She gave me quizzical look. “Yeah, flowers are natural.”
“Naturalized. Planted as if they’d grown naturally.”
“Which kind of contradicts the idea that they were planted at all. What do they call that? Oxymoron, right? Compassionate conservatives. Practical progressives. Principled politicians.”
“The point is, we gave Sam the bulbs and had him throw them up in the air. Wherever they landed, Sean planted them.”
“And?”
“And those are planted in rows. And they aren’t lilies.”
“So maybe he bought the wrong kind. Mark was famous for doing stuff like that. Send him to the store for toilet paper and he’d come back with a bag of potato chips.”
“No. I saw them. Have you ever seen a spider lily bulb? They aren’t the same. You can tell the difference. And it looks like he dug them up and replanted them.”
“You know how Sean was. Always anal about— No, wait. That’s you.”
“Ha-ha. But that’s what I mean.”
“Okay. So he dug them up and replanted them. But why does that have to mean something?”
“Jennifer—we planted all those bulbs! Dozens of them. Why would he replant them? And when? And he knew I hated that kind of crocus. Why would he do that?”
Jenn’s look of concern was being overshadowed by confusion. “He was probably joking. It’s no big deal.”
I might have believed her if Sam hadn’t been there. But he’d had so much fun helping that day. And the Sean I knew never would have tried to erase that memory.
20
There was about an hour of daylight left. I texted June and asked if they would mind watching Sam for a while. She met us at the door, wearing a pair of Halloween-decorated sneakers. She enfolded him with a hug. “It’s my favorite Sam!” As I left they were discussing whether to make cookies or brownies.
I found the shovel in the shed. It was hidden behind the rake and the plastic sled. I tugged on some garden gloves and went to work. “Jerk!” I muttered the word as I forced a shovel into the ground and jumped on it to drive it down farther. Blinking back tears, I overturned the dirt onto the grass. Sean had called me from the store to verify what kind of bulbs I wanted. I’d told him spider lilies; the red ones, not the pink ones.
And still he’d somehow managed to end up with yellow crocuses. So that meant he’d bought both? Because I knew we’d planted spider lilies.
Good grief, how many had he planted? If it had been just a dozen, I might have left them. As it was, the whole artificial-looking display insulted both my sense of aesthetics and my sense of fair play. I peeled my quarter-zip fleece off and draped it over the fence. My Don’t Trust Atoms, They Make Up Everything T-shirt had seen better days, but then, so had the crocuses.
I jumped on the shovel again, but the ground wouldn’t yield. Moving it a bit to the right, I tried again. That time it worked. Levering the soil out, I turned it over on top of the pile I’d created.
When I dug back into the ground, though, I hit that same hard patch of earth. Was it a stone? A brick? It wouldn’t have been surprising. Whoever had built the house ninety years before had used the front yard as a trash heap for construction debris. Whenever we did yard work we couldn’t dig anywhere without finding bricks and boards and nails.
Using the shovel more like a trowel, I excavated around the spot and was finally able to lift off the layer of earth from its top. It wasn’t a stone or a brick. It was a box. A metal box.
Kneeling, I brushed the dirt off and exposed a corner.
“Hey!”
Jumping at the greeting, I turned to find Chris and his Maltipoo on the other side of the fence.
I stood. “Chris. Hi.”
“Need some help?” He’d already released the latch on the gate.
“No.” I tried to push the mound of dirt back into the hole with my foot. “All done.”
He eyed the crocuses that I’d thrown into a heap. “I’m not really a flower guy, but aren’t you supposed to let them, I don’t know, stay in the ground while they bloom?”
“I meant to dig them up earlier in the season, but I never got around to it. They’re the one flower I just can’t stand.”
“So you’re ripping them out midseason.”
I shrugged, then dumped a shovelful of dirt back into the hole on top of the box. “My yard, my rules.”
“Remind me never to cross you.”
I picked my way out of the bed—away from the box—toward the driveway and the shed behind the house, hoping he’d follow.
He did. “Where’s Alice? She okay?”
“She’s inside. She’s fine.” Mostly. When she wasn’t trying to dig a hole through the house. Which reminded me. “Have you ever had mice?”
“As in pets?”
“As in pests. Something’s driving Alice crazy in our crawl space.”
“My neighbor had raccoons last winter. It’s amazing, the tiny holes they can fit through. Rats too.”
If I ever found a rat in my house, I would move out. Immediately.
“I could take a quick peek. See if there’s anything down there.”
“You know, I might just take you up on that.” If anyone had to confront a creature, better him than me. “But I’ve got to get Sam to the rink tonight for a lesson.”
“Sure. No problem. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He gestured with his thumb toward the end of the block. “Gotta get going too. Soccer practice.”
As soon as he had turned the corner, I went back to the flower bed and dug the box free.
Kneeling, I brushed the dirt from it. It looked like a metal cashier’s box. The finish was still shiny, untouched by corrosion. I might have convinced myself that it had been left there by kids playing buried treasure if it hadn’t been placed right beneath all those replanted fall crocuses.
