Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16
I had to convince someone of my story. I saw her. Melanie. More important, I could feel her. But detectives didn’t launch investigations based on feelings. Only proof. And the way to get it was to go back to that house.
I’d wasted hours obsessing over what I’d seen. I had to do something. I stared at the phone balanced in my palm. Who could I tell besides the police? Would anyone believe me? The more incredulous thought seemed to be why anyone wouldn’t believe me. After all, I had nothing to gain by making up such a story.
Tim would disagree. How many times had he told me my efforts to reconnect us were just pathetic attempts to gain attention? Every time I’d reached out to him, he’d responded with suspicion. In fairness, I could understand his skepticism. Since we’d separated, I used many tactics to get him to reconcile our relationship. He’d be wary of this latest attempt, or what he would surely see as my ploy to once again be the center of his universe. Just last month he'd given me a tongue-lashing when I’d called him, frantic because Emmy felt warm. He’d just seen her, he reminded me. She had no fever. I was to stop calling him with nonsense.
No, telling Tim about what I’d witnessed was out of the question.
I could tell Mary. She’d believe my story. Once she was into her cups—which was almost always—she’d lap up my words like a squirrel I’d once seen slurping up every drop of water from a birdbath. Where would that get me?
A thought struck me: what about Jeffrey? What was his last name? I closed my eyes, trying to recall what the officer had told me. Turner? Talbot? Trem... Trembly. That was it. Jeffrey Trembly.
I didn’t have his phone number, but I recalled him telling the 911 dispatcher he lived on Woodmint Lane. He was on the late shift, had to be if he arrived home from work at two in the morning. I looked at my watch. Just after six in the morning. He’d certainly be asleep now. Realizing I’d have to wait until he awoke, I paced around the coffee table, mind and body jangling with nervous energy.
I eventually tried to lie down, but the heavy pain in the back of my head made it throb; racing thoughts prevented my mind from stilling, despite my self-medication. As I fed Emmy breakfast and sponged her down, I kept glancing at my watch. At half past eleven I figured Jeffrey would be up and starting his day. I scooped my handbag and car keys off the kitchen table and bundled Emmy into her car seat. I’d find Jeffrey Trembly and somehow convince him of the validity of my story. As a reporter—and a resident of Deer Crossing—he’d certainly want to know more about an accident in the neighborhood.
As I drove toward Woodmint Lane, I thought about the frantic woman with the wide, dark eyes and the gaping wound at the base of her neck. Whenever I’d read accounts of people cutting themselves in suicide attempts, it was usually the wrists they sliced, wasn’t it? Then why was her neck split open?
I crossed over Route 55 and entered Deer Crossing, taking the entrance on the right, Woodmint Lane. I drove slowly, refusing to even glance at the Brocktons’ house, lest Jane see me and think I was spying on her. At the second-to-last house on the right, the name Trembly was spelled out in black capital letters across the gray metal mailbox at the curb, just to the left of a gray Colonial’s driveway. I parked next to it.
The house was much more basic than its neighbors. No shutters, which gave the facade a barren appearance. Like looking into the face of someone who’d shaved off their eyebrows.
Only a few scrubby shrubs graced either side of a plain concrete stoop with wrought-iron railings. I supposed a guy living on a newspaper reporter’s salary couldn’t afford the amenities other residents had. If Tim and I had lived here, our house would probably have looked very much like Jeffrey’s. I stepped out of my car and, checking that I’d cracked the windows for Emmy, locked the doors before walking up the asphalt driveway.
After I knocked on the wood-paneled front door, I listened for the sounds of life: rustling inside or maybe a dog barking. I heard nothing. I walked back to my car, glancing around the yard. The front lawn was yellowing. I squinted, looking for the tiny sprinkler heads that graced all the other properties, but there didn’t appear to be any. I noticed a coiled hose up against the house, behind one of the scraggly shrubs. I wondered if Jeffrey was embarrassed by his property or if he was too busy chasing news stories to care.
Glancing in my back seat as I got in the car, I noticed Emmy staring into the space around her. She didn’t look content, exactly, but she wasn’t wailing. A good sign. I slid behind the wheel and started the car. It wouldn’t do any harm to veer onto Pine Hill Road, passing Melanie and Matt’s house on my way out of the neighborhood.
