Her Every Fear Page 3

  “Sorry,” he said, indicating the snuffed-out cigarette in his fingers.

  “I don’t mind,” Kate said, stopping and looking at him. He was thin, verging on gaunt, but with wide shoulders. His narrow face was dominated by a large, crooked nose. His eyes were grayish-green and deeply sunken, and his skin was lightly pocked with ancient acne. He should have been ugly, but he wasn’t. All his outsized features combined into a sad and handsome face.

  “I actually don’t smoke. I’ve quit. But then I found this one cigarette in my drawer and figured I’d smoke it, just to remind myself how awful it is.”

  His voice was deep and friendly, and Kate, jet-lagged and still confused about the time of day, felt a ruffle of weakness in her legs. “Was it awful?” she asked.

  “No, of course not. It was great.”

  “Smoking’s great,” Kate said. Why were they speaking like old friends? Was this how people spoke with strangers in America?

  “You smoke?”

  “I did. I quit. It wasn’t easy.”

  “How’d you do it?”

  “By not smoking.”

  The man laughed. His teeth were alarmingly white, the top ones straight and the bottom ones slightly overlapping. “I’m Alan Cherney.”

  “I’m Kate. I’m living here, temporarily.” She was shy suddenly, and didn’t provide her last name.

  “You’re English?” he asked.

  “I am. I’m staying at my cousin’s apartment, here, and he’s staying at my flat in London.”

  “Which apartment is it?” Alan Cherney’s eyes scanned the building.

  Kate bobbed her head in the direction of her wing. “Uh, Corbin Dell’s place. Up there.”

  “Ah, north wing. I’m on the other side, third floor. I know Corbin. A little.”

  “You know him better than I know him. We’ve never met.”

  “That’s funny,” Alan said. “How’d that come about?”

  Kate told him the story, omitting the fact that the trip for Kate was at least partly inspired by her need to overcome the past traumas of her life.

  “Well, you got a good deal,” Alan said. “These are pretty nice apartments.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Just over a year. I moved in with a girlfriend—a rich girlfriend—and she moved out, and I can’t really afford it anymore, so I need to start thinking about finding a new place.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Sorry about what?” he said. “Sorry I lost my girlfriend, or sorry I’m going to have to move out?”

  Kate laughed. “I don’t know. Sorry about both.”

  He smirked and said: “Sorry you used to have a rich girlfriend and a beautiful apartment, and next month you’ll be alone in some hovel.”

  “Something like that.”

  A gust of wind peeled a sodden yellow leaf off the brick courtyard and plastered it on Kate’s boot. She bent over to pick it off. When she stood, there was a moment of silence, and Kate realized she’d been talking with this stranger for close to fifteen minutes.

  “Well,” she said, but didn’t continue. Her eyes skidded off his, and she felt the prickle of a blush suffusing her cheeks. For one brief, terrifying moment she knew that if he’d asked, she’d have followed him straight up to his apartment and into his bed. He was handsome, yes, even with the large, crooked nose, but she’d have followed him because it felt as though they had known each other for years.

  “You need to go,” he said, speaking her thought out loud.

  “Yes.” And then they both laughed.

  “I’m in apartment 3L,” he said. “I’m not leaving anytime soon. We’ll see each other.”

  “Okay,” Kate said.

  She started to move away, then stopped. “Do you know a woman named Audrey Marshall? She lives here.”

  Alan’s brow creased. “I do know Audrey. Well, I know who she is. I don’t actually know her.”

  “When I got in last night, a friend of hers was at her door, looking for her, saying she’d gone missing.”

