The Woman Next Door (23 page)

Gretchen put her slender hands together in front of her mouth. She was taller than Amanda by half a head, but seemed waiflike, even with her height and the bulge in her belly. Seeing the latter, Amanda felt a wave of envy that was nearly palpable.

Determined to ignore it, she asked, “What kind of damage was done? Paint?”

“Slashing,” Gretchen said from behind the edge of her hands.

Again, Amanda saw Graham hurt. “God.”

“I’ve been getting phone calls where no one answers. I figured it was one of Ben’s sons. But I don’t think they’d destroy something their father loved. And I don’t see them sitting in the woods waiting for me to leave the house.”

Amanda had met the sons a number of times. Though they were closer in age to Graham and Amanda than Ben had been, she far preferred Ben. He’d had an easygoing way about him. Same with June. The sons were more driven.

Focused intently on the house, Amanda jumped when she felt a warmth against her right hip. “Julie,” she said with a breath of relief, putting her hand on the child’s head, “you scared me.”

“Is something wrong?” Julie asked.

“I don’t think so,” Amanda said as lightheartedly as possible.

“Why are you standing here?”

“We’re just waiting for Graham.” Slipping an arm around the child’s shoulders, she gave her a quick squeeze, then let her go. The message, of course, was that Julie should turn and go back to her front porch.

“Can I wait with you?”

“Don’t you usually help your mom with dinner?”

“She did it already. I asked if she’d read with me, but she said she couldn’t. Only I don’t know why not,” Julie said with added feeling. “She’s just
sitting
there.”

“Maybe lost in thought,” Amanda said lightly, though she could easily imagine what Karen’s thoughts might be. Chances were no small part of them was focused on the woman standing on her left. “Maybe needing rescue. Go rescue her, sweetie.”

Julie crinkled her nose. “She’ll tell me to play with Samantha.” Samantha was the doll, which sat neatly propped on the Cotters’ front steps. “She’s always telling me that. Where
is
Graham?”

“He’s at Gretchen’s.”

“Why?”

“He’s doing her a favor.”

Julie slid Gretchen a curious look. Concerned that the questions might start getting uncomfortable, Amanda was relieved when the child said, “Oh. Okay,” and skipped off.

“You’re good with her,” Gretchen remarked, though her eyes were focused on her house.

“She’s easy to be good with,” Amanda said, then murmured, “Where
is
Graham?”

“Where are the police?” Gretchen responded.

Both questions were answered in the next minute. Graham came out the front door of Gretchen’s house just as a cruiser rounded the bend.

Relieved, Amanda ran to join him. Gretchen stayed close beside her.

“There’s no one inside,” he said when they met on the walk. He waved the cruiser over. “I went through the whole place. The only damage I saw was to paintings.”

“Paintings?” Gretchen asked, sounding more frightened than ever. “More than just the one in the front foyer?”

“There was that one, and two in the living room.”

Gretchen broke away and ran up the front steps. Swearing softly, Graham went after her. Amanda wasn’t about to be left behind. She followed, right in through the front door, past the painting that hung in the front hall and now had a single slash through its center, and on into the living room.

Gretchen stood with a fist pressed to her heart, staring at the painting on the wall. Tears trickled down her pale cheeks. Amanda glanced back at the other painting that had been damaged, but the difference was startling. Far greater damage had been done to
La Voisine
than to either of the other paintings. Here the slashing had been vicious, leaving the subject that Amanda had known to be a breathtakingly beautiful woman nearly unrecognizable.

The police called from the front door.

“In here,” Graham called back. When they appeared under the living room arch, he greeted both men by name, shook hands with each, and made the introductions. Their faces were familiar to Amanda, though she had never formally met either one. The older of the two, Dan Meehan, was fiftyish and easygoing. His partner, Bobby Chiapisi, was easily twenty years younger and obviously newer to the force. He wore his uniform starched; his manner matched it.

Directing them to
La Voisine,
Graham explained what he knew.

“Whew,” said Dan. “Someone was angry. So it’s this painting and the other two.” He turned to Gretchen. “Anything else?”

Gretchen made no effort to wipe the tears from her face. She looked weak—“destroyed” was the word that came to Amanda’s mind. She couldn’t help but feel for the woman.

