A Noise Downstairs

by Linwood Barclay

  She glanced his way for a second. “I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “Twelve years ago, well, going back even further, my mother was not well. It was a long decline. Life’s so unfair that way, you know? Sometimes I think it would be so much better if we went just like that.” She took a hand off the wheel and snapped her fingers. “None of this lingering. It can be so hard on everyone.”

  “Sure,” Paul said.

  “This is something I’ve never told anyone. Not my father, not any of my friends, not my ex-husband, although we’d split by this time.”

  Paul nodded. “Okay.”

  They were back on the main road, picking up speed.

  “It was a Tuesday night, just after three in the morning.” She stopped, breathed in through her nose, steeling herself. “I was sound asleep. And I heard my mother speak to me. As clearly as you talking to me now. She said, and I’ll never forget this, she said, ‘It’s time to come and say good-bye.’ I woke up, and I could still hear her in my head, saying that. I looked at the clock, and it was eleven minutes after three. I don’t want to make too much of this, but my mother was born on the eleventh of March.”

  Paul nodded slowly.

  “She was in a hospital chronic care wing at the time. I knew it was irrational, I knew she couldn’t actually speak to me like that, but I felt I had to go to the hospital. I threw on some clothes and drove there as quickly as I could and I went to her room.”

  The car went over a bump and the golf clubs in the back rattled like old bones.

  Paul realized he was barely breathing. “What happened?”

  “She was awake. She was looking at the door. It was like she was waiting for me to arrive. She smiled and reached out a hand.”

  Anna put her own hand to her mouth. Paul could see a tear running down her cheek. She needed a moment before she could continue.

  “It was so small. Her hand. Just skin and bone. I took it, and she said to me, I swear, she said, ‘I’m glad you got my message.’ I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened.” She glanced with moist eyes at her passenger. “Pretty nuts, right?”

  Paul slowly shook his head. “No. It’s not nuts at all.”

  “And I sat with her, and twenty minutes later, she was gone.”

  Paul didn’t know what to say.

  “I called my father, woke him up, told him a lie, that the hospital had called me. That Mom had passed away. I told him I was on my way.” She sniffed. “I couldn’t tell him the truth.”

  “No,” Paul said, understanding.

  “How could I explain that I was there? How could I tell him that she’d gotten in touch with me, and not him? Why didn’t she somehow contact my father, too?”

  “Maybe she tried,” Paul said. “He just didn’t hear her.”

  Anna hit the blinker and steered the car over to the shoulder. Once it had stopped, she put it in park.

  “I need a second,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She allowed the tears to come. She pointed to the glove compartment. Paul opened it, spotted a shallow box of tissues. He pulled out half a dozen and handed them to Anna.

  “God, this is so embarrassing,” she said as she dabbed her eyes, then blew her nose. She dropped her hands into her lap. “Not to mention unprofessional. I’m the one who’s supposed to be keeping it together.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I can touch her. It’s okay.

  Paul reached over and placed a hand on hers. Gently, he said, “By not telling your father, that tells me you believe what happened was real.”

  She looked at him. “Even if I didn’t believe it, even if it really was only a dream, and a complete coincidence that I got to the hospital just in time, I couldn’t tell my father because he might believe it. And think how hurt he would feel. So I could never tell him.”

  She took her hand out from under Paul’s, placed it on top of his, and squeezed. “It’s haunted me all these years. It truly has. It was good to finally tell someone.”

  Paul fought the urge to put an arm around her. He wanted to do it more than anything.

  “So,” she said, freeing his hand, putting the car back in drive, and checking her mirror to see whether it was safe to pull back onto the road, “I guess the bottom line is, yes, the jury is still out, but I can’t tell you that what’s been happening to you isn’t really happening. I just don’t know.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  God, I just want to hold her.

