by Ada Madison
I took a backseat and heard Kira’s story through the perspective of Fran’s questions. I caught the phrases I was looking for, phrases that I wanted to hear, that would ease my mind.
“…never ever took advantage of me. He would never do that, if that’s what you’re thinking.” (Whew.)
“…said he wished he could show me the French Riviera. He thought I’d love it.” (Who wouldn’t?)
“…treated me more like a daughter”—another whew—“which is not what I wanted, but for now, while his son was a teenager…”
And one that brought me up short:
“…can’t believe he’d become involved with Ms. Sizemore. Why would he want to be with an older woman?”
Fran and I stole a glance at each other at that line, thinking the same thing, I guessed—if Christine Sizemore, roughly thirty-two years old, was an older woman to Kira and her peers, where did that leave us? I couldn’t wait to laugh openly about it later with Fran.
I told myself I should be satisfied that Kira hadn’t given herself away completely. Maybe she’d learn a lesson from this, especially if it turned out that Chris and the mayor were indeed a couple.
I tuned in to the end of Fran’s interrogation and Kira’s voluntary spilling of her story when I heard my name.
“So, Dr. Knowles, are you still willing to go with me to the service tomorrow? It’s at ten in the morning.”
Service? It took a minute for me to remember the memorial scheduled for the mayor at city hall, and Kira’s earlier request to me. I hadn’t made any promises. I’d stalled. Now I had to put up an answer. I wanted to express my condolences anyway, so why not go with Kira? Besides, I had no energy to resist any reasonable request at the moment. Finally, it would provide a natural ending to the meeting I’d scheduled with Elysse at eight thirty.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s meet at the”—I caught myself before I said fountain—“right here.”
“Okay, right here. At nine fifty tomorrow morning.”
Kira took a deep breath, as if she’d checked off all the items on a long to-do list and was now ready for a good night’s sleep.
So was I, although it was only four in the afternoon.
I was glad to get outside in the fresh post-rain air. The smell from the deep fryers and the cleaning solutions in the café had bothered me more than I’d realized in real time.
In the parking lot, Fran gave me a long look, perhaps noticing my tired eyes and downturned mouth. “I have an idea,” she said.
“Am I going to like it?” I asked.
“Bruce is working tonight, right?”
“Nine to nine.”
“Come home with me for dinner. You need a little pampering, and a lot of distraction.”
“All that is at your house?”
“Gene is cooking and our grandkids will be there.”
Enough said.
Fran had been right. There was nothing like a normal multigenerational family gathering around the dinner table to put things in perspective. I’d met Fran’s family before, at least briefly—Fran and Gene’s daughter and son, their spouses and children. They all seemed to get along well. Even if I was seeing their “company” behavior, it was impressive.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a dinner like my own grandmother used to cook. A New England pot roast feast, heavy on the thyme, with potatoes and carrots, gravy, bread, and salad. All at the same meal. Was this a typical night at the Emersons’? If so, I might move in.
My question was answered when Fran explained that we were celebrating the excellent end-of-year report card of third grader Lindsay.
“Grandma told me about that,” I fibbed to the little girl. One thing I loved about Fran was that she never pounded anyone with stories and pictures of her family. Photos and drawings were placed discreetly around her office, and anyone could inquire, voluntarily.
“I got all A’s,” Lindsay said.
“I know. And I have a present for you.”
I dug into my purse and pulled out a new puzzle, an electronic maze game I’d been planning to send to Bruce’s niece. I had plenty of time to find a replacement for Melanie, and it seemed to fit the moment.
“Cool,” Lindsay said, smiling broadly and putting her tiny fingers to work immediately.
“I’m probably going to get all A’s, too,” Derek said.
“Me, too,” Kendra said.
All four-year-old Ethan did was lean into me and put his head on my lap. A schemer and a charmer, that one.
I promised to send suitable prizes for all through their grandmother.
