The key chain Rebecca had urged upon her was elegant and distinctive. Few keys hung from its sterling ring. Susan had been informed which one was for the front door, but she was interested in what had happened on the porch, so she paused to search the lawn and surrounding property first.
The porch fronted the house and then swung out, jutting into the yard before continuing on down the side of the building. Susan walked around the entire area, moving around the freshly enameled white-wicker furniture and numerous pots trailing petunias and impatiens. She was wondering what miracle had allowed this particular area to remain frost-free so late in the year when she realized that the plants had a light coating of dust—on their silk petals and leaves. She moved closer to the ornate rail that surrounded the space and then peered over the edge into a line of hedges that had been placed in the lawn, full grown, to landscape the house. There was a space between the plants and the building where the mugger could have hidden while waiting for her, but any footprints had been covered by drifting leaves. Besides, Susan reminded herself, how had the mugger known she was going to appear? She slowly strolled the shiny green floorboards and thought this out.
Since the person couldn’t possibly have known that she was going to be here, he must have been waiting for someone or something else. Probably for Rebecca, but Susan couldn’t make much sense of that. She was getting chilly. She’d explore the rest of the yard later. She inserted the key in the lock and gulped back a scream.
“Susan! What’s wrong? It’s me.”
The apparition behind her turned into her next-door neighbor, and Susan’s heart returned to normal. It was the first time in months that she found herself glad to see Amy Ellsworth.
“Rebecca thought of some other things that she needed, and I volunteered to come on over and help you get them.”
Susan suspected that Amy was more than slightly interested in seeing the inside of the house, and though she would have preferred looking around alone, there was nothing she could do about that now. She turned the key, and they were inside.
“What’s on your list?”
Susan hadn’t, in fact, had time to look at the sheet of paper that Rebecca had shoved in her hand. She stopped in the large atrium entryway, and while Amy chattered on about how much it must cost to keep such a space heated in the winter and air-conditioned in the summer, she pulled the list from her jacket pocket and studied it.
There were about thirty items written in bold block letters with a black wide-point fountain pen. Everything from a special herb tea to a particularly personal piece of underwear was listed. If only directions had been given for finding these things, Susan thought.
“What’s yours say?” she asked Amy.
“Not much. Two colors of lipstick, a white nightgown, and some slippers, and a few other odds and ends.”
Sounded like Rebecca was going to add some class to her temporary residence, Susan thought, before deciding that she was being bitchy. “She wanted me to bring some special food items, so I’m going to start in the kitchen.”
“Good idea,” Amy enthused. “I’ll come with you.”
They prowled through the halls together, opening doors to bathrooms, closets, and even a small room apparently reserved exclusively for a phone and two fax machines before finding the kitchen. It was every bit as impressive as Susan had expected it to be. The prominent colors were evergreen and white with lots of copper and butter yellow accents thrown in. A huge green Garland stove stood against one wall, opposite banks of industrial refrigerators. Cherry cabinets surrounded the appliances, and everywhere there were marble countertops, brass rails, and an extraordinary collection of gourmet tools. From a duck press to an imported espresso machine, this place flaunted all the necessities of the good life.
A more prosaic needle in the haystack came to Susan’s mind as she considered finding a box of tea here. Well, she knew where she kept tea: in a convenient cupboard, right next to her stove. She walked across the room and grabbed the shiny brass pull. An exemplary collection of wineglasses stood before her. She sighed, why should she get lucky? She started to systematically search the large room, opening cupboard doors and examining the contents. The room was organized as no kitchen she’d ever been in. Like was gathered to like. All the glasses were in one place, all the spices, all the pots, all the pans. But nothing was in a spot convenient for cooking. The glasses stored by the stove were a case in point. So were the shelves of various expensive vases (wedding gifts? or an annex to Steuben’s warehouse?) sitting conveniently by the upright freezer in case anyone wanted to throw a couple of frozen peas into one. She would have commented on this strange arrangement to Amy if she could have gotten a word in edgewise, but Amy had been chatting away ever since the two of them had entered the room. Stumped, Susan decided that she might as well listen.
