Do Not Disturb: An addictive psychological thriller

by Freida McFadden

  Then she looks up, straight at our house. Her eyes point directly at me. I drop the binoculars, my heart pounding. She doesn’t look away.

  What is going on?

  She’s rifling around in her purse, looking for something. She pulls something out of her purse, but it’s much too far away to see without the binoculars. Cautiously, I bring them back up to my eyes just as she pulls the object from her purse.

  I can’t see what the object is, but it glints in the moonlight. Could that be...

  A knife?

  Oh my God, does she have a knife? Why would this woman have a knife? And what does she plan to do with it?

  And then she moves in the direction of our house.

  My heart is pounding painfully. What is she doing? Why is she coming here with a knife? Is she angry that I was watching her?

  I throw the binoculars onto the bed, like they’re made of fire. She couldn’t have seen that I had them. And even if she did, she wouldn’t kill me over it, would she? It’s not like I saw anything terrible. I just saw her sitting in her room. That’s all.

  She’s definitely moving toward the house. There’s no doubt about it. And she’s still got that knife gripped in her hand.

  Oh god oh god oh god oh god…

  And now she’s at our front door. I hear her knock, but I stay perfectly still. But then a horrible thought occurs to me.

  Nick may not have locked the front door.

  We were always lax about locking doors. After all, it’s pretty deserted out here and we never had much worth stealing.

  And then I hear the footsteps coming from downstairs. Oh my God. She’s inside.

  I grab my phone. The first thing I do is text Nick: Please come here now! Somebody is in the house! Then I dial 911, although it will be far too late by the time they arrive.

  “Emergency services,” a female voice says.

  “Please help me,” I croak. “There’s an intruder in my house.”

  “I’m sorry…. I can’t…… you’re saying.”

  Great. The storm must have damaged the closest cell phone tower.

  The footsteps are growing louder, and now I hear a loud creak. She’s on the stairs. I don’t have much time.

  “Please.” Tears leap into my eyes. “You’ve got to help me! There’s somebody in my house. In the house next to the Baxter Motel on I-93 N.”

  “Ma’am……. can’t……”

  And now the phone is dead.

  The creaking noise stops. She must’ve reached the top of the stairs. In two seconds, she’ll be in my bedroom. With that knife.

  She’s going to kill me.

  Isn’t this what I wanted though? I was just looking up how to kill myself on Google. And now this stranger is going to do the job for me. Why am I calling 911? I should open the door for her. Welcome her.

  Except I realize at this moment that I don’t want to die.

  As my heart pounds rapidly in my chest, it’s like a fog has lifted from my brain. The fog that’s been coloring every moment of my life for the last five years. My life isn’t hopeless, and I don’t want to die. I want my restaurant back. I want to get those contractors in and convert the kitchen so I can use it again even if I can’t stand or walk. I want to do a course of physical therapy so that I can take care of myself again and I don’t have to depend on Nick for every little thing.

  And I want Nick. I don’t want him to leave. I don’t want him to find some other woman and be happy with her. I want him to be happy with me again. I want to start a family with him.

  But most of all, I want him. I want him so badly. I don’t want to die before seeing him again.

  The door to my bedroom swings open. The dark-haired woman is standing there in her pea green winter coat, a knife glinting in her right hand. I push my hands against the wheels of my chair and hit the wall behind me.

  “You…” she hisses at me.

  I raise my hands in the air. “I’m sorry. Whatever you think I did, I’m sorry.”

  “You know what happened to my sister,” she snaps at me.

  “Your… sister?” Is she the sister of the blond woman?

  She raises the knife and takes a step towards me. “Don’t play dumb.”

  I glance down at my phone. Nick hasn’t responded to my text. He probably hasn’t even seen it. He’ll read it just in time to discover my dead body. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

  “Liar…”

  “Please…” A tear escapes my right eye. “I didn’t do anything to your sister. I swear.”

  She takes another step forward. Her eyes are pools of darkness, staring into mine. “I never said you did.”

