The Stranger Inside

by Laura Benedict

  Kimber touches Jenny’s hand. It’s a thing they tell you never to do if you’re trying to close a sale, but she wants Jenny to trust her. “I thought maybe you happened to see the truck. This has all been so upsetting.”

  “I’ve never been in jail. Was it awful? Were there”—Jenny’s voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper—“prostitutes and thieves? People like that?”

  Kimber was put in a cell with two other women, neither of whom were interested in her. One wore Bugs Bunny pajama bottoms and a T-shirt that once might have been white but was now the color of her brassy bleached hair. The other complained about being cold and that she would never get her new nose ring back in because the guards had taken it out. Both were still there when Gabriel got Kimber released. “It wasn’t as clean as it looks on TV.”

  Jenny nods knowingly. She watches a lot of crime shows.

  “I hope that nice young woman policeman comes back. She seems very honest. Did you notice she had a little red in her hair?” Jenny goes on about the honesty of gingers and complains about Mr. Tuttle, who, she says, keeps running over to Kimber’s house, presumably looking for her. But Kimber loses the thread of her words because she’s busy staring across the driveway at her house’s blank windows. Even the stained glass looks opaque and dull in the glare of the afternoon sun. As Jenny talks, Kimber’s phone vibrates again and again, flashing names from the radio station and that of her mother.

  Mrs. Winkelman, Jenny’s black cat, announces herself from a cushioned chair on the porch, her wide, appealing green eyes fixed on Kimber. Kimber bends to scratch her below one twitching ear, and the cat pushes her head against her hand. Mrs. Winkelman is far neater looking than the perpetually disheveled Mr. Tuttle. She keeps her long black fur well-groomed and has white feet with tufts of longer white fur peeking from between her toes. Seeing Mrs. Winkelman usually makes Kimber wish she had a cat. Now she’s glad she doesn’t. What might Lance Wilson have done to it?

  “You have plants in your house, don’t you, dear? The ones that belonged to your father? I do hope Lance is taking care of them.”

  “I didn’t think about them, but, yes, he damn well better be.”

  Jenny makes a moue. “He seems like a very nice young man. It’s not like he did anything wrong, really.”

  Except move into my house.

  Now the bike is gone from the porch. Somehow she’s missed him leaving, and for the briefest of moments she imagines driving up behind him on his stupid, expensive bike and hitting the gas. Hitting him. Then she would immediately sell the car in another state so they couldn’t find it. Who hasn’t imagined killing someone they hated?

  It’s not hard to kill someone. Not hard at all. Is it?

  “Yellow, it was. I remember thinking it was an unusual color for a heart.”

  “I’m sorry. What did you say? The bike?”

  “The locksmith van was blue. Not navy blue but a bright blue like a royal blue, though I don’t know why anyone would call that blue royal. Except for maybe people in Sweden. I think their flag has that funny blue.”

  “Did you see the name of the company? Maybe a phone number?”

  Jenny tut-tuts. Mrs. Winkelman meows again, and for a moment Kimber’s sure Jenny’s about to wander back inside looking for cat food or something.

  “There was a big yellow heart on the side of the van. A heart with a keyhole in it and an old-fashioned key on a long ribbon. Very unusual.” Jenny nods. “Unusual.”

  It’s the first good news Kimber has heard. If the police aren’t even bothering to talk to Jenny and the other neighbors, she’ll have to deal with it herself.

  “Let me see if I can find it.” She does an image search on her phone for area locksmiths. It doesn’t take long to find the one with the yellow heart logo.

  “That’s it!” Jenny taps the screen.

  Kimber makes a quick call to see if someone is in the locksmith’s office, and the woman on the other end says they’re closing early, at four. She isn’t very pleasant.

  “See you in half an hour.” Kimber hangs up. “Listen, Jenny. I have to ask you for a big favor.”

  Jenny smiles, but it is a vague, vacant sort of smile. “What’s that, dear?”

