Having once spent a few days having the tar beat out of me while being held captive in a small room, I don’t do well with locked doors. Claustrophobia and I have since had an ongoing unpleasant relationship, and DeMont’s locked door brought it on in a hurry.
I felt a kind of hysteria rising within me, and fought hard to keep it in check. I turned, telling myself to calm down, to try to find a back door, even as I heard my breath coming in short, quick gasps, as if I been running a race.
Blocking the hallway door was Robert DeMont. He was smiling.
I had an urge to tackle him, but instead I ran through the maze of tables to the kitchen door, hearing him shout, “Stop!”
I found the back door, yanked at it. It wouldn’t budge.
“They’re all locked,” I heard him say from behind me, “but there’s nothing to be upset about. I just want to talk to you, find out what you know.”
My heart was pounding in my chest.
“Let me out of here,” I said, hating how my voice shook. “Let me out!”
“It’s one of my inventions,” he said. “One button locks all the doors and windows of the house. Once it’s activated, I have to enter the secret code to turn it off.”
Christ. Trust this to be his one invention that worked. I was sweating. “I have a problem with enclosed spaces,” I tried, moving slowly back toward the kitchen.
He frowned, not making any attempt to block my way, but following me. “Are you sure? Richmond didn’t mention it in his report.”
I didn’t answer. I was trembling. My throat was closing up. I began moving toward the front of the house again, my steps shaky, but picking up speed.
“Where are you going?” he said, still following. “Let’s talk.”
“Open the goddamned doors!” I shouted. I stumbled past worktables, knocking two of them to the floor behind me. I heard DeMont shout something about his work, but paid no attention. My goal, straight ahead, was a set of closed, cream-colored drapes. There was light coming from behind those drapes. A large picture window. I set the envelope down, picked up a metal folding chair.
“Stop!” he shouted. “I’ll unlock the door!”
Too late. I had a good grip on the chair and was swinging that son of a bitch at that window as if I wouldn’t settle for anything short of a home run. There was a satisfying crash of glass-better yet, a rush of fresh air. Almost immediately I felt myself grow calmer. I yanked the drapes back and, turning my face away, took another couple of whacks at the glass. Now the opening was wide enough for me-I could get through without cutting myself.
I turned to pick up the envelope and saw Robert DeMont looking at me with the same sort of uncomprehending look he had on his face when the blender went wild. “Why did you do that?” he said. “I told you I would open the door.”
“First,” I said, stepping through the window, hearing the crackle of glass breaking beneath my shoes, “I don’t trust you.” Once outside the house, I took a deep breath. “Second, you paid someone to spy on my family. That would have been bad enough, but you probably paid for far more than that.”
“But I won’t harm you!” he said angrily. “Why break my window?”
I looked across the street. Laurie was coming out of Leda’s house. She stopped on the sidewalk, looking wide-eyed at the damage.
I looked back at him. “You destroyed our privacy, and now I’ve done a little damage to yours.”
I walked away, not waiting to hear his reply. I wish it would have been in purposeful strides, but it wasn’t. I felt sick to my stomach, and my knees were suddenly going rubbery on me. I managed to get to my car, yank the door open and plop myself into the driver’s seat. I wanted to start the car and drive off, but I was shaking. Thanking God that I hadn’t put the top back up, I just sat there, taking deep breaths, trying to slow down.
I glanced up to see Laurie crossing the street to his house. I folded my arms across the steering wheel and rested my head against them. Now that the adrenaline rush was over, every part of my body that had hit that wall the day before was complaining-but that wasn’t what kept me sitting at the curb.
Better not to drive, I knew, when I was feeling like this. When I was feeling like this, my ghosts would rise-the memories would come to me, and I would lose my way in them. I waited.
But while one or two images of my days in captivity quickly crossed my mind, I did not fall prey to them. I wanted to hope that this was some sign that I was making progress, but settled for being grateful that I got off easy this time. I straightened up, felt the warm ocean breeze on my face and was just about to start the car when I heard a voice say, “Are you okay?”
I turned to see Laurie standing next to the car.
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”
“I hope he didn’t scare you too bad. You don’t look so great.”
“I’ll be all right in a minute.”
“He told me that he had used his locking invention. What a jerk! I’m so glad you broke his window.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. He needs to learn that he can’t have things his way all the time. He’s just an overgrown spoiled brat! He can’t go around locking strangers inside his house for no good reason. No wonder it scared you.” She suddenly blushed and said, “It’s my fault. I should have warned you about the locks. He told me about that invention, but I have to admit…”
“You didn’t think it would work?”
“No,” she said. “It’s a first, I think.”
I laughed. “I can’t blame you. Did he show you the ceiling of his kitchen?”
She shook her head. I told her the story of the blender.
She laughed and said, “Oh, God, that’s so like him. He doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions. It’s all ‘I want this,” and ’I want that.“ Sometimes he’s just a younger version of great-grandfather, only Uncle Bobby doesn’t swear. Grandma is stuck taking care of two very selfish old men.”
“I hope she won’t be upset about the window.”
“No, I’ll tell her what happened. She’ll understand.”
I wondered if it were true. She seemed to look out for her older brother. “Does she make meals for him every day?”
She shook her head. “No, she’s only doing this until his car is fixed. Before he wrecked his car, he would take care of his own grocery shopping, or, you know, he’d go out to eat. I’m hoping she doesn’t spoil him too much.”
“What happened to his car?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He got into some kind of accident a few weeks ago. I guess it, like, kind of embarrasses him. He won’t talk about it. He was going to try to fix it himself. God! Can you imagine? Probably have to drive it in reverse all the time!”
A few weeks ago. I tried to respond lightly, to keep the conversation going, but it was difficult to keep smiling. “I take it you talked him out of that idea?”
“No, Grandma had the car towed down to Sun Coast-this body shop on Beach Boulevard. Uncle Bobby was mad, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.”
“Maybe he thought it needed to go to a specialist.”
“A Camry? I don’t think so-hey, are you sure you’re okay? You look a little pale again.”
A little truth wouldn’t hurt. “I’m just not very good about being locked in places.”
“No one could blame you for being freaked out. I mean, you go into this dude’s house, just bringing him something to eat, and he acts like something out of Frankenstein!”
I laughed. “It’s the inventor in him.”
“Oh, wow, you’ve seen that movie?”
“I read the book.” I steered the conversation back to Robert DeMont. “So your uncle was surprised to find the car gone from his garage?”
“Oh, man, it was so funny when he found out that it wasn’t there! He just about died! But if we had waited for him to do anything about it, Grandma’d be fixing him free meals forever!”