“You’ll like her.”
“Almost forgot.” Ken reached inside his hand-tailored jacket. “Here’s that key you asked me to get for you.”
“I’m suitably impressed.” Luke reached across the table to pick up the key. “I didn’t give you much notice.”
Ken managed to appear highly offended. “It’s an apartment complex. One bored guy on duty in the manager’s office. How hard do you think it was to create a little distraction that made it possible to get into the office and make a duplicate of the master?”
“Not hard, I take it.”
Ken did not dignify that with an answer. Instead he picked up a plastic sack he had put on the sea hen he first sat down.
“Here’s your outfit,” he said.
“Appreciate it.” Luke took the sack. “You got a look at the apartment complex when you went there to get the key. Any words of advice?”
“Yeah. Don’t get caught.”
Thirty-Eight
It was midafternoon and the sun was out, but it seemed to Irene that the windows of the house of her nightmares at the end of Pine Lane were just as dark as they had been at midnight seventeen years before.
She halted the compact in the drive and sat quietly for a moment, summoning her courage and fortitude for the task that lay ahead. Walking back into her old home was going to be hard, maybe the hardes hing she had done since she attended the funerals of her parents.
Like every other building in Dunsley the house looked smaller and more weathered than she remembered, but otherwise disturbingly familiar. Aunt Helen had sold the place as quickly as possible after the tragedy. She had not made much of a profit, because no one in Dunsley wanted to buy a house in which violent death had occurred. The realtor had eventually found an unsuspecting client from San Francisco who acquired it with the goal of turning it into a summer rental.
When she had lived here, the house had been a warm, golden tan with brown trim, Irene reflected. Somewhere along the line it had been repainted a light gray. The trim around the windows and the front door was black.
It will look different inside, too, she promised herself. Probably been through several owners. Bound to be new carpet and newfurniture. It won’t be the same. It can’t be the same. I don’t think I can take it if
it looks the same as it did that night.
Her breathing was all wrong, quick and shallow. It occurred to her that it might have been a very good idea to wait before she came here, until her nerves had settled down after the road rage incident.
But she dared not put this off any longer. She had to know why Pamela had gone to the trouble o enting and rekeying the house.
She opened the car door and got out before she could talk herself into leaving and coming back some other time. One thing was certain, she thought, taking the key out of the pocket of her trench coat, she was definitely not going in through the kitchen door this time.
She went up the front steps, crossed the porch and inserted the shiny new key into the lock with trembling fingers.
Drawing a deep, centering breath, she opened the door.
Shadows swirled in the hall. Automatically she reached out to flip the light switch on the wall. Another chill went through her when she realized that she remembered exactly where the switch was located.
She closed the door slowly and made herself walk into the living room. The curtains on all the windows were closed. The interior of the room was drenched in gloom, but she could make out the furnishings.
Relief washed through her when she saw that someone had, indeed, redecorated.
Her mother’s pictures were gone from the walls. The sofa, armchairs and wooden coffee table were generic summer rental, inexpensive and, best of all, unfamiliar.
Keep moving, she ordered herself, or you won’t get through this. She knew there was, in fact, a very sound reason for hurrying. It would not be a good idea to be caught inside the house. True, it had been her home in her youth, but she had no claim on it now. If someone noticed her car in the drive and called the police, she would have a major problem on her hands. Sam McPherson was definitely not her best friend at the moment. As far as he was concerned, she was still the prime suspect in an arson case. The last thing she needed was for the chief to send one of his men out here to investigate a possible intruder in the house on Pine Lane.
She walked slowly through the shadowed living room into the dining area.
[_How do you conduct a search when you have no idea what you’re looking for? _] she wondered. Think about this, if Pamela did intend for you to find the key and if she wanted you to use it, she probably would have made certain that you would recognize whatever it was she wanted you to discover here.
The wooden chairs and table in the dining room were all new, too. The curtains were closed. That was good, she thought. The last thing she wanted to do was look at the view. It would remind her of all the meals she had eaten in this room, her father seated at one end of the table, her mother opposite, and her in the middle looking straight out at the lake and the old dock.
She pushed aside the memories with the skill and determination born of long practice. Turning, sh ade herself go to the entrance of the big, old-fashioned kitchen.
At the threshold she was forced to come to a halt. Nausea twisted her stomach. Her breath seemed t e locked inside her lungs. She could not go any farther.
It was all she could do just to make herself look into the room where she had found the bodies. Sh ave the counters a swift, sweeping glance, saw nothing out of the ordinary and then spun aroun efore she got physically ill.
If the object of her search was in the kitchen, it would have to remain there. She could not brin erself to walk into that space. Surely Pamela would have realized that.
She fled back through the dining room and living room and stopped in the front hall.
She knew her labored breathing was caused by incipient panic, not exertion.
Take it easy. You’ve got to do this logically, or you’ll never find whatever it is [_you’re looking for. _]
She went down the hall to her old bedroom. Dread and certainty gripped her every step of the way.
Like the other rooms, her bedroom, too, had been redone. The colorful posters had been taken down, and the sunny yellow walls that her mother had helped her paint were now a boring shade of beige.
There was a white cardboard box on the bed. On top of the box was a book. She recognized the small volume immediately.
It was a paperback romance novel, one that had been published seventeen years earlier.
Anticipation shuddered through her. She crossed the floor, removed the book and lifted the cover of the white box. Inside was a white dress sealed in clear plastic. At first she thought it was a wedding gown. Then she realized it was too small. A christening gown, perhaps, she decided. There was another object in the box, a video.