‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go on and on. May I help you?’
‘I had some questions about three fifty Roscommon Drive?’ said Kate.
Maybe it was just an impression, but it seemed to Kate that everyone’s smile dimmed, just slightly, and the room got just a little chillier.
A woman near the back, a plump blonde in a blue suit, came to the front. ‘I’m handling that for now.’ She held out her hand. ‘Abbie Flintstone. And you’re—?’
‘Kate. Kate Waters.’
‘Kate?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so pleased to meet you, Kate.’ Abbie’s smile was big and shiny bright and somehow irrelevant and wrong.
‘I just had some questions—’ Kate began.
‘I have some questions myself, Kate.’ She reached in her purse, jingled some car keys. ‘Why don’t we meet at the house? We can talk there.’
‘It’s okay,’ Kate began, ‘I—’
But Abbie was gone, headed presumably for her car.
Kate pulled in the driveway, and Abbie parked her car on the street. They met by the door. A woman – the same woman, in fact, that Kate had spoken to the last time she was here – was out walking her dog again. Kate had no idea what the woman’s name was, but she remembered the dog’s name was Felix.
‘Jane?’ Abbie called. ‘Is it a yes or a no?’
‘It’s a yes,’ the woman called back.
Abbie turned back to Kate. Her expression was no longer cheery. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Now Jane has identified you.’
‘What?’
‘You showed up at this house, spent the night like it was a motel, called our office, talked to Marci, told her some kind of ridiculous story, which you also told to Jane over there. Want to tell me what’s really going on here?’
‘What’s really going on?’ Kate’s voice rose. ‘What’s really going on? I have absolutely no idea. What I thought was going on was that I was meeting an old friend, Ellen Wilson. We were emailing back and forth discussing it. I flew all the way here from Arizona, and she never showed up.’
‘The people who own this house live in Minnesota. The Parkers. They inherited it from Emily Madigan, who died a year ago. This Ellen person? You’d mentioned the name to Marci, so I called the owners. They’ve never heard of her.’
‘Ellen’s been dead for eight months,’ Kate said. ‘I just found out, day before yesterday. Someone, I don’t know who, got me to come here, pretending to be her.’
There was a long silence. Birds twittered, and somewhere a dog barked and barked, but not like he really meant it.
‘Well, I don’t know what to think.’ Abbie whooshed out a breath. ‘I really don’t.’ She paused. ‘How did you get in, anyway?’
‘The key,’ Kate said. ‘It’s under that rock by the door.’
‘We’re not in the habit of leaving keys under rocks at Evan Bright Realty,’ Abbie said formally. She went over, lifted the rock. There was nothing there.
‘I left a note,’ said Kate. ‘Inside on the kitchen table.’
She followed Abbie inside to the kitchen. The note was gone too.
Kate remembered something else: she peeked into the dining room. ‘The flowers,’ she said. ‘I brought them for Ellen, but they’re not here either. I even talked to the police. You can check on that. A man from law enforcement came over and went through the house.’
‘No kidding.’ Abbie’s face softened a bit. ‘You talked to the police, and they actually came to the house?’
‘Yes. Officer Matt Dodds. You can check it out. He was looking for—’ Kate began to giggle, a little hysterically. ‘Ellen’s body.’
‘Wow. I didn’t realize you’d called the police. Well.’ Abbie looked as Kate as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Somebody was really mad at you. Let me guess. An ex.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Oh my god!’ said Abbie suddenly.
‘Oh my god what?’
‘I just remembered something. Now it’s all coming together.’ She sat down heavily at the kitchen table. ‘I need a drink.’ She stood up again. ‘Water, I mean. Got some bottled in my car. Want one?’
‘Yes, please,’ Kate said.
Abbie handed Kate a bottle of water and sat down across from her.
‘We’re not showing this house at the moment,’ she said. ‘The owners want us to sit on it till the housing market improves. But up to a couple of weeks or so ago we – I should say Steve, he’s handling it, but he’s out of town right now – Steve was showing it from time to time.’