The sun filtered through tattered clouds, coating everything in a lemony glow. I looked at Muzzy’s place as I drove by, once again feeling oddly dismayed at not seeing her in the yard she’d once spent so much time in. Counseling myself to not dwell on my former friend’s preferences, I passed the pond, breathing deeply to steady my upticking heart, and turned onto Pine Hill, pausing in front of the cherry-red corner house. No furniture or garden decor graced the front porch. It certainly looked as though the residents had moved on. A flash of color to the left caught my attention. A navy Jeep was parked on the brick pavers, just beyond the hedge. The same Jeep I rode in last night? My brows rose. A man was just getting out of the car.
I pulled into the driveway behind him, causing him to startle and look at me. I had the weird sense I’d seen him before last night.
“Hey,” I called, stepping from my Honda. “Jeffrey Trembly, right?”
“Yeah.” He eyed me warily. “Caroline?” He didn’t look or sound happy to see me.
I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for helping me.”
He shrugged. “Well, I don’t know how much I helped anyone. The police told me no one lives here.”
I grimaced. “They told me the same.”
“Then why are you here?” His gaze, meeting mine, was intense.
Straightening my shoulders, I walked toward him, not stopping until I reached the back bumper of his car. “I know what I saw.”
He swallowed as he took in my resolute expression. “The cops said you were wrong. Seeing something that wasn’t there.”
“Really?” My face reddened. “If you believe that, why are you here?”
His eyes shifted to the ground. “I don’t know. You seemed so certain.” He glanced up at the house. “Thought I should look around for myself. Guess it’s the reporter in me.”
I followed his gaze, taking in the deceptively cheery house. “Looking at this place now, I almost don’t believe what I saw.”
“Do you think maybe you could have imagined?—”
“I didn’t imagine the bump on my head.” My hand went instinctively to the lump at the back of my skull. “Someone knocked me out.”
He sighed, rubbing the back of his own head in an unconscious display of sympathy pain. “We shouldn’t even be here.”
“True.” I studied him. Tried to gauge his next move. He stood awkwardly, as if unsure about what to do. “We’re here now, though. Might as well look around.”
As if taking my comment as permission, he nodded. Closed his car door and walked around the front of the Jeep.
“Hold on,” I said, turning and sprinting to my car. I opened the driver’s-side door and glanced into the back seat to ensure Emmy was okay. Her head had tilted forward, the lower half of her face beneath an enveloping blanket. I could see only the top of her fuzzy head and her tiny row of eyelashes resting above pillowy cheeks. I reached over the seat and plucked at the light blanket, exposing her tiny form in a simple pink onesie. Her undefined arms and legs, like little rolls of fresh, unbaked dough, looked too still, too serene, to be real. But even the slightest discomfort would shoot those tiny limbs into motion and disrupt her peaceful visage. I cracked open the windows a little more to ensure her comfort and snagged the keys out of the ignition, then quietly closed the door, locking it with the remote. Emmy would be okay for just a few minutes. It was cool. I recalled my car thermostat displaying a temperature of sixty-seven degrees.
Looking up, I saw Jeffrey step onto the front porch and knock on the door. I crossed the yard and halted on the brick path in front of the house, noticing the wooden door Jeffrey continued to knock against was beautifully carved in an intricate floral pattern. It struck me then, the impossibility of an atrocity occurring behind such an exquisite door. I wondered if Jeffrey’s suggestion might be true. Perhaps I’d only thought I’d seen Melanie in deadly distress. Maybe I’d fallen backward and bumped my own head.
“Nobody home.” Jeffrey turned toward me with an expression that confirmed what the police had said.
I looked up at the window where I’d seen the woman, remembered her eyes, huge with horror. Beseeching. Pleading. She was real. She had to be.
“Let’s go around back.”
Jeffrey followed close behind. As we walked, an impression swirled in the back of my brain like a persistent fly. As we rounded the house, I tried to isolate the sensation. Pinpoint what was bothering me. But, like trying to catch that pesky insect, my mind couldn’t close around the thought. Couldn’t grasp the feeling.
