A Stranger in the House Page 8

  Brigid is a skillful and creative knitter; she’s even had some of her own patterns published. She has a knitting blog that she’s very proud of, where she showcases some of her work, and she has a lot of followers. On the banner across the top of her blog is written Knitting isn’t just for old ladies! And there’s a picture of Brigid there, too. Brigid’s happy with the picture, which she had taken by a professional photographer. She’s very attractive in that photo; she photographs well.

  She’d once tried to teach Karen how to knit, but Brigid could tell she wasn’t really interested in learning. And she didn’t have the patience for it. They’d had some laughs and agreed that maybe it wasn’t Karen’s thing. Karen seemed to want and enjoy Brigid’s company anyway, despite their different interests. It’s too bad Karen hadn’t taken to knitting; knitting with someone is a great way to get them talking, and Karen isn’t one to open up easily.

  Earlier today Brigid visited her favorite shop, Knit One Purl Too. She was running out of the fabulous purple Shibui yarn she’d bought last time. The minute she walked in the door and saw all the colorful skeins of yarn bundled along the walls, almost up to the ceiling, she felt her spirits lift. So much color, so much texture—such unlimited possibilities! She walked happily around the shop, admiring, feeling, and gathering up various yarns of different weights and colors until her arms were full. She loves gorging on yarn.

  Brigid was stroking a lovely orange merino wool when a woman she vaguely recognized approached her.

  “Brigid?” the woman said. “I’m so glad to run into you! I wanted to tell you how much I loved your last blog post about fixing knitting mistakes.”

  Brigid almost blushed with pleasure.

  “I missed an increase, and that trick with the crochet hook worked like a charm.”

  “I’m so glad you found it helpful,” Brigid said, smiling. It was gratifying to share her expertise and be appreciated. It made all the hard work of writing the blog worth it.

  Sandra, at the cash register, was also happy to see her. “Brigid! We don’t see you much anymore. You must come back to our knitting circle.”

  Brigid instinctively cast her eyes to the chairs arranged in a circle at the front of the store. She wasn’t ready to come back. She couldn’t face it. Too many women happily knitting baby things—at least three of the regulars were pregnant. And they talked about it constantly. She couldn’t trust herself not to let her hurt and disappointment spill over; she couldn’t trust herself not to say something unpleasant. None of them would understand. Better to keep away. “Soon,” Brigid lied. “I’m really busy with work these days.” She hadn’t told anyone there that she’d quit her job because of the fertility treatments. She didn’t want to tell them about her fertility issues. She didn’t need their pity.

  She picked up the bulging, expensive bag of yarn and quickly left the shop, her mood spoiled.

  Now, Brigid watches as two men in suits come down the street, knocking on doors. The men stop at her neighbor’s house. She’ll be next.

  When she hears the doorbell, she puts her knitting aside and answers it. She’s alone in the house; Bob is out at a function, as he so often is. The two men stand on her doorstep. The taller one, handsome with striking blue eyes, pulls out a badge and flips it open.

  “I’m Detective Rasbach,” he says. “This is Detective Jennings.”

  Brigid tenses. “Yes?” she says.

  “We’re conducting a police investigation. Did you happen to see your neighbor Karen Krupp leave her house on the evening of August thirteenth? That’s the night she had a car accident.”

  “Pardon?” she says, although she heard him perfectly well.

  “Did you see Karen Krupp leaving her house on the evening of August thirteenth? She had a car accident that night.”

  “Yes, I know about the accident,” Brigid says. “She’s a friend of mine.”

  “Did you see her leave the house that night?” the detective presses.

  Brigid shakes her head. “No.”

  “Are you sure? You live right across the street. You didn’t see her go out?”

  “No, I didn’t. I was out until later in the evening myself. Why?” She looks back and forth between the two detectives. “That’s kind of a strange question.”

  “We’re wondering if she was alone.”

  “I’m sorry, I have no idea,” Brigid says politely.

  “Perhaps your husband was home that evening? Is he here?” the detective queries.

  “No, he’s not home. He’s out most evenings. I think he was out that night, too.”

  The detective hands her a card and says, “If your husband did happen to be home and saw anything, would you please have him give us a call?”

  She watches the two detectives stride back down her walkway and go on to the next house.

  —

  Neither Karen nor Tom can sleep, although each pretends for the other. Tom lies on his side with his face to the wall, his stomach churning. He keeps replaying the scene of the detectives in their living room that afternoon, over and over. He remembers the ease with which his wife lied to them about the gloves. In contrast, he had lied badly, and they all knew it.

  He feels Karen move restlessly on the other side of the bed; finally, she gets up quietly and creeps out of the room. He’s used to this now, her getting up in the middle of the night. Tonight, it’s a relief. He hears the bedroom door close softly behind her and turns over and lies on his back, his eyes wide open.

  Tom had seen the police detectives going up and down the street earlier that evening, from the upstairs office window. Karen must have noticed them. Yet neither of them had mentioned it to the other.

  He feels sick when he thinks about the police investigating her, hates himself for the creeping doubt he feels about her. Now he’s watching her all the time, wondering about her, about what she’s done.

