A House by the Side of the Road (23 page)

The dog sniffed with curious interest at the floor.

“Good grief,” said Meg. “What in heaven's name did she spill?”

She replaced the tiles, which didn't stick as firmly but stayed in place. The stain would have to be bleached out. If it
could
be. With what? Oxalic acid? And allowed to dry thoroughly and then sanded and refinished. Maybe a tiled linoleum floor wasn't such a bad idea.

She tried to work. Outside her office, the darkness was thick and much too quiet. When ideas were coming, when she could get caught up in productive thought, she didn't mind the quiet, didn't even notice it. Tonight, she noticed. She gazed out the window, wishing she could eradicate the fields that lay between her house and Christine's. She took in breath and let it out slowly. It wasn't fields that created the problem, because the distance they imposed was merely physical.

That isn't Dan on the tape, she told herself. It isn't. Even if it is,
so what?
Just forget the stupid thing and get your friend back.

She put her elbows on the desk and rested her forehead on her hands, loneliness spreading its chill to the tips of her fingers.

Seventeen

A great many people were heading, if not to New York City itself, at least in that general direction. Meg watched their cars go by as she sat on the grass twenty feet off the highway. Her own car was motionless on the shoulder, its flashers blinking in the dark.

“No,” she said out loud and with great bitterness, “it
doesn't
take long to get to New York.
If your car runs.
”

By the time a highway patrol officer stopped to investigate and helped her arrange a tow, it was nearly ten. By the time a service station attendant had explained the impossibility of dealing with what appeared to be a thrown rod, it was past eleven.

She called the hotel and found Sara in her room. “So there's no way to get there except by cab, and I can barely afford a cab to get back
home,
which is less than a quarter the distance.”

“Borrow a car and come in the morning,” said Sara, which was, it seemed to Meg, a much better idea than not going at all. “Call me before ten or so and let me know if you can.”

Meg didn't crawl into bed until almost one and then fidgeted, frustrated and anxious, for another hour. Whose car could she borrow? How could she pay for a thrown rod? The dial of the clock glowed, the only light in the house except for the bulb she kept burning in the bathroom.

*   *   *

Her eyes opened, but the room was still pitch-black. It wasn't the alarm that had awakened her. It must have been a dream. What had she been dreaming? But the dream was gone. Maybe she'd simply become so dependent on the dog that she was subconsciously insecure in her absence. After Jim, she'd slept badly for weeks while getting used to being alone. She smiled wryly. He'd been replaced by a dog.

She lay very still, concentrating on relaxing, waiting to drift back into sleep, but sleep would not come. She sat up and twitched the covers off her legs, swinging them over the side of the bed.

A noise froze her motion. Houses—and especially old houses—made noises as they responded to gravity, to wind, to …

Someone was moving in the house. She sat very still, turning her head slowly, trying to locate the sound. It came closer. Someone was walking through the living room. Not tiptoeing. Walking.

She stared at the hallway, taking shallow breaths and trying to imagine how many steps it would take her to reach the window. Her heart skittered. Unless she pried the nails out of the jamb—hardly a silent activity—the window wouldn't open.

A bobbing glow lit the dark floor in the hallway, moved past her door. The footsteps moved past behind it. Whoever it was didn't care about making noise but didn't want to turn on a light. Why? And then she knew. Because he thought the house was empty. Lights would be noticeable from the road; noises were not.

She eased off the bed, the muscles in her legs taut. The springs sighed. She took one cautious step, another, another. She reached the doorway and looked down the hall. The noise of something being dragged across the floor came from the back bedroom.

She took three quick steps across the hallway and into the living room, needing to cover the distance to the front door before the noise stopped. The noise stopped. The front door was twenty feet away. If she could get outside, she would be safe in the thick darkness. Even if the intruder could see well enough to discern her in her dark blue T-shirt, which she doubted, chances were he couldn't catch her. Few people could.

