With a bit of prompting, Mattie thanked Rosie, and then they headed out of the store. The coin-operated pony was pretty tame, rocking Mattie very gently. Still, Susan put down her grocery bag to keep ahold of his arm while he rode the pony. Mattie squealed with delight. He’d only been on the pony for half a minute when Susan noticed a red MINI Cooper turning into the store lot. The car pulled up a few spaces away from hers and parked.
“Gimme up, gimme up!” Mattie squealed. He must have meant
giddyup
.
Susan turned to him and smiled. “Pretty fun, huh, sweetie? Yippee-eye-oh…” She glanced over toward the car once again. The driver hadn’t gotten out of the front seat yet. Susan couldn’t see him because the late afternoon sun reflected on the windshield. But then some clouds moved in front of the sun, and Susan noticed the driver, sitting alone in the car. She saw his handsome face, the dark hair parted to one side, and the rugged five o’clock shadow. He stared back at her, unsmiling.
It was just a few fleeting seconds, and then the glare on the windshield wiped his image away. Susan could no longer see him, but she still felt his eyes on her. She remembered his cocky grin as he’d sat down next to them forty-five minutes ago.
Well, you certainly have him well-trained in case you’re ever separated,
he’d said.
You folks are a long way from home.
“Yippee!” Mattie sang out, kicking the toy pony’s flanks. “Gimme up! Gimme up!”
Susan tightened her grip on his arm. “Um, honey, that’s enough for now,” she said, pulling him off the pony in midride. “We need to get a move on. Allen’s probably waiting—”
“NOOOOOOO!” he screamed, his legs kicking in the air.
“Enough of that,” she said firmly. Susan managed to grab her grocery bag while wrestling with him. “The pony needs to rest up. He’ll give you
two rides
tomorrow.” She carried Mattie to the car.
Susan hated turning her back to the stranger in the MINI Cooper, but she had to put down her bag and strap Mattie in his booster seat. Her hands shook as she fumbled with his seat belt. All the while, she listened for a telltale click of the door handle of the car behind her. Any minute now, she expected to see a shadow creeping up on her and Mattie.
“Okay, sweetie, fingers and toes,” Susan said, a bit out of breath. She shut his door, then glanced back at the red sports car. She could see the man, still at the wheel, his head slightly tilted in her direction. Part of her just wanted to scream at him to leave her and her son alone. But instead, Susan hurried around to the driver’s side of her car. Tossing the bag on the passenger seat, she scooted behind the wheel, then shut her door and locked it. Her hands were still trembling as she turned the key in the ignition and shifted into reverse. Then she backed out of the space, turned the car around, and headed out of the lot.
Speeding down Carroll Creek Road, Susan checked her rearview mirror several times. The MINI Cooper hadn’t moved. Finally she took a curve in the tree-lined road, and she couldn’t see the store anymore.
Susan started to wonder if she’d overreacted back there. The man really hadn’t
done
anything—except come on as overly friendly and solicitous at the Arby’s earlier. Yes, he’d shown up at the store, but fifteen minutes after her. Was he really following her? Maybe he was a local.
Something buckled under the car. Susan glanced in her rearview mirror to see if she’d hit a piece of metal on the road—or had lost some part of the car. But the road was clear behind her.
The car suddenly rocked and wobbled as if it were going over a series of potholes. Biting her lip, Susan clutched the steering wheel. It vibrated from the rough ride. She nervously glanced at the driver’s side mirror—shaking so much the reflection was just a blur.
Mattie was jostled in his booster seat. “Gimme up! Gimme up!”
Easing up on the gas, Susan steered over to the side of the road. The car seemed to be limping. It felt like she had a flat tire. “Oh, I really don’t need this now,” she muttered to herself, a pang of dread in her stomach.
She switched on the emergency blinkers, cut the ignition, and then glanced back at Mattie. “Well, that was pretty exciting, wasn’t it?” she asked.
Wide-eyed, he nodded and put his thumb in his mouth.
“I’m just going to take a look at the damage, okay, sweetheart?” she said. “I’ll be right outside where you can see me.” Climbing out of the car, Susan checked around the back. The rear tire on the driver’s side was flat; the hubcap pressed against the gravel roadside.
“Oh, swell,” she murmured. She remembered that article again:
Local police discovered Matusik’s abandoned car on Timberlake Drive in Cullen. One of the rear tires was flat….
Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, Susan took out her cell phone and tried dialing Allen. Her hands were shaking.
No signal available
came up on the tiny screen.
With a nervous sigh, she popped open the trunk and started to unload their suitcases so she could get the spare tire, jack, and other equipment. She glanced over her shoulder at the empty road behind her.
The narrow highway curved around a wall of tall evergreens, but there was a gap between some of the trees, and she saw another little stretch of road—and a car. Susan was too far away to see the color or the make of the car.
But it was coming her way.
He watched her unload the jack, wrench, and spare tire from the trunk of her old Toyota. All the while, Susan Blanchette kept looking over her shoulder.
He stood behind a tree in the woods, about thirty feet away, snacking on a Three Musketeers bar.
He’d given her the flat tire, his way of welcoming her to Cullen—and an ominous start to this weekend he’d planned for her. Susan had no idea he was calling all the shots. He knew Susan would be coming to Cullen before she did.
And he knew she would die.
He’d been waiting for Susan and had kept a lookout for her red Toyota—license plate: MLF901. While she’d been in Rosie’s Roadside Sundries, he’d set a small device under her rear left tire. It was a foot-long spiked metal strip—a section cut from a long grid that rental car companies used at their lot exits and entrances to prevent theft. Those spiked strips instantly punctured tires and disabled cars. His smaller, portable version perforated only one tire, but it got the same job done. It just took a bit longer for the tire to deflate.
In fact, last year, Wendy Matusik had driven at least two miles from the grocery store before all the air left her back tire. He hadn’t gone to any great lengths to hide the perforating device afterward. He’d merely tossed it on the ground by the cellar storage doors on the shady side of Rosie’s. And there it remained for days—much to his amusement—while state police combed the area for clues to Wendy’s disappearance.
The Wendy episode had been unplanned, a mere impulse. He kept her alive for a few days until he got bored with her. It was the same with that hiker, Monica, who was a bit too mannish for his tastes. After the initial capture, the thrill had worn off pretty quickly. As a kid, when he’d grown tired of a toy, he would smash it with a hammer, and there was always a bit of regret afterward. Except with Wendy and Monica, there were no regrets after he’d slit their throats. Those were departures from the Mama’s Boy killings. All of them had been strangled. And neither Wendy nor Monica had been mothers—not to his knowledge anyway.
He finished up his candy bar and watched Susan struggle to loosen the tire’s lug nuts. He shoved the Three Musketeers wrapper in his jacket pocket.
He couldn’t imagine growing tired of Susan. He’d been watching her for weeks now, and she continued to fascinate him. He’d seen her coming and going—sometimes wearing her white nurse’s lab coat—at Dr. Chang’s office. He often parked across the street when she picked up Matthew at Yellowbrick Road Day Care. And sometimes he watched from outside her bedroom window as she climbed into bed alone. She wore a man’s T-shirt to bed. She only wore a nightgown when her fiancé spent the night.
Of course, he knew her fiancé’s whereabouts most of the time, too.
But he had become far more interested in studying Susan. He knew the whole layout of her first-floor duplex on Prospect Avenue in Capitol Hill. He’d even broken in once. He’d gotten so close to her, but in her home, he could actually touch her clothes, her shoes, and her panties. He smelled her hair on her pillow—and thought about how he could touch her and smell her as she was tied up. He could do whatever he wanted to her. And maybe after he killed her, he would even taste her blood.
He’d been looking forward to this weekend for quite some time. He had to be patient. He couldn’t rush it.
When he’d spotted that teenage girl outside Rosie’s a few minutes ago, he’d thought about going after her, too—just something to tide him over until he had Susan. He’d heard of some guys who masturbated before a big date—to take the edge off. Killing that cute teenage girl before starting in on Susan might serve the same purpose. It was something to think about.
On the shoulder of Carroll Creek Road, Susan took her young son out of his car seat in the back. “All right, sweetie,” she told him, handing him a wrench. “I need your help with these thingamajigs! I can’t get them unstuck!” Hovering over him, she showed him how to unscrew the lug nuts she’d already loosened. The kid seemed to get a real kick out of helping.
Watching them, he had to admit, it was pretty damn cute.
Thirty feet away, Susan stood bent over her son by the rear bumper of the old Toyota. Her brown hair was blowing in the wind. Soon he would be close enough to touch it.
