Chapter 32
32
POLLY
A police officer is standing on our doorstep, and I am freaking out.
It should have occurred to me that this would happen. I am, after all, keeping a missing woman against her will in my basement. It’s not surprising that the police would show up here. I just have to handle this correctly, like everything else. I can’t let myself panic.
It’s just one officer. If they really thought she was here, they wouldn’t send one guy. The whole cavalry would be outside.
“Just a moment!” I call out. “I’m not decent!”
I hurry back to the kitchen, nearly tripping over my fuzzy slippers. Hank is still sitting at the kitchen table, pushing the eggs around his plate with his fork. He’s barely made a dent in them.
“Hank,” I say, “there’s a police officer at the door.”
His eyes fly open. “What?”
“I’m sure it’s no big deal,” I say quickly. “You just stay here and eat your breakfast—”
Hank rises from his seat. “Stay here? But—”
“Stay here unless he calls for you.” My voice is firm. “And if he does ask, you can’t tell him she’s here.”
Panic fills his eyes. “What? Why not? You said she’s fine with being here.”
“Well, it’s mostly true.”
“Polly…”
“Look,” I hiss at him, “if they find that girl down in our basement, we’re both leaving here in handcuffs, okay? So just keep your fool mouth shut. You’re good at that.”
Hank glares at me. My husband is the most honest person I’ve ever met. It’s something he’s always prided himself on. It’s only because of me that he’s ever bent the rules, when he was on the brink of losing his auto shop.
That was my fault too, of course. He had to shut the shop down for a while after The Incident, and sinking all our cash into infertility treatments and that failed adoption didn’t help matters. We were going to lose the shop, and once that was closed and neither of us had a steady source of income, we would likely lose our house too. We were about to lose everything he had worked for in the blink of an eye. Because of me.
Since I couldn’t work as a nurse anymore, I was doing his bookkeeping, and I was the one who hit on the simple solution to his problems.
So I fudged the tax return—a bit. I was careful. I didn’t do anything that would raise a red flag. I didn’t tell Hank about it, because I knew he’d refuse to do it and lose the shop before he risked doing anything that would send him back to prison. I simply handed him the tax return, and he signed it, because he trusted me. I figured if we ever got caught, I would take the fall.
But then he found out. He was frantic when he saw what I did, but it was too late by then, and if he tried to correct the mistake, it would have been admitting wrongdoing. Not to mention we still didn’t have the money to make it right. So he kept his mouth shut.
It’s been almost a year since I handed in the tax documents. Nobody has come pounding down our door. We got away with it.
I never thought this was something I would ever use against my husband. To blackmail him. After all, I had planned to fall on the sword if we ever got caught. But I won’t have to ever turn him in. Hank will do what I want. He’ll do anything for me.
I’m sure of it.
Finally, he drops back down into his chair so heavily, I’m scared it might break under his weight. “Fine,” he says.
I knew it.
I wrap my pink terry-cloth housecoat more tightly around my body and rush back out to the door. I turn the lock and crack it open. “Hello there, Officer,” I say. “How can I help you? Is everything all right?”
The policeman standing at our door is in a navy-blue uniform. Like Tegan, he’s painfully young—looks like he can’t even be that far out of high school. He smiles politely at me. “Hello, Mrs. Thompson. My name is Officer Malloy. I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions.”
“Of course.” I crack the door open slightly more. I don’t like the fact that he called me by my name, but I suppose the owners of this house are public record. “What’s wrong?”
“Any chance I could come inside? I’d hate for you to lose all your heat out the door.”
I read once that a policeman can’t come inside your home without a warrant unless you invite him in. Once he’s inside, he has a lot more leeway in what he is allowed to do. And what if Tegan calls up to me from the basement? There’s no way I’m letting him inside.
“I just had the carpet cleaned.” I look pointedly at his snow-caked boots. “I’d appreciate it if you stay on the porch.”
“No problem, ma’am.” He nods at me. “Anyway, this shouldn’t take long. We’re looking for a woman who disappeared two nights ago. Her name is Tegan Werner.”
I tap my finger against my chin. “The name sounds a bit familiar.”
“You may have heard about her disappearance on the news this morning,” he says. “She was traveling in this direction to visit a family member, and we found her car not far from here. It looks like she had been in some kind of accident, but she’s not in the vehicle.”
“Oh, dear!” I clasp a hand over my mouth. “Do you think she got thrown from the car during the accident?”
“No, ma’am.” He shakes his head. “Her purse and her luggage were missing from the car, and we haven’t been able to locate her. We think she took off on foot, but the snow covered her trail. We’ve been searching the area, and I was just wondering if you may have seen her.”
“Sorry, Officer. I’m afraid I haven’t seen anyone here for the last two days. We’ve mostly been buried by the storm.”
He doesn’t look surprised, but even so, he digs a photograph out of his pocket. “Can you take a look at this? This is what she looks like.”
I peer down at the color photograph of Tegan Werner—it’s one of the photos from her social media page, where she looks very young and pretty, her round cheeks flushed from alcohol. If he saw her now, he would barely recognize her. I hand the photo back to him. “Sorry, no.”