She paused, took a swig of water. ‘Not that anyone was lining up to see it. As a matter of fact, right now Steve’s at a conference for realtors: How to Improve Sales in a Tanking Economy.’ She sighed.
‘It’s tough,’ Kate said.
‘Oh, yes, it is. Anyway, there used to be a spare key on one of those hooks over there by the door. Then one day Steve noticed it was gone.’
‘Ah,’ Kate said.
‘He tried to remember the last time he’d actually noticed the key. It was maybe a month before – during which time he’d shown the house three times, once to a young couple, and twice to men. One he didn’t remember much about, but the other one, the last one to look at the house, was maybe late thirties, early forties, and Steve didn’t like him.’
‘Oh,’ said Kate. ‘Why is that?’
‘He felt uncomfortable. He thought he was maybe some kind of real-estate scammer. Remembering this guy was kind of an aha moment for him.’
‘Really?’ Kate said.
‘Steve was pretty stoked about it, you know? What I think is—’ She paused significantly. ‘It could be the person who pretended to be your friend. Anyway, we debated getting the locks changed, but we never did.’
‘Why not?’
‘Partially inertia on Steve’s part, to be honest. But there’s nothing in this house of any value. The relatives came here from Minnesota, auctioned off any furniture that was of value and either threw away or took everything left that was personal. What’s here now comes with the house.’
‘Names? Do you have names for any of these people who might have taken the key?’
‘Steve should. I don’t have his card.’ She reached in her purse. ‘Here, take mine. Call me later—’ she glanced at her watch – ‘tomorrow and I’ll give you his cell number. He’ll have names – but of course there’s no telling if they’re real.’ She locked the door, started down the driveway. At the end she paused. ‘Honey, I’m sorry.’
‘Not your fault,’ Kate said.
Abbie’s car was blocking the driveway. Funny, Kate thought as she watched her pull away. Abbie had said all the personal stuff had been taken away by the relatives, and it was true, there’d been nothing personal in the house anywhere that Kate could tell, except for the photograph of the woman in the bikini at Tall Pines Lake.
Tired from her night in the motel keeping vigil, too tired to think any more, Kate, the scourge of decent neighborhoods everywhere, got slowly into the rental car. She drove slowly back to the motel, which was a nondescript building, she thought wearily, painted in bright colors, surrounded by many other nondescript buildings in similar bright colors and a freeway full of fast-moving cars and trucks and vans, going quickly from one nondescript place to another.
She was so tired that she went back to her motel room, put the sliding chain on the door and lay down on the bed. Her flight tomorrow was at seven in the morning, which meant she should leave for the airport around five. Why had she made it so early? Then, suddenly, she began to weep, but fell asleep almost at once.
When she woke it was dark outside. What time was it? Nearly eight o’clock. She got up, still groggy, and splashed cold water on her face, checked her cellphone. She’d missed a call from Dakota, no message. Why hadn’t Dakota texted her? Oh, well. Time for dinner. She picked up her purse from the dresser.
There was a Subway not too far, a couple of parking lots away. Kate decided to walk; it would wake
her up. The freeway was humming, but in a subdued way, and the Subway restaurant was empty, just a clerk yawning behind the counter. Kate scanned the menu above her and ordered a Diet Coke and a seafood sandwich. She ate it there, staring out at the parking lots and the brightly lit plate-glass windows of Kroger’s.
Then she walked back, dodging the parked cars, past the office and down to her room. A few doors down from her room a hallway led to the interior of the motel, where there was, Kate had checked earlier, a mangy-looking swimming pool. As she walked by the hallway someone just inside coughed, a deep cough.
An alarm bell went off in her mind.
She walked a little faster, scrabbling in her purse for her room key with her free hand, fingers slipping off the slick plastic. She could feel someone right behind her now, right behind her as if he had been waiting for her all along.
‘Wait!’ a man’s voice said. ‘Kate, wait!’
