The First Time I Fell

by Joanne Macgregor

  I hit the playback button on the recording and handed him my cellphone. He listened to the click, the creak, the radio and the humming sound, frowning, but not saying anything. Then he sat up straight and gaped at me.

  “Is that– Was that the refrigerator opening? And glass clinking? That sounds like a bottle of beer being opened!”

  “Right? And not even my mother would claim a ghost was visiting my kitchen to guzzle my liquor!” Honestly, I was relieved to discover that it hadn’t been me polishing off all the wine and beer. “He ate my animal crackers, too, I’ll bet!” I added.

  “A felony misdemeanor, at least,” Ryan said with just the hint of a smile.

  “I thought maybe you’d taken them,” I confessed.

  “Oh, yeah, I always fill my pockets with snacks from the houses of witnesses and suspects. It’s a perk of the job.”

  On the recording, we both now heard the sound of the television, channels changing until it settled on one — ESPN, judging by the station identification jingle. The TV hadn’t been changing channels by itself, after all.

  “Do you know who it is?” Ryan asked.

  “You bet I do,” I said and told him. “I think he’s done this regularly. And the dogs wouldn’t kick up a fuss or be a deterrent, because they know him. Besides,” I said, remembering the nearly empty dog-biscuit tin, “I think he feeds them treats when he comes over.”

  “How does he get in?”

  “He has keys! Or he had them and made a duplicate set. I think he’s been coming in and out of here since I arrived. Helping himself to my booze, going through my stuff, stealing my underwear!” I said, recalling the missing pair of panties. “Listen — now he’s wandering around the house.” Probably rearranging statuettes and going to the toilet, leaving the basin faucet dripping, making me think I was losing my marbles. “And that’s the sound of him going upstairs, no doubt to rifle through my personal things and lie on my bed like some perverted Goldilocks.”

  We listened through to the part where the doorbell rang, hearing footsteps running down the stairs, into the kitchen and the sound of the back door opening and closing.

  “That’s it,” I told Ryan. “That’s when I came back and he hightailed it.”

  Ryan puffed out a breath and placed my phone on the coffee table. Before I could grab it and turn off the playback, he got to hear my angry comment about my mother, and me telling my dad I intended to throw in the towel before more people got hurt.

  Feeling my cheeks grow hot, I met his assessing gaze and said, “The worst part is that I think he may have been watching me when I’ve been upstairs. I’ve heard sounds from the attic, but I assumed it was rats. And I had a feeling of being watched, but I figured I was either imagining it or that there was some kind of … paranormal presence.” I rolled my eyes. “I feel like such an idiot! The most simple and logical explanation was that there’s been an intruder.”

  I’d been so brain-dead from the academic work and so emotionally exhausted from the Laini Carter drama that I’d let all the woo-woo stuff — my visions, my mother’s crazy ideas, the nightmarish doll — get to me, and I’d overlooked the obvious. I’d exposed myself to the real danger of a peeping Tom because I’d gotten stuck in a web of superstition and confusion.

  “I’d better check up there,” Ryan said.

  I fetched him a flashlight, and we went upstairs together. Ryan pulled down the attic trapdoor and climbed up.

  “Be careful — I set a bunch of mousetraps up there,” I warned him.

  He disappeared into the dark space, and a moment later I heard him mutter a low oath. He’d found the doll. I stayed below, tearing strips off my nails, putting two and two together. I recalled how I’d woken up with “I’ll be watching you” playing in my head, and how the kitchen radio had gotten stuck on the Rockwell song. I’d squirmed at the lyrics about being a little crazy, but the main refrain of the song was “Somebody’s watching me.” Had those been messages from Colby, trying to warn me about the intruder?

  Ryan emerged from the attic and stepped down the ladder, looking rueful.

  “Find anything bad?” I asked.

  “You mean apart from the doll?”

  “I know, right? And the dressing table and the brush with the hair?”

  “They probably belonged to the Andersens’ daughter.”

  “Is she dead?”

