The Uninvited Page 8

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was like a blow to the solar plexus. Mimi sat, weak-kneed, without anyone to hold her up this time. She felt as if she had wandered into the middle of a battlefield. It wasn’t her war, so why was somebody taking potshots at her?

  She had lied to Jay; she wasn’t exactly fearless. But by the time she had dressed, set the security alarm, and climbed into the Mini, she could already feel her anger start to nip away at the big lump of fear and resentment in her gut. Jack Russell terrier takes on the Blob.

  She squealed out of the Pages’ driveway onto Riverside Drive. And the Mini Cooper beeped twice, surprising a bicyclist off the road.

  She found a nice-looking organic grocery store in town. She found a bakery where they made bagels.

  “Bagels,” she said, and sighed, clutching the bag to her chest. “All is not lost!”

  She found a bookstore and the library and a street of charming shops. A village with a river running through it.

  Jay was home by 12:45, and they sat down at a table of warm bagels, aged local cheddar, kosher dill pickles, sliced-up veggies, and freshly whipped mayonnaise.

  “Listen,” said Jay, “I’m sorry about the Grinch act this morning. I was worried about the house.”

  “It’s cool. Everything okay?”

  “As far as I could tell. I took the padlock off the ladder and put it on the storm door. I hope that’ll do the trick.” He frowned. “Hope he doesn’t know the starter fluid trick.”

  She nibbled at a piece of celery, trying to decide whether to tell him her latest news, figured she’d better. “There was this photograph of me and a friend,” she said. “Jamila, the one you thought was hot?”

  He nodded, but from the expression on his face, he was already guessing the worst. “What about it?”

  “I brought it with me,” she said. “I remember packing it. But it’s gone.”

  He stared at his sandwich. “You’re saying this guy went through your stuff?”

  She shrugged-didn’t want to admit that Mr. X had pawed through her clothes, her underwear. She shuddered.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s hardly your fault.”

  Jay shrugged and looked forlorn as if somehow it was.

  “Jay, I don’t know what’s going on up there, but it doesn’t change my mind. I mean I’ve come this far.” She took a deep breath. “I want to ask if we could share the house. For a while, anyway.”

  He stared hard at her a moment. “Did you talk to Marc?”

  She shook her head. “I’m too angry.” She broke off a piece of bagel, crumbled it in her fingers. “He’s such a jerk! I can’t believe he didn’t say anything about you.” She shook her head. “All these jerks! What am I, a jerk magnet?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, stop with the hurt routine. You know what I mean.”

  Jay blundered into a bagel sandwich that was too thick. She shook her head in disgust. He stopped. “Kidding!” she said. She made an open-face, took a bite. Swallowed.

  “Actually, I’m not being entirely honest,” she said. “About Marc, I mean. I can believe him not telling me about you. He’s… Oh, I don’t know. It’s like he’s a sociopath or something.” She glanced at Jay, whose mouth was open, his sandwich raised halfway there but stopped in midair. “Not in the Anthony Perkins-slash-Norman Bates way, but in the seriously irresponsible conduct way.”

  Jay was frowning now, and Mimi realized she was freaking him out. “Forget it,” she said. “I have taken precisely one psych course. All I meant was that Marc doesn’t seem to get it about caring, about family, about giving a shit.”

  She took another bite of bagel. She glanced at Jay again and felt guilty at the bewildered look in his eyes. She reached across the table and was about to give his hand a squeeze but then thought better of it; she wasn’t sure why. “He’s not a murderer or anything. I don’t want you to think that. It just wouldn’t occur to him to bother saying anything. That having relatives somewhere would be a big deal-that, like, I might care. ” Jay summoned up a smile. “Believe me, Marc won’t see this as his problem,” she said. “You and I wanting the place. He won’t care what we do.”

  Jay nodded. “Well, you’re right about that.”

  He had a weird look on his face. “How do you mean?” she asked.

