Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
FRIDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 8
A s soon as I woke, I knew something was wrong, but my sleep-fogged brain wasn’t supplying details. I sat up gingerly, like an overworked athlete knowing every muscle would be sore. The break-in and my conversation with Mary amid the moldy stench of her allergy-inducing basement finally trickled in.
As if recalling my neighbor had magically conjured her, Mary’s wafer-thin voice floated through the vaporous morning air. I looked through the gravelly light, my gaze settling on the bedroom doorway. I half expected to see her walk through it.
“Caroline? Car-o-line?”
I got out of bed, blinking, following her voice like a sleepwalker obeying the dictates of a fever dream. I shuffled along the hallway and halted in my tiny foyer, spying Mary through the sidelight window on my front porch. She was tapping lightly on the glass, which made my jaw clench.
“What is it now, Mary?” I yanked open the door, scratching the top of my snarled head with my free hand, a whimper escaping me when my fingers tangled in the knots of hair at the crown.
“Oh, dolly, I couldn’t sleep knowing you were upset with me.” She smiled, not looking even slightly remorseful.
I looked beyond her, to the gray light of early morning coating my across-the-street neighbor’s white ranch. “What time is it?”
“Just after six.”
I took a cleansing breath. I couldn’t start my day yelling at an old lady. “If you’d waited until eight to wake me, you’d have had two extra hours to contemplate my anger. That would have really ratcheted up the drama.”
“That’s just it, I want to avoid extra tension,” she said, her eyes going wide. My sarcasm was lost on her, but I had the sneaky suspicion it was by design. “I’ll make you a cup of coffee while you shower, then we can head into town,” she added. “I need to buy some things and I could use the company. I think you could too. I think it’s a good...”
Without bothering to wait for her to finish her sentence, I turned and walked into my bathroom, hearing her shut my front door. I twisted the spigot on the shower and wiped the crust from an eye while I waited for the water to heat up. I had no energy to argue.
I stayed in the steamy bathroom for a long time, enjoying the invigorating stream of hot water on my skin and dreading an upcoming morning with Mary.
When I finally emerged, wrapped in a ragged-edged towel, she was at the bathroom door with a steaming mug. I didn’t know what to make of it. Nobody made coffee for me. Tim claimed to not even know how to boil water, and, growing up, my mother continually warned me of the dangers of regular caffeine ingestion. I winced thinking about what she’d make of my routine pill-popping as I took the mug from Mary.
Still annoyed with my neighbor, I shuffled to my bedroom, closed the door behind me, leaving Mary standing in my hallway. I took a sip and gagged, spitting it back into the cup. I’d not been expecting Mary’s strong coffee.
When I finally made it to my kitchen, swathed in my detergent-blue bathrobe, Mary was shoving bread slices into my toaster. I dumped the contents of my mug and poured myself a new cup, eyeing my neighbor with a look that challenged her to protest.
She looked from me to the toaster. “The stores open at ten. I know it’s not yet seven, but we need to be prepared for traffic. And with your driving challenges...”
“I don’t think we’ll be battling the Upstate New York hordes in this heat,” I said, hearing my nasty attitude spilling into my tone. “It’s not like we’re lining up for the Travers Stakes in Saratoga. And my driving is just fine, thank you.”
“You’d be surprised how bustling downtown gets on a Friday morning,” she said, the toast popping up as if accentuating her words.
I’m sure you’d be surprised too , I thought. I seldom saw Mary before 10:00 a.m. It took her a while to come around after each night of hard drinking.
By ten minutes before ten, after enduring a morning viewing of The Price is Right with Mary—her nonstop coaching of the contestants as if she were getting paid to do it (and they could actually hear her)—I had my neighbor securely ensconced in my front passenger seat, safety belt in place. I backed out of my driveway carefully, recalling how she’d disparaged my skills behind the wheel the last time I’d driven her. After she told me she let her husband die.
I still had no idea how true that story was, just as I wasn’t sure of exactly why Mary had been in my house the night before. Had she really been tailing someone?
