“But it didn’t take him anytime at all. I heard a key go straight in and the lock started turning.”
“I saw him use a key,” Cynthia said. She looked at me. “Who did you give a key to?”
“No one,” I said. “Did you give a key to anyone?”
“Of course not.”
I looked at Grace. “Are you kidding?” she said. “You think I’m an idiot?” I gave her a look that suggested her last twelve hours made that a risky question.
I said, “Okay, the only people who have a key to this house are each of us, and Teresa.”
“Well, that sure wasn’t Teresa trying to break in,” Grace said.
“Why would someone have a key and want to get in here?” I asked. I was looking at Grace.
“Like you said. I’m a witness.”
Cynthia looked dumbstruck, trying to get her head around what we were talking about.
“Yeah,” I said. “But what are the odds the person who was in that house would have a key to ours?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just — I don’t know, Dad.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Cynthia asked. “What the hell is going on?”
I took a second to compose myself, let the proverbial dust settle around us. I said, “We’ve got some trouble.”
Sitting at the kitchen table, Grace and I told her everything, from the beginning. We didn’t leave anything out. When Grace neglected a detail, I filled in a gap, and vice versa.
Cynthia, to her credit, mostly listened, asking only the occasional question, letting the story unfold. If it had been me hearing all this, I’d have been interrupting every ten seconds.
I finished by telling her where I’d just been, how I had hoped maybe I’d find Stuart Koch at home.
“So you still don’t know what happened to him,” Cynthia said.
We both shook our heads.
Grace said, “I know you probably want to chew me out and all that stuff, but Dad’s sort of done some of it, and right now I really have to go to the bathroom, so can it wait until I get back?”
Cynthia nodded.
As Grace got up from the table, her mother grabbed her arm and pulled her in to give her another hug. Grace wrapped her arms around her mother’s head and said, “I’m glad you’re home. Even if it’s just for a visit. And everything’s going to shit.”
Cynthia looked like she wanted to say something, but held back. All she said was, “Go.”
When Grace was gone, Cynthia looked at me.
“You could chew me out now instead,” I said.
She reached out and gripped my hand. “What a mess.”
“What’d Tommy Lee Jones say in that movie? ‘If it ain’t, it’ll do till the real mess gets here.’ Yeah, this is bad.”
“I think you’re right about getting her a lawyer. Pronto. We don’t know what’s coming.”
I nodded.
“But we’ve been through tough times before,” Cynthia said. “Thanks to me. My troubles nearly got us all killed.”
“It’s nice that we can take turns,” I said.
“You think that man at the door — that he was here to get Grace? That he was in that house and thinks she saw him?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Let’s say you’re right,” Cynthia said. “How could that person have a key to the house?”
Good question.
Cynthia speculated. “Maybe Grace — or you, or I — maybe we left our keys out somewhere, allowing someone to make a copy. You know, like when you leave your car keys with the dealership service department, or you give them to a valet and they’re hanging there at some restaurant where anyone could sneak off with them for a while.”
Except I was a schoolteacher and Cynthia worked for the health department. Okay, we had a cleaning lady, but we didn’t exactly throw our money around that way. “When was the last time you used the valet service at a hotel or restaurant?” I asked.
“Never.”
“Same here.”
“Maybe one of Grace’s friends? Got into her purse, took her key and copied it?”
“From the way Grace described the guy, it wasn’t a kid. It was someone my age.”
“But even if he got into the house,” Cynthia said, “he’d have had to contend with the alarm system. Soon as that went off, he’d have had to run.”
“He didn’t know we had one,” I surmised. “If he knew we had one, he’d have had to know the code to disable it.”
We were both quiet for a moment.
“Stealing a key and copying it is one thing,” Cynthia said. “But none of us would be dumb enough to give out the code.”
“Only people who know the code are you, me, Grace, and Teresa.”
“Second time her name has come up,” Cynthia said.
And again, we were both quiet.
“No,” I said. “I mean, even if it was Teresa, that she gave someone a key and told him the code, what would be the point? What have we got? We don’t have a security system to protect our valuables. We have it to protect ourselves, after what happened years ago. And that guy, when he was trying to get in, he figured no one was home. He rang the bell, he knocked, and Grace didn’t answer. So maybe he wasn’t coming in to attack her. He was coming in for some other reason. What would he steal? Your priceless jewelry?”
For the first time, Cynthia chuckled softly, despite everything.
“My rare coin collection?” I continued. “The thousands in cash that we keep stuffed under the mattress?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, and her face grew dark. “I’m going to talk to Vince.”
“Oh yeah, that’s a plan. He loves us. When I saw him last night, he wasn’t any more friendly than when you and I visited him in the hospital years ago.”
“I’ve seen him,” she said.
“What? You mean, recently?”
Cynthia nodded. “Yeah. He visited me at the apartment.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, breaking my hand free of hers. “You’ve been seeing Vince?”
“I haven’t been seeing Vince,” she said, leaning back in her chair away from me. “But I’ve talked to him. I wrote to him after his wife died, sent a card. He spotted me driving around, followed me to the apartment, thanked me. And he apologized for how he treated us way back then.”
“I didn’t get my apology,” I said.
“I guess the card you sent got held up in the mail.”
I had no comeback for that.
“Anyway,” Cynthia said, “I want to talk to him. I think he’ll be more forthcoming with me than you.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
“No. I’ll do it alone. Besides, someone needs to be with Grace. All the time.”
I didn’t disagree.
I pressed my back against the chair and folded my arms across my chest. “So how long have you been keeping an eye on us?”
She bit her lip. “Since I left.”
“Wait a minute. You couldn’t be watching us all the time.”
“No. But most nights. I’d park around the corner. There’s a tree — you know the one, out front of the Walmsleys’ house?”
I nodded.
“It’s wide enough to hide behind. I can’t get to sleep unless I know you’re both home safe. Especially Grace. I could see her window, and sometimes I’d wait until she turned off her light, and then I’d go home.”
She swallowed. “What I wanted to do was just come in. I wanted to go up to her room and kiss her good night and turn off the light for her. But I guess, when you’re fourteen, you’re too old for your mother to do that.”
“I think she’d have been okay with it.”
“And then, after I’d done that, all I’d have wanted would be to slip into bed next to you.” She sniffed. “But then I’d drive back to the apartment. Until the next night, and I’d do it all over again.”