Chapter Eighty
In the house next door, Holly, wearing one of Nick’s stolen shirts, has eaten a solitary Thanksgiving dinner of left-over spaghetti and salad, washed down with most of a bottle of red wine. Now, after midnight, she is sitting in the dark in her secret room.
She is sitting at the window, watching the Millers’ house.
Vasquez told her two days ago that Nick would be coming home for Thanksgiving dinner. But dinner has been over now for many hours, and Holly has been watching for every minute of each of those hours, waiting for Nick to leave. But he has not left.
Which means, of course, that he is staying.
Staying the night with Nina, snuggling up with Zoë, sleeping with Nina.
Making love to Nina.
The images pour through Holly’s brain. Nick with Nina. Naked with her. His hands on her. His mouth on her.
His cock in her.
The other woman.
Holly cannot bear this. This is unbearable.
She stands up from the chair by the window and covers her eyes to try to stop the pictures, but they do not go away.
She can hear them now, too, in her mind. Through the solid walls and the space between. Their moaning and thrashing and the sound of their skin, hot and sweaty, the little smacking sounds their bellies make as they touch and part, over and over again, as he thrusts into her, back and forth, back and forth.
Holly cannot endure the sounds. She presses her hands over her ears and sinks to her knees on the floor, but they go on and on, the images and the sounds of it, and she cannot bear it any longer.
So she covers it with something else.
Pain.
Until she passes out.
When she comes to, she is lying curled on the floor in her secret room, her Nick room.
The shirt she was wearing – his shirt – is in shreds.
There is blood on it.
She lifts her hands and looks at them. Her fingernails are caked with blood, and with fragments of something else. Torn skin.
Holly feels the pain again, and looks down at her own body.
Her abdomen looks almost flat in this position.
It, too, is bloody.
Bloody from the long, gouging scratches she has raked into her empty, pathetic, useless belly.
Chapter Eighty-one
The telephone rang just as Nick was dressing, getting ready to go back to the Art Center to pack his belongings and check out.
Nina, sitting on the bed, picked up the phone on the bedside table.
‘Yes, Dad.’
She listened. Her eyes grew brilliant and her cheeks flushed.
‘Oh, Dad, that’s wonderful. I can’t believe it. Yes, of course. Yes, of course. I can’t wait.’ She put out her right hand, gesturing to Nick to come to her, her excitement palpable.
She put down the phone.
‘Phoebe’s talking,’ she told Nick. ‘I can hardly believe it, but Dad says she’s really talking.’
More warmth coursed through Nick. He hadn’t thought there was room for more.
‘What did he say exactly?’ He laughed. ‘What did she say?’
‘She wants us to come.’ Nina grasped his hand, and tears flooded suddenly into her eyes. ‘Can you believe this? I’m crying – more good news than I can take in, and I sit here and cry!’
Nick sat down and put both his arms around her. ‘You said she wants us to come. Does that mean us?’
‘Of course it means us,’ Nina said, pulling away from him and drying her eyes.
‘How did your father sound about that?’
‘He didn’t sound anything except excited,’ Nina said. ‘And happy.’ She looked at Nick’s face. ‘I gather Phoebe was very clear on what she wanted. Even Dad wouldn’t argue with Phoebe right now – I think if she asked for Son of Sam to visit, it would be okay with Dad.’
‘Thanks for the comparison.’
While Nina made airline reservations, Nick went to the hotel, checked out and came straight back.
‘I’ve packed for you,’ she told him. ‘Hot weather clothes. Is that okay with you?’
‘Sure it’s okay.’ Nick threw the suitcase he’d brought back with him from the Art Center onto the bed, ripped open the zipper and dug around in it for his shaving kit and washbag. ‘What about Zoë?’
‘I think she has a little cold,’ Nina said.
Nick frowned. ‘Does she have a fever?’
‘Hardly at all.’
‘But we shouldn’t take her with us.’
