All the Way Home

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  What if Lou isn’t there? The thought occurs to her as she’s fumbling to dial the number of his office, noticing that the red message light is blinking on the answering machine as she walks away from it. Someone must have called while she was upstairs vacuuming, she thinks, distracted. Maybe it was Lou. Maybe he was saying he had to go to court this afternoon, or maybe making up some excuse for why she wouldn’t be able to reach him at work.

  But he’s there. In his office. Where he should be. Picking up the phone, saying, “Michelle? What’s wrong?”

  “My water just broke.”

  “Oh, my God. Are you sure? It’s so early.”

  The concern in his voice strikes her, makes her feel, at least for the time being, that everything is okay between them again.

  “Well, I know I didn’t pee in my pants,” she says, her voice coming out in a high-­pitched cross between amusement and hysteria. “I’ve been potty trained for years, Lou.”

  “I’ll be right home.”

  “Hurry.”

  “Did you call the doctor?”

  “I did. He said he’ll meet us at the hospital. I’ll go up and pack my bag. I hadn’t done that yet. I thought we had time—­”

  “I know. What about Ozzie?”

  “Ozzie!” Stricken, Michelle glances at her son, who’s happily pouring apple juice all over the remains of his peanut butter sandwich, soaking it. “My God, I forgot all about him. I mean, he’s right here, but . . . I’ll have to call Molly,” she realizes, remembering that his mother left this morning to go antiquing in Vermont through the weekend.

  “Call her right away. I hope she can do it.”

  “I hope so, too,” Michelle says, and hangs up. She thinks of Rebecca Wasner, and of Molly’s drawn face on Sunday night.

  “She’ll help us out,” she says aloud, dialing the Connollys’ number. “She has to.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Shilling,” Rory says, when her neighbor’s familiar face pokes through the screen door. “How have you been?”

  “Not too bad, Rory.” She opens the door, shoving her shoulder into the opening and asking, “How are you enjoying your visit home?”

  “Fine, thanks.” Suddenly, she wants to put off the real reason she came here. “Looks like rain, doesn’t it?”

  She glances up at the heavy gray sky, and Mrs. Shilling follows suit.

  “It does,” the woman says, then asks, nosy as ever, “Are you here to see Barrett Maitland?”

  “I—­why would you ask that?”

  “Because I saw how the two of you looked at each other the other day. I figured maybe something was going on between you.”

  “Oh.” Rory feels her cheeks grow hot. “Well, for the record, nothing’s going on, Mrs. Shilling.”

  “I see,” the woman says, wearing a slightly smug, whatever you say expression.

  “I just wanted to talk to him about . . . something.” She hadn’t even known, as she walked out the door, that she was headed over here. She’d only been aware that she had to get out of that house, with its haunting memories and its awful, lonely silence.

  But she had immediately realized, as she headed down Hayes Street, that she needs to talk to someone about yesterday’s encounter with poor David Anghardt, and Barrett Maitland is the logical—­no, the only—­choice.

  “I don’t suppose you know where he went?” Mrs. Shilling is asking.

  “Where he went?” Rory echoes.

  “Didn’t you get the message that he was leaving, Rory? I heard him—­ That is, I’m pretty certain he left a message with Molly, though I might be mistaken.”

  “You must be. I didn’t get a message.” Rory doesn’t want to be thrown by the news that Barrett is no longer here, doesn’t want disappointment to steal over her. After all, Barrett Maitland is just . . . what? Not a friend.

  Just a writer who came to town and started poking his nose into things that were better left untouched.

  “Where did he go?”

  “I have no idea. That’s why I asked you,” Mrs. Shilling reminds her. “All I know is that he paid for his room yesterday morning and left some of his things behind, but nothing all that important.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I . . . Okay, Rory, I’ll admit it. I checked. There was nothing there but some clothes, and shoes, and shampoo, stuff like that.”

