Before She Knew Him Read online

  Sitting at the Owl’s Head, Lloyd carefully figuring out what to say, Hen imagined the Lloyd she’d first met and what he would tell her. He’d tell her she was nuts, of course, and that she was imagining things. But he would never say that now, even if he thought it. When he did speak, he said, “Maybe the best thing to do would be to just make an anonymous call to the police and mention your suspicions. And then be done with it. Either they look into it or they don’t. But it’s not going to do you any good trying to investigate if our neighbor is a homicidal maniac.”

  “I did think of that.”

  “It will only work if you drop it once you make the call.”

  “I know. It’s probably the best thing to do. But what do you think? Am I crazy or am I onto something? They were at Sussex Hall together. He had a fencing trophy, then got rid of it after I saw it.”

  Lloyd was quiet again for a moment. The Red Sox game was still delayed, and rain was now pattering against the windows of the tavern. They should have brought umbrellas.

  “Honestly, I think it’s all a coincidence, honey. He probably moves things around in that office all the time. But make the call if you want, then stop thinking about it, okay? It can’t be good for you.”

  Chapter 8

  On Thursday in the teacher’s lounge, Matthew asked Michelle if she was going to see her boyfriend’s band that night.

  “God, no. I have sixty papers to grade. Why?”

  “You know I live walking distance from the Owl’s Head?”

  “I did know that. Are you going?”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “Why?” Michelle said, and then laughed, instinctively putting her hand over her mouth, something that Matthew had noticed she always did when she spontaneously laughed. “I didn’t mean that, really . . . they’re a good band. It’s just—”

  “You didn’t think they were my kind of thing?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Dylan Hembree, one of the English teachers, entered the lounge and went straight for the coffee. Matthew noticed that the front zipper of his trousers was halfway down and wondered if he’d just taught a class in that state.

  “It was just that I was thinking of eating out tonight,” Matthew said to Michelle, “since I’ve been cooking for myself all week, and then I remembered that the C-Beams were playing at the Owl’s Head.”

  “How’s the food there?” Michelle asked. “I’ve only been there for drinks.”

  “Pretty good. I like their chicken potpie.”

  “You two going to Owl’s Head to see Scott’s band?” This was from Dylan, who’d gotten his coffee and was now edging in on their conversation.

  “Probably not me,” Michelle said, at the same time Matthew said, “Check your zipper, Dylan.”

  “Oh, thanks, dude.” Dylan put his coffee down on the very edge of the collapsible card table that held the coffee maker. “Arrgh, embarrassing,” he said as he zipped up his fly.

  “I taught an entire day once with a poppy seed between my front teeth,” Michelle said.

  “I was going to get an early dinner at the Owl’s Head,” Matthew said directly to Dylan, “and I knew that Michelle’s boyfriend’s band was playing, so I wanted to know if I’d see her there.”

  “Man, I wish I could go,” Dylan said, as though he’d been invited. “I’m swamped.”

  “Me, too,” Michelle said.

  “When’s he going to play on a Friday night next?” Dylan said. “We should all go together. I haven’t seen Scott in forever.”

  Matthew didn’t know that Dylan and Michelle were friends and found himself a little taken aback. He was glad, however, that it looked like he’d be alone tonight to watch the C-Beams.

  “If you do end up going,” Michelle said to Matthew, “then introduce yourself to Scott. I’ve mentioned you, I think.”

  “I’ll see,” Matthew said.

  The band started at eight o’clock. Matthew, who normally ate around six, made himself wait until seven before walking down to the tavern. It was dark out when he left the house. He could hear wind high up in the trees that lined his street, but he couldn’t feel it. It was the perfect temperature, neither too cold nor too warm, and Matthew felt a rare sense of happiness. He was out by himself in the night, alone with the knowledge that Scott Doyle (Matthew found his full name on the C-Beams’ website) was a possible new victim. It was an exhilarating thought, and Matthew felt himself walking faster, the wind now buffeting against him, pulling his blazer open so that he had to fasten its two buttons. He told himself to walk slower, that tonight was simply a fact-finding mission, a chance to observe Michelle’s boyfriend, to begin to make his decision. He needed to be composed, tranquil. A line went through his head, something he’d learned in college when he’d taken an elective in the Romantic poets: poetry was “emotion recollected in tranquility.” He thought of that quote often, applying it to his own life. Tranquility was his goal, not just after he committed a murder, but before. It was what made it meaningful, and it was what made him impervious to detection.

  At the tavern he sat at a small table in the front room, toward the back but with a good view of the stage. Although he was not a drinker (that was Richard’s thing), he ordered a Guinness from the young waitress, plus the chicken potpie. When his drink arrived, he took a small sip, feeling as though he were wearing a disguise. He looked around the small room and toward the back bar, and noted all the men there with their pint glasses filled with their beer, just like him. Some were alone, and some with wives or girlfriends, but they all had that empty-eyed, stoop-shouldered look of men who’d just barely managed to get through their day and were now rewarding themselves with cheeseburgers and alcohol. Matthew didn’t recognize anyone in the restaurant. No neighbors or former students. It would have been okay if he had—he was fine with small talk—but it was a much better feeling to be anonymous.

