Love Me If You Must

14

I didn’t want it to be true. A big part of me wanted to believe that Brad was the one good cop I knew, the one Uniform that was also a decent human being. We’d spent such an enjoyable afternoon together, despite my injury. But as I met his steady gaze and followed the faint creases that lined his eyes, I realized I really knew nothing about the man, other than the fact that he went to church on Sundays and could tell a good story.

Any motive he might have for entering my basement through that window was beyond me. A dark, paranoid imagination might suppose that he wanted access to the body in the cistern, maybe to do a better job of hiding it. But a realistic, facts-only look at the situation concurred with Brad’s take on things: the perpetrators were just naughty, nasty, rotten, stinky kids looking for a thrill.

Besides, if Brad were the murderer, who was the victim?

Brad must have caught me squinting at him. He pulled back and stood up, staring at me for a few seconds with an expressionless face. Then with a slow blink, he said goodbye.

I listened as he left the house through the back door. A squeak of the screen, the crunch of metal as the door slammed shut, then all was silent.

Except my brain.

As long as shock waves continued rippling up my leg, I had nothing better to do than lie on my cot and replay the Brad-as-murderer theme while I waited for the prescription to kick in. But please, Brad just wasn’t that kind of guy. Look at his tidy yard and neat gray shutters. That was the sign of a sane, well-organized mind. Of course, there was the cracked concrete on his front porch . . .

I sat up. I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d been lying here idle for ten minutes, and my mind had taken a bizarre digression. Clearly, having a leg injury was bad for my mental health. I had to get up or I’d drive myself crazy thinking about a murder that never happened.

Sighing, I recalled Brad’s gentle features. A pleasant-looking guy like that with those straight, serious lips could only be taken at face value—at least for now.

In any case, the burden of proof was on me. And I had no intention of proving anything about anybody. All I wanted to do was finish the job at hand and move on to whatever vacant, decrepit building was in store for me next.

Still, as long as I was disabled, it wouldn’t hurt to hobble across the street and meet the neighborhood watchdog. It would be my first, long-overdue step in moving from a Silas Marner way of thinking to an Emma frame of mind. And if the old gossip gave me any local scoop, so much the better.

I held on to the wall as I put weight on both feet, standing inch by inch. Each jolt of pain reminded me that I was indeed alive. And that was better than some people.

I slid carefully into my jean jacket, clenching my teeth to stay focused. By the time I reached the front porch, I was out of breath. And despite fall’s sharp bite, beads of shock-induced sweat broke out on my forehead.

Maybe now wasn’t the right time to pick my neighbor’s brain.

I collapsed to the top porch step. I rested my head on one knee, listening to a swirl of noises. The far-off beep of a car horn. The distant slam of a screen door. The rumble of a truck over on Maple Street. A faint whistle, foretelling the train to come.

I groaned. The doctor’s assurance that my leg would only hurt for a few weeks seemed shortsighted. The way I felt, a year was probably more accurate. Which meant that Friday night’s date with David wasn’t going to be the perfect romantic evening I’d had my heart set on, not with me gritting my teeth between every bite.

On the bright side, if I couldn’t work, I couldn’t lose any more fake fingernails. But on the downside, I think I’d been counting on them all falling off before Friday. Could I truly go out in public with Flamingo Pink anywhere on my body?

I pity-partied the whole time the train blew past, wallowing in the bone-jarring vibrations, holding fast to the revolting but undeniably authentic sound of my reality.

At the last ding of the warning bells, I lifted my head. And there she was, staring at me, right at the foot of my front porch. The neighbor lady, Ms. Watchdog.

At close range her gray hair was more like wisps of pure black mixed with chunks of pure white. In between were pale patches of bare scalp. Her face seemed almost blue from the labyrinth of veins showing, with skin pulled tightly over a bone-thin nose. Her lips withdrew into her mouth, and I wondered if she’d remembered to pop in her dentures that morning.

“Looks like you’re in some pain,” she said in a soft, surprisingly youthful voice. I had expected the cackle of an old hag.

“I twisted my ankle going to the basement.” I paused to catch my breath.

“Not surprised. Those steps are too narrow to be safe.”

“Oh? You’ve been down there?”

“Plenty of times. My son, Jack, helped with the foundation repair after the flooding. When was that . . . about a year or so ago?”

I wanted to jump for joy. Brad wasn’t the killer—Jack was. Jack had access to the basement and even worked with the concrete.

“Mind if I sit a minute?” The woman climbed to the top step and settled in, leaning against the crackled-paint siding.

