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

by Cathryn Grant

  Tess let go of my hand and left.

  I sat down again and looked out the window. It wasn’t too early to think about how I’d approach getting more than my fair share of the pot allocated for pay raises during the annual review process.

  50

  Los Angeles

  Letting Randy hang from a tree, assisted by a roofie, is how I committed my first murder. It was easier than I would have thought.

  Randy was a coward of the worst kind. The day Lisa returned from her ordeal with Tom, Randy couldn’t be bothered to find out whether she was okay and it got me thinking, maybe he put Tom up to it. Tom had a good looking face without a lot behind it. He could vent his spleen on Lisa, but coming up with the whole idea for bullying and shaming her was a bit more complex.

  When Lisa wept out the story of how Tom humiliated her, she’d mentioned something else — Tom said I fantasize about murder. That I want to be all peace and justice for the people, but I’m a hypocrite. Why would Randy tell him about the game? He promised no one would ever know.

  It was more of a lament, I don’t think she really wanted an answer, and I didn’t give her one. She just wanted to express her feeling of utter betrayal, betrayals layered on top of each other.

  I knew then, Randy was behind it. When he tweeted at me that he was losing me after all, I think he believed Dianne was planning to tell me what he’d done to Lisa by proxy. He feared losing me and killed Dianne to stop her talking. When he realized the police were looking for him, he saw he would lose me after all. He didn’t get that he never actually had me.

  Even so, the murder game was never really a game. Lisa felt that in her gut. Randy and I knew it. He wanted to kill Dianne for the way she treated him. When he thought she was going to reveal his ugly secret, it fired him up enough to actually do it. But she didn’t deserve to die.

  He needed to be taken out of circulation — for what he did to Lisa. For killing a woman who was simply trying to get away from her mother’s iron grip on her life. Calling Dianna a whore fired me up enough to actually do it.

  What I did might horrify quite a few people. Murder is the worst crime of all, a crime against life itself, taking the ultimate something that doesn’t belong to you. There’s taking a parking space and taking cuts in line and taking two bucks someone left in the women’s restroom without bothering to find out who it belongs to. Then there’s taking nail polish or hair dye from a discount store, lingerie or a bathing suit from a department store. Stealing someone’s lover. Mugging and armed robbery. Kidnapping. And finally, murder. How many people have stolen a parking space when another car was clearly waiting? How many have dashed to the newly opened checkout line, leapfrogging over others who had been waiting longer? Taking something that’s not yours is a sliding scale.

  The world is better off without some people. No one denied that the world was rid of a heinously evil scourge when Hitler died, when Osama bin Laden was taken out. Unfortunately, those men, and so many others like them, resembled those seemingly innocuous but horrifying wolf spiders — when the female is smacked, a hundred spiders burst out, spilling into every corner of the room. There’s no hope of finding and killing them all.

  Women have been shackled and shoved in corners and treated like shit by too many men for too many centuries. Words have been invented for the sole purpose of shaming women for wanting and having sex. Whore. Slut. Hussy. Strumpet. Floozy. Hooker. Tart. Trollop. Harlot. Where are the mirror images of those words for men? Gigolo? Toy boy? Even then, it’s implied the woman is the one pierced by the slur, an object of pity — she can’t get a man without paying him to accompany her. Besides, how often is the word gigolo bandied about? It doesn’t show up in the Twitter stream. Pimp? He’s considered a businessman, an entrepreneur, in some circles.

  It’s not like men have a super special sex drive that deserves honor while a woman is ambivalent or supposed to keep hers under wraps. And she’d better not wear a top that’s cut too low or a skirt too short or she’ll face blame and shame if she’s raped. She can wear jeans and a sweatshirt and she’ll still be blamed for going somewhere she shouldn’t have.

  Women are mocked and ridiculed for fussing over makeup and getting their hair and nails done, and sneered at if they let their hair grow as it will and leave their faces naked. They’re covered head to toe in heavy fabric so they don’t tempt men. They’re chastised for not smiling at a man’s whim and criticized if they’re too friendly at the wrong time in the wrong place.

