Bliss House: A Novel

by Laura Benedict

  The sun had finally dropped, and dusk was coming on. The waitress raised the filtering blinds on the broad window near their table, throwing the last of the sunlight across their faces. Despite his careful appearance, Nick looked weary. Karin Powell’s death had hit him hard.

  “Did you talk to her at the party?” Lucas asked.

  “Only in passing. She wasn’t in great shape. She was distracted, but she had her game face on. Earlier this week I had to take her out of town for the day so she could get her act together.”

  Lucas knew he was taking a chance, but he said what was on his mind anyway. “You were the one who took her to get the abortion?”

  “That’s why I called you. I heard the autopsy was finished except for the final toxicology report.” Nick sighed, took a sip of his cooling coffee. “She wouldn’t tell me whose it was.”

  “Any thoughts?” Lucas’s own coffee wasn’t cold, but was stale. There obviously wasn’t much call for decaf at this particular Waffle House.

  “Here’s what I know,” Nick said, leaning forward. “Her decision to terminate was sudden. She’d just told me a few days before that she was pregnant, and that—and this I find hard to believe—Gerard was happy about it. Then she calls me up and asks if I can drive her to have a procedure. She wouldn’t talk about it, though. It was a very quiet, very long drive.”

  “No clues? Nothing about whose it might have been? Someone who might not have been happy about it?”

  “Mr. Laid-Back wanted to raise the baby as his. How does that work?” Nick said. “And even though she picked up the occasional date in Charlottesville . . .” His brief pause was an obvious comment on the similarity of his and Karin’s situations. “Her latest conquest was definitely local. We had coffee late one morning last week, and she said she had to meet someone in fifteen minutes. She had a look about her that told me that it wasn’t a business meeting. You know what that means?”

  “Tell me,” Lucas said.

  “Gerard was going to have to see the baby-daddy around town. Creepy, don’t you think?”

  “You think he changed his mind and killed her?”

  Nick shook his head. “He’s got his problems, but he’s not a wife-killer.”

  “So, what about the baby-daddy?”

  “Love’s complicated ways,” Nick said. “I think Karin was afraid of whoever it was, even though she wouldn’t tell me anything at all about him. Not even after a few drinks. But she was definitely shaken up the day I took her to the clinic.”

  “Again, Nick. You’ve got no guess at all as to who the father might have been?”

  “Yes, I have thoughts. Lots of thoughts.”

  “Maybe you could share those with me,” Lucas said.

  “I don’t think so, Detective. Thoughts aren’t something you can use in a court of law, anyway.” He smiled. The slick lawyer was back. He put down a ten for the waitress.

  “You wouldn’t want to obstruct justice,” Lucas said.

  “My guesses—and that’s all they are—could end up looking like slander if they got around. I know you wouldn’t want me to get in any kind of trouble.” He smiled again. “If you want to drop by the house later, I’ll be home. We can have a drink.” He took his car keys from his pants pocket.

  Lucas noticed the flashy BMW fob that matched the dark sedan in the parking lot. Did Nick actually have more information, or was he just playing a game? Lucas hated games.

  “Maybe another time,” he said.

  Chapter 38

  Ariel shone the flashlight on her watch. It was after eight o’clock and it would soon be getting dark outside. Had her mother come back to the ballroom looking for her? It gave her a tiny thrill of satisfaction to imagine her mother thinking that she’d disappeared.

  The air in the tunnel was mostly still, but Ariel noticed that when she raised her hand close to the low ceiling, she could feel a kind of faint draft. Somewhere there were openings to the outside. She just didn’t know how to find them.

  When she heard a sound far ahead of her, Ariel shone her flashlight forward.

  “Who’s there?” She looked over her shoulder into the opaque dark, trying to decide if she should run away from the sound or not.

  The only answer was the sound of heavy footsteps. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut and wake up back in her old bedroom, almost a thousand miles from Bliss House.