I nearly opened it right there but thought better of it. After glancing up and down the street, I shook the rest of the dirt from it and took it with me into the house.
In the kitchen I set it in the sink and put on my cleaning gloves. I didn’t want to be at the mercy of any bugs that might come crawling out. But there was no need to worry. It was locked. If only I had a key.
But I did.
I had a key. I had the mystery key from Sean’s key chain.
I peeled off the gloves, ran to the office, and dug the key out of the cardboard box. Then I slipped it into the lock with a trembling hand. The top swung open easily, silently. The inside was pristine. It contained just a single book enclosed in a gallon-size Ziploc. I undid the fastener and slipped it out.
It was some sort of diary or journal.
I opened it.
Sean’s handwriting.
21
I set it on the counter. Ran my hand across the pages as if touching them would somehow put me in direct communication with him. I flipped through it. Only a quarter of the pages had been used.
The alarm on my phone beeped.
Time to get Sam ready for his hockey lesson.
I put the phone into my giant catchall of a purse and went across the street to get Sam. June gave him back to me along with a dozen still-warm brownies. I sent him to his room to get dressed for skating. Sooner than I expected, he bumped back down the hall, dragging his bag behind him.
“Are you sure you need all of that? It’s going to take you half an hour just to take everything out and put it on.”
“It’s only my helmet. And my stick. And my pads and—”
I took the bag from him. “It’s fine.” He was small for his age, but even so, it seemed like the bag shouldn’t be taller than the kid who owned it. I would have swung it forward to tap him on the butt, but I was afraid I might give myself a hernia.
Once we got to the rink, we stood in line to get skates. I wrestled them onto his feet and must have tied and retied them ten times to cries of “But they’re too loose” and “Now they’re too tight.”
“Is your name Goldilocks?”
&n
bsp; He giggled.
“You ready?”
He nodded. At least I thought he did underneath that massive helmet.
I held his hand as he tottered on his skates through the glass double doors to the rink. There, he joined the crowd of wobbly-legged kids waiting for the session to start.
“Want me to stay until they let you on?”
He nodded.
I held Sam’s hand as he shuffled along toward the door. Then I watched, holding my breath, as he put a tentative foot to the ice. He grabbed the rail and wouldn’t let go, but as he inched away from the door, he glanced back and sent me a triumphant wave, which very nearly caused him to lose his balance. I stayed to make sure he made it to his lesson in one piece.
Once he did, I went up to the glass-fronted mezzanine and found a seat overlooking the rink. And there, I pulled the book out of my purse and opened it.
The book I was holding wasn’t a journal. In fact, I wouldn’t have said Sean had even made entries. The pages were filled with numbers and names.
Some had been crossed out.
Others had a question mark drawn beside them.
They were all written in the same format.
E/Abbott/David/DS
E/Ornofo/Lee/DS
E/Beckman/Beck/DS
E/Wallace/Reginald/DS
E/Conway/Paul/DS
2/Denunzio/Bobby/BW
2/Jenkins/Peter/BW
It was like a logbook. A roster.
Or a record of some sort of investigation?
I felt my eyes widen. I shut the book and buried it at the bottom of my purse. Glancing around, I looked to see if anyone had been watching. A woman’s glance intersected with mine. She smiled and then her gaze shifted to the rink.
I picked up my purse and transferred it to my lap, threading my arms through the strap.
But as I sat there watching Sam pick his way back and forth across the rink, something niggled at me.
I brought the book back out and flipped through the pages again until I found it.
E/Conway/Paul/DS
Conway.
It seemed to me I’d heard that name before.
* * *
After I put Sam to bed, I picked up the book again. I took a picture of all the entries with my phone so I could look at them without having to access the actual pages. Sean had gone to a lot of trouble to hide it, so I figured I should do the same. I’d find a safe place to put it.
I turned back to the Conway page.
Abbott
Ornofo
Beckman
Wallace
Conway
On a whim, I turned on my computer and typed in the names as I flipped through the pages.
A search returned nothing but the random hits a person would expect with common names like Abbott and Conway.
Costello. Twitty.
I searched several of the combinations of names and numbers from Sean’s notes.
Nothing there either.
* * *
I woke myself that evening with a snore. After going through Sean’s book, I’d been too wound up to go to sleep. I’d turned on the TV instead and fallen asleep watching cable news. I woke to the sound of my father’s voice. It took me a moment to realize it was coming from the TV.
“Listen—we’ve tried being enemies with Russia. We tried it during the Cold War. Was the world any safer? Why don’t you ask the children of the eighties, who grew up having nightmares about nuclear wars.”
The news anchor was frowning. “So you’re saying we should trust Russia? Because that’s what I’m hearing.”
“Trust them?” My father held up his hands as if that was going a bit too far. “I think trust has to be earned. What I’m saying is, why can’t there at least be a dialogue? Talking never hurt anyone. And talking about small things can sometimes lead to bigger things. That’s all I’m saying.” He leaned forward, tone earnest. “I’m not talking about making promises. Not talking about signing treaties or defense agreements. I’m just talking about . . .” He stopped and chuckled. “I’m just talking about talking.”
