She closes the door to her own room, where she’s kept the shades down ever since that first night. She settles on her bed with her laptop to resume scouring online reports for clues about the Toska murders.
She’s hardly the first true crime buff to attempt solving an old case. But in this situation, there’s very little to go on. The family members hadn’t left much of an online footprint leading up to their high-profile murders. That’s not unusual, considering they’d died long before pervasive internet and social media.
Still, a lot of old records have become digitalized and she’d uncovered plenty of information about the Williams family, including photographs. In life, posing with fellow schoolchildren, Gertrude’s eyes had twinkled with mischief even when her mouth was dutifully solemn.
The Williamses had lived a full century before the Toskas, yet so far, Stacey hasn’t uncovered evidence of their existence prior to 1994. The wedding photo of Lena and Stanley had been the only one published in the press.
The more she reads about the murders, the more apprehensive she is about being alone in the house tonight. She might feel better if Kato were with her, even if he’s just a lump of sleeping canine. And she’s definitely hungry again. But venturing back downstairs holds about as much appeal as calling her parents and telling them to come home because she’s scared.
Remembering the cigarettes she’d hidden, she retrieves them and a book of matches from her drawer. This is one way to calm her nerves.
It takes her a few tries to light a match, and when she does, she fumbles and burns herself trying to get a cigarette out of the pack and into her mouth with one hand. Finally, she gets it lit.
How can one cigarette give off way more smoke than two had when she was with Lennon?
She retrieves a damp towel from her laundry basket, rolls it, and wedges it along the door crack. At least the smell won’t seep out into the hall, but the small room is hazy and her eyes are stinging. And she doesn’t have anything she can use as an ashtray.
She goes to the window, cautiously lifts the shade a few inches, and lifts the sash just that far. Cold night air rushes into the room, diluting the smoke.
Much better.
She sticks the cigarette out and taps the ash, letting it fall into the plant border below, glad the house is made of stone and brick. In California, she’d worry about igniting a deadly, rapidly spreading wildfire, but that can’t happen here . . . can it?
She crouches on the floor, takes another drag, and blows it out the window, wondering what her parents would do if they caught her. It’s not like they’ve ever punished her for anything, or even had to yell at her, really.
Because she’s never done anything risky or stupid. Until now.
Lennon . . . the cigarettes . . .
Plus, she’s breached her own security measures by opening a window—which is precisely how investigators theorized the Toska family killer entered the house that night. Not this one, but down on the basement level. Back then, there hadn’t been bars on those windows. There are now. At least in the front. She hasn’t spent any time out back, or in the basement.
What if someone—the killer—got into the house earlier and hid down there all day, waiting until tonight?
Stacey’s chest constricts. She can hardly breathe regular air right now, let alone inhale smoke.
So much for alleviating her anxiety. The stupid cigarette is only making it worse.
She kneels and opens the window wider so that she can reach out far enough to stub the butt on the exterior concrete sill.
That’s when she sees it.
Him.
Cloaked in shadow, a hooded man is on the roof of the shed next door, binoculars trained on the house.
Nora
Heather and Jules deftly ease the friction between Nora and Keith, sharing their own tales of marital discord. Their storytelling skills are well honed, and they hand off lines and cues like a comedic duo.
Nora laughs along, but she’s relieved when wine arrives, closely followed by the first course.
“What should we drink to? Or should I decide? Okay, I’ll decide,” Heather says, as if they’d urged her to.
“Of course you will.” Jules rolls her eyes. “Guys, Heather loves to decide things, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, like you don’t?” her wife retorts.
“Sure I do. That’s why we get along. We’re both control freaks.”
Keith laughs. “That makes no sense.”
“What? Why?”
“Because two strong-willed people . . . don’t you clash?”
“Nah, we get each other. How about you two?” Jules asks Keith.
“Do we get each other? You don’t stay married almost twenty years if you don’t, right?”
Nora’s neck muscles clench as she returns his smile, and she hopes it doesn’t show. She imagines what Jules is thinking about Nora’s supposedly perfect life now that it’s obvious her marriage is anything but.
Heather lifts her glass. “Okay, so anyway . . . here’s to New York! Welcome, Keith and Nora. We hope you love our city as much as we do.”
They clink and sip.
“I did live here once before, you know.”
Nora half listens to Keith as he talks on about his college days. In the background, Sinatra sings about strangers in the night, and she nibbles her salad with a mouth so dry she probably wouldn’t be able to tell fennel from chocolate cake.
“. . . right, Nora?” Keith asks.
She fumbles her way back to the conversation. “Sorry, I zoned out for a second there. What was that?”
“I was just saying that you could probably fit the entire population of my hometown into this place.”
“Just about,” she agrees.
“So yeah, to answer your question, Heather, for me, moving to New York at eighteen was pretty overwhelming. But I loved every minute of the two years I got to spend here.”
“Why only two years?”
“It’s kind of a long story . . .”
It really isn’t, but he makes it one, telling Heather and Jules about the back-to-back concussions that had curtailed his days as a Division One wrestler and Ivy League student. Plagued by blinding headaches, confusion, and fatigue, he couldn’t focus on his schoolwork and his grades suffered.
“So that was the end of Columbia for me.”
“That’s terrible. And the same thing happened to me,” Jules says. “I mean, I wasn’t an Ivy League student athlete, but I did have an awful concussion years ago, when I got shoved off the stage during a concert.”
“Did someone attack you? A crazy fan?”
She laughs. “Oh, I wasn’t performing yet. It was right after I’d moved out to Seattle and I was the crazy fan. I stormed the stage, and security threw me off. I hit my head, and thanks to that—and a whole lot of drugs I took before, during, and after—my brain has been mush ever since, right, Heather?”
“Yes, and I love you anyway. But, Keith, your brain doesn’t seem as mushy as Jules’s. What did you do after you left Columbia?”
“Went home and finished my degree at Kansas State. Then I moved to LA because someone told me I should be an actor, and stupidly, I listened to her. Maybe my brain was mush.”