Nothing came back into the earpiece. I shook my head at Carmen. She nodded and tilted her head to the left, so that’s the direction we headed first.
She was still walking point.
Cellar noises? Nothing I didn’t expect. Furnace sighs, plumbing burps, old-house creaks. But no more pounding. Above us the scampering of feet as children and parents rushed from the house had stopped.
The first room to our left was a furnace room with an alcove that had a workbench built in under a window well.
In the dark basement my eyes found shapes but no details. As I followed Carmen toward the door that would take us to the next surprise space in the maze, my foot brushed something on the floor that I hadn’t seen. Carmen heard the noise I made. She stopped.
I crouched down and felt along the cold concrete surface with my hand.
I lifted a woman’s shoe. A clog. Not really a clog; Sherry used another name for shoes like it, but I couldn’t remember what. Why? I really didn’t care.
Had Holly been wearing clogs in the kitchen that morning? I should have remembered, but the picture in my head of Holly preparing the turkey didn’t go all the way down to the floor.
Carmen leaned over to touch the shoe. Feeling what it was, she took it from me and set it aside. With her head close enough that I could feel her breath on my cheek, she said, “Let’s go.”
The next room was small and seemed to be full of stuff. Holly probably called it her storage room. But I could tell from the haphazard pattern of shadows that it was the place she stashed the junk she didn’t know what else to do with. Storage is one thing. Sticking stuff in a room is another thing entirely. There’s a big difference. Sherry did storage. I stuck stuff in rooms.
Carmen’s eyes must have adjusted to the dark better than mine. She found a path through the stuff, and we were across that room and through another door in seconds.
The next room we entered was a bathroom. A window well provided enough light that I realized that “bathroom” was a generous description for the space. It was a tiny concrete room with inelegant plumbing and a couple of fixtures that existed in the time warp between modern and antique. Despite the shadows I could see streaks of rust on the porcelain surfaces of both the sink and the toilet.
Carmen reached behind her and held out her hand to stop my progress. Her fingers found me just below my belt.
It certainly stopped my progress.
Through the open door in front of Carmen I could see a square shape emerging from the darkness.
A washing machine. Maybe a dryer.
Here we go,I thought.Here we go.
I retraced all my steps to the landing at the foot of the stairs and opened the door that Carmen and I hadn’t taken the first time. The room I entered was the largest room in the basement and was furnished with somebody else’s things. A night-light spread a shadowy brilliance across its lowest reaches. From the looks of the bases of the pieces, I guessed that these were Holly’s grandmother’s things. Every one-sofa, chest, chair, table-was ornate, heavy, grandmothery.
Four long strides, and I was across the room and standing at the door that I was almost certain led into the laundry room. Carmen was waiting at the other door on the far side of the basement.
My role was straightforward. I was to keep anyone from exiting through this door until I went in on Carmen’s signal. That was the plan.
From then on we would improvise. And hopefully try not to shoot each other in the process.
The phone call with Gibbs was over. I’d stuffed the cell back in my pocket.
My handgun was ready.
I was wondering precisely what the signal was going to be when I heard Carmen yell, “Police! Freeze!” and figured that was probably it.
I pulled open the door and stepped inside the laundry room in a flash, though it turned out there was little cause for hurry.
SIXTY-NINE
It was a night of front porches.
Diane and I have an ancient oak swing on the porch of our building, and from half a block away I could see that it was moving to and fro in a tight arc. A solitary person sat smack in the middle of the seat.
I was guessing it was a homeless man. I pulled five bucks from my wallet, remembered what day it was, and replaced the five with a twenty. I held the bill folded in my hand. In my Thanksgiving fantasy the man would use the money to sit at a nice table in a nice restaurant and treat himself to a bountiful plate of turkey and stuffing.
The porch was in shadows. From the end of the driveway I couldn’t make out the age or gender of the visitor.
Nor did I recognize the voice when he said, “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight. You should be home with your family. I know I wish I was.”
I stopped walking. “Excuse me. Who are you? Do I know you?”
The swing stopped moving, and the man stood. He was still in the shadows, but I could tell that he wasn’t tall. “I brought you something. An explanation.” He waved some paper at me. An envelope, maybe. “I thought it might help save somebody. I was just going to stuff it through the mail slot when I saw your car. Felt the engine; it was warm. I thought I’d take a chance that you’d be coming back.”
“I still don’t know who you are.” I hadn’t moved. I remained right where I’d been on the narrow driveway. Ten yards of drought-starved lawn and a border of unhappy euonymus separated me from the stranger on the porch.
He moved forward inch by inch, and with each inch the light from the streetlamps seemed to crawl up his body like water rising in a flood.
As the light moved up from his shoulders and began to paint his face, I said, “Oh my God.”
“Hi,” Sterling Storey said. “What a week it’s been, huh?”
What did I think?
I thought,Catch me.
SEVENTY
At first, Holly didn’t even notice the woman with the covered dish. The chaos associated with the arrival of her oldest sister’s family for Thanksgiving dinner was demanding all of her attention. The woman with the dark hair and the perfect skin and the casserole waited patiently through a procession of hugs and kisses, waited until no one remained on the porch but the two of them.
“Holly?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Remember your friend from church? From the basilica?”
Holly hesitated.Could she mean…?
“He said to mention the organ.”
She could.“Uh, yes. I remember.”
“He’s around the corner. Right this minute. He’d like to see you again.”
She stammered, “I have guests.”
“He knows. He wants to see you while they’re here. In your house. He thinks it will be fun. Especially fun.”
Holly took the woman’s elbow and guided her a little farther from the door.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Holly emphasized “you.”
“I want to watch. That’s what I want.”
“Watch?”
“At Notre Dame I was the woman in the purple suit. Remember me?”
Holly remembered. “My family… what-“
“Move them into the living room for a picture. Everybody. He and I will come in the back, go down into the basement. We’ll know when, because you’ll turn off the kitchen lights.”
“And then… what?”
“Before dinner you excuse yourself, say you’re going to take a bath. He’ll be waiting downstairs. Me too.”