  Kimber’s garage sits far back on her property, and she enters it easily through the side door. Not only isn’t the door locked, but the lock hasn’t been changed. Inside, she checks the orange SUV’s license plate to see that it definitely says “Arizona,” then starts toward the passenger door, thinking to check out what Lance Wilson might be toting around. But she stops. If he returns and catches her coming out of the garage, she might be arrested again.

  Closing the door behind her, she nods to Jenny, who stands at her kitchen window, and walks quickly to the Mini. Before settling in, she folds the seat forward to retrieve a bottle of water from the back. As she plunges a searching hand into the clutter of papers and binders from work, she notices an unfamiliar manila envelope with her name carelessly printed in marker on the front.

  Its presence is mysterious rather than alarming. At least it isn’t alarming until she bends up the ends of the alligator tab and slides out the eight-by-ten photo that’s inside.

  She has to turn it right side up before she is certain what it is.

  It’s a new print of an old photo: the camera is aimed down a leaf- and dirt-covered hillside, and there’s a flare of pink off to the right where the sun is overbright, interfering with the shot. The nearby trees are mostly pine, but a few in the distance are covered in turning leaves. Fall is obviously threatening.

  But it’s what is in the center of the picture, halfway down the hillside, that draws her attention. It’s an image that’s been seared in her mind for many years. Her sister, Michelle, wearing the moss-green sweater that was too warm for that mid-September day almost twenty-five years ago. Michelle, lying motionless against an outcropping of rock. Dead.

  Kimber holds her breath and looks over at her house, sitting silent and closed in the August sunshine.

  “I was there. I saw what you did.”

  This is what he knows. He knows I was there.

  Chapter Ten

  Is Lance Wilson blackmailing her? But blackmailers are usually after money, and he hasn’t asked for a dime. Yet.

  Does he want her house—or something in it—in exchange for hiding what he knows: that Michelle’s death didn’t happen the way everyone thought it did? That she was there. That she was responsible.

  For almost twenty-five years she’s believed that she is the only one who knows what really happened to Michelle. It’s been her secret, and hers alone. But all this time a stranger named Lance Wilson has known. It feels like some kind of paradigm shift. Her reality has been false all along, and now she has to adjust to a new one. The world feels smaller. A lot more dangerous.

  Breathing shallowly, her heart pounding, Kimber starts the Mini and drives automatically east, through the St. Louis afternoon traffic. Again she feels the man’s presence. His fingers have held this envelope. His hand wrote her name. The photo is a warning, she thinks. Fight me and I’ll tell. She could lose not just her house but her job and her freedom. He could take it all.

  He’s in my house. He’s been in my car. I can’t get away from him.

  There had been times when she truly worried that someone would discover the truth. Times when her life was going well and she had a lot to lose: when she got into college, when she got her first job. When she and Shaun first talked about getting married. She hid it from him, and from everyone. The truth lived inside her, pushed further down with each passing autumn, hidden but festering. When you’re hiding something that big, it’s always with you.

  A part of her is deeply afraid. But there’s another part that feeds and thrives on fear. The part that got her into this situation in the first place. The part of her that’s so angry it glows white-hot. The part of her that isn’t going to put up with someone messing with her life.

  The traffic on Highway 40 is at a pred
ictable late afternoon standstill, even headed east toward downtown. Fired by a sudden need to get some control, she calls her boss, Leeza. She’s only half listened to Leeza’s string of anxious messages, and when the call goes straight to voicemail, she hangs up. Leeza calls back before she reaches the next exit.

  “First thing, are you okay? Brianna said someone called in for you. Then Jim in the newsroom said you’d been arrested. Really, Kimber. I can’t believe it.” Her aggrieved tone tells Kimber she isn’t happy that she had to hear it from other people. Leeza likes to hear things first, and she spends more time trying to manage Kimber than the two male sales reps. It might be down to a discomfort with the difference in their ages: Leeza is only thirty-one, seven years younger than Kimber. She’s connected and ambitious, but her insecurity shows in her expensively highlighted blond hair and body-hugging designer clothes. Still, she could sell striped pajamas to a zebra. Kimber can’t begrudge her that.