  Kate expected him to dismiss it, but instead he said: “That doesn’t sound good. She’s not the type to go missing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I mean she’s always around. I see her around. A lot. I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

  Kate had brought a printed map of her neighborhood, but she’d studied it so many times in the previous weeks that she didn’t need to remove it from her bag. She navigated down Bury to Charles Street, where she got a breakfast sandwich and another coffee from a packed Starbucks. The second coffee was a mistake. She was jittery and wired while shopping at an upscale grocery store with tight, congested aisles. She had been planning on getting ingredients for a pasta she liked to make with smoked salmon, but a mild panic had set in, and she bought only a loaf of sourdough bread, some cheddar cheese, milk, and two bottles of red wine. Back out on the street, warm, mild rain had mixed in with the gusty air. It felt good against her skin after the overheated store, and she walked slowly back along Charles, noting, for future reference, a bar that looked well lit and friendly, plus a coffeehouse much less crowded than Starbucks had been.

  She deliberately walked past the gaslit side street that would take her back up the hill to Bury Street, and continued to the outskirts of the Public Garden. Her groceries were heavy, but she wanted to at least see the famous park. The rain was picking up, and several parents were ushering their kids away from a line of bronze ducks. Willow trees shimmered by the pond. She almost entered the park, but decided against it. She was here for six months and there would be time.

  Kate swung through the doors into the lobby. She introduced herself to the doorman, Sanibel, a thin man with high cheekbones and ink-black hair. He offered to help her with her bags. She said, “No, thanks,” just as a white cat that had been perched on the lobby desk jumped to the floor and rubbed against Kate’s shin.

  “That’s Sanders,” the doorman said.

  “Does Sanders belong to you?”

  “No, no. He belongs to Mrs. Halperin. Upstairs.” He indicated with a fractional move of his head the direction of Kate’s own apartment. “He likes to go everywhere, though. All over. Unlike Mrs. Halperin.”

  Kate walked up the stairs, Sanders following her. Carol Valentine had mentioned Florence Halperin; she had the other apartment on Kate’s wing. Passing the door, Kate noticed it was cracked open, presumably for Sanders, but the cat followed Kate down to her own door and managed to slide into the apartment, even with Kate trying to block the way with her foot.

  She put away her groceries, then went and found Sanders. He had leapt onto one of the windowsills and was looking out at the rainy day. Kate scooped him up, expecting resistance, but he arranged his back paws on Kate’s forearm and his front paws on her shoulder, and purred quietly into her neck. Kate, usually ambivalent toward cats, felt a surge of affection. She carried him to the hallway, saying, “Wrong apartment, Sanders,” and dropped him back onto the hall carpet. She quickly shut the door as he padded away.

  Kate went to the bedroom and got the sketchbook that she’d brought with her from London. It was brand-new, a way to commemorate the beginning of her time in a new country. She removed a charcoal pencil from a fresh pack, then sat down on the lushly carpeted floor and thought about trying to draw Sanders. Instead, she drew Alan Cherney’s face, getting it just about perfect. Something was a little off, the eyes spaced too close together, the hairline a little too low, so she pulled out a kneaded eraser and fixed it. It took her longer to fix the sketch than it had to draw it, but then it was him. She wrote his name, and the date under it, then added boston, massachusetts. She almost exclusively drew portraits, and her sketchbooks were comprised of the faces of people she had recently met. She had stacks of these notebooks, the earliest ones from grade school. Flipping through them—something she often did, especially when she’d been housebound—was like reading a diary. She’d find faces of close
friends that she’d sketched hours after she’d met them for the first time, and she’d find faces of people she’d forgotten all about. Looking at Alan’s likeness, she wondered if, ten years from now, she’d even recognize who he was. Or maybe it would turn out to be the drawing she’d done right after meeting her future husband. Probably the former.

  She flipped to a blank page, closed her eyes, and tried to picture Carol Valentine, the older woman who had given her the tour of the apartment. She could remember her eyes, her forehead, her hair, and her neck, but couldn’t quite picture her nose and mouth. Instead of drawing her, she drew herself; she could remember the way she’d looked that morning in the mirror of the bathroom. Her hair, recently cut, tucked behind one ear. Her eyes a little puffier than usual from the long, dehydrating flight. But she gave herself a slight smile, a smile that ended up looking like the frightened smile of a nervous bridesmaid about to deliver a speech. It didn’t quite capture her mood, but she left it as it was. She almost never erased her self-portraits.

