Starter House(84)

“Lacey?” He turned to look back into the bedroom.

He’d have heard her car if she’d come home. He swung the mirrored door again, and there it was, the slash of fair hair and a pale arm. What did the mirror see? In the bedroom, dim and watery light spilled from the bathroom. Maybe the window’s white blinds had caught the bathroom’s cast-off light and reflected it blond and white. It could be nothing else. Over the last week, he’d been careful not to leave clothes lying around, after giving himself a shock by glimpsing a white shirt and seeing it as a body curled in a chair. This was a small house, but too big to live in alone.

He swung the mirror. It had to be the blinds. He couldn’t keep his mind from slipping to the living room, the furniture with feet, creeping around in the dark. . . . He turned on the bedroom light and stood in the doorway to reach the hallway light switch. That was better. He needed a remote control that would turn on all the lights together. Four thirty. If he wanted to be at Spinet Cove by midmorning, he’d better quit daydreaming.

He hurried downstairs and put an English muffin in the toaster and three frozen sausage patties in the microwave. With breakfast in progress, he ran back up the stairs to toss a few things in a garment bag. Then down the stairs, slipping a little on the fourth step from the bottom; he caught the banister and bumped down the last three steps on his heels. Oh, that hurt, it jarred his teeth. He rubbed his jaw with both hands, just behind and under his ears, and what was that in his driveway, some immovable shadow?

The toaster popped. Eric made his sandwich: strawberry jam on the bottom muffin, sausage, a dribble of maple syrup, the second sausage, more strawberry jam, the third sausage, and wasabi mustard on the top muffin. Courtroom breakfast, his favorite, greasy and hot and spicy and sweet. What was in the driveway, blocking his exit?

He opened the front door. A beige car was pulled right across his driveway. He could see the tire tracks where it had driven across his grass. It was parked with its passenger door four inches from his back bumper. He’d never be able to get out.

Eric finished his sandwich, went back inside for his cell phone, and walked over to the beige car. He rapped on the driver’s window. “Hey,” he said. “You can’t park here.”

The beige car was greenish in the security light from Eric’s porch, its windows dark as mirrors. For a moment, he was certain it was empty, that it had never been driven and someone had towed and abandoned it here, where it had taken root, never to move again. He rapped harder. Something moved in the dark inward space. “Hey!” Eric said loudly.

The driver’s door swung open. Eric stepped back. For the space of five breaths, nothing moved. Then out came a worn sneaker, a denimed leg, a chambrayed arm and side, and the long dim face of Lexington Hall. “I need to talk to you,” Lex said.

“What the hell?” Eric closed his hand around his cell phone, so Lex wouldn’t see it. He knows where you live, Sammie had said. “You can’t be here.”

“You’re my lawyer. I paid for you.”

“Harry paid. I’m refunding your retainer,” Eric said, and too bad if Floyd didn’t like it. Eric would pay it out of his own pocket, anything to get Lex Hall off his driveway.

“You’re my lawyer. I need my baby.”

Eric took a breath to answer and stopped himself just in time. Never argue with crazy people. Arguing with crazy people makes you crazy. “You have to make an appointment. I can’t talk to you here.”

“That shiny girl won’t make an appointment. She only lets me see the other one. You’re my lawyer. I paid for you.”

“I am telling you to leave,” Eric said, clearly and loudly. A light came on in Harry Rakoczy’s house. “Leave my driveway now, Mr. Hall.”

Lex Hall’s hands came up to his own chest, clutching and twisting the fabric of his shirt, as if he might tear the shirt off or pull it up over his head and hide inside it. “I didn’t,” he said. “I don’t want. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t.”

Eric was sorry. He ignored the feeling. Lex might be a poor sick damaged thing, but compassion was a luxury out of the Miszlaks’ budget. Lex’s sufferings, Lex’s lost child couldn’t be Eric’s problem. “You have to leave,” Eric said. “I’m not your lawyer. You can’t come to my house. Go away or I’m calling the cops.”

The light in Harry Rakoczy’s house moved. The upper dormer light disappeared, and a new light appeared, green and yellow in the stained glass over his front door, then the door opened, and a broad yellow fan opened across Harry’s grass. “Who’s there?” he called, an old man’s timid question in the dark.