I shifted restlessly on the chaise, still peering at the second floor.
There was no movement. The lights were still on but there were no more shadows.
I relaxed slightly and was about to rejoin the conversation when a silhouette darted past the window. And then it reappeared, just a shadow, crouched down as if it didn’t want to be seen.
I couldn’t make out who it was, but it had the shape of a man, and it was wearing what looked like a suit.
And then it disappeared again.
Involuntarily, I looked back at Robby and the babysitter and Sarah.
But maybe it wasn’t a man, I automatically thought. Maybe it was Jayne.
Confused, I sat up and craned my neck to look behind me into the Allens’ kitchen, where Nadine and Sheila were filling bowls with raspberries and Jayne was standing at the counter pointing out something in a magazine to Mimi Gardner, both of them laughing.
I slowly reached for the cell phone in the pocket of my slacks and I hit speed dial.
I saw the exact moment that Wendy’s head bobbed up from the book she was reading to Sarah, and she carried her to the cordless phone hanging near the pool table. Wendy waited for whoever it was to leave a message.
The silhouette appeared again. It was now framed by the window and simply standing there.
It had stopped moving when it heard the phone ringing.
“Wendy, it’s Mr. Ellis, pick up,” I said into the machine.
Wendy immediately lifted the receiver to her ear, balancing Sarah in her arm.
“Hello?” she asked.
The silhouette was staring into the Allens’ yard.
“Wendy, do you have a friend over?” I asked as carefully as possible.
I swung a leg—it was tingling—off the chaise and looked back down into the media room, at the three of them there, oblivious to whoever was upstairs.
“No,” Wendy said, looking around. “No one’s here but us.”
I now stood up and was moving unsteadily toward the house, the ground wobbling beneath me. “Wendy, just get the kids out of there, okay?” I said calmly.
The silhouette continued to stand in front of the window, backlit, featureless.
I ignored the inquiries from the men behind me as to where I was going and walked along the side of the Allens’ house and unlatched a gate, and then I was on the sidewalk, where I still had a view of the second-story window through the newly planted elms that lined Elsinore Lane.
As I got closer to the house I suddenly noticed the cream-colored 450 SL parked out front at the curb.
And that’s when I saw the license plate.
“Mr. Ellis, what do you mean?” Wendy was asking me. “Get the kids out of the house? What’s wrong?”
At that instant, as if it had been listening, the silhouette turned from the window and disappeared.
I froze, unable to speak, then moved up the stone path toward the front door.
“Wendy, I’m outside the front door,” I said calmly. “Get the kids outside, now. Do it now.”
Victor kept barking from somewhere out back, and then the barks turned to howls.
I started knocking on the door rapidly until it became pounding.
Wendy opened the door, startled, still holding Sarah, who smiled when she saw me. Robby was standing behind them, apprehensive and pale.
“Mr. Ellis, no one’s in the house but us—”
I pushed her aside and walked into the office, where I opened the safe in a matter of seconds and grabbed the small handgun, a .38 caliber, I kept there, and then, breathing heavily and dizzy from all the grass, tucked the gun into the waistband of my slacks so as not to frighten the kids. I began moving toward the staircase.
But I stopped as I passed the living room.
The furniture had been rearranged again.
Footsteps stamped in ash crisscrossed the entire space.
“Mr. Ellis, you’re scaring me.”
I turned around. “Just get the kids outside. It’s okay. I just want to check something.”
Saying that made me feel stronger, as if I was in control of a situation I probably wasn’t. Fear had been transformed into lucidity and calmness, which in retrospect I realize came from smoking Mark Huntington’s grass. Otherwise I wouldn’t have acted so recklessly, or even thought about confronting whatever it was in the master bedroom. What I felt walking up those stairs was, I had been expecting this. It was all part of a narrative. Adrenaline was smoothly pumping through me yet I wasn’t moving quickly. My steps were slow and deliberate. I kept gripping the railing, letting it assist in my ascension. I felt so neutral I might as well have been in a trance.