“As long as you’re not a vampire,” Kimber says under her breath. Where did that come from? Some old movie, of course. The legend that in order for a vampire to come into your house and cause you harm, you have to invite them inside.
“No fangs here. Promise.” Colin Delancey’s voice is equally low, and Kimber colors slightly. Feeling like an idiot, she steps back so they can come in. Oh, by the way, I also confessed to murder in this same room only about a half hour ago.
Officer Maby, flustered, says, “We’re surprised to see you here, Ms. Hannon.”
“I’m a little shocked to be here myself. Sorry. I haven’t had a chance to clean up yet.” She opens an arm to indicate the mess on the floors and walls.
“Do you believe Mr. Merrill caused this damage?” Officer Maby asks.
Kimber hesitates. “You mean Mr. Wilson? I don’t know a Mr. Merrill.”
“Right. I’m sorry. Marshal Delancey here told us that Mr. Wilson’s real name is Kevin Merrill. I thought someone might have told you already.”
“I guess I don’t know who that would have been, Officer. No one from the police has called to tell me anything,” Kimber says archly.
Colin Delancey interrupts. “So, Ms. Hannon. Was the house like this when you arrived today?”
Suddenly Kimber is glad neither she nor Gabriel have told the police about the house being trashed. It only would’ve complicated things. She decides to go on offense. “Seriously? You come into my house after a criminal has been living in it illegally and you want to know if I think he caused the mess? You’re joking, right?”
“I’m here at the request of the justice department of the State of Florida, Ms. Hannon,” Colin Delancey says. “We had a call from them with information that Mr. Merrill was living here—illegally—in violation of his parole. I’m here to escort him back to Florida. Officer Maby is here to assist me.”
“The guy is a felon? A fugitive?” Kimber acts as surprised as possible. “Aren’t you supposed to keep track of dangerous people like that?”
He gives her a chagrined smile. “The system’s stretched. It happens.”
“Well, he’s not here. But feel free to look around.” She could tell them he’s her half brother, but that would only complicate things.
When her cell phone rings, she takes it out of her pocket to see Brianna’s name. She could mute the call but decides to enjoy the small satisfaction of putting off the marshal and Officer Maby. “I need to take this. You’re welcome to look for him. Good luck.” Giving them a thin smile, she takes the phone down the hall to the filthy kitchen.
“What’s up, Brianna?”
“Oh, I’m so glad to talk to you!” Brianna’s voice is young and breathy. “Are you okay? I worried about you all weekend. Are you really upset? Things have been so weird here today. Everyone’s wondering if you’re going to come back.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.” And if they choose to prosecute me, it won’t matter what I want to do.
“I don’t blame you, Kimber. They’re such jerks. Everyone here knows what kind of person you are. I told everybody that I probably made some mistakes on your expense reports. My life has been so messed up recently. My boyfriend—”
“That’s really nice of you, Brianna. But there’s stuff in there that happened before you even got here. So. What do you need?”
“Oh yeah. You’ve got a ton more mail piled up, and you left your planner here. Do you need anything from your locker? I have the master key. I don’t know where you are, but I could bring stuff to you.”
“That’s okay. I don’t think there’s anything in there that I particularly need.”
“Well, I might’ve already looked.” Brianna gives a nervous giggle. “There’s an umbrella and some tennis shoes that are still in the box. And the cutest red sweater. You know that one with the embroidered daisies along the bottom hem?”
Kimber remembers the sweater, a gift from her mother. Definitely her mother’s taste. She’s still trying to make Kimber preppy twenty years after she left home.
“It doesn’t really seem like your style, but you can have it. I would kind of like the shoes here instead of there.” She’d ruined her other tennis shoes by stumbling into a muddy creek bed on the retreat and had thrown them away. Now that she’s back in her house, she can start working out again. Go for long walks. Things she hasn’t even been able to think about over the past week.
