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

by Cathryn Grant

  He gave me a lazy smile.

  “When you saw me inside Henry’s…”

  “Next time,” he said.

  “Next time, what?”

  “I’m sure you’ll go out again. And I’m noticing the owner of the BMW isn’t around much lately.”

  “So you’re not in such a hurry to surprise Noreen after all?”

  He smiled. “There’s a right time for everything.”

  “If you knew he wasn’t around, and you saw me leave…”

  “You’re more enticing than Noreen.”

  I smiled. “Thank you.”

  I opened the door.

  “Joe,” he said. “My name’s Joe.”

  A nice solid name. A low-key counter to my rather flamboyant name. “Alex,” I said. Maybe another time I’d tell him all of it.

  30

  Back at the house, Jared’s BMW was still gone. I parked and went inside. Noreen was sitting on the couch watching Legally Blonde. She gave me a watery smile but said nothing.

  I stood there for a moment. Finally, I moved closer to the couch. “What’s the progress on the mirror replacement?”

  “I put a mirror in your room.”

  “Not acceptable.”

  “I thought it was settled?” she said.

  “How did you come to that conclusion?”

  “Because I told you I had a temper tantrum. I told you I…”

  “None of that has to do with replacing it.”

  “Where were you? You look tipsy. I hope you didn’t drive drunk.”

  “Nothing to worry about, mom.”

  She scowled.

  “If you don’t replace the mirror, I will. And I’ll expect you to reimburse me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I started toward the hallway.

  “Do you want to watch this with me?”

  I shook my head.

  “I get nervous when I’m here by myself.”

  She picked up the remote and paused the movie. “It seems like you and Jared are never here any more.”

  “We have our own lives.”

  “But I thought…I don’t like being here alone.”

  “We’re renting bedrooms in your house, Noreen. We’re not here to be friends or some kind of substitute family.”

  “That’s not what I want.”

  “I’m going to crash.”

  “Your hair and makeup says you already had a nap. I’ll make martinis.” She stood up.

  “No thanks.”

  She slumped on the couch and stared at the TV but didn’t re-start the movie. I walked into the hallway, went into my room, and closed and locked the door. I sat in the armchair, unzipped my boots, and pulled them off. I dropped them on the floor and imagined Noreen, staring at the wall shared by my bedroom and the great room.

  I popped open my laptop and fired up the spreadsheet where I track my expenses and savings. If Tess came through with a decent pay raise, I could be out of this delicately balanced little house in three months. I wondered if I’d make it that long.

  31

  Mountain View

  So many people are indiscriminate with their drug and alcohol use, viewing them as nothing more than a pathway to a good time. Brain altering stimulants are streamlined vehicles for letting go of their rational minds and pursuing a long, prolonged derangement of the senses — a line Jim Morrison adapted, aka stole, from the poet Arthur Rimbaud. But it’s okay. Many intriguing ways of expressing truth about life have been stolen, and Jim brought the concept into the modern world. I’m sure Rimbaud appreciated his second fifteen minutes in the spotlight.

  Rimbaud insisted the systematized disorganization of all the senses creates visionary poets. It’s not clear whether he supported the chemical or herbal path to disorganization, which is a hell of a lot less terrifying than derangement, but he did believe vision came out of disorder. Rimbaud was a cool guy, an avant-garde thinker, considering he lived in the late 1800s. Arthur R — how’s that for poetic — proposed that women should have their eternal slavery destroyed, living for themselves and through themselves. He imagined women might become poets. Imagine that. All this would come about through abominable mankind setting her free, of course. He believed mankind would wake up and do just that. He didn’t quite recognize that women had considerable more free will than he allowed them. Still, he deserves kudos even though his vision is not how it played out. Mankind did not set women free. Women took their freedom into their own hands. We still do take freedom into our own hands. It’s a wrestling match that’s lasted thousands of years. At least he recognized something wasn’t right.

  Smoking weed leaves you dreamy and relaxed, the shared escape tightens the bonds of friendship. Doing shots and sipping wine softens the brain, removes the excess clutter of life, and brings you into the moment. We’re all seeking to be In The Moment. As long as you don’t go too far. Two or three glasses of wine are nice, ten puts you on the bathroom floor, which is a Moment I prefer to avoid.

  While people smoke on patios and meet their friends in bars, they rarely stop to think about what easy targets they become for a killer. They think, most of the time, about not getting behind the wheel of a car. They think about not making utter fools of themselves. Most women think quite a bit about making sure they don’t end up a victim of rape after four martinis or shots with the guys.

  But they don’t think about murder.

  Alcohol and pot are perfect murder weapons for a woman. Or at least part of her toolkit. Vodka and whiskey and cannabis take away the natural disadvantage of a smaller form, and upper body strength that’s not a match for even a medium-sized man. I’ve been lifting weights since I was fifteen years old. I can curl twenty-five pounds and I can bench press one-hundred-thirty-five pounds. I’m toned and lean, but still lithe. My strength is startling to people when they encounter it for the first, or last, time.