“Of course,” Amy was saying, “they probably don’t know how to cook. I wouldn’t expect them to, would you?”
Susan did expect it. She expected everyone over the age of fourteen who knew how to eat to be able to cook something, but she decided not to mention it. She looked at the list. “Was there anything that you would expect to find in the kitchen on your list?”
Amy appeared surprised. “No.”
“Then we may as well head on upstairs, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t. I want to see the living room, and I want to see the dining room.” Amy hurried out of the kitchen, as though afraid Susan might try to thwart her curiosity.
Susan, with a backward glance at a shelf crowded with imported coffee (no tea of any kind), followed.
“This really is something, isn’t it? Not that I like Victorian myself. Too much like the junk my grandmother had in her apartment. But this is really very grand, isn’t it?”
The two women were standing in the middle of an extraordinary room, full of museum-quality antiques artfully displayed. Susan was impressed, too. She was still impressed fifteen minutes later when they had finally covered the first floor and were mounting the stairs to the bedrooms. Impressed but curious: where did these people go to slop around in jeans and watch TV? The house was so formal, ornate, and delicate. She’d be afraid to sit down in some of the chairs for fear of breaking them, and she wasn’t large.
The bedroom was familiar territory, and she ignored Amy’s chatter while collecting the wardrobe that Rebecca had requested. She even found the desired two sheer negligees, one peach, one lime green. Susan wondered briefly if these fabulous items had been splurges for Rebecca’s trousseau or if Rebecca had always slept (or whatever) like this.
“Be sure to pick up that tea. Rebecca mentioned it to me specifically.”
“What?”
“The tea. I thought you knew about it.” Amy looked confused. “Rebecca told me that she wanted some sort of special tea that she always had before she went to bed. She said it was near an electric pot in her dressing room.…”
“Why didn’t you tell me before? I assumed it was in the kitchen. Didn’t you wonder what I was hunting around in there for?”
“Not really,” Amy answered vaguely, picking up plates from the bedroom mantel and looking at the manufacturers’ names on the bottom.
“What did you think I was doing?” Susan asked impatiently.
Amy shrugged. “Looking around, I guess.” She focused on Susan. “You can’t tell me you haven’t been curious about this house. Everyone in town has been talking about it ever since it was announced that the Armstrongs were going to move in.”
“Yes. I was interested, but I do have more important things to do right now.”
“Well, of course, you have houseguests. But how much trouble is that? You just throw on a little more food at mealtimes and provide some clean sheets.…” She shrugged as if to show how casually she accepted these things.
Susan didn’t believe it. Amy was always telling other people how easy it was to do something, but when it came to doing them herself, she was always too busy with some nebulous tas
k to actually accept the responsibility for any work. Susan returned to the job at hand, folding and packing everything in two more Vuitton suitcases. The tea she found behind an elegant tiny screen on top of an Oriental lacquered chest. It was packed in an ornate rosewood box inlaid with sterling silver. Susan carefully picked it up and sniffed at the contents. It smelled like no tea she knew, but she shrugged, wrapped it in a silk scarf, and placed it in a suitcase before she snapped them both shut. Picking them up, she went back to the bedroom, expecting to find Amy there. Stupidly expecting to find Amy there, she decided. She should have known that Amy, her curiosity unsatisfied, would have wandered off. There was nothing she could do but follow her.
She certainly didn’t plan on carrying these things alone. She dumped the suitcases near the door and headed out into the hall. The rooms were arranged around the opening for the atrium, and it was easy to circle the space, opening door after door, to see if she could find Amy. When she did, she was so surprised at the location that she forgot to be angry with the other woman for holding her up. Amy was standing in the middle of a completely modem media room. The large space contained wall units with six television screens, numerous VCRs, speakers, and monitors. Seated in front of all these electronic marvels were two modern leather couches, set at angles to a coffee table cum control panel of buttons, knobs, and switches. On the walls behind the viewers, a huge abstract hung over a well-supplied see-through acrylic bar. The only colors in the room were the browns of the woods and the various beiges of the carpet, the unusually textured suede-covered walls, and the couches.
