John Lutz - The Ex

When she reached her building, she rolled the stroller into the dark walkway without hesitation, as if confident that any waiting predator, and not she, would be in danger. Chumley wouldn’t have walked into that black maw with such resolution. He was impressed by her bravery.

He stood for a while waiting for her apartment lights to come back on. Then he saw her walking from the dark gangway. The stroller was gone and she was carrying the sack of groceries.

He watched her push open the glass doors and enter the building’s lobby.

The elevator door opened immediately when she pressed the Up button. She stepped inside, punched her floor button, then stood leaning against the elevator’s back wall, clutching her groceries to her breast and staring in the direction of the street.

Chumley was sure the bright lobby’s reflections on the glass doors would prevent her from seeing him out on the sidewalk, across the street and on the other side of a row of parked cars. He watched as the elevator door smoothly closed, cutting her from his view.

Her actions confused him, and made him even more uneasy about the irregularity in the files.

On the other hand, what had he actually seen? A woman pushing a baby stroller, then buying groceries and using the stroller to convey them to her apartment. It didn’t compute that she’d store the stroller someplace in the building’s basement, compact and portable as it was, and come and go via the service entrance. But then there was so much in life that didn’t compute if you really stopped to think about it.

She’d paused here and there on the sidewalk and done a little talking to herself, but was that a crime? And was talking to yourself even so unusual these days? Maybe what he was doing was technically a crime, stalking her. Only he knew his true motives, and they’d be difficult to describe to strangers in an official setting

Chumley considered dropping in unexpectedly on her for a visit, perhaps asking her about the walk with the stroller, about the files.

But he’d seen her sudden anger and didn’t want to provoke her again.

He stood in the shadows on West Eighty-fifth Street and stared for a while, puzzled. Her apartment lights came on again, but the living room drapes drew closed without him catching sight of her.

He slapped at the gnats, who’d patiently awaited his return, then he shrugged elaborately and walked away.

Molly pushed the empty stroller along West Eighty-fifth Street the next morning, after dropping off Michael at Small Business. Traffic was heavy, and the sidewalks were teeming with people on their way to Monday morning work.

There was a store nearby that had a coupon sale on Healy’s Cat Gourmet Meatloaf, the only brand Muffin would eat-in various flavors, of course. Molly needed some other groceries, so she thought this was a good morning to buy them, at the same time stocking up on cat food for the week and hoping Muffin wouldn’t suddenly decide to switch brands.

She was waiting for the traffic light to change at Columbus when she noticed a woman in a green dress entering a clothing store across the street.

Molly stiffened behind the stroller.

The woman had looked familiar.

So had the dress.

The light read WALK and the knot of people at the corner began to move. Molly sped up and shot out ahead of most of them, pushing the stroller so fast that the rhythmic squeal of one of its wheels was almost a steady scream.

She crossed to the other side of Columbus and hurried to the clothing shop she’d seen the woman in the green dress enter. The sign in its window boasted that it sold both men’s and women’s quality irregulars and seconds.

Molly peered through the window at the racks of clothes.

Damn it! Deirdre, or at least the woman Molly had seen enter the shop, was nowhere in sight.

Quickly she collapsed the stroller, lifted it by its light aluminum frame, and went inside. It was possible that the woman had exited the shop unseen while Molly was crossing the intersection, but Molly didn’t think so.

The shop’s interior was somewhat dim, and crowded with racks of clothing, but it took Molly only a few minutes to look around and conclude that she and an elderly woman in Plus Sizes were the only customers.

“Help you?” a blond sales clerk in her twenties asked.

“I’m looking for a friend I’m sure I saw come in here,” Molly said. “But now I don’t see her. Is anyone in the changing room?”

The girl shook her head. “No, ma’am.”

“Would you look, please?”

The girl stared at her for a few seconds, then walked away toward a curtained doorway at the back of the store.

Less than a minute later she returned. “There’s no one in any of the changing rooms, ma’am. Like I told you, no one.”

Molly thanked her and returned to the street and the warm morning sun.

No one.

Had she imagined she’d seen the woman? Seen the green dress that was like Molly’s dress or was Molly’s dress, and one of David’s favorites on her? Was she hallucinating these days?

She unfolded the stroller, locked its handle into place, and continued rolling it toward the grocery store.

Next I’ll be hearing voices, she thought.

A man walking past glanced uneasily at her, and she realized she’d unconsciously spoken.

Talking to myself now, she thought with some alarm.

Maybe that was the step before hearing voices.

Traci Mack hung up the phone and sat back in her desk chair. Around her in her small office at Link Publishing were stacks of manuscripts, her computer, some shelves of published books she’d edited. A sign behind her desk said IF YOU CAN’T LEAD AND YOU DON’T WANT TO FOLLOW, SIT DOWN AND LET’S TALK.

She’d just been on the phone with Winston Delacort, the author of Architects of Desire. He’d called to complain about Molly’s breaking up his run-on sentences in the portion of the copyedited manuscript Traci had sent him to work on. He maintained that the prose was more fluent his way and better able to express architectural lines. Traci had been diplomatic, but she felt like sending one of Link’s hard-boiled crime writers to bump off Winston Delacort.

But that wasn’t the way the game was played. Instead, she would talk to Molly about fixing the run-on sentences by inserting conjunctions whenever possible. A safe, middle-of-the-road solution that should leave everyone only slightly miffed. That kind of philosophy had come to Traci early enough to help her professional life, but she still hadn’t gotten around to applying it to her personal affairs.

She leaned forward and used a pencil eraser to peck out Molly’s number.

The phone rang six times without an answer.

Traci hung up. She’d try again this afternoon, after lunch. Or maybe she’d talk to Molly about this the next time they met. She was almost finished with the manuscript anyway, and what were a few more revisions, one way or the other? They were slightly ahead of the production schedule now, thanks to Molly’s fast and reliable job on the manuscript, and the art department supplying a jacket illustration that had thrilled Winston Delacort.

She slid the manuscript she’d been reading into a drawer then stood up to leave. There was a new restaurant over on Lexington she wanted to try. Well, it was more of a bar, really. But they did serve food.

She told Jock the receptionist she was leaving for lunch, then pushed through the heavy wooden door out into the hall and walked to the elevators.

Plenty of other people in the building must have decided to go to lunch early. The elevator was packed. Everyone edged backward uneasily as Traci wedged her way inside far enough for the door to close.