  Knowing she was taking a chance, she switched off her flashlight. Now, whoever it was couldn’t see where she stood. But she couldn’t see them, either.

  The footsteps stopped. She caught an even fainter sound—maybe a door closing.

  Turning her flashlight on, she hurried toward what was surely the beginning of the tunnel. She had no idea how far she was from the stairway and the sealed door. Knowing that there was something else ahead of her kept her moving forward.

  “Hello?” she said. Her own voice echoed back to her. The flashlight exposed twenty feet of gray walls and ceiling. She wished her mother had given her a better, more penetrating flashlight. When she reached the door a minute later, she felt hugely relieved.

  This door was short—not much taller than she was—and the metal hinges were mounted on the inside of it. The handle, a sort of wrought iron lever, was set high, almost level with her chest.

  She jerked up the lever and pulled.

  She heard the sound of moving water. Pulling harder, she opened the door wide enough for her to pass through sideways.

  Was she outside? Inside? A dusky light filtered through broken stone walls, casting everything in gray.

  She stepped into a jumbled mess of stones and broken furniture and boards from which the paint was peeling. Instead of the fetid damp of the tunnel, the air smelled of fresh water and grass. Looking up at the cracked wooden ceiling, she could see that it was painted with some kind of bird. It looked as though it had once been brightly painted, but now there was a little, but faint, suggestion of feathers, stick-like legs, and a long, intricately feathered tail. One of the bird’s clawed feet ended in a large brass hook. There was a hole in the ceiling beside it that looked as though it had held a second hook. The bird’s narrow head sat atop a graceful curved neck and wore a feathered crown. A peacock.

  “Amazing, isn’t it? This is where they hung the meat and kept the milk.”

  Ariel dropped the flashlight at the sound of Jefferson’s voice. It shone down into a chaotic pile of wood and metal, leaving them in the graying sunlight.

  She bent for the flashlight, but Jefferson hopped down from the rock on which he sat and picked it up.

  “Scared you again,” he said, holding it out to her.

  Ariel took it from him, but found it hard to speak. Jefferson seemed older, and it suddenly struck her that she’d never been outside with him. She hadn’t really been outside the house at all in over a month. Mosquitos buzzed near her ear, the sound amplified and disturbing. It all felt so strange. She trembled with cold even though it must have been eighty degrees. Or was she just afraid?

  “Hey, you’re freezing,” Jefferson said. “Take my jacket.”

  He eased out of his denim jacket and laid it over her shoulders. It smelled like him—the same mix of beer and cologne that had hovered around him the night of the party. “You want to sit?”

  “Where are we?” Ariel said, remaining standing. “Where’s the house?”

  “Up there. You’ll see,” he said, taking her by the elbow. “Cut that light.” They climbed up a few feet to stand beneath the remains of an arch. The crumbling wall on which they stood was more dirt than stone.

  “There,” he said.

  She could see the back of Bliss House five or six hundred feet away, the blurred glow of the kitchen light marking the distance.

  Chapter 39

  As Bertie drove through town, she felt a strong sense of regret about leaving the book club meeting early. It wasn’t that she was missing anything important. The recipes in between the chapters were her favorite part, and she had bought her ow
n copy of the book. She felt bad about lying to her friends, telling them she had to leave because she had to get up early. She would have to lie to the Judge, too, if he asked how long the meeting had gone. The lies were piling up, burying her soul.

  Her prickly conscience was one of the reasons she had never really wanted to go out in the world and get a real job. She was certain people would just try to take advantage of her. But sometimes she wondered what she might have become if her father hadn’t supported her desire to leave college and find a husband. Like Rainey, she loved art and beautiful things. No one had ever—at least to Bertie’s knowledge—suggested to Rainey that she couldn’t have a career, couldn’t spend her days and evenings making the world a lovelier place, and helping people acquire things that made them happy. It had occurred to Bertie that if she couldn’t talk Rainey out of leaving Bliss House (which would really be the best thing), then Rainey was going to need some help. Lots of spiritual help and support, yes, but also someone to answer her business phone, make appointments, and order things. Maybe even help with clients. Bertie could do all those things in addition to bringing in many of those clients. It would all take place in the daytime, of course. Bad things didn’t happen in the daytime. The idea of working with Rainey at Bliss House gave her a thrill, as though she were contemplating taking a lover.