And soon, before the end of this weekend, her little boy would be an orphan.
“Well, what did this joker look like?” Allen asked. He stood at the gas barbecue on the rental house’s back porch. Moths fluttered around the porch light. Over his navy blue fisherman’s sweater and khakis Allen wore a
Hail to the Chef
apron they found hanging on a hook in the pantry. He was a tall, ruggedly handsome thirty-eight-year-old. Susan had fallen in love with his thick, wavy salt-and-pepper hair and pale green eyes. He had a scar on his left cheek that looked like a dimple, so it appeared as if Allen were smiling even when he wasn’t. With a pair of tongs, he set four marinated chicken breasts on the grill. That barbecue smell mixed with the crisp, cool night air.
Susan had Tater Tots and French bread in the oven and a salad in the refrigerator. The kitchen had modern, stainless-steel appliances. She’d been expecting to “rough it” in a squat, rustic, bayside shack. But their rental house was a lovely, comfortable, two-story white wood-veneer house with green shutters. The property was surrounded by trees on three sides—and in the back was this quaint porch. In addition to the barbecue, it had a porch swing and a view of the backyard dock on Skagit Bay. That was where Allen had moored her “surprise,” a beautiful sailboat with an indoor cabin—complete with a small galley, dinette, and V-berth sleeping quarters. He’d rented it from a charter place in town, and tomorrow afternoon, they’d go sailing.
Mattie was thrilled about it, of course. At the moment, he was in the sunroom, on the other side of the sliding screen door, watching
WALL-E
on DVD.
So much for roughing it
, thought Susan, but she wasn’t complaining one bit.
Susan was wrapped in a russet cardigan sweater. She poured some more pinot noir into Allen’s wineglass, hoping it might take some of the edge off. He seemed far more upset about her Arby’s encounter than she’d been.
“Actually, this guy seemed perfectly normal,” Susan told him. She spoke in a hushed tone so Mattie wouldn’t hear. “In fact, he was good looking—tall, with dark brown hair. I’d say late thirties, and nicely dressed, too. I would have been flattered if he hadn’t been so overly familiar and pushy.”
“He didn’t tell you his name or where he was from? Any clue—in case I want to report this to the police?”
“No, he didn’t say a thing about himself.” She sipped her wine. “But listen, I don’t know about involving the police, Allen. I mean, this man really didn’t do anything
wrong
. He—”
“What are you talking about?” Allen interrupted hotly. “The guy followed you all the way to Cullen, and then you got a flat—with practically new tires. We just got them—what—three months ago? I don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit.” With the tongs, he flipped over the chicken breasts on the grill. All the while, he was frowning and shaking his head. “I really wish you’d gotten the license plate number off that red MINI Cooper.”
“Sorry, it didn’t occur to me,” Susan murmured. “At the time, I just wanted to get the hell out of there.”
“Well, if you remember anything else about this creep that would help us track him down, let me know.”
“All right already, I will,” she sighed. “Y’know, I didn’t encourage the guy—if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking that at all,” Allen replied.
“Well, you act like you’re mad at
me.
” She took her wineglass and retreated to the edge of the porch.
“I’m not mad at you,” he answered quietly. “I’m just upset thinking about what could have happened.”
Susan didn’t say anything. She gazed out at the moon and the stars—so bright this far away from the lights of the city. Slivers of white and silver reflected on the bay, and the boat gently rocked in the water. Susan leaned against the railing and heard it creak.
Grabbing the top rail, Susan gave it a shake. It groaned again, and she could see a gap in the corner between the top-rail beams. “Better not let Mattie play out here alone,” she said. “It’s not safe. This thing looks like it might give way.”
“Oh, he’ll be fine, babe,” Allen said, focused on his barbecuing. “I’m sure the railing will hold. Besides, the drop’s only two feet. He’d do worse rolling off the sofa.”
“Well, I still don’t want him playing out here unsupervised,” she insisted.
“Yes, cupcake, anything you say, cupcake,” he replied in a whiny, milquetoast voice that sounded a bit like Truman Capote.
She rolled her eyes at him and then started into the house. “God, I hate it when you do your henpecked husband act.”
“Yes, pudding,” he said—with that whiny voice again. “Dinner will be ready in about five minutes, pudding.”
Susan could hear him chuckling as she slid the screen door shut behind her. She didn’t think it was very funny, not when they were discussing the safety of her child.
