Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Nine hours earlier
Bonnie plastered a harmless look on her face as Mr. Terrence’s door swung open and he asked, “What the fuck do you want?” He was wearing a black satin robe that only reached to the tops of his disgusting, hairy thighs.
She launched into the words she’d rehearsed on her brisk walk from the diner.
“Mr. Terrence? What a surprise. I had no idea you lived here. My car broke down up the road a ways and my cellphone died, and I forgot the car charger.” She touched her head and rolled her eyes in self-deprecation.
“Can I use your phone? I won’t need more than a minute. ”
He turned to look behind him in a way that told her he didn’t want her seeing what was inside.
She used the opportunity to duck, gracefully, underneath the arm that held the door open and into his small, shabby house.
There was a big square light on an adjustable stand.
It was aimed at the sofa. She turned her eyes away and they fell on a flagstone fireplace kitty-corner from the door.
It was the nicest part of the house, with a solid stone mantel four inches thick. What a beautiful piece of rock.
At length, she looked at Mr. Terrence again, letting her eyes slide down to his attire, then over to the sofa, then to the light again. “You were expecting Sara?” she asked, all innocence. “Sara Leroy?”
His eyes became saucers. “No! God, no, Sara Muh-Muh-Monroe. My girlfriend.”
“Oh your girlfriend,” she said. “Then I’m even more sorry to bother you. If I could just make a quick call, I’ll get right out of your way.”
“Sooner the better,” he said. He looked around the room, then went to the kitchen to retrieve a black Android phone from a small square table with shiny metal legs and a red Formica top. He handed it to her, unlocked and everything.
The man was an idiot.
That or he just didn’t see her as a threat.
Yeah, probably the second one.
He was standing right over her, and she needed him gone, so she gasped softly, pressed a hand to her chest, and said, “Oh, Oh dear—”
“What is it now? Tell me you’re not having a heart attack.” He actually sounded concerned.
“Of course not.” She made her words little whispers and tapped the phone’s screen with her thumb to keep it unlocked. “Maybe…if you could…get me a glass of water?”
“Yeah, sure. Hurry up and make your call.”
As he walked away, she located his conversation with Sara under Recent Messages. Sara was identified as SL in his contacts. He had texted her “5 p.m. My place. Or else.” He’d sent that from the school while Bonnie had been standing right there in the same classroom with him.
She checked the current time. Ten minutes before five.
Mr. Terrence was running water from his kitchen tap. Bonnie texted Sara from his phone. “Cancel. Unexpected conflict.” She tapped send.
As soon as the read notification popped up, she would delete the text she’d sent to cover her tracks, but Sara hadn’t read it yet, and Mr. Terrence was coming back with her water.
Sighing, she exited the message app, brought the phone to her ear and said, “Yes, dear, that will be fine, thank you.” She pretended to hang up a non-existent call and handed the phone back to its owner.
As he took it, Mr. Terrence glanced across the room as if there was someone there, a forefinger held upright in a way that said give me a minute.
She followed his gaze, but no one was there. Was he insane, as well as a child molester? She was suddenly nervous. “Well, I’ll get out of your hair. I told my husband I’d meet him at that little diner up the road. Thank you for your help, Mr. Terrence.” She started for the door.
He held out the glass of water. She said, “No, thank you, I’m fine now,” and went to move past him.
His phone beeped in his hand.
Don’t be Sara, don’t be Sara, don’t be Sara.
Bonnie was almost to the door, but had her back to it, afraid to take her eyes off the man.
Mr. Terrence looked at his phone and frowned. “What did you do?” he asked, showing her his screen.
SL: Fine, but I’d better get that A.
“Did you text Sara?” he demanded.
Bonnie said nothing, just kept backing up, reaching behind her for the doorknob, turning it.
“What are you really doing here, old lady? What do you think you know?”
She pulled the door open partway. He grabbed her by her neck and lifted her up on her tiptoes, holding her against the door so it closed again, and squeezing her windpipe.
She couldn’t breathe. She tried to claw his hands, but she’d bitten her nails to the quick, a habit that had arrived when her husband had departed.
Black spots popped into her vision. She reached out for something, anything, and on the tall stand beside the door, her hand closed around a warm metal handle she recognized like an old friend.
