Warning Signs

CHAPTER 25

Lucy Tanner didn't go home right away after leaving Alan's office.

Shortly after she'd been old enough to drive she'd discovered that nothing she did gave her the succor and peace she felt when she was alone behind the wheel of a car. As a younger woman, she'd required open roads and speed to achieve the contentment she sought from her automobile. During the first few years after she'd graduated from college, she'd thought nothing of driving alone from Colorado to San Diego and back on a long weekend to sneak in a few hours surfing in Encinitas.

The trips were a lark. The surfing was usually a thrill. The driving was a necessity.

Now she could achieve some modicum of solace simply by driving city streets or cruising the narrow canyons that snaked into the foothills above Boulder. The speed to which she was once addicted was no longer necessary. A dirt lane up Magnolia served her purposes as well as a wide-open interstate on Floyd Hill up I-70. The turbo boost on her cherry-red Volvo was about as essential for her as a box of condoms was to a nun. She was thinking it was time to trade the car in for something else, though she couldn't decide exactly what.

When she left Alan's office, Lucy headed north on Broadway, paralleling the naked hogbacks that ridged Boulder's western rim. Her fiancé, Grant, lived in a townhouse in Niwot, a once-charming rest stop of a village that had grown into an extra bedroom for Boulder's expanding family. She weaved east until she connected with the Diagonal Highway and started the familiar route to her boyfriend's house a few miles down the road. She barely noticed the soft colors that were illuminating the clouds above the hogbacks.

Lucy knew Grant wasn't home. He was in the field, somewhere in central Wyoming, doing a wildlife survey. She'd received an e-mail from him that morning and had sent one back his way, a don't-worry-about-me-I'm-doing-fine pack of lies. Her journey to his home wasn't about seeing him; it was about driving to see him. She looped past his house twice, finally parking for a moment in the place beneath the big cottonwood where she usually left her car when she was spending the night.

Her engine running, she listened to Gloria Estefan sing something in Spanish. The backbeat was invigorating but the tone was lamenting. Gloria obviously wasn't pleased about something, but Lucy didn't remember enough of her high school Spanish to know exactly what. As the song ended and the disc jockey moved into a commercial for an herbal elixir that he promised was just as potent as Viagra, Lucy touched a button to change stations, pulled out from beneath the cottonwood, and steered her way back onto the Diagonal, this time heading toward Boulder.

She stayed on the Diagonal until it ended, and then stayed on Iris until she reached Broadway, where she turned south. She'd arrived at a decision as she was stopped at the light at Twenty-eighth Street. Her next stop was going to be the home of the Bigg family. She'd already checked their address. They lived south of Baseline in a cul-de-sac below Chautauqua.

She cruised the cul-de-sac only once. Four houses on big lots. The garage door was open on one of the houses on the corner. Somebody was working on an old motorcycle with a sidecar. A dozen lights were ablaze in the two-story Bigg home. One car-a six- or seven-year-old BMW-was parked in the driveway; two more cars were on the street nearby.

She jotted down the plates on all the vehicles, hoping that she'd happened upon an evening visit by the man named Ramp. But she didn't think so. Lucy wasn't feeling particularly lucky.

Sixth took her back toward downtown. But she didn't make it all the way downtown. All along she knew that the Peterson home would be her last stop before heading back to her place.

She cruised Jay Street twice, slowing each time in front of the Peterson house. The lawn had been mowed for the first time that spring. The crime-scene tape was down. The do-not-enter warnings were gone from the front door. The light in one of the upstairs windows was dim, not dark. The ubiquitous flicker of the television screen from Susan Peterson's bedroom, present. She's back home, Lucy thought during her first pass. She felt an urge to park around the corner where she'd always left her car during her prior visits, but resisted, settling instead for permitting herself one more loop past the house.

On her final drive by the house she wondered if she wished things were the same as they always were. As they were a couple of weeks before.

She couldn't decide. She found that interesting, still.

Although she'd promised herself that no matter what she saw in the upstairs window, she absolutely wouldn't stop, she pulled over to the curb and parked her car behind an aging Toyota pickup, killing the engine in the middle of a melancholy ballad by Sinéad O'Connor.

That's one girl, she told herself, who's more confused than I am.

Lucy reached over to the passenger seat and checked her purse to make sure she had everything she might need.

She did.

The air was heavy, the way it is in July when a thunderstorm has just passed. But the April night was dry. A chill permeated her clothing. Lucy kept her head down, counting curb sections, reading the dates imprinted on the borders of the cement work. The oldest section she found had been installed in 1958.

Nineteen fifty-eight must have been a very good year for concrete. The pour was still in good shape. By comparison, some of the newer sections, including one done in 1993, already appeared due for replacement.

She had to cross over Pleasant Street to get to the Peterson home. When she looked up from her reverie to check for traffic, she was almost hit by a bicycle riding on the wrong side of the street.

The walkway that led from the sidewalk to the Petersons' front door was constructed of brick pavers set in a herringbone pattern. The path meandered from start to finish in the elongated shape of a lazy S. Lucy cut the curves, straightening the path into a line.

She had no illusions that she'd find Susan Peterson home alone. She suspected that Susan would have convinced someone-one of her doctors, probably-that her husband's murder had left her in need of a full-time aide. Lucy knew that there was another possibility-that instead of an aide, Susan's caretaker might be one of Susan and Royal's daughters.

Either way, Lucy knew that whomever she discovered in the house would be a woman.

Susan didn't like men close by.

Lucy had never used her key in the front door lock, didn't know if it would even work. Since she'd had the key, she'd always come in through the back door.

She tried the key in the front lock. The thin metal wand slid into the brass slot naturally, as though it belonged. She rotated her hand and the key turned evenly in the lock. She depressed the thumb lever and pushed the heavy door inward. It released with a gentle whoosh and Lucy stepped inside the house.

She paused. The living room was to her right. She tried not to think about that night. About Royal.

About Sam.

"You okay, Luce?"

She failed in her attempt to ward off memories of that night; the images flooding her left her feeling a momentary pulse of disorientation. The same almost-vertigo she'd felt when Sam was kneeling over the body.

"Holy shit. You know who this is, Luce?"

She shook her head to clear the slate. Ever since she was a little girl she'd cleared her head the same way she'd erased images from her Etch A Sketch. This time it took two shakes.

The stairs to the second floor were right in front of her.

Lucy heard water running in the kitchen at the rear of the house. That would be the aide or the daughter.

Staying to the far right edge of the staircase because Royal had warned her once that a couple of the treads squeaked, Lucy took the stairs one at a time. She didn't touch the banister.

From the landing at the top of the stairs, she could see that the door to Susan's bedroom was almost closed. Through the narrow opening Lucy could hear the distinct sound of the television.

Martha frigging Stewart.

She paused and thought about Grant.

She was consciously aware that she was looking for a reason to go back down the stairs, back out the door, back into her bright red Volvo. But Grant wasn't going to be that reason. He'd find out everything soon enough and at that point he'd do what he'd do. Lucy thought he'd run like hell, but allowed for the possibility that he might surprise her.

With her left hand Lucy reached into her purse. With her right hand she pushed open the door.

Susan looked up, probably to demand something of the aide.

Lucy said, "Susan. We need to talk."