Stitches in Time (20 page)

Rachel followed him. She didn't look at the male footprints. They could have been made by a delivery man or door-to-door salesman or a friend who had not heard that she and the others were away. But she knew someone who wore oversized, old-fashioned galoshes. Their housemates had often kidded him about them.

She unlocked the door, but when she would have opened it, Adam took her arm. “Let me go first.”

Rachel didn't argue. Even a cheerful modern house has a depressing air about it when it has been unoccupied for some days, and this house was neither cheerful nor modern. The door opened halfway, into a space of dusky, stale-smelling silence, and then stuck.

Adam's eyes widened. “There's…something…behind the door,” he breathed. Squaring his shoulders, he edged through the opening.

“Probably a body,” Rachel said sarcastically.

There was a brief silence before Adam responded. “You sure get a lot of mail.”

Rachel went in and switched on the overhead light. It didn't improve the general atmosphere, bringing into stark detail the stained, scuffed bare boards of the floor and the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. Adam stood staring at the pile of envelopes and periodicals that had been pushed through the mail slot. A magazine had caught under the door, jamming it.

“One of my housemates is a catalogue freak,” Rachel said. “Talk about junk mail! It's a wonder the world isn't buried under the stuff. I'll do that,” she added, as Adam knelt and began sorting the accumulation into piles.

“I'll have a look around,” Adam said, rising impressively to his feet. The small hallway looked even smaller with Adam and his sweaters occupying so much of the space. Small, shabby, and odorous; the ghosts of former meals and antique plumbing haunted the air. Wrinkling her nose, Rachel sat down on the floor. Tossing magazines and catalogues aside, she glanced through the envelopes. There was nothing for her except bills, a few belated Christmas cards…and a note, written on lined paper and folded twice.

She was still staring at it when Adam returned from his investigation of the kitchen and living room. “What's that?” he asked.

“Nothing important.” Rachel stood up and shoved the paper into her jacket pocket. “A—a friend stopped by looking for me. That takes care of the mail. I'll see if there are any messages on the answering machine.”

At least the note had prepared her. He had called five times, twice on Christmas Eve, three times on Christmas Day, leaving a number each time. The conciliatory tone of the first message turned to anger and accusation at the end. “I know you're there. Probably standing by the phone listening. Call me.”

Hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, Adam watched her curiously. “Same—friend?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

“You didn't write down the number. Shall I play it back?”

“No.” She jabbed at the rewind button, wiping out the messages. Except for Phil's tirades the only call had been a Christmas Day greeting from her family in England. Each of them had spoken a few words.

She let Adam precede her up the stairs. He moved lightly and quickly for a man of his size; when she reached the top of the stairs he had opened a door and was looking into the room.

“That's not my room,” she said.

“I deduced that, from the intimate male garments lying on the unmade bed. Your housemates aren't very neat, are they?” Calmly, ignoring her protests, he looked into the other rooms. “How many people live here?”

“Four—I mean, three. They've all gone home for the holidays.”

“I don't see any signs of unauthorized intrusion. This your room?”

“Yes.”

All at once she was gripped by violent distaste—for her small, comfortless room, for the entire house. She wanted to get out of it as fast as possible and never come back. How could she have tolerated such a dirty, depressing place? Wherever she went after she left Tony…after she left Leesburg…it wouldn't be here.

Rapidly she emptied drawers and tossed clothing into the cartons she had stored in the closet. There weren't enough of them to hold all her possessions, she'd have to come back one more time. It didn't matter. What mattered was getting away, quickly.

“Can you carry this one?” she asked, indicating the
box that held books and papers. “I'm afraid it's pretty heavy.”

“No problem.” Adam hoisted the box onto his shoulder.

Together they carried the cartons to the porch. Adam insisted on transporting them to the car and Rachel stood by the door, under the sheltering shadows of the porch, while he did so. When he came back for the last one she locked the door and followed slowly after him, scuffing her feet, blurring each footprint as she walked.
Maybe the snow will melt, but it's better to be safe than sorry
.