  What would the Judge say if she went to work? He hadn’t even wanted her to take on the garden club presidency the previous year. But there was something about Rainey that made her feel brave, and willing to face down the Judge’s opinions about what she should do with her time.

  Rainey was her friend, now, as well as part of the family, and she even felt partly responsible for Rainey’s unhappiness—at least the unhappiness she’d experienced since moving to Old Gate. The housewarming party had been her idea, and she’d practically written the guest list. The very least she could do was help Rainey deal with all the unpleasantness surrounding the Powell woman’s death. The Judge would just have to understand.

  It was bravado, she knew, talking inside her head. The visit she was about to make might confirm her worst fears, and all of her hopes could evaporate in an instant, just like Karin Powell’s had. Outwardly, she and Karin Powell had so little in common. Sometimes it was the hidden things, like lies and secrets, that bound people together.

  Nick slid the patio door closed with one elbow, his hands well-occupied with two tall glasses of white wine.

  “This will bring a smile to your face, dear Bertie.”

  Thanking him, Bertie took one of the glasses and settled back in the cushioned wicker chair. She hadn’t known until late in the evening that she would be stopping by Nick’s house. Something one of the gossipy women at the book club had said about Karin Powell, about the way she dressed and the makeup she wore, had started her thinking. And those thoughts had led to truly uncomfortable thoughts. She had to share them with Rainey, but Nick was the person she needed right now.

  Nick sat down in the opposite chair, framed by a fragrant butterfly bush that was heavy with lilac-colored flowers. “Cheers,” he said, raising his glass to her.

  They drank.

  Nick’s garden made her happy all year ’round, no matter how she was feeling when she walked into it. He held an annual Christmas open house, and even in winter the garden was bright with holly berries and boxwoods, crown-shaped tufts of decorative grass turned the color of hay. Now the small yard around the patio was crowded with green leaves and late-summer bloomers: black-eyed Susans, foxgloves, bold clematis clinging to a trellis, and tightly-closed chrysanthemums tipped with oxblood and gold. Seeing the chrysanthemums, she remembered that Nick had been an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, whose colors were similar.

  Nick only did a small amount of his own gardening. The garden was meticulously tended and carefully mulched—not the garden of a hobbyist, and definitely not a garden tended exclusively by a busy lawyer with a busy social life. That he had someone take care of it for him didn’t lessen its charm.

  He lit a cigarette and offered it to her as though it were 1950-something and they were in a black and white film. That image suited Nick. He reminded her a little of William Powell—if William Powell had been short and discreetly homosexual.

  She leaned forward and took the cigarette with a little giggle, and held it carefully to her lips. Inhaling, she managed to exhale the smoke again without coughing.

  Nick laughed. “Nicely done.” He reached out and took the cigarette back. “You don’t have to smoke any more of it. I just wanted to see if you had it in you.”

  Bertie was about to protest that she wanted the rest of it, but stopped. She’d smoked cigarettes in high school for a while, like most of the other girls in her group. Then her mother had found them in her purse and had threatened to take her car away, and that had been that. Nick just always seemed to bring out the naughty in her.

  “It’s not like you to be out on the loose in the evening without your friends,” he said. “Or your husband.” Ignoring the pink lipstick stain on the filter, he took a drag and put the cigarette down in the ashtray on the glass-topped table between them. “What’s up?”

  Bertie liked Nick’s forthright manner. She knew that some people in town considered him slightly disreputable, but she saw the honesty behind his snarky gaze. She trusted him.

