by Joy Fielding
Which probably explained why he hadn’t returned any of the messages she’d left on his voice mail earlier tonight. Perhaps he assumed that was message enough.
Robin felt a tug on her bladder and climbed out of bed to use the washroom. She was opening her door when she heard the door to Landon’s room also open, and she quickly ducked back inside. Seconds later, she heard Landon’s door close and his footsteps recede down the hall. Only then did she crack open her door and see him disappearing down the stairs.
She stepped into the hall, tiptoeing toward the top of the stairs, the hardwood floor creaking beneath her bare feet. She heard the front door open and close.
She thought of waking up her sister, but didn’t want to risk Melanie’s wrath. Instead, Robin headed down the stairs after her nephew. “This is not a good idea,” she whispered as she opened the front door.
At first she saw nothing but the blackness of the night. Gradually, a curving sliver of moon appeared overhead, followed by a sprinkling of stars. A smattering of roadside trees swayed in the tepid midnight breeze.
And then she saw him.
He was standing at the end of the walkway at the side of the road, his body mimicking the swaying of the trees. “What are you up to?” she asked softly, watching her nephew take several steps toward her father’s house, then stop, turn back, resume his swaying.
Stop, go, sway, repeat.
Then Robin heard a sound come from the distance—a low rumble that grew louder as it drew nearer. A motorcycle, Robin realized, watching as the large bike materialized, its unmistakable form piercing the darkness as it slowed, then stopped to allow Landon to climb on.
A second later, the motorcycle sped down the road and was swallowed up by the warm night.
Robin stood in the doorway, trying to process the scene she had witnessed. “What just happened?”
Again she thought of waking up her sister. Again she thought better of it. If Melanie knew of Landon’s nocturnal wanderings, she was unlikely to explain them to her sister.
Robin closed the front door and hurried back up the steps, glancing repeatedly over her shoulder as she tiptoed past Landon’s room, then stopped and turned around. What the hell are you doing now?
Throwing caution to the wind, she opened Landon’s door and stepped inside his room, closing the door after her.
It was even darker inside the room than it had been outside, the tiny sliver of moon not strong enough to penetrate the sheer curtains. Robin debated turning on a light, then decided it was too risky.
“So what now?” she whispered, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. “What are you doing here? What do you think you’re going to find?”
After several seconds, objects began to take shape in the darkness: the double bed in the center of the room, the night tables on either side of it, a dresser next to a small closet on the opposite wall; the rocking chair in front of the window.
Robin moved to the bed, falling to her knees in front of it and quickly running her hands underneath it. Nothing but dust. She ran around to the other side and repeated the process. More dust. Wiping her hands on the front of her nightgown, she opened the top drawer of the closest night table, her fingers brushing over an assortment of pencils and paper clips before closing around a large ball of something soft and wriggly. Worms, she thought, dropping the ball to the floor and feeling it bounce against her toes. “Not worms, you idiot,” she said as she bent to retrieve it. Elastic bands. “Way to go, Nancy Drew.” She returned the ball of elastic bands to the drawer, then opened the drawer beneath it. It was filled with comic books: Archie, The Green Hornet, Superman.
The second night table contained more of the same: comic books, paper clips, rubber bands, pens and pencils, scrap pieces of paper full of doodles and illegible scribbles. And something else. Something hard and dome-shaped. A snow globe, she realized, pulling it out from the back of the drawer and turning it upside down, watching hundreds of make-believe flakes dance around the tiny plastic ballerina at its center.
An odd thing for a teenage boy to have, she thought, wondering if Cassidy had given it to him. Or maybe he’d just helped himself from her collection after she’d moved out. Odd, maybe, but hardly incriminating. Robin returned the snow globe to its previous position and pushed the drawer closed.
Except it didn’t close.
Robin tried it repeatedly, but the drawer would shut only halfway before getting stuck. “Close, damn you.” She jiggled it, but it refused to budge. “Shit! Okay. Don’t panic.” A few measured breaths later, she reached back and found two crumpled pieces of paper wedged between the two drawers. She extricated them gently, ironing them across her thighs with the palms of her hands.
A girl’s face stared back at her from both pages. The sketches were rendered in pencil. While they were somewhat slapdash and lacking in detail, the girl in both pictures was instantly recognizable, even in the dim light: Cassidy.
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Robin muttered, wondering if Melanie was aware that Landon was such a talented artist and realizing that she couldn’t ask her about it without giving away her snooping. Would there be any more surprises?
She folded the papers neatly in half and returned them to the drawer, releasing a deep sigh of relief as the drawer now slid easily back into place.
She crossed to the closet, examining the shirts and pants draped across the wire hangers, and rummaging through the shoes on the floor. There was nothing unusual. No jewelry secreted in the toe of a sneaker, no gun hidden in the back pocket of a pair of jeans.
Robin was moving toward the dresser when she heard the sound of car doors slamming. She hurried to the window and peered through the sheer curtains, careful to keep out of sight.
A car was parked at the top of her father’s driveway. Two people were running toward the house.
Robin reached under the curtains to pry open the window several inches.
