Peek A Boo I See You (Emma Frost #5) Read online

  But I didn't like the idea that this killing had something to do with me. Why me, of all people?

  I parked the car in the driveway in front of my grandmother's old house and looked at the facade before I went in. It really needed a renovation.

  Maybe that should be your spring project instead of writing another book?

  I walked into the kitchen and found my mother sitting where I’d left her with a laptop on the table.

  "Hi, honey," she said, and looked up. "Oh my, you look terrible. I never noticed how pale you are. You need to get out more in the fresh air or travel places. Get some sun and vitamin D."

  I had no idea what to say to this woman. I felt exhausted and couldn't cope with her and her sudden pretended interest in me.

  "I…I think I'll go upstairs for a little while," I said.

  "Do that, sweetheart. I have a lot of e-mails to answer anyway. Take a nap. Maybe you're just tired."

  "Maybe."

  I walked up the stairs and went into my bedroom where I threw myself on the bed. I felt like crying, but no tears came. I think I was in some state of shock. I didn't know what to call it. I just felt so incredibly tired.

  So naturally, I feel asleep and didn't wake up until it was almost dark outside. I gasped and looked out the window at the dusk. Then, I opened my eyes wide and jumped out of the bed.

  "The kids!"

  I rushed down the stairs, feeling horrible for not being there when they got home. I was always there to greet them. I almost always baked something for them. They had to be so sad.

  At least I thought so until I heard Maya's laughter coming from the kitchen. I walked in and found her sitting at the table with a cup in her hand. Next to her sat my mother. They looked chummy and, somehow, that annoyed me more than anything.

  "Hi, Mom," Maya said.

  "Where is your brother?"

  "He’s in the yard playing," my mother said. "He didn't say much, but went straight out there after he came home. Maya here tells me he likes to play out there. That's good. Gets a lot of fresh air and exercise."

  "He's all right, Mom," Maya said. "I checked on him not long ago. He's wearing his warm snowsuit and everything. I made sure of that."

  I inhaled sharply. "Well, that's good. But I better get him inside now. It's getting dark."

  "Can't he tell it’s getting dark and figure out to come inside on his own?" My mother asked with a scoff. "I mean, he is eight years old now, right? He should know when it’s time to come back in."

  I closed my eyes and calmed myself down to not answer her too harshly. "No, Mom, he doesn't know when it’s time to come back inside. When he’s in a world of his own, he doesn't sense his surroundings. If I don't get him inside, he'll stay out there all night. He’s not like other kids; he doesn't think of consequences."

  "That sounds like nonsense to me," she said. "You're just being overprotective. No good has ever come from that."

  I drew in a deep breath, then walked out of the kitchen without answering her. I found Victor in the middle of the yard talking to the tallest of the birch trees.

  "Victor! It's time to come back in, buddy. It's getting dark."

  He didn't answer. I was used to that. "Victor? Buddy?"

  He nodded and looked at the tree. "I'll make sure to ask her," he said, right before he came towards me and walked right past me.

  I caught up with him. "Hi, buddy. How was your day at school?"

  "Bad," he said. "You know it was. It always is. Why do I have to say the same thing every day? Why do you ask the same thing every day? It doesn't make any sense. People spend way too much time talking about stuff that doesn't matter."

  "But it matters to me, Victor. I really want to know how your day was. Maybe I secretly hope that it will be good one of these days."

  Victor didn't say anything. He kept walking towards the porch.

  "So, what did you have to ask whom?" I said.

  "What?" he asked, as we reached the porch and I told him to take his muddy shoes off.

  "You told the tree you would ask someone something, what was that? Who was it?"

  "You," he said. Victor lifted his eyes and looked into mine, something he rarely did. Only if it what he had to tell me was important.

  "He asked me if you liked to play Hide and Go Seek."

  Victor turned around and walked inside the house, leaving muddy prints all over the wooden planks with his dirty socks.