  On the next page, she drew Sanibel, the doorman she’d just met. Instead of drawing just his face, she drew him standing next to his desk, and she added Sanders down by his legs. She was not used to drawing cats, and Sanders looked wrong, menacing when he was anything but.

  She slid the sketchbook under the bed and stood. She was hungry again, went to the kitchen, and ate some bread and cheese, thought about opening some wine, then decided against it. The rain outside was now slashing against the windows, and she thought, randomly, of a painter whipping a spray of paint across a canvas. She stared at the kitchen windows for a while, deciding that she loved her new apartment, not for its obvious luxury, but for its high ceilings and oversized windows. She could breathe in this place. She decided to make tea, realized she hadn’t bought any, but then found a box of Red Rose in one of the high cupboards. She filled a kettle with water, put it on the gas stove, then went into the living room. One wall had built-in bookshelves, and she looked at some of the selections. Hardcover nonfiction, mostly, although there was one complete shelf of John D. MacDonald paperbacks. She plucked one out. Darker Than Amber. A Travis McGee adventure. The cover had a pulpy image of a sexy girl in a crop top. The pages were yellowed with age. These had to have belonged to Corbin’s father, Kate thought. Where were Corbin’s books? Did he have any? Below the Travis McGee books was a shelf of other paperback mysteries. She pulled out a Dick Francis—Bonecrack—that she didn’t think she’d read yet, and brought it with her to the long beige sofa under the largest window in the room. She lay down and read the first few paragraphs, then closed her eyes and fell immediately to sleep.

  She dreamed of the park, the pond now whipping and rippling in the ferocious rain. She stood under one of the willow trees, its branches yellow. George Daniels was on the other side of the pond. Kate wasn’t surprised that he was in Boston—and she wasn’t surprised that he was still alive—because in her dreams he was always alive, and he was always coming after her. He spotted her hiding under her willow tree and began to swim across the pond. Kate had a rifle with her, and when George came out of the pond, dripping and smiling, she shot him several times, the bullets pocking his shirt but not doing much else. One of the bullets struck him on the chin, and he brushed it away like it was a horsefly. He kept coming.

  She woke, neck and chest filmed in sweat, then smelled something bitter and acrid in the air. She remembered the kettle, leapt from the couch, the Dick Francis falling to the floor, and ran to the kitchen to shut the gas off. The kettle had boiled dry and was beginning to smoke. She opened one of the windows as far as she could and, using a hand towel, put the smoldering kettle on the windowsill. The rain striking it made sharp hissing sounds. Something about the near-disaster made tears spring to her eyes. Then she remembered her dream. George in the park, the bullets barely penetrating his shirt. It almost made her smile that he’d followed her to America in her dreams. Of course he had. If her dreams were a realm, George was king for life.

  After the kettle cooled down she took it from the windowsill. Its bottom was completely black; she’d have to buy a replacement. The metal was still warm, so she put it in the deep stainless steel sink and returned to the couch. This time she read half of the book before falling back to sleep.

  She was woken by a knock on the door. She blinked herself awake, momentarily confused by what time it was. It was daylight outside still, but the inside of the apartment was dark and dusky. There was another knock, louder and longer. She stood, her knees popping. How long had she been asleep?

  She went to the door and peered through its peephole. She almost expected to see Alan, but it was a woman’s face through the fish-eye lens, a woman with close-cropped hair, coffee-colored skin, and dark brown eyes. The calm disinterest in those eyes made Kate say policewoman to herself. Audrey Marshall’s dead, came a voice. It was George Daniels, whispering in her head. Kate swung the door open.