“It’s so dark,” she heard a girl say, her high-pitched voice magnified by the breeze. “You’re sure this is the right place?”
“Of course it’s the right place,” her male companion answered. “Can’t you see the police tape?”
Dear God. Teenagers.
“I can hardly see anything, it’s so dark.” The girl stopped. “It’s really spooky. I think we should leave.”
Yes, that’s exactly what you should do.
“Come on. It’s an adventure. Everybody’s gonna be so jealous when we tell ’em we were here.”
Robin watched in horror as the boy ran toward the house.
“Wait,” the girl called after him, although she didn’t move.
“Are you coming or not?”
And then another voice. “What the hell is going on out here?”
Melanie?
“Shit,” the boy swore as Robin watched Melanie march toward them, a housecoat over her pajamas, something long and menacing in her hand.
Dear God, was that a rifle?
“She’s got a gun,” the girl cried. “No! Please don’t shoot us.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“We just wanted to have a look…”
“This isn’t a goddamn tourist attraction. Get out of here before I call the sheriff.”
Robin watched the two kids race back to their car and take off, the car’s tires screaming in protest.
“Stupid kids,” Melanie growled, lowering the rifle as she glanced up at Landon’s window.
Immediately Robin dropped to the floor. Had Melanie seen her?
Shit.
She heard the front door close, followed by Melanie’s footsteps on the stairs. The next moment, Melanie was standing outside Landon’s door, knocking gently. “Landon,” she called softly. “Landon, are you awake?”
Please go away. Please go away. Please go away.
Several long seconds passed before Robin realized that Melanie was no longer standing outside the door, and still more time went by before
she was able to breathe without pain and get to her feet. Her knees wobbling, she closed the bedroom window, debating whether to continue her search. She decided not to press her luck. One close call was enough for one night. She might not be the world’s best therapist, but she was an even worse detective.
What the hell was I thinking?
Better not to think at all, she decided, returning to her room and collapsing on the bed. A series of silent images replayed in her head as she closed her eyes: Landon swaying by the side of the road; a motorcycle pulling up in the dark; a wriggling ball of elastic bands; two pencil drawings of Cassidy’s smiling face; curious teenagers creeping toward her father’s house; Melanie walking toward them, a rifle in her hands.
The last thing Robin saw before she fell asleep was a tiny ballerina imprisoned in a plastic dome, snowflakes swirling around her head.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She woke the next morning to a house that was eerily quiet: no voices, no footsteps, no persistent rocking.
It was after ten o’clock, and both Melanie’s and Landon’s bedroom doors were open. Robin stole a quick glance inside Landon’s room as she passed by, noting that his bed was neatly made, its covers all in place, as if it hadn’t been slept in. Had he come home last night?
“Melanie?” she called out, hurrying down the stairs and walking toward the kitchen, her sister’s absence palpable. “Melanie?” She half expected her sister to jump out at her from a corner of the room.
Some leftover coffee remained in the coffeemaker, and Robin poured herself a mug, then heated it up in the microwave. She glanced out the window over the sink to see if Melanie was in the backyard, but it was empty.
Where is everyone?
Mug in hand, Robin proceeded into the mudroom, which Alec had once claimed as his personal space. “What are you hiding, Alec?” she asked, noting that the cot he’d slept on stood folded up and abandoned in a corner. The small room was now a makeshift storage area for boots and forgotten household items, the sort of things that people never used but were loath to throw away “just in case.” An empty glass-front cabinet stood against the wall beside the back door, across from a wobbly wooden bench. A rusty yellow toolbox lay open on the bench’s scratched surface, a large claw hammer half in, half out of the slot intended for a screwdriver, the screwdriver tossed carelessly atop a pair of pliers. Robin was tempted to return each item to its proper place, but decided against it.
Several large cardboard boxes sat on the floor in the far corner of the room. Robin knelt to reach into the first one and removed a handful of pencil drawings. Many of them were little more than scribbles, but a number of them were surprisingly good. She sank back on her heels, marveling at a simple sketch of two horses and another of a helmeted man on a motorcycle. But the best ones were of a young girl as she morphed from child to adolescent: Cassidy.
Her nephew was quite the artist, Robin thought, returning the pictures to the box, grateful that Melanie had saved them. Perhaps she could suggest sending Landon to art school, maybe even offer to help out…
“We don’t need your help,” came Melanie’s imagined retort, even before Robin could finish the thought.
The second box was filled with old paperback books: Rosemary’s Baby; Kiss the Girls; The Shining. Someone obviously loved suspense thrillers. Nothing wrong with that. Another title suddenly caught her eye, and she squatted down to retrieve the softcover book from the top of the pile. Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer.
Shit, she thought, shuddering as she dropped the book back into the box. What the hell does that mean?
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said out loud, noticing some larger books protruding from the bottom of the pile, her heartbeat quickening when she realized that they were old high school yearbooks. Eagerly tossing the paperback books aside, she extricated the half dozen leather-bound books.
She started with the most recent—the year she and Tara had graduated. Surely if there’d been anyone named Tom in any of their classes, she would find him in these pages.
