Bliss House: A Novel

by Laura Benedict

  It would’ve been so much easier for Rainey to get the advice she really needed if the Judge’s mother were still alive. Charlotte Bliss had had a fondness for Rainey, an understandable fondness that Charlotte had explained to her when Bertie was a young bride, and which had bonded Bertie more closely to her mother-in-law. Charlotte also had very strong opinions about who should and shouldn’t live in Bliss House. Rainey definitely would have been on the “should not” list.

  Rainey had treated Bertie so kindly—almost like a sister—that she harbored a hope that they might become best friends. She had plenty of friends in Old Gate, of course, but she knew in her heart that not even her closest friends took her seriously. She didn’t mind being a little ridiculous, with her fondness for flowers and sunny colors that made her feel happy and adventurous. And she knew she wasn’t the smartest person on the planet. College at Randolph-Macon had exhausted her after three semesters and she had come home one early March afternoon and declared that she wasn’t going back. Her parents had told her it was just as well. In fact, her father’s words were: “Good on you, Bertie. You’ll save me ten thousand a year.” But when serious things like a death came up, she wanted to show that she was just as valuable as anyone else. Besides, she understood about Bliss House, about what Rainey and that dear child were up against.

  She’d tried to talk to the Judge about it. He’d gone to the party reluctantly, because he had made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t want anything more to do with Bliss House. He’d told her that she should stay out of the business of the woman’s death, and that she needed to keep Rainey Adams at arm’s length. But Bertie was scared for Rainey, and the girl too. She had to do something.

  Resolving to finally do something, she decided to skip the phone call and go right over to Bliss House to see how Rainey was doing. The Judge didn’t even need to know.

  When the first load of laundry was in the washing machine, Bertie bent over the large basket beneath the chute to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. A single sock was curled in the corner of the basket. As she plucked it out, something fell back into the basket with a tiny click. She felt around for whatever it was, and brought it into the light to get a better look.

  The thing was small and thin, rough to the touch on one side, smooth on the other. She held it closer, wishing she had her reading glasses with her. Turning it over, she almost threw it to the floor. It was part of a fingernail. Bright and bronze and definitely not hers.

  Chapter 26

  Detective Lucas Chappell drummed his fingers on the restaurant’s pocked wooden tabletop. It had been slightly more than forty-eight hours since Karin’s body had been found. He had a team interviewing both the guests from the party and the woman’s friends, but by interviewing the family—including Gerard Powell, the husband—himself, he’d learned that the couple’s marriage was way more complicated than it had looked on the surface. It definitely warranted a closer look. Because the evidence didn’t point to a straight-up murder, the case wasn’t imbued with a strong sense of urgency. But that could change at any moment. Right now his primary goals were to get some food and to get on the phone with the medical examiner.

  The service at the Lettuce Leaf was slower than usual. Despite the brutal August heat, the Shenandoah Valley was packed with families trying to sneak in a last vacation before school started. Every café in town was stuffed with overweight, sunburned men, women in flip-flops, shorts, and t-shirts, and bored teenagers texting on phones that cost more than his first car. Finally, Lucas caught a server’s eye, and she immediately started toward the table.

  “How are you, Kyleigh?” he said.

  He knew servers ate it up when you remembered their names without looking for a nametag. Being nominally vegetarian, he ate at the Lettuce Leaf whenever he was within ten miles or so of Old Gate because they had a particularly good hummus burger.

  Kyleigh was a bouncy sort of young woman, with a heart-shaped face and a talent for applying false eyelashes that made her look perpetually wide-eyed and expectant. Her breasts neatly filled out her bright white Lettuce Leaf t-shirt, and her tiny denim shorts exposed a pair of well-shaped legs that were both tan and athletic. He guessed that she was about twenty-two.

  “Ugh,” she said. “I made this huge dinner for my boyfriend last night, and he only ate like five bites of it. So frustrating! And how are you? Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Hayseed Summer Lager, and a glass of water. Did he make it up to you?”