Jeffrey’s voice was in my left ear. “Why don’t you check the shed out back?”
“Why?” I stopped and looked at him.
He shrugged. “Just being thorough.”
“Okay.” But I didn’t know what he expected me to find. Disturbed dirt in the shed floor revealing a shallow grave? I’d seen a movie when I was around ten where that had been the case. Zombie hands clawed up through the disrupted soil on my thirteen-inch television screen. Scared the shit out of me and earned me a scolding from my mom about watching inappropriate shows when I should have been sleeping.
I crossed the backyard, looking over my shoulder. Jeffrey was trying the back slider, which didn’t appear to budge. I stepped into the shed, glancing at the row of gardening tools hanging on one wall. It was surprising that the previous residents hadn’t taken any of the implements with them to their new place, but maybe they’d moved into a condo. Or the murdering husband is booking a flight to Mexico. I looked at the pegged implements—rakes, brooms, lopping shears, a shovel—all glinting in the early afternoon light like shiny new offerings in a hardware store. I noticed the shed floor was a spotless concrete slab.
When I stepped out of the small structure, Jeffrey was nowhere to be seen. I crossed the weedless grass and stepped onto the back deck. “Jeffrey?”
No answer.
I walked to the slider and pulled the handle. The door slid open with a swish. I stared at it as if it were enchanted. Jeffrey was in the empty dining room beyond the doors.
I stepped over the threshold. “How did you get this door open? I saw you tugging on it.”
“Oh, that.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Credit card.” He grinned, looking charmingly handsome. “Oldest trick in the book.”
I tilted my head, considering. “I thought that was one of those things you only saw in movies.”
He didn’t answer, just kept looking around the empty space as if trying to imagine what it might have looked like with furniture.
The thought came to me instantly—the niggling in the far recesses of my brain: Check the vestibule . That’s where I’d been the night before—where I’d lunged inside and had my head bashed in. I stepped into the foyer and looked around the empty space. The white Carrara marble entryway floor revealed no footprints or debris from outside—no errant blade of grass or a stray leaf marring its surface. Odd. With no doormat to wipe one’s feet, how did the area remain pristine? Surely I’d brought something in on my shoes the night before? A chill ran up my spine. Someone had cleaned up.
I turned back toward the living room, looking around. Once more, Jeffrey wasn’t there. I retraced my steps, entering the dining area and heading left through the expansive kitchen, all white cabinetry, granite surfaces, and stainless steel appliances—even a state-of-the-art blender like the one featured in Top Chef , my favorite television cooking show. A kitchen I could only dream of cooking in. Today I rushed through it, for once uninterested in the layout of the place. Next came a bathroom, stripped of its shower curtain, soap dish, and towels, and two bedrooms. Both empty as scoured bowls. I circled back to the staircase in the center of the house. Taking two steps at a time, I made it to the upstairs landing, looking to my right where Jeffrey was exiting a room.
“There you are.” I huffed, unsure whether the quick shot of physical exertion or the fear of nearing the place where I’d seen the doomed woman seized my lungs, making me gulp for air.
“Another empty room,” was all he said, passing me and heading to my left, down the hallway.
My heart rate accelerated as I followed him into the far room, the master bedroom with attached bath. Like the rest of the house, the empty space looked like it had just been cleaned. No dust, windows sparkling in the midday sunshine. I instinctively felt my eyes roaming over the cream-colored walls for any specks of—what? Dirt? Blood?
Jeffrey stepped into the master bath and disappeared. Only his footsteps belied his presence. I glanced at the expanse of louvered closet doors against the far wall. They looked so much like the ones in my house when I was growing up. I recalled games of hide-and-seek with my dad, peeking through the angled slats to watch his feet roaming around, “searching” for me. My eyes took in the wide plank floorboards, pine or light oak. The floor looked clean enough to serve a meal on.
“Nothing here,” said Jeffrey, stepping back into the bedroom.
“Guess not.”
“Looks like all the other rooms upstairs and down. Empty.”
I sighed. “I just don’t get it.”
