The Sixes

***

SHE WAS NEVER sure how they’d snuck into her room. Glenda had gone home that weekend, and she was on her own, but she was sure she had locked the door. Somehow they had gotten their hands on the master key. She wondered later if the RA had let them in.

At first she thought there was someone crumpled on the floor in a heap, and she had frozen, startled, and fumbled for the light. Her clothes had all been shredded into pieces. But it took her a moment to realize that they’d been arranged in a pattern—the shape of a wheel. Fortune’s wheel.

23

SHE SPUN AROUND, instinctively grabbing the handle of the frying pan—to hurl or to swing it. To her utter shock, she saw Duncan standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted out. Whatever relief she felt at the sight of him was overridden by her distress. How had he gotten in?

“Uh, sorry,” he stammered. “I just needed to find out how you were. The mailbox on your phone was full, and then when I showed up at the hospital, they said you’d already been released.”

“But how did you get in the house? The door was locked.”

“It wasn’t, actually. I knocked a few times, but I guess you couldn’t hear me over the music. I tried the door, and it was open.”

Phoebe brought her right hand to her forehead and massaged it, thinking.

“Sorry I sounded so frantic,” she said after a moment. “Glenda brought me home, and in my foggy state, I must have forgotten to lock it again after she left.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to scare you out of your wits. I’m just glad to set eyes on you.” He smiled mischievously. “I’m also thrilled to know you’re a Neko Case fan.”

She let out a long sigh and smiled back. So he’d obviously been concerned about her.

“Want some scrambled eggs?” she asked. “For some reason I’ve decided to prepare the same thing they served at the hospital.”

“I’ve already eaten, but why don’t you sit down and let me do it?”

“I’d like that. Have a glass of wine at least. On the counter.”

He slipped out of his coat and hung it on a peg by the back door. As he slid the eggs onto a plate, Phoebe settled at the table. She watched him butter the toast. She could feel her earlier panic subsiding. After Duncan finished serving her, he poured a glass of wine for himself and sat across from her.

“I’ve been really worried about you,” he said. “I heard about Hutch, and the fact that you found him.”

She wondered how he could have heard, since the cops told her they were keeping things under wraps.

Before she could ask him, Duncan reached out and stroked her forehead.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” he said. “Or maybe I shouldn’t assume that. Are you?”

“A mild concussion, a small fracture on my elbow.”

“Tell me what happened.”

As she went through the saga again, Duncan asked only a few questions, and mostly let her talk, but his eyes betrayed how disturbed he was by her story.

“You must have been terrified,” he said when she’d finished.

“Completely,” she said. She’d lost her appetite as she spoke, and now her eggs lay cold and bloblike on her plate. “It was like one of those recurring nightmares where you just can’t seem to move fast enough.”

“And you never got a good look at who was chasing you?”

“No. But I started thinking that if I stop trying to force my mind to work, something is eventually going to come to me.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. His soft brown eyes were quizzical.

“Have you ever had the sense that something is scratching at your brain? That there’s a thought trying to reach you, but when you try to grab it, it retreats like a mouse. So you just need to be patient and wait. Sorry, there must still be a trace of painkiller in my system. I sound kind of loopy.”

He cocked his head. “No, I hear you. What you’re saying is that there’s something in your subconscious trying to break free. Do you think it’s about the killer?”

“Maybe,” Phoebe said. “It could be something I saw last night that I didn’t fully acknowledge, or maybe something I picked up from reading Hutch’s notes.” But even as she spoke, she realized that the sensation had first started with something Wesley had said at the diner. Maybe, she realized, the smell of the eggs tonight had retriggered that disquietude.

“Why don’t I take a look at the notes at some point,” Duncan said. “Maybe a fresh pair of eyes will help.”

“Sure, good idea,” she said.

“And if something does come to you over the next day or so, don’t keep it to yourself. This is a dangerous situation. You understand that, right?”

“I know,” she said. She felt her panic rear its ugly head again. “I appreciate your coming over tonight. I thought—I guess I had this feeling I might not hear from you again. Something seemed off between us Saturday afternoon.”

Duncan leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other and resting his wine glass against his chest.

“That was completely my fault,” he said. “And I’m sorry about that. It didn’t reflect how I feel about you.”

Phoebe waited, not saying anything. It seemed best to let it all just unfold.

Duncan brushed twice at an unseen object on his thigh. She realized how seldom she’d seen him make a nervous or awkward gesture. Finally he looked back up at her.

“Something a little weird happened on Saturday,” he said. “At the inn.”

So she’d been right about the timing then, she thought. “Between us?” she asked.

“No, no,” he said. “It happened when you went to the ladies’ room. A couple that Allison and I used to spend time with came into the restaurant. I was never crazy about them, but the woman was a friend of Allison’s from high school and the two of them became tight again when we moved back East. I waved to them from the table—I was about to get up to go over and say hi—and they just completely ignored me. Made eye contact and looked away very intentionally.”

“Was it because they’d seen you with me, do you think?”

“No, you were in the restroom when they walked in. I’m pretty sure Allison badmouthed me to this woman right before she died. Allison grew very bitter as her illness advanced, and though I couldn’t blame her, it was tough to live with. Her take was that our marriage was on the rocks because of me—that I had just announced one day I was bailing. And that I was sticking around through her illness just to make myself look good.”

“I’m sure when I came down and joined you at the table, it only made things worse.”

“Probably. Right after you showed up, they paid for their half-finished drinks and left. I’m sorry I let it get to