  “No. He did not. He told me he felt sick, like I poisoned him or something.”

  “You can’t do any more than try,” Lucas said.

  “I know, right?” she said, giving him an exaggerated blink. “For specials today, we’ve got a white bean vegan chili with cilantro, served with rosemary caraway bread, also vegan, and mushroom and Gruyére quiche with a melon salad, but that’s not vegan. I mean, the quiche isn’t. You want me to come back in a minute?”

  “Give me a hummus burger with your homemade chips.”

  As she walked away, he watched her, her brunette ponytail swing with her lilting gait. She was cute and he sensed that, in another couple of visits, he could make her forget the ungrateful boyfriend for at least a few hours if he chose to. Then he wondered what the boyfriend was like. It was a diversion from the paucity of information he’d gotten from the medical examiner about Karin.

  He’d been frank about his sexuality with his work partner, Brandon, when they started working together two years earlier. Brandon was straighter than straight and had a pretty blond wife named Gayle and a new baby. Lucas knew it puzzled Brandon, and probably worried him, that he didn’t discriminate between men and women when it came to his love life. Though he did differentiate: while he didn’t mind being with men who were his own age or slightly older, he definitely preferred women who were younger.

  “What the hell do I care who you date?” Brandon had told him. “Well, with the exception of my wife, of course. Maybe that part-time guy down in records, too. He’s got a body odor problem, and that would show a serious lack of judgment.”

  Once they’d been partners for a year or so, he’d tried to be funny by asking Lucas if he would “do” a particularly good-looking guy who had waited on them in a restaurant. Lucas had stunned him by answering honestly and in detail. It wasn’t a question he asked a second time.

  With some time to kill before his lunch arrived, he got Hamrick, the medical examiner, on the phone. He confirmed that the marks on Karin Powell’s neck indicated someone had had their hands on her firmly enough to leave bruising, but hadn’t caused her death. A significant but not problematic amount of alcohol and Lorazipam in her system, but not enough of either to suggest an overdose.

  “Anxiety?” Lucas asked. He kept his voice as low as he could, even though the people at the tables around him were well-occupied with their own concerns.

  “Likely,” Hamrick said.

  “The prescription bottle was in a makeup bag in the car. A box of laxative pills was in there, too,” Lucas said.

  “Well, that could’ve been a diet thing.”

  “Nice,” Lucas said. He did a fast mental inventory of what was in his own medicine cabinet. What would a detective make of his medication, shaving habits, or preference for waxed dental floss? He couldn’t help wondering. It came of having too much experience of the lives of the dead.

  “And then this . . .” Hamrick said.

  “What?”

  “There were signs she was pregnant.”

  “Okay.” Lucas said.

  “The thing is, she wasn’t pregnant when she died. She was pregnant. Recently. But there are no signs that she ever gave birth.”

  “Miscarriage? Abortion? What?”

  “She has all the signs of having had a recent abortion. We’re testing for the amount of pregnancy hormone in her blood,” Hamrick said.

  Stressed out and pregnant. Or not. A hell of a combination. It made sense that she wouldn’t have
been taking the Lorazipam when she was pregnant, unless she knew she was going to get rid of the baby. It was a notion that seemed cold-hearted to him, but he pushed the judgment aside. There wasn’t room for that kind of thinking in his job. It had been her business. He had to stay focused on the facts.

  “I need to know how long ago the pregnancy ended,” Lucas said. “Also if the anxiety meds were connected in some way, and if she was on them when she died.”

  “Pregnancy could be a motive for suicide or for murder,” Hamrick said.

  Children were always a complication. It was as though the diapers, the doctors’ appointments, the weird sleeping and eating schedules weren’t enough. They had to mess with everyone’s heads, too. They never arrived at just the right time, or for exactly the right reasons. Damned if they didn’t come out already well-versed in human flaws and steeped in drama. Lucas had no desire to ever have one of his own.

