The Other Mrs.(72)

I’m terrified. I don’t know who’s here, if anyone is here. I can’t call out for fear that someone might hear me. But as I creep around the first floor of the home, the reality is hard to ignore. I see no one, but there are signs of life everywhere. It’s dark outside and in; I have to use the flashlight on my phone to see. I discover an indentation in the plastic that covers a living room chair, as if someone sat down there. A piano seat is pulled out, sheet music on the rack. There are crumbs on the coffee table.

The cottage is a single-story home. I make my way down the dark, narrow hall, tiptoeing so I don’t make a sound. I hold my breath as I go, taking short, shallow breaths only when I have to, only when the burn of carbon dioxide in my lungs is more than I can bear.

I come to the first room and look inside, shining my flashlight along the four walls. The room is small, a bedroom that has been converted into a sewing room. A seamstress lives here.

The next room is a small bedroom crammed with ornate antique furniture that’s buried beneath plastic. The carpeting is thick, plush. My feet sink into it, and I feel guilty for wearing my shoes inside, as if that’s the worst of my infractions. But there’s also breaking and entering.

I leave that room and step into the largest bedroom of the three, the master bedroom. The room is spacious in comparison. But that’s not the reason my eyes do a double take when I step inside.

The sun has set outside. Only a faint hint of blue creeps in through the windows. The blue hour, it’s called, when the residual sunlight takes on a blue tone and turns the world to blue.

I shine my flashlight into the room. I see the ceiling fan, the blades of which are formed into the shape of palm leaves. The ceiling is a trey ceiling. And I’ve seen it before.

I’ve dreamed of this room. I dreamed of myself lying in this bed, or a bed similar to this, hot and sweating beneath that fan, in the crevasse that is still in the center of the bed. I stared at the fan, willed it to move, to push a gust of cold air onto my hot body. But it didn’t because the next thing I knew I was standing beside the bed watching myself sleep.

This bed, unlike the other furniture in the house, isn’t covered with plastic. The plastic that should be on the bed lies in a heap on the floor, on the other side of the bed.

Someone has been sleeping in this bed.

Someone was here.

I don’t bother with the basement window well this time. I head straight out the front door. I close it behind myself, the light in the living room flicking on as I leave.

As I run back home, I convince myself that the ceiling, the bed, the fan weren’t the very same as they were in my dream. They were similar, yes, but not the same. Dreams have a way of fading fast, and so the true details of it were likely gone before I ever opened my eyes.

And besides, it was dark in that cottage. I didn’t get a good look at the ceiling or the fan.

But without a shred of doubt, the plastic was pulled from that bed. The homeowner covered the bed just like all the other furniture in the home. But then someone else removed it.

Once in my own yard, I look at my cell phone. It’s dying. The battery percentage hovers at around 2 percent. I put in a call to Officer Berg. He’ll be able to search for fingerprints and figure out who’s been there. God willing, he’ll find Morgan’s murderer.

I have a minute or two at best before the phone dies. My call goes to voice mail. I leave a quick message. I ask him to call me. I don’t tell him why.

Before I can end the call, my cell phone dies.

I drop the dead phone into my coat pocket. I step across the driveway, moving toward the porch. The house, from the outside, is dark. Will has forgotten to leave the porch light on for me. There are lights on inside, but I can’t see the boys from here.

There’s a warmness about the house. Heat spews from the vents, gray against the near blackness of night. Outside, it’s windy and cold. The snow that’s fallen over the last few days blows about, creating snowdrifts on the driveways and streets. The sky is clear. There’s no threat of snow tonight but forecasters are going hog wild about a storm that’s to arrive late tomorrow. The first substantial storm of the season.

A noise from behind startles me. It’s a grinding noise, something discordant. I’m not ten feet from the porch when I hear it. I spin and at first I don’t see him because his body is blocked by a formidable tree. But then he steps forward, away from the tree, and I see him moving slowly, deliberately, a snow shovel dragging behind him and through the street.

The snow shovel is the sound that I hear. Metal on concrete. He holds on to the shaft of the shovel with a gloved hand, scraping the blade across the street. Jeffrey Baines.

Will is in the house making dinner. The kitchen is in the rear of the house. He wouldn’t hear me if I screamed.

At the end of our drive, Jeffrey turns and makes his way toward me. There’s something bedraggled about him. His hair stands on end. His dark eyes are rheumy and red-rimmed. His glasses are missing. He looks nothing like the suave, affable man I met at the memorial service the other day. Rather, he looks like something the cat dragged in.

My eyes go to the shovel. It’s the kind of thing that’s versatile. It has dual purposes because not only could he hit me over the head and kill me with it, but he could use it to bury my body.

Does he know I watched him and Courtney at the memorial service? That I was in her home?

I’m stricken with a sudden terror: What if there are security cameras inside her home? One of those fancy new doorbells with the camera to let you know who’s at your door when you’re not there?