  Chapter 37

  ROB

  Three hours earlier

  Most of the time, the first thing I do when I get home is take a shower.

  Claudia requires it. Not that it’s a terrible idea. When you’re working on people’s toilets, you get your hands dirty. Claudia claims there’s grease and grime permanently ground into the creases of my hands but that’s not true. I can get them clean if I want. If I scrub for a long time.

  Today was the kind of job where you come home and want to shower right away. There was a clog in the pipe that just wouldn’t come free. I worked at it forever before I figured out what it was. It was a dead rat.

  No, not a dead rat. A frozen dead rat.

  Half a frozen dead rat.

  So when I walk through the front door of my house, yeah, I want to shower. And after that, a nice dinner with Claudia. Although that’s one of those things that’s gotten more and more rare lately. Everything is a fight these days. I don’t even know why. I work hard all day, and all I want to do is go home and relax at the end of the day with a nice cold beer. You think I want to fight with my wife? I don’t.

  The house is dark when I get inside. I swear Claudia told me she didn’t have any clients this afternoon. On account of the snow.

  “Claudia?” I call out.

  No answer.

  I don’t know where she could be. Maybe she’s looking for Quinn, although I don’t know why she thinks she’ll be better at it than the police. Unless she knows something she’s not telling me, which might be true.

  I don’t get Claudia’s relationship with Quinn. Quinn is fine. She’s nice enough. Quiet compared with my wife. Her husband is an asshole, but who cares? Claudia spends so much time with Quinn, but sometimes I wonder if they even like each other.

  Claudia is always whining about Quinn. To be fair, she whines about everything. But especially about Quinn. Quinn’s fake blond hair. Quinn’s giant house. How Quinn wouldn’t give us any money to help when our roof collapsed last year and wrecked our attic.

  Not that we need money from the Alexanders. I do fine as a plumber. It’s a very good living. Maybe I’m not rich like Derek Alexander, but I could afford to fix my own damn roof. I didn’t want their charity. I wouldn’t have taken the money if they offered it.

  I head up the stairs, trying not to think about where Claudia might be. I don’t even know if I care. There was a time when I might have come home and told her about the rat in the pipe and she would have laughed. But these days, she wouldn’t want to hear it.

  I strip off my dirty clothing and go straight in the shower. I turn it up as hot as it gets, so hot I might get second-degree burns, but it will be worth it. It’s cold outside. And I installed a shower nozzle to improve the pressure. It was Claudia’s request, but I think I like it more than she does.

  The water runs over my hair, which admittedly, isn’t much to speak of lately. Claudia likes to point out I’m losing my hair, and that it makes me look like an old man. It’s a favorite topic of hers. I told her I’ll just shave it all off, but she doesn’t want that either. I don’t know what the hell she wants.

  My head is throbbing dully from the stress of getting that goddamn rat out of the pipe. I reach for my forehead and my fingers graze the scar on my hairline. I got that scar a year ago, and it still t
hrobs sometimes. Claudia and I were in a fight—yelling and screaming, and yes, throwing things. I can’t even remember what the fight was about, but she picked up a paperweight and threw it at my head. Five stitches.

  She felt bad about it though. Drove me to the ER. Was real nice for a good few weeks after. No fighting.

  When I climb out of the shower, I wrap a towel around my waist and stare at my reflection in the mirror. I look tired. Yeah, I’m losing my hair, but I don’t look that different from the day Claudia and I met. But somehow, she’s gotten sick of looking at me.

  I tap the medicine cabinet open. We got a lot of pill bottles in there. I don’t know what the hell half of them are—they all belong to Claudia. I rifle through half full bottles and finally find the Tylenol. I shake two of them into my hand and swallow them dry. Maybe that will help with the headache.

  When I get out of the bathroom, it’s strangely quiet. “Claudia?” I call out.

  No answer.

  Claudia still isn’t home. Where the hell is she? It’s getting late. Usually we have dinner around now.

