Before She Knew Him Read online

  The door opened again and two men emerged, both Latino. One was beginning to light a cigarette as the other came over to Hen’s side. “He okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Hen said. “I called 911.”

  Scott was still conscious, saying something to the girl in the tight dress—Hen now recognized her from the dance floor earlier.

  The girl said, “You’re going to be fine. Just lie still.”

  Scott said something back, and she said, “Outside the Rusty Scupper. In New Essex.”

  Hen moved a little closer to see if she could hear his words, just as a light went on above the double doors, flooding the parking lot with fluorescence. The other man had gone back inside, probably to turn on the lights. In the stark yellow glow, Hen could see the extent of the head injury, a dark, bloodied indentation and a sliver of white that was either skull or brain matter. She involuntarily lifted her hand to her mouth.

  “What state?” Scott asked the crouching girl, sounding as though he were speaking through a wet towel.

  “Massachusetts, Scott. It’s where you live?”

  “I wish it was Maine,” he said, and Hen, even from five feet away, saw the life go out of him.

  The girl began to howl and shake his shoulders, then Hen heard the sirens and caught the distant pulse of red lights.

  The EMTs were the first to arrive, followed by two uniformed officers in a police cruiser, one of whom asked Hen if she was a witness.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d like to make an official statement. I know who killed him.”

  Chapter 18

  Matthew had been in the interrogation room for just over an hour when his lawyer, Sanjiv Malik, arrived, wearing a slightly rumpled suit and with a two-day beard.

  “Sorry,” he said to Matthew as he settled himself into an adjacent chair. “I didn’t get Mira’s message until an hour ago. How long have you been here?”

  “We got back from Portsmouth about noon and the police were waiting there for me. What did she tell you?”

  “Everything she knows, which isn’t much. You were arrested?”

  “I agreed to come in for questioning, and when I told them I was going to leave, then I was arrested. They say they have a witness who positively identified me at the scene of the crime. It’s ludicrous. I was asleep with Mira all last night, and—”

  “She’s given an official statement. You won’t be here long. They’ve just made a mistake, is all.”

  “I don’t even know . . . Who was it again who got killed?”

  Sanjiv looked at his notes. He was distantly related to Mira on her father’s side, although Matthew always suspected that Mira had been introduced to him as a potential husband around the time that Matthew and she were dating.

  “The lead singer of the band that had been performing at the Rusty Scupper that night. They were called the C-Beams.”

  “Right. They told me. I did know that band because they played at a place near me called the Owl’s Head.”

  “Oh,” Sanjiv said.

  “I mean, I didn’t know them, but they were playing there on a night when I had dinner. It’s just a coincidence. The only reason I remember it is because someone I work with knows a member of the band.”

  “Which one?”

  “I think it was the one who got killed, but I’m not sure. The police officer said his name was Scott.”

  “Scott Doyle.”

  “I think that’s probably him, but I never knew his last name. Who says they saw me there?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out.”

  Matthew had barely slept the night before, lying in bed while he went over and over in his mind the events that had taken place outside of the bar. Hen had been about twenty feet from him. He could see her perfectly, but he was in the shadows and there was no way she could know for sure that it was him. Plus, he had an alibi, an incredibly strong one. Mira would say he was there by her side all night. He doubted very much that she would even mention that she’d been drinking. And any physical evidence was now gone. He’d driven back to Portsmouth via back roads and pulled over at an abandoned gas station on the edge of a salt marsh. He’d thrown the baton, wiped clean of prints, out into the water, and he’d buried the jackknife and the stun gun, plus his hat and gloves and shoes, underneath a broken piece of asphalt where there had once been a parking lot. After that, he’d returned to his hotel room—no one had seen him—and he’d showered and gotten into bed, not even bothering to wake Mira.

  The hardest part of the day had been trying to act surprised when they’d returned to their house on Sycamore Street and been confronted by two detectives with a search warrant for the premises.

  “Matthew, can you think of anyone . . . Is there anyone you know who might want to mess with you?” Sanjiv asked.

  It was a question that hadn’t been asked yet by either of the two detectives.

  Matthew took a breath. “Actually, I think there is someone,” he said, and then proceeded to tell all about his neighbor and how he believed she had already sent a police detective from Cambridge to his house to investigate an old crime.

  “Why do you think it’s her?” he asked.

  “Well, it’s embarrassing, but I googled her, just because I was curious, new neighbor and all, and she has a history of accusing people of crimes they didn’t commit. So, it’s a possibility—ridiculous, I know—but for some reason I thought of her right away this afternoon when the police were there.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Henrietta Mazur,” Matthew said.

  “You need to tell the police everything you just told me. Exactly as you told it, okay?”

  Matthew said, “Okay.”

  He was released just before five o’clock. Mira drove him home, and as they passed Henrietta’s house, windows dark in the encroaching dusk, he craned his neck to see if he could see any signs of life.

  “What are you looking at?” Mira asked.

  “I want to see if our neighbors are home.”

  “Why?”

  “I think that Hen was the witness who said I was at that bar last night.”

  “What?”