  But they were back on the road now, Anna pushing down hard on the accelerator. A few miles later, she said, “I think this trip did you some good. If your only takeaway is that Kenneth Hoffman is no longer the boogeyman you’d built him up in your dreams to be, then it was worth it.”

  “I suppose. And I got to show him those notes. Maybe . . . maybe I was hoping he’d think they were real. If he had, I’d be able to think, okay, I’m not the only one who’s starting to believe in the unbelievable.”

  “I think they rattled him,” Anna said. “Although I’m not sure which troubled him more. The notes, or the fact you’d come into possession of what might be his typewriter.”

  Paul’s phone rang. He dug it out of his jacket, saw the caller’s name, and frowned.

  “What does she want?” he said, more to himself than Anna.

  “Who is it?” Anna asked.

  Paul put the phone to his ear. “Hailey, is everything okay? Is Josh—what . . . Charlotte came to your office and what . . . yes, I have had a hard time, but . . . I know Josh has a key. Why would she . . . okay, okay . . . okay. Thanks for telling me . . . okay . . . good-bye.”

  He held the phone, made no effort to put it back into his jacket.

  “That was weird,” he said, staring straight ahead.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Charlotte said she was going to see her mother but she went to see Hailey, supposedly because she was worried about me, and wanted to get Hailey’s take. But then there was something about Josh’s key, and . . .”

  “What is it, Paul?”

  He shook his head, as if that might make things come clear. “Something I’ll have to talk to Charlotte about when I get home.”

  Anna decided not to push it. “Okay.”

  _________________

  ANNA PULLED INTO HER DRIVEWAY NEXT TO PAUL’S CAR AND TURNED off the engine. She glanced up at her father’s bedroom window, noticed that the light was on.

  “Thanks again for everything,” Paul said, pulling on the handle of the passenger door.

  “You’re welcome. Thank you. It was quite a day.”

  Paul held his position. He looked at Anna and knew, at that moment, what he wanted to do. Something he couldn’t. Something he wouldn’t.

  “Time to go, Paul.” She smiled. “See you at our next session.”

  “Right, of course,” he said.

  He got out, closed the door, found his keys, and unlocked his car. Anna waited until he was out of the driveway and heading up the street before she got out and went into her house.

  _________________

  DRIVING HOME, PAUL FELT AWASH IN GUILT.

  He’d done nothing wrong, he hadn’t acted on his feelings, but the fact he’d had them made him remorseful. Just when Charlotte was being so supportive, sticking by him, helping him through the worst crisis of his life, he finds himself attracted to another woman.

  He’d spent so much time lately with Anna. He could tell her things he could tell no one else. She listened.

  Of course, you idiot. It’s her job.

  At an intellectual level, Paul knew that. Her concern for him was rooted in professionalism. He’d be a fool to think she felt anything for him that went beyond that.

  Except it didn’t change how he felt.

  He had to push her out of his mind. Any other kind of relationship with Anna White was a nonstarter.

  If there was anything Paul needed to work on, to reward and nourish, it
was his life with Charlotte.

  Don’t make a complicated life even more complicated.

  So he struggled to replace thoughts of Anna with a review of his meeting with Kenneth Hoffman.

  Had the encounter been helpful? Was Anna right, that if nothing else, seeing Kenneth face-to-face had diminished his stature? He was, indeed, a broken man. Paul thought the days and weeks ahead would be the test of whether seeing Kenneth was a good thing. Would the nightmares fade? Would he stop hearing Kenneth in his head?

  He hit the turn signal indicator, turned down his street, then pulled into the driveway behind Charlotte’s car.

  Well, there was some good news. He actually remembered driving here.

  As he wearily got out of his car, it occurred to him he’d had nothing to eat in hours. On the way up, he and Anna had joked about dining on prison food, but once they were inside, they pretty much lost their appetites. He figured Charlotte was home from New York by now. Maybe she’d made dinner and set aside a plate for—

  Oh God.

  The front door was wide open.

  Forty-One

  Paul charged into the house, shouting, “Charlotte!”

