The Apple of My Eye

by Mary Ellen Bramwell

  . . .

  I recall driving home in the dark after making our teary good byes and being loaded down with leftovers. When I eventually found my answers, or as many as I could find, we would talk again. There was no doubt in either of our minds that Professor Haynesworth would reprise his role as surrogate father to Paul, only this time it would be as surrogate grandfather to Noah. We were bound by the mutual loss of a friend.

  My phone rang on the way home, and I fumbled to find it and answer it. When I finally did so, no one was there. How rude people could be sometimes! Normally it wouldn’t bother me, but I had so little fuse left these days. In my mind, I immediately blamed Paul for that, but as I did so I was quickly annoyed with myself for being that person, the one who takes offense at the littlest thing and never takes personal responsibility, insisting on blaming others instead. While learning that Paul was not who I thought he was, was I also learning that I wasn’t as nice of a person as I thought I was?

  The car lights illuminated the road in front of me but nothing else. How I wished I could see even that much of where my life was heading. I felt completely surrounded by darkness, but was it darkness of my own creating or had someone else pulled all the shades and turned off the switch, plunging me into this frightening abyss? I didn’t know the answer.

  It was a relief when the porch light on my house came into view. At least a small piece of safe harbor still existed. Coming into the house so late at night I was surprised yet pleased to see my father waiting up for me. He looked up from his crossword puzzle and smiled. “Hi, sweetie. Mom went to bed when Noah did, but I thought I’d wait up. You know, for old time’s sake.” He waited for me to sit down beside him. “How did it go?”

  I nestled up next to him, putting my head on his shoulder, feeling at least partially safe. “Dad, I really didn’t know him. I still feel so much love for him, but at the same time, I feel hurt and betrayed. I don’t even know if he ever loved me.” That’s as much as I could get out before collapsing in tears.

  It took a few minutes to pull myself together. Wiping my tears with a tissue, I said, “Thanks for being here for me. Would you mind helping me up to bed? I think I need your shoulder to lean on a little longer.”

  Without a word, he wrapped an arm gently around my shoulder, and together we made our way upstairs. He even insisted on waiting for me to brush my teeth and get ready for bed so he could tuck me in before heading off to bed himself.

  INTRUSION

  I slept like a rock. At nine in the morning, my mother reluctantly woke me. “Brea, I’m sorry, honey, but you need to get up. The police will be here in a few minutes, and they’re going to need your help.”

  I woke up with a start. “The police? What happened?”

  “Someone broke into the house last night. We’ve already called the police, because we didn’t want to wait any longer.”

  “What’s missing? What did they take? Is everyone okay?” I realized that last question should have been my first, but my brain wasn’t quite awake yet.

  “Everyone’s fine, dear. Noah’s eating some cereal in his high chair and Dad’s with him. We don’t know if anything is missing. That’s why we need you. Can you come take a look and see?”

  “You mean there’s nothing obvious that’s been taken, like a TV or artwork?” I was trying to think of what we had of value in our home.

  “There might be a computer missing. The only place we can see any disturbance is in your office. So we figured you would know.”

  I hastily threw on some clothes, not wanting to greet the police in my robe, and hurried down the stairs. Mom was right. Nothing was disturbed in the rest of the house, but my office was a shambles.

  Stopping at the door, I stared with disbelief. The entire contents of my filing cabinet had been emptied onto the floor, not in one big, loud dump, but in a quiet, we’re-looking-for-something-specific kind of way. I could tell this by the piles of files, not quite neat piles, more like sorting piles – you know, “I’ve gone through this stack, why don’t you go through that one.”

  I looked at the top of my desk where my laptop should have been, only it was gone. The dust outlined an empty rectangle where it usually sat.

  I tried to look around and call up a mental picture from my memory of what used to lay where. If I could compare what I was seeing with that image, I could piece together what was missing. They had taken the charger for my laptop, so these were thinking criminals, or at least that’s what I thought, admitting at the same time that I could be completely mistaken.

  As I looked at the empty socket that usually held that missing power cord, I realized Paul’s phone charger was also missing, which meant ... yes, his phone was missing, too. Who would want his phone? Or more likely, whoever took it thought they were taking mine. It’s rather doubtful that I would be charging a dead man’s phone I realized with a laugh, even though none of this was actually funny.

  I couldn’t imagine that someone just stole the phone and the computer to sell them. Looking over my office seemed to indicate this wasn’t a random robbery. The whole thing felt surreal. I should be outraged, but with all I had been through lately, I just felt numb.

  At that moment, the doorbell rang. I let my father answer it while I continued to paint images of the room, both past and present, in my head.

  A familiar voice said, “Have you figured out what’s missing yet?” I turned slowly around to find myself face to face with Detective Lentus. It had only been a few days since I had seen him last.

  “Mrs. Cass, I’m sorry we meet again under such circumstances. Since your husband’s case is still open, my lieutenant thought it best to send my partner and me out to see what happened here.”