  "Wait, Victor," I said and stormed after him. "What did the tree mean by that?" I asked and suddenly heard how silly of a sentence that was. But Victor had a way of knowing things and I had reached a point where I couldn't ignore it anymore. I didn't dare to. "What do you think it meant?"

  But Victor didn't answer. He kept walking towards the kitchen and disappeared through the door. I followed him, but stopped when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out and saw Morten's name on the display.

  "Still working, huh?" I asked, as I answered.

  "Yes. This is going to be late. I'll sleep at my own place since I have to get up early, if that's alright with you?"

  I was disappointed, but at the same time, relieved. I hadn't told him about my mother showing up all of a sudden and I wasn't prepared for him to meet her just yet.

  "Sure. We'll see each other tomorrow night instead. Any news on the identity of the woman?"

  "You were right. The head didn't belong to the body. The face has been identified as a woman named Susie Larsen. She was twenty-six years old and living in these condos outside of town where the county places a lot of psychiatric patients. She was bipolar and disappeared three days ago. Her mother reported her missing. She was afraid she had forgotten to take her medicine and usually that makes her lose the sense of reality. Last time she disappeared, we picked her up in an apartment where she had barged in on some people who didn't know her. We found her sitting naked in the open window while singing. So naturally, the mother was concerned about what Susie had come up with this time. I am on my way to her house now to tell her what we’ve found."

  "That's a tough one, huh?"

  Morten breathed in the phone. "It is. Especially since I don't have much to tell her. I don't know how she died. We haven't even discovered the rest of her body yet. We probably can't say anything about the cause of death before we find it."

  "Well…good luck. Let me know how it went."

  "Sure. Talk to you later."

  7

  February 2014

  "SO, HOW'S YOUR DAD?"

  We were eating dinner at the table when my mother popped the question. I knew it was going to come at some point, but had hoped to avoid it for a little longer.

  "He's fine, Mom," I said, and smiled at Maya, who rolled her eyes at me.

  Victor remained bent over his plate, eating without making any eye-contact at all or saying a word to any of us, for that matter.

  "He moved here, right?" she asked, and stuck her fork in the pasta. She had hardly eaten anything except for the salad. Probably contained too many carbs for her taste. I still found it hard to accept the fact that my mother had become so fixated on looking good and eating right. It annoyed me greatly.

  "Yes, he did. Right after we came here. He bought a house two blocks from here."

  "I'm done," Victor said and got up from his chair. He left the kitchen without so much as looking at any of us.

  My mother looked surprised. "Isn't he even supposed to take out his plate?"

  "Mom," I said sounding just like Maya when she spoke to me.

  "Yeah, yeah I know. Victor is special."

  "He is. Things are different with him," I said, and took another plateful of the pasta. I wasn't even hungry anymore, but the stress made me continue to eat. I started wondering how many kilos I was going to gain while my mom was here. I hoped she wouldn't stay long, or else I’d have to buy new clothes.

  "Seems a little like Victor is so special that he gets away with everything," she said, chirping.

  I dropped my
fork and looked at her. Maya got up and escaped out the door.

  "Well excuse me for saying so. But he doesn't need any disciplining just because he has a condition?" my mother asked, making quotation signs in the air.

  "Really, mom? Is that the way you're going to approach this? You've been gone for four years. What can you possibly know about my son? Do you really think I'm interested in what you think about anything?" I asked and got up from the chair. I found a bottle of red wine and opened it. I poured myself a glass.

  "Oh, you're drinking too now?" my mother asked. "Is that the way you deal with everything around here? You let the boy run his own show and be so impolite that he doesn't even look at us. Meanwhile, all you do is drink and overeat. I'm really not seeing anything healthy here, Emma."

  I stared at her, not believing my own ears. "What the heck do you care? You can't just run away then come back and pretend to be a mother all of a sudden, just because you don't have anything better to do."