She didn’t turn, just tightened her grip on the plastic card. She reached her room, tried to insert the plastic card key, but her hands were shaking and it wouldn’t go in.
Maybe she shouldn’t go inside, anyway – he might push in behind her. She should try to get around him, go the office. She stepped back from the door and turned to make a wide berth around him. Then she saw his face.
‘You,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’
TWENTY-SEVEN
It was Malcolm, the supposed detective. He was wearing jeans and a rumpled blue denim shirt, and he looked tired.
‘I came here to find you,’ he said. ‘Dakota told me where you were.’
‘Right,’ Kate said. ‘Thanks, Dakota.’ She stepped around him, closer to the office. ‘Are you the man that called the motel looking for me, who said I was his wife?’
Malcolm looked surprised. ‘No. That happened?’
Should she believe him? Had he been stalking her all this time? She had a sudden thought – was he the man lurking in the neighborhood, the one the dog was barking at, the night she’d slept at the house at Roscommon Drive? But he couldn’t possibly know about Ellen Wilson, could he? She didn’t see how, and the sane part of her brain told her all these thoughts were paranoid and totally irrational, but just in case she moved even further away from him until she was out in the parking lot.
‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘That happened.’
She could see the office out of the corner of her eye. She walked towards the office lights, noticing thing she hadn’t noticed before. For instance, the blue Toyota Camry parked a couple of spaces down from her room. It hadn’t been there earlier.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’
Kate began to laugh, a little out of control laugh. She walked a little faster. ‘Why?’ she asked over her shoulder. ‘Are we breaking up?’
‘Not just yet,’ he called out to her. ‘Go to the office, sit inside. It’s a safe place. I’ll meet you there.’
John the desk clerk looked up from a book he was reading. Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell. ‘Some guy was looking for you,’ he told her, ‘but it’s okay, I told him you weren’t registered here.’
He straightened his nerd glasses.
‘He found me anyway,’ Kate said. The office was chilly, overdone on the air conditioning. John the clerk, she noticed, was wearing a thick brown sweater. She sat down on the only chair, an uncomfortable one, so close to the desk that John would probably be able to hear any conversation that might take place.
She bet he’d listen, too – he looked like that kind of person.
Malcolm walked in.
John looked over at Kate nervously. ‘It’s not my fault,’ he said. ‘I told him there was no one here by your name, I swear.’
‘I believe you,’ Kate said.
‘You did right,’ Malcolm told the desk clerk. ‘I could have been an abusive husband or, even worse, a stalker or a serial rapist.’
‘Okay, okay.’ The desk clerk looked disgusted. ‘I get the message. Whatever.’
‘Dakota told me everything,’ Malcolm said to Kate. ‘Your friend who’s dead, the empty house all of it. Look, I’m with law enforcement – I’m just on leave at the moment.’
‘So I heard.’
‘And—’
‘This isn’t going to work,’ Kate said. ‘Let’s go to one of the fast food places to talk.’ She stood up. ‘You’ve seen him now,’ she said over her shoulder to the clerk, though by now her fear had dissipated. ‘If I turn up missing, it was him.’
‘Wait!’ John, the desk clerk, held up his cellphone. ‘I’ll take his picture.’
Malcolm mugged briefly for the camera.
They walked outside. It was cool but warmer than the chilly office, and lights sparkled and glimmered from the cars and the fast food chains and the Kroger’s, giving the impression that they were in a place that was interesting and exciting – and maybe they were.
‘Nothing,’ Kate said. ‘Carrie said nothing to me. I’m so tired of thinking about it, okay?’
They sat in a booth at the McDonald’s with hard orange seats that said eat up, hurry, hurry, customers are waiting. Kate got a Diet Coke and Malcolm a Coke and three quarter-pounders with cheese and fries. It took him one of the quarter-pounders to explain to Kate how he had ended up in New Jersey, sitting across from her.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘And now I have to ask why you took it at face value – that it was this Ellen who was emailing you?’
‘It never occurred to me, really, that it might not be her.’
‘Why not?’
‘I guess it was the Ooblecks.’
