The Enemy at Home by Kevin O'Brien

Author:Kevin O'Brien [O'Brien, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2023-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Saturday, May 1

3:11 p.m.

Nora plugged in the iron and then took a few T-shirts off the basement clothesline. She’d let the laundry pile up this week. Before washing anything, she had to make room on the two clotheslines that stretched across the basement. The heavy-duty cord was still moving as Nora set aside the clothespins. The shadows of the remaining garments danced on the dingy gray walls.

Nora usually didn’t mind being down in the gloomy unfinished basement, except when she was alone in the house—like now.

The basement was one big room—including Pete’s work area with a workbench and cabinets, and her laundry nook with the big electric washer and the ironing board. Nora had tried to cheer up the space by tacking travel posters to the wall above the laundry sinks—all those places she’d probably never visit.

But the large room still seemed sinister—what with the storage closet and a couple of shadowy nooks that seemed like perfect hiding spots for a would-be intruder. A huge octopus furnace with its many ducts and a water heater occupied one corner of the room, right by the coal window. The place was cluttered with junk—including Jane’s childhood dollhouse, a stack of old shutters and some yard equipment that Jane was itching to donate to a scrap drive.

Nora was touching up one of the T-shirts with the iron when she heard a creaking above her. She glanced up at the ceiling and the cobweb-draped pipes. Just the house settling, she told herself. Though it was the middle of the day, Nora had locked the front and back doors before she’d gone down to the basement. She wasn’t usually that cautious, but there was nothing usual about someone strangling female riveters in their homes.

She touched up the second T-shirt. Then she pulled one of Jane’s school uniform blouses off the line, sprinkled some water on it and went to work with the iron. She did her best to ignore the shadows swaying on the wall again.

This morning, Chris had helped her post the APARTMENT FOR RENT sign at the end of the driveway. Nora had included their phone number on the placard. With the lack of traffic on their street, she didn’t expect to hear from anyone until an ad ran in tomorrow’s Seattle Times.

Chris had forgotten he had to do “volunteer work” today at a scrap repurposing center in South Seattle, part of a school project “to ruin my Saturday,” according to Chris. So this morning, at the last minute, she’d had to drive him to the industrial district. At least Chris would be bussed back to the school, and he could walk home from there. He would be back in time for dinner, he’d said.

As for Jane, she’d returned from her slumber party, ate lunch and then asked to be driven to her friend Doris’s house. She’d call when she needed to be picked up—probably sometime before dinner. Nora, for her part, didn’t have a clue what she was cooking for dinner tonight.

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