  I lifted the glass and drank some of the wine. My mother looked at me with contempt. It was hard to tell if she was upset or not, but I guessed she was. "Do you want some?" I asked, and lifted the bottle.

  She nodded and looked down.

  "You look like you could use it," I said, and poured her some.

  I placed the glass on the table in front of her and sat down. We sat in silence for quite a while. I was furious at her and wanted to calm down before I spoke to her again. I didn't want to say something I would regret.

  "I…," she said, then drank from her wine. "I missed you."

  I exhaled deeply, then leaned back in my chair. "I missed you too, you old bat."

  We both laughed. Then I lifted my glass and we toasted in the air. "Let's start over," I said. "Welcome back, Mom."

  "Thanks, sweetie. Can't say it feels good, but I'm glad I did it, after all."

  "Well you didn't have much choice, did you?"

  "Ha. No, you're right. He threw me out. I don't have a penny. I’ve got my pension, but that's not much to live on. At least not in the lifestyle I have gotten myself used to. Damn the bastard."

  I drank again. Then I looked at her. "You can stay as long as you need to," I said, knowing I was going to regret it the moment the words left my lips.

  8

  February 2014

  ANDERS SAMUELSEN DIDN'T LIKE to go out. Most of the time, he stayed inside his house behind locked doors with the curtains pulled to cover the windows. He didn't care much about the world outside of his small house. He had moved outside of Nordby to be alone. He bought a house in a nice, quiet neighborhood where no one bothered each other, nor cared enough to be friendly.

  It wasn't that Anders didn't like people. No, he was just so incredibly afraid of them and especially of where they had been and what they had touched. He was terrified of germs. There was nothing worse for him than that time of day when the mailman came to his door and put Anders' mail in the mailbox with his dirty germ-ridden hands and Anders had to step outside to get it. Because, not only was he afraid of germs, he was also afraid of going outside; open places especially frightened him. Anders was afraid of a lot of things and, over the years, it had come to control his life and whereabouts to a degree that his doctor told him he didn't think the medicine helped him much and that he was unable to work. The doctor had then signed a piece of paper, which he gave to the county to make them give Anders a disability pension. In that way, Anders could stay in his house and only had to go out to get the mail or that one time a week - oh the horror - when he had to go grocery shopping.

  Anders Samuelsen liked his life the way it was and could deal with the few times when he actually had to interact with other people, even if he wanted those times to be less often. He carried with him a hand sanitizer that he used to clean his groceries before putting them in the cart and again when he came home after cleaning the door handles and washing all of his clothes.

  Yes, Anders thought he had found himself safety, a way of living that he could handle. Until this morning in February when the mailman brought him a letter that, for a second, made him consider breaking out of the safety and security that he had sought for so long. A letter that made him consider leaving the house, a letter stating that his mother had died.

  Now Anders Samuelsen wasn't particular fond of his mother. As a matter of fact, he had hated her for most of his life and some of the many therapists he’d seen blamed his condition on what had happened to him back in his childhood.

  Anders had lost two younger brothers who had both died from what the doctors believed was pneumonia six months after birth. Losing two sons within three years had made Anders' mother terrified of something happening to Anders, and especially of the fact that he might also get sick. Anders' father hadn't been able to handle the big loss and had left them shortly after it. He had thereby doomed Anders to live a life where every step he took, every thing he touched was a possible danger to him. His mother preached about germs and diseases and how they travelled from person to person by air and Anders grew up to be terrified of a thing as simple as breathing.

  At the age of seventeen, Anders had run away from home, only to find himself living on the street and soon being hospitalized with pneumonia. His mother had come to his bed and told him he was a fool and he had brought this on himself, and when he had asked her to let him live his life like a normal teenager, she told him that if that was what he wanted, then she was done trying to take care of him. She had left him in the hospital with a check on the table and told him to go out and take care of himself. She was done. If he wanted to get sick, then she wasn't going to stand by and watch it.

  "It's like a Band-Aid," she said. "Hurts less if you rip it off fast."