  “My mother phoned him.”

  “Get out of town.”

  “Last night. If it makes you feel any better about him, he probably didn’t warn you because he thought I was still in school. So he didn’t expect you’d run into me.”

  Mimi was almost pleased. It was sort of like an excuse. But when she thought about it, not much of one.

  “He said pretty well what you said. It was up to us.”

  Mimi drank a sip of water. Didn’t want to look at Jay. Didn’t want to see no written on his face.

  “What is it you want to do up there?” he asked.

  “I want to write.” She glanced up. Was he silently howling with scornful laughter? No. He looked impressed.

  “Like a book? A novel?”

  She shook her head. “A screenplay. I just finished my first year at NYU. Dramatic writing.”

  “Very cool,” he said. “What’s it about?”

  Ah. She dropped her eyes. Then glanced at him, a little furtively. “It’s about a girl who gets herself in a big mess in her first year at college and runs away to another country.”

  There. It was out. She picked up her sandwich and took a bite. When she looked, Jay was regarding her with what… concern? Affection?

  “Boy-type trouble?”

  “Worse,” she said. “Professor-type trouble.”

  Jay picked up his own sandwich and took a bite. It was as if they were building a little wall of sandwiches between them. The kitchen was filled with the sound of two people not talking. A motorboat went by out on the river. Jay swallowed, took a drink of water.

  “The phone call you didn’t answer last night?” he said.

  “Right. That was him.”

  “Why don’t you block his number?”

  “I did, so he’s started calling from pay phones. Different ones.”

  Jay looked concerned, and it annoyed her because it only proved what she was worried about-that there was reason for concern. “So get a new cell phone from this area code,” he said. “It’ll be cheaper.”

  “I just got here, remember?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s none of my business.”

  You’re right, she thought. But she needed Jay on her side and bickering didn’t help.

  “Hey,” he said. “I really am sorry. I’m just, you know, anxious.”

  She nodded and thought that he was always low-grade anxious, as far as she could tell. “Thanks. It’s a sore point,” she said. Then she thought of something else and shook her head.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just a random little memory that came to mind.” She pointed at her head. “Sometimes it’s like bumper cars up there!”

  “Tell me,” he said. “I like bumper cars.” He grinned and she couldn’t help grinning back.

  Then she had to look away. The intimacy quotient was climbing way too fast.

  Still, he might as well know what kind of a crackpot he was dealing with. “Lazar Cosic-he’s the prof-he even accompanied me to one of Marc’s openings.”

  Jay’s head jerked, as if he’d been sucker-punched. “An opening? So, like, Marc was there?”

  “Of course. That was the point.”

  He looked perplexed. “You wanted Marc to see you with-”

  “A man almost his age? Yeah. Don’t ask why.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.” She laughed, a sad little laugh. “If Marc noticed, he didn’t say a thing.” Then she shook her head. “And that is the end of the amusing part of this broadcast. Lazar confused going to the opening with taking him home to meet the folks, which is when he started talking about leaving his wife.”

&nbs
p; “Yikes.”

  “And I freaked.”

  Jay chewed on his sandwich and looked to be chewing on what she had told him. “And so now you’re going to turn the whole thing into a movie,” he said.

  “Well, you’ve got to admit there is some dramatic potential.”

  “I guess.”

  She leaned her elbows on the table. “I’m thinking maybe in the screenplay, the professor turns out to be a psychotic killer-the real kind.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “Uh-huh. Luckily my part is played by Angelina Jolie. And she’s got great weapons.”

  He smiled wryly. “She’s a little old for a freshman, isn’t she?”

  Mimi shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. So who do you suggest?”

  But Jay was finished playing. He looked as if he had eaten something sour. “Men are such assholes,” he said.

  Mimi gawked at him.

  “Well, it’s true. Not all men, obviously. But really! A professor?”

  “That’s sweet of you. Thing is, it wasn’t entirely his fault. I mean it was consensual.”