Dessert was served in the family room of the large Vermont-style house. As if we were still hungry, we all reached for an ice cream sandwich. Not the kind that came in a thin cardboard box with freezer burn, but a concoction of rich vanilla ice cream between two homemade cookies, one chocolate chip, the other oatmeal. I wished I’d packed my pj’s in my briefcase.
By eight o’clock, if someone had mentioned the words “bloody fountain” or “grade inflation” or “Facebook posting,” I’d have had no idea what they were talking about.
I reached my street around nine thirty, feeling that all was right with the world. It had stopped raining hours ago, but the wind had picked up and lent a pleasant, cleansed feeling to the air.
Early as it was, my plan was to download a book and curl up in bed. I wanted to stretch out the good feeling I’d gotten from family night with the Emersons.
I pulled into the garage, entered my house through the kitchen door, and punched in my alarm code. It seemed a long time since I’d been home. When I left this morning for class and, admittedly, for snooping at Zeeman Academy, I hadn’t planned on getting home so late and hadn’t left any lights on.
Now I flicked on the lights in the kitchen and hallway and headed toward my bedroom.
As I approached the den on the left, I felt a breeze. Had I left a ceiling fan on? I doubted it, since I seldom needed to run one in the morning.
I walked past the den, dropped my briefcase in my office, and continued to make my way back to my bedroom. The breeze got stronger with each step.
No wonder. I’d left the window open.
No, not the window. The patio door.
No, I hadn’t left it open. Someone had opened it for me.
By throwing a brick through the glass.
I dropped my purse on the floor and froze in place. My ears went into some supersonic state where I seemed to be picking up sounds outside the range of normal hearing. A car door closing at the end of my street. The digital clicks and rumbles of the hard drive in my computer that often sounded like my stomach growling for food. A siren from an emergency vehicle on the expressway, a mile from my home. I even thought I heard again the sound of the train in the background of the voice mail message Mayor Graves had left me.
What I didn’t hear, fortunately, was any sound of a brick thrower camped out in my home.
I stood about three feet from the foot of my bed, unable to move. The dull red brick lay at my eleven o’clock, giving off an unlikely shimmer in the light from the hallway. My lavender décor, my color of choice much of the time, took on a nasty, garish look, as if it had been violated by the smashed window and the shards of glass on the wet carpet.
A gust of wind that blew through the hole in my patio door shook me into action, and I spun around as if another brick might be coming at me from behind. I ended up flat against the wall of my bedroom, next to the door to the hallway I’d just come from. If I’d been holding a gun, one might have thought I was sneaking up on the bad guy, as I’d seen cops do in Bruce’s favorite movies.
I’d neither seen nor heard anyone as I’d entered the house and walked the length of it from my kitchen to my bedroom. My alarm had been set, needing my code as I’d entered. I had no reason to think anyone was still in the house right now, but that didn’t stop the shivers making their way through my body.
I finally left my wall post, holding my breath
as I opened my closet door. Nothing but the new set of organizer drawers Bruce had installed for me, with my clothes stacked and hung in the neatest arrangement they’d ever seen. Next to the closet, my dresser appeared intact, its lacy scarf in place, no drawers open. A box of tissues, a few bottles and jars, and a jewelry box stood undisturbed on top, silent witnesses to what had transpired across the room.
I made my way around the room. Nothing else seemed out of place except the brick. Or what looked like a brick. It might have been foreign matter from outer space, a meteor fragment, for all the sense it made. Maybe one of those unstable satellites had disintegrated and was raining on Henley.
It took me another few minutes to adjust myself away from my fear and absurd thoughts and into a rational thinking mode. I’d been making too much of what was most likely a prank, some suburban kids on an “I dare you” mission. Most of Henley’s schoolchildren were out on vacation and they had nothing better to do than cruise around creating havoc.
