The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (6 page)

She had thought she would surely dream of Olivia Korhonen, but it was only in the sweet spot between consciousness and sleep that the woman's face came to her: the long mouth curling almost affectionately, almost seductively, as though for a kiss, caressing the words that Mattie could not hear. It was an oddly tranquil, even soothing vision, and Mattie fell asleep like a child, and did not dream at all.

The next morning she felt curiously young and hopeful, though she could not imagine why. Don had gone off to work at the real estate office with his normal Monday hangover, pitifully savage; but Mattie indulged herself with a long hot shower, a second toasted English muffin, and a long telephone chat with a much-relieved Virginia Schlossberg before she went to the grocery store. There would be an overdue hair appointment after that, then home in time for
Oprah
. A
good
day.

The sense of serenity lasted through the morning shopping, through her favorite tea-and-brioche snack at La Place, and on to her date with Mr. Philip at the salon. It ended abruptly while she was more than half drowsing under the dryer, trying to focus on
Vanity Fair,
as well as on the buttery jazz on the PA system, when Olivia Korhonen's equally pleasant voice separated itself from the music, saying, “Mrs. Whalen—Mattie? How nice to see you here, partner.” The last word flicked across Mattie's skin like a brand.

Olivia Korhonen was standing directly in front of her, smiling in her familiar guileless manner. She had clearly just finished her appointment: the glinting warmth and shine of her blond hair made that plain, and made Mattie absurdly envious, her own mouse-brown curls' only distinction being their comb-snapping thickness. Olivia Korhonen said, “Shall we play next week? I look forward so.”

“Yes,” Mattie said faintly; and then, “I mean, I'm not sure—I have things. To do. Maybe.” Her voice squeaked and slipped. She couldn't stop it, and in that moment she hated her voice more than she had ever hated anything in the world.

“Oh, but you must be there! I do not know anyone else to play with.” Mattie noticed a small dimple to the left of Olivia Korhonen's mouth when she smiled in a certain way. “I mean, no one else who will put up with my bad playing, as you do. Please?”

Mattie found herself nodding, just to keep from having to speak again—and also, to some degree, because of the genuine urgency in Olivia Korhonen's voice.
Maybe I imagined the whole business . . . maybe it's me getting old and scared, the way people do.
She nodded a second time, with somewhat more enthusiasm.

Olivia Korhonen patted her knee through the protective salon apron, plainly relieved. “Oh, good. I already feel so much better.” Then, without changing her expression in the least, she whispered,
“I will kill you.”

Mattie thought later that she must have fainted in some way; at all events, her next awareness was of Mr. Philip taking the curlers out of her hair and brushing her off. Olivia Korhonen was gone. Mr. Philip peered at her, asking, “Who's been keeping
you
up at night, darling? You never fall asleep under these things.” Then he saw her expression and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” Mattie said. “I'm fine.”

After that, it seemed to her that she saw Olivia Korhonen everywhere, every day. She was coming out of the dry cleaners' as Mattie brought an armload of Don's pants in; she hurried across the street to direct Mattie as she was parking her car; she asked Mattie's advice buying produce at the farmers' market, or broke off a conversation with someone else to chat with Mattie on the street. And each time, before they parted, would come the silent words, more menacing for being inaudible,
“I will kill you.”
The dimple beside the long smile always showed as she spoke.

Mattie had never felt so lonely in her life. Despite all the years she and Don had lived in Moss Harbor, there was no one in her local circle whom she could trust in any sort of intimate crisis, let alone with something like a death threat. Suzanne or Eileen? Out of the question—things like that simply did not happen to members of the Bridge Group. There was Virginia, of course . . . Virginia might very well believe her, if anyone did, but would be bound to fall apart under the burden of such knowledge. That left only going further afield and contacting Patricia.

