Death in a Funhouse Mirror (24 page)

When I opened the door, Andre was standing there, holding two brown paper grocery bags, looking exactly as he had the first time he cooked me dinner. He carried them to the kitchen and picked me up in a bear hug, waltzing me around the room. "I figured you must be pretty sick to leave the office so early. I was in Kittery on business, so once I was that close, I had to come and see you. I called your office and Suzanne said you'd gone home sick, so knowing your refrigerator like I do, I stopped for some supplies."

I watched in awe and wonder as he pulled out what he'd bought.

First he took out dinner. Boneless chicken breasts, broccoli, snow peas, cashews and a spicy sauce for a stir-fry. "I assumed you'd at least have rice and an onion," he said. A bottle of dry white wine. A chocolate cheesecake. And cocktail shrimp with sauce for starters. "You take the shrimp like this," he said, opening the package, "dip it in the sauce, and feed it to the woman you love. Says so right here." He pointed at the label.

I bent down to read it. "It says '$8.25 Seafood.'"

He pointed to the bar code. "And feed it to the woman you love. It's in code," he said, dipping one into the sauce and feeding it to me. He put his ear against my stomach and listened. "Heard a splash, and I know what that means. Poor little guy is down there all alone. When's the last time you ate?"

I shrugged. "Maybe breakfast, maybe yesterday. I haven't felt like eating."

"Too busy to eat is more like it. But tonight," he tapped himself on the chest, "vee hef zee premier chef du Maine ici, end 'ee vill mek you somesing sooo delicieuse, you weel faint."

"And then you will have your way with me, is that it?"

"Have you seen yourself in a mirror lately?"

I nodded glumly. "Zee premier chef du Maine must be pretty hard up."

He took my hand and brought it to his body. "Maybe not hard up, lady, but definitely... well, I leave that to your imagination."

"I'm not sure my imagination's working right now, mister. My head's too full of sawdust." It was a lie. Getting close to Andre always excites me. If I was in cardiac arrest, he could probably restart my heart just by coming close. "So what's in the second bag?"

"Magic potions." In went his big, blunt-fingered hand, and out came a gigantic box of tissues. He gave me his sexy, sardonic, eyebrows-raised look over the top of the box. "Freud just made it all too complicated. I know what women want." He hummed a little of "Try a Little Tenderness," and handed me the box with a flourish. "The softest money can buy," he said, pulling out a bag of scones, cough syrup with a decongestant, throat lozenges, aspirin, and several cans of soup.

"You are so wonderful I can hardly stand it."

"I saved the best for last," he said, handing me a box of Sleepy-time tea.

"Just another ploy to get me into bed."

"No, this is the ploy for getting you into bed." He grabbed me and kissed me, and a deliciously warm, languid feeling started in my toes and made it to my head before the kiss ended. "And this." He released me, reached into the bag once more, and pulled out a huge bouquet of roses.

"Andre! They must have cost the earth!"

"You're worth it," he said, dangling another shrimp in front of my eyes. I snapped it up like a trout. We ate the shrimp at seven and the rest of the meal at ten. Despite my cold and the weather, it was a great Valentine's Day.

Why couldn't I have it all? The man I loved and enough freedom in my life to work my absurd hours, be by myself when I needed to be, and still have someone warm in my bed, someone to play with on the weekends. Someone to feed me when I was hungry, to feed when he was hungry, someone who... Right in the middle of my meditation on relationships, I fell asleep, plunging down through the darkness to dreamland like an angel falling off a cloud.

I slept the deep sleep of the just, or tired, until about 3:00 a.m., when I was suddenly wide awake. I lay in the darkness, trying to breathe quietly. There was a noise out there that was neither the wind nor one of the many noises I'd learned the sea can make. Yes, there it was again, a sound like the creaking of footsteps on wood. I rolled out of bed, quickly pulled on my robe and went into the living room. As my eyes gradually adjusted to the dark, I could see a faint shape on my deck, a twisting figure, holding something in its hand. Without thinking, I snapped on the outside light and charged toward the window, fumbling the sheer curtain out of the way and struggling to open the lock. Something thudded loudly onto the deck and the intruder turned and ran away into the darkness.

