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."
CHAPTER 26
Lucy e-mailed her fiancé before she scrubbed the makeup from her eyes and slid into bed. She wrote to tell him that she loved him, but she knew in her heart that her words were nothing more than shouting in a canyon.
What she really wanted to hear was the echo.
When the phone rang twenty minutes later, she still wasn't asleep. Wasn't even close to being asleep. She checked the time out of curiosity. The clock read 11:05.
"Hello."
"Lucy Tanner?"
"Yes."
"This is Brett Salomon from The Daily Camera."
In a clear voice, a cop voice, Lucy said, "How the hell did you get this number? I've told you before, Mr. Salomon, I'm not giving interviews. Good night. Please don't call here again."
"Wait, please. Don't hang up. This call is a courtesy for you, Detective Tanner. Hear me out. In tomorrow morning's edition we will be running a story concerning you and the Petersons, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to comment prior to publication. It's up to you, but I suggest you hear me out."
Lucy's heart felt as though it were a new thing in her chest. The suddenly rapid beating got her attention like a loud knock at the door. She swept her hair off her forehead. "Concerning me how? What's the story about?"
When he started talking again, Lucy thought Salomon's inflection had changed, as though he was reading, or reciting something that he'd rehearsed. He said, "Detective Tanner, we will be reporting in tomorrow morning's paper that Susan Peterson is your mother and we will be characterizing your relationship with her. Feel free to comment. I'd like to print your side of the story, as well."
Lucy pressed the mouthpiece of the phone into her right breast and told herself to breathe. The room was dark and the foot of her bed faced the wall. She thought she saw brilliant flashes of light, like flames, erupt in three or four places where she should be seeing nothing but the familiar shadows of her room at night.
She could still hear Brett Salomon's voice. It sounded disconnected, hollow, distant. But urgent, pressured. He was saying, "Detective? Detective? This is your chance to comment. Detective Tanner? Detective Tanner?"
Lucy hung up the phone and then she vomited all over the sheets.
CHAPTER 27
I misled my wife in order to get out of the house after midnight. An emergency, I said. Lauren, half asleep, assumed that I meant an emergency with my practice. And now, sometime shortly after midnight, I was sneaking down the street, head down, collar up, hoping no photographers' lenses were pointed my way as I hustled into the old house on Pine Street where Lucy Tanner had a second-floor flat.
I was surprised how cold it was outside.
Lucy had been crying. A pile of spent tissues marked the place on the sofa where she'd been awaiting my arrival.
Her flat was dark, a solitary light from the kitchen spilling shadows into the living room. Even in the muted light I could tell that the room was elegant yet comfortable, a pleasant mixture of the modern and the ancient. An alluring step tansu filled much of one wall. A gorgeous old highboy secretary marked off the transition to the kitchen. The sofa where she was sitting was covered in a rich tapestry. It was the kind of room that took either serious bucks or an exceptionally high credit limit from Visa.
"Thanks for coming," she said. "I didn't know who else to call." Lucy was wearing a black robe that reached to mid-thigh. As she sat on her sofa, she had to tug the hem of the robe carefully into place to maintain modesty. She grabbed a wadded tissue from beside her and stretched out one corner of it as though she were about to use it to blow her nose. She didn't. She said, "My fiancé is in Wyoming," as though that explained why she'd called me instead of him.
"Sure," I said.
"After I left your office today, I drove around for a while. I do that sometimes. Just drive around. It helps me relax. You ever do that? Just drive around? Does that make me weird?" The last question informed me that she was aware at that moment that she was talking to a mental health professional.
She pulled on a different corner of the tissue, and it ripped. She slipped a fingertip through the hole.
I shifted my weight so that I was leaning forward, closing the space between the chair where I was sitting and Lucy.
She went on. "During my drive I went, well, I went a lot of places, but one of the places I went was the Peterson house. Susan's moved back home. Did you know that? I saw the lights on upstairs. The TV screen was flickering."
I said, "I didn't know she was back home."
"Me neither. I was kind of surprised, actually."
For a split second she lifted her eyes and looked at me. "I don't have many friends, Alan. Did Sam tell you that about me? That I don't get close to very many people?"
"I think he's told me that you're a private person, Lucy. That's all."
"Sam's nice," she said. Here in the dark with something important on her mind, her voice was almost girlish. "My boyfriend says that I seem to love it when he's intimate with me but that I don't want to be intimate with him."
Almost reflexively, I said, "You say that in a way that makes me wonder whether his words make sense to you." It was a shrink phrase. In that room at that time it was as out of place as a bright red clown nose.