Chapter 31
Annie sank into the warm bliss of her fourth beer and looked around the table. DeeAnn was intent on the page in front of her, moving pictures around, tilting her head. Paige just closed her scrapbook and was eating the last chocolate-and-peanut-butter cupcake. Sheila was straightening books on her bookshelves piled with scrapbook materials. Vera was stretched out on the floral couch, asleep. She had been for about an hour. Annie’s eyes were beginning to droop.
Above the couch were beautiful pictures of Sheila’s four kids. And the corner cabinet held even more pictures, along with trophies and ribbons. Thank God, there were no paintings of barns. Annie was a bit sick of the barn scenes everywhere she went. There was not much décor at all in the basement scrapbooking room that didn’t revolve around Sheila’s children. Annie wondered what Sheila would fill the room with if she didn’t have children.
Annie loved these rub-ons that she had recently purchased from Sheila. She worked her stick across the paper until she was sure that the fancy scripted word “Magic” came out perfectly. She pulled the paper back slowly, until she saw the word on the page. Nice. Underneath the word was a photo of Maggie Rae and her husband, Robert. They looked so happy. His arms were around her. Both of them were smiling for the camera, taking a break from a family game of soccer. Someone’s foot was kicking the ball in the background. A flying braid was part of the picture. Scattered pieces of their children. Imagining them now, with no mother, broke Annie’s heart.
She looked at the snoozing Vera and thought how blessed she was to be expecting a baby. Vera had all of it in front of her. Annie loved the boys when they were babies—she didn’t mind the sleep loss or the nursing. Somehow she found the energy to take care of them and the fortitude not to care how tired she was. In fact, she remembered rocking Sam in her arms until they ached, not wanting to lay him in his crib.
Annie closed the album. “I need to get going,” she said after draining her last beer.
Paige looked at her. “I’m leaving, too. Need a ride?”
“Nah,” she said. “I’ll walk.”
“Walk? Haven’t you heard there’s a murderer on the loose?”
“I’ll be all right. I’ve got my pepper spray,” she said, pulling it out of her bag. “And I just live right around the corner and down the street.”
“Well, okay,” Paige said. “You be careful.” She was still gathering her things and shoving them in her scrapbooking tote when Annie said her good-byes.
Annie didn’t have that much to carry, amazed that all of these scrapbookers had special equipment to carry all of their stuff in. DeeAnn and Paige both had cases on wheels. The cases had equipped compartments made just for scrapbooking supplies—a space for stickers, a space for sticky tape, a space for scissors, and drawers for paper. It was an amazing sight to behold.
She flung her bag over her back as she turned the corner, and heard something. She wondered if she herself had caused the noise, or if someone else was out at this hour of night—or morning. What was it? One thirty-five, her watch said. She rolled her sleepy eyes. She’d pay for this tomorrow.
She heard the rustling noise again. Maybe it was one of the many neighborhood cats prowling around. Still, she moved forward through the darkest spot on the street as quickly as she could, heading to a more well-lit area. The moon was not quite full and clouds began to glide across it. The sidewalks gave off a little sparkle, and the streets were completely quiet—which Annie always found a little unsettling. The town had long rows of streets, with quiet houses on either side. Trees took on an ominous quality and they shadowed over the sidewalks.
Is that the thump of a foot?
Annie’s heart raced and she felt sudden beads of sweat form on her forehead. It was all she could do to stop from running. And she wished she had not drunk that fourth beer. She just then realized that she was more than a little tipsy, just about tripping over her sneakers.
She reached in her bag and pulled out her pepper spray. Whoever it was would get an eyeful. A rustle again. She turned quickly—was that a man behind that bush? She tried to focus her somewhat drunken eyes. She held up her spray and saw the rhododendron shimmy as a figure moved behind it. A tall man was definitely crouching behind the bush. She blinked.
Confront him? Yank him out from behind the bush? Her heart beat madly in her chest. There was a day she would not have thought twice about it. But tonight, all she could think about was her two boys and getting home safely to them. She did not want to leave her children motherless—not if she could help it.
Don’t be foolish,
she told herself,
just get home.
But if a man was following her, should she really lead him to her house? She stood paralyzed in that moment.
Go home? Confront him?
The pull of her home won in the end. She thought that if he followed her, he’d have to deal with Mike and possibly the police.
When she opened the door of their tiny bungalow, she had never been so grateful to be at home in her life. Her eyes took it all in: the faded brown couch sitting against the wall with toys piled in the corner, the finger-smeared screen on the television; the big plaid chair, with the cushions beginning to wear out; the old blue afghan thrown over Mike’s chair; the potty chair sitting in the corner; the tiny 1940s pink kitchen; her snoring husband; her sleeping boys. Yes. She was home.
The next day, as she was pouring Mike’s coffee, she felt her heart jump as she thought about last night.
“I think someone followed me home last night,” Annie told her husband.
“You think?” he said, putting down his fork.
“Well, someone was outside. It was one-thirty. I could hear him behind me every once in a while. And once, I think I saw a man behind a bush or something.”
“You think?”
“I drank four beers, Mike, you know? But I’m positive someone was there. I wasn’t
that
drunk.”
“What? From now on, don’t walk home. Get a ride from somebody, okay? Who knows what kind of creep that was? There’s a murderer out there, Annie!”
“Yes, I know that,” she said, sipping her coffee. “But I really hate to be bullied into driving instead of walking the two blocks to Sheila’s. I mean, how crazy is that? I was armed with my pepper spray. And I’m fine.”