A feather would glide across a floor without being heard. She tried to move weightlessly, the wood satiny against the soles of her feet. Was there someone behind her, watching her, lifting an arm? She had to keep her balance, couldn't afford to turn even her head. Just move forward, she told herself. Another silent step. One more. Forward … The door was ten feet away. She took another step and felt the narrow plank beneath her give slightly even as she heard it creak.

There was the sound of movement behind her. Meg broke for the door, turned the bolt, yanked it open, and slammed into the screen. The outer door flew open as she hit it, and she was outside, leaping down the porch steps and racing across the cold grass.

How far to the fence? She slowed, dropped to the ground and crawled, grateful for the blackness of the night, frustrated by it as well. There it was, just in front of her. She scrambled over, her shirt catching on a picket. She ripped it loose and dropped again to the ground, lying flat and turning her head to look back at the house.

Through the fence, she could see the glow of the flashlight sweeping the yard. What now? The meadow between her house and the Ruschmans' was uneven and profusely scattered with brambles, shrubs, and trees. She could move across it, but barefoot and in the moonless night, only very slowly. If he guessed where she'd gone, if he followed her with the flashlight, her speed wouldn't save her because she wouldn't be able to use it.

Scattered with trees … Where were the closest trees outside the yard? Just beyond the fence. There were apple trees there, a small grouping. She peered into the darkness. They should be to her right, if she'd come over the fence where she thought she had.

Crouching, she crept toward where the trees should be. They rose in front of her, their clouds of blossoms barely perceptible. A few more feet and the bark was faintly rough against her palms. She passed the first, went on to the second. Its lowest branch parted from the trunk no more than three feet off the ground. She pulled herself up, gripping the trunk with one hand, feeling for branches above her with the other. She climbed carefully and silently but quickly and, in a few moments, was fifteen feet off the ground. Unless he caught the dark blue of her shirt directly in the beam, she would blend with the trunk and branches.

She felt the outside corners of her eyes tighten, prelude to a sneeze, and clamped one hand across her mouth, fighting the involuntary response. The flashlight glow disappeared into the house. She sneezed, the muffled sound like thunder to her ears. The light did not re-emerge.

She stood, one arm clinging to the trunk, frightened and furious that she had to wait helplessly while the intruder took his time deciding what to steal. After what seemed like hours but she knew could not be more than twenty minutes, the beam reappeared in the yard. It moved steadily toward the road. He was walking in that direction. The light went off. Meg stopped trying to breath silently. If he wanted to find her, he wouldn't have turned it off. Or would he?

She stared at the road, hoping for the light to go on again, to show her where he was. Only blackness met her eyes. There was no sound. Wherever he was, whatever direction he had taken, he was moving noiselessly. She moved uneasily on the branch, lowering herself to a sitting position.

The night air had turned her legs to ice. She pulled her knees up and stretched her T-shirt down to her ankles. Her arms around the trunk began to cramp, and the branch she huddled on became painfully hard. She shifted her weight, bark snagging against the nylon of her underpants.

What was the most logical thing to do? Walk carefully through the meadow to the Ruschmans. If he realized that, and if he wanted to find her, he would be waiting in the meadow. But it didn't make any sense for him to want to find her. He was almost surely far down the road by now. Or up the road.

Stay in the tree, she told herself. It is often the rabbit that thinks it has escaped that ends up in the talons of the hawk. She closed her eyes and counted slowly to five hundred, resting her head against the trunk.

She jerked awake, tightening her arms around the tree. How long had she dozed? The sky seemed lighter. It was lighter; she could make out the fence thirty feet away. She was frozen, could no longer bear her motionless wait. She stretched her left leg down, found the next branch with her toes, and let it take her weight. Slowly, stiffly, she descended.

*   *   *

Both detectives, a young man and a woman in her thirties, were sympathetic but patronizing. They introduced themselves and accepted coffee at the dining room table.