“You’re so nice. I’ve got a pair of green leather shorts that’ll work great with it. Green and red—kind of a Christmas in the summer theme. Tell me where you are, and I’ll bring the shoes over tonight on my way home from the gym.”
“Oh. Would you get the papers from the comptroller and Human Resources? I need to look at them so I can figure out what to do.” Kimber reminds Brianna of her home address, though surely it’s in the station’s records. She starts to ring off, but Brianna interrupts her.
“Are you really at home? Is that creepy guy gone?”
“For now, at least. See you later. Thanks.”
“Um, okay.”
Kimber hangs up.
She hadn’t decided to definitely stay in the house tonight, but where else can she go? Not back to Shaun and Troy’s. In her confessional mood, she doesn’t want to find herself telling Shaun the truth about Diana not wanting to see her. Gabriel’s? He needs to explain why he hid the photo album, and he also has Mr. Tuttle. But staying with him is out of the question for now because she’s too vulnerable. Why in the world did she sleep with him? Everything is getting more and more complicated. Right now the only thing she wants is to start making her house hers again.
Colin Delancey’s heavy tread on the staircase follows Officer Maby’s lighter one as they come down from the second floor.
“No what’s-his-name, Kevin Merrill, hiding under my bed?”
“No, ma’am,” the marshal says. “I assume he hasn’t contacted you. That wasn’t him on the phone?”
“God no. You think I wouldn’t tell you? I don’t know why you people seem to think I’m in touch with this guy. He’s a freak who decided to squat in my house. Now he’s gone, and I’m left to clean up the mess. That’s pretty clear, yes?”
Officer Maby bristles. “Ma’am, I witnessed your interaction with him here that first night. We understand how difficult this has been.”
Oh, do you? What a laugh. Kimber holds her tongue.
“I understand he changed the locks on you? That’s bizarre. I’ve heard of that happening in houses standing empty but never in an occupied house.” Colin Delancey’s black notebook is open.
“I was out of town. Do you need something else? I’ll let you know if he comes by again.”
“Why do you think he did so much damage to your house, Ms. Hannon?” He gestures toward the wrecked fireplace. Then he does a kind of double take and squats to touch his pen to the shattered wood on the door beneath the stairs. He looks at Kimber, eyebrows raised.
She shrugs, trying to act casual even though her blood pressure has just gone through the roof. “Yeah, I saw that. It’s going to have to be fixed, and stained, like the floors.” The gun’s still in her purse, but she’s pretty sure he’d need a warrant to look in it without her permission.
“You think he was looking for something?” He stands again.
Kimber knits her brow. Might as well go full-on indignant. “What would he be looking for in this house? The woman who lived next door, Jenny—the woman I’m certain he killed—” She gives a hard look to Officer Maby, who is unmoved. “Jenny said she’d never seen him before, and she lived here for fifty years. It’s not like she wouldn’t have noticed him. She was into everyone’s business.” Discomfort brings a flush of red to her cheeks. “Not in a bad way. She was just, you know, nosy.”
“Do you know if he was connected in some other way to the house? Are you certain he’s not connected to you in some way? Officer Maby tells me you inherited this house from your father.”
Than
ks, Officer. So helpful. She and Officer Maby won’t be buddies after this is all over.
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you people. I didn’t know this Merrill guy. I haven’t had anything to do with him. I never met him or heard of him before he moved into my house.”
It’s mostly the truth. There’s no reason Shaun would have mentioned to the Florida authorities that her father and Kevin Merrill’s father were the same person. She can’t admit their relationship without taking the chance the police will dig up information about Michelle. But if Kevin Merrill’s on the run, chances are he won’t return. And there’s nothing that says she has to pursue prosecution. His fugitive status could be a bargaining chip. If he contacts her again, she can threaten to turn him in to the Florida authorities.
Still, she knows Colin Delancey is just doing his job. “Listen. This has been a nightmare for me. I really don’t know why he wanted so badly to be in my house. Honestly, I just don’t know.”