  When their hormones affect their mood, women are categorized, dismissed, and told they’re incapable. When a man’s hormones drive him to punch a guy in a bar or launch a bombing strike on the other side of the world…well, they’re strong and defending what’s right.

  Fuck that.

  51

  Aptos

  I hadn’t seen Jared for three days and I felt like I could breathe again. He didn’t seem to recognize that he was almost as scary as Noreen. He wasn’t erratic and full of obvious lies, but he lived in some sort of alternate reality. Inside his head, he and I were a couple, bonded by sex, drawing closer to each other, fighting against potential danger from Noreen, setting up housekeeping in a cozy, if sleek, little cabin by a lazy creek in the middle of a forest, making love and preparing and eating our meals together. Heading into the sunset, hand in hand. Us against the world.

  Listening to him stirred up a desire to grab his neck and squeeze the breath out of him. Vicious, yes, but speaking and not being heard is tiresome. He acted as if my thoughts were insignificant or unimportant, water dribbling unnoticed from a leaky faucet. Not being heard suggests you don’t exist. Being talked over, ignored, dismissed eats away at your soul. If you don’t dig inside and find the will to make yourself heard, you absolutely will disappear altogether.

  Noreen was crazy, but she wasn’t going to hurt us. She liked waving that knife around, playing with our heads. She didn’t have the courage or the strength to cause serious injury.

  Now that I was alone in the house with her again, I pushed Jared out of my thoughts. Without his fears tripping me up, there was a chance I could get some information on what went down between Brian and Noreen.

  I went to the French doors and looked out, picturing the eroding cliff below the deck. The tree brushed its heavy branch against the railing. Beyond, the world was an endless splash of blue sky and water. I opened the door and stepped onto the deck. The wood planks seemed to give ever so slightly beneath my feet, but I swallowed and moved forward until my hip touched the railing. The sun was nearing Pleasure Point at the opposite side of the bay, headed down for the night. I’d never ventured onto the deck at night and I wondered what it felt like, if there was the same sense of being suspended over nothingness, or if not seeing meant a greater sense of security. Once you know there’s nothing beneath you, I doubt it’s possible to remove that knowledge from your mind, so even without visible evidence, I expected it would be equally unnerving.

  I leaned against the railing with more force. It seemed to shift at the pressure of my body. I stepped back, unsure whether I’d imagined it. I returned to the house, closed the doors and locked them. I don’t know why we were careful to keep those doors locked. The deck was inaccessible from any other side. Perhaps the lock gave a false sense of security. Maybe we all secretly feared sleepwalking, and needed to know there was a barrier to simply pressing the handles down and stepping out into nothingness.

  The sound of Noreen talking on the phone drifted out of her bedroom. I couldn’t make out the words, but her door had to be open if her voice was audible in the alcove near the deck. I went into the kitchen and got out the vodka and vermouth, shaker and glasses. I picked up one of the glasses and went to the doorway of her room. I tapped my fingernail on her partially open door. She turned, listening now instead of talking. I raised the glass. She smiled and held up her thumb, then replaced it with the peace sign to indicate two minutes. Nothing like the offer of a martini to make her forget I’d be
trayed her.

  In the kitchen, I got out the jar of olives and filled the shaker with ice. I poured vodka into the shot glass and then into the shaker. As it glided over the ice cubes, they crackled under its relative warmth, even though the vodka was cool from being stored in the freezer.

  When the drinks were ready, I went to the back doors and looked out. We’d never sat on the deck, never done more than step out there briefly to feel its menacing presence. The evening was warm enough. Why not enjoy our drinks out there? Two iron chairs were in the corner closest to the tree, tucked up against a small round table. I unlocked the doors and went out. I moved the table slightly to make more room for us to sit comfortably. The ocean was far enough away, smooth as glass, free from the threat I feel when I’m on its level and able to feel the advance of the water.