Lately, she found herself cutting Allen very little slack. She wasn’t quite as enamored of him as she’d been when they’d first met. Then again, maybe that was just what she needed right now. If she wasn’t completely in love with him, she wouldn’t get her heart broken.
Susan set the dining room table—with plaid cloth mats that had seen better days, plain white plates, and mismatched stainless pieces. This was about as close to “roughing it” as they got here. That nice young man she’d met by the restrooms at Rosie’s had been right about this place. It was lovely.
She could smell the Tater Tots cooking; they had about five more minutes. She remembered the Tater Tot casserole she’d made that one time—eighteen months ago. She would probably never make it again.
Walt and she had been invited to a party.
Tater Tot casserole was the “kitsch-dish” Susan had decided to make for Connie and Jim O’Mara’s Fourth of July potluck. The hosts, old friends of Walt’s from college, were barbecuing hot dogs and hamburgers. Connie encouraged their guests to bring a side dish or dessert that was some guilty-pleasure comfort food, parish picnic delicacy, or trailer-trash cuisine. Connie had explained to Susan over the phone that one guest was baking a mock apple pie from Ritz crackers. Another guest was bringing a Jell-O ambrosia salad.
“And Melissa Beale is bringing a Seven-Up cake—whatever the hell that is,” Susan said, folding a load of still-warm laundry on the bed while Walt dried off from an after-work shower. Steam wafted out the open bathroom door. Dinner was on the stove, and the kids were in front of the TV in the living room. Susan could hear it blaring. “Anyway, I told Connie we’d be there.”
“I really don’t want to go,” Walt grunted from the bathroom. “Can you call and cancel?”
“But why?” Susan asked while folding a pillowcase. “I figured you’d be all for it. They’re all your old college friends….”
The O’Maras had recently moved into a new luxury condominium on the edge of Capitol Hill. They were supposed to have a spectacular view of the Puget Sound and the fireworks. Kids were invited, too. Connie had hired a nanny to look after the little ones and read them to sleep in the guest room while the adults and older kids enjoyed the fireworks. Susan thought it sounded terrific—what with a sitter for two-year-old Mattie, and Michael, age eight, begging to stay up and watch the fireworks this year. It was an ideal arrangement—and she didn’t even have to cook, except for the Tater Tot casserole.
“I’d just as soon skip it,” Walt sighed, emerging from the bathroom with a towel around his waist. He was working a Q-tip around his ear.
Susan caught him furtively looking at her in the mirror over her dresser, and she could tell something was wrong. She stopped folding one of his T-shirts and tossed it on the bed. “Okay, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I just don’t feel like going to a party on July fourth. Traffic is always a pain in the ass. And the parking…” He snatched a pair of boxer shorts from her pile of laundry, then shed the towel and stepped into his boxers. The whole time his eyes avoided hers. “It’s too much of a hassle. I’d rather not go….”
Folding her arms, Susan stared at him. “Something’s wrong, I can tell. You’re not even looking at me. I’ve never known you to turn down a party. At the risk of repeating myself, what’s going on?”
With a long sigh, he strode across the room and closed the bedroom door. He stood there in his undershorts for a moment, one hand on the doorknob. He looked down at the floor. “Melissa Beale,” he muttered, frowning. “I’d rather not see her.”
“Why?” she asked, half smiling. “Don’t you like Seven-Up cake?”
He kept staring at the floor, and Susan kept waiting for him to say something.
She knew Melissa from the occasional get-togethers with Walt’s college friends. Melissa was a petite, pretty redhead with a killer body. She taught yoga and had a back tattoo (Walt’s old college gang had had a pool party last summer). She also had a younger live-in boyfriend, Jason Something, with a pierced nipple. Susan had asked Walt ages ago if he and Melissa had ever had a thing in college, and he’d told her no.
“I’m trying to avoid her, because she’s been calling me and e-mailing me at the office,” Walt said, finally.
Susan sat down on the edge of the bed. “And exactly why is she doing that?”
“She and Jason broke up,” Walt explained. “She came by the office about two weeks ago—just before lunch. It was a sneak attack. She said she needed a sympathetic ear. At lunch, she got a little buzz on and asked me to drive her home. I—I wasn’t comfortable about it, because clearly she was flirting with me at the restaurant. But we’d taken her car, and I didn’t want her to get in an accident….”