When the marshal and Officer Maby are gone, Kimber stands at the window watching the kids across the street run through a sprinkler. Jenny used to sit on her own porch and watch the neighborhood kids play. A lot of them thought she was mean because she wouldn’t let them tease Mr. Tuttle. Kimber had come to think of her as a kind of friend, even though they weren’t close. Jenny always kept an eye on the houses around hers and would remind Kimber about little things, like when streets were going to be cleaned or the garbage or leaf pickup schedules were going to change. (Jenny was a great fan of the garbagemen, much like Hadley, who makes them cards and cookies for all the major holidays.) If Jenny hadn’t died, would Kimber have been more patient with her? How strange that she misses Jenny so much now. Maybe that’s how it is when people die. Sometimes you discover feelings you didn’t know you had. But the feelings she had about Michelle and her father had stopped at guilt and anger. Is that really all she has in her heart for them?
Chapter Forty-Seven
Cleaning has never been Kimber’s favorite thing to do, and she knows she should probably call the service that comes in once a month to do a thorough job. She looks at her watch. Definitely too late in the day to get anyone there for even an emergency service. If cleaners even did emergency service.
After she takes a quick shower and changes into shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops, she starts with her own bedroom. There’s plenty to do in the kitchen, but a niggling at the back of her brain tells her that Kevin is mean enough to violate her in the most personal of ways. Diana had bought her all new underwear, which made her laugh, but now she sees the wisdom of it and shudders at the thought of her half brother touching her panties.
So disgusting on so many levels.
Her bed is haphazardly made. When she strips it, she finds the stains. There are dark hairs, too, on the pillow and scattered over the sheets.
Sick to her stomach, she tears the sheets from the bed. Something metal hits the floor and bounces across the bare wood.
At first she thinks she won’t look for it, but knowing how Kevin likes to mess with her head, she’s curious. Not seeing anything immediately, she gets on her hands and knees to look under the furniture. Mostly what she finds is dust. But there—just beneath the window—she sees something dark and oblong.
“Go on. You can put the penny in.”
Kimber looked up at her father. “Mommy says it’s silly to pay a dollar to do something to a penny.”
“Do you think it’s silly?”
Kimber worries it might be a trick question. “I guess it’s a little silly.”
“You still want to do it?”
She nodded, her braids swinging. She hated the braids, but her mother told her that if she couldn’t keep her hair brushed, then the braids would at least keep it neat. Neatness was important to her mother.
Ike Hannon handed the four quarters and the penny to his youngest daughter. He watched as she carefully inserted the money into the machine, then jumped back when it ground to life. But she stepped closer and closer as the press began its work, rolling out the metal, stretching it into a thin oval, her breath fogging the acrylic cover of the machine.
Michelle, who’d run out of quarters playing Skee-Ball, wandered up to them. “What are you doing?”
“Watch,” Ike said.
The two girls stood watching together. Kimber’s hands were sticky from the cherry sno-cone she’d just finished, and when her hand brushed her sister’s, Michelle recoiled.
“Daddy, Kimber’s all gross. We’ll get in trouble for doing the penny thing. Mommy said not to.”
Ike Hannon’s mouth stretched into a wry smile. “Mommy’s not here. It’s my penny. My dollar. Don’t you worry.”
But Kimber worried. Michelle was a constant reminder of their mother’s rules, and when the penny tinkled down into the flapped receptacle from which it could be removed, she didn’t want to retrieve it.
“Go on, honey. It’s yours.”
Kimber, only six years old, stayed mute.
“For Christ’s sake.” Ike swept open the receptacle with one long finger and pinched out the warm, flattened penny.
“Here, baby.” He gently opened Kimber’s sticky fist and put the penny inside. She didn’t resist. But later, on the way to the car, Ike pretended he didn’t notice when she awkwardly stuck her hand into the edge of his pants pocket. He knew what she was doing. When they got home, he put the penny in the tray with the rest of his pocket change, and every morning from then on, he returned it to his pocket. Then one day, years after Michelle was dead, it disappeared.