  Bertie took a large swallow of wine, then picked up her handbag from beside the chair. She laid a neatly folded tissue on the table between them, and carefully unfolded it.

  She waited as Nick picked up the thing on the tissue, his face illuminated by the lighted tiki torches planted on either side of the patio.

  When he looked at her again, there was understanding in his eyes.

  “Ah, poor Bertie.” He took her hand. “Tell me everything.”

  Nick walked Bertie to her car. It was late enough that the crickets had started their nightly song, but the nearby houses were still glowing with light, and they heard laughter from a house across the street.

  When Bertie held out her hand to say goodnight, Nick took it and pulled her gently toward him. Breathing against him, she smelled a little of Pinot Grigio and smoke—probably from the torches. She was fleshy and soft and had a generous heart, like his mother. Maybe that was why he liked her so much.

  Pulling away, he looked down into her face, which even in the glow from the streetlamp was slightly pink with wine—and what else? Relief?

  If it was relief, he was glad to see it.

  “Feel better?”

  “Much,” she said, getting in the car. She looked up at him, her eyes moist with emotion. “Thank you, Nick. I knew I could come to you.”

  “You be careful going home. I don’t want to have to come bail you out of county.”

  She smiled back at him, and he stepped away from the car. He stood waving after her until her car turned the corner and was out of sight.

  Back on the patio, he extinguished the tiki torches and sat down in the darkness. He lit a cigarette, and smoke filled the still air around him, covering the achingly rich scent of the butterfly bush.

  Why do people work so hard to fuck up their own lives?

  It was a question that he found himself pondering almost every day. Though, if they didn’t, he supposed he’d be out of a job. And he liked his job, as complicated and unpleasant as it sometimes was. The laws within which he worked were like the people who made them: arbitrary and subjective and always, in their deepest hearts, surprising. But sometimes they were strangely malleable. The challenge was to find their weak points. That was the part of his job that he truly loved.

  He finished the cigarette, thinking. Inside the house, after tucking the dirty glasses into the dishwasher, he went to his bedroom and picked up his phone to make a call.

  Chapter 40

  “I wondered when you’d figure it out,” Jefferson said.

  Ariel pulled the jacket closer around her, still chilled.

  “My mom told me there was a springhouse out here somewhere,�
�� she said. “I could see something from the third floor, but I didn’t know this was what it was.”

  Jefferson jumped down from the broken wall.

  “No,” he said. “I meant the tunnels. How did you find them?”

  “There’s more than one?” she asked. She’d known there was something behind the metal door, but had imagined it would be a single room. Nothing more. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the idea that there were tunnels, maybe rooms, or vaults, or perhaps a kind of dungeon beneath Bliss House. But it made sense, didn’t it? There was so much to know about the house. That it seemed to be growing right in front of her shouldn’t have been a surprise. Bliss House had reached out from its heart, sending out the tunnels like extra limbs that could only grow in darkness. Or had it been the other way around? She’d read that the nearby mountains were some of the oldest, most enchanted on earth. Maybe the house hadn’t been built by people at all, but had actually pushed itself out of the depths of the ground, rising up from the dark, cold dirt.

  “You couldn’t get through the other door, could you?” Jefferson said. His face wore a look of amused satisfaction. He was teasing her.

  But she wasn’t in the mood to be teased, even if she was a little glad to see him. The evening air was like acid on her skin, and her leg hurt. A lot.

  “At least I know how you’ve been getting into the house, and it creeps me out,” she said. “The night of the party, you were in the ballroom, weren’t you?”

  “You’ve lived here five minutes,” Jefferson said. “I’ve known this house . . .” He stopped. “My father knows this house. He told me how to get into it. So what?”

  Ariel shrugged the jacket off. It didn’t matter that she’d be cold. She tossed the jacket at him, but when he didn’t bother to try to catch it, it fell to the ground. “So we own the house now, and you have to stay out of it,” she said. “My mother’s going to freak when she sees the tunnel.”