ONE THING I love about my job is that I’m not stuck in the office all day. I would lose my mind if I had to spend nine to five in that cubicle Monday through Friday. But fortunately, Seth allows me to travel to vitamin and health stores in the greater Boston area, because he knows that the personal touch can help to make sales.
Soon after a quick sandwich in the office, I travel to a sales call at a nutritional store in Quincy. Quincy is a commuter town on the transit system’s Red Line, largely made up of an eclectic mix of people who want to live near the city, but can’t afford to pay the steep Boston housing prices. And it has an amazing Chinatown, where I could seriously eat dinner every single night.
There are also a large number of vitamin stores, and by now I have sold products to nearly every single one of them. I like to think of myself as Quincy’s Official Vixed Girl. Today I visited one of the stores I’ve never made a sale with in the past, but I managed to leave with an order for three boxes of our products. And the owner informed me that if they sold well, he would be requesting more.
As I climb back into my car with the paperwork for the new orders, I check my phone. There’s a text message waiting for me from my mother:
Coming to dinner Sunday night?
My mother invites me to Sunday night dinner well in advance nearly every weekend. It’s a bit of a tradition in our family. She told me once that she (not so) secretly hopes one day I will show up with a serious boyfriend,
but unfortunately, I have not yet dated a guy who is worthy of the Sunday night dinner. After all, whoever I bring is going to get grilled all night long.
But for the first time, I consider inviting a guest this Sunday: Caleb. I really feel like he could be the guy. At the very least, he could withstand my mother’s incessant questioning. And if I invited him, he would say yes.
I type into the phone:
I’m bringing…
Before I can type the rest of that sentence, I rethink it. What Caleb and I have is great, but it’s still very early. I don’t know if I want to subject him to my mother yet. And if things don’t work out, I’ll never hear the end of it. What happened to that nice Caleb? Why wasn’t this one good enough for you? So I revise my text:
I’m bringing salad.
Bringing salad is a much smarter choice than bringing Caleb. After all, my mother only cooks greasy, fatty meals.
I scroll through the messages on my phone. I checked my voicemails right after my podcast, but the blocked caller didn’t leave a message. And now it’s nearly three and there has still been no word from Dawn. She is the kind of person who always responds to text messages within five seconds, so no response the entire day is extremely strange. I shoot off a quick message to Seth:
Did Dawn show up for your meeting at 2?
Immediately, those little bubbles appear on the screen. A second later, his response pops up:
No. I guess she forgot
Dawn—forget a meeting? That seems highly unlikely. Although now that I think about it, there were a few meetings a bit ago where she showed up just when the meeting was ending and seemed confused when she realized she was an hour late. But that problem resolved itself, and lately, Dawn has been back to her almost scarily prompt self. In fact, if Dawn
appeared even a millisecond after the scheduled start time for a meeting, I would faint dead away from shock.
And of course, there was her request to meet with me as well, about that “matter of great importance.” And in a very uncharacteristic fashion, she left early and blew me off. And then that phone call this morning…
Help me.
This is not like her at all. Something is wrong. I know it. Maybe everyone else at the office blew it off, but they didn’t hear the way Dawn sounded on that phone call. She’s in trouble.
It hits me that Dawn lives in Quincy. Not so far from here, if I recall correctly. I picked her up once when her car was being repaired. She was going on and on about how she didn’t know how she was going to get to work, so I volunteered to chauffeur her back-and-forth, thinking we might get to know each other better, although it didn’t work out that way. She mostly talked about turtles the whole time, even when I tried to press her for details about her life.
In any case, the address is still stored somewhere in my brain. She lives at…
Lake street? Was that it?
No. Lark street. Like the bird.
I enter Lark Street into my GPS, and it’s a tiny street not far from Quincy Center and my absolute favorite hot pot sushi bar. It’s less than ten minutes away from here. I don’t remember her house number, but the street is small enough that if I drive there, I’ll probably recognize it. And then I can make sure she’s okay.
Before I can change my mind, I click on “start” in my GPS and a clipped British female voice instructs me to make a right at the next light. Even though I vaguely know where her house is, I don’t dare travel anywhere without my GPS. The streets in the greater Boston area simply don’t make sense. In some parts of the country, you can turn three corners and be back where you started. Around here, you turn three corners and you’re hopelessly lost.
Seven minutes later, my GPS directs me to make a right turn onto Lark Street. Your destination is on the right. Of course, I don’t know what house it is. But if I drive slowly, I should be able to figure it out. It was sort of an off-yellow color with light blue trim, just one story high, with a small but well-groomed front yard.
The houses on the street are all relatively small, single-family houses. I rent out a house in Dorchester—surprisingly tiny given the steep rent, although it’s two stories high. Dawn is far enough from the center of town that she probably pays less in rent than I do.
When I get about halfway down the street, I hit the brakes. There’s a car parked in the driveway that looks exactly like the one I’ve seen Dawn climb into at the end of the day. A green Honda Civic.
It’s the color of a turtle.
I turn my head to the right and that’s when I see it. The off-yellow house with the blue trim. Dawn’s house.
I pull over outside her house. There are several windows in the front of the house, and all of them are dark. I don’t see Dawn’s silhouette in the window or any other indication that she might be home. But I also don’t see any broken windows or signs that something terrible has happened.
I kill the engine and sit in my car for a moment, debating what to do. Dawn and I aren’t exactly best friends. But I get the feeling Dawn doesn’t have any real friends. All she’s got is her elderly mother, who lives all the way up north of Boston. If something has happened to her, if she’s hurt or sick, it could be days before anyone discovers what’s wrong. And by then, it could be too late.
Help me.
Screw it. I’m getting out of the car.