  He threw the door closed behind him and took the stairs up to the kitchen two steps at a time. As he reached the top, Charlotte came around the kitchen island, her face full of alarm.

  “What?” she asked.

  He put on the brakes. “The door was open. I was worried. I didn’t know—”

  “I left it open,” she said, cutting him off. “You know how you were asking about a surveillance system, getting the locks changed? Well, I found a guy and took the first step today. I’d set up an appointment for late in the day, after I was back from the city. We’ve got new locks. I’d left the door open a crack so you’d be able to get in. I guess the wind blew it all the way open. God, you’re a nervous wreck.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, glancing back down to the front door to be sure it was closed. “I’ll close it now.” He scurried down the flight, turned the dead bolt, and returned. Charlotte was standing by the island.

  “Give me your keys,” she said.

  He handed her his set. On the granite countertop was a single key that looked, at a glance, identical to Paul’s house key. Charlotte picked up his set and worked the house key off the ring, then replaced it with the new one. She took his old key and tucked it into the front pocket of her jeans.

  “You did this because of Hailey?” Paul asked.

  “What about Hailey?” Charlotte asked, looking nervous.

  “She called me.”

  “I was gonna tell you,” Charlotte said, looking like she’d been caught in a lie. “I knew there was a chance Hailey’d rat me out. But you remember the other day, how she strolled right in here?”

  “You don’t really think Hailey snuck in here and—”

  “I don’t know, okay?” she said defensively.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them I was worried about you. So shoot me. I’ve been worried sick about you, and honestly, I can’t predict what you’re going to do next. Not these last few days. Not since I bought that goddamn thing and put it in your think tank.”

  Paul glanced at the open door to his study, as if to confirm that the typewriter was no longer there. He mentally breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was not. He knew where it was, but he was not going to go into the garage to check this time.

  You could take paranoia a little too far.

  “Whatever’s going on, whatever the cause,” Charlotte said cautiously, “I see it driving you to the brink of . . .”

  Paul gave her a look.

  “Just hear me out here. What if Hailey is behind this? She had a key. She could sneak in. What if it’s a custody thing? What if she and that smug asshole Walter are somehow setting you up, trying to make you seem mentally unfit, so they could go after sole custody of Josh?”

  “No!” he said firmly. “She wouldn’t do that! She wouldn’t do it to Josh. She wouldn’t keep him from me.”

  “Sometimes,” Charlotte said, “you don’t know what people are capable of.”

  Paul sighed, moved his head from side to side sorrowfully. “I just spent the afternoon learning that lesson.”

  He recounted his prison visit for her.

  “Are you glad you did it?” Charlotte asked.

  He told her he thought he was, and why.

  “Good,” she said. “You know what I’d like?”

  “What would you like?”

  “One night where we don’t talk about any of this. Nothing about Hoffman. Nothing about typewriters. Nothing about your legal problems with that asshole Hitchens.”

  “God, him. There’s been so much going on, I nearly forgot I might be going to jail myself.” He tried to laugh.

  “Stop.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want one night that we devote just to ourselves.”

  “Sold.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “I’m so hungry, I’d eat airline food.”

  He perched himself on one of the island stools while Charlotte pulled out an already prepared plate from the refrigerator. She said, “Spinach-and-ricotta-stuffed cannelloni with tomato sauce. Sorry, I had mine about an hour ago. I was starving.”

  She put it into the microwave, then went back to the fridge and brought out a bottle of red wine. “Got this, too.” She found a corkscrew in a drawer, opened the bottle, and filled two wineglasses.

  Charlotte handed one to him, raised her glass to make a toast. “To a new beginning. To putting the bad behind us, and looking forward to the good.”

  Paul, struggling to be enthusiastic, clinked his glass to hers and drank. “I like that.”

  Charlotte, wineglass in hand, turned back to the microwave to check on the progress of her husband’s dinner. “Three minutes.”