  Noreen didn’t object to sitting outside. We toasted the sunset and took simultaneous sips of the soothing liquid.

  Without preamble, I said, “What’s going on with Brian?”

  “What about him?”

  “I’m a little unclear about whether you two are still together, whether he’s planning to move back in here.”

  “That will never happen.”

  “Isn’t he a partial owner?”

  She sipped her drink and looked out at the water. “It’s mine. I bought it with my grandmother’s money. I told you that.”

  “I thought…”

  She placed her hands flat on the table. “It’s mine. You don’t know anything about it, ’kay?”

  For several minutes we sat in silence. She took several small sips of her drink. I waited for the alcohol to smooth over her tension, loosening her tongue. The sun dropped closer to the tree line draining the sea of color. Her drink was almost half gone.

  “Are you hungry?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  I leaned forward so I was more fully within the range of her peripheral vision. I tucked my hair behind my ears, sincere and vulnerable. “Look, Noreen. You’re in danger of losing your roommates. Do you realize that?”

  She turned. Her lips parted slightly. The upper lip trembled. “Why?”

  “You’re acting crazy.”

  “No worse than you two.”

  “Actually, it is. The knife on the door. Locking Jared in his room. The mirror. The rat.”

  “You’re the rat. It was wrapped in your thong. So there you are.”

  “Okay.” I took a long swallow of my drink and scooted my chair to my left so I was directly facing her. “That’s demented, don’t you see that? Leaving rodent carcasses in his room isn’t the way to attract a guy’s interest.”

  “Obviously I can’t attract him at all, so what difference does it make? Only girls like you can do that.”

  “You’re scaring him.”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t scare easily,” I said.

  “Well he’s not as scared as I am.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on. Maybe if we understood…”

  “You’re the last person I’m going to confide in.”

  I finished my drink and popped both olives in my mouth. “Do you want another one?”

  She shrugged. She looked near tears. I picked up the glasses and went inside. When I returned with fresh drinks, she gave me a soggy, limp smile. “Thanks.”

  “We should drink these more slowly.” I laughed. “We don’t want to trip and fall off the deck.”

  Noreen shivered, convulsions passing through her body repeatedly as if she was having some kind of fit. Finally, she rubbed her arms and settled down, slumping lower in the chair. She poked her finger at her olives but didn’t take a sip.

  52

  I left Noreen on the deck, poking at her olives, reminding me again of the decapitated heads I’d envisioned the first time we drank martinis together. I went back inside and returned with a plate of tiny crackers and thinly sliced cheddar cheese. I sat down and ate one. “You have to trust someone. And I think I’m a good candidate. Better than most.”

  “You have no reason to think so highly of yourself.”

  I shrugged. “Jared will leave if there’s not an explanation.”

  “So I’ll never get a chance? Maybe I don’t even care.” She took a sip of her drink. “I think I’m still in love with Brian, on some weird, sick level. How can you love someone who wants to kill you?”

  “Are you sure you’re not just a little paranoid?”

  “You saw that photograph.”

  The photograph was disturbing. But it was also meaningless. When I was a kid, we used to erase the eyes of models in magazines. When the ink was gone, the eyes blazed white, giving them a soulless, other-worldly quality. It was the same impression conveyed by the empty-eyed photograph of Noreen. But maybe Brian, if he was even the one who did it, was just fooling around. Like we’d done with our erasers. A childish thrill at altering another’s appearance.

  “Are you sure he’s the one who drilled out the eyes?”

  “Who else would do it?”

  “Did he say why?”

  “I found it after he was gone.”

  “And you haven’t talked to him? You have no idea what it means?”

  “I might.” She took several sips of her drink. Her eyelids were heavy and her demeanor was finally, gradually, uncoiling itself.

  “Who would I tell? Except Jared, and he should know. If you want him to stay.”

  “It’s worse than you think. I might be in trouble.”

  “Pregnant?”