Pat Gallagher lived directly across the bay, in a tiny incorporated area called Witness Point. Mattie had known her very nearly as long as she had known Virginia, but the relationships could not have been more different. Pat was gay, for one thing; and while Mattie voted for every same-sex-marriage and hate-crimes proposition that came up on any ballot, she was honest enough to know that she was ill at ease with homosexuals. She could never explain this, and was truly ashamed of it, especially around someone as intelligent and thoughtful as Pat Gallagher. She found balance in distance, only seeing Pat two or three times a year, at most, and sometimes no more than once. They did e-mail a reasonable amount though, and they talked on the phone enough that Mattie still knew the number by heart. She called it now.

They arranged to meet at Pat's house for lunch on the weekend. She lived in a shingly, flowery, cluttery cottage, in company with a black woman named Babs, an administrator at the same hospital where Pat was a nurse. Mattie liked Babs immediately, and was therefore doubly nervous around her, and doubly shamed, especially when Babs offered in so many words to disappear graciously, so that she and Pat could talk in private. Mattie would have much preferred this, but the very suggestion made it impossible. “I'm sure there's nothing I have to say to Patricia that I couldn't say to you.”

Babs laughed. “That you may come to regret, my dear.” But she set out second glasses of pinot grigio, and second bowls of Pat's minestrone, and sat down with them. Her dark-brown skin and soft curly hair contrasted so perfectly with Pat's freckled Irish pinkness and they seemed so much at ease with one another that Mattie felt a quick, startling stitch of what could only have been envy.

“Okay,” Pat said. “Talk. What's got you scared this time?”

Babs chuckled. “Cuts straight to the chase, doesn't she?”

Mattie bridled feebly. “You make it sound as though I'm a big fraidy cat, always frightened about something. I'm not like that.”

“Yes, you are.” The affection in Pat's wide grin took some of the sting from the words. “You never call me unless something's really got you spooked, do you realize that? Might be a thing you saw on the news, a hooha with your husband, a pain somewhere there shouldn't be a pain. Maybe a lump you're worried about—maybe just a scary dream.” She put her hand on Mattie's hand. “It's fine, it's you. Talk. Tell.”

She and Babs remained absolutely silent while Mattie told them about the Bridge Group, and about Olivia Korhonen. She was aware that she was speaking faster as the account progressed, and that her voice was rising in pitch, but all she wanted was to get the words out as quickly as she could. The words seemed strangely reluctant to be spoken: more and more, they raked at her throat and palate as she struggled to rid herself of them. When she was done, the roof of her mouth felt almost burned, and she gratefully accepted a glass of cold apple juice from Babs.

“Well,” Pat said finally. “I don't know what I expected to hear from you, but
that
was definitely not it. Not hardly.”

Babs said grimly, “What you have there is a genuine, certified stalker. I'd call the cops on her in a hot minute.”

“How can she do that?” Pat objected. “The woman hasn't
done
anything! No witnesses, not one other person who heard what she said—what she keeps on saying. They'd laugh in Mattie's face, if they didn't do worse.”

“It does sound such a
silly
story,” Mattie said wretchedly. “Like a paranoiac, somebody with a persecution complex. But it's true, I'm not making it up. That's just exactly the way it's been happening.”

Pat nodded. “I believe you. And so would a jury, if it ever came to that. Anyone who spends ten minutes around you knows right away that you haven't the first clue about lying.” She sighed, refilling Babs's glass and her own but not Mattie's. “Not you—you have to drive. And we wouldn't want to frustrate little Ms. What's-her-face, now would we?”

“That's not funny,” Babs interrupted sharply. “That's not a bit funny, Patricia.”

Pat apologized promptly and profusely, but Mattie was absurdly delighted. “You call her Patricia, too! I thought
I
was the only one.”

“Only way to get her attention sometimes.” Babs continued to glower at an extremely penitent Pat. “But she's right about the one thing, anyway. Even if the cops happened to believe you, they couldn't do a damn thing about it. Couldn't slap a restraining order on the lady, couldn't order her to stay
x
number of feet away from you. Not until . . .” She shrugged heavily, and did not finish the sentence.

“I know,” Mattie said. “I wasn't expecting you two to . . . fix things. Be my bodyguards, or something. But I do feel a bit better, talking to you.”

