The Woman In the Mirror: (A Psychological Suspense Novel) (Alexandra Mallory Book 1)

by Cathryn Grant

  “We’re just bullshitting,” I said. “It’s a game.”

  “That’s right, a game.” Randy got off the chaise lounge and came to the table. He pushed the candle back to the center and pulled out a chair. “You can go inside. More pot for Alex and me.” He laughed.

  “Okay, fine. But it makes me queasy. And it’s just a game. And you can never tell anyone. Not ever. And you don’t have a good track record with that, Alexandra.”

  “I said I didn’t know it was a secret.”

  “You should have figured it out. This, this game is top secret. Agreed?”

  She was turning it into something threatening by trying to swear us to secrecy. It was just talk. She made it sound like something more, as if she was afraid this was the first step toward actually doing it. That night, we each came up with one method for murder. My method was the least violent. There were so many benefits. It was the easiest, the quietest, the cleanest. Randy cracked up when I said that. He couldn’t stop laughing, so Lisa was forced to go next. She said she’d push Dianne off the balcony.

  “Boring,” Randy said. “Obvious. And we’re only on the second floor. She wouldn’t die.”

  “It’s a game,” Lisa said. “I don’t care if it’s obvious. So okay, I’d do shots with her until she passed out and then push her into the pool.”

  Randy said he would shoot her. We pointed out he didn’t own a gun and he wrote that off to more fixation on details rather than the spirit of the game. He wanted to shoot her because he wanted to see her fancy bed — a bed that was apparently too good for him to sleep in — soaked with blood. He went on a long time about the blood. It was overly hostile, but we were very wasted by then.

  In the morning, the memory of it sounded like nonsense in my head.

  Then this one night… We’d been playing for a while, and had covered a lot of different methods. It had become somewhat detailed and maybe a little too real. We wanted to keep our interest up, so we gave flamboyant explanations of how we could fool her into thinking everything was okay, how we’d set the trap.

  Randy stood up and blew out the candle. He told us to move our chairs so we were both facing the balcony railing. He stood behind us, the lights out in the apartment as well, so all we could see were curtained lights of other apartments, fuzzy and glowing, and the garden lights lining the paths in the courtyard, and of course, the underwater light in the swimming pool.

  He spoke in a quiet voice that was almost a monotone. “Let’s go back to Lisa’s first idea — water is so beautiful,” he said. “It’s where we come from, it’s almost the entire makeup of our bodies. It’s required for life. We can live without food for a while, but not water. We need water to grow our food. We need it to keep clean. We need it for everything. Water is life.”

  He paused. He put both his hands on my head and held it there, making sure my face was turned in the direction of the swimming pool.

  “Water is seductive. The human race gravitates toward waterfalls and lakes, rivers and oceans. The symbol of money is a luscious swimming pool. The best vacations take place on ocean liners and islands and beaches. We all want the water. We’re obsessed with it.”

  This felt like a detour away from the game, and it was disturbing in some way I couldn’t explain. Maybe because there was no light and he stood where we couldn’t see him. Maybe because he was still holding my head so I felt he could crush it between his hands.

  “Water,” he said. “One part hydrogen and two parts oxygen. That’s all. We die without it, and if we can’t swim, or if we’re unconscious, if a boat capsizes, we die within it.”

  I shivered. Lisa put her hand on my arm. Her fingers were icy cold.

  “The best way to kill Dianne is letting her drown. Then, it’s not murder. It’s water being itself, remaining true to its nature, taking life.”

  I started to turn. He tightened his grip.

  Lisa turned, “But…”

  “Shh. Shh. Don’t turn around.” His voice was a whisper.

  “I would give Dianne her favorite sleeping pill. She does love to sleep. Napping all the time, have you noticed? Shh. Shh. Don’t answer. I know you have. Sleeping until noon, sometimes one o’clock on the weekends. She sleeps the sleep of the dead, as they say.”

