Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

I got close to the window, shone the light down into the basement, saw some shards of glass down there on the carpet.

“Let’s see if we can look inside without going in,” I said. I wanted to look through the kitchen windows. Most houses had the kitchen at the back of the house. The first-floor windows sat up some, the sills hitting me around the base of the neck. Low enough to get a peek.

There was flagstone right up to the wall’s edge, so I didn’t have to step into any gardens to put my face up close to the glass. A set of blinds covered the entire window, but they were turned to let the sun in, so I was able, at least in theory, to peer between the slats. I held the flashlight over my shoulder and angled it to shine light through them and into the house.

It worked. I was looking at the kitchen. There was a large granite-topped island, a fridge on the far wall.

“Can you see anything?” Grace asked.

Problem was, from my angle I couldn’t see below the level of the countertops. If someone was on the floor, I wasn’t going to be able to tell from out here.

“Not really,” I said.

There was one obvious solution, of course: call the Milford Police. They’d be able to get into this house without going through a basement window. They’d know how to contact the security firm that monitored the house. They’d know how to handle things properly.

They’d also have questions for Grace. About her and her boyfriend’s plan to steal a Porsche. About breaking into this house.

On the off chance that things were not as bad as they seemed, I wanted to keep the police out of this mess as long as possible. Preferably forever. I had a feeling Grace would accept whatever punishment her mother and I dished out if it meant she wasn’t spending time behind bars.

Stop going there.

I lowered the flashlight and backed away from the house a couple of steps. “I really can’t see anything,” I said. “And that’s just the kitchen. Maybe whatever you heard happened someplace else.”

I had to make a decision. Call the police, or—

“I’m gonna have to go in,” I said, glancing over at the open basement window.

“I can’t,” Grace said, eyes wide with fear. “I can’t go in there.”

“I’m not asking you to. You stay by the window. Better yet, call me on your cell. We’ll be connected the whole time I’m in there.”

We both got out our phones. I instructed her to mute the ring, and I did the same. Grace dialed mine, it buzzed in my hand, and I accepted the call.

“Okay. If there’s a problem out here, you just give me a shout.”

She nodded as I slipped the phone into my shirt pocket. Close enough that if she called out to me, I’d hear her.

I got down on my hands and knees and worked my way back through the open basement window.

Cynthia Archer was pissed.

Why wouldn’t Terry let her pick up Grace? Why did he insist on doing it? He had to know it was important to her. He had to know that she wanted her daughter to know that even though she was taking a break away, she still loved Grace and wanted to be there for her.

Even for something as simple as a lift home.

Was Terry angry with her? Was this about the beer? About her being rude? Did it have anything to do with Nathaniel? Did Terry pick up some kind of vibe from him, even in the few seconds they’d spoken? Maybe Terry wasn’t upset about anything that had happened today, but just generally fed up about the whole time-out.

Or maybe it was something else.

Maybe it was something to do with Grace. Maybe Terry didn’t want Cynthia picking up Grace because the girl was in some kind of trouble. Not necessarily something big, just big enough that it might set Cynthia off.

Was that how they saw her? she wondered. Like she was dynamite? Handled incorrectly and she’d explode?

It depressed her.

Terry and Grace were always trying to protect Cynthia, shield her from anything that might raise her anxiety level. Well, really, it was just Terry trying to protect her. Grace was probably more interested in protecting herself whenever she kept something from her mother.

The problem was, the more they tried to keep her from worrying, the more she worried. When she suspected this was what they were up to, Cynthia couldn’t stop thinking about what it was they were hiding. Was Grace having trouble at school? Was she skipping classes? Failing to turn in her assignments? Staying out too late? Getting into trouble with boys? Smoking? Drinking? Drugs?

Sex?

There was no end of things to make yourself crazy about when it came to teenage girls.

Cynthia knew better than anyone. She was willing to concede she was a terror at that age. But she also knew, despite the headache she must have been to her parents — at least while she was still in their lives — that she was a pretty good kid. True, she made some stupid choices, like all teenagers. She shouldn’t have been out that night with Vince Fleming, who was seventeen and had what they called back then a “reputation.” It wasn’t just that he liked to raise a little hell, drove too fast, drank too much. His father was a known criminal, and, to recollect a phrase both her mother and her aunt Tess used to say, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Even though she was half in the bag at the time, she could recall every detail of that night back in May 1983. At least the parts before she got home and passed out. She remembered her father tracking her down, finding her in that Mustang with Vince, how he dragged her out, drove her home. The ugly scene that followed.

And the horrible, horrible events that happened after that. Waking up the next morning to an empty house, and not knowing for another two and a half decades what had happened to her mother and father and brother. And then struggling to come to terms with knowing her family — that family, the one she grew up with — was now forever gone.

But none of it was her fault.

After all these years, it was one of the few things she’d finally accepted, thank you very much, Dr. Naomi Kinzler. The irony was, her bad behavior that night when she was fourteen, her excessive drinking, undoubtedly saved Cynthia’s life. She’d passed out, missed the whole thing.

Stop dwelling on the past...

But that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? She couldn’t stop. When you suffer a trauma in your teens, it never really leaves you. She knew these deep-rooted anxieties fed her worries about Grace, and Terry, too. It wouldn’t matter how perfect their lives were — she’d always be steeling herself for what was around the next corner.

There were medications she could take, of course. But she didn’t like how they made her feel, and really, wasn’t it a good thing to always be on guard? To be ready for whatever bad thing that might come along? You couldn’t allow yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security, right?

Except it was no way to live.

And she didn’t want to live here, in this apartment, nice as it was. A combined living room and kitchen, plus bedroom and bath. Nathaniel across the hall. Downstairs, Winnifred the librarian and Orland, the lonely old guy. Not exactly a place where you had to be worried about loud parties.

The only one she’d really gotten to know was Nathaniel Braithwaite. A very distinguished name for a man who made his living taking people’s pets for a stroll while their owners were at work.

Cynthia chided herself for mocking him in her thoughts. Nathaniel was a nice man. Thirty-three, jet-black hair, slim. From the looks of him, walking dogs got you in as good a shape as if you went to the gym. He told her he covered probably ten miles a day. Plus, all that bending over to clean up after them — well, it was the next best thing to calisthenics. Lots of stretching.