From the wet carpet, I figured the hole in the patio door was made before or during the showers; but the rain had been on and off most of the day and it was probably impossible to pin down when the brick had been thrown. I felt another shiver as I considered the fact that if my day had gone as planned, I might have been home when the vandalism occurred.
Though my intrusion alarm had been set, it had been useless as an alert since the brick didn’t set off any of the magnetic triggers. No doors or windows had opened—Bruce would say the perimeter hadn’t been breached—during the commission of this crime.
Without a lot of thought as to why I was doing it, I retrieved my phone from my purse, clicked on the camera icon, and took several pictures of the brick in situ.
I grabbed a tissue and picked up the brick, finally noticing a note attached to it with a rubber band on the underside. I picked out the piece of paper from under its shackle and unfolded a small, square yellow sticky note with a handwritten message: “SUPPORT ELYSSE.”
I could hardly believe it. Had Elysse recruited a band of freedom fighters to her cause? Had she rallied union workers? Fraternity and sorority friends? Where was the Elysse of only a short while ago, the “Are we good?” Elysse wanting to meet with me in person?
I shook my head, placed the note on the floor next to the brick, and snapped a few more pictures.
Amazing that support was spelled correctly, I thought, not feeling very charitable. Under the rallying cry was a URL that was a Facebook address, most likely for Elysse’s page, though there was no identifying subset in the long string of characters. It was all very low-tech, from the brick to the handwritten URL. I’d have expected a flame war online, or—settling for the real-life brick and note—a simple Quick Response Code that could be scanned, instead of an unwieldy URL that was barely legible.
I imagined a crazy scenario where the brick wasn’t targeted for my house at all, but was one of many bricks, thrown by a posse of Elysse’s Facebook Friends, at windows and patio doors all over the city of Henley. I scrutinized the tiny note for signs of my name or any ID of me, Elysse the Victim’s persecutor. Nothing. The note didn’t begin with “Dear Sophie,” and it bore no words that said, “This means you, Professor Knowles.” At least I wasn’t being immortalized that way.
What next? I could call any number of people, official and unofficial—Virgil for police intervention, Fran for moral support, Bruce for a little of both. And my insurance company for logistics.
One call I knew I had to make was to a glass replacement company. I’d do that first, before deciding how public to take this latest entry in the Sophie versus Elysse drama.
I took my laptop and a bottle of water to my den and used Google to search for the equivalent of “glass hit by bricks.” I was amazed to see the number of companies that offered emergency glass services, twenty-four-seven. I seemed to have my choice of installer if I could believe the ads: One offered a tall, muscle-bound guy wearing a leather tool belt; another showed an older man who looked like every kid’s favorite coach; a third, equal opportunity company showed a woman in a baseball cap, on a ladder at an upstairs window. Any of them, apparently, would come to my home or business and either board up the offending window, or install replacement glass immediately, depending on whether a custom fit was called for.
I guessed I was lucky I wasn’t familiar with the multitude of such services in my own city.
Rring, rring. Rring, rring.
Bruce. I picked up too quickly, without first checking my cool level.
“Hey,” I said, and then uttered a frustrated moan.
“What’s wrong?” Bruce asked.
I set my laptop aside and leaned back on the couch. “Nothing serious. Just that someone threw a brick through the patio door in my bedroom.” Too late to make light of the situation, but I gave it a try. “It’s okay, really. I was about to call a glass replacement service. Did you know there are any number of them that will come out immediately and board me up?”
“Are you sure there’s no one in the house?” I heard the man of action take over, as he had at the Henley College fountain two nights ago.
“Quite sure.”
“Did you check the doors? Did you reset the alarm?”
“The alarm—” I began, intending to report on how useless it had been in the brick-through-a-window scenario.
Bruce interrupted. “I’m sure it didn’t go off if the perimeter wasn’t breached”—I smiled at his predictability—“but set it again anyway, okay?”