  “I’d go to the coffee bar and get her a double latte. She likes those. I’d dump the powder from her Ambien into the coffee and bring it to her in bed.”

  “She won’t let you in her room,” I said.

  “Shh. Shh.” He pressed down on the top of my head. The weight was solid and comforting. “Once she’d fallen asleep, I’d dress her in her favorite lingerie. The cream colored satin with the black lace. On top of that, I’d put casual, normal clothes, so it looked as if she just wanted to lounge by the pool. I’d carry her down the stairs and…”

  “What if someone saw you?” I said.

  “No one is here during the day. They’re working so they can afford this place.”

  “You never know.”

  “Okay, okay. I’d wrap her in a quilt and pile clothes on top so it looked like I was going to do laundry. I’d go to the edge of the pool and…”

  “Someone would see you. This won’t work at all,” I said.

  “Then how should I do it? If drowning is the preferred method?”

  I tried to turn, but the pressure on my head increased. “Don’t look at me. Speak to the water.”

  His voice was mesmerizing.

  The darkness made me feel as if I was dreaming as I spoke. “You should give her the coffee by the side of the pool. You could even get into the pool and sit on the steps like you’re talking. Then when she passed out, no one would really notice. Or put her on a raft, both of you on rafts.”

  “Oh, Alexandra,” he said. “You’re so clever and so wicked and so right.”

  I smiled, pleased with myself in spite of the horror behind what I’d said. It was a game. But he needed to follow the laws of physics and human behavior, otherwise the game wasn’t challenging.

  “But how would I dress her in the lingerie I’d chosen?”

  “You have to forget the lingerie. She has lots of nice bikinis. Compromise.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  We were quiet for several long minutes.

  Finally, Randy said, “I guess that was mostly your turn, not mine.”

  I shrugged. “It was Lisa’s idea, we just embellished it. We’re teammates. Cooperative play. We all win together. Like the Pandemic game.”

  He moved his hand off my head and rubbed my shoulders, pressing his fingers into tight muscles until they screamed with pain, but it felt so good because the knots dissolved under his fingertips.

  10

  Aptos

  My job at CoastalCreative Software was easy. All I had to do was make sure other people got shit done. My laptop contained countless tiny blue folders full of complex spreadsheets that tracked the most minute details for the public announcement of every new product the company released. If something had to happen before a product was unveiled to the world, it was on my list — photographs of the packaging, talking points for the press release and industry analyst briefings, product documentation, sales training materials, slides proving CoastalCreative’s stuff was better than what competitors had to offer, customer slides, technical customer slides…For a brand new product line, the list was easily three-hundred-fifty items. Each task had an owner’s name attached, along with supporting sub tasks.

  I didn’t actually have to make sure people got stuff done. I just had to run meetings where I asked for updates on their status relative to the due dates, note it on my spreadsheet, multi-layered with pivot table capabilities, and assign them a color indicating how at risk they were for failure. Non-delivery was the official, politically correct term, but I called it failure. Red meant you were in deep shit, yellow meant you were probably lying about how far behind you were, and green meant you would hit the deadline, or, you were a pathological liar and hadn’t even started. T
here were columns to track when material was scheduled for review and feedback by peers, management, and executives. The executive reviews often meant all day meetings followed by a complete re-do because the top dog changed his mind about the marketing strategy or the sales focus.

  It was all very complex, for a to-do list.

  I was a corporate tattletale. Management often called me into meetings so I could brief them on the numbers of reds and yellows. I ratted out the liars and failures, rather, the risks and potential non-deliveries. It’s not that people didn’t get their work done. They were all smart, hard driving, career-advancing overachievers, but they didn’t like someone watching over their shoulders, checking on their work, treating them like pre-schoolers. And most of the time, there was just too much work to realistically get it all done. Especially with the re-do’s.

