Mal detects a faint British accent.
“They all think I’m a nutter, you know? Come closer. Take a seat. Would you like some tea? You’ll need to fetch yourself a cup from the kitchen cupboard first, but I have some extra in my flask. It’s still hot.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Sit, then, sit. Please. It’s so nice to have the company.”
Mal seats herself on an overstuffed chair. “Nice view,” she says. She can see her boiler-suited techs busy by the pool, and she can see into the part of the living room where the coffee table is upturned. Movements are also visible in the upstairs windows. Police tape flutters across the driveway.
“Yes, it’s a marvelous view. Horton bought me binoculars two weeks ago so I can see to the other side of the Burrard. I can sometimes see the sailors on the tankers in the bay. They come from all around the world, you know. Today is a twelve-tanker day. Just look at them all waiting to go into the harbor.”
Mal looks. The water sparkles. “You also have a good view of the house next door and the driveway, too.”
Beulah pulls a wry mouth, but her rheumy eyes light up. “I’m too old and too far gone to pretend I don’t turn my scopes on the neighbors.” She leans forward and lowers her thin voice in a conspiratorial way. “Between you and me, that is. And the binoculars make it so much nicer. My spectacles were failing me as it was.”
Mal smiles. “Do you get downstairs much?”
Beulah’s features change. She glances away. Then quietly she says, “Horton . . . he means well. He did buy me the binoculars.”
Mal opens her notebook. She clicks her pen. “You reported hearing screams early this morning, Mrs. Brown. Can you tell me in your own words what you saw and heard?”
“Beulah. Please call me Beulah. Something woke me at 11:21 p.m. I lay there awhile and I’m sure I heard it again. A woman’s scream.”
Mal makes a note in her pad. “You seem very certain of the time.”
“Well, yes. I keep a log now.”
Mal glances up. “A log?”
“Like a journal. A recording of everything I see. Out in the garden. On the water. Next door. Along the little seawall path in front of my property. Sometimes a yacht docks in the bay, and I watch the people on board having their sundowners, and I write it all down—what time they anchored and sailed off. Which stand-up paddleboarders go past, and when. I started a few weeks ago because Horton kept telling me I was misremembering and mis-seeing things. He said I was forgetting my medication and that I needed to take more pills. I began to worry he might be right. Or that I might be taking the wrong pills, because the days just started blurring one into the next. So now I write down which pills I take, and when. And I write the names of all my carers and nurses. I also record how often I go to the loo.” She chuckles. “Otherwise they make me try again. Getting old and sick is not for the meek, I tell you.” She hesitates, coughs. “It’s such hard work sometimes I wonder if it’s worth fighting to stay alive.”
Mal feels a clutch in her chest. “I’m sorry to hear that, Beulah.”
“Calling 911 does offer some respite, though.”
Mal wonders again how reliable this witness will prove to be. “About what you saw—”
“Pass me those reading spectacles,” Beulah says abruptly as she reaches for her notebook.
Mal hands the glasses to her, and Beulah perches them on her nose. She opens her book, runs a gnarled finger down the text on the page. “I’ll start from when I believe it began yesterday. At six fourteen p.m., Thursday, October 31—that’s Halloween. We never used to celebrate Halloween when I was a girl. We—”
“Go on. What happened at six fourteen p.m.?”
“The Glass House got visitors—that’s what everyone in the neighborhood calls Northview: the Glass House.”
“What visitors?”
“A couple in a dark-gray Audi. It pulled into the driveway at six fourteen p.m. At six fifteen p.m. the couple exited the Audi. The male was tall, well built, sandy-brown hair. The female was a brunette. Long wavy hair.”
“Very precise—sounds like a police report, Beulah.”
“Oh, I love detective and mystery stories, Sergeant. Watch them on all the streaming channels. I mean, what else am I to do? The British ones mostly. And I always used to read mysteries as a little girl in Yorkshire.” A wistful look deepens the old woman’s wrinkles. “One time I thought I might try to write my own. About a lady detective. One should follow one’s heart, you know, because before you realize it, your time on this earth is done and you’re at death’s door.”
Mal gently steers her back, a sense of urgency tightening. The first forty-eight hours of a homicide investigation are critical. Success could hinge on this old woman’s statement. But Mal can also see that rushing this old witness might backfire and have the opposite effect.
“Can you tell me anything else about this couple, Beulah?”
She consults her notes. “Well, the man was maybe forty years old. The woman a bit younger. She was very pregnant.”
Mal’s gaze narrows sharply. “Pregnant?”
“Yes, like Vanessa North is.”
“Vanessa North—the homeowner—is also pregnant?”
“She’s certainly showing now. I saw Vanessa last Friday. It was the first time I saw that brunette as well. The two of them had a late lunch by the pool. It was very clear they’re both pregnant.”
Mal’s pulse quickens. She thinks of all the blood, the signs of violence. Urgency bites harder. “Beulah, this couple who visited yesterday, were they carrying anything?”
Beulah consults her log. “Flowers. Mostly white. And something like a cake box. It looked like they were arriving as dinner guests.”
Mal makes another note. “What happened next?”
“I don’t know. My carer came, then it was dinner and bathing time, and I was put into bed, and I . . . I must have passed out with the medication. But I woke all hot and bothered in the dark. It was raining, and I realized a scream woke me. I managed to get into my chair and roll to the window. And that’s when I saw.”
“Saw what, Beulah?”
“All the lights were on next door—it was a great glowing box of glass. Even the pool light was on. Kind of a haunting, glowing green. The living room doors were wide open in spite of the rain, and the coffee table was upturned. Then I saw them, the couple, dressed in black rain gear, and they were tugging something heavy rolled up in that white carpet from the living room. Tugging it alongside the pool toward the yard gate. I know it was the carpet because when I looked with my binoculars this morning, it was gone. They dragged the carpet through the gate into the driveway. The motion sensor went on. It lit the rain up. It was also very foggy out.”
“Go on, Beulah. What happened next?”
“Well, they struggled quite a bit. That carpet looked heavy, and she was awkward because of her pregnant belly, but they got it into the back seat of the car. The Audi, not the other one.”
Frustration nips at Mal. “What other car?”
“The little yellow one. The maid’s Subaru with the Holly’s Help sign on the doors. The maid arrived earlier that morning. But her Subaru was still parked in the driveway when the couple arrived in the Audi. I assumed the maid was helping with catering, or waiting to clean up after dinner.”