Chương 7
Nora pressed her thumb into it until she slept.
She woke to the sound of the garage door rising.
For a second, she did not know where she was.
Then fear hit so fast that her body moved before thought. She slid from the couch, grabbed the heavy brass candlestick from the side table, and crouched behind the armrest.
Samuel stood in the hallway, holding his phone.
The garage door continued upward.
“Police are outside,” he whispered.
A vehicle engine idled.
Nora’s heart hammered against her ribs.
The interior garage door had been locked. The code had been changed. The old remote should not have worked after the locksmith reset the opener.
Yet the door was opening.
Malik’s earlier question returned.
Could he have shared access with someone?
Samuel dialed 911.
Nora tightened both hands around the candlestick.
A shadow moved beneath the door.
Then a woman’s voice called from the garage.
“Nora?”
Mrs. Alvarez.
Samuel lowered the phone slightly but did not end the call.
“Nora, I have your casserole dish.”
Nora remained crouched.
Samuel spoke through the locked door. “Mrs. Alvarez, please step away from the entrance.”
“What?”
“Step outside where the officer can see you.”
“I’m holding glass.”
The patrol officer appeared at the front of the garage. Mrs. Alvarez, seventy-two and offended by most safety precautions, stood beside her old station wagon with a flowered casserole dish pressed against her chest.
She had used the external keypad.
The new code had not been set correctly.
The garage door stopped halfway.
Nora’s hands began shaking again.
She placed the candlestick on the carpet.
Mrs. Alvarez was escorted to the front door, where she apologized while also insisting she had knocked first.
“I did not know the police meant I could not return your Pyrex,” she said.
“It’s all right.”
“It is not all right. You look terrible.”
Samuel made a small choking sound.
Mrs. Alvarez frowned at him. “She knows she looks terrible. I am not insulting her.”
Nora stepped back to let her in.
The older woman wore gardening gloves and smelled of tomato leaves. She placed the dish on the console table, directly over the folded protection order.
“I heard Derek did something stupid,” she said.
Nora waited.
Mrs. Alvarez looked at the burn, then at the floor.
“More than stupid.”
“Yes.”
“I saw him leave last night.”
“What time?”
“A little after nine. Maybe nine fifteen. I was watering the hydrangeas. He drove your car.”
Nora’s hand went to the console table.
“My car is in the garage.”
“The black one.”
“That’s his.”
Mrs. Alvarez waved one gloved hand. “All new cars look like appliances.”
Samuel asked, “Did you see anyone with him?”
“No. He drove away. Then he came back maybe twenty minutes later in another car with that red-haired woman.”
Nora looked at Samuel.
“Tessa said she came alone,” she said.
Mrs. Alvarez shook her head. “No, he was in the passenger seat. She drove. They argued by the curb. She left. He went inside.”
“That can’t be right,” Samuel said. “Police arrived around nine thirty.”
“They came after she left.”
Nora unlocked her phone and called Tessa.
No answer.
She called again.
Straight to voicemail.
The fear that rose was different now. Not fear of Derek entering the house. Fear of the archive on Samuel’s laptop, of Tessa standing behind the officer, of the bruise that might be real and the story that might not be complete.
Samuel closed the laptop.
“Nora, don’t decide what this means yet.”
“She brought him back here.”
“Apparently.”
“She said she came because I called.”
“You did call her.”
“After he burned me.”
Mrs. Alvarez removed one gardening glove finger by finger. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Nora said. “You said something useful.”
The patrol officer checked the garage and disabled the exterior keypad until a technician could reset it. Mrs. Alvarez returned home with her casserole dish because, in the confusion, nobody emptied it. Samuel contacted Malik and added her observation to the report.
At 3:40, Tessa called back.
Her voice shook. “I was meeting with the detective.”
“You brought Derek back to my house last night.”
Silence.
“Tessa.”
“He took your phone.”
“I know.”
“He called me from it. He said you’d thrown coffee at him and locked yourself in the bathroom.”
“So you picked him up.”
“I thought you might be hurt.”
“You drove him here.”
“I drove him from the gas station. He said his car had stalled.”
“Mrs. Alvarez saw you arguing.”
“Because when we got here, he told me to come inside and help calm you down. I refused. Then my phone rang. It was you calling from your watch. I answered after I drove away.”
Nora pressed the phone to her ear so hard the edge hurt.
“Why didn’t you tell the police you had been with him?”
“I did. This morning. In my full statement.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“You didn’t ask.”
The answer was so terrible and so human that Nora had no immediate response.
Tessa began crying quietly. “I thought if I said everything on the porch, you’d tell me to leave before I could give them the messages.”
“I did tell you to leave.”
“After.”
“What else haven’t you told me?”
“I sent the entire archive.”
“That is not an answer.”
“There’s one thing.”
Samuel stood across the room, watching Nora’s face.
Tessa inhaled raggedly. “The title company payment. Derek put money down on a townhouse.”
“For you?”
“He said for us.”
Nora sat on the bottom stair.
“Where?”
“Brookfield Commons.”
A new development fifteen minutes from the hospital.
Nora had toured Brookfield Commons with Derek two years earlier when they considered buying a rental property. He complained that the kitchens were small. She liked the walking trail behind the units.
“Whose name is on it?” Nora asked.
May you like
“I don’t know. He told me Kyle’s company was purchasing it and we would rent it from him until the divorce was final.”
“What divorce?”