I opened the door and gave chase, leaping down off the deck and dashing around the corner of the house. There was only a sliver of moon, and the night was very dark and still. Ahead of me, I could hear the sound of shoes slapping the pavement of the driveway, a stumble, a muttered curse, and the running resumed. A robe is not the best thing to jog in and in my bare feet I kept stepping on rocks and prickles and couldn't make any time. Finally I gave up, breathing heavily. So much for aerobics. Where was that stamina I was supposed to be building? The running footsteps disappeared up the drive.

I limped back to the house, pausing on the deck to look for whatever my intruder had dropped. In the bright light, it wasn't hard to spot, and when I spotted it, a chill ran through me like I'd been dipped in ice water. Lying on my deck, shining against the dull gray boards, was an evil looking hunting knife. I ran inside, slammed the door shut and locked it. Then I grabbed the phone and dialed 911.

I wasn't dressed for a police visit, not even a nocturnal one, but I was afraid to let the knife out of my sight. I compromised by dashing into the bedroom for some sweats. My hands were trembling so badly I could hardly get them on. After what seemed like an eternity, and which was only four minutes according to the glowing red display on my digital clock, there was a vigorous knock on the door. The kid who was standing there was so neat and crisp and spit-shined he looked liked he'd just come out of the box. He swept me with a quick head-to-toe, introduced himself as Officer Harris, and stuck one shiny black shoe inside the door. "What seems to be the problem, ma'am?"

I opened the door wider, and he walked past me into the room, sweeping it with his eyes just like he'd swept me, making it easier not to take his scrutiny personally. He was probably just doing what they'd taught him at the academy. "There was an intruder out on my deck trying to break in. The noises woke me up. I came out here and turned on the lights and there he was." There was an annoying quiver in my voice. "He ran away. I tried to catch him, but I couldn't. When he ran, I saw him drop something, and when I came back, I found the knife."

He'd been listening with routine politeness until I mentioned the knife, then his head came up and he stared at me. "Could you show me the knife, please?" I led him to the window and pointed at it, lying bright and nasty, and, in my eyes, looming as large as an elephant on my deck. "I'll just take a look around outside. I'll be right back," he said.

I stifled my impulse to grab his arm and say "don't go," even though that's what I felt like doing. I didn't want him to think I was some helpless female intimidated by knife-wielding intruders in the night. Instead, I huddled on the couch, bits of conversation about Helene running through my head. "She was butchered, Thea," I could hear Eve say, "I've never seen so much blood. Two of her fingers were nearly cut off."

And Dom. "Not just a stab wound or two, like you might expect from a random attack, but deep, deliberate slashes, designed to kill."

Or as Eve had said last night, "it was done so that the killer could be certain that she would die. By someone who intended to kill and knew how to kill." The paper had said they'd found a hunting knife nearby that might have been the murder weapon.

Outside the window, Harris peered intently at my sliding door, then stooped and examined the knife. He pulled a flashlight off his belt, snapped it on, and went down the steps to the lawn. I couldn't see him anymore, but I followed the progress of the light as he slowly searched the yard. He was gone about five minutes, while I sat and shook, furious with myself for being such a wimp, and resisted the urge to grab Jack out of the cupboard to comfort me. I could imagine what Harris would think. It does not look good to the cops to dash for the liquor bottle. A few footsteps in the night and the broad heads straight for the bottle. They like you to wait until they suggest a good therapeutic slug of whiskey. He didn't know about my connection to Helene.

He was back at the front door again, shaking his head as he replaced the flashlight. "Whoever it was, they're not out there now. Did you see or hear any sort of vehicle?"

"No. Just the footsteps."

"Whoever it was used a screwdriver to dismantle the lock on the fence and got into the yard that way, but left the screwdriver by the fence, so he was using the knife to try to break the lock on your slider. You wouldn't happen to have a couple of plastic bags I could use to put the knife and screwdriver in, would you?" I could tell that he hated to ask. Cops like to keep the upper hand. They don't like to ask favors. But I didn't care. The sooner that knife disappeared from sight, the better. I got him two bags from the kitchen. He went outside again, bagged them both, and came back in, setting the bags down on the coffee table.

