On the Street Where you Live (3 page)

She slipped out of her bathrobe. Don't think about it now, she warned herself.

But her hands were suddenly clammy as she remembered the first time she had come home and realized he'd been there. She had found a picture of herself propped up against the lamp on her bedside table, a photograph showing her standing in the kitchen in her nightgown, a cup of coffee in her hand. She had never seen the picture before. That day she'd had the locks of the townhouse changed and a blind put on the window over the sink.

After that there'd been a number of other incidents involving photographs, pictures taken of her at home, on the street, in the office. Sometimes a silky-voiced predator would call to comment on what she was wearing. “You looked cute jogging this morning, Emily . . .” “With that dark hair, I didn't think I'd like you in black. But I do. . . .” “I love those red shorts. Your legs are really good . . .”

And then a picture would turn up of her wearing the described outfit. It would be in her mailbox at home, or stuck on the windshield of her car, or folded inside the morning newspaper that had been delivered to her doorstep.

The police had traced the telephone calls, but all had been made from different pay phones. Attempts to lift fingerprints from the items that she had received had been unsuccessful.

For over a year the police had been unable to apprehend the stalker. “You've gotten some people acquitted who were accused of vicious crimes, Miss Graham,” Marty Browski, the senior detective, told her. “It could be someone in a victim's family. It could be someone who saw you in a restaurant and followed you home. It could be someone who knows you came into a lot of money and got fixated on you.”

And then they'd found Ned Koehler, the son of a woman whose accused killer she had successfully defended, lurking outside her townhouse. He's off the streets now, Emily reassured herself. There's no need to worry about him anymore. He'll get the care he needs.

He was in a secure psychiatric facility in upstate New York, and this was Spring Lake, not Albany. Out of sight, out of mind, Emily thought, prayerfully. She got into bed, pulled up the covers, and reached for the light switch.

Across Ocean Avenue, standing on the beach in the shadows of the deserted boardwalk, the wind from the ocean whipping his hair, a man watched as the room became dark.

“Sleep well, Emily,” he whispered, his voice gentle.

H
IS BRIEFCASE UNDER HIS ARM,
Will Stafford walked with long, brisk strides from the side door of his home to the converted carriage house that, like most of those still existing in Spring Lake, now served as a garage. The rain had stopped sometime during the night and the wind diminished. Even so, the first day of spring had a sharp bite, and Will had the fleeting thought that maybe he should have grabbed a topcoat on the way out.

Shows what happens when the last birthday in your thirties is looming, he told himself ruefully. Keep it up and you'll be looking for your earmuffs in July.

A real estate attorney, he was meeting Emily Graham for breakfast at Who's on Third?, the whimsical Spring Lake corner café. From there they would go for a final walk-through of the house she was buying, then to his office for the closing.

As Will backed his aging Jeep down the driveway, he reflected that it had been a day not unlike this in late December when Emily Graham had walked into his office on Third Avenue. “I just put down a deposit
on a house,” she'd told him. “I asked the broker to recommend a real estate lawyer. She named three, but I'm a pretty good judge of witness testimony. You're the one she favored. Here's the binder.”

She was so fired up about the house that she didn't even introduce herself, Will remembered with a smile. He got her name from her signature on the binder—“Emily S. Graham.”

There weren't too many attractive young women who could pay two million dollars cash for a house. But when he'd suggested that she might want to consider taking a mortgage for at least half the amount, Emily had explained that she just couldn't imagine owing a million dollars to a bank.

He was ten minutes early, but she was already in the café, sipping coffee. One-upmanship, Will wondered, or is she compulsively early?

Then he wondered if she could read his mind.

“I'm not usually the one holding down the fort,” she explained, “but I'm so darn excited about closing on the house that I'm running ahead of the clock.”

At that first meeting in December, when he had learned that she'd only seen one house, he said, “I don't like to talk myself out of a job, but Ms. Graham, you're telling me that you just saw the house for the first time? You didn't look at any others? This is your first time in Spring Lake? You didn't make a counter offer but paid full price? I suggest you think this over carefully. By law you have three days to withdraw your offer.”

That was when she'd told him that the house had
been in her family, that the middle initial in her name was for Shapley.

Emily gave her order to the waitress. Grapefruit juice, a single scrambled egg, toast.

As Will Stafford studied the menu, she studied him, approving of what she saw. He was certainly an attractive man, a lean six-footer with broad shoulders and sandy hair. Dark blue eyes and a square jawline dominated his even-featured face.

At their first meeting she had liked his combination of easygoing warmth and cautious concern. Not every lawyer would practically try to talk himself out of a job, she thought. He really was worried that I was being too impulsive.

Except for that one day in January when she had flown down in the morning and back to Albany in the afternoon, their communication had been either by phone or mail. Still, every contact with him confirmed that Stafford was indeed a meticulous attorney.

The Kiernans, who were selling the house, had owned it only three years and spent that entire time faithfully restoring it. They were in the final stage of the interior decoration when Wayne Kiernan was offered a prestigious and lucrative position which required permanent residence in London. It had been obvious to Emily that giving up the house had been a wrenching decision for them.

On that hurried visit in January, Emily went through every room with the Kiernans and bought the Victorian-era furniture, carpets, and artifacts they had lovingly purchased and were now willing to sell. The property was spacious, and a contractor had just
completed a cabana and had just started excavating for a pool.

“The only thing I regret is the pool,” she told Stafford as the waitress refilled their cups. “Any swimming I do will be in the ocean. But as long as the cabana is already in place, it seems a little silly not to go ahead with the pool as well. Anyhow, my brothers' kids will love it when they visit.”

