Bree thought of her next-door neighbor, the balding guy with the graying ponytail who looked embarrassed just to say hello if they ran into each other on the street. The day that she had gone storming over, he had invited her in. At first he had listened to her rant with calm, unblinking eyes, his face thoughtful — as she imagined a priest would look during confession, if she could see through the screen, of course. Then he had suddenly started blushing and perspiring and almost whispered his protest that it couldn’t be his roof, because surely he would have a leak too. She should call another contractor, he said.
“I scared the poor guy out of his wits,” she had told Kevin that night. “I should have known the minute I saw the way he keeps his place that he’d never tolerate a leaking roof. The polish on the floor in his foyer almost blinded me. I bet when he was a kid he got a medal for being the neatest boy in camp.”
Kevin. That was something else. Try as she might, she couldn’t keep him from coming to mind. She would be seeing him this morning, the first time in a while. He had insisted on meeting her in court even though they were no longer dating.
I’ve never brought anyone to court, she thought, and going there is definitely not my idea of a good time, particularly since I absolutely do not want to see Kevin. Pouring herself a second cup of coffee, she settled back at the breakfast bar. Just because Kev helped me file the complaint, she thought, he’s going to be Johnny-on-the-spot in court today, which thank you very much I don’t need. I do not want to see him. At all. And it’s such a gloomy day all around. Bree looked out the window at the thick fog. She shook her head, her mouth set in a hard line. In fact, her irritation with Kevin had become so pronounced she practically blamed him for the leaking roof. He no longer called every morning, or sent flowers on the seventeenth of every month, the seventeenth being the day on which they had their first date. That was ten months ago, just after Bree had moved in to the town house. Bree felt the hard line of her mouth turning down at the corners, and she shook her head again. I love being independent, she thought ruefully, but sometimes I hate being alone.
Bree knew she had to get over all this. She realized that she was getting in the habit of regularly rearguing her quarrel with Kevin Carter. She also realized that when she missed him most — like this past Saturday, when she had moped around, going to a movie and having dinner alone, or yesterday when she stayed in bed feeling lonely and lousy — she needed to reinforce her sense of being in the right.
Bree remembered their fight, which like most had started out small and soon took on epic, life-changing proportions. Kev said I was foolish not to accept the settlement the contractor offered me, she recalled, that I probably won’t get much more by going to court, but I wouldn’t think of it. I’m pigheaded and love a fight and always shoot from the hip. Telling me that I was becoming irrational about this, he said that, for example, I had no business storming next door after that shy little guy. I reminded him that I apologized profusely, and Mr. Mensch was so sweet about it that he even offered to fix that broken blind in the living room window.
Somewhat uncomfortably, Bree remembered that there had been a pause in their exchange, but instead of letting it go, she had then told Kevin that he seemed to be the one who loved a fight, and why did he have to always take everybody else’s side? That was when he said maybe we should step back and examine our relationship. And I said that if it has to be examined, then it didn’t exist, so good-bye.
She sighed. It had been a very long two weeks.
I really wish Mensch would stop that damn tinkering or whatever he’s doing in his basement, she thought, hearing the noise again. Lately he had been giving her the creeps. She had seen him watching her when she got out of the car, and she had felt his eyes following her whenever she moved about her yard. Maybe he did take offense that day and is brooding about it, she reasoned. She had been thinking about telling Kevin that Mensch was making her nervous — but then they had the quarrel, and she never got the chance. Anyway, Mensch seemed harmless enough.
Bree shrugged, then got up, still holding her coffee cup. I’m just all around jumpy, she thought, but in a couple of hours this will be behind me, one way or the other. Tonight I’ll come home early, go to bed and sleep off this damn cold, and tomorrow I’ll start to get the house in shipshape again.
Again the scraping sound came from the basement. Knock it off, she almost said aloud. Briefly debating going down to see what was causing the noise, she decided against it. So Mensch has a do-it-yourself project going, she thought. It’s none of my business.
Then the scraping noise stopped, followed by hollow silence. Was that a footstep on the basement stairs? Impossible. The basement door that led outside was bolted and armed. Then what was causing it?…
She whirled around to see her next-door neighbor standing behind her, a hypodermic needle in his hand.
As she dropped the coffee cup, he plunged the needle deep into her arm.
Kevin Carter, J.D., felt the level of his irritability hit the danger zone. This was just another example of Bree’s total inability to listen to reason, he thought. She’s pigheaded. Strong-willed. Impulsive. So where in hell was she?
The contractor, Richie Ombert, had shown up on time. A surly-looking guy, he kept looking at his watch and mumbling about being due on a job. He raised his voice as he reiterated his position to his lawyer: “I offered to fix the leak, but by then she’d had it done at six times what I coulda done it for. Twice I’d sent someone to look at it and she wasn’t home. Once the guy who inspected it said he thought it was coming from the next roof, said there hasta be a leak there. Guess that little squirt who rented next door fixed it. Anyhow, I offered to pay what it woulda cost me.”
Bree had been due in court at nine o’clock. When she hadn’t shown up by ten, the judge dismissed the complaint.
A furious Kevin Carter went to his job at the State Department. He did not call Bridget Matthews at Douglas Public Relations where she worked, nor did he attempt to call her at home. The next call between them was going to come from her. She owed him an apology. He tried not to remember that after she had gotten her day in court, he had planned to tell her that he missed her like hell and please, let’s make up.
Mensch dragged Bree’s limp body through the kitchen to the hallway that led to the basement stairs. He slid her down, step by step, until he reached the bottom; then he bent down and picked her up. Clearly she hadn’t bothered to do anything with her basement. The cinder-block walls were gray and dreary, the floor tiles were clean but shabby. He had made the opening in the wall in the boiler room where it would be least noticed. He had pulled the cinder blocks into his basement, so now all he had to do was to secure her in the secret place, come back to get her clothing, then replace and re-mortar the blocks.
The opening he had made was just large enough to slide her body through and then crawl in after her. In his basement he picked her up again and carried her to the secret place. She was still knocked out, so there was no resistance as he attached the restraints to her wrists and ankles, and, as a precaution, tied the scarf loosely around her mouth. He could tell from her breathing that she had a cold. He certainly didn’t want her to suffocate.
For a moment he reveled in the sight of her, limp and lovely, her hair tumbling onto the mattress, her body relaxed and peaceful. He straightened her terry-cloth robe and tucked it around her.