  Ryan gave me a perplexed look. “No, why would you think that?”

  “Because I’m upset and creeped out, okay?”

  “Sorry to tell you this, but there’s more up there to be upset about than creepy old toys.”

  “Tell me,” I said, heart sinking.

  He handed me a plastic evidence baggie containing an empty Skittles packet.

  “Son of a bitch!” I said at this new evidence of the trespasser’s larceny. “So that’s where they all went.”

  “There’s more. And you are really not going to be happy about it.”

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Two neat little holes have been drilled through the ceiling — one directly over your bed and one over the bathroom.”

  The asshole had been spying on me when I was dressing in my bedroom and naked in the bathroom. Watching me while I slept.

  “And there’s a mattress right by them with a pile of porn magazines,” Ryan said. “It looks like he’s been … enjoying himself … while watching you.”

  I shuddered with revulsion and swallowed down the bile that rose in my throat. “What now?”

  Ryan closed the trapdoor and dusted his hands on his jeans.

  “Let’s pay the perv a visit.”

  – 37 –

  The pervert’s face lit up when he opened his door to find me standing there but fell when he caught sight of my police escort.

  I leaned forward to sniff my neighbor’s neck. “Nice minty aftershave you’ve got there, Ned.”

  “Can we come in?” Ryan said, stepping forward so that Ned had to back up.

  Ryan walked through to the living room and sat down on one of a matching pair of wingback chairs. I took the other.

  “What’s this about?” Ned asked, perching his butt on the arm of a sofa.

  “I have some questions to ask you about your trespassing inside the Andersen house,” Ryan said.

  “What? I never! I just swept the path sometimes.”

  “I’ve got you on tape, asshole!” I said, holding up my phone. “Drinking my beer, cheering while you watch women’s volleyball, talking to yourself about which player has the best tits.”

  “Oh,” said Ned.

  “Yeah, oh!”

  Ryan held up the evidence baggie with the Skittles wrapper inside. “And in the attic, right by two strategically placed spyholes, we found this. I’m guessing we’ll find your fingerprints on it. On the porn magazines, too.”

  Ned looked from Ryan to me, took a deep breath and then shrugged.

  A hot wave of fury washed through me.

  “You are a pig and a pervert,” I yelled at him. “You drank my wine, you ate my candy and crackers, you stole my underwear! You spied on me when I was sleeping, when I was naked!”

  Ned’s lips curved in a sly smile, which enraged me even further. How had I ever pegged him as Nosey Ned — a friendly, helpful, harmless neighbor? I jumped out of my seat and marched over to him, wagging a finger.

  “Annnnd, you left my faucets running and moved the clown statue around.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes. You. Did.” I poked him in the chest. “You despicable peckerhead!”

  “I never did that. Not with the faucets or the statue. Why would I do that?”

  “To gaslight me — to mess with my head.”

  “I didn’t do it. Just because you say it doesn’t make it true,” he said, pushing his lip out in a sulky pout.

  “Garnet, come sit down,” Ryan said, and he waited until I took my seat again before asking, “Mr. Lipton, do you deny accessing the Andersen house without per
mission?”

  “I won’t be interrogated by the police without my lawyer being present,” Ned said.

  “Do you have a set of keys to their house?”

  Ned started humming.

  When Ryan merely nodded, I scowled at him. He was being inexcusably calm about this. Where was a good dose of police brutality when you wanted it?

  “Hey!” I said, clicking my fingers to reclaim Ned’s attention. “That telescope on your porch — it’s not for stargazing, is it? You use it for watching women.” That explained why he was so often out on freezingly cold nights. Cloudy ones, too, now I came to think of it. “You probably used it to spy on Laini Carter when she lived here in the estate. And, according to Hugo in the hardware store, you also have a pair of powerful binoculars.”

  “I like bird-watching,” Ned said with a smirk.

  I leapt to my feet and lunged at him. Ryan seized my jacket and tugged me back.

  “Let me at him!” I cried, struggling against Ryan’s restraining hold. “I want to kill him!”