  Whether a woman is using a knife or a rope, water or a pillow or a plastic bag — drugs and alcohol are a huge help. It’s like having an accessory to the crime. A murder partner. Guns are so loud and messy, and like most women, I prefer to work quietly and as neatly as possible.

  Once I came to realize the world would be better off without Charlie Denton, that Sylvia and her kids would be able to continue eking out their existence without some asshole going out of his way to cut the fragile strings holding them aloft, I also knew immediately that a bit of pot and an evening of vodka shots were essential to getting the upper hand with him. The trickiest part would be figuring out how to do shots and smoke dope while keeping my own senses arranged.

  Taking possession of Charlie’s phone was an added benefit. But you don’t kill someone over an unwanted photograph.

  The world didn’t need another attorney, a man who believed women existed solely for his pleasure, a man who blamed a woman for a man’s failure. A man who labeled a woman a whore because she didn’t yield to his crude offer. His views were obscene and dangerous. He was a man who wanted to destroy six lives for the sheer satisfaction of being right. Instead of plugging his ears, he wanted to silence all of them. This was a man who needed to be prevented from sowing his seed and raising yet another generation of misogynists.

  32

  Aptos

  Tess was in my office. Again. Gushing about Jared. Again.

  Since I’d started working for her, she’d begun to remind me of a butterfly defying the laws of nature — a silky black and golden orange creature lighting on whatever object pricked her desire, now turning and crawling back into the husk of her cocoon, pulling it around her and allowing her body to deteriorate into a worm again.

  I’d done everything I could to reflect her narcissistic face back to her, and she’d turned into something else entirely. She no longer elicited my respect and admiration. I couldn’t remake myself into something quivering and needy. I could try to mirror some of those traits, or say things that suggested I had similar fears, but I wasn’t sure it would come off as genuine.


  “Maybe you should introduce him to me,” Tess said. She crossed her legs and ran her fingers gently over her kneecap.

  “He’s having sex with me.”

  “You said he’s not happy with that situation.” She stood up. “I’m antsy. Do you want to go to the gym with me? We can take a long lunch and do some weight lifting.”

  “You don’t have any meetings?”

  She shrugged.

  I couldn’t have this. The moment I’d walked into my interview with Tess, I’d known she was a good candidate to be my protector at CoastalCreative. I’d been certain she could give me job security, to defend me if I ever made a mistake. She was there to sing my praises to her peers, to deliver pay increases and good performance reviews. There had been too many job changes in my life, and if I was going to make any forward steps toward long-term financial security, the kind of money that allows a mind to free itself from ever thinking of money. I needed someone on my team.

  In the past, my managers and bosses had been men. It’s easy to recruit a man to be on your side. A night or two of inappropriate sex with a subordinate and they were steadfastly watching out for my interests. But I’d believed a woman would be more passionate in a different way. A woman would go further to ensure a solid career because the strength of sisterhood, the feeling that my success was her success, was alluring. The bond that’s not unlike the bond of shared military bootcamp, lasting a lifetime, the result of fighting for your place in what’s still, let’s be honest, a man’s world. Business and politics and money are dominated by men. Nearly two decades into the twenty-first century, that’s still the case. The only change is that male domination has now become a subterranean thread, running through Wall Street and Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley — superficial respect and equality instead of blatant shunning.

  When I met Tess, the final interrogator for my application to CoastalCreative, she’d presented a stunning package of accomplishments. She was fully in command of every step of her career, not to mention every ounce of fat and muscle in her body, every choice in her life. She’d mapped out a career path before she exited the MBA program at Stanford — complete with weekly and monthly goals, each step forward a seductively polished stone. Even as a young senior vice president, which would satisfy many women, she’d suggested she wanted more. She needed me as much as I needed her. She needed a confidante whom she could trust absolutely. She needed a project manager that was zealous and treated every single mundane task like a mission with life threatening consequences. She needed a colleague who would be loyal to the death.

  I thought I had a perfect setup. I thought a woman’s support would embody all that passion and loyalty, that it would be more long lasting than a man’s. Permanent. I thought removing sex from the equation was brilliant on my part. Loyalty and a higher vision of the need for women to have each other’s backs would go far deeper and become much stronger than support born out of a simple fear of scandal.

  I couldn’t understand why she’d changed. Unless she’d always been needy and insecure and obsessed with finding a man and she’d kept it hidden until we became close. It was hard to know.

  I wheeled my chair away from the desk. “Sure. I’ll go to the gym with you.”

  “I have extra workout clothes you can borrow.”

  “No need,” I said. “I keep running clothes in my trunk.”

  Six minutes later I pulled out of the parking lot, following Tess’s white Mercedes to her gym. The car gleamed in the late morning light. It looked like a powerful, rare white tiger. That was the car I would have someday, although I might want the small SUV model. I slid my hands down the side of the steering wheel and shifted in my seat, imagining the feel of premium leather and the purr of an engine that functioned so well the parts seemed to be cast from platinum.

  The lobby of Tess’s gym overflowed with clusters of tropical plants. There was an eclectic mix of wicker and leather furniture. Baskets of bottled water and body lotion were nestled between love seats and chairs. A few low tables had fresh flowers in Steuben vases. The receptionist acted as if Tess was her best friend.

