Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

He’d had his own software company in Bridgeport, designing apps for that cell phone company that went bankrupt a couple of years back. He’d had the fancy car, a condo overlooking the sound, a place in Florida. But when his major client went under and failed to pay Nathaniel’s company the millions he was owed, his company got dragged down with it.

Nathaniel didn’t just lose the company and the condo and just about every dime he had in the bank.

He lost his wife, too. She’d met Nathaniel as he was riding the wave and had grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle. When it ended, so did the marriage.

And then, as he’d told Cynthia during the chats they’d had in the hall or when they met on the stairs, he lost his mind.

He called it a nervous breakdown. A mental collapse, with a dollop of depression thrown in for good measure. Lasted the better part of a year, even spent a week in the hospital when he went through a suicidal period. When he finally emerged from the darkness, he opted for a simpler, less ambitious, much less stressful existence.

He might not get back into the proverbial fast lane for six months, or a year. Or maybe never. He got his small apartment, then began considering ways to keep food on the table and beer in the fridge.

Nathaniel liked dogs.

He’d always had them as a kid. He wasn’t about to go back to school for several years to become a veterinarian, but he was pretty sure he didn’t need a degree to walk them. He acquired several clients whose dogs needed to be liberated from the house to do their business every day.

Cynthia liked Nathaniel. She tried hard not to feel sorry for him. He claimed to be happy, that he wasn’t looking for pity, but he always seemed to be on the edge. She couldn’t help but feel a tenderness, an almost motherly feeling toward him. He was, after all, thirteen years younger.

A handsome man.

But right now, at this moment, she wasn’t thinking about Nathaniel. She was thinking about why Terry didn’t want her to give Grace a ride home.

Something was going on.

She could feel it.

The question was whether she should do anything about it, and if the answer was yes, then what? At the very least, she could call back in half an hour and make sure Grace had gotten home safely. She paced the apartment wondering what she should do.

Make a cup of tea and go to bed. That’s what you should do.

As if that would happen. She had tossed the pamphlets warning about household mold on her small dining table — just the sort of thing she wanted to read while eating dinner — and now picked one up to reread the copy. She’d written it, and now that she was looking at it again, she realized she could have used simpler, less technical language — and that was when she heard a noise in the hall.

Maybe Terry had decided to drop by with Grace. Was there a chance of that? That they might decide to surprise her with a late-night visit?

But then she heard raised voices. Two. Both men, although neither sounded like Terry.

Cynthia swung open her door to see Orland from downstairs trying to open the door to Nathaniel’s apartment. He kept twisting the knob, but the locked door wouldn’t yield.

Cynthia guessed Orland was in his seventies. He was sapling thin and had probably been over six feet tall at one time, but now, round shouldered, he was no more than five-nine. His thinned, wispy hair was all over place, as if he’d just taken off a hat, but there was none in evidence. His eyebrows were bushy and there was hair sticking out of his ears. His silver-framed glasses were askew.

Nathaniel was ten feet away at the end of the hall by the top of the stairs.

“Orland?” he said. “Can I help you?”

Orland’s head craned around. “Huh? Yeah, you can help me. You can help me get this damned door open.”

He made a fist, banged on the door. “Honey? Open the damn door!” He turned and looked at Nathaniel again. “My wife’s locked me out. Goddamn bitch.”

Cynthia stepped out into the hall and gently placed her hand on the man’s shoulder. His head moved around and he eyed her over the top of his glasses. “You’re not my wife.”

“It’s me, Cynthia. Your upstairs neighbor. I think you’re on the wrong floor.”

“Huh?”

“Orland,” said Nathaniel, “why don’t you let us take you downstairs, to your place.”

“My wife’s moved?”

Nathaniel and Cynthia guided him toward the stairs. Nathaniel led and Cynthia followed. The door to Orland’s apartment was unlocked. They settled him into his La-Z-Boy chair in front of the television, which was already on.

“I was watching TV,” Orland said.

There was no one else in the apartment, and Orland took no notice of that. The hunt for his spouse was over, for now.

“You going to be okay?” Nathaniel asked.

“Sure, I’m fine. What are you doing here?”

“Good night, Orland,” Cynthia said as she and her upstairs neighbor slipped out of the apartment and closed the door.

“I’ve never seen him like that,” she said.

“Me, neither,” Nathaniel said. “Good thing I got home when I did. He might have got into my place and I’d have found him in my bed.”

When they’d returned to the second-floor hallway, she said, “I wonder if I should let Barney know. I mean, if Orland’s starting to lose it, he could set the place on fire or something.”

“Jesus, I hadn’t thought of that.”

They’d reached the door to his apartment. “Listen, you want a coffee or something? I feel a little, I don’t know, wound up.”

“It’s late,” Cynthia said.

“I was going to make decaf, if you’re worried about not being able to get to sleep.” He smiled, flashed his perfect teeth, and opened the door. “Take two seconds.”

She knew she should go back into her apartment and close the door. But it would be nice to talk to someone, anyone, about just about anything. She hadn’t realized, when she decided to stay here, just how lonely she’d feel at times. How even turmoil was a form of company.

Talking to Nathaniel might ease the anxiety she was feeling about what Terry and Grace might be keeping from her.

And the things that she was keeping from them.

“Sure,” Cynthia said. “A cup of decaf sounds great.”

I pushed my legs into the house, let them dangle a second, then dropped in. It was barely a one-foot drop to the basement floor. I surveyed the room with the flashlight. All the things you might expect. Big couches. TV. Dartboard on the wall. Bookshelves jammed with as many DVDs and old VHS tapes as actual books. I shone the light around my feet looking for glass, not wanting to step in it even with shoes on. Shards could get caught in the treads.

But it was impossible to avoid, and broken glass crunched beneath my shoes.

“What is it, Dad?” Grace asked, appearing to me only from feet to knees, her shoes just beyond the window.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just glass.” I got the phone back out of my pocket and put it to my ear as I hunted for the stairs up to the first floor. “You hear me?” I said.

“I hear you,” Grace whispered, still close enough that there was a slight echoing effect in my ear. “It’s making a weird noise, like your voice is repeating. It did that before tonight, when I got out of the house. My phone might be wonky.”

“It should go away once we get farther apart,” I said.

Phone in one hand, flashlight in the other, I found the stairs and ascended to the first floor. The stairs brought me off to the side of the front hallway. One of the drawers on a shallow table pushed up against the wall was half open. I raised the flashlight, cast the beam ahead into what looked to be the kitchen.