  Chapter 4

  The woman introduced herself as Detective James, unclipping a badge from her belt and holding it up for Kate to see. Kate invited her in, noticing before she shut the door that two uniformed officers stood a little ways down the hall, one of their radios crackling.

  “Is Audrey Marshall dead?” Kate asked automatically.

  “Why do you ask that?” the detective asked, a touch of surprise in her eyes.

  “I, uh, heard that she was missing.”

  “When did you hear she was missing?”

  Kate explained about her arrival the evening before, the friend in the hallway who was pounding on the door.

  “When was that exactly?” the detective asked, pulling out a small notebook from the inside of her dark gray suit jacket.

  Kate gave her best guess at the approximate time and the detective wrote it down. Kate studied her while she wrote. She had a long face, with high cheekbones, and Kate didn’t think she was wearing any makeup. The detective raised her eyes from her notebook, and Kate watched her nostrils minutely flare.

  “I left the kettle on,” Kate said.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t—”

  “I left the kettle on the stove earlier and I burnt it. That’s the smell.”

  “Oh. I did notice that.”

  “Do you want to sit down?”

  The detective’s eyes scanned the room briefly before she said, “No, thanks. I’m just collecting statements right now. And I’d like to get a little more information from you regarding timelines.”

  “She is dead, right?” Kate asked.

  “We are investigating a suspicious death in the apartment next to yours. We don’t have a proper identification yet on the body.”

  “Okay.”

  “You said you just came over here from London, right? You didn’t know her?”

  “No, I don’t know anyone here. It was a murder, then?”

  “We’re treating it as a suspicious death, yes. What can you tell me about the owner of this apartment?”

  “He’s a second cousin. Corbin Dell. I don’t actually know him, either. We’ve never met, but we arranged this house swap because he’s been transferred to London for his work.”

  The detective wrote something else down on her pad, while asking: “I don’t suppose you know whether Corbin Dell had any kind of relationship with Audrey Marshall?”

  “No, I have no idea.”

  “Can you give me the phone number for your apartment in London?”

  “It doesn’t have one, actually. I just use my mobile. But I have Corbin’s e-mail. I can get it for you, if you’d like?”

  “That’d be great,” the detective said.

  Kate went to the computer in the study and brought up her e-mail page. There were several unread messages, in bold, at the top, including a response from Corbin. She opened it:

  Thanks for recommending the Beef and Pudding. Can’t say I’d have tried that one if left to my own devices. It reminded me a little of a place called St. Stephen’s Tavern near where you are. Check it out. Al
so, met a neighbor of yours named Martha something. She seemed to recognize me, or else she heard my loud American accent and just guessed. Hope all’s well. C

  Kate found a piece of scrap paper and jotted down Corbin’s e-mail address. She’d worry about the Martha situation later.

  She brought the scrap of paper to Detective James, who was now looking at the screen of her cell phone. “Thanks. I’ll write him,” she said, folding the piece of paper and sliding it into her jacket pocket.

  “Should I let him know before you do? He just e-mailed me, and if I wrote him back . . .”

  “You can tell him the police were here and that we’ll be in touch. I don’t want to make any pronouncements about Audrey Marshall till we have an identification, okay?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You’ve been very helpful.” She was turning back toward the door. Kate went around her and opened it. There was now a small crowd in the hall, including an older man in a suit who immediately spotted Detective James and said, “Jesus. There you are.”

  Before leaving, Detective James said: “We might need to search your apartment. Would you agree to that?”

  “Why?” Kate asked.

  The detective pressed her lips together before saying, “If we find anything that might connect the death next door with your cousin, then we’ll need to take a look around. That’s all.”

  “It’s okay with me, I guess,” Kate said.

  “Thank you very much. We’ll be in touch.” The detective handed Kate her card before leaving. Kate studied it after shutting the door. roberta james, detective. Under the name were the Boston Police Department shield, a phone number, and an e-mail.