  We changed into spandex capri pants and sports bras and went into the cardio room with its liberally spaced elliptical machines and treadmills. The treadmills faced a garden with a pond and a small waterfall. In the middle of the day, there were only three other women using the twenty or so machines. Tess and I climbed on side-by-side treadmills, set the incline and speed, and started walking. Tess checked her phone while she walked, obviously quite used to the rhythm of walking or running on an artificial surface that moved with her. Four minutes into it I wished I was outside, running on a path or a sidewalk, creating my own pace. Treadmills are for rainy weather, that’s all.

  After a few more finger-flying taps at her phone, she slipped it into the back pocket of her workout pants, stabbed her finger at the controls, and began running faster. I did the same. We looked out the window and didn’t talk, which I appreciated.

  We ran for nearly forty minutes. When I heard Tess’s machine shift to a slower speed, I lowered mine as well. The machines ground to a halt. We stepped off and wiped down the handles. We both grabbed a second bottle of water from the basket near the door and went into the weight room. It was empty. Tess sat on the end of the bench press and stretched her arms overhead. “I wanted to tell you something.” She lowered her arms and ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back in thick, sweaty black tufts.

  I bent forward and touched my toes, angling first one toe and then the other off the floor to give an extra stretch to my calf muscles. “Uh huh.” I pushed my upper body gently lower until my palms were flat on the floor.

  “No go on the pay increase,” she said.

  The clank of weight bricks on the benchpress almost drowned out the last word. Almost.

  I straightened and looked at her. “That’s a surprise.”

  “It shouldn’t be. I told you an out-of-cycle increase had to be negotiated.”

  “You sounded confident you could manage it, though.”

  “It doesn’t mean we don’t recognize your value.” She lay on her back and grabbed the handles of the machine, ready to lift.

  “I have no doubt you see my value, that’s why I’m surprised.”

  “I was able to get you a spot bonus. Fifteen hundred dollars. For the analysis you did on how metrics have improved since you came on board.”

  Fifteen hundred dollars was nice, very nice, but it was the ongoing infusion of cash that meant something. I closed my eyes and saw the beige tile floor and the gently sloping deck of my current home. I thought about the scraped up mirror and Noreen’s breathless requests that we hang out together. I thought about Jared and his exquisite smile and the proximity of his bed to mine. But every night he was in there longing for me with a desire that sucked the oxygen from my room. So much for his Buddhist exercise in letting go of desire and attachment. He wanted too much.

  It seemed as if he lay in his room, waiting for me. I could feel him breathing, hear him breathing, the whole house pulsed with his long, deep breaths. My bedroom wall grew warm from the heat of his breath, unhindered by the closets lining our shared wall. I could hardly sleep with the sound of his breathing, the knowledge of his open eyes, fixed at the back of his door, staring at the doorknob, waiting for it to turn. Every night I found myself creeping into the kitchen at eleven or twelve and mixing a martini, taking it back to my room, sipping it steadily until it lulled me to sleep. But the resulting sleep was restless, my dreams moving in the same rhythm as Jared’s chest as it rose and fell.

  Escape from that stew of human need was imperative. He hadn’t asked about our relationship again but I imagined his next attempt to pin things down would mean more pressure to move out of Noreen’s together. It would be tempting, but in the long run, would create more problems than it solved.

  I gave Tess a smile calculated to look pleased, but without glee and without communicating a sense that she’d done as much as sh
e possibly could. She had not. Her own issues had surely gotten in the way. Suddenly she was afraid to break the rules and hesitant to exert her influence. A senior vice president should have very few people signing off on something that skirted the existing structure. It wasn’t as if out-of-cycle raises were unheard of, they just had to be pushed through by someone who was a fighter, someone with her documentation in place to justify the request. If an employee threatened to leave the company to work for a competitor, there would be no objection to an unplanned increase. In fact, it wasn’t truly unplanned — budgets allowed for such things. The problem was, the threat of going with the competition worked very well for an engineer. For a project manager, not so much. Although it should. Companies think only the engineers provide intellectual capital. They don’t realize that without the creme de la creme in support functions, none of their precious engineering performs well in the marketplace. It was Tess’s job to communicate that to her superiors.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said.

  I studied her eyes. After a moment, she glanced away, looking toward the door to see whether anyone had come in who might dissolve the uncomfortable moment. As she looked back at me, guilt was visible in the erratic movement of her eyes, searching mine for reassurance. Guilt was good. Guilt would keep me at the forefront of her thoughts.

  My body had cooled down from the treadmill and the AC was set too high for such a large, unoccupied room. I rubbed my arms. The skin was cold and dry.

  “I’ll try again next quarter,” Tess said.

  I turned away.

  “Don’t sulk,” she said. “It’s unprofessional.”

  “I never sulk.”

  “It sure looks to me like sulking.”

  “I didn’t ask for a raise. You offered it, so my expectation was set differently, that’s all.”

  “I said I was sorry.”