Susan felt as if she had turned the corner at the end of the eighteen hundreds and landed in the twenty-first century, somehow leaping through time and avoiding the intervening hundred years. “It’s impressive,” she commented, still staring. How long had it taken Rebecca and Jason to learn to control this equipment? She still had to look through the guidebook before setting her own, substantially simpler, VCR. “Isn’t it?” She looked at Amy. The other woman had been unusually silent.
“Did you hear anything?” Amy asked, walking back toward Susan.
“No. What did you hear?” Susan thought of her mugger. Was he (she?) back?
“I thought … something out in the hall.” Amy seemed unusually hesitant. “Did you let anyone in while I was looking around?”
“No. And I think we should be very careful.” Susan moved closer to the door that had swung closed behind her. She picked up a bottle standing on the bar and slowly, carefully, opened the door.
“Maybe you shouldn’t do that. Maybe we should call someone for help. There’s a phone.”
There were, in fact, four phones. Susan, surprised at Amy’s good sense, smiled a little weakly at her. “Good idea.” She let the door swing closed again.
Amy had picked up the receiver and was busy punching buttons. Little red lights lit up, but apparently she didn’t make her connection. “Damn! Let me …” She tried again.
“What … ?”
“Wait a second. I’ve gotten through; it’s ringing.” Amy waved her off.
Susan waited anxiously and was surprised when Amy hung up without saying anything.
“Nobody home,” Amy explained without Susan asking. “Maybe I should try the police station.”
“You certainly should!” Susan had assumed that was what she had been doing. “Dial nine one one. Who were you calling before?”
“My house. I thought I could get through to my husband. He wasn’t feeling well and he didn’t go into the city today, so I thought he might be there.”
Susan didn’t say anything. What was the point? Valuable time had been lost. There was nothing she could do about it now. Apparently, from Amy’s conversation, she had finally gotten through to the police station and was explaining their predicament. It took more time than necessary, as Amy insisted on adding insignificant details and suggestions as to how the person she was speaking to should deal with this situation. By the time Amy had hung up, Susan thought her molars had probably been stripped of their enamel. She stopped grinding and tried to smile. “Are they sending someone?”
“The new police chief is out in his car somewhere nearby. The dispatcher called him on their two-way radio. He’s going to hurry right over here.” Amy sounded nervous.
No more so than Susan felt. “You didn’t tell him to be careful. Whoever is out there could be armed. Brett could be in danger.”
Amy, typically, brushed aside concern directed at someone beside herself or her family. “He’s the police chief. He’s sure to know what to do. Besides, it’s his job to protect us. We pay his salary, after all.”
Susan, ignoring this, had opened the door slightly and was trying to listen for Brett’s arrival—or the intruder’s departure. She didn’t hear anything. Amy, still in the middle of the room, chewed on a cuticle, a worried expression on her face. Susan wasn’t sure how long they remained in these positions. She was so relieved when she heard the front door open and Brett’s voice calling out that everything else seemed to vanish.
“Who is that? What’s he saying?”
But Susan didn’t hang around to answer Amy’s questions. She ran out the door toward the stairs. “Brett! Be careful! We heard something. We think someone else may be in the house!”
“Susan? Susan, is that you? Are you all right?”
“Yes, but …”
“I heard what you said. Don’t worry. I’m not alone. If there’s someone here, we’ll find him.”
Susan was so happy to see Brett that she had to resist running toward him. She felt more than a little foolish at her reaction. She was too old to believe in knights in shining armor. She looked back, hoping Amy hadn’t noticed her behavior, but the other woman had moved toward one of the two windows in the room and was apparently peering down at something in the backyard.