‘Ah, the Ooblecks.’
‘Green slime from a Dr Suess book. Bartholomew and the Oobleck.’
‘Ah.’
Kate reached for one of his fries. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Go ahead. Ketchup?’
‘Yes.’ Kate opened a packet and squeezed a little mound beside the fries. ‘That’s what we called ourselves, a group of us in New York City.’ She dipped a fry in the ketchup and ate it. ‘It’s too hard to explain.’
‘That’s it? That’s what made you trust whoever it was? That they knew about the Ooblecks?’
‘Yes. I guess I wanted to trust her, him, it, whatever.’ She paused. ‘I really needed to trust somebody so, as usual, I guess I chose the wrong person.’
‘As usual?’
‘Never mind.’
‘So maybe we can narrow down who might have done it,’ Malcolm said. ‘Someone from your past who knew about the Ooblecks stuff. Or – this old boyfriend of yours, Harry Light?’
‘What! Dakota told you about him too?’
‘Dakota’s your true friend,’ said Malcolm, ‘and don’t you forget that. Did he know about the Ooblecks?’
‘No.’ She frowned. ‘That’s one of the reasons I was hot to go see Ellen – New Jersey’s so far away from California.’
‘So you spent the night in the house. Ellen never showed, and then you left the next morning. Doesn’t make much sense – just a really stupid joke. Anything unusual happen during the night?’
‘There was a dog. It kept barking. It woke me up.’ She smiled. ‘It woke up the whole neighborhood, and the police came.’
‘Aha.’
‘What?’
‘Harry ever do workshops and the like within the prison system?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, not that I know of. Why?’
‘Anna Marie Romero. That name mean anything to you?’
‘She was one of his students at a workshop he did.’ Kate shrugged. ‘Actually, I kind of suspected something might be going on between her and Harry. By then, though, Harry had turned out to be such a jerk I was basically thinking to myself, leave.’
‘She’s gone missing.’
‘What?’
‘She’s gone missing. Harry was questioned.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. He wasn’t charged or anything.’ Malcolm polished off the last quarter-pounder and wiped his mouth with three napkins. He looked o
ver at Kate. She seemed pale, weary. Should he mention the fact he might be talking to Anna Marie’s mother soon? No. Too much right now. Wait. See how it played out. ‘But he does have a criminal record.’
‘What!’
‘Misdemeanor criminal damage.’
‘What does that mean, exactly?’
‘Hard to tell. Got mad, broke something that belonged to someone else. In the end it was dismissed.’
‘Great.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘I don’t even want to think about it right now, okay?’ Her voice was tense, high with anxiety. Familiar.
‘You take any medication?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like, for anxiety. You seem a little high-strung.’ Plus he could imagine how she’d be once he told her what he was going to tell her next.
‘Don’t I have a right to be anxious and high-strung? And I’ve hardly slept at all for days. Dakota gave me two Ativan before I left. I took one for the plane, and I have one more, okay? But I don’t want to take it and lose my edge.’
‘I’m here. Relax. You don’t need an edge now. You have an Ativan on you right now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, then take it, okay?’
‘Tell me something first.’
‘What?’
‘You were a cop in Mesa; now you’re on some kind of leave?’
‘Right, some kind of leave.’
‘Why?’
‘My wife Cindy killed herself about nine months ago. I had a little trouble dealing with that.’
‘Oh!’ Kate put her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. How could I be this horrible self-centered person? Look—’ She reached into her purse and took out a gold metal pillbox. She opened it and took out a small white pill. ‘I’m taking this Ativan, okay?’
‘Okay. Good.’
‘There,’ she said after a moment. ‘Your wife? Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No.’ Malcolm avoided her eyes.
Outside, a car pulled into a parking slot near them. Bugs batted futilely at the street lights. Kate and Malcolm rested.
‘The tire blowing out on your car?’ Malcolm said after a while. ‘It wasn’t an accident. Someone shot out the tires.’
‘Someone did what?’
Empty Houses Page 15