When I opened the front door, my heart did a little skip. The alarm didn’t make its familiar beeping sound, which meant someone had turned it off. I immediately had that same creepy feeling I’d had the morning I found Mr. Harwick—that someone was in the house.
I rolled my eyes and said out loud, “Oh, get over it!”
I dropped my ring of keys into its pocket on my backpack and went over to the marble staircase and called up. “August?”
There was nothing but silence.
Then I realized, of course the alarm wasn’t on. The crime-scene units had only finished their work today. I doubted they even knew the code to set the alarm.
I let out a big sigh of relief and told myself I needed to stop being so dramatic. But just to be on the safe side, I went back over and locked the front door. That’s when I smelled it. Cigarette. Something moved in the corner of my eye. I walked through the main entry where the two Roman statues were standing guard and saw the back of someone’s head.
Mrs. Harwick was sitting on the couch in the living room, staring out at the pool. A plume of white smoke was trailing up from a cigarette perched on the edge of the coffee table.
I stepped lightly up to her side. “Mrs. Harwick?”
She turned her head in my direction but didn’t look directly at me. “Oh, Dixie. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I’m so sorry to interrupt you. I didn’t realize anyone was home. I just stopped by to check on the fish.”
“Oh, good.” She stared blankly ahead, her eyes fixed on the pool area. “The police left a little while ago. I came by to get a few of my things. I was going to send the driver in to get them for me, but at the last minute I changed my mind. I told him to leave me here and come back in an hour.”
Her voice was small and distant, as if it were locked away inside a safe.
“Mrs. Harwick, I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, thank you, Dixie. I’m sorry, too. That must have been a terrible ordeal for you.”
She tilted her head to the side and closed her eyes.
I suddenly realized that I’d completely intruded on her quiet, and more than likely she just wanted to be left alone.
I said, “Well, I’ll just check on the fish and then I’ll be out of your way.”
As I turned to leave, she stopped me.
“It’s so odd, isn’t it? You think you know people. I’ve never been very close to my son, August. He’s always been a little distant, even when he was a baby. People say that’s just the way boys are. Maybe it’s true. It’s always been Becca that was there when I needed her. But not this time. Not now. Becca’s gone. To be honest with you, I think she’s gotten herself mixed up with drugs, and now it’s August taking care of me. All the paperwork, the police, everything. I don’t know what I would do without him.”
My first instinct was to tell her I was sure that if Becca could be here she would, which of course was about the dumbest thing I could possibly have ever said. Sometimes my mouth starts running before my brain has any idea what’s going on. As my grandmother liked to say, “The wheel is spinning but the gerbil ain’t home.”
Luckily this time I caught myself. Mrs. Harwick was in a state of deep shock. She knew Becca was missing, but she’d somehow managed to avoid considering what everybody else feared: that Becca might have witnessed something that night, and right now could be in very grave danger.
I said, “I know Becca’s been going through a lot of things in her life. When you’re a teenager, sometimes you think the world revolves around you. You shouldn’t take it personally.”
She was sitting perfectly still, her back ramrod straight, staring numbly out at the swimming pool.
She said, “Becca and I were riding bikes one morning. She couldn’t have been more than five or six, because I remember her bike still had training wheels. We were coming around a curve, and I rolled over a stick that had fallen in the path. It popped up and got stuck in the bicycle chain. The next thing I knew I was flying over the handlebars. I landed flat on my face. It nearly knocked me out. Becca saw me fall, but she just kept on riding. I remember her little legs just pumping away on the pedals.”
She looked down and spread her palms open.
“I broke the fall with my hands. I’m convinced that’s where my arthritis came from. Dixie, do you have someone?”
That caught me off guard. I said, “What do you mean, someone?”
“Someone special in your life.”
“Umm. I do. Sort of. I mean it’s complicated.”
She stared at me, unblinking, with a desperate look in her eyes. I knew she wanted an honest answer.
I said, “I’ve been alone for a while, so it’s hard. I mean, it’s such a compromise…”
“A compromise?”
“Well, I mean I like my life the way it is. It’s just hard to compromise no matter how much in love you think you are.”
She thought for a moment and then looked out at the pool. “I think you should stay away from Kenny Newman. I’m afraid of him.”
“Mrs. Harwick, I’m not involved with Kenny Newman, and I never have been. I really only know him through work.”
She nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I jumped to that conclusion. To be honest, I think I was a little jealous. I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve always had a little crush on Kenny, which I’m sure you can understand.” She smiled sadly. “Well, I’m glad you have someone you can share your life with.”
She looked down at the cigarette, still lying with its lit end over the edge of the coffee table, only now there was a half-inch-long tail of ashes. She flicked the ashes into the palm of her hand and dumped them along with the cigarette into a bowl on the table next to the couch. She shook her head. “Disgusting habit. I haven’t smoked in twenty years.”
The doorbell rang.
“That’s the driver.”
She stood up slowly, and we walked to the front door.
“Dixie, I hope you don’t mind feeding the fish a while longer. I realize it’s not at all what we planned, but until they find out who did this, I can’t stay in this house.”
“It’s not a problem at all. I can feed them as long as you want, and I’ve already talked to the Kitty Haven. Charlotte can stay there as long as necessary.”
Her eyes glassed over, and she nodded mutely. I watched from the porch as the driver helped her into the backseat of the car. She had been so vital and strong that first day we met. Now, just a few days later, she seemed old and frail.
The driver closed the door, and as he walked around the front of the car and got in the driver’s seat, Mrs. Harwick sat perfectly still, her eyes wide open and gazing forward. I was waiting to give her a smile or a wave, but as the car moved forward she didn’t look back.
I trudged up the stairs with heavy legs. Mrs. Harwick seemed to have lost not only her husband, but her soul mate. I had been wrong about them. They had been together so long their bickering had become just another mode of communication. What I had thought was bitterness and sarcasm was really just harmless play, like two old dogs rolling around in the grass and chewing on each other’s ears.
In the master bathroom, I slid open one of the pocket doors on the side of the aquarium and opened the cabinet where all the food and chemicals were kept. I pulled out a water-testing strip and dipped it into the aquarium for a few seconds, then watched the little squares on the strip change color. I compared them with the examples printed on the side of the bottle. Everything matched perfectly, which was a relief. I didn’t have to add any chemicals to the tank. I remembered Mrs. Harwick saying that just the slightest imbalance in the chemistry could be fatal to the fish.
After I sprinkled some food in, I slid the lid of the tank closed, flicked off the light, and closed the pocket door behind me. The bathroom was the same, except the towel that had been lying on the counter was gone, along with all the little yellow evidence markers, and the harp-toting angels flying around on the ceiling looked a little more heavenly and glowing in the late-afternoon light.