Bill, closing his eyes briefly, said he was pretty sure that could be done.
“And I have to find an old typewriter. In all the stories I read, there was one reference to an Underwood. We need to find one of those. It doesn’t have to be an exact replica, but close. The good thing is, it’s within the realm of possibility it could still be out there. The real one was never found.”
“You’re sure?”
Still moving her hand up and down, she smiled. “I called the police. Made up a story about being from some crime museum starting up in New York. Said that typewriter would make an excellent exhibit. Never recovered, they said.”
Bill said he would start checking antique shops. He even knew a couple of business supply stores that might have something like that, almost as a novelty item. And there was always eBay and Craigslist.
“Nothing online,” Charlotte cautioned. “No trace.”
“Hang on,” Bill said. He closed his eyes, shuddered, gasped. Charlotte took her hand away.
“This is where the creative part comes in,” she said. “Paul has to believe this is the machine used in the murders.”
They would type up all the messages ahead of time, she said. Bill could feed him the idea of leaving paper in the machine if he didn’t think of it himself. Charlotte could hide them in the house and roll them into the typewriter or scatter them about the house as opportunities presented themselves. She’d make Bill a key, so he could sneak into the house and plant them. Or, she could do it herself.
Like the morning Paul wanted to find the yard sale where Charlotte had said she’d bought the Underwood. She didn’t call the real estate agency to say she’d be late. She called Bill, signaling that the house would be empty for the next hour or so. He went over and rolled a message into the typewriter. The morning that Paul arose late and found Charlotte in the shower, she’d already been down in his study, putting a message in place.
Over the next week, they worked out the details. With a new phone, she recorded the sounds of typing by banging away at the keys. She turned that into a ringtone. The muted phone would be left atop one of the kitchen cupboards, programmed to ring only when called from Charlotte’s personal phone. She’d keep that one under her pillow and make the calls once Paul was asleep.
They did some test runs. Bill held the new phone while Charlotte called it, using her own.
Chit chit. Chit chit chit. Chit. Chit chit.
“Oh my God,” he said. “It’s perfect.”
She’d even be able to do it if Josh were staying with them. He slept with iPhone buds in his ears.
Bill had some ideas of his own. “Remind him of conversations that never actually happened. Ask him if he picked up things you say you asked him to get, but never did. Reinforce the notion that his memory’s faulty.”
Charlotte liked that. She said she could tell Paul she’d seen a car parked outside the house, the same one he’d seen days earlier. Except, of course, he’d never mentioned seeing a car. She could send texts from his phone, leaving him baffled when he received the replies.
“And I can visit his therapist, and Hailey. Tell them all the disturbing things I’ve witnessed. Plant the seed that he’s losing it.” She smiled. “It’s nice to get back to acting. I don’t see winning an Emmy, but I’ll have you.”
Bill came up with what he called the clincher.
“One night, we go for broke. You get him drunk, slip something into his drink, show him the best night in bed ever. I sneak in, put that fucking typewriter right next to him. If that doesn’t drive him round the bend, he’s made of stronger stuff than any of us.”
Charlotte said she’d tell Paul she’d had the locks changed, even when she hadn’t. He’d be even more convinced there were supernatural forces at work.
They found a suitable typewriter in an antique shop in New Haven. The notes were written.
Bill identified one huge flaw in the scheme.
“This is all designed to drive him crazy, push him over the edge, make him step in front of that metaphorical bus.”
“Right,” Charlotte said.
“But what if he doesn’t?”
Charlotte smiled. “Oh, I have that figured out, too.”
Fifty-Three
Anna was not an expert at the whole “following cars” thing.
She’d grown up watching The Rockford Files and Miami Vice and Cagney & Lacey, and it always looked so easy on those shows when the detectives had to tail someone. They didn’t have to worry about traffic or red lights or pedestrians texting at crosswalks. The road was always clear for them.
The only way she could keep Bill Myers’s car in sight was to practically ride on his bumper.
She tried to back off when she could but was so afraid of losing him that she stuck too close to him. She was sure he’d notice he was being followed.
But maybe that wasn’t so bad. Didn’t she want to talk to him? She wasn’t tailing him so much to find out what he was up to as to find a moment to have a few words with him.
Right.
Except what was she going to say? What was she going to ask him? Anna was starting to think maybe she hadn’t thought this through.
Myers led her into a nice area of south Milford. He put on his blinker and turned into a development on Viscount Drive, a few hundred feet from the beach. He lived in a collection of attached townhouses, and turned into the driveway of one of them.
She kept on driving.
She had planned to stop, flag down Mr. Myers for a conversation, but then lost her nerve. She carried on to the next stop sign and turned.
Anna circled the block, came back, and parked out front of Bill’s house. She killed the engine, sat there, frozen by fear and indecision.
Knock on the door or leave?
While she considered what to do, she dug her phone out of her purse. She needed a distraction. She decided to check and see whether she had any messages. She’d muted the phone during the funeral. If anyone had texted, emailed, or phoned her, she wouldn’t have known.
Well, what do you know, there were two emails and one voice mail. She checked the latter first.
It was Rosie, her neighbor keeping an eye on her father while she was out, asking when she thought Anna would be back. The woman had an eye appointment at four. Anna called her immediately and said she would be home soon, long before the woman had to be at the doctor’s.
Then she turned her attention to the emails. One was junk, and the other was from someone asking if she was taking on new clients. Anna tapped on the reply arrow and was about to write back when she nearly had a heart attack.
Someone was rapping hard on her window.
Anna was so startled she dropped the phone into her lap and put her hand to her chest. Bending over, his nose pressed up to the glass, was Bill Myers.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
_________________
COMING HOME, BILL MYERS WAS PISSED.
He wanted to see Charlotte, needed to see Charlotte. Not at the funeral, but privately. She’d been putting him off, and sure, he understood the need for caution. But they hadn’t gone through all this to not spend time with each other. He needed her. He needed her in every way.
It was this need that made him take her hand as they were leaving the church. To link his fingers with hers. What he wanted to do, right there in the church, was put his mouth on hers, take her in front of everyone.
See the look on their faces.
But he wasn’t that stupid. And he’d already let her know a few minutes earlier what was on his mind. Sitting in the front pew, next to her, he had taken her hand and subtly shifted it to his lap so that she could feel how hard he was.
Charlotte had given him the tiniest squeeze before withdrawing her hand back to her own lap.