He starts to put the photograph back in his pocket. Did I just get away with this? Is he just going to walk away? But then he hesitates. “Does anyone else live here?”
I want to say no and put an end to this, but I shouldn’t lie about something so easily disproved. “My husband. But he hasn’t seen her either.”
“Would you mind if I asked him myself?”
I look over my shoulder. “He’s in the middle of breakfast. Is it really necessary?”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, ma’am. We’ve been looking everywhere for this lady.”
Hank is a terrible liar. The last thing I want is to drag him out here and force him to talk to this police officer. But I can’t very well say no. That would look very suspicious.
“Of course,” I say. “Let me get him.”
I apologetically close the door in the officer’s face, explaining about keeping the heat in. I have to trudge back to the kitchen and get Hank. He’s not going to be happy.
Sure enough, when I get to the kitchen, Hank is still sitting at the table, listlessly staring down at his plate. He’s not even pretending to eat anymore. This isn’t good. When Hank loses his appetite, it basically means the world is coming to an end.
“Hank,” I say, “the policeman wants to talk to you.”
He doesn’t say anything. He keeps staring down at his eggs.
“It’s not a big deal,” I say. “They just want to know if you’ve seen Tegan. All you have to do is tell him no and then we’re done.”
He raises his head to look at me. The circles under his eyes look a lot like Tegan’s. “Yeah? Is that all I have to do?”
“Hank…”
His chair scrapes against the floor as he gets up. He walks slowly toward the front door, like he’s being led to his execution. He puts his hand on the lock, and just before he turns it, he shoots me one last pained look.
Over Hank’s shoulder, the policeman gives Hank the same friendly and apologetic smile he offered me. “Hello, sir. I don’t know if your wife told you, but we’re looking for a missing woman.”
Hank just grunts.
The officer reaches into his pocket and pulls out the same photograph he showed me. “Have you seen her in the last two days? Her name is Tegan Werner.”
Hank stares at the photo for a long time. Too long. Oh no , he’s going to crack. He’s going to tell the policeman everything. He’s going to lead him right down to Tegan in the basement. My husband is not cut out for this. Why did I ever think he was?
“No,” Hank finally says. “Didn’t see her.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
My shoulders relax. I knew Hank would do anything for me. After all, he smashed a man’s face in for me. This is nothing.
I look at the officer’s face, but there’s no suspicion there. He shoves the photograph back in his pocket and nods at us. “Well, thank you both for your time. Please don’t hesitate to contact the police if you do happen to see her anywhere.”
“Will do, Officer!” I say.
He starts to turn around. My knees almost collapse with relief. Did I really just get away with this? But just before he starts down the steps, he stops short.
“Mrs. Thompson,” he says, “would you mind if I take a look around the house? Just make sure she isn’t hiding out somewhere in your backyard or something along those lines?”
It’s within my rights to say no, but what possible reason could I have for telling him he can’t do a lap around my house?
“Absolutely!” I say. “Gosh, I really hope you find her and that she’s okay.”
“Me too, ma’am,” he says in a subdued voice that indicates he doesn’t think it’s likely he’s going to find her and that she’s going to be okay.
It isn’t until the door is locked again and the policeman is making his way down our front steps that I hazard a look at my husband.
“Thank you,” I say to Hank.
He gives me a look that I can’t quite decipher. I’m used to Hank looking at me like I’m out of my mind or like he’s worried about me. Or, back when we were dating or first married, he used to look at me like I hung the moon. But this is something different. Something worse, but I can’t quite figure it out. We’ve been together so long, I thought I could always tell what he was thinking, but maybe not.
But I can’t worry about him right now.
I hurry over to the kitchen to see what the police officer is doing in our backyard. From the kitchen, I’ve got a view of the yard from the window on the back door. The officer is walking around, knee-deep in snow, circling the giant oak tree that Hank once mused was “perfect” to hang a swing from for a future child. I don’t know what exactly the cop is looking for, but he won’t find anything in our backyard.
At least I don’t think he will.
The officer is just standing there. He seems to be looking at something on the ground, although I can’t see what. He pulls his radio out of his pocket, and he starts talking into it as my heart thumps loudly in my chest.
There’s nothing in the backyard, of course, but it hits me that there is one window into the basement that is visible from where he’s standing. But the snow should be high enough to conceal it. He can’t possibly see through that window into my basement.
Can he?
He looks up, and for a moment, his eyes meet mine through the window. He knows I’ve been watching him. I freeze, waiting for him to march back into the house and demand to search my basement.
But instead, he raises a hand. He’s waving hello.
I raise my own hand. And I force a smile.
I make myself busy cleaning the kitchen, but all the while, I’ve got one eye on the policeman in the backyard. After a few more minutes, he puts away his radio and vanishes from sight. I hurry back to the living room, just in time to see him get back in his patrol car and drive away.
I let out a sigh of relief. The police are gone, and there’s no reason to think they’ll ever come back. We got away with it.
Tegan’s baby will be mine.