  And he can’t help worrying: What will the police find?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Karen has Tom drive her to Jack Calvin’s office on his way to work the next morning. Luckily Calvin was able to fit her in. Tom has an important meeting that he cannot miss, and cannot stay. Or so he says. Karen wonders if maybe he can’t deal with any more of this, or doesn’t want to. Or perhaps he thinks she’ll be more forthcoming with the lawyer if he’s not there. But she’s not going to tell the lawyer any more than she’s told her husband. She just wants to know what she should do.

  Tom leans over and kisses her on the cheek when he drops her off, but he doesn’t meet her eyes. She tells him she’ll take a cab home. She stands in the parking lot for a moment watching her husband drive away. Then she turns and walks toward the building. Once inside, she hesitates for a moment in front of the elevators, but then she presses the button. When she arrives at the lawyer’s office, she swallows her fear, opens the door, and walks in.

  She has a longer wait this time, and her nerves begin to get the better of her. When she’s finally ushered in to see Jack Calvin, she can feel the tension in her shoulders, her neck.

  “You’re back!” the lawyer says cheerfully. “So soon. Does this mean you’ve remembered something?” He smiles at her.

  She doesn’t return his smile. She sits down.

  “What can I help you with?” Calvin says now, all business.

  “I still don’t remember anything about that night,” Karen tells him. She imagines what he must think. He probably thinks she’s here to tell him something she couldn’t tell him in front of her husband—about some sordid affair she’s conducting on the rough side of town. She will have to disappoint him. “Tom has a meeting this morning that he can’t miss,” she says.

  He nods politely.

  “Everything I tell you is protected by attorney-client privilege, correct?” Karen asks, looking him directly in the eye.

  “Yes.”

 
; She swallows and says, “The police paid me a visit yesterday.”

  “Okay.”

  “I thought it was about the accident.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No.” She pauses. “They’re investigating a murder.”

  The lawyer’s eyebrows go up, his eyes sharpen. He takes a fresh pad of lined yellow paper from his desk drawer, grabs an expensive-looking pen off his blotter, and says calmly, “You’d better tell me everything.”

  “It was horrible.” She chokes on the last word. She feels nauseated, remembering the photographs of the corpse. She can feel her hands trembling in her lap and squeezes them together. “They showed us photographs, of the body.”

  She quickly tells him about the detectives’ visit. “I didn’t recognize the dead man,” she says. She watches the lawyer closely, hoping he will somehow be able to save her.

  “You were speeding, running red lights, not far from where a murder took place—possibly around the time the murder occurred,” Calvin says. “I can see why they might want to talk to you.” He leans forward, his chair squeaking at the movement. “But is there anything else to tie you to that crime? Because unless there’s something else, that’s nothing to worry about. That’s a dicey area. It has nothing to do with you, does it?”

  She feels herself swallow again. She looks at him, steadies herself, and tells him the rest. “They found some gloves.”

  He stares at her with his sharp eyes, waiting. “Go on,” he says.

  She takes a deep breath and says, “They found some rubber gloves, in a parking lot near the murder.” She hesitates, then adds, “I’m pretty sure they’re mine.”

  The lawyer stares at her.

  “Our rubber gloves are missing.” She pauses. “I don’t know what happened to them. They’re quite distinctive, pink, with a flowered pattern near the top.”

  “Did you tell them you were missing some gloves?” Calvin asks.

  She can tell from his tone how incredibly dumb he thinks that would be. “I’m not that stupid,” she says tartly.

  “Good. That’s good,” he says, obviously relieved.

  “Tom lied for me,” she says. She can feel her mask of composure slipping. “He told them we weren’t missing any rubber gloves. But they could tell he was lying.”

  “Rule of thumb,” the lawyer says. “Don’t lie to the police. Don’t say anything. Better yet, call me.”

  She says, “They said they don’t need to prove those gloves were mine. Because apparently my car ran over them in that parking lot—they have tire track evidence—so they can put me, or my car, at least, near the murder scene. They have evidence.”

  Calvin looks back at her, his face grave. “Who’s the detective on this anyway, who figured that out?”

  “His name is Detective Rasbach,” Karen says.

  “Rasbach,” Calvin says, looking thoughtful.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Karen says in a low voice. “They were all over my street last night, the detectives, talking to the neighbors.”

  The lawyer leans forward intently and fixes his eyes on hers. “You do nothing. You don’t talk to them. If they want to talk to you, you call me.” He takes another one of his business cards, turns it over, and writes a number on the back. “Use this number if you can’t get me at the others. You’ll always be able to get me at this one.”

  She takes the card from him gratefully. “Do you think they have enough to charge me?” she asks anxiously.

  “Not from what you’ve told me. You were in a parking lot, near a building where a murder was committed, possibly around the time of the murder. You were speeding, and had an accident. You might have seen something. That’s all. The question is, what else will they find?”

  “I don’t know,” she says nervously. “I still can’t remember anything about that night.”

  Calvin takes a minute and scribbles some notes. Finally he looks up at her and says, “I hate to mention this, but I’ll need a bigger retainer, just in case.”