“Now, if you were in the hospital”—Babs grinned suddenly and wickedly—“we really
could
bodyguard you. Between old Patricia and me, nobody'd get near you, except for the surfers we'd be smuggling in to you at night. You ought to think about it, Mattie. Safe
and
fun, both.”

Mattie was still giggling over this image, and a couple of others, when they walked her out to her car. As she buckled her seatbelt, Pat put a hand on her shoulder, saying quietly, “As long as this goes on every day, you call every day. Got that?”

“Yes, Mama,” Mattie answered. “And I'll send my laundry home every week, I promise.”

The hand on her shoulder tightened, and Pat shook her a little more than slightly. “I mean it. If we don't hear, we'll come down there.”

“Big bad bull dykes on the rampage,” Babs chimed in from behind Pat. “
Not
pretty.”

It was true that she did feel better driving home: not at all drunk, just pleasantly askew, easier and more rested from the warmth of company than she had been in a long time. That lasted all the way to Moss Harbor, and almost to her front door. The
almost
part came when, parking the car at the curb, she heard a horn honk twice, and looked up in time to see an arm waving cheerfully back to her as Olivia Korhonen's bright little Prius rounded a corner. Mattie sat in her car for a long time before she turned off the engine and got out.

Is she watching my house? Was she waiting for me?

She did not call Pat and Babs that night, even though she lay awake until nearly morning. Then, with Don gone to work, she forced herself to eat breakfast, and called Suzanne for Olivia Kor­honen's home telephone number. Once she had it in hand, she stalled over a third cup of coffee, and then a fourth, before she finally dialed the number and waited through several rings, consciously hoping to hear the answering machine click on. But nothing happened. She was about to break the connection when she heard the receiver being picked up and Ms. Korhonen's cool, unmistakable voice said, “Yes? Who is this, please?”

Mattie drew a breath. “It's Mattie Whalen. From the Bridge Group, you remember?”

If she has the gall to even hesitate, stalking me every single day . . .
But the voice immediately lifted with delight. “Yes, Mattie, of course I remember, how not? How good to hear from you.” There was nothing in words or tone to suggest anything but pleasure at the call.

“I was wondering,” Mattie began—then hesitated, listening to Olivia Korhonen's breathing. She said, “I thought perhaps we might get together—maybe one day this week?”

“To practice our bridge game?” Somewhat to Mattie's surprise, Olivia Korhonen pounced on the suggestion. “Oh, yes. That would be an excellent idea. We could develop our own strategies—that is what the great players work on all the time, is it not? Excellent, excellent, Mattie!” They arranged to meet at noon, two days from that date, at Olivia Korhonen's condo apartment. She wanted to make cucumber sandwiches—“in the English style, I will cut the crusts off”—but Mattie talked her out of that, or thought she had. In her imagining of what she planned to say to Olivia Korhonen, there would be no room for food.

On the appointed day Mattie woke up in a cold sweat. She considered whether she might be providentially coming down with some sort of flu, but decided she wasn't; then made herself a hot toddy in case she was, ate Grape-Nuts and yogurt for breakfast, went back to bed in pursuit of another hour's nap, failed miserably, got up, showered, dressed, and watched
Oprah
until it was time to go. She made another hot toddy while she waited, on the off chance that the flu might be waiting, too.

The third-floor condo apartment turned out as tastefully dressy as Eileen and Suzanne had reported. Olivia Korhonen was at the door, smilingly eager to show her around. The rooms were high and airy, with indeed a good many paintings and prints, of which Mattie was no judge—they
looked
like originals—and a rather surprising paucity of furniture, as though Olivia Korhonen had not been planning for long-term residence. When Mattie commented on this, the blond woman only twinkled at her, saying, “The motto of my family is that one should always sink deep roots wherever one lives. Because roots can always be sold, do you see?” Later on, considering this, Mattie was not entirely certain what bearing it had on her question; but it sounded both sensible and witty at the time, in Olivia Korhonen's musical voice.

Nevertheless, when Olivia Korhonen announced, “Now, strategy!” and brought out both the cards and the cucumber sandwiches, Mattie held firm. She said, “Olivia, I didn't come to talk about playing cards.”