Close to You (11 page)

Eliza nodded and closed the door behind her as she left them, envying them for a moment that they would soon be climbing into bed, together. She wished she wasn't going to be sleeping alone again tonight and, tiredly, she thought of Mack. She considered calling him, but it was the middle of the night in England. He knew she was moving. Why hadn't he called to give a little moral support?

Don't be angry,
she reasoned with herself as she headed toward the master bedroom, eager to shed her clothes and step into a hot shower.
You don't know. He might have been sent out on a story and had no chance to call.

Eliza was pulling her shirt over her head when she remembered.

Zippy.

Back on went the shirt, and she hurried barefoot downstairs and out the kitchen door to the backyard. It took her just a few minutes to find the stuffed chimpanzee in the grass behind the pool.

The kitchen door was left open the entire time.

Oh, God! What had he done?

Mack listened to the soft breathing of the sleeping blonde lying beside him in room 509 of the newly refurbished Mandarin Oriental Hotel, his home until his KEY News service flat was ready.

He hated himself.

There was no excuse for it. Too bad if he was heartsick about leaving Eliza. Too bad if he was lonely. Too bad if he had downed one vodka martini after another at dinner with Marcy McGinnis and her pretty young assistant. The assistant whom Mack would now be seeing day after day at work. The assistant who had just turned over on her side and pulled the covers closer around her.

How could he have been so stupid?

Mack groggily remembered the resigned expression on his bureau chief's face as she excused herself and said her good-byes for the evening, leaving Mack and the blonde at the table at Harvey Nick's. This was certainly not the first time that dinner in the posh “see and be seen” department-store restaurant had been the prelude to an indiscreet dalliance.

As his head throbbed, the old warning about dipping
your pen in the company ink passed through Mack's mind. He had always made it a policy not to get involved with anyone where he worked. Eliza had been the notable and totally worthwhile exception.

He didn't even know this young woman. Was she trustworthy or would she be sharing the news of their encounter with her friends in the London office? Even if she only told one person, word would get around. It always did. And what if it got back to Eliza?

Mack slipped from the bed and felt his way in the dark to the bathroom. He closed the door behind him, switched on the light, turned on the faucet and doused his face with cold water. His bloodshot eyes stared back at him in the mirror. He loathed himself.

How could he have betrayed Eliza so easily and so quickly?

Eliza awoke in the semidarkness, a thin ray of white light peering through from the hallway beyond her bedroom door. She had left the door slightly open so she could hear Janie.

“Janie?”

No reply.

What she heard instead was a rhythmic tapping noise and a rustling sound. She lay still in her bed, actually feeling the beating of her heart as instinctive-danger adrenaline coursed through her. Something or someone was in her room.

The soft knocking sound continued as Eliza tried to get a fix on its source. It seemed to be coming from the left side of the room.

She lay there a few minutes more, listening to the sound, trying to figure out what she should do. She considered running down the hall to wake Paul. No, she should face whatever it was herself. Knowing that Janie was asleep nearby galvanized her to reach over and turn on the lamp on the table next to the bed.

Her eyes adjusted quickly to the full light as they strained in the direction of the noise. She saw no one. But
the sound continued and as she stared she noticed that the shade on the window was moving almost imperceptibly. It wasn't a breeze that was making the shade flutter. There was a small lump beneath the fabric.

Summoning up her courage, Eliza slowly rose from her bed, grabbed a shoe from the floor and walked deliberately toward the window. She took a deep breath as she lifted the shade and looked underneath.

For a split second she wasn't sure what she was seeing. The dark, furry pulsating animal stared at her with beady dark eyes. It had pointy ears and a snout that looked a little bit like a fox.

She dropped the shade and ran from the bedroom, closing the door firmly behind her.

It was a bat.

On the first night in her new home, there was a brown, furry bat in her bedroom.

Keith Chapel awoke early, relieved he had an excuse to get out of the apartment on Sunday morning. Cindy had been upset last night when he had gotten up the nerve to tell her he had to go to the Broadcast Center and get some work done on the holiday weekend.

“Look, honey, it won't be for the entire day,” he promised. “Range wasn't happy with the first
FRESHER LOOK
when I played it for him late Friday afternoon. I just need some time to rework the script a little so Eliza can track it again when she comes in tomorrow.”

“Eliza, Eliza, Eliza! I'm so sick and tired of hearing about Eliza Blake,” Cindy cried shrilly. “What about
me?
”

You're driving me crazy and I need to get away from you.

Keith didn't say what he thought. Instead he hugged her increasing girth, kissed her wet cheeks and suggested that when he got home they go to that movie she had been talking about wanting to see. Cindy had been mollified, for the moment. Until, inevitably, the next outburst.

He prayed things would be different between them once the baby came. And he wished to God he would stop
dreaming about Eliza. Last night's dream was so explicit that he had awakened in a cold sweat. The things he was doing with Eliza were things he would never dare suggest doing with his wife.

“Mommy, why are you sleeping in the living room?”

Eliza sleepily opened her eyes to find Janie's inquisitive blue ones staring intensely into hers. She bolted upright on the sofa, remembering the bat upstairs.

“Janie, did you go into Mommy's room to look for me?” she asked fearfully.

“Yup. But you weren't there.”

“Stay right here, Janie. I mean it,” Eliza said firmly as she sprang from the couch and ran upstairs to her room, slamming the door Janie had left ajar.

Katharine came out of her bedroom, tying the sash of the bathrobe around her waist.

“What's going on?”

“I found a bat in my room last night.”

“Dear Lord!” Katharine looked at the closed door behind Eliza. “It's in there now?”

“God, I hope so. I hope it didn't fly out and hide somewhere else in the house.”

“What should we do?”

