Street was now a Best West supermarket. I wandered the aisles, snagging a bottle of Sriracha and a jar of pickled Mucho Nacho Jalapenos (fatter, longer and hotter than their common cousins) along with basic groceries and a bunch of snacks — chips, salsa, several packets of sour Skittles and a giant bag of Barnum’s animal crackers. As a nod to good nutrition, I grabbed some ripe tomatoes and grapes from the fresh produce section, before I steered my cart to the wine aisle for a bottle of pinot grigio and a six-pack of beers. That was when I saw her.
Jessica Mantovani, who’d been my best friend back in high school when she was still Jessica Armstrong, was standing staring at a shelf of expensive-looking chardonnays. With her sleek bob of auburn hair, her subtle makeup and cashmere coat, she looked just as elegant as the last time I’d seen her — at Cassie’s funeral. On that day, Jess had given me a silent nod and a look as cold as a penguin’s ass, clearly still angry that due to my investigative efforts, her lover had been arrested on a bunch of charges.
While I pondered whether to march up and greet her or make a cowardly retreat — the latter option appealed way more — Jessica glanced up and saw me, forcing the issue.
“Hi, Jess!” I walked over to her with arms open and a smile glued to my lips.
She didn’t hit me or push me away, but she didn’t return my hug either.
“Didn’t know you were back,” she said, with no hint of enthusiasm.
“Yup.” I explained about the house-sitting and then, to break the awkward silence that followed, added, “Hey, let’s get together and have a chat. You know, catch up and … clear the air?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Okay.”
“You could come around for dinner.”
She arched an eyebrow at that. “You cook now?”
“Good point,” I said. “Drinks at the Tuppenny Tavern?”
“Lunch, at the Frost Inn,” she said. “Friday at twelve-thirty would work for me.”
“It’s a date!” I said, my tone overly cheery.
“Well,” she said, turning her back on the chardonnays and cabernets, “I need to get going.”
“Your boss at the gallery nitpicky about working hours?” I joked, because Jessica was the boss, and owner, of the Art on Main gallery.
The slightest flicker of a smile flitted across her expression. “I promised Nico that I’d get him a nice steak for dinner.”
“Oh, right.”
In the decade since high school, Jessica had become a modern Stepford wife — slim, perfectly groomed, and effortlessly juggling the tasks of raising children, running a business, and getting meat and potatoes on the table for her spoiled husband. It was impressive, but also disconcerting, because she was now so different from the girl I’d once known.
Back in the Andersens’ minty kitchen, I let the dogs out for a toilet break and fed them another serving of the kibble, topping each bowl off with a juicy chunk of the rotisserie chicken I’d brought home from the store for my supper. I ate on the couch in front of the television, checking to see whether there was anything new on either of the quarry stories. I had to search through the channels to find the local news channel again, because the TV was on a different station when I switched it on. An electrical appliance behaving oddly? I could just hear my mother telling me it was a sign of a ghostly presence.
Eventually, I found the right channel, but there were no updates on the story and no live crossings to The Hair. Perhaps he’d taken the evening off to deep condition his tresses. The repeat footage of the quarry gave me flashbacks of the woman’s corpse in the pit and on the stretcher, killing my appetite.
I fed the remains of my meal to the dogs, then poured myself a large glass of wine and took a deep, candlelit bath, sprinkling in my mother’s salts, which smelled like freshly baked cupcakes. I should have felt relaxed as I soaked in the steaming water, but instead, I grew increasingly edgy. Being in this bathroom, with its pink tub, tiles and towels, was like being stuck inside the rosy depths of a giant conch shell. Bathrooms should come in any color as long as it was white.
I picked at the scabs on my scraped hand by the light of the flickering candle while I reviewed the day, trying to identify the source of my unease. I’d put in a good day’s work, so no guilt or anxiety there, and I’d taken care of the dogs. Maybe I was dreading the upcoming lunch with Jess — it was bound to be uncomfortable — or perhaps I was still experiencing the increased autonomic system arousal of post-traumatic stress. Given the events of the day before, that made sense, but it didn’t make me feel any more relaxed.
I cut short my bath, wrapped myself in one of the fluffy pink towels and brushed my teeth. A sensation like a faint itch prickled behind my shoulder blades. I froze, feeling the fine hairs on my arms lift and goosebumps pucker my skin. Someone was watching me; I could feel it. I spun around.
No one was there.
Of course no one was there. The only eyes in the bathroom apart from my own mismatched pair were the beady black ones of a sappy mermaid statuette on the shelf below the mirror. Damn these freaky figurines! I shoved the vile thing inside the cabinet beneath the basin and slammed the door shut, but I still felt the flesh-creeping sensation of not being alone.
The rib bone. Maybe my mother was right — she was bound to be sometimes, if only according to the law of probabilities — that it hadn’t been a good idea to bring human remains into the house. What if I’d brought some spiritual presence in along with the bone? Oh joy, I thought sourly. Either I was imagining things, or I’d just discovered another unpleasant aspect to this whole psychic tangle.
As soon as I’d gotten back from the previous night’s dinner at my parents’ house, I’d tossed the sage blunt in the trash. Now I half-wished that I had moseyed through the house, smoking away the bad vibes.