“Don’t be stupid, Annie. Until we find out who this killer is, please don’t go walking around the town alone with pepper spray to protect you. I mean, holy shit.”
“Mike, I’ve been in worse situations. I can handle myself.”
“That was then,” he said, raising his eyebrows and his voice. “This is now. I love you. The boys love you. No more, Annie, do you hear me?”
Chapter 32
Vera’s recital was another smash. All of the parents and children were happy with it. She was at home, relaxing on her baby blue soft couch in the middle of her letdown-after-the-show time—where she felt completely exhausted and exhilarated simultaneously—when the phone rang. It was Officer Bryant on the other end.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Ms. Matthews?”
“I don’t mind at all,” she said.
“Can you tell me where you were the morning of Maggie Rae’s death?”
“I was home,” she said, digging her feet between the plush cushions.
“Where was your husband?”
“He was away on business,” she said.
“Do you know where your mother was?”
“Hmm. No. I don’t really think I do. I imagine she was at home,” she said, wondering what her mother or husband had to do with any of this. “That morning is when she was stabbed, of course.”
“How well did you know Maggie Rae?”
She didn’t answer right away.
“I knew her as well as anybody else did, I suppose. She kept to herself. But I saw her once a week for Grace’s ballet class. And she was going to sign her younger one up,” Vera answered, looking over at Bill’s empty chair, feeling a pang of missing him.
“How do you know that?”
“She left a message at the studio the night before she died. She was going to bring her daughter in.”
“Interesting. Oh, that’s right. You mentioned that earlier. Very interesting.”
“That’s what I thought. It doesn’t sound like something a woman would do if she were planning to kill herself.”
“That sounds about right,” he said. “Well, thanks for chatting a bit with me, Vera. Have a good night.”
“Thank you. You too,” she said. Strange for him to call her on a Saturday night. She dug for the remote and flipped the television on, pulling a green throw over the top of her. She switched the channels, looking for something decent to watch. She stopped on the public television station that was showing a lineup of British comedies.
It was quite a night. She leaned her head back onto the couch cushion and sank in. Then she heard the doorknob rattle. A key went into the socket, and the door opened. What the—she shot up off the couch—it couldn’t be Bill. He wasn’t supposed to be home until Monday. But there he was, standing in his raincoat, half soaked.
“Came home early, Vera,” he said.
“I see that.”
He slipped off his raincoat. “It’s coming down out there.”
“Yep,” she said, getting off the couch and wrapping her arms around him. “Nice to see you.”
He stiffened.
“Vera, I need for you to sit down and listen to me,” he said, cupping her hands in his.
“What is it? Oh, God, is it Mama?” she said, sitting down, grasping her chest.
He smiled his worried smile. “No, darlin’. Nothing like that.”
He sat next to her on the baby blue couch, where she had just been resting and thinking over her life.
“There’s no easy way to say this. But, uh, I had an affair with someone.”
“What? I don’t believe that, Bill. What kind of sick joke is this?”
His face dropped and a tear formed in his eye. As he took off his glasses, he rubbed the tear away.
“Vera, I need you to listen with an open heart. Please.”
She nodded. “What’s going on?” She felt her heart sinking, and her stomach felt as if it would roll off into oblivion.
“I’d been seeing a young woman—”
“Young?”
He nodded. “Look. I have to tell you because it’s going to come out eventually. I don’t know of any other way to tell you this.”
“Good God, Bill, what have you done?”
Was she dreaming? Was her perfect husband telling her he had been cheating on her? She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She felt the room spin.
“I don’t know. She was so young and beautiful and willing. I feel like an old fool, really.”
“Screw you, Bill, if you think I care how you’re feeling.” She just wanted to hit him. She sat on the edge of the couch and held herself back from clobbering him.
“The woman was ... Maggie Rae.”
Her hands went to her mouth; she gasped and felt sharp pangs in her chest.
“I’m sorry, Vera. You don’t know how sorry I am.”
“Sorry? Jesus, Bill. Did you ... kill her, too?” she barely asked. The wind, the energy, suddenly sapped from her.
“No,” he said, looking like he’d been slapped. “But I am a suspect, which is why I’m home. I got a call from the police. I was with her the night she was killed, but I left around two in the morning. She was murdered around four.”
Vera’s thoughts were running at warp speed in her brain. The recital. The phone call from the detective. Her husband home early now. Telling her he cheated on her. Now he’s a murder suspect. He cheated on her with a much younger woman. He cheated on her.
“Vera? You are angry, I’m sure. But you need to know that with Maggie, it was just about the sex. No emotions. No love. No relationship.”
“Christ, Bill. Do you think that makes me feel any better?” she shot at him. What to do? Leave? Make him leave? Forgive him? Pretend it didn’t happen? Here she was, expecting his child.
“What’s going on in that mind of yours, Vera?”
She was thinking that they already had the room upstairs picked out for the nursery and had chosen the color—a beautiful butter yellow. They were trying to make up their minds about the cribs they had been seeing and had decided on a lamb theme. Funny what you think of in times like this.
But a resolve formed hard in her guts—in that moment, she knew she hadn’t loved her husband in years. A good friend and companion, yes, but there was no love between them. It wasn’t her heart that he was breaking—it was her pride, her integrity, their commitment to one another, which somehow seemed to be deeper than the word “love” could even get to. No point in bringing a child into this. It would work out somehow, but it would have to work out differently from what she’d thought.
“Bill, I think you need to leave.”
“Vera!”
She put up her hand. “Really? Really? Are you going to argue with me about this now?” She stood up and stomped up the stairs, stopping halfway up. “I want you out of this house.”