“I called the police in the middle of the night and they had a woman from Wildlife Control call me back. She said she would come right away if I really wanted her to, but if
I could wait until morning she would really appreciate it. So I slept on the couch and the woman promised she would get here first thing today.”

“Mommy,” Janie's voice called from downstairs. “There's a lady coming to the door.”

“Thank God,” Eliza whispered as she hurried down the staircase.

The middle-aged woman was dressed in farmer's overalls and a long-sleeved flannel workshirt. She carried a heavy plastic pail. Eliza saw a pair of thick leather gloves resting on top of the paraphernalia in the bucket.

Matter-of-factly the woman followed as Eliza led the way to the master bedroom.

“There really isn't too much to be worried about, miss,” said the woman. “Bats are actually very useful. A single bat can eat thousands of bugs each night, including those mosquitoes everyone around here is so riled up about.”

“What about rabies?” Eliza asked, unready to love bats.

“That's pretty much a non-issue. You are more likely to get bitten by a rabid dog than a rabid bat. Bat rabies cause about one human death a year in this country.”

The woman pulled on her work gloves and opened the bedroom door. “Now, you wait outside here while I go in and take a look around.”

Eliza stood in the hallway, listening. She heard the shade rolling up inside.

“He's not in the shade anymore,” the woman called through the door.

Oh, God.
Eliza's heart sank.

But a few minutes later, the women opened the bedroom door, a satisfied expression upon her face.

“You got it?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Where was it?”

“hi the bottom of your wastepaper basket in the bathroom. As the daylight comes, they try to get as far away from the sunlight as they can.”

“So it's in there?” Eliza eyed the bucket.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

The woman looked over Eliza's shoulder where the little girl was standing listening at the top of the staircase.

“I'm gonna take it for a nice long ride,” she answered.

Eliza escorted the woman out to her truck.

“How did it get in? I don't want it to happen again.”

“Well, you should probably have your attic checked to see if there are any bats roosting up there.”

“I just bought this house. We moved in yesterday. I had the house inspected just over a week ago.”

The woman shrugged. “Well, it could have flown in yesterday if you had your doors open for a while with all the moving.”

Or last night when I was out looking for Zippy,
Eliza thought, with a shiver.

“Are you really just going to let it free someplace?” Eliza asked as the woman climbed into her truck.

“Nah. I just didn't want your little kid to hear. I'm going to take it out later and stomp on it and break its neck.”

Abigail got to the gym early so she wouldn't have to wait for the equipment. She started out with the free weights then did a circuit of Nautilus machines and finished up on the treadmill. She had showered and was dressing in front of her locker when she heard a voice call her name.

“Abigail? It that you?”

She turned toward the voice and saw a woman Abigail guessed to be in her late twenties.

“It's Monica,” the woman smiled. “Monica Anderson.

Abigail tried to mask the confusion and guilt she immediately felt.

“Of course. Monica! It's so good to see you again. How have you been?”

“Great. I finally moved into the city. I'd been wanting to do it for so long but, you know, with everything that happened, I felt I should stay with my parents for a while.”

Abigail nodded. “How are your parents?”

Monica's face clouded. “Well, Dad died last spring. He was never really the same after everything happened. Heart attack, the doctors said. But his heart really broke five years ago.”

“I'm so sorry, Monica. If I had known, I would have come out to pay my respects.”

There was an awkward silence and Abigail folded her workout clothes and placed them in her gym bag, buying herself time. She felt she should say something about Linda.

“You know,” Abigail began haltingly, “I'm sorry I didn't keep in touch, Monica. But after Linda disappeared, I felt I had to get away. I couldn't work at Garden State Network anymore, with all the memories there.”

Monica nodded. “Don't worry about it, Abigail. I think everyone understood. I was away at college most of the time when you and Linda worked together, but I remember you coming to our house for Easter that last year. Linda told me what a good friend you were, how much fun you had starting out in the business together. She treasured you.”

“And I her,” Abigail said softly. “For the first year or two, I'd call the news director every month to see if there were any leads in the case. After a while I just stopped calling.”

“It's better that way, Abigail. They're never going to find out what happened to Linda. I'm convinced of it It's one of those horrible things in life that has to be accepted. Of course, my mother still calls the police all the time. She can't let it go.”

Around four o'clock, Eliza took Janie by the hand and headed across the street to the Feeneys' house. After a day spent unpacking, Katharine and Paul begged off going to the barbecue. They wanted to relax and take naps.

As mother and daughter tentatively entered the fenced backyard through the gate, Susan saw them and hurried over with two little girls toddling behind her.

“We're so glad you came! Let me introduce you around to everyone.”

Eliza met at least twenty people, trying to remember names and knowing that she wouldn't, while Janie and James ran away to frolic with Buddy, the Feeneys' black-and-white Brittany spaniel.

Chicken and steaks were cooking aromatically on the grill alongside aluminum foil-wrapped loaves of garlic bread. A long buffet table was covered with a red, white and blue-striped tablecloth and a huge centerpiece of flowers Eliza recognized as cut from the gardens that edged the yard.

James Feeney offered her a drink. “What will it be?”

“Iced tea?”

“How about a little vodka in that?” offered her host.

“Even better.” Eliza smiled.

She took a seat in one of the chairs, and took a quick count of the guests. An even number of men and women. She assumed she was the only single woman at the party.

“Eliza, if I may call you that,” said one of the women, whose name she couldn't remember, “I can't tell you how everyone has been buzzing about you moving into our neighborhood.”

“Please. Of course you should call me Eliza. And I can't tell you how happy I am to be here. Janie and I were really looking forward to moving out of the city. I'm hoping we can have a more normal, quieter life here.”

“Yes,” clucked the woman. “I read in the paper about the nastiness you went through. I hope you'll be very happy out here.”