Lost Cargo (20 page)

L
isa studied her husband over a late breakfast. Even though they’d made up last night, the tension lingered like an unpleasant aftertaste. She stared at the back of the newspaper and wondered if he was reading it or ignoring her on purpose. “Nuclear Weapons Summit Fails to Make Progress; Nuclear Terrorism and Dirty Bombs; Eagles Destroy Redskins 42-10,” the headlines said. He turned to the sports section.

She felt foolish and gazed around the room. Cool sunlight fell across the antique sugar bowl she’d managed to unpack yesterday. The china they’d shipped from London looked good on the new tablecloth, homey and cosmopolitan at the same time. The kitten licked her paws in the doorway.

Everything was back to normal. Ian had forgotten about the argument. They finished breakfast and kissed goodbye. After he left for his office, she threw the newspaper away and eyed the boxes in the kitchen.

Dr. Lynch’s card on the refrigerator caught her eye. She was supposed to be downstairs in five minutes. So much for getting anything done. She pulled on a blue cotton sweater and jeans, ran a brush through her hair, and raced down to the lobby.

Dr. David Lynch turned out to be an intense man in his thirties with thick black eyebrows and muscular hands. Something about him seemed familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. He was a toucher. When she talked about her headaches, he patted her arm as if he was trying hard to make her like him. Touchers usually made her squirm, but he didn’t seem to be flirting with her. She remembered Ian’s comment that she was too suspicious of everything and let it go.

The busty young receptionist kept calling him Dr. L.

“Dr. L,” she said, poking her head in, “Mr. Peters is here to see you.”

“I’ll be with him in a minute,” Dr. L said. He peeled off his gloves and took his time washing his hands. She needed major work. He talked implants and said he could save her some money with a bridge. “I can make you a fixed bridge. All the movie stars have them.”

She stared at him. “A bridge? I’m not that old.” Her old dentist must have been completely incompetent.

“I’ll mail you an estimate. We give ten percent off if you prepay, which in your case could be a substantial savings.”

“But I’m so busy right now, I don’t have time for this.”

“Evenings, weekends, I see patients at all hours,” Dr. Lynch said. “We can do two or three long Saturday sessions so you don’t have to come back so many times.”

“That’s nice to know,” she said. “You don’t need to mail the estimate, though. I’m in the building. I’ll just pick it up.”

His eyes widened for a second. “I’ll put it in your mailbox this afternoon,” he said. “And I’ll give you a call this evening after you’ve looked it over.”

She left his office. Really personal service, even if he was expensive. Calling her at home. Somehow that counted a lot after all the unpacking and bickering with Ian. Then she remembered where she’d seen the man. In the garage, going back to check his car.

Back upstairs, Lisa rebelled at the sight of the boxes. The unpacking could wait. Halloween was coming up. The place could use a pumpkin and some candy in case any kids came to the door.

One more cigarette and she would go shopping, but the moment she opened the balcony, her husband’s voice rang in her ears. “You’re suspicious about everything. Every time you turn around, you think somebody is out to get you.” Feeling guilty, she let her eyes wander to the balcony where the giant had been standing last night. It was empty.

Relieved, she lit up. She should quit smoking. Someday.

She drove into Georgetown, had lunch on the harbor, and bought a Halloween witch made of corn husks for the front door. Then she came across an outdoor market, passed up a hefty pumpkin that was too heavy to carry to the car for three small ones, and lingered at a newsstand to read the holiday magazines.

“Ian would like these,” she mused, reading a recipe for iced apple cookies.

“Homeless Man Mauled Under Northwest Bridge: Police Suspect Animal Attack,” read the headline on the
Washington Times
. Stunned, she skimmed the article. Not just mauled, but dead. The man’s remains had turned up three blocks from their condominium under a bridge in a lonely, weed-filled section of Rock Creek Park.

The rain began, a miserable gray downpour that pounded on the asphalt and sent people scurrying indoors. Four o’clock. She’d blown the whole day.

When she reached Buchanan House, the concierge gave her an envelope. Dr. Lynch had already dropped off the estimate. He wanted twelve thousand after insurance and reminded her about the discount if she prepaid the bill.

