Behind her, she sees Peter and Rose talking quietly for a moment. Then Peter pats her sister-in-law briefly on the arm before going up the steps and into the house.
“Be careful, Peter,” Leslie calls after him, frowning.
“Why does he have to be careful? Is he going to use his hammer?” Leo wants to know.
“No, it’s just . . .” Just what, Les? That there was an intruder in the house while Mommy was gone? “Um, power tools,” she amends. “He’s going to use his power tools and I always tell him to be careful with them.”
“Can I go watch?”
“Not right now.”
She stares up at the house. Rose is hovering nervously on the porch. The children race each other down to the sidewalk and back, with Jenna contradicting Leo’s repeated shouts of “I win!”
Leslie wants to believe that Rose is overreacting to this sound machine incident, and the phone call, and the anonymous gifts. But what if she isn’t? What if somebody other than harmless Hitch is actually behind this?
“Excuse me . . . is everything okay over there?”
She looks up, startled, to see an unfamiliar man poking his head through the open front door of the house next door. Leslie recalls Rose saying that a couple moved in there a few months ago, but this is the first time she’s seen anybody over there.
Rose appears to be at a loss for words, distracted by the children and by Peter inside the house, so Leslie crosses the patch of grass to speak to the neighbor.
“Hi, I’m Rose’s sister-in-law, Leslie,” she tells the man, who has now stepped out onto the small porch.
“Ben Kirkmayer.” He reaches down over the railing to shake her hand. The gesture seems oddly formal, considering that he’s wearing flannel pajamas and slippers. She senses tension in his handshake and in the dark eyes regarding her from behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. He’s probably self-conscious about what he’s wearing, and looks like he’d be far more comfortable in a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase instead of the terry cloth dish towel in his hand.
“Rose just got home and she thinks there might have been an intruder in the house,” Leslie tells him. “You didn’t see anything strange over there, did you?”
“No, but then, I’m not the type to spy on my neighbors through the windows,” he says, sounding almost defensive.
“I didn’t mean—I just thought you might have glanced out and seen somebody prowling around.”
“If I had, I would have called the police,” he informs her. “What makes her think there was an intruder in the house. Are there signs of a break-in?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s . . .” Leslie eyes the man, uncertain how much she should reveal. He is, after all, a stranger. Besides, you never know. What if . . . ?
Nah. She dismisses that theory as quickly as it flits into her head. There’s no way this uptight married man is concealing a flaming infatuation for Rose. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine him being passionate about anything.
At the sound of wild barking, both Leslie and Ben Kirkmayer turn back toward the house next door. Peter has emerged onto the porch, the puppy wriggling in his arms.
“Ow! He bit me!” He lets go of the dog abruptly and he drops the few feet to the ground.
“You dropped our dog!” Jenna shouts as the puppy releases an accusatory yelp. Trailed by Leo, she scampers after her pet across the brittle, muddy lawn.
Leslie abandons the neighbor on his porch and hurries toward Peter, who has thrust his knuckle into his mouth, wincing with pain.
“Are you okay, Peter?”
He removes his hand from his mouth and examines it. “He barely broke the skin. I thought you said he was friendly, Leslie.”
“He is. I don’t know why he’d—”
“Where did you find him?” Rose interrupts.
“He was shut in that small room where I’m working on the shelves. And he crapped in the toolbox I left there yesterday.”
“But . . . he was upstairs when I left.” Her uneasiness now verges on alarm. “You’re saying the French door was closed and he was trapped in there?”
Peter nods, his knuckle back in his mouth.
“What about the sound machine?” Leslie asks.
“It was on,” he says with a shrug. “The volume was all the way up. I unplugged it. Maybe there’s an electrical short in one of the wires.”
Electrical short. Wires.
The disturbing memory of Sam’s freak electrocution bursts into Leslie’s thoughts.
But that wasn’t a short in a wire. That was high-voltage cables coming down in a storm.
“Was there . . . was there anything else?” Rose asks, her eyes shadowed with trepidation.
He meets her gaze and shakes his head. “I checked the whole house. It doesn’t look like anything was ransacked, and there were no broken windows or anything like that. I’m not sure how anybody could have broken in. Maybe it was just a short in the wire, like I said.”
“Then . . . what about the dog?” Rose’s voice rises, shrill with barely contained hysteria.
They turn their gazes to the children romping on the grass with the barking puppy.
“Maybe he got himself trapped in there on his own.”
“How? By turning the doorknob with his paw?”
“Rose, try to calm down,” Leslie says, pushing aside her own worry and resting a hand on her sister-in-law’s coat sleeve.
“You never know. Puppies are capable of all kinds of mischief, Rose,” Peter says.
You never know.
Just what Leslie thought moments earlier about Rose’s taciturn neighbor. She glances over at the porch next door, intending to give him a wave to show him that everything is okay, whether it is or not.
But the porch is empty, the front door closed.
“I’m calling the police,” Rose says.
Leslie turns her attention back to the matter at hand. “That’s a good idea.”