  I throw on some clothes, and while I’m buttoning my jeans, I hear a ding from the hallway. It’s the dryer. Before Claudia left for wherever she was going, she must’ve put a load of clothes in the dryer.

  That’s another problem Claudia’s got with me. I never do the wash. Whenever I bring up having a baby, she always says that. How are you going to help me take care of a baby if you won’t even do the laundry? I don’t know what one thing has to do with the other. Everyone else I know who got married when we did has a kid or two by now. What are we waiting for?

  But if I need to do the laundry to prove myself to her, hell, I’ll do it. I don’t mind. It’s easier than getting a dead rat out of a pipe.

  I go out to the hallway where our washer and dryer are set up. I take the load out of the dryer—it’s mostly Claudia’s stuff. Shirts and scrubs. I almost think maybe I shouldn’t do it because I’ll fold her shirts wrong, and that will be another thing I did wrong today. You can’t win. But then I say to hell with it. Better to try.

  I fold Claudia’s shirts the best I can. I build a little stack of them on our bed, and I’m almost proud of it. I recognize a lot of the shirts. She still has that shirt with the silhouette of the Eiffel tower on it. She wore that the day we met. I remember because I liked how she had the French name and the French shirt.

  I just liked her though. Mostly that.

  I do a good job with the folding. I mean, it’s a nice little pile of shirts. I think I folded them right. She’ll be happy. She’s got to be happy with this, for once.

  Claudia keeps her shirts in the big dresser in our bedroom. I open up the drawer and push some of the clothing aside to make room for the neatly folded clean shirts. And that’s when something falls out of the pile of shirts that was already in the drawer.

  It’s a phone.

  I pick it up and turn it over in my hand. It’s a burner phone. One of those phones you get when you don’t want somebody to track you.

  What the hell is my wife doing with a burner phone?

  I flip it open. I notice a bunch of missed calls on the screen. I think about calling the number back, but I don’t. I want to know what the deal is with this phone first, before I start calling a number and acting like an idiot.

  There are a bunch of text messages on the phone. All from the same number. I open up the most recent one:

  I can’t wait to see you.

  What the…?

  I sink onto the bed as I read through the text messages one by one. It gets much worse.

  She just went out. See you soon!

  Rob won’t be home till late. Come over.

  I can’t wait to get you naked.

  You’re all I can think about.

  Well, great. Claudia is messing around with another guy.

  Am I surprised? I don’t even know. Am I pissed off? Hell yes. How could she? How could she do something like that to me? To us? I knew she wasn’t happy with me, but what the hell? We could’ve talked it out. Marriage counseling or some shit like that.

  I squeeze the phone, feeling it almost crack in my hand. I want to throw it across the room and watch it shatter. I know I shouldn’t. This is the only evidence I have that she’s been messing around on me. But the urge is almost too strong.

  And then the phone rings.

  Chapter 38

  It’s the same number that’s been texting her and calling her. The guy. He’s trying to reach her. She’s probably forgotten about some get-together they had because she’s been too focused on Quinn.

  Some of my anger fades. Claudia is going through a lot right now with Derek being killed and Quinn maybe being held hostage. Not that it’s any excuse for what she did. But she’s already distraught.

  That doesn’t mean I’m not going to answer this phone and tell this guy to stay the hell away from my wife. So I click the button to accept the call.

  “Hello, asshole,” I say through my teeth.

  There is a long pause on the other line. He’s probably shocked Claudia didn’t pick up and wondering if he should hang up. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to find him either way.

  “Who am I speaking to?” a voice says. It’s a male voice, deep and overly formal. It’s not what I expected.

  “I’m Claudia’s husband,” I say. “And you’re busted. I want you to leave her alone from now on. You got me?”

  Another long pause. “This is Robert Delaney?”

  “Yeah. Who’d you think it was?”

  A throat clears on the other line. “Mr. Delaney, this is Officer Higgins. We found this phone number on a burner phone in the pocket of your brother-in-law, Derek Alexander.”