She winced and stuffed the estimate in her purse. Back inside the condo, she knelt before the hearth and built a fire to chase away the chill. The kitten came into the kitchen to watch her carve the pumpkins. She felt pleased with the way the jack-o’-lanterns turned out and arranged them on the mantel where they grinned like goblins. Then she tackled the cookies, slid them in the oven, swept the pumpkin seeds in a bag, and hurried down the quiet hall to the trash room.

The heavy door snapped shut behind her. The trash room was a stuffy, windowless place that smelled of disinfectant and old newspapers. Lisa turned to throw her bag down the chute when the elevator on the other side of the wall pinged. The doors slid back and stayed open with a faint hum.

It’s that awful woman.

You don’t know that.

It’s her, and she’s just standing there.

You’re going to have to say something to her eventually. She’s your neighbor
.

It was probably the contractors. They usually wrapped it up at three-thirty, but maybe they were working late. Still, she held the trash bag. The noise would give her away once she threw it down the chute.

Something dragged across the carpet.

What’s she doing?

Lisa put the bag down and tried to peer through the crack in the door, but couldn’t see anything, felt ridiculous, and stepped outside. She caught her breath. Her terrifying neighbor was moving down the hall, head down and broad back turned, with her gray cape dragging behind her.

The hall lights shone like white moons above the giant’s head. When she hunched over her door, her cape rose in the back, revealing scaled feet with liver-colored claws. The scales rippled as the claw tips sank into the carpet. The giant took three monstrous steps forward, claws extended, and disappeared through the doorway.

Click
went the lock.

Lisa found her own feet and fled to her condo, horrified to find she’d left the front door unlocked. Once inside, she fumbled with the deadbolt and managed to lock all the windows. The cookies were burning. She turned off the oven, turned on every light in every room, and hid in the bedroom. The smell of burned cookies grew stronger, but she didn’t move. Pie came in to sit beside her. The fire in the fireplace consumed all the wood and hissed itself out.

She called Ian, but when his phone rang and rang and went to voicemail, she hung up. She couldn’t leave a message.

And she couldn’t call 911. They would think she was crazy.

“We’re leaving,” she told the kitten. “We’re not going to live here.”

“The woman who lives next door to us has claws,” Lisa said when Ian came home. The ache at her temples was threatening to turn into a full-blown migraine.

“What did you say?” Ian shut the door, put his briefcase down, and reached for a lamp, looking troubled. “Why do you have all the lights on? The hall light, the closets, the bathroom. What’s going on here? And what’s that smell?”

“I burned something in the oven. She has claws. I saw them under her coat when I was coming out of the trash room.”

“Oh? What kind of claws? Big fingernails?” He turned off more lights and began to open the windows. “Lisa, it smells terrible in here.”

“I didn’t say fingernails,” Lisa said. “She has claws on her feet. Leave the windows alone.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “She can’t have claws on her feet.”

“Well, she does! I bloody well saw them with my own eyes. Big, thick claws like some kind of a horrible animal.”

Ian’s facial muscles worked up and down. “She had on a costume,” he said at last in a tone of dismissal, and moved to the kitchen. “Where’s the air freshener?”

Lisa followed him. “In a box somewhere. You’re not listening to me. She has claws like an animal.”

He turned around. “This is Halloween weekend.”

She felt like an idiot. Of course, that was it, the only reasonable explanation.

“It’s Halloween weekend,” he said again. He opened the refrigerator and took out a Heineken. “This is Friday. Halloween is Sunday, and people go to parties the whole weekend. Half the people at the university were in costume today. I saw a Frankenstein and a pirate in the library. Some of the students had monster teeth. The woman you saw bought her claws at some shopping mall.”

“You’re right. That has to be it.” She could feel her whole system shutting down, all the alerts turning off, and she just wanted to collapse. “The claws looked real. Her feet even had scales. It was just awful.”

He laughed. “She was going to a party, or she just came from one.”

“Well, I don’t care if it’s Halloween. I don’t like her. She frightens me. She’s the most enormous woman I’ve ever seen, and she stares. She was staring at me the other night when I was on the balcony.”