  Just in case. Just in case she’s charged with murder, Karen thinks. She fumbles in her purse for her checkbook.

  “I have to ask,” Calvin says quietly. “Why might you have had a pair of rubber gloves with you?”

  She deliberately avoids his gaze, searching in her purse for her checkbook. She says, “I have no idea.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rasbach runs a thorough background check on Karen Krupp. If you don’t count the recent high-speed accident, she’s a model citizen. Not a single moving violation on her driver’s license. Not even a parking ticket. A fairly solid employment record—temping and then two years at Cruikshank Funeral Homes as a part-time bookkeeper. Her taxes are in order. No criminal record. A nice, quiet, suburban upper New York State housewife.

  But then he digs a little deeper. He knows her maiden name is Karen Fairfield, he knows her date and place of birth—Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He starts with some basic searches.

  But he doesn’t find much on Karen Fairfield from Wisconsin—no record of her ever having graduated, or even attended, either grade school there or high school. She has a birth certificate and a social security number. A New York driver’s license. But other than that, prior to a couple of years ago, there’s nothing on Karen Fairfield with the date of birth he’s been given. It’s as if she rose, fully formed, at the age of thirty, when she moved to New York State.

  Rasbach sits back in his chair. He’s seen this before. It’s not as rare as the average person might think. People “disappear” all the time, and take up life elsewhere, under new identities. Karen Fairfield is obviously a fiction. She’s a segue into a new life. Tom Krupp’s wife isn’t who she says she is.

  So who is she?

  He is going to find out; it’s only a matter of time. He drops by Jennings’s desk to share what he’s learned. Jennings lets out a low whistle.

  “I’ve got something, too,” Jennings says. “She got a call.” He hands a printout of the Krupps’ phone records to Rasbach.

  Rasbach takes the printout from the other detective and looks over the information carefully. “She got a call at eight seventeen P.M. on August thirteenth, the night of the accident,” Rasbach notes, looking up at Jennings.

  “From an untraceable cell,” Jennings says. “A burner phone.” He adds, obviously frustrated, “We don’t know who called her, or from where.”

  “You don’t use an untraceable cell phone without a good reason,” Rasbach says, pursing his lips. “What the hell was she up to, this housewife of ours?” he murmurs. He’s not surprised to learn that she received a call right before she tore out of her house that night. He expected as much. Because the night before, they’d found two witnesses who had seen her leave. One, a mother of three who lived diagonally across the street from the Krupps, had seen Karen Krupp run down the front steps and get into her car, obviously in a hurry. She said Karen had been alone. Another neighbor farther down the street remembered her, because she felt that Karen had been driving too fast when there were kids playing. She, too, was certain that Karen had been alone in the car.

  Rasbach says, feeling a familiar excitement, “She gets a call at eight seventeen, runs out of the house in the middle of making supper, doesn’t lock the door, and doesn’t take her purse or her cell—”

  Jennings says, “The call was to the landline, rather than to her cell. Her husband was very late getting home from work that night. The call could have been meant for either one of them. Maybe they’re both involved.”

  Rasbach nods thoughtfully. “We’d better take a closer look at Tom Krupp, too.”

  —

  Karen Krupp leaves the lawyer’s building and steps outside into the hot sun. Now that she’s alone again, not having to pretend for either her husband or her lawyer, what she feels is blind panic. She has just given a lawyer a very large retainer, in
case she’s charged with murder.

  She’s terrified. What should she do? Her instinct is to run.

  She knows how to disappear.

  But it’s different this time. She doesn’t want to leave Tom. She loves him. Even if she’s not so sure about his feelings for her anymore.

  —

  Tom is finally back in his own office, after an unbearably long morning meeting. He closes his office door and sits down in the chair behind his desk. He’s finding it impossible to focus on work; he’s falling behind with everything. He’s grateful that he has an office with a door that closes, one that doesn’t have walls made of glass—otherwise everyone would see how little work he’s doing, how much time he spends pacing the floor and staring out his window.

  Almost immediately, his cell phone buzzes. He snatches it up and looks at the caller ID. Brigid. Shit. Why the hell would Brigid be calling him? “Brigid. What’s up?”

  “Is this a good time?” Brigid asks.

  Not an emergency then, Tom thinks. He starts to relax a little. “As good as any. What is it?”

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Brigid says.

  Something in her voice warns him that he isn’t going to like it. Instantly, he feels himself tense. “What?”

  “I wanted to tell you this before,” she says, “but Karen’s accident just kind of pushed everything else out of my mind.”

  He wishes she would get to the point.

  “The police were here last night, asking questions.”

  Tom feels the perspiration start to bloom on his skin. He closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to hear what she has to say, whatever it is. He wants to hang up.

  Brigid says, “I didn’t tell the detectives this, but I think you should know. The day that Karen had her accident, there was a strange man looking around your house.”

  “What do you mean, looking around?” Tom asks sharply.

  “This guy—he was looking in your windows and snooping around the back. I was pulling weeds on the front lawn, and I kept an eye on him. I was almost ready to call the police but then he came over and talked to me and said he was an old friend.”