The Stranger Inside

by Laura Benedict

  “Glass of wine to keep you going?” Kimber reaches for the handle of the fridge.

  “No, thanks. I’d like to, but I need to keep my head clear.” When she picks up her glasses, Kimber reads it as a sign that their conversation is over.

  “Don’t stay up too late, okay? Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  It’s as chilly a response as she’s ever gotten from Diana.

  Damn you, Kyle. You’re an idiot.

  Befriending Diana had started out as a kind of revenge joke on Kyle after he dumped her. Now she cares for Diana like a sister, and she can’t stand the thought of Diana dumping her as well. It’s the ultimate irony, given what she did to her own sister.

  “Sleep well.” Kimber doesn’t mention the incident with Lance Wilson and the pajamas. The awkwardness between them feels unbearable.

  An hour later, she lies between the flawless sheets, watching shadows on the ceiling. From another part of the house comes the hollow sound of muffled, angry voices.

  Chapter Twenty

  Kimber wakes early, without an alarm, and her mind goes right to the evening before.

  Maybe she should go stay with Gabriel or go to a hotel. The stress of Kyle’s presence, added to the fear that Lance Wilson could completely ruin her life in an instant, puts her gut in a twist.

  She showers and dresses quickly, knowing Kyle will have already left. Before she goes downstairs, she listens to her phone messages. One is from Jenny, from late the night before. What was she doing that she didn’t notice it then? There’s a pause before Jenny speaks, and Kimber hears Mr. Tuttle whimpering in the background. “There’s another car parked on the street in front of your house, and I saw a woman going inside. I’m taking Mr. Tuttle out for the last time. I’ve tried using those potty pads late at night, you know, but he’s such a good boy he just won’t do it in the house. Call me and I’ll report.”

  Kimber tries Jenny’s number, but there’s no answer.

  Opening her bedroom door, she hears Diana telling Hadley to run and get her backpack so they can leave. When she’s certain they’re gone, she goes downstairs, feeling guilty about hiding from them.

  After coffee and a quick breakfast of half a bagel with smoked salmon from Diana’s well-stocked Viking fridge, she decides to go straight to Jenny’s house. At first she imagines parking a few blocks down and going in Jenny’s back door so Lance Wilson won’t see her. But why shouldn’t she be visiting Jenny? Even if he’s watching her, so what? He has to know that she’s also watching him—or that someone is.

  Providence Street basks in its morning quiet. As she pulls over in front of a house half a block from hers, she sees a postal worker cross at the next corner. Shit. The mail. Lance Wilson is also getting her mail. What’s he doing with it? There was nothing sticking out of the box that she noticed on Monday night. She has every right to demand it from him. Should she stop her mail or forward it to Diana’s? The very thought makes her feel hopeless. How long is this going to go on?

  Her phone rings.

  Brianna’s excited voice comes through, soft but urgent. “Leeza’s going to be calling. She wants you to come in. I wanted you to know first, in case you want to be busy or something. I think it’s really bad.”

  “Wow, that sounds dramatic. Is it the comptroller thing?”

  “They were here until late yesterday. I hung around because I wanted to know what was going on. Leeza kept going in and out, but she didn’t say anything to me until this morning.”

  Brianna isn’t the type to get overexcited. Kimber had hoped that yesterday was the exception, and now she’s alarmed. This is probably why Leeza has been quiet the last day or so and, she realizes, has stopped messaging her. Something is wrong, but she doesn’t want to think about it now.

  “I guess she’ll call me when she wants to talk. I really don’t want to deal with this shit, Brianna. Can you hold her off?”

  Brianna is silent a moment, and Kimber can hear the station’s music in the background. She only listens in her car when she knows there are new ads running.

  “Let me think.”

  Patience isn’t one of Kimber’s primary virtues, but she holds her tongue and waits.

  “I’ll tell her you called in, and you have to be with the police. That sounds okay, right?”

  “It makes me sound like I’m some kind of criminal, but that’s probably the best way to go.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean it that way. I’ll think of something else. Nobody who knows you would think that.”