  When he was halfway through his dinner, the three-piece band began to lug their instruments onto the stage. Matthew recognized Scott from the website. He was in his midtwenties, with short hair and a full reddish beard. He wore dark jeans and a purposefully ragged oxford shirt half tucked in. As he was adjusting his microphone stand, a woman who had just come in from outside ran up and gave him a hug. The rest of the band acknowledged her, nodding and smiling, and then she moved toward the bar. Even though it was early fall in New England, she wore a short black leather skirt and a sleeveless shirt. She had dirty-blond hair and wore bright pink lipstick. Was she a groupie? More important, did the C-Beams even have groupies? They were about to start, and the place was full, but that was mostly because of people finishing up their dinners. It seemed that a few people had come in to hear the music, but not many.

  When the waitress cleared his plate, she asked, “You staying for the music?”

  “I thought I might,” Matthew said.

  “You should. They’re good.”

  “They’ve played here before?”

  “Once, I think. But I’ve seen them play a couple times in Lowell. That’s where I live.”

  Matthew ordered another beer. He planned to drink it slowly, while watching the band play. Was the waitress another one of the C-Beams’ groupies, another of Scott’s possible infidelities? She seemed excited that they were here, but maybe she was just making small talk with a customer. When she came back with the beer, he almost asked her where exactly they played in Lowell, but he didn’t want to seem too interested, didn’t want to be memorable. After she placed his Guinness on the wooden table, he watched her walk back to the waitress station, her gait reminding him a little bit of Mira’s. Matthew heard Richard’s plaintive voice in his head—Jesus, that ass—and almost smiled. The waitress was pretty, but she couldn’t have been much older than twenty. Her eyes had the startled look of a fearful deer, wide open and jittery. She probably did have a crush on one of the C-Beams. He studied the band again. The drummer was clean-shaven and pug-nosed and had a slight beer paunch, and the bass player wa
s lanky to the point of emaciation, with one of those pronounced Adam’s apples that Matthew found disconcerting to look at. If the waitress did have a crush on a member of the band, it was probably on Michelle’s boyfriend, with his hipster beard and high cheekbones. Matthew tried hard to discern if he was actually handsome, but found it hard to do. All men looked alike to him. They either had fox faces or pig faces. Scott was a fox face, while the drummer and the bass player both had pig faces.

  The band began, playing a decent version of “Not Fade Away.” The drummer was probably the most talented instrumentalist, but Scott was the dynamic member of the group, even though he sang with an annoying nasal twang. Matthew’s waitress was watching Scott, and the blonde in the short skirt, now holding what looked like a vodka and cranberry, stood and kept time at the edge of the stage, her eyes also on Scott. After “Not Fade Away” the band played two originals, then did a Johnny Cash cover. A few more people came in to hear the music, filling the tables that had been left empty by departing diners. It was obvious right away to Matthew that they were a much better cover band than an original band. His opinion didn’t change as they continued their set. Their own songs were sludgy and unmemorable, and every time they played one, the energy in the room evaporated. But their covers—“Paperback Writer” and Springsteen’s “Atlantic City”—were clearly their most popular songs, some of the fans cheering when they began to play them. By the time they were playing their encore—“Positively 4th Street”—the Owl’s Head was nearly filled, and a number of people, mostly women, were dancing in front of the stage.

  It was almost midnight, and Matthew, after paying his bill with cash, exited the bar just as they were finishing up playing. In the four hours he’d been there, the temperature outside had dropped at least fifteen degrees. It was a dark night, clusters of bright stars visible above the tree line. He walked home swiftly, trying to decide if he should go get a sweatshirt before getting into his car, but decided against it. Instead, he immediately got into his Fiat, turned on the heater, and drove back to the Owl’s Head, pulling into a space on the darkest side of the parking lot. He turned the car off, killed the lights, and slid down a little in the bucket seat. He had a good view of the front of the tavern, where a small group of smokers had congregated, including Scott, recognizable from afar by his large reddish beard. Next to him, not surprisingly, was the blonde in the short skirt. Matthew watched her grind out her cigarette under her boot, then wrap her arms around herself, shivering. Scott seemed to be purposefully ignoring her, talking with the skinny bassist, then helping the drummer load pieces of his kit into the back of a beat-up van. The blonde lit another cigarette as more customers departed the bar, getting into their cars and driving away. The parking lot was emptying, and Matthew felt a little bit exposed, even though it was dark where he was. But he had come this far, and he wanted to see if Scott went straight home or if he went somewhere else first.

  After the drums were loaded in the van, the drummer drove away. Scott kept talking with the bass player, both of them smoking, and eventually, the blonde, after giving Scott a lingering hug, took off. Her car was parked near where Matthew’s was, and he watched her sit for a moment in the driver’s seat, still gazing toward Scott at the front of the bar, before she drove out of the parking lot. When her car left, Scott watched it go, then said something to the bass player, and they both laughed. Shortly after, they hugged—one of those man hugs that involved smacking each other on the back—and parted ways to go to their separate cars. The bass player drove off right away, but Scott leaned up against his car, a Dodge Dart—“He’s had it since high school,” Michelle told him once—and checked his phone, the light from its screen illuminating his face. Then he got into his car, but instead of immediately taking off, he just sat in the driver’s seat for about five minutes.