  “Of course. That makes sense. I, uh, I’m not sure what’s missing yet. My laptop is gone and my husband’s cell phone, beyond that I don’t know.”

  “His cell phone?” I had just piqued his interest. “The phone we returned to you a few days ago?” His voice sounded testy.

  I couldn’t tell if he was mad at me for retrieving the phone or at himself for not knowing it could somehow be important. But then I sensed something else - fear, fear that his lieutenant might think he had messed up.

  When he kept staring at me expectantly, it dawned on me that I had not answered his question. “Yes, that very phone,” I confirmed.

  “Was there anything on it?”

  “Well, there was an Alex in his contacts that I didn’t know. He, uh …” How could I explain tracking down his address and staking out his house? “He seems to have been a friend of my husband’s that I hadn’t met before. He even showed up at his funeral, but ducked out before I got a chance to meet him.”

  The obvious question now would be, how did I know he was at the funeral if I had never met him, but Detective Lentus never asked it. He just shrugged his shoulders and started looking around. I thought about how it must sound. Your husband has a friend, a male, who his wife has never met. Yeah, that didn’t sound like much of a threat, probably a drinking buddy or a bowling partner. It sounded silly now that I thought of it. I guessed B. P. would sound even sillier, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Detective, whoever it was that broke in took my computer and ransacked my office. I’m guessing they thought the phone was mine.”

  “Oh,” Lentus responded with obvious relief. “Do you have any idea what they might have been looking for?”

  “No, I don’t. I haven’t had a chance to go through my papers to see what’s missing. Although I don’t know if that will help any. I can’t think of anything of value or importance that I have in here.”

  Lentus made his way over to the window; it was ajar. With a sinking feeling, I knew that was the form of entry.

/>   He looked at me and arched his eyebrows. “Was this window left open like this?”

  Feeling like the fool, I responded, “It could have been. I often crack it a bit. Even when I close it, I often forget to latch it,” I admitted, but defensively I added, “I’ve been a little preoccupied lately.”

  He ignored my excuse. “This looks like how they gained access,” stating what was now obvious, but exerting his control at the same time. “Were any other rooms in the house disturbed?”

  “Not that I know of. My parents didn’t think so, but I haven’t looked around yet to see if anything is out of place.”

  He seemed eager to leave now that it didn’t seem important to his investigation. Impatiently he urged, “Why don’t you go take a look around, and then we’ll talk in here again.”

  Annoyed with his attitude, I turned to wander through my house. It was strange that nothing else was touched. There were valuable pieces of art, mostly gifts from Paul to me, but none of these had been disturbed. What had they been looking for in my den?

  As I walked through the kitchen, I noticed my cell phone sitting on the counter where I must have placed it on my way upstairs last night. It registered one missed call. I picked up the phone to check it. No message had been left. The call came in at 2:23 am, and the number was blocked. That struck me as odd, both a call in the middle of the night and on a night when we had a break in. While pondering that, I noticed that the call before that one had also been from a blocked number. It was not a missed called, so clearly I had answered the call, but I couldn’t place it. Looking at the time of the call for clues, it showed 11:04 pm the previous evening. That would have been shortly after I left Professor Haynesworth’s, but I hadn’t talked to anyone on the phone.

  I stood where I was in the kitchen pondering the call that I could not remember, mentally retracing my steps of the night before. The time must have been when I was in the car. With realization dawning, I recalled getting a call and answering it only to find no one on the other end. That was it! I was proud of myself for remembering, but then I stopped to consider what it might mean.

  If both calls were from the same person, was someone checking to see if I was asleep? Was that call from the person who broke into my house? It sounded far-fetched, but just as plausible as anything.

  Happy that I had pulled my thoughts together, I returned to the office to show the detective my phone. “I wonder if whoever broke in was checking to see if I was awake, if I would answer my phone. See, here’s a phone call from a blocked number at 2:23 this morning. I didn’t answer it. And around eleven last night there was another call from a blocked number. I answered it, but no one was there.” I then looked up at the detective and smiled. I don’t know what reaction I expected, but a complete dismissal was not it.

  “Yeah,” he raised his eyebrows at me, “it seems they had a plan,” and with that he turned away.

  Okay, I had to admit, it wasn’t an earth-shattering piece of information that directly tied itself to anything. So maybe it didn’t really help, and it didn’t help direct us anywhere. A blocked call is a blocked call, isn’t it?

  Then over his shoulder he threw me a bone. “If you’d be willing to give us access to your phone records, we can try to track it down.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I eagerly responded. Why wouldn’t I? Did this detective care about doing his job? Maybe I was just reading him wrong. It’s possible I had just ticked him off questioning him at the station a couple of days ago. I didn’t know for sure, but the sooner I looked over my office for what was missing, the sooner he would be gone.

  “Um, I didn’t find anything disturbed anywhere else. What would you like me to do here?”