Will Stafford had handled all the paperwork covering the various agreements. He was a good listener, she decided, as over breakfast she heard herself telling him about having grown up in Chicago. “My brothers call me ‘the afterthought,'” she said, smiling. “They're ten and twelve years older than I am. My maternal grandmother lives in Albany. I went to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, which is a stone's throw away, and spent a lot of my free time with her.
Her
grandmother was the younger sister of Madeline, the nineteen-year-old who disappeared in 1891.”

Will Stafford noticed the shadow that came over Emily's face, but then she sighed and continued, “Well, that was a long time ago, wasn't it?”

“A
very
long time,” he agreed. “I don't think you've told me how much time you expect to spend down here. Are you planning to move in immediately, or use the house weekends, or what?”

Emily smiled. “I plan to move in as soon as we pass title this morning. All the basic stuff that I need is there, including pots and pans and linens. The moving van from Albany is scheduled to arrive tomorrow with the relatively few things I'm bringing here.”

“Do you still have a home in Albany?”

“Yesterday was my last day there. I'm still settling my apartment in Manhattan, so I'll be back and forth between the apartment and this house until May 1st. That's when I start my new job. After that I'll be a weekend and vacation kind of resident.”

“You realize that there's a great deal of curiosity in town about you,” Will cautioned. “I just want you to know that I'm not the one who leaked that you're a descendant of the Shapley family.”

The waitress was putting their plates on the table. Emily did not wait for her to leave before she said, “Will, I'm not trying to keep that a secret. I mentioned it to the Kiernans, and to Joan Scotti, the real estate agent. She told me that there are families whose ancestors were here at the time that my great-great-grandaunt disappeared. I'd be interested to know what if anything any of them have heard about her—other, of course, than the fact that she seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.

“They also know I'm divorced and that I'll be working in New York, so I have no guilty secrets.”

He looked amused. “Somehow I don't visualize you as harboring guilty secrets.”

Emily hoped her smile did not look forced. I
do
intend to keep to myself the fact that I've spent a fair amount of time in court this past year that had nothing to do with practicing law, she thought. She had been a defendant in her ex-husband's suit, claiming he was entitled to half the money she had made on the stock, and also had been on the witness stand testifying against the stalker.

“As for myself,” Stafford continued, “you haven't asked, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I was born and raised about an hour from here, in Princeton. My father was CEO and chairman of the board of Lionel Pharmaceuticals in Manhattan. He and my mother split when I was sixteen, and since my father traveled so much, I moved with my mother to Denver and finished high school and then college there.”

He ate the last of his sausage. “Every morning I tell myself I'll have fruit and oatmeal, but about three mornings a week I succumb to the cholesterol urge. You obviously have more character than I do.”

“Not necessarily. I've already decided that the next time I come here for breakfast it will be to have exactly what you just finished.”

“I'd have given you a bite. My mother taught me to share.” He glanced at his watch and signaled for the check. “I don't want to hurry you, Emily, but it's nine-thirty. The Kiernans are the most reluctant sellers I've ever bumped into. Let's not keep them waiting and give them a chance to change their minds about the house.”

While they waited for the check, he said, “To finish the not very thrilling story of my life, I married right after law school. Within the year we both knew it was a mistake.”

“You're lucky,” Emily commented. “My life would have been a lot easier if I had been that smart.”

“I moved back East and signed on with the legal department of Canon and Rhodes, which you may know is a high-powered Manhattan real estate firm. It was a darn good job, but pretty demanding. I wanted a place for weekends and came looking down
here, than bought an old house that needed a lot of work. I love to work with my hands.”

“Why Spring Lake?”

We used to stay at the Essex and Sussex Hotel for a couple of weeks every summer when I was a kid. It was a happy time.” He shrugged.

The waitress put the check on the table. Will glanced at it and got out his wallet. “Then twelve years ago I realized I liked living here and didn't like working in New York, so I opened this office. A lot of real estate work, both residential and commercial.

“And speaking of that, let's get going to the Kiernans.” They got up together.

B
UT THE
K
IERNANS
had already left Spring Lake. Their lawyer explained he had power of attorney to execute the closing. Emily walked with him through every room, taking fresh delight in architectural details she had not fully appreciated before.

“Yes, I'm absolutely satisfied that everything I bought is here and the house is in perfect condition,” she told him. She tried to push back her increasing impatience to get the deed transferred, to be in the house alone, to wander through the rooms, to rearrange the living room furniture so that the couches faced each other at right angles to the fireplace.

She needed to put her own stamp on the house, to make it
hers.
She'd always thought of the townhouse in Albany as a stopgap place, although she had been in it three years—ever since she'd returned from a visit to her parents in Chicago a day early and found
her husband in an intimate embrace with her closest friend, Barbara Lyons. She picked up her suitcases, got back in the car, and checked into a hotel. A week later she rented the townhouse.

The house she had lived in with Gary was owned by his wealthy family. It had never felt like hers. But walking through this house seemed to evoke sensory memory. “I almost feel as though it's welcoming me,” she told Will Stafford.

“I think it might be. You should see the expression on your face. Ready to go to my office and sign the papers?”

T
HREE HOURS LATER
Emily returned to the house and once more pulled into the driveway. “Home sweet home,” she said joyously as she got out of the car and opened the trunk to collect the groceries she'd purchased after the closing.

An area near the new cabana was being excavated for the pool. Three men were working on the site. After the walk-through she'd been introduced to Manny Dexter, the foreman. Now he caught her eye and waved.

The rumble of the backhoe drowned out her footsteps as she hurried along the blue flagstone walk to the back door. This I could do without, she thought, then reminded herself again that the pool would be nice to have when her brothers and their families came to visit.