The dogs, however, didn’t seem at all agitated by any possible ghostly visitation. They were stretched out, sleeping, on the top of my bed.
“Oh, no you don’t, you charm-monsters. You get down right now!” I ordered them, pointing at the floor.
Reluctantly, they jumped down and nestled together on the floor beside my bed, Darcy resting his head on Lizzie’s paws. I slipped into the ratty old T-shirt I always wore to bed and half-cajoled, half-carried the dogs downstairs to settle them in their baskets. Back upstairs I snuggled into bed with a crime novel. Despite the eerie moaning of the wind outside and the sounds of the unfamiliar house settling around me — creaks and rustles in the ceiling and cracks of the floorboards — I was feeling better. The sensation of being watched had faded and I could breathe more easily. Maybe I’d just imagined it, after all.
But, as I drifted off to sleep, I thought I caught a faint whiff of cola-flavored lip balm. The type Colby had always worn.
When my phone on the bedside table rang the next morning, Sting’s Every Breath You Take was playing so loudly and clearly inside my head that it took a few moments to realize there wasn’t a radio playing the song in my bedroom. I’d been dreaming about Colby. I strained to recall the dream images, but it was like trying to hold mist between my fingers.
“This is Officer Ronnie Capshaw from the Pitchford Police Department.”
“Oh, right. Hi,” I croaked groggily.
“Have I called too early?”
I thought I detected judgment in her tone.
Blinking sleep away, I squinted at the time display on my phone. Seven-thirty. Way too early.
“Not at all,” I replied.
“We’d like you to come into the station this morning to check and sign your statements about what you found at the quarry. Is eleven-thirty convenient?”
“Sure.” I could drop in before I met my mother for lunch at twelve-thirty.
She ended the call without further niceties. I slumped back into the pillows, but drifting back off to sleep was impossible. I could hear the hounds whining and scratching at the door downstairs. Was this what having kids was like — being on-call all the time? It was probably worse. Dogs didn’t need to have diapers changed or be driven to ballet lessons.
Running on still-sleepy autopilot, I let the dogs out into the yard, put on the coffeemaker, and poured some muesli into a bowl. When I opened the refrigerator to get milk, I was taken aback to see that there was only a scant inch of wine left in the bottle from last night. Damn, I hadn’t realized I’d drunk that much. Again. Better watch the sauce, I warned myself. It was enough that I was turning into an oddball. I didn’t need to become a drunk, too.
I kept my nose fixed to the thesis grindstone for two uninterrupted hours, nibbling on sour Skittles while I worked — a trick which helped keep my fingers out of my mouth. Afterwards, I took the dogs for a long walk around the estate, goggling at the mansions with their snow-iced topiary and three-car garages.
When I passed the gatehouse, the muscly guard trotted over to walk beside me for a way.
“How you doin’?” he said, Joey-Tribbiani style. “My name is Doug. That's God spelled backward with a little bit of u wrapped up in it.”
My eyes rolled so hard they nearly came loose entirely. The dogs, who clearly liked this clown, leapt up against him, begging for attention.
“And your name is Garnet,” Doug said.
“I know, right?”
“Sooo … I’d like to hook up sometime.” He extracted a folded piece of paper from his pocket and tried to hand it to me. “Here’s my number.”
“Oh, no thank you, I already have one.”
He frowned for a moment, then returned it to his pocket. Did he keep a whole collection there, for ease of distribution?
“What’s with your eyes?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re different colors.”
“No way! Really? I’ll need to get that seen to.”
He nodded. “There was a reporter sniffing around here this morning. Soft-looking guy with hair like a girl. Thought he was gonna cry when I denied him entry.”
“Uh-huh.” I tugged at the dogs, keen to get away.
“He asked a lot of questions about you, but I told him nothing. Sooo … maybe I could come around to your place later to receive your demonstration of appreciation?” he sang the last words, walking beside me. “I don’t mind your crazy eyes.”
“Wow.” I stopped and faced him. “I have no words. I mean, I do, but it’s a string of four-letter ones.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means no.”
He folded his arms, and the seams on his jacket strained. “You’re not very nice, are you?”
“It’s been said.” I marched off.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?” he called after me.
I turned around and, walking backward, yelled, “But you catch the most flies with corpses.”
Back at the Andersen house, I took Ned up on his offer to babysit Darcy and Lizzie, because I didn’t know what time I’d be home.
“Any further news on Laini Carter?” he asked as I handed over the dogs on his doorstep.
“Not that I know of.”
“I knew her.”
“You did?”
“She used to live here on the estate. In that double-story over there.” He pointed to a house on the far side of the park. “Then she moved out, and I couldn’t see her anymore.” He looked put out by the fact.
“Oh, were the two of you dating?”
“What? No! I wasn’t in her league.”
“What was she like?” I asked.
“She was beautiful,” he said simply. “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of coffee, and we can chat about her?”
I glanced at my wristwatch. “I can’t, I have an appointment in town in fifteen minutes.”
“Of course, of course,” he said. “Some other time.” And, humming, he let the dogs inside his house.