  Knowing Leeza’s fondness for drama, she doesn’t try to downplay what’s going on. “Leeza, it’s just crazy. This guy broke into my house and had the locks changed, saying I rented it to him. I…I lost my head. I tried to get past him when the cops were there, and I guess I knocked him down. The whole thing is some kind of weird misunderstanding. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing.”

  And he could ruin my life with a photograph and a phone call. Because if there is one photograph, there are sure to be more.

  A snippet of music from the radio station speakers comes through the phone. When Leeza speaks, she’s not ready for the sound of—what is it?—admiration in Leeza’s voice.

  “Damn. It doesn’t get any weirder than that. Who is he? Do you know him?”

  It’s a question she can’t answer. Not yet.

  I might, but I’m not sure, and it scares the shit out of me.

  “I’ll tell you just as soon as I know anything, but I’m going to need a few days off. Probably at least the rest of this week.” She continues, feeding the drama. “Gabriel’s representing me. He says he’ll help me work it all out.” Leeza had been supportive back when Kimber was thinking about breaking up with him. As they’d finished a bottle of wine that was left after a client meeting, Kimber revealed that Gabriel was pressuring her to commit and was talking about marriage (though she left out the part about feeling like he was too attached, maybe a little obsessed with her). Even as she told Leeza, through her wine buzz, she knew she was sharing too much. Leeza is not afraid to use any information she has when it suits her.

  “Is he, you know, okay?”

  This is her shorthand for Everyone knows he tried to kill himself. Can he be trusted?

  “He seems great.” Kimber waits her out, not volunteering more.

  “Keep me posted. Let me know what we can do,” Leeza says finally. “Hey, there’s an issue we need to talk about, but it can wait for now. Try not to become the news, okay? Frankly, we can use the ratings, but we don’t need to get them that way.”

  It’s an oddly compassionate response for Leeza, and Kimber finds herself grateful. She doesn’t trust her any more than she did before, but at least Leeza’s giving her some time to deal with Lance Wilson.

  “We’re about to close.”

  If the plaque on the scuffed metal reception desk is correct, the young woman standing behind the desk, packing up her purse, is named Neely Curtis. She’s a ponderous girl, broad shouldered, with the suggestion of a double chin that makes her look older and more serious than she probably is. When she points to the giant heart-shaped yellow clock on the wall behind her, she looks like Virtue pointing to the distant horizon in an old painting. It’s five minutes before four.

  Kimber puts on her best sales smile and apologizes. “I am so sorry, Neely. You’re an angel to even let me in the door. This won’t take five minutes, I promise.”

  Neely looks skeptical. Her brown eyes narrow. “I have to get the four ten bus. We open at seven-thirty in the morning.”

  “I really just need to talk to the guy who changed the locks on my house, but I don’t know his name, and I don’t have the invoice.” Kimber opens her own purse. “Listen, if you miss your bus, I’ll get you a Lyft. Or a cab. Whatever you need.”

  A glimmer of eager suspicion brightens Neely’s face. “Why? Did he do something wrong? I’ll need you to fill out a complaint form if there’s a problem.”

  “Oh, absolutely not! I wasn’t there when he finished, and it was a complicated job. My sister forgot to tip him, and I thought I’d bring it by myself.” Kimber takes a twenty-dollar bill from her bag.

  “They don’t usually get tips.” Again Neely glances back at the clock.

  “If he’s here, I’d just love to give it to him. Good service should be rewarded, don’t you think? I mean he put brand-new locks on my entire house. And it was a beast of a day.”

  Neely sighs. “All right, but only because I haven’t shut down the computer yet. Let me see your driver’s license.” She doesn’t sit, wanting to make sure Kimber understands that she’s on borrowed time.

  “You are so sweet.” Kimber slides the license across the desk.

  Emek’s voice is lightly accented—eastern European, Kimber thinks—and his narrow face bears a fading sunburn. They stand in the parking lot, near one of the Lock It Tite trucks. Behind him, Neely stalks across the pitted asphalt toward the bus shelter near the corner, her phone against her ear.