“Can you see my man?” Brett asked, appearing in the doorway.
“I see one man,” she answered slowly.
“One is all there is. I didn’t think it smart to yell that out, just in case we were overheard by anyone. But, to tell the truth, I think we’re alone. Did you call the station right after you heard the intruder?”
“No, I …” Amy seemed embarrassed, so Susan helped out.
“Amy called home first. She thought someone might be there to help us,” she explained.
“But when I didn’t get any answer, I called the police station right away,” Amy assured him. “I spoke to this really nice woman and told her what was going on here, and she said you were out in your car and she called you.”
“And here I am.” Brett smiled reassuringly. “But I think enough time has passed for us to assume that anyone who was here has left by now. Why are you two here?” he added.
“Rebecca asked me to pick up a few things for her, and Amy offered to help …” Susan began and then, realizing that Brett probably didn’t know her neighbor, she introduced them.
“So you offered to help,” Brett said to Amy, shaking her hand. “That was very nice of you. Mrs. Henshaw had an unpleasant experience here yesterday. I can certainly understand why she wouldn’t want to be alone.”
Susan didn’t bother to correct Brett’s impression of Amy’s motives. And Amy eagerly jumped on the bandwagon. “Susan told me about the mugging and, of course, I felt I just couldn’t allow her to do this errand alone. I wanted to help Rebecca, too, of course. I had a lot of errands to do today—running a house can be such hard work, and my husband is a lawyer with a large Wall Street practice and doesn’t have time to help me at all, I’m afraid—but …”
A squeal from the two-way radio Brett held made further conversation impossible.
“No one out here, Chief. I’ve gone over the grounds twice. Want me to hang around until you leave? Or stay and guard the place?”
“Thanks, Bob. We’re fine here. Just carry on with whatever you were doing before this call came in,” Brett ordered, and then flipped off the machine. “Looks like our intruder has gott
en away.”
“If there ever was an intruder,” Amy surprised Susan by saying. “Maybe we just got carried away. There are probably a lot of big limbs brushing against the house, and that’s probably what Susan and I heard. We just thought there was someone outside. After all, two men have died and Susan was mugged here yesterday. You know how we women are.…”
“No, how are we?” Susan angrily interrupted Amy’s speculations.
“Well, Susan, even you have to admit that we were pretty scared by one small noise.…”
“That’s because so many strange things have been going on, not because we’re women,” Susan insisted.
“Maybe, but …”
“In fact, it would be a little strange if we weren’t a little spooked under the circumstances.…”
Just when Susan thought Brett (who was smiling broadly) was going to insert some thoughts of his own, the phone rang.
There was an extension on an ornate papier-mâché table in the hall and, at Brett’s nod, Susan, who was closest to the instrument, answered. Her husband was on the other end of the line.
“Jed! Hi. Yes, we’re fine. I know we’ve taken a long time, but it was difficult to find a few things, and we’ve had one or two interruptions.” She waited while he explained his reason for calling. “I don’t understand. I was there this morning, and he was completely disinterested in talking to me. Did he mention that?”
Amy and Brett moved off down the hall so they could chat without interrupting Susan’s call.
Jed was trying to explain what the beginning of his afternoon had been like. “Look, I left work right after that meeting this morning, thinking you probably needed help at home with Rebecca and all these network people.… Did you say something?”
Susan assured him that he hadn’t heard the curses that she was, in fact, muttering, and he continued.
“Anyway, when I got here, Rebecca said that you had gone over to her house to pick up a few things for her.” (Susan stored away this interesting definition of “a few things” but didn’t say anything.) “And since you seem to have forgotten lunch, I went out to the deli to pick up some sandwiches. I don’t know when Mr. Grace started calling, but when I returned, that woman … Hilda … said that he had been trying to get hold of you for a while. They’re working hard at some sort of scheme to keep Rebecca’s reputation intact, and she seemed a little miffed that she had to take personal messages for you …”
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