“Be my guest. I’m Tish Amble, by the way.” I offered my hand, but pulled back at the electric twang ripping through my nerves.

“Dorothy Fitch. You stay put.” Dorothy adjusted her bulky quilted jacket. “Takes a little more to stay warm these days.”

I waited for her to say more, but she simply looked at me in silence. Flustered, I glanced across the street at the Fitch residence.

“So, have you lived in the neighborhood long?” I asked.

“All my life,” she replied. “Grew up in that little house next to the church a couple blocks down. My husband grew up in that house right there.” She pointed to her story-and-a-half, early-1900s home. “We moved in with his mother and raised four kids in three bedrooms. Hate to say it, but the best day of my life was the day his mother died. She was a miserable, sickly woman. Only lived to torture me.”

“Oh.” I swallowed hard at the callous comment. “Must’ve been some flood last year, huh?” I said, hoping she’d move back to a less irreverent topic.

“Never saw such a downpour. Water was seeping through every crack. Rick and Jan had it worst of all.” Dorothy patted the tongue-in-groove of the porch floor. “Looked like sprinklers going off from every wall of the basement.”

“You were down there when it happened?”

“Jan called right away. It was the last straw for her. She hadn’t wanted to buy the place to begin with.” Dorothy shrugged. “Rick wasn’t about to give up his baby.”

I thought about Rick Hershel, almost in tears at the closing table. His scruffy beard and mustache barely hid his emotion as he penned his signature on the dotted lines. At the time, I thought he was distraught about the divorce. Now I wondered if he wasn’t more heartbroken over having to sell his true love.

For a second, I hoped Jan really was lying in my basement. Some people had no understanding of the connection between flesh and bone, and plaster and wood. Renovating an old home was more than just a project. It was a labor of love, almost certainly more gratifying than giving birth. Unlike a child, a house didn’t have a mind of its own that came with destructive self-will. Every effort applied toward its four walls remained constant, and only powers greater than the house could change it. Time, elements, a new owner.

A gust of air rattled the windows. The cold blast brought to mind the image of perpetual suffering frozen in the cistern, and along with it came a wave of empathy. In her misunderstanding of Rick’s passion for the house, Jan might have become a permanent part of it.

Or not.

I reminded myself that there was no body in the basement.

“So Jan must be happily living in a brand-new home somewhere, huh?” I said.

“Haven’t heard. Thought she’d drop a note now and then, but some people are bad that way. Probably hurts too much to think about the old neighborhood.”

I clasped my hands against a rearing stomach. “What about Rick? Has he stayed in touch?”

Dorothy nodded. “In a manner of speaking. I see his car drive by every so often. Probably just curious to see what you’re doing to the place. Never stops in, though.”

Not exactly comforting to learn that a possible murderer was casing my house. I thought about the stick in the basement window, and wondered if Rick had conveniently kept a key so he could let himself in later, prop open the basement window, then take his time patching up his lousy burial job.

Forgetting my audience, I shook my head and rolled my eyes, determined not to give valuable brain space to a ridiculous notion.

“Where’d you wander off to?” Dorothy asked.

I gave her a questioning look. “Pardon me?”

“Looked like your mind was a million miles away.”

I hesitated. Spilling my guts about imaginary bodies somehow didn’t seem like good Welcome Wagon conversation.

Still, for the sake of sound sleep, I took a chance.

“Just thinking about the trick-or-treaters that came through last week. A couple of them said my house was haunted.” I gave an embarrassed smile and rubbed the back of my neck.

I’d hoped she’d laugh and reassure me that it wasn’t true. Instead, a look of alarm flashed across her face. Her hands fidgeted in her lap.

“Oh, kids these days.” She waved off their comments. “No such thing as ghosts.”

I wrapped my jacket tighter to keep the frigid wind at bay and stared vacantly at Dorothy’s house across the street. The curtain in the downstairs window moved to one side. I jerked upright in my perch on the top step. A zing of pain knifed down my leg.

I tried not to waggle my primped-up finger too exuberantly as I pointed.

“Who’s that in the window?” I asked. I’d been going on the assumption that Dorothy was the busybody of the ’hood, but it seemed I was wrong.

Dorothy looked toward home. The curtain fell back into place.

Her lips pursed up, giving the illusion she had teeth.

“Just my Jack,” she said. Her thumbs twirled together in slow circles. “Bet he’ll like you just fine. Sure liked Jan when she used to live here.”

A buzz of apprehension crept over my shoulders and up the back of my neck. Somehow I didn’t want anything in common with cold, dead Jan.

Especially not interest from Dorothy’s eccentric son.