Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

Strangely, he didn’t seem interested in arguing with me, just said, “You’d do the same, if you were me.”

“She’s just a woman who hired me. That’s all she is. I bumped into her by accident when I got her stupid cat out of a tree and that’s it. I work for her. I’m her... employee.”

“How’s school?” he asked, startling me.

I stood up, no longer interested in the food, nor suddenly in the stupid track meet I was supposed to attend. I wanted to get on my bike, go over and check the Carter place, make sure the timers were on and the candles set well away from the curtains. I hadn’t been altogether happy about agreeing to leave them on with no one there. And Sammy, I had to make sure I hadn’t accidentally locked him in, and the furnace had to be turned back. It was running worse all the time.

“How’s school?” he asked again, with the patience which makes kids my age so sick of adults sometimes.

“Fine.”

“You haven’t talked much about it.”

“Nothing to talk about. It’s fine. School is school.”

“Your counselor stopped in to see me down at the station Wednesday.”

“I’m not flunking anything. My work’s all up-to-date. My grades are good.”

“I know that. All As and one B,” he agreed. “Your grades have never been better.”

“So why the visit? What’s the point?”

“You been doing your studying at the Carter house?”

“The last week or so, yes, so what? She’s not there, you know. She’s gone back to New York. You do know that? Damn it, Jake, it’s not like — I mean, what do you think I’m doing? I’m not...” I was too flustered to continue. I turned away and ran both hands back through my hair.

“Your mother does that.”

“What?” I spun around on him, not knowing whether to be angry, insulted, confused, bitter.

“Tears her hair.” Jake looked down at his empty coffee cup. “When she’s upset.”

“Glad to hear it. Nice to know you notice,” I muttered, reaching for my jacket.

“I’ve talked to some of Frances Carter’s co-workers. She seems to lead a very quiet, self-contained life. No...”

I hated this! The way he jumped from subject to subject! School, then my mother, and now back to Frances. And they say kids manipulate adults? What was he doing to me? I spun around to face him.

“Self-contained? Does that mean she doesn’t have a record for seducing fifteen-year-old kids? That’s good, isn’t it, then? It means you can get off her and you can get off me and leave us both alone!”

I went out, slamming the door, then shoving my hands into my pockets, stood at the bottom step. It was another windy day, which is all we seem to have here on the Cape in November, December, the whole damn winter. Why do people live out on this damn peninsula anyhow?

“Bay’s that way,” Jake said behind me.

I spun around, glared up the steps at him.

“That’s what you do when you’re mad, isn’t it, walk out to the end of the jetty?”

Okay, my next remark was completely out of line, but I said it right to his face. I told him where he could go.

“Yeah, that’s a good answer,” he said. “But if you’re trying to make me mad, it’s not going to work.” He folded his arms and stared down at me.

“What makes you think...” I was totally flustered, embarrassed, and a little bit ashamed. Truth is, I had such a rush of emotions just then I didn’t know what I was feeling, or why, and neither did I have a single clue as to how to control them. I just knew I felt like I was suffocating.

Then my fingers felt the small wooden object shaped like an egg that I’d tucked in my jacket pocket.

“Do you blame me for what your mother did?” Jake asked.

“This is a stupid time to talk about that!” I fired back. Finally something at which I could aim.

“You’re working your butt off, Herbie, day and night, making yourself so exhausted that you fall into bed each night without time to think about your mother, about what she did, about how it’s affecting you — isn’t that right?”

“You ought to change jobs, Jake. Become a — psychiatrist or something.” I turned around then, headed toward the driveway, the road, the water? I stopped short; no way did I want to fulfill his expectations. If he thought I was headed for the bay, I’d go in the other direction, toward town.

I felt his hand come down heavily on my shoulder. “No, I’m just happy being a — cop,” he said to me, and then in an entirely different tone of voice, casual, friendly, upbeat, said, “So, what have you got planned for the rest of the day? Track meet? Then what?”

“I’m going to...” I couldn’t look at him. “...Frances’s and I don’t know, reset the timers. I change them every few days.” I shrugged. “I got things to do there; it’s a big house.”

“You bill her by the hour, the day, the week? Or does she have you on salary?”

“I work for her, Jake,” I said in a rather small voice. I had my fingers wrapped around the wooden egg, tight in my pocket. It was cool and smooth. Slowly I felt my breathing even out. “That’s all I do.”

“Did you think I doubted you?”