“Even out here,” said the woman, “it makes sense to lock your doors at night.”

“I thought I had,” said Meg.

The detective inclined her head toward the kitchen. “The door hasn't been forced,” she said. “You positive you bolted it when you came home?”

Meg sighed. “I'm from
Chicago,
” she said. “In Chicago, Detective Stanley, we lock our doors. But, no, I'm not positive. It's just the kind of thing I
do.
”

“But it was unlocked when you came back in the house this morning.”

“That doesn't mean I left it unlocked last night.”

“No,” agreed the young man. “But when there's no sign of forced entry, it's a logical conclusion. We've had trouble with this kind of thing from time to time. The Stansburys, next house that way…” He nodded toward the east. “The one time they left a window unlocked when they went back to the city, their place hosted a party they hadn't authorized. But breaking and entering … well, kids around here aren't normally that determined.”

“It wasn't kids,” said Meg.

Detective Stanley raised an eyebrow and drummed her fingers on the notebook that lay in front of her on the dining room table. “No?”

“There was only one person. No conversation. No, ‘Hey, man! Let's get outta here!' No panicked flight. No car. How many kids go off by themselves at three-thirty in the morning, on foot, to try the doors of what may very well be an occupied house?”

“Do you have a theory about who it was?”

“No. Not specifically. How could I?” Maybe Dan Ruschman, who's married to my good friend Christine, she thought. Probably not, but
maybe.
“Not kids looking for a place to make out, have a party, or smoke questionable substances, however. A burglar, I'd guess. One who thought I wasn't home.”

“How many people knew you'd be gone?”

“For all I know, everybody in town. For all I know, it was announced at the PTA meeting, or the
Journal
printed it in their ‘What's Up Around Town?' column. Besides, I wasn't secretive about it.”

“But nothing's gone. You said so yourself.”

I lied, thought Meg. Something is definitely gone. The tape that I found in the toolshed and hid in the house has mysteriously vanished. But I'm not telling you about that, because I'd have to tell you things I don't want to tell you, and it wouldn't do any good anyway.

Soon after she'd come in the house, she had managed to stop shivering. And as soon as she stopped shivering, she realized what had happened. She had walked, slowly and deliberately, to the couch, tugged out the middle cushion, unzipped its upholstered cover, and groped unsuccessfully inside it. The tape was gone.

She had been right. Someone
had
been in her house, who knew how many times? This time, he had been mistaken about her being gone. Perhaps he had not watched as carefully. Perhaps, as before, he'd seen her leave; clearly, he had not seen her return. Lulled by the absence of her car, by the quiet of the night unbroken by a dog's furious barking, he had felt secure.

She had called the police. But, before they arrived, she had wound her way through the possible ramifications of telling them this particular detail. What did she have? Her memory of an unusual voice making some suspicious but inconclusive remarks. The only thing that made it more than merely a perplexing and bizarre recording was her knowledge that Dan Ruschman had, somehow, found a way to get ahold of fifteen thousand dollars his wife didn't know existed and that this was a secret. It was not knowledge she could share.

Still, no one—not Dan, not
anyone
—had the right to invade her home.

“Somebody had been going through my things not long after I moved in and, I think, my first night here,” said Meg.

The woman officer lowered her chin and raised one eyebrow. “Going through your things?”

Meg explained, realizing how ridiculous the story sounded.

The younger detective looked at his partner as if requesting permission to speak and then cleared his throat. “It, uh, seemed to you that someone had gone through your medicine cabinet and two drawers in a dresser were switched and a clothesline had been moved? Was anything missing on any of these occasions?”

“No,” said Meg. “No, Detective Schultz, nothing that I know of was missing.”

He frowned. “Is there any reason for people to think you keep a lot of cash? Jewelry? Small, portable valuables?”

“No.”

The woman shifted in her chair. “Because the person who came in last night wasn't after your computer,” she said. “Or anything heavy. He, or she, didn't bring a car.”