I carried the phone to the panel on the wall by the front door. “I’m doing it now,” I said. I was breathing better, just having Bruce at the other end of the line.
“Have you called Virge yet?”
“No, I don’t see what he can do. He’s homicide, for one thing, and I know the uniforms will just want me to fill out tons of paperwork and nothing will come of it. Remember the break-in across the street this winter? The Andersons actually had things stolen and the police never found the kids or the stuff. I don’t think they bother unless there’s personal injury.”
No response from Bruce. Had he hung up? I waited a beat. “Bruce?”
“I’m back. Virge is on his way over. Don’t touch anything.”
“I picked up the brick. I couldn’t just leave it there.”
“Okay, that’s okay. Don’t touch anything else, okay? And don’t call the glass company yet. Wait till Virge gets there.” Bruce let out a grunt. “I’d be on my way there myself, but I’m the only driver here,” he said, meaning he was the only pilot on duty and couldn’t leave without a major schedule disruption.
“I’m fine. I wish you hadn’t bothered Virgil,” I said.
“Liar.” Said sweetly.
“Uh-huh,” I admitted.
I told Bruce about the message on the note that was attached to the brick.
“Elysse? Is that the student who doesn’t like her grade?”
“The same.”
“It sounds like a ploy to annoy you. But it’s odd. I don’t figure college kids for that kind of vandalism,” Bruce said.
“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense at all, especially since she called me today and wanted to meet. She sounded at least open to talking. I don’t know why she would do this.”
“Maybe some overzealous friends?”
“Could be.”
“So how was the rest of your day?” Bruce asked, sounding as though he’d just put his feet up on what passed for a coffee table in the MAstar trailer living room–like space.
“Are we going to chat until Virgil arrives?” I asked.
“Something like that.”
“Thanks.”
After he read the note, I reminded Virgil of the background on Elysse and her Facebook campaign. I was proud to mention I’d handled everything with tissue, not to disturb any fingerprints, but I could tell he doubted they’d find any from the guilty party.
A crime scene tech, who’d arrived with Virgil, went about her business, pack
aging the brick, string, note, and a few shards of glass into evidence bags. She transferred the photos I’d taken to her own device and took several of her own. I was embarrassed to be taking up the resources of the HPD for such a minor event. I hoped no one on the other side of town was in real trouble, without a police presence, because of me.
The tech was gone in twenty minutes. Virgil settled in for coffee.
I wondered what my neighbors thought of Virgil’s visits lately, more frequent than usual. Virgil wondered about the neighbors, too, but for a different reason, one I should have thought of, and would have, if freaking out hadn’t been my primary reaction.
“Did you talk to any of your neighbors?” he asked when we sat with coffee at the kitchen table. I wished I could have offered Virgil one of Fran’s homemade ice cream sandwiches, but all I had on hand was the same packaged cookies from yesterday.
“You mean canvass the neighborhood?” I blew out a disgusted breath. “I didn’t even think of it.”
“No problem. We’ll take care of it. We’ll find out if anyone saw or heard anything.”
I pointed out the window, to the west. “Two elderly sisters live there. They’re both semi-disabled and not too aware of their surroundings. They have a caregiver who comes in once a day. She may have seen something, depending on when the”—I searched for a word—“vandals did their thing.”
“Caregiver’s name?” Virgil had his pad and pen ready.
“Wanda. I don’t know her last name. She’ll be around at about ten in the morning. She stays for close to four hours most of the time.”
Virgil pointed east, north, and then south, with a questioning look. I gave him the demographic of my street.
Directly east of me was the Rasmussen family with two working parents and one child in the fourth grade, so no one would have been home during the day. Virgil agreed that the brick thrower probably struck after dark, however, so it was worth checking with the Rasmussens. Across the street from me was a relatively new development with all of the houses facing into a cul-de-sac, perpendicular to my orientation. It wasn’t likely that anyone happened to be looking in the direction of my house unless they were driving away, out of their street.