“What are you doing?” Adam asked.

Rachel looked up with a start. He was waiting by the car, frowning as he watched her.

Without answering she got in the car and started the engine. Adam climbed in beside her. He didn't speak until she had negotiated the stop-and-start traffic of Route 1 and turned onto the Beltway.

“Maybe you'd better tell me about this guy.”

“There's nothing to tell. It's over.”

“Doesn't sound as if he thinks so.”

“Oh, he was just…in one of his moods. Probably bored and at loose ends. I haven't heard from him for weeks, and I don't expect I will again.”

“You're afraid of him. Look at your hands.” Rachel relaxed her white-knuckled grip on the wheel, and Adam went on gently but inexorably, “I'd just like to know how many threatening characters I have to watch out for. We're up to two now. Anybody else you'd care to mention?”

“I didn't mention Phil because my private affairs are none of your business,” Rachel retorted hotly. “He is not a threat. He's a selfish, moody, irritating boor, but he's not dangerous. I am not afraid of him!”

“Then why were you scuffing out your footprints when you left? Watch out for that van,” he added in the same mild voice. “He's about to move over into your lane.”

Rachel slowed, leaving enough space for the impatient driver to cut in ahead of her. He hadn't bothered with turn signals, but if she hadn't been distracted she would have anticipated his intention too.

“You're right,” she said, after a moment. “I wasn't aware of what I was doing. How ridiculous! All that talk about footprints and superstition must have been preying on my mind. Even if he came back and even if he knew I'd been there and even if he could identify footprints with the snow melting so fast, it wouldn't matter.”

“Does he know where you work?”

“Let's drop the subject, all right?”

“Okay.” Adam held out his hands. “Did I tell you how much I like my mittens? Great colors.”

“It's not that I don't appreciate your concern,” Rachel said awkwardly.

“It's purely selfish. I have these fantasies about rescuing you.”

Rachel decided the only way she could deal with comments like that was to ignore them.

It was dark before they reached Leesburg. Christmas lights blazed out from houses along the way, and the shop windows of the business section had been strung with tinsel and ropes of evergreen, holly and poinsettias. The homeowners of Cornwall Street favored more subdued decorative effects; blue and crimson, gold and white, the bulbs of the trees inside the houses twinkled through the darkness. Thanks to Joe, whose tastes ran to quantity rather than quality, their own decorations were the most conspicuous on the quiet street; he had strung lights along the fence and around the blue spruce in the front yard, and only his mother's outraged protests had prevented him from climbing onto the roof to outline the entire house.

Either Adam had remembered to leave the lamps in the
family room turned on or he had forgotten to turn them off; the house welcomed them with warmth and mellow light. The answering machine was blinking insistently, but Rachel was able to ignore it until after she had helped Adam carry in the cartons and return the rapturous greetings of the dogs. She wasn't afraid of Phil—that was ridiculous—but she shrank from talking, or rather arguing, with him, especially with Adam around, and she didn't underestimate his intelligence. If he wanted to track her down he could.

“I'll carry those boxes upstairs for you after dinner, okay?” Adam asked. “I'm starved. How about spaghetti?”

“Again?”

“I like spaghetti. You didn't have any last time.”

He was smiling but his eyes shifted, avoiding hers, and then she understood. The sauce came from a can, the spaghetti from an unopened box. It wouldn't be easy to tamper with either.

“All right.”

“Sit down and relax. Crazy Glue is waiting for a lap.”

His attempt to suggest that this was just a nice normal domestic evening was a little ludicrous under the circumstances, but it proved to be effective. All the small details that added up to create atmosphere of comfort—warmth instead of chilly cold, light instead of shadows—a cat purring on her lap—Adam bustling back and forth from the sink to the stove to the fridge. The glass of wine he handed her was another nice touch, but when he sat down opposite her with a glass of his own she cried out.