  “No way,” said Jay. “He’s in this position of power. It’s harassment. Did you go to the dean?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I went to Canada.”

  Jay sat back in his chair and sighed. “So what happens next year?”

  She shrugged. “I’m thinking of UCLA or maybe the University of Singapore, if they have a film studies program. Anywhere that’s about a gazillion miles away.”

  “That is such bullshit. He’s the one who should have to leave.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “I dunno. He started getting serious and I got seriously cold feet and it sort of went south from there. Bam! Suddenly I’m in the middle of a midlife crisis.”

  “A quarter-life crisis,” said Jay.

  “Hey, cool. Like the John Mayer song, right? But what I mean is I was in the middle of his midlife crisis.”

  The scene of their last meeting, unwished for, bullied its way into Mimi’s mind: Lazar’s face like something from a horror movie, his raised fist, his voice all ragged and out of control.

  “Was he scary?”

  She realized the scene in her head must have been playing itself out on her face.

  She glanced at Jay and nodded. “Really scary,” she said. Then she flung herself back in her seat, swore a bit, and crossed her arms. “Listen. I don’t want to talk about this right now, okay? You asked me what I was doing here, and I said I wanted to work on a screenplay. Can we leave it at that?”

  “Okay,” he said. “I hear you. But I still think this guy sucks.”

  My big brother, she thought.

  “Thanks, Jay. The thing is, right now what I want-what I need — is to be here. To be far away from the whole mess. Not to mention far away from him!”

  She looked Jay squarely in the eye. “I am totally capable of staying out of your way. Seriously. I won’t be coming up asking if you want coffee. I won’t ask you to read scenes. I won’t sing or tap dance or put up a lot of shelves. I won’t distract you. Honest.”

  “It’s not that,” he said. He looked down at his plate. His hands rested lightly on the table. He flexed his fingers as if he were about to play the piano.

  “There’s still this other problem,” he said.

  “The creep?”

  He nodded. And she could see the concern in his face. “I guess I was hoping whoever was doing this shit would get tired and go away. I mean sometimes there’s nothing for weeks. I figured maybe I was winning the waiting game. But when I realized he’d taken the movie camera right out of your car, taken that footage, and then put it back, well…”

  “And now the framed picture,” she added.

  He nodded again, combed his fingers through his hair, left it standing in a softly spiky heap. Then he looked at her with such considerate eyes, she thought she might fall in love with him, anyway, despite all the taboos about that kind of thing.

  “I’m worried,” he said.

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t be there all the time. What if you were alone at night…?”

  She favored him with a really big smile. “Wait here,” she said. She went off to the guest room and came back with her purse. She sat down and rooted around. “There are two reasons why I don’t want you to be worried for me,” she said. “First of all, this,” she said, and held up her cell phone. “I’ll put the local cops on speed dial, if that’ll help.”

  “It would take them twenty minutes,” he said. “Assuming they didn’t get lost.”

  “Which is where this’ll come in handy,” she said. She held up a miniature spray canister, with a red plastic top.

  “What is that?”

  “Mace,” she said. “One spray and the creep is blinded. Temporarily. Just long enough for me to hit him with something large and get the hell away.”

  Jay shook his head, but he was smiling-a ghost of a smile. He was giving in.

  “Listen, Jay,” she said, grabbing his wrist. “This has been the strangest couple of days in my whole frigging life. And I’m not going to pretend I’m not a little freaked by what’s going on. But it’s good to be in the know, you know? And assuming there’s only one of him-if it is a him-well, it’s got to be better if there’s two of us.”

  “Except for the nights when there’s not two of us.”

  “Except for the nights when there’s not two of us. Agreed. But those nights it’ll be me and my friend Mr. Mace.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, he nodded.

  “Shake?” she said.