“Are you sure you saw...” He let his voice trail off.
I placed the backs of my hands over my eyes and rubbed them, feeling exhausted. “I’m not sure of anything right now.” I dropped my hands and looked at him. “Could you give me a minute?”
He nodded. “Okay.”
As Jeffrey walked out of the room, I crossed over and half sat on the oversized window ledge, the spot where I’d seen Melanie. I stared at the nearby birch leaves shimmering in the breezy early afternoon light just beyond the glass. The tree looked like it was covered in suncatchers. This may have been the last view Melanie had of this life. The birch tree, the street, the hedge. Me, looking up at her. But how could violence have occurred in this room? In this house? It was literally dust-free, not to mention blood-free. I tried to recall the night I’d seen Melanie and Matt dancing, weeks earlier. Had there been furniture in the living room? Wall art? I couldn’t remember. All I could recall was being captivated by Melanie’s graceful movements.
Was I losing my mind? I thought about my activities of the past few days and realized I should go back to therapy. Things in my world were clearly spinning out of control. I was having a hard time holding my marriage together and dealing with the impending anniversary of my mom’s death. Was it stress that prompted me to recall incidents that may not have even happened? Was I making things up? The back of my head throbbed. A subtle reminder of my most recent injury.
I shifted, facing the empty room, and let myself slide down the wall until I was sitting on the cool, wide-planked floor. I placed my palms on either side of me for support and recoiled as a sharp pain pierced the skin of my right thumb joint.
Lifting my right hand and holding it in front of my face, I saw a tiny hole in my palm filled with a minuscule amount of blood. No more significant than a paper cut. I looked back at the floor, noticing something wedged between the floorboards. I plucked it out and studied the oddly shaped object. It was less than a quarter inch long. It looked like a tiny, concave piece of plastic, rounded at one end, and jagged to a point at the other. I turned it over and my breath snagged in my throat. I was holding the remnants of a fake fingernail. A neon-orange fingernail. I remembered the woman from the night before, holding her neck. The red oozing from her throat and the bright orange thumbnail clearly visible in the twilight. I felt dizzy.
I looked back at the floor where my hand had been, at the groove between the wide floor planks. Just deep enough for a broken nail to wedge into without being noticed. My body began to shake.
Jeffrey appeared in the doorway. “We really should get out of here,” he said. “We’ve trespassed enough for one day.”
I closed my left hand around the nail shard. I wanted to reveal my finding to him, to prove I wasn’t crazy, but I needed time to process everything. Nothing made sense. Why would the broken nail be here but nothing else, not even one tiny drop of blood?
Again, I thought somebody had cleaned up everything else.
I stood on shaky legs. “You’re right. We need to go. Now.”
My mind was spinning like a centrifuge, I followed Jeffrey down the stairs and out the back door. We were just rounding the back of the house when Jeffrey said he’d left his credit card on the kitchen counter. I didn’t recall seeing it there, but then I’d been distracted when passing through the room. He turned back.
“See you around,” I said.
“Yeah, see ya,” he called over his shoulder. He’d already forgotten me.
Anger stirred in my chest as I rounded the house. How dare he dismiss me. How dare everyone dismiss me. I’d found something important, something that would prove I’d witnessed violence. Possibly even a woman’s death. I opened my left hand and looked at the nail remnant nestled in the center of my palm. I’d show him, and everyone else. I turned and walked back around the corner just in time to see Jeffrey in profile, his body bent slightly over the sliding door handle as he twisted a shiny silver key in the lock. My mouth dropped open.
I stepped back as he reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out a tissue, and wiped down the door handle. Without making a sound, I rounded the corner of the house and ran, thoughts colliding like bumper cars through my mind: Jeffrey didn’t break into the house with his credit card. He had a key, which meant he knew the people who’d lived there. Had to. He was a news reporter, not a real estate agent. He’d have no professional reason for possessing a key to the empty house. And why would he erase evidence of his presence unless that same evidence was incriminating? I reached my car, heart thumping heavily as I thought of something else, the most frightening thought so far: Jeffrey Trembly knew who I was, what I had seen. And he knew where I lived.