The Red Hunter(30)

“I’m struggling with the wallpaper in the kitchen,” she said to Josh. She stared in dismay at the mess around her, her ruined hands that were raw and red, glue embedded under her nails. The rumble was over. She’d lost.

“I can help you with that,” he said easily. She liked the sound of his voice, sweet but masculine, not deep but resonant somehow.

The steamer she’d rented from the big box hardware store was not cutting it. It looked so easy on the YouTube video she’d watched. Except the paper wasn’t peeling off in big sheets but in frustratingly small pieces.

She glanced at the clock. It was after two already.

“Can you come by today?” she asked. “We can talk and I’ll show you what I need done?”

“I can come now, if you like.” Was there something suspicious about someone who could “come now”? Everyone she knew in the city was so busy-addicted. Schedules were tight, not a minute to spare, dinner dates and lunches and coffees planned weeks in advance. No one she knew ever said, “I’m free right now.”

“That’s perfect,” she said. “You can see what a mess I’ve made of the kitchen.”

He laughed a little. “I’ll look forward to it. Hey—remember, everything looks like a mess when you’re in the middle of it. See you in a while.”

After she’d hung up, she stood staring at the useless steamer humming in the corner and decided she was beaten. She’d attacked the job (like so many things), with so much vigor but all that initial energy had drained. She’d decided to make an espresso to give herself a little jolt. She picked up her phone and watched the little blue dot that was her daughter arrive at Ayers’s Upper West Side building. She received a text from Raven just minutes later.

You can stop tracking me! I’m here. Love you.

Okay. Love you. Have fun.

“What’s the point of tracking her if she knows you’re doing it?” That’s what Ayers wanted to know.

“I don’t want to spy on her. I just want her to know I’m watching,” she’d said. “With her—even when I’m not.”

After some of the trouble Raven got into in the city—sneaking into clubs, some drinking, lying about where she was and who she was with—Ayers wanted to install spyware. It monitored everything that passed through her phone—calls, texts, emails, social media activity. It created a map of her activities. It could even turn the audio and camera on to see what she was doing in real time.

Claudia had balked, though it was tempting. What parent didn’t want to know exactly what was going on in her teenager’s brain? And monitoring Raven’s cell phone was a pretty good clue. But Raven was still close to both of them, still talked to them about things. Sure, she was pushing the edges, but wasn’t that normal? Wasn’t secretly installing spyware crossing some kind of line, the line between caring and smothering, between being there and hovering? Didn’t it say: I don’t trust you or the world we live in and I expect bad things to happen? Didn’t it put them and their daughter on opposing teams?

While she sipped her espresso and stared out the kitchen window at the hole in the barn where the door used to hang, she thought about calling Ayers. She was surprised that he hadn’t called about the test: Raven had surely texted him as soon as she got on the train. He’d want a Big Talk. He was a communicator.

Ayers would probably want to come to the house for the weekend, which would be fine. He could help with the basement. And after Raven was asleep, maybe they’d find their way to each other. It had happened a number of times since they’d split; the attraction between them had never waned. The last time had been a couple of years ago. Come back to me, he’d whispered as they lay in the dark. She’d thought about it that time. But she’d thought too long. And now there was Ella.

She rested her hand on the phone, the landline, and was about to call her ex-husband when it started to ring. She saw the name on the caller ID and for some reason almost didn’t answer. It was Wanda Crabb, the woman she’d called for a reference earlier.

Mrs. Crabb sounded like her name, older and a little crotchety.

“He does decent work, as much as anybody does these days,” she said. “He refaced my cabinets. Work was fair at a fair price. I didn’t have to call and call to see when he was going to show up like some of them. Seems to have grown into decent fellow. Not like his brother.”

“Oh,” said Claudia. “Do they work together?”

“No, no one’s seen Rhett for years. Good riddance. He’s probably in jail; that’s the rumor anyway. I was the English teacher here at the local high school for twenty years; seen all kinds. Anyway, you must know all this. Rhett Beckham was a bad seed, if ever there was one.”

There was something a little unsettling about a teacher referring to a child as a bad seed, wasn’t there? It touched a nerve, a concept that Claudia could not allow herself to entertain. And—know all what? She found that happened a lot here; locals assumed a lot of knowledge on her part just because the property had been in her family for a long time. Anyway—stay focused, Claudia!

“But Josh?”

Wanda Crabb issued a cough, then another. It was an unsettling sound, deep and growling. Claudia noticed that she’d involuntarily put her hand to her own chest.