  Back inside their home, after drinking a much-needed Diet Pepsi, Matthew told Mira about his suspicions.

  “She came here,” Mira said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I never told you because it was the day I flew out to Charlotte, but she dropped by the house and asked if she could have a tour again. Look at all the rooms.”

  “What did you say?”

  “What do you mean what did I say? I said sure. I was excited to see her.”

  “So she went through all of our rooms?”

  “Don’t get mad at me. It wasn’t like I left her alone in here. We walked through the rooms together just like we did at the dinner party.”

  “Did she want to see my room?”

  “What, our bedroom?”

  “No. My office.”

  “We measured the size of your desk because she told me she was thinking of getting one. It never even occurred to me . . .”

  “I know. I’m not blaming you. I’m just still freaked out. I think she’s insane, Mira. I think she’s decided I’m a murderer and now she’s out to get me. She probably planted some kind of evidence here.”

  Mira frowned. “I believe you, but I just don’t get it. Why you?”

  “I think she made a connection between me and Dustin Miller. He was a former student from school who got killed a couple of years ago.”

  “While at Sussex?”

  “No, no. Many years later. I honestly don’t know that much about it, but the case is still open. And a police officer from Cambridge came out and talked with me about it.”

  “When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you. And you were away on your trip to Charlotte. It was nothing. At least I thought it was nothing.”

  “And you think that Hen sent the cop to you?”

&nb
sp; “I know she did.” Matthew didn’t want to mention the fencing trophy, knowing that it would look strange that he’d gotten rid of it. “I don’t think it’s personal. I think it’s just . . . a problem she has. Like a compulsion. She sees murderers where there aren’t any.”

  “Well, not really, Matthew. There’s a real murderer. Someone killed that singer last night.”

  “Right. I guess she just latches on to someone and begins to think that person’s guilty.”

  “But why was she there? I mean, she witnessed the crime. That doesn’t sound odd to you?”

  Mira got up and went to the window that faced their neighbors’ house. She moved the curtain two inches to one side.

  “Lights on?” Matthew asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What were you saying?”

  Mira turned. “Maybe she had something to do with it. I mean, are they looking at her? She was there. You weren’t. Maybe she’s framing you for a crime.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Why not? She thinks you’ve killed someone and gotten away with it, so she kills someone else and says she saw you do it.”

  “It’s ridiculous. But if that’s what happened then the police will figure it out.”

  “Can you show me that article, the one about her in college?”

  That night, in bed, Matthew listened to his wife’s breathing as it slowed and began to purr a little. He thought she was finally asleep when she said, “What time do you think the police detectives will be at work in the morning?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I’m calling as soon as I get up. You never know, they might get there early.”

  Five minutes later, she asked, “Are you sure the door is bolted from the inside?”

  “I am,” he said, “but I can check again if you’d like.”

  “No, I believe you. What a bitch,” Mira said, as though they’d been in the middle of discussing their neighbor. It was not a word Matthew had ever heard his wife use.

  “Let’s not totally jump to conclusions, either. Maybe it’s just a big misunderstanding. Maybe she really did think she saw me there.”

  “I’d think that, too, but that article. What she did to that girl in college.”

  “I know,” Matthew said. And now she’s wrecked everything. I had two lives before I met Henrietta Mazur, both of them simple, with their own comforts and rewards. And from out of nowhere she’s come along and turned those two lives into one. One complicated mess of a life. I never thought I’d lie in bed and listen to Mira talk about murders, but here I am. I want to call Hen a bitch as well, but that is what my father would’ve called her. She’s not a bitch, but she is too smart for her own good. I feel like I’m on a small boat in the middle of a huge storm. I need to ride the waves and wait for it all to blow over.

  Before she finally fell asleep, Mira said, “I love you, Bear,” a name she hadn’t used for at least a year. He immediately curled up next to her, making himself small, moving his leg across her thighs.

  “Love you, too,” he said, burrowing his face into her neck.

  “Shh,” she said as he tried to squeeze closer to her, as though he were freezing and she were his only source of warmth. “Shh, it’s going to be all right.”

  “You promise?” he said, his voice whispery.

  “I promise, Bear, I promise.”

  Chapter 19

  Mira opened her eyes at dawn. She knew she’d slept, although her body and her mind didn’t feel rested. She swung herself off the bed, moving carefully so as not to wake Matthew, still curled up on his side.

