For a moment, she didn’t move, frozen by fear and indecision—run out the back door? or the front door? or call the police?
She knew she had to do something, and now, because there was someone in the house.
15
SARAH HESITATED A MOMENT longer, then hurried across the kitchen and phoned the police.
They found her standing half in and half out of the front door, with her hand on the knob and her cat tucked under her arm. She looked ready either to run from the porch or else jump back inside and slam the door shut.
“Are you the lady who called the police?” one of the cops asked.
He was over six feet tall, Sarah guessed, with dark eyes and black sideburns jutting from beneath his cap. His partner, a woman, was shorter than he but taller than Sarah. Her hair was blond and pulled back in a small bun. She was dressed like the man: black shoes with rubber soles; dark trousers; and a waist-length zippered jacket open to reveal a wide belt from which hung a night stick, a two-way radio, and a holstered revolver.
“Yes, there’s been someone in the house.” Sarah spoke rapidly in a low voice. “Maybe they’re still in there, I don’t know. The back door was open, so they could have slipped out.”
“Did you see anyone?” the woman asked.
Her name tag said “Pearl,” and Sarah wondered if that was her first name until she saw that the man’s tag read “Maestas.”
“No, but someone turned on the kettle.”
The cops glanced at each other.
“In the kitchen,” Sarah said. “Someone was in the kitchen.”
“Is there anyone else in the house?” Maestas asked. “Any other member of your family?”
“No.”
He nodded, then said to Pearl, “Go around and check the rear of the house and the back door. I’ll meet you inside.”
Officer Pearl stepped off the porch just as Alex drove into the driveway. He braked the car abruptly, then jumped out, leaving Brian sitting inside.
“My husband,” Sarah said to Maestas, who nodded, then went into the house.
“Sarah, what’s going on? Are you all right?”
“Oh, Alex, thank goodness you’re home. Someone’s been in the house. They came in the back door.”
“While you were here?”
She nodded yes.
“Did you see who it was?”
“No.”
“Could it have been …?”
“I don’t know, Alex. It could’ve been anyone.”
Sarah described how she’d checked the doors before she left the house that morning to go shopping. Then she explained how she’d been in the living room wrapping presents and heard the teakettle whistling, then discovered that the back door was open.
Alex was frowning.
“The kettle?”
“Yes. Whoever came in must have turned on the stove.”
Alex gave her a quizzical look.
“But why?”
“How should I know?” Sarah’s voice was tight.
“Okay,” Alex said gently. He looked over her shoulder. “Brian’s sitting in the car. Maybe I should get him.”
“I’ll go.”
Sarah found Brian waiting not so patiently in the Celica.
“How come there’s a police car?” he asked, his eyes wide with wonder.
“Because … someone left the back door open, and they just want to see that everything’s okay.”
“Oh … Can we look inside their car?”
“I think we should go up to the porch,” she said.
The porch was empty. Alex and the two policemen were waiting in the foyer.
“They’ve searched the whole house,” Alex said. “The upstairs, too. There’s no one in here.”
Sarah felt Brian pressing against her side. She realized that he’d probably never been this close to uniformed policemen, and their presence frightened him. She put her hand on his head.
“Did you check the basement?” she asked.
“The outside door is locked,” Pearl said.
“What about the inside door?”
They all followed Sarah down the short hallway and through the kitchen to the laundry room. The basement door was closed, and the bolt was set firmly in place.
“Locked tight,” Maestas said.
“Shouldn’t you check the basement, anyway?”
Maestas looked at Sarah. “No one could go through this door and then lock it from this side.” Then he shrugged. “But we’ll search down there if you like.”
“I … guess it’s not necessary.”
“I’ll do it,” Pearl said. She stepped past them and slid open the bolt. “It’s no problem.”
“Whatever,” Maestas said under his breath.
After Pearl had gone down the stairs, Maestas asked if anything had been stolen. Sarah and Alex looked at each other for an answer. Then they made a quick search of the rooms on the first floor—the television set, the stereo, Sarah’s good silver in the polished box in the sideboard in the dining room. Nothing was missing. Back in the kitchen Maestas pointed to Sarah’s purse on the table.
“How long has that been there?”
“Since I first got home.”
Sarah looked through her purse and found her checkbook and her wallet inside. She went through the wallet, counting off her credit cards and thirty-seven dollars in cash.
“It’s all here.”
“If someone came in the house, then I guess you scared them off,” Maestas said.
Sarah looked at him.
“What do you mean, ‘if’?”
Before Maestas could answer, Pearl came into the kitchen.
“Anything?” Maestas asked her.
She shook her head no. Maestas looked smug, Sarah thought. When she spoke, it was directly to him.
“What did you mean a minute ago when you said, ‘If someone came in the house’?”
“See, when you get a back-door thief, the first thing they’d take would be a purse lying in the open like that.” He shrugged. “No one took the purse.”
“What about the kettle?” Sarah demanded.
“Yes, well …” Maestas cleared his throat. “Is it possible that you left the burner on and—”
“No.”
“—and then forgot about it?”