“But won’t the kids get scared if the police show up? You said Leo’s been having trouble sleeping as it is,” Peter says.
Rose looks torn. “Leslie, can you take the kids out for—I don’t know, for ice cream, or something? If somebody has been in the house, I need to report it.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll come, too,” Peter says.
“Maybe you should stay here to talk to the police with Rose,” Leslie tells him. “You know, so you can tell them what you found.”
“Oh . . . right. Okay.”
As she loads the kids—and Cupid, whom they refuse to leave behind—into her car, Leslie glances again at the house next door.
It almost looks as though a figure is standing in a window on the side of the house facing Rose’s.
She blinks, and the figure—if it was ever really there in the first place—is gone.
Hmm . . .
You never know.
“Are you hungry?” Christine asks Ben, sticking her head into his office.
He jumps, his hand knocking the coffee cup beside the computer. It sloshes over onto some papers.
“Dammit!”
“Sorry.” She hurries across the hall to the bathroom and returns with a wad of paper towels. “Here. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I told you never to sneak up on me when I’m working.”
“I wasn’t sneaking, Ben.” She sighs inwardly. Here we go again. “I was just trying to be nice, and now we’re about to have yet another argument? Maybe I should just stay away from you altogether.”
“What are you talking about?” He mops his desk furiously.
“Are you kidding me? Have you forgotten all about the blowup because I didn’t get butter on your sandwich from the diner?”
“All I said was, ‘oh, no butter?’ and you blew up at me,” he retorts, tossing the sodden paper towels into his wastebasket and shoving his fingers through what remains of his hair.
“I didn’t blow up.”
“Yes, you did. And then you went on and
on about how there was some intruder next door—”
“On and on? All I did was tell you about it, and you acted as though you couldn’t care less. I’m alone here all day, every day, and it doesn’t even seem to have occurred to you that something could happen to me.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with you, Christine. It was the neighbors who had the prowler, if there even was a prowler in the first place. It’s really none of our business.”
“Of course it’s our business. We’re right next door.”
“Well, what the hell do you want me to do? Grab a torch and lead a posse through the streets?”
She glares at him. “That was so uncalled for. For your information, I thought I saw someone lurking in their bushes the other day.”
“You thought you saw . . . ?”
“I’m pretty sure of it. I was thinking maybe I should go to the police and tell them.”
He shakes his head. “Tell them what? That you were spying on the neighbors? They’ll think you’re the one who’s prowling around the house. I say stay out of it, Christine.”
“We’re not in the city anymore, Ben. You’re the one who wanted to move to a small town. This is what it’s like in a small town. You help your neighbors. You look out for each other. In fact, I was just telling Rose next door that I’d be happy to babysit for her kids if she needs me.”
He brightens. “That’s a good idea.”
“Really?” She’s surprised by his reaction. “Because they’re such sweet kids, from what I’ve seen, and I thought it would be fun.”
“Yeah, and that’s a good way for you to bring in some extra money.”
Horrified, she blurts, “Ben, I wasn’t going to charge her for it!”
“Not charge her? Why would you babysit, then? You’re not running a day care over here. She has a lot of nerve to ask—”
“She didn’t ask. I offered.”
He shrugs and mutters something she doesn’t catch, and doesn’t want to.
With a sigh, she asks, “Did you want anything for dinner? Because we’re pretty much out of everything. But I could order a pizza—there’s a coupon from a new place in town.”
She’s thinking that is sure to get him. Ben likes her to use coupons. He expects it—just like he expects her to buy the generic brand of everything, to save money.
“You get a small cheese pizza free if you buy a large with one topping,” she goes on. “And I was thinking we could put the small pizza right into the freezer and save it for one of those nights when you come home late from—”
She breaks off, realizing that his gaze has drifted down to the pile of papers on his desk. “You’re not even listening to me, are you?”
“I’m just really busy, Christine,” he says, sounding exasperated.
“Well, you heard what I said about the free babysitting. And about the break-in next door, and that I’m almost positive I saw—”
“Come on, Christine, stop making a big deal out of nothing.”
“A break-in is not nothing. And I didn’t even tell Rose that I thought I’d seen someone there, in her yard.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Why not? What if I was witness to somebody casing the . . . the . . .”
“Joint?” he asks dryly.
Actually, she was looking for a word other than “joint.” The last thing she wants to do is sound like she’s spewing dialogue from an old gangster film—or admit to Ben, or anyone else, that she spends quite a bit of time looking at the neighbors’ house through the curtains. She doesn’t want to be seen as some kind of nosy recluse . . . but maybe that’s exactly what she’s become.
She turns and walks toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Ben asks.
“Downstairs to find something to eat and watch 60 Minutes. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“It’s okay. And Christine?”
She hesitates in the hallway, hoping he’ll tell her he’s going to quit working for the night, that he’ll say to order the pizza and he’ll come downstairs and watch TV with her. If he does, maybe she’ll tell him that her period is already more than twenty-four hours late, and she doesn’t feel as though it’s coming on.