  Matthew wasn’t surprised when the waitress—the young one from Lowell—came out of the bar and walked briskly to Scott’s car, getting into the passenger side.

  The car started loudly and pulled out of the parking lot, its wheels scattering gravel.

  Chapter 9

  Hen sat in her car across the street from the Owl’s Head Tavern and wondered what Matthew Dolamore, also sitting in his car in the bar’s parking lot, was up to. Who was he watching?

  It was Thursday night. She and Lloyd had made fish tacos for dinner, then watched two episodes of Better Call Saul before Lloyd said he was going to bed to read. Even though it was early, Hen decided to go to bed as well. She had the new Margaret Atwood, and while it had been months since she’d really gotten into a book, she was still trying.

  The bedroom was cold. She’d cracked the window earlier in the day for Vinegar, who loved to sit in open windows, but the temperature had dropped and the room was frigid. She shut the window, just as Lloyd, oblivious to any temperature fluctuation, came into the room, holding a new paperback in his hand. Something science fiction–y. He had the dazed look he got when he was getting ready to get into bed. She imagined he was already falling asleep, which made sense, since once he got into bed, he’d be asleep about thirty seconds after he finished reading and turned off his lamp. Hen, on the other hand, would lie in bed for at least forty-five minutes, her mind turning the day over and over, slowly revving down enough so that she could edge her way into unconsciousness.

  Tonight was no different. Before Hen had even gotten into bed, wearing flannel pajamas she had to dig out from one of the large bins under the bed, Lloyd was deeply asleep. Hen began to read her book, but her mind wouldn’t allow her to absorb the words. It had been three days since Hen had confessed to Lloyd her suspicions of their neighbor. Since then, she had done nothing more. Well, that was not entirely true; she had spent more time online, looking for any information she could glean about Matthew Dolamore. There wasn’t much, and there wasn’t much new on Dustin Miller’s homicide, either. But she hadn’t, as yet, gone to the police with her suspicions. And Lloyd hadn’t asked her if she had, clearly hoping the whole subject would be dropped.

  Hen put the book away, not bothering to mark with a bookmark that she’d made it all the way to page two, and turned off her own lamp. She lay on her back, her eyes on the ceiling, wide-awake. She could hear the tap, tap, tap of Vinegar’s nails along the wooden floor of the bedroom, coming to check if the window was still open. It wasn’t, but he jumped on the windowsill anyway, and Hen turned her head to watch Vinegar’s tail twitching from under the curtain. An image came to her—a potential piece of artwork—of a human-sized cat tucked into a bed and a small, naked girl asleep on a windowsill. She imagined that outside the window, crouched on the bare branch of a tree, was a small, naked boy with large catlike eyes. As always happened when Hen imagined an etching, the entire image was instantly in her mind, exactly as it would look and exactly as it should feel. She got out of bed, went downstairs to the living room, and sketched the idea, just as she’d seen it in her mind. It felt good; she hadn’t had an idea for an original etching in months, at least since before they’d moved to West Dartford. She wasn’t sure her idea was any good—it was just a little obvious, the transposition of a pet and an owner—but something about the rendering of the sketch was working for her. It creeped her out to look at it, in a good way, and she felt the familiar buzz, the aliveness in her chest, that she got when she created a piece of art. She captioned it: “The boy was back again the very next night.” She’d always titled her artwork as though the images were illustrations for a nonexistent book, part of an ongoing story.

  She put her sketchbook away, already looking forward to contemplating the drawing the next day with fresh eyes. The problem was that she was now fully awake. She considered getting back into bed, trying to read again, but knew it was useless. Her mind was buzzing.

  She went back up to the bedroom, put on socks and slippers, and got a thick cardigan to put over her pajamas. Vinegar had moved to the bed, settling down by Lloyd’s feet. He eyed Hen with suspicion.

  Back downstairs,
Hen put the kettle on to make some herbal tea. Waiting for the water to boil, she stood in the living room looking out at the night. There were stars in the sky, something she’d rarely seen in Cambridge, far too close to the bright lights of Boston. The Dolamores’ house was almost completely dark except for some faint light coming through the curtains of the downstairs living room. She was just about to turn away when movement from the street caught her eye, and she turned her head to see a man walking down the Dolamores’ driveway. A motion sensor light went on above the front door as the man passed, and Hen could tell it was Matthew. She expected him to enter the house, but instead he got into his car. Hen checked her watch. It was almost midnight. Where could he be going? And where was he coming from on foot? The words follow him jumped into Hen’s head. He was clearly up to something, and she might be able to find out what it was. Without thinking, she grabbed her own set of car keys from the hook by the front door and went outside, speed walking toward the Volkswagen as Matthew’s taillights receded down Sycamore Street toward the center of town.