Immediately ashamed of her outburst, Lauren sent him a look of apology. “I forgot.”
“Well, don’t,” Matt went on in the same soft voice. “I’m looking for any possible detail that would give us some clue to whether the things that have happened are unrelated or not.”
She shivered at the latter thought. “I know. And I appreciate your listening to all this. But I don’t know in which direction to turn at this point.”
“Which is why you should tell me everything.” He paused. “All set?” When she nodded, he released a breath. “Okay. Some things were amiss in your bedroom. Possibly your own fault. What was the next thing that happened?”
“The car followed me home.”
“Did you see where it picked you up?”
She shook her head. “It could have been anywhere. I was on Storrow Drive when I first noticed the headlights in my rearview mirror.”
“Make of the car?”
She shrugged and shook her head.
“Color?”
“Dark. At the time I thought it was maroon or brown, but it was hard to tell.” Her eyes widened. “Do you think it could have been the same car that nearly hit me on Newbury Street?”
“I don’t know. There are a hell of a lot of maroon and brown cars on the road. Without a make and model, we’re clutching at straws.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Cars aren’t my thing. I’m no good at identifying them.”
“That’s okay, Lauren. Do you remember when it finally dropped away?”
“It didn’t, in a sense.” She explained how she’d headed straight for the police station, where the car had nonchalantly pulled into a parking space. When Matt remained silent, she feared that he would chide her for not entering the station and complaining; she still wondered if she should have done that. “Well?”
“It’s odd,” he said at last. “Could have been a policeman having a little fun on his way to work, but all the way from Boston? And he stopped, then picked you up again.”
“But he had to be harmless if he was a policeman.”
“If, and that’s a big if.”
“Matt, he pulled into that space as if he knew just where he was going!”
“He may have pulled out just as smoothly once you drove on.”
“And if I’d gone in to file a complaint?”
“He could have driven off anyway. You would have led the officer on duty to the parking lot, only to find that there wasn’t any car there.”
“Mmm. And the officer would have thought I’d dreamed the whole thing up.”
“Possibly. Okay, the only thing left, then, is the matter of strange noises last night. Tell me exactly what you heard.”
She did. “By the time I came out of the shower, there was nothing. Maybe I imagined it all.”
“Maybe.”
Then again, maybe not. “If someone had gotteninthe house, wouldn’t he have had to getout?I was so spooked that even the tiniest creak in the floorboards would have sounded like thunder to me. But there was nothing. I’m sure of it.”
“And when you got up in the morning, there was no sign of an intruder?”
“Nothing.”
“No window partway open? No dirt tracked onto the floor?”