  He turned at my conciliatory tone. “Why don’t you go through your papers and things to see if you can identify anything else that’s missing. I’ve got my partner checking the outside of the house. I’ll go direct her to this window, and then we’ll head back to the station.” I had been oblivious to the fact that another police office was somehow on the premises. Lentus had mentioned a partner when he first showed up, hadn’t he? I shook my head to shake out the cobwebs.

  “Call us if you discover what else, if anything, is missing,” he added.

  “Okay,” I responded, knowing he wasn’t expecting much. Regardless, it was time to do my part. I found a clean spot on the floor amid the piles and sat down cross-legged in the middle of it for the tedious task ahead.

  MARTHA’S CAR

  Two hours later I had learned two things. One, that my files were seriously out of date, and two, that I couldn’t possibly tell if anything was missing. Other than the computer and the phone, I knew of nothing for certain that had been taken. I left a brief message to that effect for Detective Lentus and then went to find Noah. At least if I could play with my little boy, the day would not be a total loss.

  I found my mom and dad in the great room on the floor with Noah. They were rolling a ball across the floor much to Noah’s giggling delight. I sat down to join the game, and for the time being all my troubles were forgotten.

  Before long, playtime and lunch were over. I read a story to Noah in our rocking chair and placed him down in his crib for a nap. He fussed only a little before drifting off to sleep.

  I stood outside his door listening to the soothing sound of his breathing. I felt like I was playing at being a mom, as if this were all a dream. Waking up to the uncertainties swirling around me would be the nightmare.

  With reluctance, I tiptoed away from his room and returned to my office to put things back in order. When I had gone through my papers earlier to determine if anything was missing, I had made a cursory attempt to sort my files. I had a pile of things I no longer needed that would go straight into the trash and an assortment of other papers that needed to be returned to my filing cabinet.

  Working on the mindless task of shuffling papers allowed me to ponder recent events. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why anyone would want my computer or any of my papers. I hadn’t found anything missing, but what had they been looking for in the first place?

  No matter which way I looked at the problem, I could think of nothing I knew or had that could be of value or interest. I felt like I was walking around with a target on my back with no idea what or who had placed it there. It was a vulnerable feeling, and the urgency to understand it just compounded all my frustrations with trying to figure out what Paul had been up to.

  My thoughts drifted to the last couple of days. All I had to show for them was more questions and certainly no answers. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. Was I stirring up something I would later regret?

  Is that what was happening? Had I inadvertently triggered the break in? What had I learned that someone might think was important? Alex! That was the only loose end. He must have seen me outside his house. If he knew Paul, it would be logical that he would know where I lived. If he was behind this, what did he think I knew? What was there to know?

  As my thoughts started to race to pull the pieces together, I felt a growing sense of alarm. What would happen when he discovered he had Paul’s phone and not mine, would he come back? And surely when he looked at my computer he would find that there was nothing to find. He was looking for some knowledge that he thought I had; what would he do when he didn’t find it? I wondered what lengths he would go to to get what he wanted.

  With fear creeping up my back, I thought of Noah and the danger I had just placed him in, not to mention my parents. There was no time to waste. I had to figure out what was going on and I needed to do it right now! Somehow, I had to learn what it was that Alex was after.

  I quickly shoved the remaining files back into the drawers or the garbage can, only pausing briefly to hope I hadn’t mixed up the
piles. I had to learn more about Alex.

  What should I do now? If he was worried about me watching him, maybe that’s exactly what I needed to do more of – watch him. Only this time, I needed to guard against being seen.

  I raced upstairs and rummaged through the closet. Finding a nondescript t-shirt, I quickly changed clothes then put my hair up under an old baseball cap of Paul’s. A pair of sunglasses would complete the look. At least from a distance no one would recognize me.

  After a brief explanation to my parents, where I gave them enough information to appease them but not enough to worry them, I went to the garage with a plan forming in my mind. I came up short. All the disguises in the world would be meaningless if I drove the same car I had driven the day before. I assumed since Alex knew Paul, that Paul’s car would be an even worse choice. I sat down on the steps leading from the garage into the house. How could something so simple derail me? I determined that it wouldn’t; I just had to come up with a solution.

  With a sudden idea, I slipped out of the garage and made a beeline for Martha’s house, pulling off the hat and letting my hair fall as I did so. As a reached up to knock on her door, I realized I had some explaining to do. I had shut her out, and at bare minimum, I owed her an apology.

  What would I say to her now that I was standing on her front porch? Before I had a chance to formulate the words, the door swung open and Martha was throwing her arms around me.

  “Brea, dear, come on in.”

  “Martha, aren’t you mad at me?”

  “Why would I be mad at you?”

  “I’ve turned my back on you lately. I’m so sorry.”

  “Is that it? Well, my dear, everyone has to grieve. Some of us do it loudly and tell everyone about it. Others, like you, grieve in your own head, trying to spare the rest of us from your turmoil.”