I Don't Forgive You

by Aggie Blum Thompson

  “Ma’am, I appreciate this is stressful for you. You have the choice to leave or to remain on the property, but you may not interfere with the search.” She nods toward a young woman standing nearby in uniform. “Officer Michaelson?”

  The woman takes a tiny step up the walkway toward me, her hands hooked in her pockets, her hips laden with a radio and a gun.

  I walk past her and back to the curb. It’s a beautiful autumn day, with crisp air and cloudless blue skies. A duo of young mothers with jogging strollers whizzes through the intersection toward the park. It’s suburban bliss, but I am in my own personal hell. At the far end of the block, I can see a small group of dog walkers who have collected in the middle of the road and are staring in my direction. I can’t blame them. This is the most exciting thing that’s happened here since, well, since Rob Avery was murdered.

  I shiver. The reality of it is closing in. A man was murdered, and the police think that I am involved. Even having a lawyer isn’t going to stop them from going through my house, my personal things.

  If there was a tiny part of me that thought this was all a sick prank, the truth is glaringly obvious: I am in deep trouble. I realize that if Artie Zucker does call back, I don’t even have my phone on me. Like a swimmer far from shore, I cannot let myself panic, lest I go under and don’t come up. A lump forms in my throat, making it all but impossible to swallow. I won’t cry. Not in the street, not in front of my neighbors.

  I watch as several uniformed officers and Detective Katz march into my house after Detective Lopez. What could they possibly find in my house? The first thing that pops into my head is whether the house is neat enough. Did I make the bed? Do I have clothes, underwear, bras lying around? What about the dishes? I shake away those petty concerns and open the warrant. It looks like a standard form that has been filled in with my name and address and today’s date. The middle section has space to write in the basis for the search. Someone has typed Evidence relevant to the commission of an act of murder in violation of Maryland Criminal Law Code 2–201.

  The words swim before me. I sink down onto the curb and put my head between my knees. I stare at my feet, unsure of my next move.

  Soon a pair of scuffed-up, black Converse high-tops moves into my field of vision. Shielding my eyes from the autumn sun, I look up to see Dustin looming above me.

  “Do you want me to call my mom?” he asks.

  “Isn’t she at the doctor’s?” I ask. He frowns, confused. “No, don’t bother your mom. Shouldn’t you be at school?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t have first period.”

  I nod as if I believe this. I have too much going on to parent someone else’s child right now.

  “I got arrested once,” Dustin says. “It was pretty scary.”

  “I bet.” I stand up, uncomfortable seated while Dustin hovers above me. For a few moments, we stand in an embarrassing silence, and it occurs to me that the way this neighborhood works, loads of people must already know the police are at my house, and the only person who has come by to offer support is my socially awkward teenage neighbor.

  “Can I borrow your cell phone?” I ask. Dustin types in his password and hands it to me. I try Mark’s numbers, but like before, there’s no answer. I turn my back to Dustin to leave a message. “Mark, you need to call me as soon as you get this. Or come home. The police are searching the house.”

  I use Dustin’s phone to search for Artie Zucker’s office number. When his voice mail picks up, I leave another message even more frantic than the last. “Please call me, or just come to my house now.”

  “Police have your phone?” Dustin asks when I hand his back.

  “Yeah.”

  “They can get all your data, deleted pictures, locations, everything, in a matter of minutes now.”

  “You know a lot about this stuff, don’t you?”

  He gives me a half grin. “Yeah. You know, if someone messes with you online, in that many different places, there’s going to be crumbs left behind.”

  “Crumbs?” Despite myself, I am intrigued. “Like digital fingerprints?”

  Dustin frowns. “Bad analogy. It’s not unique to a person, but there’ll be enough little traces that it’ll all add up to something.”

  I toy with whether to tell him about the fake Facebook and Tinder pages.

  “The question is,” he says, “are they doing this remotely? I mean, how did they put the Tinder app on your phone?”

  I feel the blood rush to my face. “How do you know about that?”

