“They’re old,” Alexandra said. “David’s thirteen.”
And they might be past the point where they’d be willing to take on a newborn. But maybe not. “It can’t hurt to ask. I can give them a call if you want.”
“I’ll do it,” Alexandra said. “If I decide I don’t want the baby.”
“It’s up to you, of course. I’m just reminding you that you have options.”
And if she didn’t want to take on the responsibility of a baby before she’d even graduated high school, adoption was an excellent choice.
Alexandra shrugged. In a way that I recognized put an end to this particular discussion. “You’re welcome to hang out with us,” I told her, returning to the previous topic of conversation. “We’re probably just going to go home and vegetate in front of the TV. Mrs. Jenkins likes HGTV. And I rest a lot.”
Alexandra bent to peek under the table. “Are your feet swollen?”
It was my turn to grimace. “And how. The only good thing is that my stomach is now too big for me to see them.”
“I can’t wait,” Alexandra said, which made it sound like maybe adoption wasn’t such a good option after all, since it sounded like she’d made up her mind that she was going to keep the baby, high school or not.
“I can’t, either. In something like three weeks, I’ll have a baby. And won’t look like a small hippopotamus anymore.”
“You look great,” Alexandra told me. “All glowy. I still puke every morning.” She made a face.
“I did, too, into the second trimester. You’ll probably stop soon.”
The conversation devolved into comparing pregnancies. At one point, even Mrs. Jenkins roused to talk about what it had been like when she’d been pregnant with Tyrell. Since that was something like fifty years ago now, her experience had been very different from ours. And yet, exactly the same.
“He was the most beautiful baby in the world. Looked just like his daddy.”
If my baby ended up looking like his daddy, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Rafe’s quite good-looking, in case you’d missed that part. And he probably looked like Tyrell’s daddy, too, because there was very little resemblance between my husband and his grandmother.
We sat there a while longer, and then headed home. Alexandra chose not to take advantage of the scintillating offer of HGTV and a nap on the sofa, so she went off in the other direction, toward Winding Way and home. Mrs. Jenkins and I piled into the Volvo and headed home.
I got Mrs. Jenkins situated on the sofa, and then I made lunch.
Yes, I know we’d both had ice cream, but that was an hour ago. It was time for something more substantial. So I fell back on bowls of soup and sandwiches—while Mrs. J ate anything I put in front of her, I’d noticed she preferred old-fashioned food to newfangled stuff like enchiladas.
We ate in front of the TV. I fully expected to spend the rest of the afternoon there, as well, so it came as a sort of pleasant surprise when, an hour or so later, the phone rang.
The number was local, but unfamiliar. I picked up the phone. “This is Savannah. How can I help you?”
There was a moment’s silence, and then a woman’s voice said, “You’re a real estate agent, right?”
I was, indeed. Not a very good one, and not one that sold many properties, but I was licensed. And maybe my luck was about to change.
“That’s right,” I said brightly. “Are you interested in buying something?” Or selling something? Or both?
Both would be nice.
“There’s this house,” the lady said.
“Yes?”
She rattled off the address. I nodded, not that she could see me. “I’m familiar with it.”
I was. Not because I’d been inside it or anything like that. At least not since it was renovated. But it was pretty close to where we lived. Two blocks down and four over, something like that. Five minutes away, at most. I’d driven by it every so often while they were working on it. I’d even stopped once to introduce myself and give them a business card, just in case they didn’t have a realtor to help them list the house once it was done.
As it happened, the owner-and-renovator also had a real estate license, so he could sell his own properties and not have to pay anyone else to do it—that happens a lot—but I knew which house she was talking about. And knew that it was on the market now. “Would you like to see it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the caller said.
“What would be a good time for you?”
“I’m sitting outside it right now.”
Oh.
“Oh,” I echoed.
“Can you come and show it to me?”
I hesitated. I should. New clients—or potential clients—don’t come my way very often, and when they do, I usually jump at the chance to help them. You never know when they might decide to buy something, and actually turn into money in the bank.
But there was Mrs. Jenkins. I was supposed to take care of her.
I glanced in her direction. She was asleep with her head against the back of the sofa, and her mouth open. She snuffled.
What I should do, was wake her up and take her with me. I wasn’t supposed to leave her alone.
On the other hand, dragging my grandmother-in-law along on a business appointment wouldn’t look very professional. And I wanted to look professional.
So maybe if I just left quickly and came back, she wouldn’t realize I’d been gone. I could be at the house in five minutes. It would probably only take fifteen minutes or so to walk through; maybe less. I’d be back here in less than thirty minutes. Mrs. J might sleep through the whole thing. And if she did, and stayed right here on the sofa, she’d be perfectly safe.
“I can call someone else,” the lady on the phone said, and I made up my mind.
“That’s not necessary. I’m just a few minutes away. I can be there in less than five minutes. Just let me call and set up the appointment, and I’ll see you then.”
“I’ll be here,” the lady said.