I step out of my Hyundai, smoothing out the creases in my cream- colored skirt. Dawn always tells me how much she admires the way I dress. It’s funny, because she always dresses in a very understated way. She has very delicate facial features—a button nose and giant brown eyes that take up half her face—as well as a trim figure, and if she wanted, she could be a knockout. But instead, she dresses in shapeless blouses and slacks that are at least a size too big for her. She keeps her brown hair hacked off about half an inch from her skull—too short to even be called a cute pixie cut. I’ve offered her some fashion advice, but she never seemed interested.
Honestly, if you weren’t talking about turtles, it was hard to get Dawn to talk about much at all.
My red heels clack against the walkway as I make my way to the front door. I push my thumb against the doorbell, and chimes resonate inside the house. And then I wait.
No answer.
Not only is nobody answering, but I don’t hear anything from inside the house. No footsteps. No vacuum drowning out the sound of the doorbell. Nothing. It’s dead silent.
I ring the doorbell again, but it’s no different the second time. It’s obvious that nobody is going to answer the door.
I pull my phone out of my purse one more time, double-checking that Dawn never contacted me. She didn’t. There’s another text from Seth, but that’s it.
The welcome mat below my feet is an image of two turtles swimming side-by-side, holding hands. Between their bodies is scrawled the word “welcome.” I step off the mat and flip it over, hoping there might be a spare key underneath. No luck.
I check both ways down the block, to see if anyone is watching me. Dawn’s neighborhood seems pretty quiet. If something did happen here, there would be zero witnesses. I crane my neck and notice a path along the side of the house. I bet there’s a back door.
I follow the path, which leads to Dawn’s tiny backyard. I can see the back of her house, as well as her screen door. This would probably look suspicious if anyone were watching me, but I don’t think anyone is. Anyway, I’m not doing anything wrong—I’m just a concerned coworker. I don’t exactly look like a burglar in my short skirt and red pumps.
I try the screen door, and it swings open. Then I put my hand on the doorknob to the back door. It feels cold in my palm, but it turns easily. The back door is unlocked.
I hesitate as I carefully push the back door open. It was one thing to go to Dawn’s house and ring her doorbell. It’s another thing entirely to enter her house without her permission. Everyone knows Dawn is a bit strange. What if she’s sitting in the living room with a gun? Technically, I’m intruding. She could shoot me and she would be completely within her rights.
Then again, I can’t imagine harmless little Dawn Schiff sitting in her living room with a sawed-off shotgun. And I can’t shake the sense that she’s in trouble. I have to check it out—she might need my help. And it’s not like I could call the police. They’re not going to come running over here because a grown woman won’t open her door.
Please don’t shoot me, Dawn.
“Dawn?” I call out as I enter her kitchen through the back. “Dawn, it’s Natalie! From work?”
No answer.
Dawn’s kitchen is extremely tidy. I’m not surprised exactly, but I wouldn’t have been completely shocked to find out that Dawn was some kind of hoarder with dirty dishes and old newspapers stacked up to the ceiling. I have to admit, Kim and I hypothesized about it a couple of times. But this kitchen is pretty normal looking. Could be anyone’s kitchen. Well, except for the turtle salt and pepper shakers.
The kitchen itself seems normal, but there’s something else disturbing about it.
There’s a bottle of wine on the counter. Red wine, filled about halfway, still uncorked. There’s also a wine glass on the counter, with a residue of red liquid at the bottom of the glass. And then there’s a second glass. Except this one is shattered on the floor.
I may not be Dawn’s best friend, but I know her well enough to know that she wouldn’t leave a bottle of wine uncorked on her kitchen counter. And she definitely wouldn’t leave broken glass on the floor.
I was right. Something terrible has happened here.
I walk slowly across the kitchen. As much as I want to find Dawn and help her, I’m scared there could be an intruder in the house. Well, another intruder. Whatever happened to Dawn, I don’t want it to happen to me as well. I’ve got to be careful.
So that’s why when I pass the block of knives on her kitchen counter, I pull one of them out. Better safe than sorry.
My fingers are bloodless, wrapped around the handle of the knife. I push open the door to the dark living room, and the first thing that hits me is a strange smell. It’s not something rotting or anything like that. It’s almost like… wet seaweed.
Before I can spend another second wondering about the strange smell, I catch sight of the giant tank filled with water. It’s a fish tank, illuminated by a glow from within, but I don’t see any fish inside. I lower my head to peer into the water.
It’s a turtle.
An ordinary turtle, about the size of my hand, swimming around in this giant tank. Well, it’s not so much swimming as much as sitting perched on a rock, its dark green shell glistening as it stares at me. I’ve never had any
strong feelings towards turtles, one way or the other, but this turtle is unnerving me. I want to snap at it to stop staring. It’s rude.
Turtles just don’t have any manners, apparently. “Dawn?” I call out again.
No answer. Where is she, dammit?
Next to the turtle tank, there’s a large bookshelf. The room is dark, but I can still make out the contents. I always thought Dawn had a lot of turtles in her cubicle at work, but I was wrong. I didn’t know what a lot of turtles meant until I saw this bookshelf.
Every single shelf is bursting with turtle figurines. Turtles, turtles, turtles. Glass, ceramic, marble, even stuffed turtles. Every single inch of the bookcase bears the likeness of a turtle, except for one bare space in the middle of the second-highest shelf.
Something about that bookcase makes my skin crawl. I take a step back, but I nearly trip over an unfortunately placed ottoman. I look down—the Ottoman has been overturned.
But I didn’t knock it over. It was toppled over like that already.
That’s when I notice the chair overturned, lying on the floor. I creep closer, squinting into the darkness. And then I see what’s on the carpet.
And I scream.