  “Mrs. Shilling, I can’t believe you snooped through his room,” Rory says, feigning shock, even as her mind races, wondering why Barrett left town so suddenly.

  “It was the responsible thing to do, Rory,” the woman quickly justifies. “In fact, I just got off the phone with Bucky down in Texas—­he’s a police officer now, you know,” she adds proudly. “And he said it was the right thing to do. After all, poor Rebecca Wasner’s gone missing right on this very block, and that Barrett Maitland is so secretive. For all I know, he could be a cold-­blooded killer staying right here under my roof. Diana and Bucky were right. I never should have turned this place into a bed and breakfast. It’s too dangerous for a defenseless woman my age.”

  Rory glances at Mrs. Shilling, whose robust figure is far from vulnerable, and fights back a momentary urge to smile. Instead, she asks, “I know what you’re saying, Mrs. Shilling. For all we know, Barrett Maitland could be responsible for Rebecca’s disappearance Saturday night. You wouldn’t mind if I took a look in his room myself, would you?”

  The woman narrows her eyes.

  “I’ll confess,” Rory says quickly, “that I really was romantically involved with him. I was hoping that the two of us had a future. You won’t mind if I had a moment alone up there, just to come to terms with the fact that he left without saying good-­bye?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t mind.”

  Rory can practically see the wheels turning in the woman’s mind. Twenty minutes from now, she’ll be on the phone telling her garden-­club pals that poor Rory Connolly is broken-­hearted about being jilted by that mysterious newcomer, Barrett Maitland.

  “I’ll be down here in the kitchen if you need me, Rory,” Mrs. Shilling says, extracting an old-­fashioned key from the ring in her pocket and handing it to Rory. “You just take your time. He was in the room at the head of the stairs—­but then, you probably already know that,” she adds with a wink that suggests Rory and Barrett might have been sneaking around the place after hours.

  Shaking her head, Rory makes her way up to the second floor and unlocks the door.

  The room is fairly small but has a high ceiling, very similar to the rooms in the Connolly house. But it’s been painted and wallpapered and filled with period furniture to make for accommodations that are surprisingly tasteful, given Mrs. Shilling’s tendency toward tacky behavior.

  Feeling infinitely guilty, Rory opens the closet door and glances at the clothing hanging there, recognizing two of the shirts she’d seen on Barrett. The rest of his wardrobe is just as preppy—­lots of khaki, and button-­down shirts, and several pairs of loafers lined up neatly on the floor.

  In the dresser drawers are more clothes: shorts, socks, underwear—­boxers, Rory notes, blushing though she’s alone. Of course he’d wear boxers. Everything about him says Brooks Brothers.

  Which doesn’t mean he isn’t a serial killer.

  Reluctant as she is to face her suspicions, she has to admit that Mrs. Shilling is right. There’s something secretive about Barrett Maitland, and he is, after all, interested in what happened to those girls ten years ago. Could he have been behind it?

  But why would he come back?

  If he’d gotten away scot-­free for all these years, why not just stay away?

  On top of the dresser, along with bottles of shampoo and mouthwash and some loose change in an ashtray, are a dictionary, and a neat stack of notebooks—­all of them blank, Rory notices, rummaging through them. There are also pens, and several comp
uter diskettes, leading Rory to believe that he has a laptop computer, and if so, must have taken it with him, since it doesn’t appear to be here.

  Precisely the kinds of trappings you’d expect to find in the room of a writer researching a book.

  Or a serial killer taking pains to look like a writer researching a book, she thinks, toying with one of his pens, noticing it’s a fountain pen, and an expensive one at that.

  Barrett is perfectly aware of Mrs. Shilling’s nosiness. He had to know she was going to snoop through his things the moment he left. Why would he leave behind anything that would give him away?

  Rory goes to put the pen back on the dresser, drops it accidentally, and bends over to pick it up from the floor.

  As she does, she notices something under the dresser . . . a small rectangle of plain white paper, looks like.