I was out the door two minutes later, after arranging the appointment with the showing center and visiting the bathroom. Mrs. Jenkins was still asleep on the sofa. I shut the front door softly and double checked that I’d locked it before I folded myself into the Volvo and took off down the driveway with a spurt of gravel.
Less than three minutes later, I turned the corner of Ulm Street and pulled up in front of the renovated craftsman bungalow.
It looked like a nice little house. Very small compared to our—or Mrs. Jenkins’s—three story Victorian, but it probably had sixteen hundred square feet, or something like that. And the renovator had done a good job of restoration. I’d seen the house before they’d started working on it, and the brick foundation had been painted a virulent blue, while the wood siding had been covered by aluminum. The front porch had been encompassed—sometime in the 1970s, at a guess—and not in an attractive way.
The workers had taken down the aluminum siding and replaced the rotted wood with fresh. There were cedar shingles on the porch overhang, and yes, the porch was back and the hideous addition gone. Everything was painted a nice, style-appropriate sage green with blue and saffron accents. The brick skirt—the foundation, the part between the wood and the ground—was even back to a lovely red brick.
When I got closer, I saw that it was in fact paint, but they probably hadn’t been able to strip the old bricks. Sometimes, they can crumble if you powerwash them too hard.
And from a distance, anyway, everything looked great.
I climbed the steps to the front porch and looked around. I had expected my caller, my potential client, to be waiting. But I didn’t see anyone.
There was a car parked across the street. Green with tinted windows. I squinted, but I couldn’t see anyone inside.
Tentatively, I lifted a hand and waved. Maybe she needed encouragement to come out.
Or maybe she wasn’t there. The car door remained stubbornly closed.
I turned to contemplate t
he front door. It was closed, and had a gray lockbox hanging from the handle. The box was also closed.
In August last year, something very like this had happened to me. I’d received a call from a man who told me he’d been stood up by my colleague Brenda Puckett, and since she hadn’t shown up, would I come and show him the house?
I’d rushed over to Mrs. J’s house and found Rafe waiting outside. I’d also found a compromised lockbox, an open front door, and Brenda dead inside.
I’ll admit that my heart was beating a little extra fast when I reached out and tried the doorknob. Gingerly, like I expected it to be hot.
It wasn’t. And while it turned, the door didn’t open. So it didn’t seem as if anyone had gone inside.
Maybe my potential client had parked on the other side of the house? Sometimes they do, if there’s an alley and off-street parking. Anyone interested in buying would want to check out the parking situation.
I contemplated the yard. The ground was muddy, from the rain we’d gotten over the past couple of days. I might as well walk through the house. If she was back there, I’d have to open the door for her anyway.
The lockbox yielded to my secret code, just as it was designed to do. It bleepety-bleeped and opened. I dug out the key and stuck it in the lock. The door opened and I stepped through and inside.
And closed and locked the door behind me before I raised my voice. “Hello?”
There was no answer. I hadn’t expected one, so that was perfectly OK.
The door opened directly into the living room of the house. Big stone fireplace on the left, flanked by casement windows and built-in bookcases. Gleaming hardwood floors. The dining room was to the right, with a very nice—reproduction, I’m sure—Tiffany chandelier above the dining room table.
There was furniture, so it looked like they’d gone to the extra expense of staging the place before they put it on the market. And the renovation was top notch. If I didn’t already have a place to live, I’d love to live here.
The kitchen was behind the dining room, through a swinging butler door. It was pinned back at the moment, with an iron dachshund in front of it. And beyond was a gorgeously updated kitchen, with all new cabinets and appliances, and marble counters, but in the true craftsman style.
Yes, I could definitely live here.
The kitchen ended in a door with a big window in the top half. I peered through, onto a nice deck, stained dark, and beyond, a parking area inside a tall privacy fence. The gate was open, but there were no cars parked in the yard.
I didn’t bother to go out, just made sure the door was locked before I retraced my steps. Maybe my caller had decided to go get a bottle of soda while she waited?
I’d told her I’d only be a few minutes, but maybe she’d thought I was underestimating. I suppose I might have—or someone might have—if I knew it would take a while for me to get there, but I didn’t want her to know how long she’d have to wait.
In this case, though, I’d literally been here in five minutes. And anyway, the nearest gas station wasn’t very far away. Another couple of blocks to the west and south. If she’d gone there, she should be coming back soon.
I went back to the front of the house and looked out. There was no change outside. The green car was still parked in front of the house across the street. It hadn’t moved. Nor had anything else.
I wandered in the other direction, just for something to do. When she showed up I’d have to take her around the house, so I might as well know what was here.
The master suite was behind the living room. A nice size bedroom with a big bath and a walk-in closet, and double French doors out to the deck. All brand, spanking new, but with the same craftsman feel as the kitchen.
A staircase in the middle of the house led up to a second half-story with two bedrooms and a shared Jack-and-Jill bath. It was as empty as the rest of the house. I surveyed the street from up high, and still didn’t see anyone move around anywhere.
By the time I got downstairs again, I’d started to become worried. And annoyed. First, of course, I wondered whether I’d misunderstood something. Maybe I was at the wrong house, or at the wrong time.