  My world tilts sideways as my mouth drops open. “What?”

  There is shuffling on the other line while I sit on the bed, gripping the phone so hard that it hurts my fingers. I’ve almost driven myself crazy by the time I hear another voice come on the line: “Mr. Delaney, this is Deputy Dwyer.”

  Scott Dwyer has been on the police force since I’ve lived here. As far as I know, he’s a good man and a good cop. But none of that makes me feel any better.

  “Deputy,” I choke out. “What’s going on?”

  “Mr. Delaney, is this your phone?”

  “No!” I burst out. “Christ, no. I found it.”

  “Found it where?”

  The answer to this question is going to get Claudia in a world of trouble. But I can’t lie. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t.

  “I found it in Claudia’s dresser drawer.”

  There’s another long silence on the other line. I can only imagine the conversation going on right now.

  “Where are you, Mr. Delaney?” Dwyer finally says.

  “I… I’m home.”

  “Is your wife there as well?”

  “No…”

  “Are you expecting her home soon?”

  “I didn’t even expect her not to be here.” I let out a laugh that sounds strangled. “But yeah, I think she’ll be home soon.”

  “Don’t go anywhere, Mr. Delaney. I’m on my way.”

  _____

  My hair is still damp from the shower by the time Deputy Dwyer’s police car pulls up in front of my house. Right after we hung up, I went down to the kitchen, poured myself a shot of scotch and downed it in one gulp. I should be sober for when I talk to the police, but the hell with it. I needed a drink.

  It won’t make me drunk. Just something to get my hands to stop shaking.

  I’m already rising off the sofa when Dwyer makes it to the front door. I’ve got the door open half a second after he hits the doorbell. He’s wearing his blue cop uniform, and I’m glad he doesn’t try to shake my hand, because my palms are cold and damp.

  “Hello, Mr. Delaney,” he says. “Sorry to disturb you. Can I come in?”

  I wordlessly step aside to let him enter my home. Scott Dwyer is around thirty, with hair that looks reddish in the overhead lights
of our living room. He looks like he might’ve had freckles when he was younger, but they’ve faded. Claudia once said in a disparaging kind of way that Quinn dated Scott Dwyer when they were in high school. She laughed when she talked about how Dwyer showed up at their door like a puppy dog, always searching for Quinn.

  I wonder what Dwyer thinks happened to Derek Alexander. I wonder if he thinks Quinn killed him.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Deputy?” I ask as I lead him to the sofa. I suddenly worry he can smell the scotch on my breath. “Water, I mean.”

  He shakes his head and settles down on the cushions of our worn blue sofa. “No, thanks.”

  I sit down on the loveseat across from him. Claudia is always saying we need new furniture. Every time she goes over to Quinn’s house, she goes on a rant about how our stuff isn’t as nice as theirs. But our stuff is fine. You don’t have to own a ten thousand dollar leather sofa.

  “So.” I dig the phone out of my pocket and hold it out to him. “Here it is. If you want it.”

  Damn straight he wants it. He reaches for it, flips it open and stares at the screen. I sit there watching him as he scrolls through the text messages, the same way I did. I wait patiently, but I’m sitting on my hands. After a couple of minutes, he finally focuses his attention back on me. “Where did you find the phone?”

  “I was putting away Claudia’s laundry. I found it tucked between two shirts.”

  “So… it was hidden.”

  “Yeah.” My jaw tightens. “You can see why.”

  “Yes,” he says. “Did you suspect Claudia was having an affair at any point?”

  “No. Never.” Although now it makes me feel stupid to say it. I should have known. But how could I? I was too busy supporting my family. Digging rats out of pipes and all that crap.

  “Were you and Claudia close with Derek and Quinn?”

  “Claudia and Quinn were close.” I cough into my hand. “Well, I thought they were.”

  “Do you think Claudia could have hurt Quinn?”

  I frown. “Wait. Do you think Claudia might have been the one who stabbed Derek? And… done something to Quinn?”