Page 70 of Blow Down (The Plumber's Mate)
I didn’t like it. Then again, there was zero chance I’d ever end up having to live in a place like this, so why worry?
I rang the doorbell and shuffled uneasily on the doorstep as Mrs. Arlo slowly made her way through the house to answer it, each of us in full view of the other the entire time. It’d be a bit of a bugger if you wanted to pretend you were out when someone called.
Today, Elizabeth Fenchurch was dressed in pale colours that washed her out just as much as the sombre clothes she’d worn to the funeral had. Still no jewellery. Her straight hair didn’t exactly look bad, but it was definitely a bit flat as, to be brutally honest, was her figure.
“You’re the one who found her,” she said when she finally opened the door.
“Uh, yeah.” I tried to work out how she felt about that, but she just seemed, well, not so much grief-stricken as generally depressed, if you ask me. And possibly doped up on something, from the way all her movements seemed to be in slow motion.
Then again, maybe she’d just caught the sleepiness from her husband?
“What do you want?”
Huh. Not so sleepy as all that, then. And fair question. “I was wondering if I could maybe ask you a couple of questions?” Too late, I remembered I was supposed to be charming her, and flashed her a smile.
I won’t say she reared up like a startled horse, but it definitely seemed to make her nervous. I dialled it back sharpish. “Uh, sorry to bother you at this sad time,” I added.
The trite phrase seemed to work where the charm offensive hadn’t. Maybe I was losing my touch. “Come in,” she said indifferently.
She led me through to the least cosy living room I’d ever been in. Everything was square or monochrome or both. It was like I imagined a waiting room in one of those Swiss clinics Dave had been talking about the other day.
I tried not to let it oppress me too much as we sat on a blocky sofa. Side by side, as all the furniture was facing the plate glass window overlooking the lawn. Handy, for the sort of family that doesn’t want to look at one another any more than it has to. “I’m Tom, by the way. Tom Paretski. You’re Elizabeth, right?”
She nodded, barely. “What do you want to ask?”
“Um, nice place you’ve got here,” I lied. “Lived here long?”
“A year or two,” she said, like she didn’t care much either way.
“You and Arlo, you’ve been married for a lot longer than that, right?”
Liz shrugged. “Twenty years.” She didn’t sound like she cared a lot about that, either.
“Kids?”
“No.”
Christ, this was hard work. Time for a new tack. “I know this is a bit cheeky, but I don’t suppose I could trouble you for a cup of coffee?” I’d normally have asked for tea, but I reckoned she needed the caffeine.
She blinked and looked upset. “Didn’t I offer you a drink?”
“Not to worry, love,” I said quickly, but she’d already stood up and started walking off. Again there was this weird feeling she was just sleepwalking through life.
I followed her through the white living room past some white stairs to a white kitchen, the sort where anything that might have the bad taste to look like it had a practical purpose like a fridge or a cooker was ruthlessly hidden behind blank panels. No prizes for guessing what colour they were. It was all starting to make my eyes hurt.
And yeah, I took the opportunity to have a good listen to the vibes. There was something there, all right—in fact, there was more than one secret hidden in this house, but to be honest, all the trails seemed too faint to be anything important. There was a sense of shame to one of them, and another had mild annoyance with a whiff of guilt—put it this way, we weren’t talking skeletons in closets. Not even the murder weapon the skeleton got done in by. It was probably all just the general stuff you got in anyone’s house, like the secret stash of “medicinal” marijuana or the receipt for something you told him indoors only cost half as much as it actually had. That sort of stuff.
I tried not to look too disappointed. After all, if you really wanted to hide something, you wouldn’t choose a flippin’ glass house, would you?
Liz opened up a cupboard and took out a coffee machine (black, thank God). “White?” she asked, and I just managed to stop myself saying God, no.
“Yeah, ta. No sugar.”
She set the wheels in motion, got some milk out of a fridge you wouldn’t have known was there, and then we stared out of the window at the same view we’d seen from the living room. God, this was painful. “You like cooking?” I asked.
“Not really. Arlo tends to do all that.”
So she didn’t work, she didn’t cook—not to be funny, but just what did she do? I mean, yeah, maybe she’d had to give up work due to stress or depression or whatever, but I couldn’t see how sitting around on her own in this mausoleum all day doing sod all was supposed to make her feel any better.