  “I’m gonna wash up,” he said, leaving his glass and heading for the stairs to the top floor.

  “Be quick,” she said.

  By the time he returned, his dinner was waiting for him and Charlotte was refilling her glass. “It is my intention,” she said with mock seriousness, “to get drunk and make some bad decisions.”

  Paul smiled as he retook his spot on the stool. “Sounds like a plan,” he said, picking up his glass and downing the rest of his wine in a single gulp.

  “Hit me,” he said, setting the glass back down. Charlotte filled it to the brim, then looked at the trickle left in the bottle.

  “Good thing I have more than just this one,” she said.

  Paul cut into the cannelloni with the side of his fork and blew on it before putting it into his mouth. “This is not bad.”

  Charlotte smiled as she went to the fridge again. “All I want is for you to be happy,” she said. She scowled at the second bottle she had pulled out. “A screw top. Is that too down market?”

  “Seriously?” he said. “For me, who doesn’t know a Chablis from a chardonnay?”

  “Yeah, and really, the more you drink, what does it matter?”

  She opened the bottle, set it on the island at the ready. Paul went through his second glass in half a dozen gulps. The moment his glass was empty, Charlotte refilled it.

  “Do you forgive me?” she asked.

  “For?”

  “Talking to Hailey and Dr. White.”

  He nodded. “I do.”

  “If the roles were reversed, wouldn’t you have done the same thing?”

  Paul thought about that. “I guess I would have.” He had polished off the dinner and pushed the plate away from him.

  “Are you wondering what’s for dessert?” Charlotte asked.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m good.”

  “You should reconsider,” she said, setting down her glass, coming around the island, turning his head to face her, and putting her mouth on his.

  Paul felt himself instantly responding. He slid off the stool, put his arms around Charlotte, and pulled her
in to him, their lips parting. She slid her tongue into his mouth as he cupped his hands on her buttocks.

  Charlotte wedged a hand down between them, felt his hardness beneath his jeans. She pulled back slightly, creating enough space between them that she could undo his belt and the button at the top of his zipper. As his jeans began to fall, allowing her to slip her hand into his shorts, Paul freed her blouse from her pants and ran his hands over her bare skin, heading toward her back and the clasp of her bra.

  “Are you going to take me here on the island?” she whispered.

  “If it were a desert island, maybe,” Paul said. “But I think a bed might be more comfortable than granite.”

  “Well, Romeo, if we’re moving this party to the bedroom, you better pull up your pants so you don’t trip on the stairs.”

  “Wise advice.”

  “Turn off the lights on the way up. And bring that bottle.”

  _________________

  WHEN THEY WERE DONE, PAUL SLIPPED NAKED OUT OF THE BED, STAG-gered into the bathroom long enough to take a piss, guided by the moonlight filtering through the window blinds. He flopped back down on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. Charlotte, naked and exposed with the covers down around her ankles, had barely moved since they finished making love. The second wine bottle and two glasses all sat empty on her bedside table.

  “Whoa,” she said quietly.

  “No kidding,” Paul said, reaching his hand out across the sheet and touching his fingers lightly on her arm. “You know, I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  “What I mean is, four glasses of wine—”

  “It was five.”

  “Whatever. I’m feelin’ it.”

  “Like I said, welcome to the club.”

  Paul turned onto his side and shifted closer to Charlotte. She found the energy to roll onto her side, too, so that he could tuck in behind her, spoon-style.

  “Covers,” she said.

  Paul reached down for the comforter and dragged it up over them. He put his arm around Charlotte, caressing her breasts, and put his head deep into his pillow.

  Within seconds, he was snoring.

  _________________

  HE WAS DREAMING, PERHAPS NOT SURPRISINGLY, ABOUT NEEDING TO go to the bathroom. As he slowly started to come awake, opening his eyes briefly, he thought that killing off a couple of bottles of wine at bedtime will do that to you.