“Yes?” she asks, holding her breath.
“Can you please close the door so I can concentrate?”
The house is silent, aside from the faint pattering of rain on the roof. According to the eleven o’clock news, it’s snowing north and west of eastern Long Island, but out here in Suffolk County, it’s still just an icy downpour and isn’t expected to change over at all.
Propped on several pillows in the queen-sized bed she used to share with Sam, Rose turns another page in the romance novel she’s been trying to read all night. Leslie gave it to her, claiming it would take her mind off everything, but she hasn’t gotten past the first chapter since she climbed into bed with it hours ago, at around midnight.
She stares at the page, reading the same passage over and over, wondering if she should go check the kids again.
Poor Leo cried himself to sleep earlier, distraught when she told him he couldn’t have his sound machine in his room tonight.
“But Misto-Gwegg said it would help me!”
“I know, sweetie. We’ll get you a new one. That one was broken.”
Nothing seemed to calm him down, not even Rose leaving the lamp on for him so that he wouldn’t be alone in the dark.
“You’re a big brave boy, Leo. You don’t have to be afraid of the dark.”
“Mist-o Gwegg is a big bwave man, and he said sometimes he’s afwaid of the dowk, too. He said he used to think the bogeyman wivved behind his bookcase.”
Terrific. Rose knows Mr. Gregg is only trying to help by relating to Leo’s fears, but he didn’t need a new one to worry about.
As for the sound machine . . .
She threw it into the garbage right after the police officer left, hoping he was right about it having a short. That might explain how it could have turned on by itself.
But it doesn’t explain how Cupid got locked in the sunroom.
Both Peter and Leslie seemed inclined to agree with the police officer’s assessment that the puppy somehow managed to get himself shut inside.
Rose supposes she can’t blame any of them for wanting to believe that. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than the theory that somebody got into the house with nary a sign of a break-in, ostensibly only to turn on a sound machine. Nothing has been ransacked; nothing is missing.
The nice young police officer—whom Rose has seen crossing kids over at the elementary school when the regular crossing guard is absent—was patient, thorough, and sympathetic as he took her report. She even felt temporarily reassured, and actually managed to relax as she and Leslie played several rounds of Candyland with the kids while Peter worked on the bookshelves.
But tonight, alone in the house after Peter and Leslie went home, she has found herself on edge all over again.
Sleep is out of the question. It would mean turning off the light, and she’s afraid to be alone in the dark.
Isn’t that silly, Sam? I’m a grown woman, and I’m afraid of the dark, just like Jenna and Leo.
Yes, it’s silly. About as silly as not putting bullets in that gun in the bedside table. It’s not going to do you any good if it’s not loaded, Rose.
But it can’t hurt the kids if it’s not loaded, either.
She left the hallway light on for Jenna and Leo as always, and their doors ajar. She’s been in to check them several times already, reassured to gaze at them tucked cozily into their beds and to hear their hushed, even breathing.
She has also reached a decision. She’ll have to somehow scrape together enough money to get an alarm system installed, as the police officer suggested on his way back to his patrol car. It will be worth it, for peace of mind.
A loaded gun wouldn’t give her peace of mind. Hell, she doesn’t even know how to shoot a gun.
Sam learned.
Belatedly, Rose realizes she should have asked Hitch about that before she let Leo go off with him the other day. Hitch was driving his father’s car, but for all she knows he keeps a loaded gun in there, too.
She makes a mental note to discuss it with him, and decides she should check on the kids again.
Swinging her feet over the edge of the mattress, Rose sets the book aside on the bedside table. She means to lay it down in an open position so she won’t lose her page, but it topples to the floor. Oh, well. She should probably start all over again with the prologue anyway—or scrap the whole thing and try to fall asle—
The telephone rings.
Rose gasps.
Her gaze flies to the phone, and then to the digital clock beside it on the nightstand. It’s three-thirteen A.M.
It rings again.
If only she had an answering machine that could pick up and intercept the call. But theirs broke right before Sam died, and she never did scrape together the money to replace it.
Outwardly, Rose is motionless, her feet rooted to the floor, her hand pressed against her mouth as if to stifle her terror. Inside, however, chaos reigns: her thoughts careen wildly, her heart thrashes about her rib cage, her stomach quakes with fear.
Another ring.
Don’t answer it.
But what if it’s important? What if something’s happened to somebody?
Ring.
The children are safe. Sam is gone. Mommy, too.
But there are other people. Leslie. Dad and his new family in California . . .
An image of Christine Kirkmayer’s face comes to mind. What if it’s her neighbor calling? Christine pulled into her own driveway when the police car was here earlier, and rushed right over to make sure everything was okay. She seemed concerned that there was potentially a prowler in the neighborhood and promised to keep an eye on things when Rose isn’t around.
Ring.
Maybe Christine got up in the middle of the night, happened to look out the window, and saw somebody prowling around the property. Maybe she’s calling to warn Rose that somebody is trying to break in.
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