Nina shook her head. ‘I hate leaving her again, but Teresa’s happy to hold the fort. I told her about Phoebe – she seemed really pleased for us.’
‘What time’s our flight?’
‘Noon.’
Nick checked his watch. ‘We’d better go.’
‘I’ve called a cab,’ Nina said. ‘There’s time to give Zoë a cuddle.’
He looked at her. ‘You’re so calm.’
‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘I have reason to be. My husband’s come home, and my sister’s going to be well again and clear his name.’
‘You think?’ Nick asked.
‘I know,’ Nina said.
Chapter Eighty-two
At ten minutes past three that afternoon, Teresa, sweeping leaves off the Miller’s front path, noticed a brown paper-wrapped package lying on the porch of the house next door. Barbara Rowe had told Teresa three days ago that she was going out of state to her parents’ home for Thanksgiving and didn’t know when she’d be back.
Teresa’s first intention was to walk over to 1317, pick up the package and bring it into the Millers’ house until their neighbour returned from her trip. But then she thought about the other woman’s almost paranoid concerns with anonymity. Probably it would be a greater kindness, Teresa decided, to take the parcel around to Mrs Rowe’s back door, where it would, at least, be safe from prying eyes.
Teresa put down the yard brush and went inside to check on the baby. Zoë, less sniffly and more content now than she had been that morning, was lying on her back in her playpen, clutching a small, pink, baby-proof rabbit
‘I’m just going next door for one moment, querida.’
The nanny leaned over, felt the baby’s nappy to make sure she was dry and took a swift look around the playpen to be completely certain there was nothing in there that could present the slightest danger.
‘You want to come with me, or stay here?’
Zoë gurgled and blew some bubbles.
‘Okay, bonita – you stay here in the warm. I won’t be long.’
Teresa blew the baby a kiss and went upstairs to find her house keys.
Chapter Eighty-three
Holly is taking a shower in the bathroom on the third floor between the nursery and her special room. Her body aches and stings with the hot water and soap, yet the fresh discomfort is doing its job, driving out the thoughts and images that so demented her last night.
Her hopes soared this morning when she saw Nick leaving the house, but then he came back with a heap of belongings, and within a half-hour he and the other woman were on the move again, carrying suitcases, and she imagined they were going to Arizona to see the sister, though she couldn’t be sure.
Holly isn’t sure of anything any more.
Except that her plan needs refining.
Nick back with Nina was never part of the deal.
She reaches up and adjusts the dial on the shower, making the water run hotter and faster.
She needs the pain.
Pain helps her now.
Chapter Eighty-four
Teresa was at the back of Barbara Rowe’s house.
The kitchen door was closed, as she had expected it to be. She tried the handle, expecting it to be locked, but to her surprise, the door opened, and suddenly she was uncertain what to do next.
It startled her that an efficient businesswoman like Mrs Rowe should be so careless. But then again, she was expecting a baby, and Teresa remembered that
each time her own sister had been pregnant, she, too, had made many mistakes she would not normally have made.
But what to do now? Teresa felt a little guilty about going inside. And yet she and Barbara Rowe had, after all, become friends of a kind, had they not? And Mrs Rowe would probably, Teresa imagined, be grateful to her for making her house safe in her absence.
All she really meant to do was lock the back door, walk through into the entrance hall, place the package on the little table by the wall, and leave again through the front of the house. But Teresa had to confess to herself that she had recently been wondering more and more about Barbara Rowe. Even before that disquieting incident at the drugstore, the other woman’s erratic behaviour and air of mystery had piqued Teresa’s curiosity.
Teresa Vasquez had always been an inquisitive person.
‘Your nose will get you into trouble some day, Teresa Maria,’ her mother had warned her more than once, even as a child.
But surely a little peek into the mysterious third-floor rooms she’d never been shown could not hurt?
