Now that she was here, he felt so strong, so calm. He had been shocked to find her in the kitchen so early in the morning. Now he had to move quickly: to get her clothes and her purse, to wipe up that spilled coffee. It had to look as if she disappeared after she left the house.
He looked at the answering machine in her kitchen, the blinking light indicating there had been seven calls. That was odd, he thought. He knew she hadn’t gone out at all yesterday. Was it possible she didn’t bother to answer the phone all day?
He played the messages back. All calls from friends. “How are you?”
“Let’s get together.”
“Good luck in court.”
“Hope you make that contractor pay.” The last message was from the same person as the first: “Guess you’re still out. I’ll try you tomorrow.”
Mensch took a moment to sit down at the breakfast bar. It was very important that he think all this through. Matthews had not gone out at all yesterday. It seemed as though she also hadn’t answered her phone all day. Suppose instead of just taking her clothes to make it look as though she’d left for work, I tidied up the house so that people would think she hadn’t reached home at all on Saturday night. After all, he had seen her come up the block alone at around eleven, the newspaper under her arm. Who was there to say she had arrived safely?
Mensch got up. He already had his Latex gloves on. He started looking about. The garbage container under the kitchen sink was empty. He took a fresh disposable bag from the drawer and put in it the squeezed grapefruit, coffee grinds, and pieces of the cup Bree had dropped.
Working methodically, he cleaned the kitchen, even taking time to scour the pot she had left on the stove. How careless of her to let it get burned, he thought.
Upstairs in her bedroom, he made the bed and picked up the Sunday edition of the Washington Post that was on the floor next to it. He put the paper in the garbage bag. She had left a suit on the bed. He hung it up in the closet where she kept that kind of clothing.
Next he cleaned the bathroom. Her washer and dryer were in the bathroom, concealed by louvered doors. On top of the washer he found the jeans and sweater he had seen her wearing on Saturday. It hadn’t started raining at the time, but she had also had on her yellow raincoat. He collected the sweater and jeans and her undergarments and sneakers and socks. Then from her dresser he selected more undergarments. From her closets he took a few pairs of slacks and sweaters. They were basically nondescript, and he knew they would never be missed.
He found her raincoat and shoulder bag in the foyer by the front door. Mensch looked at his watch. It was seven thirty, time to go. He had to replace and re-mortar the cinder blocks.
He looked around to be sure he had missed nothing. His eye fell on the lopsided Venetian blind in the front window. A knifelike pain went through his skull; his gorge rose. He felt almost physically ill. He couldn’t stand to look at it.
Mensch put the clothing and purse and garbage bag on the floor. In quick, determined steps he reached the window and put his gloved hand on the blind.
The cord was broken, but there was enough slack to tie it and still level the blind.
He breathed a long sigh of relief when he finished the task. It now stopped at exactly the same level as the other two and as his, just grazing the sill.
He felt much better now. With neat, compact movements he gathered up Bree’s coat, shoulder bag, clothing, and the garbage bag.
Two minutes later he was in his own basement, replacing the cinder blocks.
At first Bree thought she was having a nightmare — a Disney World nightmare. When she woke up she opened her eyes to see cinder-block walls painted with evenly spaced brown slats. The space was small, not much more than six by nine feet, and she was lying on a bright yellow plastic mattress of some sort. It was soft, as though it had quilts inside it. About three feet from the ceiling a band of yellow paint connected the slats at the top to resemble a railing. Above the band, decals lined the walls: Mickey Mouse. Cinderella. Kermit the Frog. Miss Piggy. Sleeping Beauty. Pocahontas.
She suddenly realized that there was a gag over her face, and she tried to push it away, but could only move her arm a few inches. Her arms and legs were held in some kind of restraints.
The grogginess was lifting now. Where was she? What had happened? Panic overwhelmed her as she remembered turning to see Mensch, her neighbor, standing behind her in the kitchen. Where had he taken her? Where was he now?
She looked around slowly, then her eyes widened. This room, wherever it was, resembled an oversized playpen. Stacked nearby were a series of children’s books, all with thin spines except for the thick volume at the bottom. She could read the lettering: Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
How had she gotten here? She remembered she had been about to get dressed to go to court. She had tossed the suit she had planned to wear across the bed. It was new. She wanted to look good, and in truth, more for Kevin than for the judge. Now she admitted that much to herself.
Kevin. Of course he would come looking for her when she didn’t show up in court. He’d know something had happened to her.
Ica, her housekeeper, would look for her too. She came in on Mondays. She’d know something was wrong. Bree remembered dropping the coffee cup she was holding. It shattered on the kitchen floor as Mensch grabbed her and stuck the needle in her arm. Ica would know that she wouldn’t leave spilled coffee and a broken cup for her to clean up.
As her head cleared, Bree remembered that just before she had turned and seen Mensch, she had heard a footstep on the basement stairs. Her mouth went dry at the thought that somehow he had come in through the basement. But how? Her basement door was bolted and armed, the window barred.
Then sheer panic swept through her. Clearly this hadn’t just “happened”; this had been carefully planned. She tried to scream, but could only make a muffled gasping cry. She tried to pray, a single sentence that in her soul she repeated over and over: “Please, God, let Kevin find me.”
Late Tuesday afternoon Kevin received a worried phone call from the agency where Bree worked. Had he heard from her? She never showed up for work on Monday, and she hadn’t phoned. They thought she might have been stuck in court all day yesterday, but now they were concerned.
Fifteen minutes later, August Mensch watched through a slit in his front window drapery as Kevin Carter held his finger on the doorbell to Bree Matthews’ town house.
He watched as Carter stood on the front lawn and looked in the living room window. He half expected that Carter would ring his doorbell, but that didn’t happen. Instead he stood for a few minutes looking irresolute, then looked in the window of the garage. Mensch knew her car was there. In a way he wished he could have gotten rid of it, but that had been impossible.
He watched until Carter, his shoulders slumped, walked slowly back to his car and drove away.
With a satisfied smile, Mensch walked down the foyer to the basement steps. Savoring the sight that would greet him, he descended slowly, then walked across the basement, as always admiring his tools and paints and polishes, all placed in perfect order on shelves, or hanging in precise rows from neatly squared pegboard.
Snow shovels hung over the cinder blocks that he had removed to gain entry into Matthews’ basement. Beneath them the mortar had dried, and he had carefully smeared it with the dry flakes he had kept when he separated the blocks. Now nothing showed, either here or on Bridget Matthews’ side. He was sure of that.
Then he crossed through the boiler room, and beyond it, to the secret place.
Matthews was lying on the mat, the restraints still on her arms and legs. She looked up at him and he could see that underneath the anger, fear was beginning to take hold. That was smart of her.