“You wanna peek? I can fix that.” Jonas ducks into his toolshed and reemerges with a stepladder. He sets it up against the fence. “My lady.”
Even though he’s positioned himself in just the right spot to ogle my ass, I climb up the ladder and cautiously raise my head to peer across the fence. For a moment all I notice is the open cellar hatch and a bag of concrete leaning against the wall. Then I look at the upstairs windows facing the backyard and I see the reason for all the hammering and the drilling.
Bars. Matthew Green is installing bars over the windows.
Already he’s put them on the first floor, and now he’s moved upstairs, where his toolbox now sits open on the balcony. I stare at those bars, wondering why he’s doing this. Who is he afraid will break in? What is so valuable inside that house that he feels the need to turn the place into Fort Knox?
Then the chilling thought hits me. What if the bars aren’t to keep outsiders out, but to keep someone in? I think of his wife. Why do we never see his wife?
Suddenly the balcony door opens and Matthew Green steps out. I duck down before he can see me.
“What? What?” whispers Jonas.
“You won’t believe this.”
“Let me see.”
Jonas may be stocky but he’s not much taller than I am so I have to get off the stepladder to let him climb on. He takes one look and instantly ducks down again.
“I think he saw me,” Jonas says.
“Uh-oh.”
We both huddle by the fence, listening. It’s gone completely silent next door and my heartbeat thuds as I strain to listen. A few minutes go by and the drill starts whining again.
I nudge Jonas aside and climb back onto the ladder for another peek. To my relief, Matthew has his back turned as he works, so he can’t see me as he installs a new set of wrought-iron bars over the balcony window. Something catches my eye, something that I see only as Matthew Green bends forward, reaching into his toolbox for something. Suddenly wobbly, I clutch the fence to steady myself and I’m not quick enough to react when he suddenly pivots and stares at me.
Straight at me.
Caught in the act, I can only stare back at him as the seconds tick by. I am still staring as he walks back into his house and shuts the door.
My legs are shaking as I climb off the stepladder.
“What’s wrong?” says Jonas, frowning at my face. “What did you see?”
“I need to call my daughter.”
The average American cell phone user sends or receives 250 calls a month, and in that regard, Sofia Suarez had been utterly average, judging by the previous year’s phone log. Jane sat at her desk, combing through a year’s worth of calls, searching for any entry that stood out as unusual, any name that sent off a warning flare in her head, but nothing caught her attention. There were repeated calls to and from Pilgrim Hospital where she was employed, to a hairdresser and a credit card company, a plumber and an auto repair garage. And, prior to last November, numerous ones to her husband Tony. The pattern revealed the life of an ordinary woman who had her hair done once a month, whose car needed an occasional oil change, whose sink sometimes backed up.
As Jane scanned down the list, Frost was doing likewise at his desk, another set of eyes examining the same log to and from Sofia’s phone.
In November, the rhythm abruptly changed to a frantic tempo, with most of the calls going to the same number: Pilgrim Hospital, where her husband was now lying in intensive care. Here was the record of Sofia’s growing desperation as she reached out again and again for updates on Tony’s condition.
On December 14, her calls to the hospital abruptly stopped. That was the day her husband died.
Jane imagined the days leading up to that date, the jolt of anxiety Sofia must have felt every time her phone rang. As a nurse, Sofia would have recognized the signs that her husband’s body was failing. She would have seen the end coming. Jane thought again of the couple’s smiling faces in their wedding photo, a reminder that even in the happiest moments, tragedy was waiting in the wings.
She left behind that sad month and moved on to the log for January. February. March. Calls to and from Pilgrim Hospital, to a local dentist, and to Jamal Bird. No surprises. Jane turned to the month of April and stopped. Here was yet another abrupt change in pattern with a series of new phone numbers. In the last few weeks of her life, Sofia Suarez was reaching out to people and places she’d never contacted before.
She swiveled around toward Frost. “April,” she said. “Have you looked at that yet?”