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As she walked home, she wondered when she’d last thought about feeling good.
What reasonable person would even consider happiness with all the tumult tangling around her these last few days?
As she moved up her sidewalk, Henrietta ran excitedly for the porch, dragging Olivia.
Usually, Henrietta didn’t like to go home from a walk. Olivia scowled at the pile in front of her door and realized a dead rat was lying on her doormat.
Olivia pulled at Henrietta’s lead to get her away.
“All those years as a prosecutor can make you paranoid. It’s Occam’s razor,” she said aloud. “The simplest solution is probably right.” Two simple ideas: The rat died on her porch. The rat died elsewhere, but the stray cat she was feeding brought it to her and laid it in front of her door as a sign of appreciation. Mickey’s cats had done that. One morning, Olivia woke to Goldy trying to drop a mouse into her mouth. After that, Olivia insisted on the cats being removed from the bedroom and the door shut each night. Mickey had protested, but some things were not to be borne.
Mickey knew how much she hated the cat gifts—the dead birds, rodents, and snakes.
Was this Mickey?
That could also fit Occam’s razor—Mickey was a simple explanation that made sense in her mind.
Olivia took a long moment, searching over the neighborhood.
There it was again, that sense she’d had when Mickey had been on the phone, insisting he needed to talk to her. Was it safe in her house? Was her car safe to drive? She looked down at Henrietta. Her pup had none of the posturing that Beowolf displayed before the violence ensued.
It had been a nerve-racking, emotion-jumbling day with lows. “But, my god, there were some spectacular highs.”
Here she stood, feeling her nerves light up.
Were the last two days finally catching up to her? Was she overwrought?
With her hand on the doorknob, suddenly and inexplicably, home didn’t feel safe.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Olivia
Olivia stood at her office window, pulling back the drape and looking over at Nutsbe’s house. It was dark. So was the house next door, the house where Nutsbe said Clive and Milly lived. They must have gone to bed. Nutsbe said he had to go back to the office for an overseas call.
She felt better knowing he was just over the fence.
Olivia looked down at Henrietta. “We’ll be okay, right?” She wandered through the house, checking the windows, checking the locks. She regretted that she hadn’t fixed the back door yet. But if someone wanted to get in, what was breaking a pane of glass other than a bit of a warning sound?
Standing in the hall, her thoughts vacillated with indecision.
She had showered and was dressed in her nightshirt, ready for bed.
Olivia thought back to that fear-prickle and Mickey. Remembering her thoughts about the intuitive flashes people had before the moment of violence and that inconvenience pushed them forward into the path of the criminal, she examined her own decisions.
She had protected her aunt by sending her to a hotel.
Until her divorce, maybe she should do that for herself as well. “Tomorrow, I’ll go to a hotel.” She took a step toward her room, and her body convulsed. Her shoulders were up to her ears. She was frozen in place. “Henrietta, did you hear something?” she whispered.
Nope tonight. Tonight, we’ll go to a hotel. We won’t take my car. I’ll call a taxi.
Olivia hustled to her room and grabbed an overnight bag. “Ten minutes, and we’re out of here, Henny. Five minutes.” Her hands shook as she gathered her toothbrush and a comb. “Three. I can be out of here in three.”
She stilled.
Were those footsteps on the stairs?
Olivia looked down to find Henrietta staring at the bathroom door and was startled to hear her dog rumble warning noises that Olivia had never heard her make before.