“I don’t know,” Gretchen whispered. She lowered herself to the sofa without once taking her eyes from the painting.

“I didn’t see anything when I walked through the house,” Graham said, “but I only looked for the obvious. Nothing was knocked onto the floor. There didn’t seem to be any ransacking. Gretchen will have to go through to see if anything was taken.”

“I wasn’t gone very long,” she said flatly.

“How long?” the younger officer asked, firmly gripping his small pad and pen.

“Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.”

Dan looked at Amanda and Graham. “And no one saw anything?”

They were shaking their heads when Karen came to the living room door. Julie and the twins were close behind, their eyes wide. “What happened to that painting?” she asked, gesturing behind her, but catching her breath when she looked ahead. “Oh my.”

“We’ve had an intruder,” Dan said. “It’s Mrs. Cotter, isn’t it?” At Karen’s nod, he said, “Do you live nearby?”

“Next door.”

“Did you see anyone coming or going in the last hour?”

“Just Gretchen.” She didn’t take her eyes from
La Voisine.
“What a mess.”

Georgia and Russ materialized behind her. “Why are the police here?” Russ asked, seconds before his eyes, too, went to the painting. Graham approached them to explain, while Dan knelt in front of Gretchen. Thinking that she seemed pathetically alone sitting
there on the sofa with her tear-streaked face, Amanda sat beside her.

“Would you like to see if anything else was taken?” the officer asked.

Gretchen shook her head. “The only things worth taking are my ring and earrings, and I never take them off.” The earrings were diamond studs that matched in size and shape the central stone in an elegant wedding band.

“Would there be money anywhere to take?”

“No.” She changed her mind. “Yes. But I don’t care about money. They can have money. But why would they do
this?”

“Do you have any idea who might have done it?” he asked. Gretchen shook her head. “Who has a key to the house?”

“The door wasn’t locked.”

“Is there a boyfriend in the picture?”

“No.”

“The father of the baby?”

“No.”

“No, what?” the man prodded gently.

“The baby’s father wouldn’t do this.”

“Perhaps if you gave us his name—”

“There’s no need,” Gretchen said with quiet determination.

Feeling uncomfortable, Amanda asked the officer, “Can’t you dust for fingerprints or something?”

“We will.” He shot a glance at his partner.

Bobby Chiapisi looked unhappy. “If there were prints on a knob, they’re probably gone. Half the neighborhood’s just come in these doors.”

Sure enough, Allison and Tommy were there, and before anyone could say much of anything, Lee appeared behind them. “What’d I miss?” he asked, then saw the painting. “Omigod.”

His distaste looked real enough to Amanda. Still, she might have liked to know where he had been for the last hour and who could vouch for him.

Dan Meehan pushed himself to his feet, then straightened the rest of the way. “The thing to do is to let Mrs. Tannenwald go through the house to see if anything else has been touched. It could be we just have an art pervert.”

“This was the only thing in the house that mattered to me,” Gretchen murmured.

Not knowing what to say, Amanda simply put a supportive hand on her arm.

“The best I can suggest,” the older officer said with regret, “is that you call your insurance company.”

For the first time, Gretchen looked directly at him. “Can they replace the painting?” she asked, sounding angry—and Amanda was proud of her. Any fool could see that the painting had sentimental value.

“No,” the policeman answered. “But they’ll send out their investigators and an adjuster. You’ll get money to buy a new one.”

Amanda took one look at Gretchen’s face and, quietly but firmly said to the man, “I don’t think she wants a new one. This one had special meaning. Whoever did this has stolen that from her. The best you can suggest,” she used his words, “is how the department can track down the culprit and find out why he did what he did.”

The man looked duly chastened. “Yes, Mrs. O’Leary. We’ll try to do that. We’ll get cruisers out on the other side of the woods and canvass the houses over there to see if anyone noticed anything strange. We’ll put extra details on this area. We’ll do what we can.”

“Thank you,” Amanda said.

***

Amanda was the last of the women to leave the house. The police were still inside with Gretchen, as were Graham and Lee. The others had dispersed. The only child in sight was Jordie, who was watching the drama from his front porch, with an arm high on a post. Despite the cruiser’s glaring presence, the cul-de-sac was quiet.

