be to confirm that Scott was a cheater? Then how hard would it be to liberate Michelle from the creep? The very thought excited Matthew. He could feel the adrenaline in his system, and he began to tap out the drumbeat from the radio on his steering wheel. He’d been living in the past for too long now, and it was time to create a new memory. Scott might be a worthwhile candidate.
Back at home, he made himself dinner, stupidly leaving the fish under the broiler for a little too long so that the Ritz cracker topping blackened a little. It still tasted good, though, and instead of eating in front of the television, he ate in his study, watching videos posted on the C-Beams’ website. Their events page said that they were playing on Thursday night at the Owl’s Head Tavern, practically walking distance from his house, and Matthew told himself that if he could ascertain that Michelle wasn’t going to be there, he’d go by himself, get a look at Scott, see what he could see.
Chapter 7
It was late afternoon, the worst time of the day for Hen, her creative low point when her energy flagged and she didn’t know what to do with herself. It was too early to start thinking about dinner, and if she read, she’d fall asleep, and if she slept too long, she’d feel irritated and spacey for the rest of the evening. Today, however, she was pacing, trying to figure out what to do about her neighbor. One thing she could do would be to just call the Cambridge police and tell them what she had seen. It would sound crazy, but what if Matthew Dolamore had already been a suspect? What if her sighting of the fencing trophy would push them toward a deeper investigation, would allow them to get a search warrant? Who knew, maybe there was physical evidence at the scene of the crime—maybe even DNA—and that would convict him.
She went so far as to look up the Cambridge Police Department telephone number, but couldn’t bring herself to call. There wasn’t enough.
Her phone buzzed. Lloyd, texting her that he was on the commuter train, which meant that he’d be home in an hour. She went to the living room couch with her sketchbook, turned to a blank page, closed her eyes for thirty seconds, then drew the fencing trophy exactly as she remembered it, even writing the words she was sure she’d seen. third place épée. junior olympics. Then she stared at her drawing. It looked correct to her: a fencer in mid-lunge on top of a circular pedestal. Hen went and got her laptop, bringing it back to the couch. She searched for “Junior Olympics fencing trophy.” The images from the search were disheartening; first of all, there weren’t many, and second, some of the trophies that were shown were trophy cups. But one picture did catch her eye, a teenage girl beaming at the camera and holding a trophy that looked very much like the one she’d seen on Matthew’s mantelpiece. The photograph came from a local news website, attached to a story from eight years earlier: “Lubbock High School Sophomore Wins First Place at the Junior Olympics of Fencing.” Hen enlarged the photograph, but it was too pixelated for her to see any writing on its base. But it did convince her that the trophy she’d seen at her neighbors’ had come from the same event.
Lloyd arrived home, and Hen was startled. It felt like he’d only just texted her to let her know he was on the way.
He grabbed himself a Lagunitas from the refrigerator, poured it into his favorite beer glass, and settled down on the chair opposite Hen. “How was your day?” he asked.
“Fine. Did some work, took a walk.”
“You go to the studio?”
“I didn’t, but I’ll go tomorrow.” Hen was surprised to realize that she wasn’t going to tell Lloyd that she’d been to the neighbors’ house, that she’d toured the rooms again. It would only make him worry.
“How about your day?” she asked.
“Unremarkable,” he said, then went on to explain the back-and-forth with an annoying client. Lloyd worked in public relations. “For my sins,” he always said whenever anyone asked him what he did; Hen was never really sure what exactly he meant by that, especially since Lloyd loved his job. He’d recently been promoted to the head of social media marketing for his small firm, and he’d landed their biggest