Surely if there’d been anyone named Tom, she would have remembered him, a nagging voice in her head whispered.
She flipped through the pages, her eyes scanning the series of black-and-white homeroom photos. There was Sandi Grant, with her perpetually open, gossipy little mouth, and little Arlene Kessler, with her huge green eyes, freckle-covered nose, and Little Orphan Annie mop of curly red hair. Who’d have suspected she would grow into the sophisticated Dr. Arla Simpson?
Who’d have suspected a lot of things? Robin thought, locating her homeroom photograph and searching the faces of the normally sullen teenagers smiling awkwardly for the camera: Vicki Peters, with her too-short skirt and too-tight sweater, perched on a bench in the front row; Taylor Pritchard standing behind her, her long bangs almost completely hiding her half-closed eyes; Ron McLean, as tall as he was stupid; Chris Lawrence, a smug smile plastered across his round face; and Tara, front and center, as beautiful as always, her arm draped across Robin’s shoulders.
And then there he was in the back row—tall, heavyset, blond hair combed away from his not-quite-handsome face: Tom Richards, curiously insubstantial despite his girth. My God, she’d forgotten all about him.
Even now, staring into his blank eyes, Robin was hard-pressed to recall a single thing about him. He faded into the background. Like wallpaper, she thought, recalling Tara’s caustic assessment.
Was it possible that he and Tara had reconnected sometime in the last five years? That, improbably enough, they’d become friends? Possibly even lovers?
Robin dropped the yearbooks back into the box, burying them beneath the old paperbacks and pushing herself to her feet. She marched out of the mudroom, not sure what to make of—or what to do with—this discovery.
She found herself in the living room, the first time she’d been inside this room since her arrival in Red Bluff. Sinking into the moss-green velvet sofa against the wall opposite the large front window, she pictured her mother lying back against its pillows, a smile on her face, watching the large-screen TV with a magazine in her hands, her feet resting on the rectangular oak-and-glass coffee table in front of her. It was her mother who’d suggested the decorative brick fireplace in the middle of the far wall, her mother who’d selected the pair of matching rust-colored armchairs placed in front of it. She’d found the two watercolors of bucolic landscapes that hung on the wall at either side of the fireplace at a garage sale. “Can you imagine?” she’d said with a squeal of genuine delight. “Someone was actually going to throw these treasures out.”
Robin rested her head against the pillow, studying the paintings and imagining her cheek pressed tightly against her mother’s skin. “You’ve always been my favorite,” she heard her mother whisper, and she felt her heart swell with pride.
In the end, her mother had barely known who she was.
Robin stood up and crossed the hall into the dining room, with its gold-flecked, ivory-colored wallpaper that dated back to her childhood. She stood for several minutes at the head of the long oak table, which was surrounded by high-backed, orange leather chairs. Everything was exactly as it had been when her mother was alive.
Had Tara tried to change things?
Robin could imagine her friend wanting to be respectful of her mother’s memory, at least in the beginning. But surely after a year or two, she would have wanted to “put her own stamp on things,” as Melanie had suggested.
Yet there was nothing of Tara’s anywhere.
Just as there’d been nothing of her in that oversize mausoleum next door. It was almost as if the free spirit Robin had known and loved all those years had disappeared completely once she’d married Greg Davis.
Had the search for the self she’d lost propelled her into an affair? And was that what had ultimately gotten her killed?
Robin pulled her cell phone from the side pocket of her robe and pressed 4-1-1.
“Information. For what cit
y?” the recording asked.
“San Francisco.”
“Do you want a residential number?”
“Yes.”
“For what name?”
“Tom Richards.”
A phone rang.
It took Robin a moment to realize that it was the phone in the kitchen and not the one in her hand. The hospital, she thought, calling to say that her father had passed away during the night. She quickly disconnected her cell and raced into the kitchen, grabbing the phone from the counter. “Hello?”
“Hello?” a woman said, her voice soft and quizzical. “Who’s this?”
“Who’s this?” Robin countered.
“Of course. Sorry. It’s Sherry Loftus.”
“Who?”
“Sherry Loftus?” the woman repeated, turning her name into a question. “From McMillan and Loftus Designs in San Francisco.”
“McMillan and Loftus Designs,” Robin repeated. The decorators of her father’s new house.
In San Francisco.
Of course. That explained everything. Cassidy had said they’d run into Tom Richards when they were in San Francisco seeing the decorator. He obviously worked for McMillan and Loftus. “By any chance,” Robin began hopefully, “does a Tom Richards work there?”
“Tom Richards? No. There’s no one here by that name.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite. We’re not a large company.”
“Shit.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. I have to go…”
“Please don’t hang up,” the woman said as Robin was about to disconnect. “It’s important.”
“What’s important?”
“This is horribly awkward,” Sherry Loftus said. “It’s just that…are you related to Mr. Davis?”
“I’m his daughter. Robin. What can I do for you, Ms. Loftus?”
“Yes, well, as I said, this is very awkward under the circumstances.”
“Then perhaps it could wait for a less awkward time,” Robin suggested.