As soon as Amanda neared the sidewalk where Karen and Georgia stood, Karen asked, “What were you doing in there so long?”

“I went through the house with Gretchen to see if anything’s missing. I felt bad for her. If it’d been me, I wouldn’t have wanted to do that alone. Not after someone had been in my house. It was a creepy feeling.”

Karen arched a brow. “Being in her house?”

“Knowing that someone else had been there doing awful stuff with a knife. If I were Gretchen,” Amanda said, trying to put herself in the woman’s shoes, “I’d be wondering what he touched and what he thought and whether he was hiding out somewhere nearby and planned to come back.”

“Think underwear,” Georgia remarked. “What if he opened drawers and touched things? Can you imagine? I feel dirty just thinking of it.”

“‘Violated’ is the word I used,” Amanda said, reflecting on the bits of talk she had exchanged with Gretchen during the search.

Karen was less sympathetic. “She has an alarm. She should have used it.”

“Do you use yours?” Georgia asked.

“No. I can’t with the kids. They’d be locked out or locked in. It’d be a mess.” She returned to Amanda. “So did she find anything missing?”

“No. She didn’t think he’d gone upstairs. She said nothing looked like it had been touched there. He couldn’t have been inside
for long. She wasn’t gone for long.” The air was mild, but Amanda wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. No matter that Gretchen wasn’t her favorite person in the world, no woman should have to face this. Sleeping in that house tonight was going to be a challenge. “I keep seeing the scraps of that canvas hanging every which way off the painting. Whoever did that was sick.”

“Did she take it down?” Georgia asked.

“No. Graham asked if she wanted him to, but she said she’d do it later.”

“Well, I won’t miss that painting,” Karen remarked. “It was trouble. So. Who do you think did it? I can’t imagine it was a random thing.”

“Not quite,” Georgia said.

Amanda agreed. “Whoever entered the house had a mission. That painting was the target.”

“Then it wasn’t theft,” Georgia reasoned, “which means that whoever did it bears a grudge.” She slid Karen a crooked smile. “We have you on motive.”

Once, they all would have laughed aloud, Amanda realized. They would have been of like mind and shared humor. They would have been a team, particularly where Ben’s lovely, young, blond-haired wife was concerned.

Karen didn’t smile now, though. “Ha-ha,” she said soberly, then, “Did you see the way Bobby Chiapisi was looking at Gretchen?”

“He wasn’t,” Georgia replied.

“Precisely. He wouldn’t look at her. It was like he wanted to be anywhere but there.”

Georgia scowled. “You think that he and Gretchen . . . ?” She shook her head.

Amanda agreed with her. “I’ve seen him around town. He wasn’t
avoiding her. He’s like that all the time—stiff, formal, starchy, awkward.”

“He’s the right age,” Karen said. “He’s single. He’s always standing right out there in the open, manning the traffic light in the center of town. She could have seen him. He could have come on to her.” Her brows went up. “Wasn’t he part of the police detail on the day of Ben’s funeral?”

“He might have been,” Amanda said, though she didn’t actually remember.

“The department is small,” Georgia said by way of agreement.

Karen seemed satisfied with the possibility. “So”—she turned to Amanda again—“did you go upstairs with her?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Was the bedroom pretty?”

Amanda thought for a minute. “Pretty? Enough so. Seductive, no.”

Georgia returned to the intruder angle. “Should she be staying alone there tonight?”

“I asked her that,” Amanda said. “I asked if there was anyone else she could stay with—family or a friend. She said there wasn’t.”

“I’m not having her stay at my house,” Karen declared. “Neighborly concern is one thing, but having her down the hall would be pure suicide.”

There was a heavy silence.

Karen waved a hand, as if to erase the words. “Oh my. That was an unfortunate slip of the tongue. Let’s not go there.”

But how not to? Amanda thought. All three of them had been at a sixteen-year-old boy’s funeral that morning. It put vandalism into perspective.

Apparently agreeing, Georgia said, “Allison is shaky. When she’s
home, she sticks to me like glue.” She glanced at the Cotters’ porch. “How’s Jordie doing?”

Karen followed her gaze. “He’s quiet.” Her voice dropped. “Let me see if I can talk with him.” She set off, but before she had even reached the steps, he disappeared into the house. She stopped, hesitated, then more slowly followed him inside.