  Kimber wonders if that’s actually true. How well does anyone really know her? She has no real friends at the station—or at least there isn’t anyone there she particularly likes. Then again, it’s not like she trusts them. Just Brianna and maybe Bill Gustafson, the station’s general manager. She only trusts Leeza as far as she could throw her, which, given that she’s not in great shape these days, wouldn’t be very far.

  “Don’t worry. It’s fine.” She hangs up wondering how bad the thing with Leeza is going to be. Leeza only puts real pressure on when someone is pressuring her. Bill is easier to deal with because he’s a man. While he is usually all business, she frequently catches him glancing at her legs, then her cleavage, before he looks at her face. That she doesn’t hesitate to hold his gaze when he finally makes it to her eyes unsettles him. But he continues to do it anyway. Bill is handleable.

  Out of habit, she checks the mirror before getting out. Her hair is still damp from the shower, but the new makeup has restored some of her confidence. Funny how something small like that can change her whole perspective.

  Jenny’s front door stands open behind its screen door. Kimber knocks loudly, then opens the screen door to put her head inside.

  “Hello? Jenny?” She gets no answer but hears voices from farther inside the house. “Hello?” She lets the screen door close again and waits. Leaning back a bit, she can see onto her own front porch. A triangle of white sticks out of her mailbox. Maybe she should run over right now and grab it. She imagines sprinting across the yard and driveway to grab her mail, pressing the doorbell, and running away again like a middle-age ding-dong ditcher.

  But no. Lance Wilson is waiting for her to do something like that so he can call the police. Might he even come out and confront her? Threaten her?

  This time after she knocks and calls for Jenny, she steps inside. The house has the same humid, clammy feeling it had on Monday and smells of cigarettes and burnt coffee. She follows the sound of the voices to the bedroom Jenny uses as a den. There, the television plays a courtroom reality show to two empty velour-covered recliners.

  What if Jenny has died in her bed? Or somewhere else in the house? Reluctantly, Kimber searches every room, including the two small upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. Nothing.

  Where are Mrs. Winkelman and Mr. Tuttle?

  Mrs. Winkelman could be wandering outside, but it isn’t like Jenny to take the dog on a walk and leave her door open. In the tidy kitchen, the coffeemaker is on, the bottom of its carafe lined with acrid sludge. She turns it off, puzzled.

  “Mr. Tuttle, come here!”

  When there’s no clicking of tiny feet, her palms begin to sweat. Something is very wrong.

  She goes outside, searching all around Jenny’s house, feeling self-conscious. Lance Wilson might be watching, but she’s more worried about Jenny. Jenny’s car is parked in her driveway, covered with a few days’ worth of dust and pollen.

  Where are you, Jenny?

  Of course she could actually be on a walk with Mr. Tuttle and just forgot to lock the door. Or she could be at a neighbor’s house. But that doesn’t explain the burnt coffeepot. She calls for Mr. Tuttle again.

  This time she gets a sharp answering bark followed by an anguished whine from the direction of her own house.

  “Come on, buddy! Where are you? Good boy!” she calls, clapping her hands to encourage him. He barks again.

  As she crosses her driveway, the tiny dog bou
nds out of the concrete stairwell. When she picks him up, his body is quivering, but it’s not from a happy waggling of his tail. He plasters himself against her, giving her chin a single nudge with his very dry nose, and she holds him close because his body feels unusually cold.

  “Where’s Jenny, buddy? Where’s your mama?”

  He burrows even closer. It doesn’t matter. From the moment she saw where he came from, she understood that Jenny had to be in the stairwell.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kimber doesn’t want to set Mr. Tuttle down, but as much as she would rather have the shivering ball of fur for company, she needs him to stay out of the stairwell. The sun is high, so she carries him to the grass beneath one of the crape myrtle trees planted just on the other side of the driveway. When he’s settled, he looks up at her, and she could swear she sees disappointment in his round, dark eyes.

  “Stay here. Just stay here.” Turning, she strides back over to the stairwell before she loses her nerve.

  Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m being a drama queen. Please, God, let it be that I’m a drama queen this once. She doesn’t look at any of the windows above the driveway. Screw Lance Wilson. This is her house.

  For all the surrounding sunlight, the very bottom of the stairwell is deep in shade. But Jenny’s upper torso, her left arm broken at a hideous angle, is the only part of her body covered in shadow. Her stiffened legs, shockingly white in the sun, follow the upward slant of the stairs. Her delicate heels are as narrow as a child’s.

  Even though her sister’s body was the only dead body Kimber’s ever seen, she’s certain that the woman lying below her is not alive. She makes her way down slowly, avoiding the garish red wig lying on one step and what looks like a television remote on another. She covers her mouth with her hand. The air in the stairwell is close and smells of voided bowels and rotting leaves.

  I have to touch her. She might be alive. She might!

  Who are you kidding?

  Kimber looks away from Jenny’s slack, sunken face and rests two fingers on the crepey neck. Nothing.

  The scratch of Mr. Tuttle’s nails on the concrete stairs draws her attention. He suddenly stops and growls, looking past Kimber.

  “What?”

  Turning her head, she sees Lance Wilson glaring from behind the cobwebbed glass of the basement door.

  Jenny’s killer.

  Straightening, she grabs Mr. Tuttle and hurries up the stairs. Once at the top, she runs to her car and calls 911 for the second time in a week.

  “Why is that dog loose? That could be evidence in his mouth.” The detective sergeant on the scene is a tall black woman in a navy suit and a bright poppy blouse. Trim and serious looking in her horn-rimmed sunglasses, she has her hair pulled back into a bun so tight it has the unbroken sheen of silk. It’s clear she’s not interested in hearing any excuses. She stares down the cop standing closest to Mr. Tuttle. “Vasquez, you’ve got gloves on. Just pick him up. Your hand’s bigger than that dog’s whole body.”

  Kimber stands at the far edge of her own driveway in Jenny’s sunburnt grass as police search the area around both houses. An ambulance, its emergency lights conspicuously off, straddles the sidewalk where it crosses the driveway.

  Small groups of women and children gather at both ends of the cluster of emergency vehicles, held back by a cop who stalks from one end to the other like a dog guarding his territory. A circus-like air of excitement hangs over them. When they first drifted from their homes, the children had stood beside their mothers, solemn and astonished. Now they’re restless. Someone has brought a soccer ball, and a few of them kick it around in a nearby yard.

  Mr. Tuttle has retreated back to the shade of the crape myrtle, calmer now, to chew on a stick.

  “His name’s Mr. Tuttle,” Kimber calls out. “The dog.” Heads turn to look at her.

  “I already told them that.” Lance Wilson stands a few feet away from the detective sergeant, his lip curling with disdain.

  Kimber imagines punching those smug lips. Pushing a knife into the taut muscles of his middle. The violence of her imagination takes her by surprise but doesn’t shock her.

  We both know what I’m capable of.

  Why doesn’t he denounce her to the police? It would be so easy. She’s certain he already killed poor Jenny just for watching him.

  He wants something else. Not my punishment. But what?

  She holds the man’s gaze for a long moment. You’re responsible. You’re responsible for all of this.

  “I’ll take care of the dog,” she says, breaking eye contact with her tormentor. She walks over to the officer holding Mr. Tuttle. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  The ambulance drives off. Nothing for them here.

  Jenny’s body is still at the bottom of the stairwell. As Kimber cuddles the bewildered dog, she wishes she had arranged the bathrobe Jenny was wearing so it covered her in a more dignified way. At least there were no signs that she’d been molested. Her beige panties had been in place.

  A black Chevy Suburban with the county’s logo and MEDICAL EXAMINER in dull gold letters on the driver’s side door maneuvers its way into Kimber’s driveway. She realizes it’s going to be a long time before she’ll be allowed to go back to Kyle and Diana’s. If she’s allowed to go back at all and isn’t arrested because she was the one to find the body.

  Officer Maby escorts Kimber to Jenny’s front porch. Kimber waits outside, holding Mr. Tuttle, while the chestnut-haired officer gets water and food for the dog. When she returns, Mr. Tuttle jumps down, anxious. His head is in the water bowl before the younger woman can even rest it on the ground.