“No,” she repeated. “Absolutely not. Besides, the back door was wide open.”
“Are you certain it was closed when you left the house this morning?”
“Yes, we’re certain,” Alex said firmly, coming to Sarah’s defense. “If my wife says it was closed, then it was closed.”
“We didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Pearl said. She cast a hard glance at Maestas. “I’ll get a report form from the car.”
Later, after Sarah had helped them fill out the official form, Alex walked them to the door.
As Sarah passed by the living room, she saw Brian on his hands and knees in the midst of the wrapped packages.
He looked up at her, his eyes wide with delight.
“Look at all the presents!”
Sarah sighed and shook her head. She’d meant to hide all but a few of the gifts she’d bought for Brian. Those few would be placed under the tree and tagged “From Mom and Dad,” but the majority of them would be tagged “From Santa” and wouldn’t be set out until after Brian had gone to bed on Christmas Eve.
She picked up the scissors and tape and scraps of wrapping paper.
“Why don’t you place all the presents under the tree,” she said, “so they’ll look real nice.”
“Okay, Mom.”
Sarah put away her wrapping paraphernalia, then went to the kitchen to start dinner. Before she removed anything from the cupboards, though, she checked to see that the outside door and the basement door were both shut and locked. She knew that the police—at least Officer Maestas—doubted her story. Perhaps, she thought, she’d be dubious, too, if it had happened to someone else. After all, now that it was over, it did seem a bit silly. And it was possible t
hat she’d left the back door open and forgot to turn off the burner. …
She shook her head.
No, she thought, absolutely not.
Alex came in the kitchen.
“They’re going to drive around the neighborhood,” he said, “and look for any ‘suspicious persons,’ not that it’ll do much good. Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
“You sure?”
Sarah nodded and smiled. “Except I don’t think they quite believed me.”
“I believe you, Sarah.” He went to her and put his arms around her waist. “If you say that’s what happened, then that’s what happened.”
“You don’t think I’m just being forgetful and maybe imagining things like …”
He gave her a half smile. “You mean, like I did yesterday at the Broadmoor? No, I don’t think that. I think someone opened the back door, maybe a kid, maybe it wasn’t quite shut all the way and locked—who knows? And when they heard you, they ran. That’s what probably happened. But one thing’s certain—it wasn’t Christine.”
“How can we be sure?”
“Because it’s nonsense,” he said. “Why would she come in and just turn on the teakettle?”
Sarah shook her head. “I don’t know. Unless …”
“What?”
“Unless she’s toying with us.”
Sarah was remembering something from a few days ago—finding three headless mice on the front seat of the Wagoneer.
That night, Alex lay on his side, snuggled tightly against Sarah’s back, fitting her as closely as a pair of spoons. He stroked her hip and kissed her neck.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear.
“I love you, too.”
She reached back and touched him, and for a while they caressed. Then thoughts of Christine began to intrude into Sarah’s mind. She tried to ignore them, turning to face Alex, pressing her body against his, stroking him, concentrating. But her mind conjured up the image of Christine standing downstairs in the kitchen. Sarah buried her face in Alex’s chest. She wondered if something similar was occurring to him, because his hand had become still, resting on the small of her back.
After a moment she said softly, “I’m sorry.”
“I am, too.”
They did not make love.
The next day, while Sarah cut the hair of her first customer, Paul Unger, she told Kay Nealy about hearing the kettle and finding the back door open.
“God,” Kay said, “that’s nothing. Once, we went on vacation for two weeks and left the front door open the whole time and the sprinkler on in the backyard. Do you think any of the neighbors would come over and shut it off? Hell, no. When we finally got home, it looked like a rice paddy back there. Plus, all the stray cats in the neighborhood had turned our living room into a feline bordello.”
“A cathouse?” Kay’s customer said, and they both laughed.
“I called the police,” Sarah said.
“Really?” Kay turned to face Sarah, her scissors and comb poised above her customer’s hair, the smile fading from her lips. “Why?”
“Because I thought someone was in there. I’m certain that I didn’t leave the stove on or—”
She stopped when she saw that Kay was looking toward the front door. A woman had just entered the shop.
The woman was somewhere between thirty and forty, Sarah guessed. It was difficult to tell, because she wore heavy makeup. She had a broad nose and thick, dark eyebrows, and her lips were painted a deep cranberry. Her rumpled brown coat was a size or two too small for her thick frame, and her shoes looked as if they pinched her feet. She wore a plaid wool scarf around her neck. A black purse was clutched under her left arm.
“It’s crowded,” the woman said, eyeing them all. She fidgeted, as if she were ready to bolt from the shop.
“May I help you?” Sarah asked.
“It looks like she needs all the help she can get,” Kay’s customer said under her breath.
Sarah shot her a glance, then looked back at the woman.
“I’d like to get my hair done,” the woman said softly. “By Sarah Whitaker.”
“I’m Sarah,” Sarah said.
The woman smiled quickly, then nodded, staring at Sarah, saying nothing, waiting.
“What did you want to have done?” Sarah asked.
