At least she had found her extra keys in the drawer where she sometimes kept them; they had fallen down between the folds of her sweaters. That had eased her mind; and nothing in the apartment had, again, been disturbed. The windows had remained locked, and she saw no one lingering down in the street.
But still she was nervous. And then on Thursday evening, leaving work, she saw him. When she started out of the building, a man stood across the street, tucked into the darkness of an unlit doorway. She had stepped back inside her building.
She couldn't tell if he was watching her, couldn't tell if it was the same man. She had remained inside the glass door until he left the mosaic of shadows, ambling on down the street in plain view, a perfectly ordinary man wearing nondescript jeans and a brown windbreaker-but his face had been turned away. She wanted to see his face. And in spite of common sense, her fear escalated. The next day, did she imagine a shadow slipping away behind a building? Imagine that the man on the crowded sidewalk in broad daylight was keeping pace with her?
Then late last night she'd heard a series of thuds, either in the apartment or on the roof.
Taking her flashlight and her vial of pepper spray, she had made the rounds of her familiar rooms. Nothing had been amiss. But then this morning she'd noticed two desk drawers protruding, not pushed in all the way. And the couch and chair cushions were awry, and a kitchen cabinet door ajar. This had occurred after she had prowled at midnight. Then she found a wad of short black hair on the kitchen counter.
She had flushed it down the toilet and Cloroxed the countertop. She had no idea how the cat was getting in. No lock had been disturbed, and she had found her lost keys, though she supposed they could have been copied then returned to her. But what was the purpose? Consuela knew by now that the jewels were not here; she must have learned that the first time she searched the apartment.
Kate was not afraid of Consuela. And she should not be afraid of the black tomcat. On Sunday, with Lucinda and Pedric due to arrive, she hurried home from finishing a stack of orders at the office, showered, and dressed comfortably in a velour jogging suit and scuffs. She wanted dinner preparations finished early, as they would be there before dark. She boiled the shrimp and made the creole sauce and measured the rice to be cooked. She set the table in the little dining room with her new paisley place mats, and put together a salad with all but the two ripe avocados she'd selected from her hoard on the windowsill. She set an amaretto cheesecake out to thaw. The scent of the freshly boiled shrimp and of the creole sauce filled the apartment, stirring her hunger. She filled the coffeepot, using a specially ground decaf, and curled up on the couch near the phone with a book, waiting for Lucinda's call that they were about to cross the Golden Gate. From the bridge, it was only ten minutes.
She read for some time Loren Eiseley's keen observations of the world. Strange that they were so late; it was growing dusky. Traffic must be heavy; not a good time to come into the city, with people returning from the weekend. When it was nearly dark, she rose to pull the draperies. Before closing those on the east, she stood a moment looking out toward East Bay, watching the lights of Berkeley and Oakland smear and fade in the gathering fog. She hoped Lucinda and Pedric arrived before the fog grew thick. Making a weak drink, she returned to her book. Only belatedly did she pick up the phone to see if they had left a message on the service before she ever got home.
She no longer used an answering machine; three power outages with the resultant failure of the machine had prompted her to subscribe to the phone company's uninterrupted reception even when the phones were out.
There was no beeping message signal. There was no sound at all from the receiver, no dial tone.
How long had the system been out? This happened every now and then, particularly in bad weather. As her apartment had not been disturbed, she didn't think anyone had tampered with the line.
Lucinda didn't have the number of her cell phone. Anyway, she realized suddenly, she'd left that phone in the car, plugged into the dash, the battery removed to keep it from turning to jelly She had meant to bring it up with her; now she did not want to go out in the night to get it. She was disgusted that she had forgotten it when all this last week she had carried the phone even when she walked.
It was nearly seven thirty when she poured herself another mild drink and decided to fix a plate of cheese and crackers to calm her rumbling stomach. Lucinda had said they'd been up around Fort Bragg, poking along the coast. They did love their rambling life. For a pair of eighty-year-olds, those two folks were remarkable. Slicing the cheese, she reached to turn on the little kitchen TV that had been a birthday present to herself. She didn't watch much TV, but she liked to have the news on while she was getting dinner. Shaking out the crackers, she caught something about an accident in Sonoma County. An RV and a tanker truck. She glimpsed a brief shot of the wreck, the vehicles so badly burned you couldn't tell what they had looked like. Fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances filled the screen. She stood at the kitchen counter unmoving.
When had this happened? This couldn't be…
She relaxed when the newscaster said the collision had happened late last night. This had happened while Lucinda and Pedric were safely asleep in their RV, or in some cozy inn up the coast-not at a time when the Greenlaws would have been on the highway.
She didn't like to look at the TV pictures. It was a terrible wreck, those poor people hadn't had a chance. She had reached for the remote, to turn to another channel, when a cut of the newscaster came on, interviewing the Sonoma County sheriff. She paused, curious in spite of herself.
"Now that the nearest relatives have been notified, we are able to release the names of the deceased. The tanker driver, Ken Doyle of Concord, is survived by a wife and two young children." There was a still shot of a dark-haired young woman holding a little boy and a fat baby. "The occupants of the RV were residents of Molena Point. Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw had been…"
She couldn't move. Suddenly she couldn't breathe.
"… vacationing up the Northern California coast. The eighty-year-old newlyweds, who were married just last year in a Molena Point ceremony, were returning home to the central-coast village…"
She needed to sit down. She stood leaning against the counter, holding on to the counter, staring at the TV.
She had seen Lucinda and Pedric only a few weeks ago. She had spent the evening with them. She left the kitchen, making her way to the living room and the couch, which seemed miles.
Sat with her head down between her knees as she had been taught as a child, until the nausea passed.
Why would Lucinda and Pedric be on the road late at night?
A long time later she rose to put the shrimp and creole sauce and salad in the refrigerator. Standing in the kitchen with her back to the TV and the sound turned off, she made herself a double whiskey and took it into the living room.
But there, she couldn't help it, she turned on the larger TV mindlessly changing channels looking for more news, though she did not want to see any more. The wreck had happened Saturday night while she lay sleeping. Today she had gone about her pointless affairs while Lucinda and Pedric lay dead. She had stopped at the grocery, buying shrimp, flowers for the table, imagining the thin, wrinkled couple tooling along in their nice RV, stopping at antique shops, stopping to eat cracked crab… Staring at the TV, she didn't know what to do or what to think. She simply sat.
Did Wilma know? She ought to call Wilma. Should she call Clyde, ask Clyde to tell Wilma? Clyde was closer to Wilma than she was, they were like family. If they knew, why hadn't they called her?