  They watch as he drinks his fill, then goes after his food.

  “You say the coffeepot was burning? Were all these lights on when you went inside?” Officer Maby gestures toward the door and the still-shining porch lights.

  “I already told you, I’m not saying anything else until my lawyer gets here. Why do you think I know anything? I only found her.”

  Officer Maby sighs in a way that seems unprofessional to Kimber. “We want to find out what happened to Mrs. Tuttle. Anything else you can tell us might help. Why were you visiting her?”

  “You want me to help you? Okay.” Kimber leans forward, lowers her voice. “The jackass who’s occupying my house killed her. Nobody else. Everyone around here liked Jenny. No one had any reason to kill her. That just leaves a stranger. And that guy”—she points at Lance Wilson—“is a stranger, and you know it better than anyone.”

  Officer Maby narrows her deep brown eyes. “What makes you say someone killed her?”

  Kimber blinks. She hasn’t thought of this. “I just assumed—”

  “It looks as though she was out with her dog in the dark and accidentally fell down the stairs. She’d been wearing bedroom slippers. Maybe the dog wandered down there, and she was trying to retrieve him.”

  Closing her eyes for a moment, Kimber breathes deeply. She thinks of woods. Of autumn and the sound her feet make as they shush through the fallen leaves. It almost sounds like a waterfall.

  “We’re talking about you, Ms. Hannon. Did you have any contact with Mrs. Tuttle today?”

  Kimber opens her eyes. Reluctantly, she plays the message Jenny left for her on her phone the night before. When it’s over, she says, “So there was another car in front of my house, and she saw a woman going inside. That’s all I know, and now you know.”

  The officer asks her to play it again and writes the message down in her notebook. Then she looks at Kimber’s phone, and Kimber realizes the police could seize it as evidence. She slips it quickly into her pocket. “I called her before coming over here, but she didn’t answer. How could I have talked to her if she died last night? When I got here, the coffeepot was burning up, the lights were on, and her television was still on.”

  “You didn’t leave a message? Did she know you were planning to come by this morning?”

  “I wasn’t planning to come by until I heard
her message this morning. And I didn’t leave a message. But isn’t that why you people look at phone records? You must have an open contract out on mine already.”

  Across the driveway, technicians disappear down the stairwell with a portable gurney.

  “Do you think she suffered?” Kimber doesn’t look at Officer Maby but watches the stairwell, wondering how long it takes to strap someone that tiny to a gurney. “She complained a lot, but I don’t think she ever did one unkind thing in her life. Jenny didn’t deserve to suffer.”

  “I wouldn’t know. That’s for the medical examiner to determine.”

  Gabriel arrives dressed for court and nods to the officer as she leaves the porch. His face is somber, and despite the heat, his white shirt is crisp beneath his gray suit coat and red-and-gold club tie. His “lawyer-man suit,” as he calls it. The suit is so perfectly tailored to his toned body that it might as well be the fitted jeans and casual knit shirts she has seen him in so often. His presence brings an immediate relief that makes her feel weak and needy. But there it is.

  “How are you holding up?” There’s sympathy in his eyes, and when she finds herself moving toward him, he puts his arms around her. Safe. Gabriel feels strong and safe.

  “When is this going to end?” Whenever she closes her eyes she sees Jenny on the stairs, her steel-gray hair and shriveled face that of an old, sad woman. She swallows back tears.

  Gabriel holds her for a minute. In the background are the sounds of police radios and running vehicles. Eventually she sighs and pulls away.

  “What do you need me to do?” he asks.

  “They said they’re going to question me. That Officer Maby started, and I told her I wasn’t going to talk until you got here. But then I played the message Jenny left for me last night, and I told her what I found when I showed up at the house. It just came out.” She sits down in one of the two chairs on Jenny’s porch. Mr. Tuttle immediately jumps up onto her lap and turns around in a circle to settle. “She did say it looks like a straightforward accident to them. I don’t believe it.”