  She put on a robe and went downstairs, making coffee, then chugging a glass of water. She was still so thirsty, a remnant of the hangover she’d suffered the previous day, after drinking far too much at the Portsmouth Arms. Her stomach was queasy and there was a pulsing ache in her temples, almost like one of her migraines, but she knew it was from alcohol and stress. She went into the living room, thought about lying down on the couch, but decided to try to meditate instead. That was something her father did, ten minutes of meditation every morning before he drank his coffee. He swore by it, and she trusted him because, other than the meditation, her father was maybe the most pragmatic non-new-age-y person she knew. She got her yoga mat and sat cross-legged on the floor, focusing on her breathing and staring at a patch of early-morning light that lay in a rhombus across the hardwood floor. It almost worked, but she couldn’t shut out the bizarre events of yesterday, especially learning that it was Hen, their new neighbor, who had claimed to have witnessed Matthew at the scene of a murder. It was ludicrous—the whole thing was ludicrous—but Mira was trying to make sense of it. Hen had told her that she suffered from depression, mentioning how she didn’t want any children because she didn’t want to pass along her brain. Maybe she was just unhinged, and, for whatever reason, she had decided—this was what Matthew believed, anyway—that Matthew was some kind of serial killer. It was just that . . . Hen seemed sane. And she seemed nice, even though Mira now knew that Hen had come over after the dinner party only in order to look for evidence, or maybe even to plant evidence. Suddenly she was scared. How far would this woman go? She thought back to after they had all met at the neighborhood party, how much she’d already decided that she liked her arty new neighbor with the pixie hair and the interesting jewelry, how she told Matthew that she really wanted to have them over for dinner.

  “They’re total strangers,” he’d said.

  “Strangers are just friends we haven’t met yet, you know that, Matthew,” she said, laughing. She didn’t really want to have that discussion—that argument, really—about friends. For a few years Mira had wanted more friends and Matthew, if anything, wanted fewer.

  “Do what you want,” he’d said.

  And she had done what she wanted, and look what had happened. She had a psychotic neighbor now, out to get her husband.

  But there actually was a murder on Saturday night. Some man died.

  Mira did some stretches. There was too much to think about, and her mind was getting rattled. Calm down, she told herself. Think about yesterday. Try and put it in perspective.

  So, with her toes gripped by her fingers, she thought about the previous day. There was her hangover, of course, the worst she’d had in years, the worst she’d had maybe ever. Why had she drunk so much?

  Your husband made you do it.

  Matthew had encouraged her, that much was true. Matthew, who drank about two alcoholic beverages a year, if that. They’d been in that pretty bar at the inn, all dark wood and flickering candlelight, and the wine had tasted amazing, and then she’d had some sweet-tasting Scotch drink that had tasted just as good. She remembered thinking: He’s trying to get me drunk, Matthew’s trying to get me drunk. She’d wondered why and told herself that maybe it had to do with a sex thing, that maybe he wanted to try out something in the bedroom, a thought that wasn’t entirely objectionable, but not exactly enticing, either. The last time he’d gotten a little bit kinky—this was over a year ago—he’d asked her to keep her black stockings on while they had sex. That part had been fine—it actually did feel pretty sexy—and it had been equally fine when he’d flipped her over onto her stomach and finished from behind. What hadn’t been fine—what had been fairly awful—was that afterward, when she’d turned to look at him, he’d looked back at her with an expression of complete disgust on his face, very brief but it was definitely there. Then he’d flushed bright red and couldn’t meet her eye.

  “That was fun,” she’d said, hoping to salvage the situation, but he was already heading to the bathroom to shower.

  It had definitely occurred to her, even before he plied her with clam dip and alcohol, that maybe he’d suggested the Portsmouth Arms getaway in order to try something else new in the bedroom. With that in mind, Mira had purposefully not brought black stockings on this trip. She never wanted to see that almost hateful look on his face again.

  As it turned out, as
soon as they got back to their room she’d sat down on the edge of the bed and the whole room had listed to one side like a boat in bad weather. She remembered Matthew gently tucking her under the covers, and her wondering if she’d ever get to sleep with the room churning the way it was, but that was all she remembered about that night.

  The next day she’d woken early, as she had this morning, and gone to the bathroom and taken four ibuprofens, washing them down with three glasses of the tinny hotel tap water. Her stomach roiled, but she was able to fall asleep again. When she next woke up, Matthew, already dressed, hair damp from a shower, was carrying a tray of room service breakfast across the room. He’d ordered her a tomato and cheese omelet, her favorite, and after a tenuous first bite, she’d gulped down the rest with three slices of buttered toast and decided that she was going to survive.

  When they’d gotten back from Portsmouth early that afternoon, they’d found the detectives waiting for them, one in the unmarked car and one leaning against its side. We’ve been robbed, Mira thought, as Matthew said, “Huh,” in his quiet voice.

  But they hadn’t been robbed. Matthew had agreed to go into the station for questioning, even though Mira kept pressing them to say more about what it was about. “It’s okay,” he said. “I haven’t done anything wrong, so we have nothing to worry about.” He sounded like her pragmatist father, although her father’s pragmatism would have led him to say the opposite. Being innocent was no guarantee of safety.

  “Should I call Sanjiv?” she’d asked, as he’d gotten into the vehicle with the two detectives.

  “Don’t bother him,” he’d said, but she’d called their lawyer anyway, and she was glad she did. After he’d agreed to go to the police station, another detective had arrived at the house, this time to question Mira, asking her about her husband’s whereabouts the previous evening.

  “He was with me all night,” she said. “Why are you asking?”

  “Was he away from you at any point during the evening?” This detective seemed impossibly young, a light-skinned black man in a too-loose suit, as though he’d recently lost a lot of weight.