“Adam! Don't!”

Adam jumped. “Geez, don't yell like that! Everything's under control; I have to wait for the water to boil before—”

“You poured the wine from a bottle that was already open,” Rachel said urgently.

“Ah.” Adam hesitated and at first she thought he was
going to leave it at that. But he went on. “Is there something wrong with it?”

One part of her consciousness was aware of the apprehension with which he awaited the response a direct question might evoke. Another part probed inward, delicately as a fingertip, ready to pull back at the first sign of opposition. The wall was still there, and behind it only a waiting silence.

She hadn't realized she was holding her breath until it came out in a long, uneven sigh. “I don't know,” she said. “I can't tell. But why take chances?”

Adam had been holding his breath too. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“I took quite a chance myself.” His eyes were bright and speculative, and Rachel wondered if the business of the wine had been a test—and whether she had passed or failed. He might have been referring to the risk of questioning her, or the chance that she would not have stopped him from drinking wine she knew to be tainted.

Irrationally and unreasonably angry, she returned his stare. “Put some of it in a bottle. We'll have it analyzed.”

“Forget it.” But he tipped both glasses into the sink and opened another bottle. “I agree that we should be cautious, but I doubt there was anything wrong with it. Remember what Pat said—she wouldn't do anything that might injure you.”

“Pat is awfully damned sure of himself. And his hypothesis is unproven. If I'm psychotic and guilty instead of innocent and haunted, I might arrange a little accident in order to clear myself of suspicion. I wouldn't worry about hurting someone else, either.”

“What a clear, logical mind you have,” Adam said approvingly.

A sarcastic retort was on the tip of Rachel's tongue when the telephone rang and Adam reached for it.

The voice was clearly audible, even from where she sat. “Didn't you get my messages? Why didn't you call me back? Where have you been?”

Adam started to explain. Pat cut him off. “All right, okay. Is Rachel there? Anything new?”

“Yes and no, in that order. How are you?” Adam grinned at Rachel and held the phone out so she could hear the reply. It continued, typically, as a monologue.

“Never mind the social amenities. I had a look at the stolen goods today.” He chuckled fiendishly. “The cop at the desk didn't want to show me, but I bullied him into it. It helps to have connections. I think I've identified the one we're interested in. As soon as I touched the damned thing I could feel the difference. It was impossible to make out the pattern, the fabric was so filthy, but I spotted a couple of curious details. I thought you girls were going to clean it.”

He stopped to take a breath. Adam said, “I'm not one of the girls. Do you want to talk to Rachel?”

He handed her the phone and sat down next to her. “Hold the earpiece out a couple of inches or you'll get your eardrum blasted,” he advised.

Pat was talking again. “Well? Rachel, are you there? Why don't you answer the question?”

“What question?” Rachel demanded, following Adam's advice. “You don't have to yell, Pat, I can hear you quite well.”

“I'm not yelling,” Pat said indignantly. “Why didn't you clean the quilt?”

The answer came smoothly and promptly to her lips. It was the truth, if not the whole truth. “As Tony kept telling Cheryl, it doesn't belong to her. She had no right to clean it or do anything else to it.”

“We've got to get possession of it, then, or at least get permission to examine it. Who is the legal owner?”

“The old lady's niece, I guess. But the police are holding it and the other things until—”

“Yes, that's what they told me. Officious bastards,” Pat added unfairly.

Rachel waited for him to ask the next, obvious question. She couldn't volunteer the answer. It was as simple as that—she could not. But if he asked…Her stomach knotted in anticipation.

Adam wrenched the phone from her grip. “Pat? It's me again. Kara is the one you want to talk to. She discussed the possibility of buying the things from Mrs. Wilson, and I presume she's got the woman's phone number. Look, we're about to eat. I'll call back if anything interesting develops. Otherwise we'll talk to you tomorrow.”

“You'll probably see me tomorrow.”

“Thanks for the warning. Good night.”