Close-up, the knife looked even more evil and menacing. My stomach was being squeezed by a big fist and my muscles were tensed like they were anticipating pain. I've always had a horror of knives, nightmares of knives coming at me, bright and shiny, with no way to fight them off. I thought of Helene, with all her defensive cuts, holding up her arms while the knife kept slashing. I thought of my father and Uncle Henry, going deer hunting, rifles in the crooks of their arms and hunting knives in worn leather sheaths strapped to their belts. Remembered the deer strung up in the garage, its slit throat like a gruesome smile and hollowed belly gaping, and my father's knife, having done the deed, wiped clean and back on his belt.

Harris was saying something to me, and I hadn't heard him. "Ms. Kozak? Did you hear me? Are you okay?"

"Could you put that thing away please? Somewhere out of sight?" I couldn't quite keep the tremble out of my voice.

"The knife? It bothers you?" he asked.

He couldn't know how it was for me. It hadn't been found outside his door in the dead of night—an apt expression—and he probably hadn't spent the last week constantly regaled with stories about someone who'd been knifed to death. "Yes, it bothers me. When I look at it, I can't stop thinking about Helene."

"Helene?"

"Streeter. The woman who was killed last week in Anson."

He'd had his notebook out, ready to ask me questions, but suddenly he seemed a lot more interested. "You knew her?"

"I knew her. Her daughter Eve is an old friend."

He picked up the knife. "And you think this knife might have some connection?"

"That's not what I meant, Officer. It's just that looking at that knife makes me think of Helene. She was killed with a knife, you know." Against my will, my lips were trembling and my voice sounded shaky even to me. I stretched out a nervous hand, picked up the knife and handed it to him. "Please. Put it somewhere out of sight." He looked around for a moment, puzzled, then set it on the floor behind his chair. "I'm going to make some tea," I said, "would you like some?" I had to move around, do something to shake the panic that was gripping me. My hand, when I touched it to my face, was frigid.

"I'd prefer coffee, if you have it," he said. "Instant is fine."

I got up and headed for the kitchen, closing the drapes on my way. The clock said 3:30. I was getting a nice early start on the day. I turned on all the lights. It didn't make me feel any better.

Andre always complains that I never have any food in the house. About most things he's right, but I always have coffee. Good, rich, freshly ground coffee. Bad for the stomach, the bladder and maybe for breasts, but an essential element of any civilized diet. Made with spring water. No sense in bothering to buy good coffee if you're going to make it with chlorinated, fluoridated water. I put an unbleached filter in the pot, spooned in some Kona coffee flavored with macadamia nuts and poured in the water. Presto. A push of the button and the machine began to gurgle happily. Harris had come into the kitchen and was sitting on a stool, watching me.

"Boy that smells good," he said.

"Cream or sugar?" I asked, rummaging through the freezer for something to serve with the coffee.

"Black is fine."

I felt better with something to do. Before long, Officer Harris and I were sitting at the table with our coffee and a pecan coffee cake, chatting like old friends. I'd stopped regarding him as a toy just out of the box, and he'd stopped regarding me as an overreacting knife-phobic high-strung female weirdo. He'd taken seriously my fears about the knife and what had happened to Helene, and promised to call Dom in the morning. We were both disappointed that I couldn't give him more information about the intruder, but whoever it was wore dark clothes and I hadn't seen the face or hair. I couldn't even tell him if it had been male or female. All I could tell him was I thought the person was shorter than I was and had a slight build, but that was true of at least half the people I met—the shorter part, anyway. Not a lot to go on, but maybe they'd find something on the knife or the screwdriver. When he left at four, I was wide awake and I'd almost stopped shaking.

I locked the door behind him and switched on the alarm, which I normally used only when I was out of town. I got out the stuff I'd been working on for Cliff, but a wind had come up, and after an hour of jumping every time a twig brushed the house or a board creaked, I gave up, got dressed, and went to the office.

 

 

 

Chapter 15