  “We don’t know if it was the husband’s or not?” Lucas said.

  “How the hell would I know that?” Hamrick said. “That’s y’all’s job. I just open them up.”

  “I don’t suppose there was any DNA from the baby? What do you think?”

  Hamrick sighed. “Sorry, she was clean. No reputable clinic would keep the fetal tissue around for more than a day or two, at most.”

  “Let me know when you get more,” Lucas said.

  “Hey,” Hamrick said. “She was missing two fingernails. Not real ones, but the kind that they temporarily fuse to the real nail. And don’t expect this to be easy. I don’t believe in a lot of hocus pocus bullshit, but both my old man and my grandfather were docs around here most of their lives, and their notes go way back. Some of the stuff they dealt with at that house was nasty enough to rot the paper the notes were written on.”

  “So you told us after Mim Brodsky’s murder.”

  “Then, my friend, don’t bother acting like any of this surprises you. Bad things have been happening around that house for a very long time. The Brodsky murder was only the most recent. Bliss House is like one of those celebrity rehab shows. You have to keep watching it or you miss the big meltdown. Everyone’s waiting for it to happen. Then when it does, people act like they want to know why and how and all that stuff. Mostly they just want to be certain that it won’t happen to them.”

  Some surprises were more surprising than others.

  Lucas hung up the phone.

  Gerard Powell’s exact words that morning had been: “My wife was a sex addict who screwed pretty much any man she was interested in—married or single, bi or straight, any time she felt the need to do it. She might even have done you, Detective. You never met her, did you?”

  There had been a challenge in Gerard Powell’s eyes, but Lucas didn’t rise to it. He’d never been married, but he could imagine it would’ve been hell to come home to someone like Karin Powell. He just shook his head, not bothering to tell the husband that his wife hadn’t been his type.

  The interview with the rest of the family members at Powell’s house had been brief. They all lived out of state, and Karin Powell had only been in frequent touch with her sister, Molly. The father had made a lot of noise after Lucas had offered his condolences and told them his team was working as hard as they could to get answers. He knew they were in a hard place: their child had died before they had. Worse, no one had any answers about why. Molly, who looked disturbingly like the victim, had hovered over them, looking irritated. She had nothing but soft words for Gerard Powell, though. To Lucas, she looked like she wanted to be a comfort to her brother-in-law in the worst way.

  It wasn’t until they were alone that Gerard Powell had brought up his wife’s addiction. Did the parents know? Lucas thought that they—and certainly the sister—must. It wasn’t the sort of addiction that was easy to hide.

  A server who wasn’t Kyleigh brought his lunch to the table. But Kyleigh soon followed with a pitcher to refill his ice water.

  “You want another beer?” she asked. “It’s awfully hot out there today. It’s like one of those spa saunas back in the kitchen.” She ran the back of her free hand across her forehead. “So crazy. But I guess it is August.”

  “No, thanks, Kyleigh. It all looks good to me.”

  She must have heard more in his words than he meant to imply because she blushed prettily before moving on to the next table.

  It didn’t seem a bad thing to him to let a girl like Kyleigh feel flattered. But given the case that was beginning to consume him, he couldn’t help but compare her to the Adams girl. What would her life be like in five or ten years? Unfortunately, her sad situation and her injuries had little bearing on whether she was a truthful or trustworthy person. He hated to be suspicious of a child, but he couldn’t help himself. Something wasn’t right about her. She was steely and angry and he knew it was unlikely that she would open up to him anytime soon. Which left the mother. If he was patient, maybe he could get to her.

  Chapter 27

  Rainey walked from the carriage house, slowed by the cloying noontime humidity. She’d spent most of the morning stripping wallpaper in the dining room and had begun to feel claustrophobic, so she’d taken a short walk to clear her head. The scent of honeysuckle and the sound of a thousand bees at work drifted from the banks of bushes along the driveway. She’d loved the house they’d built back in Missouri, but it didn’t have the privacy and the natural beauty that the land surrounding Bliss House had. She imagined Will walking with her along the sunny drive. He often held her hand when they walked outdoors. Before he died, the possibility that she might have to grow old without him had never occurred to her.

