Chapter 18

The fading early evening sunlight sifted through the blinds. The resulting fragmented beams exposed a myriad of suspended dust particles in the same manner that a porch light illuminates falling snowflakes at night. Julie found the uncharacteristic silence disconcerting as she closed the front door. She'd just arrived home, having spent a few extra hours at school, advising a few students, catching up on some paperwork.

Famished, she popped some leftovers into the microwave. She ran upstairs and changed into a T-shirt and shorts. Picking up the phone, she turned on the voice mail and listened to a recorded message from Mark. "Why the hell didn't he call me on my cell?" she muttered audibly. She momentarily considered dialing him back right then and there, but took the time difference into account, and guessed that he was still at the conference.

Julie sat down at the kitchen table and picked her way through dinner. "It's too quiet in here," she said out loud, more to break the silence than anything else. She stood up, and flipped on the ceiling fan, suspended from a light fixture. The gentle whirring, while not entirely dispelling the quietude, at least provided enough of a psychological counterbalance to the feeling that she was alone. Julie didn't like being alone. She never had.

Loading up the dishwasher, she turned it on, and absent-mindedly traipsed into the living room. The piano, a black baby grand, beckoned. As she often did during those times when she found herself alone at home, she seated herself in front of the keys and began to play.

Musically speaking, the piano was Julie's first love. Her childhood home was not far from Albany, New York, and her parents still lived in the house in which she grew up. She was an only child, and Julie's mother instilled a love of music in her at a very early age. As so often happens to kids with musically-oriented parents, Julie's childhood was full of piano lessons and practicing while the other kids in the neighborhood were out playing. This continued through her teen years, but her lifelong passion for music had already taken root, despite the typical period of teen rebellion. She became an accomplished pianist, and won several awards and talent contests.

This particular instrument had been a wedding present from her mother and father. On many an occasion, seated there with her fingers moving across the keys, her mind would drift back to earlier, happier days. She recalled the times when she would sit proudly at the piano, playing as she was this very minute. For a few years after she and Mark were married, they lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment, with the piano taking up literally half the living room. More often than not, she would have a captive audience of two, with Ted nearby in the playpen, or toddling around the apartment. As for Mark, he would sit quietly and just listen to her play, or perhaps walk up behind her and caress her shoulders.

Julie ran through a couple of her favorite pieces: Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody" and Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata". Often, she had to allow, music was a form of escapism for her. This was one of those times. There was a little project that she was putting off. Something she had promised Beth ... promised herself, really. Right now, she was alone, and she was idle. This was the perfect time to scan the house for clues about the nature of Mark's recent preoccupation, whatever it might be. But not only did she not know what she was looking for, she was afraid of what she might find. Financial irregularities? Evidence of an affair? Something work-related? Or some other deep, dark secret?

She pulled back her hands from the piano keys and let them fall on her lap, swinging her feet a bit to the side. She ran her fingers through her hair, a persistent nervous habit of hers, still lost in thought. Retracting her fingers, she let her still youthful-looking thick brown mane fall back on her shoulders. She sighed and admonished herself out loud, "Enough procrastination." There was still an hour or so of good daylight left. Deciding to begin the search outside, she donned a pair of sandals and resolutely stepped out through the front door. It was a warm evening, almost summer-like, although the solstice was still a month away.

The shed in the back yard, she thought. That's where Mark kept his garden tools, and she remembered how he miraculously completed that yard work in advance of her band trip several weeks ago. She produced a key and unlocked the shed, taking note of several rust spots on the white enamel-coated steel door. "Another assignment for Mark," she said audibly.

But other than the usual yard implements, a cursory glance revealed nothing suspicious. Julie, however, wasn't settling for cursory glances. She pulled all the garden tools out of the shed. As she tugged on the handle of an old, rusty wheelbarrow back in the corner, one which obviously hadn't been disturbed in years, several assorted insects and spiders went scurrying away. No bug lover, Julie screamed. She peered sheepishly out of the shed, looking around in embarrassment, hoping none of the neighbors had heard her.

Out of the shed came the wheelbarrow, and then the lawn mower. Julie lifted up the mower and checked underneath. So far, nothing. She returned everything to its place in the shed. That pretty much completed the outdoor portion of the search; Julie could think of no other place outside the walls of their dwelling that merited a look. Unless he took a shovel and dug a hole somewhere, she told herself.

The sun was setting as Julie decided to direct her attention to the garage. She walked past the flower bed and stopped to briefly survey it. The irises were coming up and not far from blooming. The daffodils, however, had just about died back.

She turned on the light in the garage, opened the doors to Mark's BMW and checked the glove compartment, under the seats, the trunk. His car was one of the more obvious hiding places. But Julie's most diligent scrutiny of the interior revealed nothing out of the ordinary. She stepped back for a minute, wondering if there was a place inside the car that she'd forgotten. Then she thought of one. The spare tire compartment.

Julie looked through the trunk, locating the spare, but nothing else stowed in its storage place. The vehicle having thus passed inspection, she closed and locked the doors.

There were several cabinets in the garage which Mark used for general storage purposes. She found a whole lot of sundry items and some paperwork, but nothing to which she'd attach any kind of value. "Worthless crap," Julie said. She was an organizational ninja, the extreme opposite of a pack rat; if she didn't need something, she got rid of it. Mark was fairly similar along those lines, as well, but it was Julie who was always bugging Mark to throw away unneeded junk.

After spending a few more minutes scouring the shelves that ran along the walls of the garage, and moving things aside to check behind them, Julie took a deep breath and eyed the door along the back wall that allowed access to the inside of the house. She decided to start on the top floor and work her way downward.