I wouldn’t have turned back if it hadn’t been for Evelyn, my across-the-street neighbor.
Evelyn, sixty-eight, was a retired paralegal who spent decades working in real estate law and estate planning. She intercepted me on the driveway just as my Uber driver was loading my suitcase into the trunk.
“Don’t get in that car yet, Clara,” she whispered.
I smiled, thoroughly confused. “Did I forget something?”
“You didn’t. They think you did.”
Evelyn gestured discreetly toward a sleek gray SUV parked half a block down. She told me she had watched Eric’s mother, Eleanor, his sister, Sarah, Sarah’s husband, Richard, and an unfamiliar man carrying a leather briefcase step out of the vehicle and walk up my side driveway.
“Trust me,” Evelyn urged softly. “Go back in through the mudroom door in the garden. Keep the lights off. And just listen.”
I canceled the driver, claiming a last-minute emergency, and circled around the back of the house. Using my spare key, I slipped inside barefoot. I crept up the back stairs into the master suite’s bathroom. Through the central air ventilation shaft and the cracked glass shower door, the acoustics were terrifyingly clear. Shadows flickered in the hallway right outside.
