Page 168 of The Housekeeper

“You won’t be alone. You have Tracy. You have me. We’ll find another housekeeper.”

“She says if I don’t sign them, she’ll leave,” he repeated, as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Then let her leave!”

“I can’t do that. She’ll…Oh, no. She’s coming. I have to go.”

“What do you mean? She’ll…what? Dad? Dad? Where are you?”

“She’s coming. I have to go.”

“Dad, wait! Call the police. Dad…Dad!”

I hung on to the line until a dial tone replaced the silence.

“Was that your father?” the receptionist asked seconds later, popping back into view. “I didn’t recognize his voice.”

I don’t recognize my father,I thought, but didn’t say.

“Should we call the police?” Tracy asked when I told her of the call.

“And say what? They’re just going to tell us that this is a domestic issue and that unless Dad calls to report he’s being physically abused, there’s nothing they can do.”

I called the police anyway. They said that it was a domestic issue and that unless my father called to report he was being physically abused, there was nothing they could do.

I made a note of my father’s phone call in my journal. More evidence, although I was starting to worry that by the time anyone expressed any interest in such evidence, it would be too late.

Too late for what?

Was I really worried that Elyse was going to harm my father?

This is what I knew: She was intent on him changing his will, no doubt making her the sole beneficiary. And once the house was sold and the deal finalized, she’d collect the cash from that as well. I had little doubt that she’d been medicating my father for months, giving him sedatives and God only knows what other drugs to make him sleepy and easy to control.

What else was she capable of?

Would my father meet the same kind of unfortunate accident as my mother? Would I drop over for one of my surprise visits to find his broken body at the bottom of the stairs?He was groggy from all the sleeping pills he’d taken,I could hear Elyse sob to the police.I warned him so many times to be careful, not to take so many, but he was so stubborn.

Would they be interested in my evidence then?

I shook my head in dismay. Even if they were, I understood that evidence wasn’t proof.

There was still a little something known as reasonable doubt, and there was absolutelynodoubt in my mind that Elyse would get away with everything.

Including murder.

Had she already?

One down, one to go.

“Knock, knock,” a voice said from the doorway. I turned to see Stephanie, resplendent in a neon yellow jumpsuit, a grin stretching from one side of her unnaturally taut face to the other.

A picture formed in my mind of her lips suddenly snapping back into place, like an elastic band, causing her top row ofperfect veneers to spew from her mouth like so many Chiclets, and I smiled.

“I have great news,” she said.

I waited, the smile freezing on my lips.

She threw her hands up in the air, as if she were sprinkling fistfuls of confetti. “I sold the house!”