Bringing back such lovely memories of Paul.
Twenty minutes later I parked, checked my surroundings, walked to the door, and rang the bell. I studied my phone while I waited, one of the most surefire and also most misleading ways to convince people you don’t pose a threat. I rang a second time, and then after thirty seconds rapped the metal knocker. Nothing. I tried the door handle. Locked. Looking around, I reached into my pocket, pulled out a key, and inserted it in the lock.
Call it a hazard of my trade. Call it deviousness. Call it a safeguard against my penchant for misplacing things. Go with a combo meal, if you like. For whatever reason, I guarded the key Laura had given me back in the day carefully. So carefully that I disobeyed her instructions and made a copy anyway. Which, for reasons I couldn’t explain fully, I kept in a drawer after our breakup. The fact I hadn’t looked at it in five years until this morning didn’t spare me a residual twinge of guilt over my—what? Breach of contract? Ethical oversight? Wishful thinking?
I recalled once more the strange call, her fear, and the suspicious van, pushed the thoughts away and turned the key. A moment later I was inside.
3
“LAURA?”
No response. The house dark except for a single lamp on an end table in the living room. I shut the door behind me, took a few steps farther in, and looked around. She’d replaced the couch with something a little higher end, and it looked as if the walls had a new coat of off-beige paint. Otherwise the house appeared the same as the one I used to visit each Sunday morning. Neat—neater than my place, anyway—but lived in. Nothing immediately suspicious. Throw pillows slightly off-kilter on the couch; TV remote resting atop a day-old New York Times on the coffee table; an empty wine glass beside it, bottom ringed with red. No signs of a break-in or a ransacking or anything out of the ordinary.
I stepped into the kitchen, calling her name again. Here too, things appeared normal. A coffee cup and a small plate sat in the left chamber of the double metal sink, but the counter area was clear and the surface free of finger smudges. I stepped over and examined the door of her refrigerator and the magnets she’d adorned it with. “Let’s go somewhere and judge people,” read one, picturing two women in brightly colored fifties-style dresses. “I’m not here to judge. I’m just here to point out your mistakes,” said another, superimposed over a photo of Laura—a birthday gag gift, perhaps? And one I remembered well: “Book lovers never go to bed alone.” In the middle of the magnets, the pad of narrow stationery with a wildflower design she kept affixed there for her weekly shopping list. Several items penciled in, starting with Eggs, bananas, 1 percent milk, the 1 percent underlined. So Laura, so precise. Why describe the type of milk when she was the only person drinking it?
I walked down the hall toward the bedroom. Her office was on the left. It was common back in the day for me to enter and find her at her computer in her nightgown reading legal briefs or working on a decision or checking e-mail. She’d direct me to the bedroom with a flutter of fingers on a raised right hand, often not even turning around. It was a habit—one of many—that annoyed me at the time. Now I found myself missing it as I hoped against hope to see her sitting there, just like always. But the room was empty.
Unease growing, I walked the rest of the way to the bedroom. The door was partway closed. I thought about retreating to my van and retrieving the Louisville Slugger I keep there for protection and in case of an outbreak of league softball. But time was of the essence. I took a breath and pushed the door open all the way.
“Jesus Christ!”
I stepped back, heart pounding, as a gray blur streaked past me. I turned and saw the tip of a tail round the corner into the living room. I put my hand on my chest. A cat. An addition to the house, which had been pet-free in my day. Though my family had both cats and dogs as I grew up in rural Ohio, I always preferred dogs, finding cats too aloof and uneven in their affections. But a perfect companion for Laura, I thought, stepping into the bedroom.
I half-feared finding her body splayed across the bed or lying on the floor. But this room was empty too. Her nightstand contained a stack of New Yorker magazines, a framed photo of her son and daughter, now young adults—I knew she doted on them, especially after the divorce—and a book of legal definitions. I picked the book up and read the cover description: “More than 3,500 legal terms defined in plain English!” Dry even by Laura’s standards, I thought, setting it down. I glanced at the bed, recalling our Sundays together. It was made, of course. Many was the morning I emerged from the master bathroom to find the judge remaking the bed just minutes after we tousled the sheets, as if to erase any signs of what just happened between them. The look she gave me the one and only time I teased her about it forestalled any future comment on the practice.
I pulled out my handkerchief and spent the next couple minutes opening drawers and examining their contents. I repeated the routine with her closet, careful not to disturb any clothes. Her outfits were conservative and well-made, a mix of Talbots and Nordstrom’s, with few casual options. I saw one pair of jeans, and in their own special corner, the duds she wore to the condo’s workout club three mornings a week. A couple blouses lay on the floor beside a hamper, but other than that, no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Also no sign, I deduced, of a male presence in the condo.
Satisfied I hadn’t missed anything, and deeply dissatisfied by what I was seeing—or not seeing—I left the bedroom and went back down the hall. I looked around and spied the cat on the far arm of the couch cleaning itself.
“What have you seen?”
It licked its fur, with no answer forthcoming.
I went back into the kitchen, the cat trailing me with a plaintive cry. I opened the door to the garage, flipped on the light switch, and stepped inside. I realized I had never been there before, and so wouldn’t know what was in or out of place. On the far wall hung a neatly rolled-up hose, a stepladder, and a shovel that looked as shiny and new as the day Laura purchased it. On the back wall, closest to the condo, bare wood shelves held gardening implements, boxes of lightbulbs, and a lone toolbox. I took a last look around and stepped back into the kitchen.
And stepped right back into the garage.
The Lexus was gone.
But where? I glanced at my Timex. It was just past seven. I knew Laura liked to be in her chambers early, but this seemed prompt even for her. I took one last glance around, went back inside, sat on the couch, and thought. It was Tuesday morning. Laura called me yesterday shortly after 11 a.m., asking if we could meet. I’d been so taken aback I hadn’t managed to ask any of the million questions crowding into my brain, but instead agreed right away to see her. The fact she needed directions to my house was hardly surprising given the cordoned-off nature of our relationship way back when, though it stung just a little, if I were being honest about it.
So where was she now? I wondered briefly if I’d made a colossal mistake and would have a lot of explaining to do when she opened the door any minute now, back from an early morning milk run. 1 percent, underlined. But no, that was absurd. Laura would no sooner run out of a staple than give a wife abuser a slap on the wrist. Plus there was the missed call last night, on top of the strange call she received in the midst of our middle school antics in her car. And why had she been so adamant the police weren’t to be involved? What, or who, was she so afraid of?
The cat rounded the corner, looked up at me, and cried again. I stood and glanced at matching food and water bowls on the kitchen floor. The water bowl was low. I took it and refilled it in the sink. I looked around for a bag of kibble and found it in a bottom-level cupboard. I filled the bowl and thought: this isn’t right. Laura—leave her cat’s food bowl empty? Not the judge I knew. I considered the empty garage