  I’d been at CoastalCreative for a month now, and already every guy and the token handful of women in the executive suite knew who I was. Executives like tattletales. The higher someone climbs up the ladder, the more they’re excluded from the gossip stream and they like someone who will tell them what’s going on. Most people stand in front of executives and lie because they think executives will be impressed with their accomplishments. But in smaller meetings, execs like the tattletales. They want to know the truth. They need to know the truth.

  Some would consider it impressive that I’d achieved this position without a college degree. At the age of twenty-five, I’d started out answering phones in customer support at a software company. Customer support roles don’t always require a degree, and when they heard my voice, which is nothing short of melodic, or so I’ve been told, any nits regarding college degree preferred were abandoned. My can-do attitude impressed those above me and eventually I had a chance to become a project manager.

  The job suits me. To be honest, I take perverse pleasure in watching people squirm.

  I spent a lot of time going to college, I just didn’t get a degree. My parents understood I needed to find myself, get my head screwed on straight after some rocky years in my teens, so they let me wander aimlessly for years. I took what interested me — ceramics, biology, yoga, astronomy, history, sculpture, literature, modern dance. Randy and I had a lot in common with our grazing approach to college. Maybe that’s one of the things that drew us to one another. I skipped as many of the dull, required supporting courses as I could.

  After seven years, my father said, enough. I left college with a smattering of knowledge in a lot of areas and not a lot that I could put on a resume.

  My manager at CoastalCreative was a woman named Tess Turner. She was a loud, aggressive woman, considered a bitch by most men and quite a few women, but very successful in her career. At thirty-four she was already a senior vice president. I was a bit low on the totem pole to be reporting to a senior VP, but she wanted to keep her eye on that spreadsheet. She wanted instant, round-the-clock access to my thoughts about the status of the spreadsheet, the secrets not immediately obvious in the simple color code. She wanted to make sure everyone knew the spreadsheet had bite, even if I personally wasn’t at a level or in any kind of position to impact their salaries or promotions or bonus opportunities. She also wanted hallway gossip, another hugely important source of information denied to executives.

  Tess and I met for coffee every Monday at seven-thirty a.m.

  Defying a corporate culture where the CEO wore jeans, throwing on a sport coat for customer meetings, Tess dressed like she worked on Wall Street — high heels, nylon stockings, nicely cut suits with skirts or slacks, both of which enhanced her long legs. She had short black hair and eyes that were made up as if she were a streetwalker.

  Tess seemed pleased by my effort to mirror her appearance, on a budget, of course. I’m good at that — mirroring others’ style to make them feel comfortable. It works with clothing, speech patterns, even food choices. Martinis and pasta, for example. It makes people feel close to you. They know they can trust you because you feel safe and familiar to them.

  As always, I ordered a double shot, non-fat latte, just like Tess. It made for a very animated conversation, as 300 milligrams of caffeine worked its way through our brains.

  The quirky behavior of my roommates fascinated Tess. She’d laughed at Noreen’s emphasis on her sweetness and nodded agreeably over Jared’s devotion to Buddhism. She rolled her eyes when I told her Noreen had set her sights on Jared.

  This morning, she asked for an update.

  “Things have gotten a little weird.” I sipped my latte through the tiny hole in the lid.

  “Weird, how?”

  “Noreen acts as if she and Jared are in a relationship.”

  “Maybe they are.”

  I shook my head. “Definitely not.”

  “Maybe wishful thinking, or thinking if she believes it to be true, it will be.”

  “It’s more sinister than that.”

  “Oooh.” She laughed. “So much drama.”

  “It’s hard to describe.” I pried off the lid and blew on my latte, which does nothing, but feels like I’m putting forth effort to make it drinkable.

  “No, tell me. I’m not laughing at you.” She sipped her coffee. She broke off a small piece of croissant and put it in her mouth. She swallowed without chewing. Croissant dough melts on your tongue, but it still looked uncomfortable.

  “It’s a sense I get, not anything definite she’s said. She goes into his room when he’s not there.”

  “That’s not cool.”

  “He probably doesn’t care that much, but it’s not right.”

  She nodded.