She brought the cast iron frying pan around as hard as she could swing it, smashing its flat bottom into the side of Mr. Terrence’s head.
Meat and mushrooms flew everywhere. His head snapped sideways so hard it took his body with it, until he hit the mantel with the other side of his skull.
Wow. Christine had sure been right about those push-ups!
Mr. Terrence sank to the floor amid the remaining pieces of his dinner and did not move again.
Bonnie stood there, staring down at him, stunned all the way to her bones, and knowing he was dead. She had killed him.
Death had a feeling to it. Or an absence of feeling, really. She’d felt it that December morning a year and three months ago. It had shaken her awake, that feeling of…absence. That deafening silence. Something out of place, something gone.
She’d rolled over like she did every morning, and slid her hand over Mark’s chest, and it was cold, and its cold went through her hand all the way to her heart and chilled it through and through.
She’d recoiled at the horror of it, because she knew he was dead.
There was no question, she knew. She’d stumbled from her side of the bed, grappling for the phone, falling on the floor, and deciding not to bother getting up.
She’d called Diane before she’d even called 911.
Diane got there before the EMTs, and so did Rosa, and Christine.
They held her in their arms when the medics came, and when they checked her husband of forty years, and when they told her sadly what she already knew.
The girls all but carried her out of that bedroom while her precious husband was zipped into a body bag, strapped to a gurney and carried out of her life.
Tears welled. Bonnie wiped them with the sleeve of her coat and pulled herself out of the memories death had evoked. Between the two blows, the shape of Mr. Terrence’s head had changed dramatically. There was no question he was dead, but she still had to make sure, and call for help if he wasn’t.
She crouched and pressed her fingers to his wrist. But there was no beat she could detect. Then she saw her phone on the floor beside him. She must’ve hit him so hard it had flown right out of her bag. She picked it up and dropped it back into the depths of her teal and yellow hibiscus beach bag.
And then, quite suddenly, in her peripheral, a tiny red light blinked out.
She’d been unaware of the light until it switched off, drawing her attention to the bookshelf across the room—that same spot where Mr. Terrence had been looking at an apparently invisible friend.
Oh, no. Was that a camera?
4:00 p.m., 8.5 hours before the cemetery
Christine was enjoying her lake house alone on the shores of Otisco, a half hour from her home in Cortland. Jeff had a business dinner tonight with some of his clients—he advised them on how not to pay taxes, as had his father before him—but had forgotten his phone.
They were staying at the lake house. Well, she was.
Jeff had been stubbornly insisting he’d wait until May to move in for the season, but Christine insisted on April 1st, with him or without him, and had spent the final week of March moving in.
They spent every summer, and much of the spring and fall there.
Personally, she’d just as soon sell the big house in the hills outside Cortland and live right there in the lake house full time.
Jeff’s boat had been stored at a local marina for the winter, but they’d already prepped and delivered it. It was sitting in a dock-hoist that held it up out of the water with a large wheel that, when turned, would lower it again.
With persuasion, Jeff had promised he wouldn’t wait till May.
Now that she’d come, he would follow. Meanwhile, she was fine.
Christine loved being in the lake house.
It was her paradise. Besides, she didn’t need Jeff dancing attendance on her.
When she’d finally recovered from her utter devastation over the sudden death of her first and best husband, Jon, at forty, she’d vowed never to fall that hard for a man again.
And so she kept a carefully maintained wall around her independence and checked herself often for undue neediness.
She had her own life going on, and plenty of it, thanks.
Her second husband, Jeff, was devastatingly handsome and he could charm the socks off a centipede.
His connections had helped her interior design business and bought her entry into society on those rare occasions when she wanted it.
She only worked on projects she loved, for people she could tolerate, and charged them scads of money for it. Life was good.
Her 19th century French Comtois grandfather clock chimed four times.
“Oh thank Gawd,” she said, and wafted across her entirely glass-fronted, asymmetrical lake house toward the wet-bar for her vodka-diet on ice. She always waited until after four.
She used to wait until after five but fuck that.
She poured in the vodka. A jigger full. Shots were for lightweights.
Her cellphone rang and she picked it up, frowning at the interruption. Outside, the lake seemed moody and turbulent, and the sky got darker. A storm was moving in.