I turned off the TV and went to get myself a glass of water from my perfectly working faucet. Out in the night, past my backyard, a light went on in the house behind mine. A man appeared in the window.
He lifted a hand.
I nodded and clicked off the light.
It was strangely comforting to know that there was someone else besides me awake so late. Especially since I’d found out that Sean had done something. Some things. Things that were undecipherable.
And definitely not like him.
Or maybe they were completely in character. Things that I had been so certain of the previous week were now open to question.
As I climbed into bed, I tried to corral my thoughts, but they were restless. I hadn’t yet fallen fully into sleep when I heard something. Some noise that reverberated through my head loudly enough to wake me.
I lay there listening, trying to turn the sound into something familiar.
But it hadn’t been the refrigerator or the radiator or any other thing that I was used to hearing. I knew that because it had come from beneath me.
From the crawl space below my room.
I sat up and turned on the light, hoping, I suppose, that illumination would help with clarification. I drew my knees up to my chest. The sheet up to my chin. It was an ages-old reaction to the fear of monsters underneath the bed.
Alice had heard it too. She listened along with me, head lifted, ears cocked.
What was it?
I was listening so hard that I could almost hear myself listen.
It hadn’t been a creak, a squeak, or a rustle.
Alice whined.
Wanting to listen, hoping to hear it again, I hissed at her to stop.
She pushed herself to her feet, left her bed, and started pawing at the floor just like she’d done two nights before.
“Alice!” I whispered her name. When that didn’t make her stop, I snapped my fingers at her. “Alice.” She turned around and lumbered back to her bed.
I’d heard something. An animal, maybe? A mouse running between the floorboards?
There it was again!
Some sort of shifting. Not a shifting of the floorboards. A shifting beneath them.
Alice froze as I swept my blanket aside and eased toward the side of my bed, closer to where the sound had been.
It wasn’t a mouse. I’d heard mice before. They scratched and scurried. This thing, whatever it was, hadn’t been that. It was a heavier sound, with more force behind it. It had been something bigger.
Alice let out one of her quavery barks.
I heard a metallic clink.
I picked up my phone from the bedside table and dialed 911. Then I pulled Alice away from her post and took her into the living room with me. Whoever was out there would have to make it past Alice and me before he could even think about going down the hall for Sam.
While Alice sprawled on the couch and went to sleep, I pulled back an edge of the curtain and stood there, heart pounding as I stared into the darkness, waiting for the police to arrive.
22
“But you had to have heard them, Jenn. You’re only three blocks away.” I switched my cell phone from speaker as I heard Sam flush the toilet. He’d be coming down the hall for breakfast; no need for him to hear about what had happened the night before. I lowered my voice. “They sent two squad cars.”
“I didn’t hear a thing.”
In the background I heard the sound of . . .
“What are you doing?”
“Teeth.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to catch you in the bathroom.”
“’S okay.”
“There were lights and sirens. Thank goodness Sam didn’t wake up.”
“Did they catch whoever it was?”
“No.” I’d been afraid they wouldn’t. Because who would hang around when he could hear the cops coming?
Jenn murmured
something I couldn’t hear.
“What?”
“Sorry.” Her voice was more distinct. “So what’d they say?”
“They said there may have been someone, but they couldn’t find any signs.” Which was probably cop code for “just another crazy lady.”
“None?”
“No footprints. No signs of forced entry into the crawl space. But then, it wasn’t locked. There was no lock.” Stupid, stupid. Putting a lock on it had become priority number one. “And that side of the yard is mulched.”
“You want to spend a few days at my place, G?” Her voice seemed to echo. I heard heels clicking across a floor. “I could put you two up on the couch.”
“We’re fine. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Funny just how little reassurance those words provided.
“I’d be afraid. Just saying.”
“I’ll put a lock on the crawl space. Should have done it before. It was probably just a drifter looking for someplace to spend the night.” The more rational I sounded, the more afraid I felt. But I was thirty-six years old. I wasn’t supposed to be afraid of the dark anymore.
“It wouldn’t be a problem. It really wouldn’t.”
And I really wanted to say yes. But I knew I shouldn’t. “We’ll be fine.”
“Just so we’re clear, when the police find you and Sam murdered and they come to question your best friend, I’ll tell them I offered, but you declined.”
* * *
Chris asked how our night had been as I was walking home from school that morning. I just smiled. “Fine.” I didn’t want to think about it any more than I already was. But when I got home, Jim was waiting for me at the front gate.
“You okay?” He peered at me from behind his glasses, worry sketching lines between his eyes. “Heard the sirens last night.”
“I’m fine. I had a prowler.”
His brows peaked. “You should have called. I would have sent June right over with her rolling pin.”
I laughed.
“Seriously. You should have.”
“We pay enough in taxes, I figured I should make the police handle it.”
State of Lies Page 8