She gasped. The water was mixed with what looked like blood.
Letting the door flop back into place, she stumbled backward. It was them again, she realized—the Sixes. They’d gotten inside again somehow—while she was sleeping.
She grabbed her phone from the counter. She’d programmed in Craig Ball’s number the other night, and she hit it now. Her fingers, she saw, were trembling. As the phone rang, she rushed into the living room, checking all around her. Since both chain locks were still on, they must have gone out a window, she thought. But how had they gotten in? She felt as if she was in one of those nightmares in which the walls and the doors of your house dissolve, and you feel completely exposed and vulnerable.
“Ball,” a voice said. It was low but not groggy, as if he’d already been awake.
“It’s Phoebe Hall,” she blurted out. “They’ve broken into the house again. Please, you’ve got to help me.”
“You’re talking about the girls—the Sixes?”
“Yes—and I think there’s blood. In my kitchen. I don’t know who it belongs to.”
As she talked, she positioned herself by the front door, ready to bolt if she had to.
“Okay, I’m ten minutes away, tops.”
“Should I call the police, too?”
“Uh, just wait till I arrive, okay?”
As soon as the call ended, she froze and listened again. Could they still be in the house? she wondered frantically, but she heard nothing now, only the low groan of the furnace. She leaned back against a small cabinet to the right of the front door. They’d raised the stakes, she realized. As bad as the rats had been, breaking into her house while she was there, was a whole new level of audaciousness.
Though the wait seemed interminable, Ball was good to his word. The car pulled up exactly ten minutes later. This time, however, he wasn’t wearing his campus police jacket. He was dressed in jeans and a black leather coat.
“You okay?” he asked as Phoebe let him in the front door. She knew that she must look panic-stricken.
“I’ve been better,” she said. “I woke to the sound of my dishwasher running, and I think there’s blood inside it. I’m wondering if they put a rat in there.”
“Christ,” he said, grimacing. “Let me see.”
She trailed behind him as he went into the kitchen. He scanned the room, and then, using a handkerchief that he’d drawn from his pocket, he slowly opened the dishwasher door.
For a few seconds he just peered, squinting, into the machine. Phoebe stood behind him, and from her vantage point she saw that the dishwasher looked empty, except for the pool of bloody-looking water at the bottom. She fought an urge to retch.
“Is it blood?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said. “There’s that telltale smell. But at least I don’t see anything dead in there.”
Slowly, he pulled out the top rack. It was empty. He squatted close to the ground. As he pulled out the lower rack, Phoebe spotted something in the utensil holder. It was a cluster of spoons, wrapped in soggy cardboard that had been secured by a rubber band and was now tinted pink.
Using his handkerchief again, Ball lifted the little package from the dishwasher.
“If there were any prints, they sure aren’t there now,” he said. After yanking a paper towel from the dispenser, he laid it on the counter and set the spoons on top.
It took Phoebe only a split second to see that there were six spoons altogether.
“I don’t believe this,” she said, throwing her hands up. “What are they trying to do to me?” She didn’t want to freak out in front of Ball, but inside she was roiling.
“They’re getting bolder each time,” Ball said in disgust. “What I want to know is how they got in.”
“Exactly—and I have no damn clue. I checked the doors and windows before bed, and the chain locks were still on both doors when I came downstairs.”
“Well, this ain’t some locked-room murder mystery, so there’s gotta be an answer,” Ball said. “They may have pried a window open. Why don’t you take a seat in the other room while I look around. Try to relax.”
Oh, yeah, right, Phoebe thought, but she went into the living room and plopped onto the sofa. Leaning into the cushions, she could feel that she was sweating through her pajama top. Calm down, she told herself. You need to have all your wits about you.
As Ball began to make his way through her rooms, she tried to imagine the ugly little scene that had unfolded in her kitchen earlier. The girls—because surely there was more than one—had clearly counted on the fact that the sound of the dishwasher would wake her. That way she would see the blood when she opened it.
But was there a particular reason for this visit? she wondered. The apples had materialized after she’d dropped by Blair and Gwen’s apartment. The rats had shown up after she’d talked to Blair. Maybe they’d somehow found out about her trip to see Alexis. Or Blair blamed her for being called in to see Stockton.
Ball had gone up to the second floor, and now she heard him descending the stairs, the steps creaking and groaning from his weight. He paused at the foot of the stairs. There was a consternated expression on his face, indicating he’d yet to solve the puzzle.
After a few seconds he crossed the room and stopped again, just in front of Phoebe. He cocked his head, still thinking, and then blasted back into the kitchen.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” he called out a minute later, his voice muffled.
Phoebe nearly leaped from the couch and hurried into the kitchen. But Ball wasn’t there.
“In here,” he called. He was in the small pantry off the kitchen. Though Phoebe kept some kitchen supplies there, the space was mostly being used to store boxes of Herb’s belongings that he’d packed up before his leave. As Phoebe stepped inside, she saw that Ball had shoved a stack of boxes out from the wall. Behind them was a window—small, but still big enough for a body to crawl through.
“It’s unlocked,” Ball declared. “And look—there are a bunch of scuff marks on the sill.”
“It’s been hidden from view since I moved in here,” Phoebe said, chagrined. She could have kicked herself. “If the driveway were on this side of the house, I would have at least noticed it from the outside.”
“You know what my guess is?” Ball said as he turned the lock into place. “They unlocked it after they snuck in with the apples—so they’d have a way back in if they wanted. Or maybe they never even came in through the door that first time. You might have changed that lock for nothing.”
Jeez, Phoebe thought, that’s the least of my concerns.
“So now do we call the cops?” she asked. “I mean, how can we not?”
“Tell you what. Let me do it. I can take the heat and explain that I’d asked you to let me handle things initially.”
“Okay, I’d appreciate that.”
“But I don’t know how soon they’ll investigate this. Right now they’re focused on the two drownings. The good news is that we’ve figured out how those girls have been sneaking in, and you should be okay going forward. But if I were you, I’d investigate having better-quality locks put on the windows.”
After he left, promising to have security continue to patrol the block, Phoebe sat back on the couch, collecting her thoughts. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep, even though it was barely four o’clock.
She hated how rattled she felt. She had sworn she wouldn’t let the Sixes get to her, but they finally had. It wasn’t that they’d simply scared the bejesus out of her; now they were fucking with her mind. And there might be more visits in the offing. At least tonight she would be with Duncan, staying at his house.