  “No,” Ryan said evenly, dragging me back to the door. “I can’t allow you to do that.”

  “Maybe it was him who sent Laini the dick pics!”

  “We’ll find out,” he promised. “You go home, now. Try not to touch anything he might have touched. Tomorrow, I’ll send forensics to your place to take fingerprints. I’m going to arrest Mr. Lipton now, and then tomorrow Ronnie and I will be back with a search warrant for this house and the contents of his phone, computer and any photographic or recording equipment we find.”

  The implications of that hit me as I walked back home, and I groaned. Could it get any worse?

  I knew exactly how to deal with the kind of day I’d had — one cry and two alcohols. Feeling dirty and contaminated by Lipton’s filthy gaze, I took a long, almost painfully hot shower, taking a glass of wine with me into the bathroom. I was desperate to bite, scratch, pick, and peel at my skin, but I ordered myself not to let Ned have any more power over me and managed to restrict my urges to merely scrubbing my entire body with a loofah until I smarted all over. Afterwards, I rubbed vitamin E oil into my stinging red skin, drank a cup of chamomile tea made with three teabags, and climbed into bed wearing my woolen mittens in case I scratched at myself in my sleep, which tended to happen when I was distressed.

  I dropped into a restless doze, dreaming of Ned peering at me from the other side of a bright-red door, his eye magnified by the peephole. As he turned his face from side to side, angling for a better view, he whispered over and over again, “I like bird-watching.”

  The next morning was freezing. The temperature had plummeted overnight, and a late-season snowfall had covered the ground in a pristine layer of white. Heavy clouds hung low in the sky, threatening more bad weather. Even the dogs were reluctant to step out of the warmth of the house; I had to shove them outside the front door into the crisp air to do the necessary.

  I scowled at Ned’s house. Its windows were dark in the still-murky light, and I hoped that meant he’d spent the night in a cell at the police station, the scum-sucking, vile, voyeuristic, deviant excuse for a rancid baboon anus. His unrepentant attitude to getting caught still burned my biscuit.

  I dropped two slices of bread in the toaster and, being careful to open cupboards by the edges of their doors rather than their handles, rummaged for peanut butter. I was unable to think about anything but Ned. His forays into this kitchen, his raids on my supplies, his occupation of my attic. I put an extra spoonful of coffee into the machine and switched it on. That irritating humming, those damn bowties, his voyeurism. My vulnerability. I was still spitting mad and glad of it, because I suspected tears were waiting in the wings.

  I fed the dogs, realizing too late that Ned’s hands had probably touched the bag of kibble. I wanted a glass of orange juice but couldn’t figure out how to open the refrigerator without touching the handle, where Ned’s prints would be. I ate my breakfast and washed the dishes, remembering how I’d liked the minty smell before I knew its source. I wanted to watch the news on TV, but he’d handled the remote control. Everything in this house reminded me of him. The whole place felt tainted.

  I glowered at the clown on the shelf. Ned’s petulant denials about moving it and leaving the faucets running still niggled.

  Just because you say it doesn’t make it true. The phrase looped through my mind. Just because you say it doesn’t make it true.

  A lightbulb went off in my head. A lot of that information about Laini and the others had been based on what people had said, rather than on verifiable fact. I’d been willing to question my own intuitions as a good scientist should, but I should have brought the same skepticism to other people’s opinions, because surely what they said was no more objective or reliable than my visions and hunches?

  I fired up my laptop, opened the spreadsheet and began color-coding — green for facts that had been confirmed and orange for what I’d merely been told about Laini or any of the others. Poring over the rows and columns with a more critical eye, I compared information, looked for patterns, underlined commonalities and highlighted inconsistencies, just as I would when reading and collating a bunch of academic sources.

  Then I scrutinized the information from another perspective. If I let go of my self-doubts, if I started with the conviction that Laini had definitely been murdered and took all my visions as literal truth, then some things — the bicycle, the note, the flowers, the donuts — simply didn’t fit. I saw now that I’d made assumptions and could almost hear one of my father’s favorite witticisms: “When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.”