“Always the Good Samaritan,” Susan murmured numbly. She didn’t like where this was going at all. This wasn’t like Walt. She kept waiting for him to burst out laughing and say it was all a joke—a very, very stupid joke. But he was still standing over by the door in his underwear, gazing down at the floor.
“I parked in front of her place over in Wallingford, and she invited me in to wait for a cab.” Walt finally looked at her. “But I said no thanks. I gave her the car keys and I was just about to climb out of the car, and that’s when she kissed me.”
“On the lips?”
He nodded glumly.
“Did you kiss her back?”
“For only about five seconds,” he whispered. “Then I pulled away and got out of the car.”
Dazed, Susan stared at him. “But you kissed her back,” she murmured.
“I’m sorry, honey.” He shook his head. “I told her I was happily married and very much in love with you, and that this wasn’t ever going to happen again. Then I tried to make some kind of joke, because it was just so damn awkward, and I got the hell out of there….”
He kept saying he wasn’t interested in Melissa. He didn’t mean to kiss her back, it “just sort of happened.” He was sorry he didn’t tell her about it, but he didn’t want to upset her over something that meant nothing to him. But the trouble was Melissa had called him at the office the next day to apologize. Then she’d wanted to buy him lunch just to show how sorry she was. He’d given her a polite “No thanks, not a good idea.” But Melissa wasn’t giving up that easily. She was on a campaign. And that was why he didn’t want to go to the damn Fourth of July party.
Susan sat there in a stupor, growing angrier and angrier. She still couldn’t believe he’d kissed that woman back—and for five seconds. It probably went on longer than that, but he didn’t want to admit it. If they hadn’t been invited to this party, would he have ever bothered telling her any of this?
She finally got to her feet. “I need to get out of here, I need to be alone,” she said in a low voice. “You can serve up the kids their dinner. Make up any excuse you want for where I’ve gone. I promised Michael I’d help with his math homework. So you’ll need to do it now. I’m not sure when I’m coming back—”
“Wait, Sue, please,” he said, moving toward her.
She shook her head. “Get the hell out of my way,” she growled, brushing past him as she headed for the door. “I need to be alone. I need to get out of here before I hit you or something….”
Then Susan hurried out of the bedroom. She ducked out the kitchen door, so the boys didn’t see her leave. She drove to a lookout point on Fifteenth, near Lakeview Cemetery. The little park had benches and a panoramic view of Husky Stadium, Lake Washington, and Bellevue. Directly below the park was a wooded ravine with trails. It was just the kind of remote spot she wouldn’t have taken Michael during the heyday of Mama’s Boy. But that night, Susan sat there for three hours. She managed to cool off. It wouldn’t be easy forgiving Walt, but she would. And going to that Fourth of July party would be terribly uncomfortable for him.
But go they would—Walt, the boys, and her. Susan saw to it.
Driving to the O’Maras’ on July Fourth, Susan balanced the Tater Tot casserole in her lap and tried not to kick the two six-packs of Redhook India Pale Ale at her feet in the front passenger seat. Though she and Walt had pretty much made up, he’d been tense and taciturn all day. Clearly, he saw going to this party—with his college friends and Melissa in attendance—as some kind of punishment. And it was. Except for when he yelled at Michael for teasing Mattie in his car seat, Walt said nothing for the duration of the ride. Susan didn’t utter a word either.
She looked for Melissa when they got to the O’Maras’ home, but the pretty redhead yoga instructor wasn’t yet among the thirty or so guests. The O’Maras had a large wooden deck off their living room, and that was where Jim was barbecuing. Though only on the second floor, the condominium stood on a hillside, so the deck was at least four stories above the ground. They looked over the treetops at the Space Needle on the horizon. An occasional skyrocket or firework from some other private party burst against the darkening sky.
Walt opened up a Pale Ale, while she had a Coke and watched for new arrivals. After three doorbell rings and three more couples made their entrance, Melissa finally appeared—in a clingy blue and white striped halter-top dress that she’d accented—no doubt, for Independence Day—with a red belt. She had her stupid 7-Up cake with her—in a Tupperware cake container. Making her way to the kitchen to unload the cake, she smiled and waved at Susan—one of those,
Hi-haven’t-got-time-to-talk-now
deals. But minutes later, Susan watched her hug Walt out on the deck, kiss his cheek, and then whisper something in his ear.