The House Across the Lake(95)

I end the call, rush out to the porch, and grab the binoculars. It takes me a second to adjust the zoom and the focus. The Royce house blurs and unblurs before becoming crystal clear.

I scan the house, checking each room.

The kitchen is empty.

So is the office directly above it and the master bedroom to the right.

I finally locate Katherine in the living room. She’s on the sofa, propped up by throw pillows and lying under a blanket. On the coffee table beside her sits a large glass of red wine.

Still holding the binoculars to my eyes with one hand, I reach for my phone with the other. It bobbles in my hand as my thumb slides along the screen, scrolling to Katherine’s number.

Across the lake, she reaches for the wine, her hand curling around the glass.

I grip the phone tighter and hit the call button.

Katherine brings the glass to her lips, about to take a sip.

The phone rings once.

She perks up at the sound, the hand holding the glass going still.

Second ring.

Katherine looks around the room, trying to locate her phone.

Third ring.

She spots it sitting on a nearby ottoman and sets the glass back down on the coffee table.

Fourth ring.

Katherine reaches for the phone, the blanket slipping from her lap. She clutches it with one hand while the other stretches for the phone.

Fifth ring.

“Hang up the phone, Casey.”

I lower the binoculars and whirl around as Tom emerges from my house, joining me on the porch. The bottle of wine is in his hand, gripped by the handle like a club. He smacks the blunt end into the open palm of his free hand as he comes closer.

Katherine’s voice squawks from my phone as she finally answers.

“Hello?”

Tom wrenches the phone from my hand, hangs up, and flings it over the porch railing. The phone lands with a crack in the darkness below before bleating out a ring. Katherine calling me back.

“By now, I bet you wish you hadn’t been so nosy,” Tom says. “None of this would be happening if you had just stayed out of it. Katherine would be dead, you’d be here drinking yourself into a stupor, and I’d have enough money to save my company. But you just had to rescue her and then watch us nonstop, like our lives were a fucking reality show. And you ruined everything once you got the police involved. Now I can’t just slowly poison Katherine. Now I need to be extra careful, cover my tracks, make it truly look like an accident. That’s why I kept her tied up in the basement instead of killing her outright. Lucky for me, your husband had a lot of interesting things to say about that.”

I flinch—a reaction I can’t prevent because I’m too focused on the heavy glass of the wine bottle still slapping into Tom’s palm.

“We talked a lot while he was in that basement,” he says. “Chatted for hours. There wasn’t much else to do once your detective friend started breathing down my neck. You want to know the most surprising thing he told me?”

He lifts the bottle, brings it down.

Slap.

“That I killed him,” I say.

“Not just that. It was how you did it that was so fascinating.”

Slap.

“A perfect murder,” Tom says. “Far better than what was in that play of yours. That’s where I first got the idea, but you already know that. Poisoning my wife little by little so she dies of something else and I inherit everything.”

Slap.

“But your husband—good old talkative Len—gave me a much better idea. Antihistamine in some wine. Make her good and drowsy. Drop her into the water and let her sink. The police around these parts never seem to suspect foul play when a person drowns. As you well know.”

Slap.

Somewhere below, my phone stops ringing as Katherine gives up.

“She’s probably taking a sip right now.” Tom gestures to the binoculars still clutched in my hands. “Go ahead and watch. I know you enjoy doing that.”

I raise the binoculars, needing both hands to keep them from shaking. The Royce house jitters anyway, as if an earthquake is taking place. Through the shimmying lenses, I see that Katherine has moved to the living room window. She stares outside, the glass of wine back in her hand.

She brings it to her lips and drinks.

“Katherine, no!”

I don’t know if Katherine hears my scream flying across the lake because Tom is upon me in an instant. I swing the binoculars at his head. He blocks them with his arm before slamming the bottle against mine.

I drop the binoculars as pain shoots through my arm.

I cry out, stumble backwards against a rocking chair, and collapse onto the porch.

“Now you know how it feels,” Tom says.

He swings the bottle again. It whooshes past my face, mere inches away.

I scramble backwards along the porch, my right arm throbbing as Tom continues to swing the bottle, slicing the air, bringing it closer.

And closer.

And closer.

“I know how to make you disappear,” Tom says. “Len told me that, too. All it takes is some rope, some rocks, some deep, deep water. You’ll vanish, just like those girls he killed. No one will ever know what happened to you.”

He swings the bottle again, and I scoot out of the way, edging onto the top of the porch steps.

Tom swings again and I duck, trying to keep my balance. A moment of weightlessness follows—cruel in its deception that I might be able to resist the pull of gravity. It ends with a thud onto the next step.