Mrs Rowe was away, after all. And the back door had been left unlocked. And surely it was only proper that Teresa should check throughout the house to make certain that no intruder had been inside.
As Holly was turning off the shower and stepping out of the cubicle to dry herself, curiosity was drawing Teresa up the staircase.
The nursery, a pink teddy bear hand-painted on its door, was easy to find. Teresa placed her hand on the knob, turned it and went inside.
‘Esto es hermoso,’ she exclaimed softly, gazing around.
It was a touchingly beautiful room, lovingly prepared for a new life. The white crib in the centre, draped with palest rose-coloured cotton, its mattress already covered in white linen embroidered with tiny pink flowers with a little matching satin quilt. Teresa had always admired the way the Millers had decorated Zoë’s nursery: its purity and simplicity, and the sense of old-fashioned tranquillity which pervaded it. But this was a movie star nursery; this was the kind of room she had seen in glossy magazines, a room in which no expense or effort had been spared, from the beautifully stencilled fairies and criaturas on the walls, to the clothes that hung on silk-quilted hangers in the wardrobes.
Teresa wandered around, opening and closing drawers and doors, running her hands over the surfaces. Guilt had totally left her. She was entirely absorbed by the lavishness and charm of Barbara Rowe’s maternal preparations.
She came to the dresser last, a wondrously carved piece, every corner and edge made smooth and rounded and safe.
And then she noticed the photograph standing on the dresser in a silver frame.
Teresa looked at it for a long time.
It was a photograph that could never have been taken.
Of Barbara Rowe, with Nick and Zoë.
Holly, her hair still wet, came out of the bathroom and walked, naked, into her secret room. The wounds on her stomach were fiery from the roughness with which she had dried herself.
She picked up Nick’s sweater, held it to her face. It was blue lamb-swool. It felt soft, and it smelled of him.
Her eyes burned.
She took the sweater and lay down on the bed.
Teresa stared at the photograph for a long moment. She felt suddenly confused. Troubled.
Something here was not right. If Teresa Maria Vasquez was any judge at all, something here in this house was very wrong.
She picked up the photograph in its frame. It was impossible. Mr Miller had never, to the best of Teresa’s knowledge, even met Mrs Rowe, much less posed for a photograph with her and the nena. It was, she supposed, possible that one of them might have seen the other coming in or out of the house, or that they might have run into one another on the street the way Mrs Miller and Mrs Rowe had – but even so, the photograph still made no sense.
My husband is a very violent man.
Barbara Rowe’s explanation for her need for privacy.
It still seemed reasonable enough. A woman hiding from the husband who beat her, a woman expecting a child, hoping to keep her new home safe.
Yet something was wrong about the photograph.
Teresa considered, for a second or two, removing the actual picture from its frame, afraid of maybe being accused of stealing it for the silver. But she could not be certain who would come home to Antonia Street first, the Millers or Mrs Rowe, and an empty frame might be noticed much more quickly than a missing photograph.
Teresa wavered. Perhaps she should, after all, put the whole thing back, leave it alone? Not her business. Not her place. So what if Mrs Rowe had a picture of Mr Miller and Zoë in her nursery?
‘No,’ she said aloud, making up her mind. She would take it next door, hide it in a drawer, tell the Millers all about it and their neighbour as soon as they came home from Arizona. And if Mrs Rowe returned first and asked about the picture, Teresa would simply deny that she had ever seen it, deny that she had been in the nursery or even inside the house.
The package. She would take the package back outside, unlock the kitchen door again, just as she had found it, and Mrs Rowe would have no reason to suspect she had ever been here.
She heard the sounds as she came out of the nursery.
Strange sounds, coming from one of the other rooms on that floor.
Teresa’s heart began to beat uncomfortably fast.
Someone else was in the house.
Two rooms to her left, a door was open.
The sounds were coming from inside that room.