But the description matched. I’d known exactly which house she was talking about as soon as she described it, and she’d said she was sitting outside. So where was she?
I decided to give her ten minutes to show up, and then I’d leave. And I counted them standing at the window. Three cars drove by. Neither stopped.
When the ten minutes were up, I pulled out my phone. And redialed the number she’d called me from.
A few seconds passed. Then the phone was answered. “Pay phone.”
“Pay phone?” I didn’t think they existed anymore.
“Yeah. Listen, lady, I got other things to do than stand here on a street corner talking to you. Whaddaya want?”
“Which corner?”
I could hear the eyeroll. The boy sounded like he might be twelve or so, and I was probably keeping him from his skateboard or his drug deal or whatever twelve-year-olds in this part of town did when they were supposed to be in school in the middle of the afternoon. “Dresden and Ulm.”
Three blocks south of where I was standing.
“Thank you,” I said. “Did you see anyone use the phone?”
But he hadn’t. “I just got here, lady. I was walking by when the phone rang. And now I gotta go.”
He hung up before I had the chance to say anything else.
I shut down my own phone a bit more slowly. My thoughts were, to say it politely, scattered. As I locked the front door and made my way down the steps to the car, I tried to reason things out in my head.
The lady who called me, had called from a payphone on the corner of Dresden and Ulm.
Maybe so I wouldn’t have her cell phone number? Most people have cell phones these days, so it was hard to imagine that she didn’t. And anyway, she’d lied. She’d told me she was calling from right outside the house, not from the payphone on the corner three blocks away.
By now, I’d been standing here for at least fifteen minutes, and she hadn’t shown up.
She clearly wasn’t interested in the house.
So what was she interested in? What was the point of calling me to meet her here, if not so I could show her the craftsman?
I unlocked the door of the Volvo and fitted myself inside. The answer to my question was depressingly obvious. She’d been trying to get me out of, and away from, my own house.
Or maybe that was just paranoia rearing its head. As I turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb, I tried to think about it calmly and logically.
Maybe she didn’t have a cell phone. Maybe she’d really wanted to see the craftsman bungalow, but something had prevented her. Maybe her car had broken down between here and the payphone, or she’d been in a fender bender. Maybe she’d gotten a call that her child had been taken to the hospital, and she’d had to run.
But no. She’d have to have had a phone for that. Never mind.
I didn’t break any laws on the way home. I stopped—mostly—at every stop sign, and didn’t speed through the residential streets. At least not by much. It wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway, after all. I was just a few minutes from home. And a few seconds more or less wouldn’t make any difference.
I sped up once I hit Potsdam Street. It’s long and wide, a major street, and there are no stop signs. But my heart was beating double-time as I screeched into the driveway with a spurt of stones and stepped on the gas up to the house.
Everything looked normal. There were no flames shooting out of the third-story windows, and no black-clad commandos hiding behind the trees in the yard, automatic weapons trained on the porch. It all looked just as it should.
It wasn’t until I came closer that I saw the front door hanging wide open.
Ten
I was out of the car as quickly as a nine-months-pregnant woman can move. Out of the car and up the stairs to the porc
h, and to that open door.
“Mrs. Jenkins!”
The TV was still on in the parlor, droning softly, but there was no sign of Mrs. J. She wasn’t on the sofa where I’d left her. The blanket I had spread over her before I left, was tossed on the floor. Most likely she had just woken up and pushed it off, as there were no other signs of a struggle. The sofa pillows were still tucked in the corners of the sofa, and everything was in its proper place, including the TV remote.
I used it to turn off the TV. Blessed silence ensued. I opened my mouth again. “Mrs. Jenkins!”
This time there was a noise. Or at least I thought I heard something. From farther inside the house. Kitchen, maybe?
I left the parlor and hurried down the hallway.
The dining room was empty. I took the time to stick my head in.
So was the library, where we had found Brenda Puckett’s butchered body once before. Nobody was dead in front of the fireplace this time.
I continued into the kitchen.
Everything looked normal there, too. With one exception. The door next to the refrigerator gaped open, into the blackness of the basement. A cold draft emanated from down there.
I walked over to it. “Mrs. Jenkins?”
My voice sort of disappeared, like it was swallowed up by the blackness. But I distinctly heard a noise, something like a scraping, from downstairs.
Hell. I mean... heck. I guess there was nothing for it but to go down.
I hit the light switch beside the door. The rickety wood staircase descending into the jaws of hell winked into view. I took a deep breath and started down.
Slowly. With one hand clutching the railing. The stairs are steep and shallow, and I was front heavy. “Mrs. Jenkins? Are you down here?”
I could count on one hand the times I’d been down in this basement since I moved in with Rafe. It’s disgusting. A hard dirt floor, a little wet in places, with half dirt, half brick walls that end in a four or five foot ledge. At the far end of the ledge, here and there, there are small, dirty windows. Dirty, because we can’t reach them to clean them. Basically, we’re talking about a hole in the ground under the house. I know there are spiders. I’m sure there are other types of bugs. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was worse than that.
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