  “Saturday? Yeah, I remember. New locks. Not just rekeying.” His eyes move to Neely’s back, but there doesn’t seem to be any purpose in them. They return to Kimber. “Is there a problem?”

  Not wanting to get into the whole filling-out-a-form thing, she holds out the twenty-dollar bill. “This is for you. You should’ve gotten a tip.”

  Unlike Neely, he’s unconcerned that tips aren’t a usual part of his job. He tucks the bill into his shirt pocket.

  “So this is going to sound a little weird, but have you seen me before?” She takes off her sunglasses. “Am I the person who hired you to change the locks?”

  His brow furrows. “I don’t know what you want from me, lady.”

  She decides to be straight with him, though lying to Neely had come to her quite easily. “Seriously, do I look like the person who was there when you showed up? Because somebody paid to have the locks changed on my house, and it wasn’t me.”

  Putting up his hands, he leans back. “Whoa. I don’t know anything about that. I saw a driver’s license with the right name and address on it, and there was no sign that the place had any foreclosure stuff going on. I just did my job.”

  A license with my name and address.

  “Here.” Kimber takes another twenty from her purse and holds it out, but this time he shakes his head.

  “You got a complaint or a legal issue, you take it up with my boss. I told you, I just did my job.”

  It’s not going at all the way Kimber hoped it would. She considers getting tearful. It sometimes works, but he’s young, and she’s not. The frustration and the worry about Lance Wilson and the photograph have put her emotions right on the edge. The tears would be real enough. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble. I mean it. You met with a woman, right?”

  “She hung around inside or on the porch. Kept her sunglasses on. I guess that was kind of strange.”

  Kimber nods. This is good. “Was there a man with her? Did she look like me?”

  Without hesitating, he shakes his head. “She was your height, but she had—I don’t know—it was like she had more hair.” He holds his hands up on either side of his head. “It was pulled back like yours, but it was lighter. She was maybe a little taller. I don’t remember. Your voice is different. She kind of whispered, so that you had to get close to her to hear.” He shrugs. “Hell, maybe it was you.”

  Kimber knows hundreds of women in St. Louis, and at least three or four of them might be mistaken for her at a distance. She thinks of Jenny’s bad eyesight. But why would any of them do this to her? O
f course the woman also could be someone recruited by Lance Wilson. That makes more sense. “Do you think she was wearing a wig or anything like that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He looks at his watch. “Listen. I’m off the clock. I want to get home.”

  She pulls the invoice from her bag. “Were you with her when she signed this?” Kimber’s forged signature is at the bottom, just below the word “CASH,” printed in large block letters. He squints, thinking. “No. She took it inside and came back with the cash. You’d be surprised at the number of people who pay cash. Just saying.”

  Chapter Eleven

  On the way to Shaun and Troy’s place, Kimber stops to pick up gourmet cookies at a bakery in their neighborhood. This way she kills two birds with one stone: bringing them a hostess gift as demanded by the good manners drilled into her by her mother and indulging her newfound desire to eat herself to death to escape the crapfest her life has turned into. She picks out a pound of tea cookies dotted with pastel icing and six of the giant, flat chocolate chunk cookies with the squishy middle that keep showing up on Instagram. Heading to her car, she wonders if she has time to eat one of the giant cookies before she gets to their house.

  As she opens her car door, she hears a squeal of tires and looks up. Two cars out on the road sit nose-to-nose yet not touching. A wreck avoided. But it’s the car backed into a space at the edge of the parking lot that draws her attention. A minute later, she pulls into the parking place beside it.

  The woman inside the small blue Toyota looks up from her phone, and her face breaks into a smile. She puts down her window.

  “Kimber!” Brianna seems delighted to see her.

  “What are you doing down here? Aren’t you working today?”

  “Took the afternoon off. I’m waiting for my boyfriend—you know, Ricky? He’s moving into an apartment down here, and I came to help him, but I couldn’t find it. He’s coming to meet me.” She rolls her eyes. “Sometimes I’m so hopeless.”