I gaped at her, breathing shallowly. She didn’t make any gestures to invite me in, but she didn’t shut the door in my face either. “What do you mean?”
“It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for my apology for a year now. Now then, you said you have something to say to me?” She lifted her chin, the loose skin underneath wobbling proudly between the gold chains hanging from the tips of her glasses.
“That’s why you wouldn’t open the door for me last week? Because you were waiting for me to… apologize?”
I tipped my head, baffled, as she gave a tight, determined nod. “I knew you would eventually, since you probably want to know if I saw anything suspicious happen in your garage.”
The ground bottomed out from under me. “You saw something suspicious inside my garage?”
“I’m not a member of the neighborhood watch for nothin’.”
“You’re not?” I caught myself, shut my mouth before I said something stupid, and shook my head. “I mean, of course you’re not. And you’re right, that’s exactly why I came over. To apologize. For…” She raised the two pencil-thin eyebrows she’d drawn lopsided on her face. I had no idea what she expected me to atone for. She’d been the one to spy on my house. She’d been the one to tell on Steven and kick my marriage into a downward spiral. She’d been the one to blab it to the rest of the neighborhood watch. And yet, at the end of it all, the blame belonged squarely on one person’s shoulders. And they probably weren’t the bony, hunched ones in front of me now. She lifted her chin higher, waiting.
“I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing the last of my pride, “that I yelledat you and called you terrible names. I was angry at my husband, and I took it out on you. And I shouldn’t have.”
Mrs. Haggerty wrinkled her nose, adjusting her glasses to peer at me through them, as if she were gauging my sincerity. With a satisfied grunt, she let them fall to her bosom.
“So, about my garage,” I said cautiously. “What did you see, exactly?”
She reached for the bound diary on the hall table behind her. Thumbing it open, she licked a gnarled finger and fanned through the pages. She settled on one with a sigh. “On the night of Tuesday, October eighth, I saw you leave with the kids a little before six in the evening. And then I saw you come back without them at approximately six forty. I figured you’d probably be in for the night since you don’t get out much.” She looked down her nose at me, and I smiled tightly back. It was all I could do to keep from throttling the woman. “But then I saw you leave again, all dressed up like you were going on a date, I assume with that dark-haired policeman you’ve been entertaining lately.” She raised a poorly drawn eyebrow, inviting me to elaborate on my relationship with Nick, but why bother? She seemed to have it all figured out. “I actually mistook you for Ms. Hall at first, to be honest. But then you tripped in your heels coming off your garage step and I knew right away it was you. You’re clumsier than Theresa. And you have horrific posture,” she added, scrutinizing my shoulders. “That’s probably because of all the time you spend in front of that computer. It’s unhealthy, you know.”
I gestured impatiently for her to go on.
“Anyway, I guess that must have been just after seven,” she said, returning her attention to her book. “After that, everything was quiet for a few hours. I watched my TV programs and had a slice ofpie, which is how I knew it was about nine forty-five when I noticed the lights in your garage. You left your van running when you ran inside. I figured you were grabbing something you’d forgotten before going to pick up the children from wherever you’d taken them earlier.”
“My sister’s,” I said, gesturing again.
“Your sister, the police officer? There sure have been a lot of them over there these last few days—”
“Yes, she was babysitting for me,” I said a little too brusquely. “Did you see anything else?”
“Of course,” she snapped, as if the very question of her vigilance was offensive. “I watched the house, to make sure nobody bothered your van while you were inside. I was irritable at first because you were taking a long while, and I was missing my late-night TV program on account of it. But then something strange happened.” She adjusted her glasses, the thick gold chain catching on the shoulder pads in her sweater.
“What did you see?”
She leveled an arthritic finger at me. “I saw someone snooping inside your garage.”
My breath rushed out of me. This was it. Mrs. Haggerty had seen the people who killed Harris. “Do you remember what they looked like?”
“It was hard to see clearly from here, especially so late at night. The headlights from the van were behind him, but I could tell he was tall. He had to bend down a bit to see inside the windows of your van. I thought he might be one of the hoodlums in the neighborhood planning to steal it, so I went downstairs to call the police. But by the time I got to the phone in the kitchen, you must have come out to the garage and scared him off. When I looked outmy kitchen window, your garage door was already shut. As far as I could see he was gone.” I glanced behind her, at an electric chairlift perched on a track at the base of the stairs. My grandmother had one in her house. They moved like molasses. Who knew how much time Mrs. Haggerty had lost? Or if she could even be considered a reliable eyewitness. She hadn’t actually seen anyone close the garage door. And even if she had, the woman couldn’t see her face in the mirror to apply her own lipstick. A judge might just throw her testimony out.
“You said it was a he?” I asked, making sure I’d heard her right.
She gave a confident nod. I raked back my hair, struggling to puzzle it out. Feliks was tall. I supposed he could have come here with Theresa. Or even with Andrei. But something about that scenario felt off. I’d had enough run-ins with Feliks to see how he operated. Feliks didn’t do his own dirty work. That’s what he had Andrei for. And Andrei wasn’t subtle.
“Did you see who was with him?”
“I didn’t see anyone else. Only the one.”
But that didn’t make sense. Someone else had to have been there to help the killer close the garage. Maybe they’d waited in the car, only emerging after Mrs. Haggerty was on her way down the stairs.
“Did you see what kind of car he was driving?”
Her eyes narrowed. “There was no car. Not anywhere I could see.”
So the culprit had come on foot, as I’d suspected before. And without a description of a suspect or a vehicle—without proof that someone else had intentionally murdered Harris—I would become the prime suspect once Nick figured out that I was the woman at The Lush. My best hope was that Nick would hit a dead end. That Julian wouldn’t identify me to the police, and that no one could prove Harris Mickler had ever been to my house.
“Did you… happen to see or hear anything else that night? Anything odd… in my garage?” I asked cautiously.