“Oh,” the woman said, surprised. “I don’t know. I guess a haircut.”
“Okay. Excuse me for a minute, Paul.”
Sarah walked to the desk and looked through a few pages of the appointment book. The woman seemed to be wary of the other people in the shop. She edged toward the desk and Sarah.
Sarah said, “It looks like I—”
“And color it, too.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want my hair colored, too.”
“Oh … Okay, fine. It looks like I can get you in this Thursday, day after tomorrow, at eleven.”
“Not tonight?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m booked solid until then.”
“Oh.”
“Shall I put you in?”
The woman glanced at Kay and the two customers, then at Sarah.
“Can you get me in at night?”
“Well, let’s see.” Sarah began turning pages of the appointment book. “Not until Friday of next week.”
“No, I don’t want to wait that long. Thursday’s okay.”
Sarah picked up a pencil. “What’s your name?”
“Mrs. Green.”
Sarah nearly said, “We’re on a first-name basis here,” but thought better of it. She wrote down the name. “What’s your phone number. If there’s a cancellation tomorrow, I could have you come in then.”
“I don’t have a phone,” Mrs. Green said. “I just moved to town.”
“No problem,” Sarah said. There might be a problem with your hair, though, she thought, looking at it closely for the first time. It was a limp and lusterless brown, cut squarely a few inches above her shoulders. Sarah filled out an appointment slip and handed it to Mrs. Green. “We’ll see you on Thursday,” she said. “Oh, by the way, who recommended me to you?”
A smile quickly touched the woman’s face, and then it was gone. “Mrs. Ettle,” she said. “Kay Ettle.”
“Ettle?” Sarah wrinkled her brow. “I don’t recall the name.”
“You might,” the woman said, then turned without another word and hurried out of the shop.
The moment the door closed behind her, Kay’s customer let out a laugh.
“That looks like an all-day job,” she said, making Kay grin and shake her head. Even Paul Unger smiled. Sarah didn’t think it was funny, though. There had been something disturbing about Mrs. Green, and it wasn’t only her unkempt appearance. Sarah wished now that she’d told her she was booked solid for the next month.
Sarah picked up her scissors and comb from the shelf in front of Paul.
“Sorry about the delay,” Sarah said.
She stood behind him, looking down at the back of his head. Suddenly she realized what had disturbed her about Mrs. Green, disturbed her as much as her odd behavior. Seen from behind, Mrs. Green had looked very much like the elderly woman at the Broadmoor, the one Alex had mistaken for Christine Helstrum.
The thought gave her a chill. Had Christine just been in her shop?
No, she thought, that’s ridiculous. Christine wouldn’t simply walk in here.
But the possibility stayed in her mind throughout Paul’s haircut and after he left.
I don’t really know what she looks like, Sarah thought.
She picked up the phone and punched out a familiar number. She noticed that her hand was shaking slightly.
“Thomas Jefferson High School,” a woman’s voice said.
Sarah started to speak, then hung up.
She was thinking how ridiculous it would sound to Alex if she had him paged to the phone and then asked him, “What does Christine look like? I think she just came in and made an appointment
for a color and cut.”
Maybe there’s another way, she thought, a way that will set my mind at ease without bothering Alex. And won’t make him think that I’m jumping at shadows.
And so, when her one o’clock appointment canceled out, Sarah didn’t hesitate to put on her coat and tell Kay she’d be back at two-thirty.
She drove to the Penrose Public Library.
16
THE LIBRARY WAS ON Cascade Avenue, a few blocks north of Colorado Avenue.
Sarah tried to remember when she’d last been here. Too many months ago, she thought with dismay. Before she’d met Alex, she’d come to the library nearly every other week to pick up two or three books. She loved to escape into the world of fiction, particularly historical fiction, which she felt could teach her something while entertaining her. And for the three years between her divorce from Ted and her marriage to Alex, reading was her primary entertainment. However, after meeting Alex, her life had changed dramatically. And although she still read, she now lacked one of her earlier motivations: escape. Her day-to-day life seemed so good now that she had no desire to escape from it.
Sarah passed by the fiction department and walked to the rear of the library. Stored here were thousands of back issues of newspapers and magazines, all carefully preserved on spools of microfilm.
Sarah didn’t know exactly which newspapers were kept here or even whether any of them were out of state. However, she reasoned—hoped, actually—that if there were any out-of-state papers, The New York Times would be one of them. Furthermore, she hoped the Times would’ve carried the story of the murderer, Christine Helstrum. And, perhaps, a photograph.
An assistant librarian, a young man with a neatly trimmed beard, assured her that they did have the Times. He led her to a long row of metal cabinets, then asked her which month she wanted.
Sarah did not know precisely when Christine had been arrested. Alex had told her that his first wife and their son had been killed four and a half years ago. Frank O’Hara had said that Christine had been under treatment at Wycroff for four years. Sarah decided to begin with December and work backward.
The young man threaded the spool through the viewing machine and showed Sarah how to operate it. She began to scan four-year-old news stories.
She’d gone only as far as December third when she found a small item:
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