Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

I stopped when I was within two feet of her.

“Hey, Teach,” she said.

“Jane,” I said.

Jane Scavullo.

Cynthia Archer had been in Nathaniel’s apartment only five seconds when she realized she didn’t have her cell phone. Cynthia was not necessarily expecting Terry to call her about Grace, or anything else for that matter, but she wanted the phone with her just in case. So she ran back across the hall for the phone, then reentered Nathaniel’s place.

She’d told herself she had a good, and perfectly innocent, reason for accepting his invitation for coffee. She needed the distraction. Chatting with Nathaniel would keep her mind occupied with something other than Terry and Grace, and what might be going on that they didn’t want her knowing about.

It had nothing to do with the fact that he was an attractive young man. Let’s face it, a damaged attractive young man. He had more baggage than the lost and found at LaGuardia. And that short episode with Orland — the poor man — had been unsettling.

Nathaniel, reaching into the cupboard for two coffee cups, said, “It was nice to meet your husband, um—”

“Terry,” Cynthia said.

“Yeah, Terry. I hope I didn’t interrupt something when you guys were talking on the porch there. I didn’t realize — I mean, I never notice things like rings on fingers, so I didn’t even realize you were married. And you know, considering that you’re living here by yourself — but that’s none of my business anyway, so — Jesus, I’m rambling.”

Cynthia smiled. “That’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“He seems like a nice guy.”

“He is.”

“Grab a seat,” Nathaniel said, pointing to the small island in the kitchen nook. There were two stools tucked under the counter overhang. Cynthia pulled one out and perched her butt on the edge, one foot resting on the rung. At the island sink Nathaniel filled a glass carafe with cold water, turned around, and poured it into the top of an electric coffeemaker on the opposite counter, then slid the empty carafe into the base.

“I drink it, but the whole idea of decaf just seems wrong,” he said. “Like wine without alcohol. Cake without icing. Sex without orgasm.” He glanced at her. “Too far?”

“Yeah, the cake thing was a bit much,” Cynthia said.

“Thing is, decaf is all I can drink this late. It’s hard enough for me to sleep, and the last thing I need is to be more jittery.”

“What’s given you the jitters, aside from Orland?”

He forced a laugh. “Nothing really. Just — I was heading back, and I kind of let it rip on the turnpike, cruising around ninety, and I glanced in the mirror and thought I had a cop behind me. ’Bout had a heart attack. It was a Charger — the cops use them a lot for their unmarked cars. But it turned out just to be some guy.”

“Where were you driving back from?”

“Nowhere. A lot of nights, I just drive. Think about things. What used to be, and like that.”

“You know, I really think I should give Barney a call,” Cynthia said. She’d already put his number into her phone. She brought up her contact list, tapped the screen, and put the phone to her ear.

After three rings, “Hello?”

“Barney? It’s Cynthia? Over on—”

“I know.”

“Sorry to call so late, but there’s something I thought I should let you in on.” She told him the story.

“Oh no,” Barney said. “Orland’s been okay for a while, but he must be taking a turn for the worse. The other day, I went to call on him, heard him talking to somebody, but when he opened the door, there was no one else there and he hadn’t been on the phone, either.”

“He was looking for his wife,” Cynthia said.

“She’s been dead thirty years, at least. He could hurt himself if he’s starting to lose it.”

“That’s why I called. I was thinking, he leaves something on the stove...”

“Okay, I’ll check in on him. Thanks for this.”

Cynthia set her phone down on the counter and watched Nathaniel spoon in some ground coffee from a tin into the coffee machine, spilling some of it.

“Shit,” he said, using his hand as a broom to clear the spilled coffee into his other hand. He slapped his hands over the sink, then rinsed his hands to get all the granules off. “I always do that.” He forced another laugh. “Maybe I’ve caught something from the dogs. Distemper or something.”

Cynthia smiled. “Might be fleas. You need one of those collars.”

He nodded. “That might stop me from trying to scratch my neck with my foot.”

“That’d be something to see,” she said.

“Oh, I’m flexible,” he said, then, maybe thinking the comment had some sexual connotation, quickly added, “It’s all that stooping and scooping. It’s better than yoga. You ever tried yoga?”

“No.”

“I gave it a shot, didn’t like it. Took all kinds of things. Yoga, spinning — you know, the stationary bikes. A step class, but that was really a chick thing. Karate, but only until I got to the purple belt level, which is not all that impressive. I can still remember a couple of things, but those katas? You know, the movements you have to go through? I could never get those right. Tried jogging, too, and I still sort of do that, with the dogs. Instead of just walking them, we’ll run flat out for a half mile or so.”

The coffeemaker gurgled as the pot began to fill.

“So how many people’s dogs do you walk every day?” Cynthia asked.

“I’ve got ten. I zip from house to house, do four in the morning, six in the afternoon, walk each one for about forty-five minutes. I can jam a couple extra in after lunch because some of my clients live on the same street and I can walk two at a time.”

“They get along? The dogs, I mean, not your clients. Although if you have some gossip on them, I’m all ears.”

“Yeah, the dogs get used to each other, like to play, although sometimes I don’t cover as much territory with them. They spend more time sniffing each other than walking.”

Cynthia shook her head. “You really have to love dogs to spend your day doing what you do.”

“We always had them when I was a kid. Never more than one at a time, but when one died of old age or got hit by a car or whatever, we always got another.”

She winced. “Your dog got hit by a car?”

He made a V with his fingers. “Two. We lost O’Reilly when I was three years old, and Skip when I was ten. We were on a country road, up near Torrington — I’ve still got a lot of family up there. My brother lived up that way. I got nieces and nephews there still. Anyway, my parents never kept the dogs tied up. Wanted them to run free. My dad said if that meant one of them got run over, well, so be it. Better a dog have five great years running its ass off than fifteen years chained to a tree.”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Cynthia said.

“Anyway, after I left home and was working all the time, I never had a dog, and my ex, may she get crabs, was allergic, so there was no dog in my life for several years. Then, when the shit hit the fan and I needed something to do, well...” He threw up his hands.

“But you’re getting by okay.”

“Oh yeah. Twenty-five bucks a dog, ten dogs, that’s two-fifty a day, twelve-fifty a week, and it’s all cash, so it’s almost like making eighteen hundred a week or so if you had to pay Uncle Sam.” He eyed her suspiciously. “This isn’t where you tell me you actually work for the IRS and not the health department.”

“You’re so busted,” she said.

“And you know, there’s the odd other bit of cash coming in. The one thing I wanted to hang on to after my company went south was my ATS.”