“You’re probably misinterpreting her. Maybe you’re staring at her, and you don’t realize it, so she stares back, which is a natural reaction. She’s probably very nice. We should invite her over sometime.”

“I don’t think so,” Lisa said coolly.

He kissed her on the forehead. “Did I ever tell you about the Kid Chompers?”

“Ian, I don’t want to hear this.”

“Yes, you do.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “When I was seven years old, my cousin Jack came home from the army and spent the summer with us. Jack used to tell me and my brother stories at night. The roof of the house next door was right outside our bedroom window. The roof was lower than the windowsill, and it had a big chimney, and he would tell us that the Kid Chompers lived in the chimney.”

“The Kid Chompers,” she said.

He nodded. “The Kid Chompers would come out at night. Not every night, just when the moon was out. The Kid Chompers were like genies in a bottle, and when they came out of the chimney they would get bigger and look in the windows for kids. They would never come in the houses, just peer in the windows. And that’s why kids in the city should never crawl out a window because the Kid Chompers will chomp down on them. That’s how they control kids who climb out on the rooftops. They eat ’em up and you never see the little bastards again.” He laughed. “You should’ve seen us. My brother was so scared he peed his pants.”

She shook her head. “I’ve been married to you all these years, and you never told me about Kid Chompers. You know, you’re my favorite.”

“You’re my favorite, too.”

The phone rang, breaking the mood. Ian reached across the counter to pick it up. “Hello… yes, she’s right here,” he said, and handed the phone to Lisa.

“This is Dr. Lynch,” the dentist said in a bright voice.

Caught off guard, Lisa scrambled around for the calendar. “I looked over the estimate, and I’ve decided to go ahead. I’ll prepay to get the discount. You said you can do some of the work on the weekend.”

“Great,” Dr. Lynch said. “Can you come to my office in Maryland?”

“In Maryland?” Lisa said, surprised.

“I live in Maryland, and I have an office next to my house. It would be easier to have a long session here on the weekend.”

“No, that’s too far,” Lisa said. “I don’t want to drive all the way to Maryland when you’re right here in the building where we live.”

Hemming and hawing, Dr. Lynch finally said he could see her Saturday morning at eight at the Connecticut Avenue office.

“This Saturday, tomorrow?” Lisa said, confused. “You can see me that soon? Okay, great. So I’ll see you in the morning.”

Ian gave her a peculiar look after she hung up. “Why is he calling you this time of night? I thought dentists had receptionists and worked nine to five.”

She shrugged. “He’s trying to go the extra mile. He’s a nice guy. I keep having these headaches, and he says I need some work done, so I’m going to go ahead.”

“You’ve been diagnosed with migraines.”

“But I only get those once a year. I’m getting a headache almost every day.”

Ian put his arm around her. “It’s stress. Tomorrow is Saturday. Let’s go for a walk in Rock Creek Park. You can get claustrophobia stuck in here with all these boxes.”

“I forgot to tell you what I saw in the paper. They found a body in the park.”

“In Rock Creek Park?” he asked.

She nodded. “A homeless man under the bridge down the street. The paper said it was an animal attack. I want to stay out of the park until they find out what’s going on.”

“It’s probably drug related and they all know each other. I’m not going to become a prisoner in my home every time something shows up in the news.”

“I don’t want to go off in some abandoned area, Ian. It’s not worth it.”

He sighed. “The park is wall to wall people on Saturday. There’s no way anything can happen. I’ll go by myself then. I need the exercise.”

“I’ll come,” she said reluctantly, afraid for him to go alone.

“We’ll stick to the trails where everybody else is walking. It’ll be fine.”

Roused out of a deep sleep, Lisa squinted at the nightstand clock. The glowing red numbers changed from 12:59 to one in the morning. She turned over and sat up.

Scratch, scratch, scratch
. The sound was coming from a room off the hall. She realized she had been dreaming about the scratching, but the dream began to fade like fuzzy fog the more she tried to remember what it had been about. Something about Kid Chompers outside, scratching at the bedroom window.

“What’s wrong?” Ian groaned.

“I hear something,” Lisa said.

They lay still.