  She liked to think of him here, exploring the place with her, letting her bounce ideas off of him about how it should look.

  Stopping in the sunshine, she closed her eyes and listened to the droning of the bees. So frantic, yet peaceful at the same time. The sun was warm on her face. Will might have kissed her in that moment, his hand firmly cradling her head, his fingers messing up her hair. She would pretend to be shocked that he would kiss her so frankly in a place where anyone watching from the house could see them. He might squeeze her breast playfully, daring someone to notice, making her laugh and blush.

  What if Ariel ses us?

  You had the talk with her, right?

  But we’re her parents!

  Then he would kiss her again. Harder.

  Their physical connection had been instant and deep and lasting, and she felt stirrings that went beyond memory. She’d been without him for so long! How easily, unthinkingly they’d touched one another in the four-poster bed they’d shared since the day they returned from their honeymoon. The bed that had been so lucky for them. The bed in which they’d lain breathless and spent and happy.

  Rainey.

  Will’s voice, whispering her name. Despite the hazy distance of the sound, the word itself was brutal to her ears. She’d heard Will’s voice before, in the brief, thick moments of gloom between sleeping and waking. It would always be there, she knew, as much a product of her guilt as her love.

  When something—or someone—touched her hair, Rainey brought her hand to the back of her head and opened her eyes. The sun seemed to have dimmed.

  “Will?”

  There was no one near. She felt dizzy. Disoriented. Bringing her hand back around, she discovered a fat bumblebee crawling on her index finger. She started to shake it off, but realized that she wasn’t afraid. The bee was as weightless as a thought. If she hadn’t seen it, she wouldn’t have known that it was there.

  Then: a woman’s laughter. Confident laughter, low and suggestive.

  The driveway, the gardens, the grass stretching back to the far-off orchards . . . all desolate and shimmering with heat. Ariel was inside the house, napping. But Rainey sensed that someone was nearby.

  I won’t be afraid. For Ariel’s sake, I won’t be afraid. And she had heard Will’s voice. How could she be afraid if Will was nearby?

  “Will?” She couldn’t be
lieve she was actually calling his name, but it felt so right. So natural.

  Ariel was in her room, right above her, so she didn’t want to say his name too loudly. The laughter had seemed to come from behind the house. She didn’t hurry, even though she wanted to.

  He touched me. God, it’s been so long. But I remember!

  The windows she passed were blank with sunlight, and she could see her own solitary figure reflected back as she walked. When she reached the corner of the house, she opened the iron gate leading to the herb garden behind the kitchen and went inside. As she ran a hand over the unchecked stand of lemon verbena to release its fresh, sharp scent, the bumblebee—had it been on her hand the whole time?—dove into the leaves, then quickly shot out again, into the air above her. She followed it with her eyes. Up, up. As she lost sight of it, she noticed the woman in the window.

  Rainey put a hand to her mouth. The window was in the servants’ quarters that jutted from the back of the house. In the glass above an open second floor sash, she saw a pale, naked woman with burnished red curls, whose image was mixed with the vast reflection of the sky. Her hair was gathered into a sumptuous ponytail resting over one shoulder and tied with a thick blue ribbon. Her face was a mask of pleasure: lips parted, wet and open, glistening in the sun. Her eyes were closed, one hand holding fast onto the window’s frame, the other nearly hidden in the apex of her thighs. But there was a man, too. Rainey could only see his outline behind the woman. He slipped a hand around her, seeking and finding one of her voluptuous breasts. The woman’s breasts were the sort that Rainey had always wanted to have, that she found fascinating in their unfamiliarity. Her own were firm but almost pubescent. Even with Will she’d been self-conscious about their petite size.