  She laughed. “No. I mean serious trouble.”

  The sun dropped away from the sky and a cool breeze sprang up. Before the sun disappeared, the deck had grown quite warm. The breeze was a relief. For now.

  “So you do know why he damaged the photograph?”

  “He didn’t like what I was seeing.”

  “What was that?”

  “In the mirror.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When I looked in the mirror, I saw a woman’s face.”

  I laughed softly.

  “Not my own. His mother’s.”

  “Does she look like you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then why…are you taking medication, or anything?” I wondered why I’d never considered it. That would explain her bizarre behavior. And maybe she wasn’t taking a prescription, maybe she was using a hallucinogenic and we hadn’t noticed. It’s not like we’d spent much time around her.

  It annoyed me that I was starting to think in terms of we, as if Jared and I were a unit after all. But when it came to facing our psychotic landlord, I suppose we were. When he showed me the picture of the classy little cabin, I felt as if he’d thrown a net over me and was slowly pulling a rope, tightening it ever so slowly while he whispered that everything would be okay, his soothing tone mimicking the trainers that capture escaped wildcats and try to coax them back into a cage. He made too many assumptions, assuming sex meant more than it did, assuming we were friends, assuming I wanted to chain myself to another human being, assuming he understood me, or that he understood women in general and there was no variation in desire from one woman to the next. He seemed to think all women wanted the same things.

  I’d bolted from his room, although I was sorry not to look more carefully at the pictures of the small house. It looked new, very nicely constructed with dark hardwood floors and a small, but gleaming kitchen featuring charcoal gray granite counters and buff colored cabinets.

  Noreen sipped her martini and didn’t speak for several seconds. “He thought I was making it up —seeing her face in the mirror — trying to upset him. Playing mind games.”

  “Why would he think that?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I think you should tell me. Maybe I can help.”

  “It’s too late for that.” She plucked an olive out of the glass and ate it, her face turned toward the horizon so I couldn’t read her expression.

  53r />
  The martini glasses were empty and Noreen still hadn’t spoken. I needed her to tell me what was going on. I didn’t care if she decreed it too late. What did that even mean? I played my ace — “I met Brian.”

  She jerked her head toward me. “No you didn’t.”

  “He came by a while back, when you were at your parents.”

  Her voice rose and turned shrill. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He didn’t say who he was.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “I figured it out eventually. The point is, I could ask him about the photograph, and about whatever it is you don’t want to tell me.”

  “He won’t say anything.”

  “I bet he would.” I smiled with a brief twitch of my lips.

  She glared at me. “You wouldn’t.” She made a whimpering sound. “You wouldn’t seduce my…You’re a…”

  I stood up. “Do you want another drink? And then you need to tell me, or Jared and I will be moving out this weekend.” There was no doubt Jared would be willing. I wasn’t sure I was, but I wanted to know what was going on with Joe…Brian. Asking him was not the ideal solution, and I wasn’t entirely sure he would tell the truth. Noreen seemed to be moving closer toward truthfulness, at the end of her rope, in some ways.

  She let out another whimper, the sound faint and faraway, like a dog outside a solid wood door, the cry so faint you have to stand motionless and strain to determine whether you’d really heard it. I took her meek noise as a yes to a third drink. My mind was pleasantly floating. Three martinis in a relatively short span of time can really knock you over, but it was a warm, relaxed, unworried feeling and it was what I needed, with the ocean growing darker beside us, white caps starting to emerge.

  After mixing the drinks and carrying them to the table on the deck, I refilled the plate with cheese and crackers. I returned to the house, picked up one of Noreen’s gardenia candles and a lighter and brought them outside. I set the candle on the table, clicked the lighter, and held the flame to the wick. The sky was a deep inky blue and a few stars had popped out like eyes opening brightly, equally curious about Joe. The moon was a thin slice, crystal clear in the cloudless expanse. There wasn’t even a whisper of fog along the shore and the lights of Capitola sparkled on one side, Monterey on the other.