Kimber holds the penny up to the light. It’s aged badly, marked and pitted at the edges. She knows what the penny is and wonders if her father left it for her to find. Or did Kevin leave it as a reminder of everything he could take from her? That thought makes her want to go outside and throw it as far away from her as she can. But if it’s been here all along, maybe at least some part of her father’s memory, or his ghost or whatever is left behind when you die, is still here with her. The idea makes her uncomfortable, but she goes to her dresser and puts the penny in the ceramic butterfly tray where she drops stray safety pins and spare buttons.
Gathering all the towels from the bathrooms, along with the sheets from both the guest bed and her own bed, she hurries downstairs to the kitchen, where she stuffs everything into a big garbage bag and drops the bag by the door.
On impulse, she pulls up Diana’s number from her favorites on her phone and starts to press the button. Has Hadley had more surgery? Is she awake? It’s been over forty-eight hours since the accident, and she’s heard nothing since Saturday night. But she doesn’t have any right to ask. She’s put herself beyond the pale, as her father would say. Not forbidden territory, but definitely not within the zone of respectability.
She thinks of driving over to the hospital, passing herself off as Diana’s or Kyle’s sister, to find out how they are. Except it would mean leaving the house, and she’s not sure she wants to do that yet. Kevin is still out there, hanging over her head like Damocles’s sword. It was a favorite image of her father’s, and now she understands why. He lived his entire life beneath a sword.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Finished with the upstairs, Kimber sits on her porch swing with a plastic cup of ice water. All the glasses she owns are in the grumbling dishwasher. Shaun and Troy call, on speaker, and she updates them on Kevin’s disappearance and the marshal’s visit. They promise to come over and help her banish all the “bad vibes,” as Troy calls them, the next day.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with us?” Shaun sounds concerned. “Guys like Merrill aren’t the kind you want to mess around with.” Though he’s still partial to the theory that Jenny’s death was an accident, as the police believe. Jenny was old, and the outside stairs to Kimber’s basement are steep. “Or we can come over tonight and have a pajama party.”
She laughs. “I haven’t seen you wear those fuzzy Cookie Monster slippers Troy got you yet.” It feels
good to laugh.
“He won’t wear them because he’s afraid they insult his dignity,” Troy says. “I think they match his hairy Hobbit feet.”
“Wait a minute. Gabriel just pulled up.”
“I hope he brought you some food. When’s the last time you ate?” Troy’s often concerned that she’s not eating enough. She used to think it was because he wanted her to get fat, but now she knows he’s that way with all his friends.
“Don’t worry. I have some crackers in the back of the pantry, hidden behind the oatmeal and the quinoa I bought six months ago. Having seen all the crap Kevin ate while he was here, I don’t think he was into quinoa. Hey, I’ll call you later.”
When Gabriel opens the car door, Mr. Tuttle jumps out and dashes across to Jenny’s house. Kimber calls after him but knows it’s not any use. Of course he wants to go home.
“I’ll get him. Can you take these?” Gabriel hands her a bag containing a sheepskin-covered dog bed, kibble, and a clutch of new toys. When he returns with Mr. Tuttle, they go inside.
“Poor guy.” She takes the dog from Gabriel, and Mr. Tuttle licks her face happily, his body wriggling. “Was he very sad last night?”
“He seems to like the new bed, but he was definitely sulking. How was Shaun’s?”
“We drank. Shaun showed me the background on Kevin. The end.”
They watch in silence as Mr. Tuttle sniffs his way around the living room. When he gets to the small pile of bricks littering the floor in front of the fireplace, he growls low in his throat and slinks away to sniff elsewhere.
“Probably smells the guy who killed his mom,” Kimber says.
“You really think he killed her?”
“I do. I can’t understand why no one else does. Why you don’t.”
“Maybe you know him better than any of us do.” He gives her a grim smile.
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean he’s your father’s son, right? Maybe he’s like your father.”
The Stranger Inside Page 25