  She picks it up, and it’s stiff, like a business card, and the edges are uneven, as though someone cut them with scissors.

  A photograph, she realizes, flipping it over.

  A school photograph of Carleen at seventeen.

  “How about some ice cream, Ozzie?” Molly asks, carrying the sobbing two-­year-­old back to the kitchen after his parents’ car has disappeared from view of the front porch.

  “No! I want Mommy!” Ozzie says, squirming.

  “Mommy’s going to the hospital to have the new baby, Ozzie, just like she said.”

  “No!”

  Molly hugs him, her heart going out to the little boy. Poor Michelle had been seized by a contraction, doubling over, clenching her huge stomach, just as she was saying good-­bye; Lou had hustled her out to the car the moment it was over and she could speak again.

  Ozzie—­and Molly, too—­had been startled by the sight of her in terrible pain.

  “She’ll be back in a few days, you’ll see,” Molly tells Ozzie now, nodding her head and feeling Carleen’s huge earrings clanking. She hadn’t had time to change out of this crazy get-­up—­Michelle had begged her to come straight over. Neither Michelle, nor Lou, when he dashed in from work, had seemed to notice her vintage eighties look. As soon as she gets a chance, she’ll scrub off the makeup she’d been painstakingly applying in Carleen’s mirror when Michelle’s call interrupted.

  “Your mommy’s going to the hospital,” Molly says again, “and guess what that means, Ozzie?”

  “What?” he asks halfheartedly.

  “You get to be a big brother. I have a big brother, and it’s the most important job in the whole world.”

  Ozzie ponders that, then asks, still sniffling, “What do big brothers do?”

  “All kinds of things. Mostly, they take care of their little brothers and sisters, making them feel safe, because when big brothers are around, nothing bad can happen.”

  And when they go off to Europe with their girlfriends without a second thought, all hell breaks loose.

  “I want a big brother,” Ozzie announces, on the verge of tears again, and looking around.

  “I want Mommy, too. And Daddy.”

  Uh-­oh. That backfired.

  “I’ll be your big brother while they’re gone, Ozzie,” Molly says, stroking his soft hair. “I’ll keep you safe and make sure nothing bad happens. Okay?”

  He looks dubious.

  Is it that obvious that she’s scared out of her mind at the prospect of being alone in this house again? But what else could she do when Michelle called but say, “I’ll be right over”?

  Michelle had said that they’d tried to reach her mother-­in-­law, Iris, in Vermont, to see if she could come back to stay for a few days. “If she calls, give her the number of the hospital,” Michelle had said. “We’ll tell her to come home right away.”

  And even if Iris didn’t call and come rushing back, Lou would be home as soon as possible, so Molly won’t have to spend the night alone in the house with Ozzie. But Molly can’t help wondering how long it takes to have a baby. What if it doesn’t come right away? It’s early—­Michelle wasn’t due until August. What if there are complications?

  If there are complications, she reminds herself, the last thing Lou needs to worry about is rushing home to a big baby of a baby-­sitter.

  Well, if they get hung up at the hospital, she can always call Rory to come over and stay—­not that it’s something she’d do unless she was out of her mind with fear. Nobody was home when she left, and she’d almost walked out the door without leaving a note, when she’d remembered what Rory had said this morning about letting each other know where they’d be when they went out.

  Rory had done that, jotting only Went for a walk, be back soon on a scrap of paper and leaving it on the table.

  So Molly had grudgingly turned it over and scribbled Baby-­sitting next door, be back???? before dashing out the door.

  “Come on, Ozzie, let’s have ice cream before your nap,” she says again, brightly, forcing away her misgivings for his sake—­and her own. “I’ll see if there are any chocolate sprinkles left.”

  As she walks to the cupboard, she sees the red message light blinking on the answering machine. Somebody must have called while she and Ozzie were out on the front porch, waving good-­bye.

  She hesitates, wondering if she should listen to the message. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t, but what if it was Ozzie’s grandmother Iris calling from Vermont?

