“Right,” Charlotte said.
“But what if he doesn’t?”
Charlotte smiled. “Oh, I have that figured out, too.”
Fifty-Three
Anna was not an expert at the whole “following cars” thing.
She’d grown up watching The Rockford Files and Miami Vice and Cagney & Lacey, and it always looked so easy on those shows when the detectives had to tail someone. They didn’t have to worry about traffic or red lights or pedestrians texting at crosswalks. The road was always clear for them.
The only way she could keep Bill Myers’s car in sight was to practically ride on his bumper.
She tried to back off when she could but was so afraid of losing him that she stuck too close to him. She was sure he’d notice he was being followed.
But maybe that wasn’t so bad. Didn’t she want to talk to him? She wasn’t tailing him so much to find out what he was up to as to find a moment to have a few words with him.
Right.
Except what was she going to say? What was she going to ask him? Anna was starting to think maybe she hadn’t thought this through.
Myers led her into a nice area of south Milford. He put on his blinker and turned into a development on Viscount Drive, a few hundred feet from the beach. He lived in a collection of attached townhouses, and turned into the driveway of one of them.
She kept on driving.
She had planned to stop, flag down Mr. Myers for a conversation, but then lost her nerve. She carried on to the next stop sign and turned.
Anna circled the block, came back, and parked out front of Bill’s house. She killed the engine, sat there, frozen by fear and indecision.
Knock on the door or leave?
While she considered what to do, she dug her phone out of her purse. She needed a distraction. She decided to check and see whether she had any messages. She’d muted the phone during the funeral. If anyone had texted, emailed, or phoned her, she wouldn’t have known.
Well, what do you know, there were two emails and one voice mail. She checked the latter first.
It was Rosie, her neighbor keeping an eye on her father while she was out, asking when she thought Anna would be back. The woman had an eye appointment at four. Anna called her immediately and said she would be home soon, long before the woman had to be at the doctor’s.
Then she turned her attention to the emails. One was junk, and the other was from someone asking if she was taking on new clients. Anna tapped on the reply arrow and was about to write back when she nearly had a heart attack.
Someone was rapping hard on her window.
Anna was so startled she dropped the phone into her lap and put her hand to her chest. Bending over, his nose pressed up to the glass, was Bill Myers.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Coming home, Bill Myers was pissed.
He wanted to see Charlotte, needed to see Charlotte. Not at the funeral, but privately. She’d been putting him off, and sure, he understood the need for caution. But they hadn’t gone through all this to not spend time with each other. He needed her. He needed her in every way.
It was this need that made him take her hand as they were leaving the church. To link his fingers with hers. What he wanted to do, right there in the church, was put his mouth on hers, take her in front of everyone.
See the look on their faces.
But he wasn’t that stupid. And he’d already let her know a few minutes earlier what was on his mind. Sitting in the front pew, next to her, he had taken her hand and subtly shifted it to his lap so that she could feel how hard he was.
Charlotte had given him the tiniest squeeze before withdrawing her hand back to her own lap.
He saw that as a good sign. He’d been hoping for one, given Charlotte’s avoidance since Paul’s death. Not taking his calls, ignoring texts. Yes, she’d told him, weeks earlier, that whenever it was done, they had to be discreet. They did not want to attract any undue attention.
Fine. He got that. But the thing was, he had questions. Like, how long would they put up with the charade? They did work together, after all. How long before he could stay at her place, or she could sleep over at his? It was nobody else’s business what they did now. Paul was dead. Wasn’t Charlotte entitled to move on with her life?
But son of a bitch, just like he’d whispered to her, it had worked. Better than he had ever imagined.
He paced the house. Antsy. Anxious.
He happened to glance out the window, saw a Lincoln SUV parked across the street. He’d noticed the car in his rearview driving home. He squinted, tried to see who was behind the wheel.
It was a woman, and she looked familiar. Bill thought he had seen her at the funeral. What the hell did she want?
There was only one way to find out.
He went out the front door, crossed the street, and while the woman was engrossed in her phone, went up to the window and knocked on it with his knuckle. Asked if he could help her. Gave her quite a start.
The woman put down the window.
Bill, thinking maybe she hadn’t heard him through the glass the first time, asked again, “Can I help you?”
“Mr. Myers?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Anna White. I was Paul’s—”
“I know who you are,” he said, nodding. “You were there, the other night, when Paul, you know, when things got really bad.”
“I’m sorry to bother you. I’d hoped to talk to you at the service but missed you. And now I’ve been sitting out here, like an idiot, trying to work up the courage to speak to you. I wasn’t sure whether to bother you at a time like this, what with Paul being your friend and all.”
Bill studied her for a second. “Uh, well—”
“It wouldn’t take long. I just want to have a few words.”
Bill shrugged. “Come on in.”
She got out of the car, locked it, and walked to his front door with him. “I thought your eulogy was very heartfelt.”
He shrugged. “Thanks.” He opened the door for her and invited her to sit in the living room.
Anna settled into a soft chair. “How is Charlotte doing?”
“Well, she’s devastated, of course,” he said.
“I can imagine. I dropped by to see her, after it happened. But I think it was a mistake. Did she tell you I visited her?”
“No,” he said. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“I suppose I wanted to tell you what I told Charlotte. That I feel terribly sorry. That I feel I failed your friend. It’s all been weighing heavily on me.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not the only one. I mean, I guess we all played a role there.”
“Did you see the signs?” she asked earnestly.
He nodded slowly. “Like I said in the church, I guess we all did. Charlotte for sure. And anytime I saw Paul, I could tell he was pretty troubled.”
“Troubled, yes. But anything that suggested to you he’d take his own life?”
“Well, come on. Look at everything that was going on. The attempt on his life, the nightmares, thinking his typewriter was somehow possessed or something? That must have been some scene the other night.”
“It was.”
“I don’t know how he did it. Without waking up Charlotte.”
“You mean...”
“Going down to the garage, bringing up the typewriter, putting it right there by the bed. Shit, I still can’t get my head around it. You’re the expert. Do you think he knew what he was doing? Was it like a split personality or something? One part of him was doing all the typewriter stuff, and another part was scared shitless by it?”