Teresa’s left hand flew to her mouth. Her right hand, clutching the photograph, began to perspire. Breathing too fast, too hard, she started to move, then stopped again. All she wanted now – all she wanted in the whole world – was to get out of the house, but in order to get back to the staircase she was going to have to pass that open door.
‘Ay, Madre de Dios,’ she mouthed silently, transferring the photograph carefully to her left hand and crossing herself with her right. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God—’
The sounds were continuing. Awful, ugly sounds.
Teresa started to move, thanked the Blessed Virgin that the floor did not creak beneath her feet, crept closer to the open door.
She did not mean to look. Don’t look, just go.
She could not help herself.
It was only one second, but it was an eternity.
Barbara Rowe was lying on a bed in the middle of the room, naked.
A large photograph of Nick Miller hung facing her on the wall.
The sounds were of her masturbation.
She was rubbing herself, with something blue.
Teresa didn’t mean to gasp, any more than she had meant to look, but she couldn’t help it.
Barbara Rowe turned her head.
If Teresa had thought that the look she had given her in the drugstore had been chilling, it had been nothing compared to the nightmare she saw in the naked woman’s eyes now.
She dropped the photograph and ran.
‘Teresa, stop!’
Holly was already off the bed, grabbing something from the top of the dresser – a canvas cutting knife stolen from Nick’s studio next door.
‘Ay, Dios mio!’ Teresa sobbed as she started down the staircase. ‘I didn’t see anything – I will not tell anyone!’
‘Stop, you stupid bitch!’
Holly caught Vasquez on the first landing and swung the knife at her. Vasquez ducked Holly’s lunge, screamed piercingly and continued down the stairs, her breath rasping, her arms flailing, desperate to keep her balance.
‘Socorro!’ Teresa shrieked. ‘Help me!’
She looked back over her shoulder, tripped on the bottom step and fell headlong, sprawling – Holly was on her, pinning her down, lifting her knife arm—
‘No!’ Teresa pushed back with every ounce of her strength, dislodging her and kicking out with her right shoe, catching the naked woman on her left hip. Holly shrieked in pain. Teresa kicked out again wildly, indiscr
iminately, caught her right breast, and Holly screamed and fell back.
Teresa scrambled to her feet, struggling for sobbing breaths.
She did not know that pain was a spur to Holly.
Holly grabbed her ankle, yanked at her, and Vasquez fell again, hard, onto her back.
It was all the advantage Holly needed.
With one last cry, she was on her again, raising the knife in her hand.
And then she brought it down and stabbed Teresa Vasquez right through her large, staring, terrified, brown right eye.
Chapter Eighty-five
Minutes pass.
Holly sits naked on the floor at the foot of the staircase beside Vasquez’s body.
She knows that Vasquez is dead. She saw and heard her die. Just after she pulled the knife out.
Not pretty.
Holly feels way beyond sick. She began to heave when she saw the colours on the blade, but then she closed her own eyes and breathed deeply and brought the nausea under control.
Still, she doesn’t feel good.
This isn’t right. This was not supposed to happen.
This was not part of the plan.
She feels many things, sitting here on the wood-block floor that will need cleaning and polishing if it’s ever to match the rest again.
Mostly she feels rage. At Vasquez for placing her in this position, for coming uninvited into her house, for snooping and meddling. For betraying her. After all she’s done for her.
Holly’s right breast hurts. She looks down at it, sees the mark of Vasquez’s shoe where she kicked her, sees the bruise already beginning to bloom. Her hip hurts less. And the pain from the scratches on her stomach is starting to fade.
She puts a hand to the breast and squeezes.
It takes her breath away.
And sharpens her mind again.
‘Of course,’ she says aloud in sudden realization.
This killing clarifies everything. Everything.
The death of Teresa Vasquez might not have been part of her original plan. But if Holly concentrates, focuses really hard on every tiny detail as well as on the bigger picture, it may yet become the nub of her new strategy to bring Nick to his knees.
Too Close Page 32