  “I already am,” he said. And they both laughed, a little hysterically, as if they’d been holding way too much inside.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was Wednesday before Cramer saw Mimi again. Just a glimpse, and it wasn’t up at the snye but at the Page place on Riverside Drive.

  The Taurus was not a car people noticed. It wasn’t old enough to be antique or rusted enough to be an eyesore. Cramer himself wasn’t sure what color it was: gray, green-he had no idea. The car, as large and ugly as it might be, was invisible. Which was just as well, when Mimi and Jay suddenly pulled out of the driveway in her Mini Cooper. There were high hedges to either side of the entrance, and so Cramer didn’t see them until the last second, even though he was parked pretty well right across the road. He had a map open on the steering wheel as an excuse, a lost traveler. But neither of them so much as glanced his way. They were talking up a storm, oblivious. It wasn’t just his car that was invisible.

  A boxy black Honda Element pulled out of the driveway a moment later, a large old desk strapped to the roof rack, its legs sticking up in the air like some dead animal. The back of the Honda looked to be jam-packed with furniture. Dr. Lou was sitting in the passenger seat, the other woman driving. They didn’t notice Cramer, either.

  It was 7:00 PM. He was on his way to work. For the last couple days, he had taken the time to drive out of his way past the Page house. He was scoping the place out. He had done it before, after all. And tonight it looked as if he had caught a break. It wasn’t hard to guess where they were all heading. The round-trip to the snye would take them an hour at least and who knows how long to unload all the furniture. Plenty of time. Now all he needed was to talk himself into it.

  Cramer looked ahead and behind him. Riverside Drive was deserted in both directions. It was a stretch of road with farmland to the north and large riverside properties to the south, properties that were wooded and landscaped, hedged and fenced. Private. Some of them even had gates. But not the Pages’. A lawn mower was making a racket nearby, but Cramer couldn’t see where. He skipped across the pavement and down the long, shaded drive without anyone seeing him.

  ADVANCED ALARM. The little sticker in the corner of the glass-fronted door didn’t come as a complete surprise. Clearly, he wasn’t going to just walk in the door the way he had last fall.

  He walked around the side of the house t
o the floor-length windows of the master bedroom. This was where he had found the emerald necklace. The curtains weren’t fully drawn. Pressing his nose up to the screen, he could dimly make out the dresser where Dr. Lou had kept her jewelry case. He had a penknife, never went anywhere without it; the mesh of the screen would be easy to slit. And then what? Break the glass? He quickly glanced behind him. He was alone. He turned his attention back to the window. It all depended on how the alarm system was activated: motion detector, pressure detector, or metal contacts on the window frames. Yes, there they were. But how long was this going to take? Would the siren be louder than the lawn mower? The alarm company would contact the local cops, but not before they phoned the residence to see if it was a false alarm. He sure didn’t plan on dawdling and he wasn’t greedy. Shit! He hated this-just wanted it to be over!

  He looked around for a rock, a stick. Nothing, just lawn. He backed off.

  He’d had a plan. He’d seen other stuff when he stole the necklace: pearls, some silver earrings, whatever. Not much, but he was guessing it was good stuff. He didn’t know any fences to get rid of stolen merchandise; that was Waylin Pitney’s territory. But he figured Mavis could help him out. It was for her, after all. So she could dress up in something nice. She could still do that, when she took a mind to it. They would drive into Ottawa, go to a jewelry store or a pawnshop or something. She could pretend she was selling off a few family heirlooms. She could pull it off-he knew she could-if he could convince her. It was a big if, but then it was for her-for her art! And there was something else that might win her over. She hated Louise Page.

  The lawn mower drew nearer. Cramer was standing a few yards away from a tall cedar fence. The lawn mower, by the sound of it, was right on the other side. The noise made him nervous. He wouldn’t hear a car arrive over that racket. What if they doubled back? What if they had forgotten something?

  He folded up his knife. He pressed his nose up to the screen one last time, trying to make out the shine or glitter of something of value.