  After a moment, Molly presses the flashing button and hears the tape rewind.

  “Shelly, it’s John. Listen, I was going over the measurements I took the other night, and I noticed something very interesting. I’ll be out of town tomorrow, but I’ll be back Friday night. Call me back as soon as you have a minute—­if you aren’t in the hospital in labor or anything,” the caller adds with a laugh, before hanging up.

  Good guess, Molly thinks, looking around for something to write with. She finds a pen and a piece of notepaper and jots, Michelle, call John when you have time.

  “Sorry, John,” she says aloud, “I don’t think that’s going to be for a while.”

  Barrett is putting the last neatly folded polo shirt on top of the pile in his bag when there’s a knock on the door.

  Frowning, he glances over at it, wondering who on earth it can be. Must be somebody looking for a guest in another room, he thinks, deciding to wait a minute before bothering to answer.

  He glances at the television set, where the Weather Channel meteorologist is talking about a series of strong storms due to move across the Great Lakes into northern New York State later today and tonight.

  There’s another knock.

  Barrett clicks off the television set and walks swiftly across the threadbare motel carpet to open the door.

  A uniformed police officer is standing there, with several others just behind him, looking poised to take action.

  “Barrett Maitland?”

  “Yes?” His heart is pounding.

  The cop looks past him, taking in the open suitcase on the bed, the airline ticket ready on the desk by the door.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” the cop says in a heavy North Carolina accent, his eyes coldly fastened to Barrett’s face.

  “Questions?”

  Relax, he tells himself. There must be some kind of mix-­up. This can’t possibly be about—­

  “Questions about what, Officer?”

  “Is it true you were snooping around Russell Anghardt’s home over on Grove Street earlier today?”

  “I wasn’t snooping—­”

  “Neighbor of his said you were there, asking questions.”

  He raises an eyebrow. He’d never mentioned his name to that old woman with the poodle. How had they tracked him down?

  Then again, it can’t be too hard in a remote, tiny town like this, he realizes. There’s only one motel, and he’d be willing to bet he’s the only newcomer with a northe
rn accent to show up here in the last twenty-­four hours.

  “After you left, Mrs. Knisley realized she hadn’t seen Mr. Anghardt around lately, so she called us,” the cop goes on, his eyes narrowed at Barrett, as though daring him to make a move or slip up, blurting something he shouldn’t.

  Barrett waits, holding his breath, thinking this can’t be happening.

  “We went right over there to investigate, Mr. Maitland. And when we did, we found Russell Anghardt’s body, such a bloody mess that this sure as hell ain’t no death by natural causes.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Rory returns home just as it’s getting dark outside, and sees that Sister Theodosia’s car is no longer sitting in the driveway.

  In the kitchen, on the table, she sees the note from Molly and is surprised that her sister actually did as she’d asked earlier and let Rory know where she’d gone. Maybe Molly’s coming around.

  “Mom?” she calls, walking to the foot of the stairs, turning on lights as she goes. “Are you up there?”

  There’s a faint, muffled reply.

  Encouraged by it, Rory goes up, and taps lightly on her mother’s closed bedroom door.

  “Mom? It’s me, Rory. Can I come in?”

  “Come on.”

  She opens the door and sees Maura sitting in a chair by the window, her usual spot. Her hair is neatly combed and she’s wearing a pair of lightweight summer slacks and a sleeveless blouse, dressed, for once, appropriately for the warm summer night.

  “Where’s Sister Theodosia?” Rory asks.

  “She left.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Back to Buffalo, I guess.”

  At least her mother is lucid enough to know where her friend lives.

  “Did she help you comb your hair and get dressed?”

  Maura nods. “She said I would be too warm in a sweater.”

  Rory bites back the urge to say that she and Kevin, and probably Molly, too, had been telling her exactly that.

  “When did she leave?”

  “Right after we got back from the doctor.”

  “Doctor?” Rory repeats, startled. “What doctor?”