“I don’t blame Rhea. I mean, Maple Street could have ignored her—told her to go take a nap or pop a Prozac or whatever. But they didn’t. They whispered the poison right back.
“Did you read her dissertation? It’s like Freud meets Frankenstein. She was totally delusional. So, no. I don’t blame her for what she did. I blame the people who knew better. I blame the people of Maple Street.” —Evan Kaufmann, Menlo Park, California
118 Maple Street
Monday, July 26
Ding-Dong!
Rhea Schroeder put down the brush she’d been using to clean the sticky crevices of her fingernails.
Ding-Dong!
“Don’t come out of your rooms,” she warned as she rushed on one good knee, one aching knee, out of the bathroom and down the steps to the hall. She scanned the floors for oil. Clean of evidence. No trace left. She swung open the door.
“Detective Bianchi, hi!” she said. A smile, under the circumstances, would be overkill. “Did they find my Shelly?”
“I’m sorry, no.”
This was the second police visit today. The first had come just after dawn, and she’d met them on the porch. Told them everybody else was asleep and played the my kid’s missing and probably dead so show some respect card. Now she leaned, so Bianchi couldn’t see inside.
“Is it something about Arlo Wilde?” she asked. “I thought after I made that complaint that something would happen. But nothing’s happened!”
“I’m on it,” Bianchi answered. “He’s under full investigation.”
Rhea pointed at the house next door—the torn Slip ’N Slide, the broken window. Their car was parked but the Wildes weren’t home. Seeing all that, she felt real pity. Look at the mess they’d brought upon themselves with their bad choices. “I hate to think people can do such things. Arlo… I trusted that man. I trusted Gertie, too.”
“May I come in?” Bianchi asked. “I know your family was sleeping this morning, but I really do need to talk.”
She’d been through this before. Back at U-Dub, they’d investigated. The police first, then the university, then her department. She knew she had to answer yes. Anything else brings them back with a search warrant.
“Of course!” She backed up and showed him into the dining room with its missing drapes. It smelled in 118 Maple Street of heat and wine. Fermented and human. The maid had stopped coming after having to clean the wrecked house last week—to bleach the sink and sweep all the broken shards. She’d quit via text: Sorry Missus! I move to Peru. God Bless you!!!
“Have a seat!” she said, pointing at the chair, which she just then realized was still stained with a ribbon of Shelly’s menstrual blood.
She led the detective around to the other side so he didn’t notice.
“Please excuse the mess.” Her voice and diction were more demure than usual. More housewifely. She located this persona easily—it was the same one she used with the PTA and Linda Ottomanelli. Invoking it made explaining herself to stupid people more tolerable.
“Your house is very nice.”
Bianchi was of medium build, average height, with a middle-aged paunch, and he was invisible in the way all middle-aged people with unlucky genes are invisible. He had a gentle manner, too, shrinking deeper into his mid-priced suit to set her at ease.
But he was looking everywhere, at everything.
“What happened there?” he asked, nodding at her knee, which she’d wrapped in an Ace bandage for the first time in years.
“Oh, I had an accident a long time ago. With all the stress, it’s been acting up. I just need a cortisone shot. So, coffee? Tea? It’s almost five… Shall we be intrepid? How ’bout a beer!”
“Just your son,” Bianchi answered. His hair was so fair you couldn’t discern whether it was gray or simply blond. “I’d like to speak to you together.”
“Oh. FJ’s too broken up. He just can’t. But I’m happy to clear up whatever.”
He smiled. Even his smile was bland. “If not here, I’ll need you and FJ at the police station first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow? Oh, sure,” Rhea answered. “He can drive himself over… So, what is it?” she asked, feeling an alive kind of nervous, like the time she’d defended her dissertation. She’d mattered back then. They’d clung to her every word.
“Where were you last night?” he asked.
“How do you mean?”
“A felony assault occurred on your block. Someone threw two bricks through the Wildes’ window. Where were you and the rest of your family last night?”
“Goodness! We were home!” Rhea cried. “Snug as bugs. In rugs!”
Bianchi didn’t take his eyes away. Just waited to see if she’d say more. The room got distant like when you stand up too fast, and she knew that he didn’t believe her. She also knew that because of her circumstances, she had his sympathy. Sometimes, that’s enough.
“Is it possible that any of you left the house while the rest were sleeping?”
She pretended to think. “No? It’s an old house. It creaks. I’m a light sleeper.”
“Did you hear anything? Music playing? Or a window breaking?”