  “The other night she was pounding on his door and he never answered.”

  “So?”

  “He’s not interested. But she’s very aggressive about telling me to stay away from him. As if he belongs to her.”

  Tess broke her croissant in half. She took a sip of latte.

  “And there was something really weird, disturbing.” I described the damaged mirror and Noreen’s lack of concern over it, her effort to get me to change my habits rather than confronting Jared, rather than replacing it.

  “You need to look for a new place.” Tess broke off another piece of croissant. She put it in her mouth and chewed, slowly, as if she were drawing ideas out of the pastry, advice to help me escape the seemingly demented people I’d ended up living with.

  “That’s not an option.”

  “It’s always an option. They sound unstable. It’s not healthy.”

  I hadn’t even told her about the dog. Not that the dog was entirely Noreen’s fault. “I don’t think she’s unstable, she’s just…” I sipped my drink.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to look for a new place, so you have the wheels in motion if she does something more bizarre.”

  I swallowed the rest of my latte and took a few deeper than normal breaths. I lowered my eyelids slightly.

  “What’s the matter?” Tess said.

  “I can’t afford to move again.” I made my voice meek, tinged with a note that Tess might interpret as shame.

  She licked the corner of her lip and glanced away from me. She put both her hands around her coffee cup and picked it up as if she intended to drink, but she didn’t. “Maybe I can do something about that.”

  “I’m not asking for…”

  She held up her hand. “I know that. But you’ve become hugely valuable to the company. To me. I’m going to look into getting you an out-of-cycle pay increase.”

  “I don’t want to put you in an awkward spot, telling you my sob story.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it.” She pushed out her chair.

  As she turned to lift the strap of her bag off the back of the chair, I smiled. People feel so good when they know they have more power than you, when they know they can use that power to help you.

  11

  Meditation now occupied four hours out of every day, and Jared needed every nano second. As a newbie to the practice, he’d been assured m
any times that rescuing one’s mind from distraction, endless rumination, and mindless chatter was a life-long pursuit. It was normal to have thoughts repeat mercilessly, the fervent demands for attention growing until it seemed as if unwanted memories and imaginings and plans and desires were hurling themselves against the flesh of his brain like screaming infants. He took a breath, and saw Alexandra’s face. He let the breath out, and heard Alexandra laugh. He took another breath, and imagined the texture of her hair, let the breath out, and saw her unwavering gaze. It was exhausting.

  The classes at the Zen center helped, slightly. Performing yoga poses in a room full of other grunting, sweating, straining bodies helped. His muscles and joints had a way of drawing attention to themselves as he stood in the extended triangle or wobbled in the tree pose. Especially the tree pose, balancing on his left foot while the right foot pressed against the inner side of his left thigh and he tried to keep his arms raised over his head, palms together.

  His devotion to pursuing answers to the bigger questions of life hadn’t diminished, but the desire had been smothered by Alexandra Mallory and it was now gasping for life. At the same time, he saw the humor in his situation. He’d found both heaven and hell inside the sagging bungalow.

  Every fiber of his being longed for Alexandra. He wanted to know the entire scope of her mind and he wanted her in his bed so badly his ribs ached. His lungs seemed to scrape against the bone with every breath. It was difficult to comprehend that the most enthralling woman imaginable was sleeping and listening to music and taking off her clothes on the other side of the two-foot deep closets that formed the common wall. At night, he thought he could smell the lotion she spread across her skin. Taking a shower after she’d stood under the same flow of water was a religious experience in itself. She was right there in the room next to his. She used the same utensils and dishes when she ate, sat on the same couch, looked out through the same windows, yet she held herself apart. She didn’t offer a smile to encourage a conversation outside her bedroom door. She rarely went into the great room, suggesting she was available to talk over a glass of wine. He heard the front door close when she went running every morning before the sun came up. He’d thought about buying a pair of running shoes, but she was gone for so long, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to keep pace for all that time. He hadn’t run more than a half mile since college.