  And then she was gone.

  Now Anders sat in his small house that he had bought with the money his mother had given him and looked at the letter from the attorney stating that she had died from falling from a ladder, while disinfecting the kitchen cabinets. Anders chuckled.

  Of course she would go out cleaning.

  But it wasn't the fact that she died or how she went that had gotten Anders thinking about leaving his house for this news. No, it was the fact that his mother was an extremely wealthy woman and the attorney stated in the letter that Anders had to contact him, so they could discuss his inheritance.

  You could get a bigger house. Pay someone to do the grocery-shopping for you. Make sure you never had to go outside again.

  The thought made Anders smile for the first time in many months. He got up from the chair and found his phone in the drawer. Wearing plastic gloves, he dialed the attorney's number.

  9

  February 2014

  I WAS EXHAUSTED WHEN I woke up the next morning. I had slept horribly, constantly tossing and turning and worrying about this whole thing with my mother and whether it was a mistake to tell her she could stay as long as she needed to.

  But she was, after all, my mother. Wasn't I obligated to help her out? I knew she wasn't here because she wanted to suddenly be close to all of us again. No, she was here because she had nowhere else to go. That's what bothered me so much.

  At the same time, I was afraid of hurting my dad. I would have to tell him at some point that she was back and that she had moved in. I felt bad for him, since this was not at all what he needed right now. He had finally moved on and put their marriage behind him. I had no idea how he was going to react to this.

  Why now? Of all the times you could chose to interfere in my life, dear mother, why now? You really know how to time things.

  Furthermore, I was very concerned about that strange message carved in the skin of the dead woman. It freaked me out. I had no idea what this killer wanted from me or why he would choose to carve a message to me on the back of a dead woman. Did he want to tell me something? Who did the body belong to? And worst of all; would there be any more?

  I had the chills thinking about it when I went downstairs to start making breakfast for my kids before school. I ope
ned the door to the kitchen and, to my great surprise, found my mother standing there, wearing an apron.

  "You're up early," I said, and stepped inside. I noticed, to my pleasure, that there was coffee in the pot and I poured myself a cup. I closed my eyes and sipped it, then spat it all out in the sink.

  "What the…? What is that?"

  "Ganoderma coffee. I brought a package with me from Spain," my mother sang happily. Her cheerfulness annoyed me.

  "That tastes horrible, Mom."

  "It's better for you. Ganoderma coffee is like regular coffee but contains extracts of Ganoderma. It's a medical mushroom, in case you didn't know."

  "A mushroom? Come on, Mom. I really like my own coffee. Regular black coffee with milk. Nothing else."

  "Ganoderma on its own offers certain health benefits. Aren't you even interested in that?"

  "Not really."

  "Oh come on, sweetheart. There is so much to learn. For instance: a study of some advanced-stage cancer patients found that Ganoderma strengthened the immune system in people with cancer. Published in Immunological Investigations, the study found that 12 weeks of treatment with Ganoderma supplements enhanced immune response in most participants. They say it can knock out breast cancer cells and lower cholesterol."

  "But I don't have breast cancer, at least not that I know of, and I don't have a high cholesterol level either. If I ever get any of those two, I'll get back to you and have you make me some of that coffee."

  My mother scoffed. "Don't be such a dinosaur, Emma. Try something new for once. It's not just those things it's good for. It's also a strong antioxidant. It can boost your immunity, help with weight loss, fight fatigue and improve memory, relieve stress and reverse the aging process. Who doesn't want that, huh?"

  "Me," I said, and poured the rest of the cup into the sink. "I don't need all of that. My immune system is great. I haven't been sick since we moved here. I have no stress and my memory works just fine, sometimes a little too great, if you ask me. It would be nice to forget stuff every now and then, especially when you want to sleep, if you know what I mean. And I look just fine. I don't care about aging or weight loss. There, now I'll make a new fresh pot of my own coffee, if you don't mind."