  “I dunno.” He shrugs. “Maybe I heard my mom talking about it? Anyway, if you change your mind about wanting help…”

  “Thanks, Dustin, but I’m just trying to get through this.” I wave my hand toward my house. What I need is a good lawyer, not a computer hacker.

  A white Lexus screeches to a halt on the corner, and Daisy climbs out and jogs over to me.

  “Oh, Allie! Are you okay?” She doesn’t wait for an answer but wraps her arms around me and hugs.

  “How did you know?” I ask, pulling back.

  She rolls her eyes. “It’s all over the Eastbrook Facebook page. There are even photos.”

  I swivel my head around. Photos? I didn’t see anybody taking pictures. I realize Karen Pearce is gone. She was here when the police pulled up.

  “Do you know who posted them?” I ask.

  She frowns. “Didn’t check. Just hopped in my car and came right over.” She looks over at Dustin. “Dustin, what are you doing here? Don’t you have school or something?”

  He shrugs and gives me a quick glance before fixing his eyes on the ground.

  “You should go,” Daisy tells him, a stern note in her voice that I’ve never heard her use before.

  We watch him amble back across the street, and Daisy shudders. “I know I shouldn’t say this, but he gives me the creeps.”

  “I think underneath it all, he’s a good kid,” I say. “Adolescence is hard.”

  “Where’s Mark?”

  “Work. I tried calling him, but he’s not picking up.”

  “And Cole’s at school?”

  I nod.

  “You poor thing,” she says. “Any idea what the police are looking for?”

  “None. This whole thing is a total shock to me.”

  We turn and stare at the house. The door opens, and a uniformed officer steps out carrying our home computer. It sends a chill through me, although I can’t put my finger on exactly why. I know in my heart I had nothing to do with Rob Avery’s murder, and they can’t possibly find something on there that doesn’t exist. But what if my Google searches get misconstrued? Or even worse, what if someone else put something on there that implicates me, like the Tinder app on my phone? Leah and Dustin had both told me that files and apps could be installed remotely. Maybe that happened with my computer. I take a step forward.

  “Hey, that’s our computer.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize it’s a stupid thing to say. At the same time, the female officer watching me takes a step in my direction as if she’s going to physically stop me from moving forward. She holds her hand up like a traffic cop.

  “Everything removed from the house will be accounted for.”

  “I just feel like I should be there when you look at it, to explain stuff.”

  “If the detectives need your assistance, they’ll ask for it.”

  “But they won’t know.” I turn to Daisy. “They won’t know what’s real and what was put on there by someone else.”

  Daisy narrows her eyes, clearly confused. “Allie? You’re not making sense.”

  “Someone remotely installed the Tinder app on my phone. I didn’t do it, but it’s there, and I’m worried whoever did that put something on my computer, too.”

  “Okay, okay, calm down.” She rubs my arm. “It’s going to be all right. Do you have a lawyer?”

  “Sort of. I called and left messages, but I can’t reach him. I don’t know what to do. This is insane. They’r
e taking my things! Can they just do this?” I sound hysterical, even to my own ears. I take a deep breath. Losing it on the street is not going to help. I glance down at the end of the block. What had been a few people has grown into a wall of onlookers. Daisy follows my gaze. “Ugh, why don’t they go home? I’m just glad Cole isn’t here to see this. He’s been kind of anxious lately, and this would freak him out.”

  “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s go sit in my car.”

  I feel a bit better once we are safely ensconced in the warming leather seats of her car. Daisy taps on her phone, and soon dreamy synth music fills the car.

  “This is my Spotify Chill Out playlist,” she says. “I use this to lower my blood pressure when my stepdaughter, or a client, is driving me crazy.”

  She asks me how the sale of the house in Westport is going and whether Barb DeSoto has been helpful. I answer her questions curtly. I know she is just trying to help by taking my mind off what is happening, but I can’t concentrate on anything other than the fact that the police are swarming my house. “I just wish I knew what they were looking for.”