“Why would a person break into my house, Mary?”
“Only one reason,” she said instantly, as if she’d been expecting my question. “Whoever killed the woman you saw in that neighborhood wants to discover what you know about it.”
I reflexively hit my brake, in the middle of the street, shooting us both forward. Again. “You think?”
“Good God, girl, remind me not to speak when you’re driving,” Mary griped, rubbing the skin between her clavicle and the seat belt. “You need all your faculties to focus on the task at hand.”
“I’m sorry, I really am.”
“Hmph,” she said, refusing to say another word until we hit the main street in the downtown area, where she directed me to a parking spot.
After we stepped onto the sidewalk in front of a florist shop, she finally said, “I think it’s true, you know. Someone was in your house looking for tangible evidence linking you to that bleeding woman you saw. Did you take anything from her house that night?”
I looked at Mary as if seeing her for the first time. “You sound like a cop. Do you have a background in law enforcement?” I realized as I asked that I had no idea what Mary had done for a living in the years before we’d met.
“No, but I was an insurance adjuster back in the seventies. The stories I could tell you about people. The bonkers stuff folks do to cash in on claims.”
“Really?” Thinking about the nail fragment, I hoped I’d distracted Mary from her question. I hadn’t taken anything from the Pine Hill house that night .
“You bet, especially down by the city, where we lived before moving to the Capital District. Everyone’s nuts down there. Too many people, living too close together. Makes you stir crazy.”
We dipped into a card store. It wasn’t crowded yet; the woman behind the counter merely nodded when we walked in, a look on her face like she’d just had an unexpected sip of Mary’s specialty coffee. I urged my neighbor out the door after one pass around the card racks and followed her into a pharmacy across the street.
I perused the shelves while Mary stood in line for her prescriptions. As I neared the front of the store, I heard the two teen girls behind the counter gossiping, but an oversized endcap filled with beachballs prevented me from seeing them.
“Did you notice those two women who just came in...?” A hushed voice. I looked around, seeing only one other patron, a man at the other end of the aisle. “One of them’s crazy.”
“Which one?” asked the second voice.
“The one who...” The first voice lowered. I stepped closer to the front counter, as far as I could get without being seen. “She’s a murderer. Can’t believe she’s allowed to walk around in public after what she’s done.”
Thoughts swirled in my head, making me slightly dizzy. So, Mary had been truthful when she’d told me about her part in her husband’s death. And it appeared to be common knowledge among the townsfolk. But that didn’t give them the right to gossip about her. How dare they disparage someone without knowing the whole story. Mary had issues, of course she did, but who among us was perfect? If she wasn’t behind bars, it was because someone wiser than two wretched teens had decided she didn’t belong there.
I stepped past the ball-laden endcap, into the space in front of the counter, and stared down the girls, who stopped talking as soon as they saw me.
“Well, that about does it for me,” came Mary’s voice from behind me. “Got my scripts filled, so we can...”
“Go,” I finished, noticing the girls each looking at the floor, as if something engrossing was happening at their feet. “There’s clearly no reason to stay.”
As we walked back to my car in the escalating morning heat, Mary asked what I’d meant by my odd remark in the pharmacy.
I sighed. “Nothing, really. I overheard gossiping. God, I’m glad I’m new here. There seems to be nothing quite like having a history in a small town.”
“True,” Mary agreed. “People in a town like this remember everything. They’ll dredge up history just to have current events to talk about.” She cackled, finding her own joke amusing.
She babbled on as we crossed the blanched sidewalk and slid into the scorching interior of my Honda, not needing, it seemed, any contribution from me, but we drove home in silence. Mary must have thought I was concentrating on improving my driving while I was really seething. The shopkeepers had been unfriendly and downright rude. I was glad I got all my prescriptions refilled through the mail.
I rounded the bend and pulled onto our street, slowing when I realized someone else was standing on my doorstep. I rolled my eyes. Tasha Turner was back.