  Had I made other wrong assumptions?

  Reading through the details of my visions once more, I noticed another place where I’d leapt to a conclusion — quite possibly the wrong one. I also had gaps in my information that needed filling, a couple of which were probably not important.

  Snatching up my phone, I called Ryan.

  “A couple of quick questions, Chief. According to the autopsy, was Laini pregnant at the time of her death, or had she recently undergone an abortion? Does Kennick Carter have a solid alibi? What exactly was Laini wearing when she died? And what color was her nail polish?”

  I nodded at his answers. “That fits.”

  I was mad at myself. I’d been sloppy. I’d jumped to conclusions about what I thought I’d seen, rather than examining what I actually had. I’d been careless instead of precise, and I’d shared general impressions with Ryan, rather than specific details. I’d succumbed to confirmation bias — interpreting data according to my expectations. In short, when it came to the data analysis of my crazy, I’d been a bad scientist.

  “What fits?” Ryan asked.

  “I’ll tell you everything later. I just need to confirm a couple of things.”

  A pattern was emerging from the information. A possible motive — or motives — and even a method. The facts and visions clicked together, more or less, but it was still just a theory. I needed more information to confirm my hypothesis, so I went online to research the average lifespan of cut flowers, to compare the various features of fitness trackers, and to check distances on Google Maps. It all made sense.

  I glanced at my wristwatch. At nine-thirty on this Tuesday morning, I knew where I’d find the person I needed to speak to. Should I call Ryan back and ask him to go with me? No. For one thing, he couldn’t be seen doing any more investigating with Kooky-pants McGee, and for another, if I was wrong — again — I’d just be wasting more of his time. I needed to be sure before I troubled him. I needed evidence.

  Besides, there’d be people around. I’d be perfectly safe.

  – 38 –

  Far from being full of people, the parking lot of the Sweet ‘n Smoky sugar works was deserted except for one black Lexus SUV. Where was everybody?

  I was about to ring the bell of the office block when the door opened.

  “You!” Bethany Ford said, glaring at me.

  This was h
ow people reacted to me these days, it seemed. To know me was to loathe me.

  Bethany locked the door to the office block behind her. The keys she held looked like the same bunch that Denise had fidgeted with, but Bethany’s fingernails were painted pink, not turquoise.

  “I thought I told you to keep off my property,” she said.

  “Well, technically, you told me to keep away from your staff.”

  She gave an exasperated “Tchah!” then pulled a red beanie over her soft blond curls and yanked on her gray leather gloves.

  My own head and hands were bare. Expecting to talk to her in the warmth of her office, I’d left my hat and mittens in the car, and my ears were already beginning to hurt from the cold. I thrust my hands into my pockets.

  “Can we go inside?”

  “No,” she said, pushing past me and zipping up her North Face winter jacket — ruby red to match her beanie — as she stalked off to the sugar shack.

  “I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “And I just wanted you arrested for assaulting Jim, but we don’t always get what we want.”

  “I didn’t assault Jim!” I said, struggling to keep up with the pace of her long legs.

  “So you say. And yet, he has broken bones and you are” — she shot a disparaging glance my way, and I had the sense that a number of unflattering descriptions hovered on the tip of her tongue — “fully in one piece.”

  “Well, okay, that’s true, but —”

  “Look at it!” She flung an arm out to indicate the sugar shack with its closed door and cold chimney. “The height of sugaring season, and I’ve got a shutdown.”

  “Is that why no one’s here?”

  “I’ve given the staff time off. My new custodian starts on Thursday, and we’ll run the boilers flat-out from then, so I told the others to take their ‘weekend’ now.”

  When we reached the shed, I said, “Here, let me help you.”

  Grabbing the icy handle of the red sliding door, I tugged it open, and Bethany strode inside. I lagged behind a moment to activate the recording function on my cell phone. Then, tucking it microphone side up into my outer jacket pocket, I followed her into the sugar shack, rubbing my hands together for warmth.