  “I know I shouldn’t be surprised,” Daisy says, tapping at her phone, “but I can’t believe how quickly this got on the Facebook page. And with photos.” She tilts the small screen toward me. “Looks like it was Heather. She posts, Does anyone know what’s going on with the police on our block?”

  “I can’t believe she did that. I mean, I was right there. Why didn’t she just ask me?”

  Daisy shrugs. “Probably didn’t want to bother you.”

  I look out the window. I think of the picture Heather took at the pool, the one from the same angle as my fake Tinder profile shot. And the picture of her with that woman wearing an Overton shirt. Lots of strange little coincidences, but what could Heather, the woman who organizes trash-free lunch at Cole’s school, possibly have to do with Overton? When I turn back to mention this to Daisy, to see what she thinks, I see an officer wearing mirrored sunglasses striding to the car, his face in a tight grimace.

  “Showtime,” Daisy says.

  We follow him, a short bulldog of a man, back to the front of my house, where he hands me my cell phone. “We’re about done here, ma’am. Just some paperwork.” As he scribbles on a stack of papers on a clipboard, I check my phone. Two missed calls from Morningside House and one from Artie Zucker. Just seeing his name floods me with relief.

  But that relief is short-lived. When I look up, I see an officer leaving the house carrying a small brown box, the kind Amazon leaves on neighborhood doorsteps every day.

  “What’s that box?” I ask the officer.

  “The list of items seized is right here, ma’am.” He taps his finger on one of the papers he just handed me.

  I look at the list, which is not long. The third item is: Brown cardboard box containing liquid Ambien.

  30

  Twenty minutes after the police leave, I am driving around Chevy Chase Circle, on the phone with Artie Zucker.

  “As soon as we hang up, I’m going to make some phone calls and find out exactly what’s going on,” he says in a booming voice. “By the time I come by your place this evening, I should have more information.”

  “I don’t feel good about this.”

  “Of course you don’t! Why would you? I’ll see you tonight.” With that, he hangs up. I appreciate his candor, at least. He’s not telling me this is a prank or the police are just doing their jobs. He’s taking it seriously.

  I drive in silence for a few minutes. The shock of seeing the police on my front lawn and then inside my house has worn off a bit, and now I am plain terrified.

  As I merge onto the Beltway to head toward my mother’s facility, Mark finally calls me back. As soon as he answers, I blurt out what happened—starting with the police showing up and ending with a recap of my call with the lawyer. “Artie Zucker will be at our house by six.”

  “I know.” His tone is curt.

  “Fine. Just reminding you.”

  We agree to be back at the house by four to get ready for Artie.

  I hang up and focus on the drive, a bit unsettled by Mark’s abruptness. I have my phone and car back, as well as paperwork on the seat beside me detailing exactly what they took from the house—including our computer. How am I going to pay bills or check email? I do everything online. It’s then that I realize they did not take my laptop. It was sitting in my tote the whole time, and the police never asked about it. I feel a bit of relief, but also a slight sense of having gotten away with something. Surely, they would have confiscated my laptop if it had been in the house.

  Thank god for small things. All my work stuff is on my laptop. I don’t know how I would have explained to Mike that I couldn’t edit my photos.

  When I glance at myself in the mirror, I see a wild-eyed, red-faced woman. I can’t help but imagine the conversations that are taking place in the neighborhood about me. I try to relax and focus on staying under the absurdly low thirty-miles-an-hour speed limit on Connecticut Avenue. The last thing I need is a speeding ticket.

  As I pass the Chevy Chase fire station, my phone pings with a text from Barb DeSoto in Westport: We have a major problem. Call me ASAP.

  The words send another wave of shock through my all-too-sensitive system. Everything that can go wrong is. A car blares at me as I yank the wheel to the right and pull into the parking lot of a library.

  “What kind of problem?” I ask Barb, who answers my call right away.

  “I’ve stopped by the house, and there’s no good way to say this, but putting it on the market now would be a disaster.”

  “Why?”

  “Let me ask you, Allie,” Barb says in a patient tone. “When was the last time you visited the place?”

  “About a year and a half ago. My sister is the one who keeps an eye on it.” Only one other car sits in the lot, a weathered gold Chrysler LeBaron, which triggers a memory of my father. In one of the few photos I have of him, he stands proudly in front of a similar sedan, the kind of wide, gas-guzzling dinosaur you never see on the roads anymore.

  “Well, she hasn’t been,” Barb says, her voice sharp.

  “I know, it needs a new roof and a new septic tank.”

  “That’s not all it needs. The paint is peeling, the gutters are literally sagging, and that’s just the outside. Inside, you have a serious mouse problem, and the banister is loose to the point of being dangerous.” I can picture Barb ticking these problems off on her French-manicured fingers. I’ve never seen Barb’s fingers, of course. What I do know of her I have gleaned from her website, but her glistening, white smile and shellacked blond bob suggest to me that Barb sports a flawless French manicure. “And don’t get me started on that kitchen. I estimate there’s at least fifty, if not seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of work to do on that house before you put it on the market. Of course, you could sell it as is, but that’s a tough sell. At least there are no tenants—that always complicates a sale—but still, in the condition it’s in, you may not even break even.”

  “Break even? What are you talking about? That house is worth at least a million.”

  “But the mortgage is almost eight hundred thousand.”

  “No, that’s not right. My mother inherited that house sixteen years ago. There’s no mortgage.”

  “I’m looking at the paperwork right here,” Barb says. “Sharon Healy took out a jumbo reverse mortgage on the property. She’s pulled almost eight hundred thousand dollars out of the house.”

  I shake my head in disbelief, even though I know she can’t see me. “My mother is incompetent. She’s been in an assisted living facility for years. I’m my mother’s power of attorney, and I did not approve any mortgage.”

  “Well, if all that’s true, we very well may be looking at fraud.” Barb sighs. “I think you ought to contact the Westport police.”

  * * *

  Some kind of event must be taking place at Morningside House, because when I arrive, the main lot is
full, and I have to pull around to the side lot. I shoot off a text to Daisy: What the hell is a reverse mortgage???

  Tension grips my neck as I walk to the front of the building, and I can feel my shoulders inching closer to my ears. The last thing I want to do right now is call the Westport police. Everything is going wrong at once. I pull my coat tight against a gust of wind that is whipping particles of dirt into my eyes.

  Inside the facility, it looks like the Halloween section of a crafts store exploded. Glittering paper pumpkins hang from a garland that stretches the length of the large lobby. Gangly scarecrows sit atop bales of straw that flank the faux fireplace. The room even smells like fall, a cloying combination of pumpkin spice and candy corn, but it cannot completely mask the acrid odor of ammonia.

  “Are you here for the apple bobbing?” the woman at the front—Desiree, according to her name tag—asks as I sign in.

  “No. I’m here to see Lydia.”

  Desiree picks up a phone. I wonder how she’s going to dial with such long nails, painted orange and overlaid with tiny black spiderwebs, but she uses a pencil. “Miss Lydia? Someone is here to see you.”

  Everyone is a Miss at Morningside, like at a preschool. After she hangs up, she passes an orange flyer to me that outlines the many Halloween activities coming up. I see pumpkin carving is scheduled for tomorrow.

  “Pumpkin carving? Is it a good idea to give knives to these people?” I gesture behind me at the slack-jawed men and women.

  My attempt at humor is lost on the receptionist. “Most of our residents prefer to use Sharpies to decorate pumpkins. You should come back with your kids! This is a multigenerational experience.”

  Lydia arrives and ushers me to the back offices. Round-shouldered and short, she seems to roll rather than walk. Her voluminous skirt may well be hiding wheels.

  “Miss Sharon is very spirited, but you probably don’t need me to tell you that. She’s small, but boy, when she gets hold of an idea, there’s no stopping her.” Her melodious voice soothes me, a skill that must come in handy when dealing with irascible seniors.