Bliss House: A Novel
Page 36
Rainey forced a smile. “People always want unpleasant things ‘out in the open.’”
“This is serious. This will be a shock, Rainey. But I know for a fact that the people who raised you weren’t your real parents. The woman who raised you was a Bliss, as you are, but she wasn’t your real mother.”
Rainey laughed. “That’s ridiculous, Bertie. That man really did hurt your head.”
“For once in my life, I’m not being ridiculous at all. It’s my strong belief that you are the child of Michael Bliss and the poor girl who died with him in those rooms years and years ago.”
“No. That’s not possible.” She tried to pull her hand away, but Bertie held tight. “My real parents are buried in St. Louis.”
“They went to St. Louis because they had to leave Virginia. Mother Bliss knew they wanted a child but couldn’t conceive, and she had one who needed to be taken away. She couldn’t risk having you raised anywhere near Old Gate.”
“Stop! That’s insane.” This time Rainey pulled her hands away and stood.
“I won’t,” Bertie said. “Not until you’ve heard the truth. Randolph came to Mother Bliss with a baby, and you were that baby. He said Michael told him the baby was a product of a failed affair, and that Michael had left the baby with him and run away. He talked like Michael wasn’t coming back but wanted to make sure the baby was placed in a good home. My heart tells me that Randolph lied, Rainey. Now, I believe Randolph murdered your biological parents and left their bodies in that room or whatever it is down there.”
Rainey shook her head vehemently. “I don’t believe it. And I’m sure there’s plenty of DNA to prove that those dead people weren’t my real parents.” Seeing Bertie’s distress, she lowered her voice. “I hate to tell you I think you’re wrong. I’m sorry that all this has happened to you, but I just can’t see how it has anything to do with me.”
“I hate that my husband was a murderer. I hate that he killed your parents, leaving you alone.”
“I don’t know how to go forward from here.” Rainey spoke quickly. Her slender hands trembled as she picked up her purse to leave. “What I do know is that I need to be with Ariel right now. She needs me.”
“We’re going to get through this. I promise,” Bertie said. “We can make things better. So much better.”
As Rainey hurried to her car, anxious to be away from Bertie and her outrageous claim about her birth, she was suddenly struck by the memory of Ariel screaming at her when the EMT was treating her.
He said that you had been in the room, too.
Chapter 83
Ariel pulled on some blue jeans, a cami, and her bright orange hoodie. She hadn’t packed much, so the selection was slim. But it didn’t matter because she’d be home in a matter of hours. Home, with all of her things. Home, with mirrors she could look into. Home, with its thick, sheltering walls. Home. Where she belonged.
As she sat down on the bench at the end of the bed to put on her shoes, Ellie came into the room and nosed her arm.
“You’re such a dorky dog.” Ariel scratched Ellie’s head, and Ellie squeezed her eyes shut with pleasure.
When Ariel leaned her face close to Ellie’s, she felt the dog’s warm breath on her cheek. “You could come with me. You could sleep in my room. Even up on my bed, and it wouldn’t matter at all what anybody said about it. Do you want to come?”
Ellie licked her face. Ariel let her hand trail across the dog’s back as it moved away, toward the window. Finding a wide rectangle of sunshine on the rug, Ellie lay down and watched Ariel finish dressing.
When she was done, she looked around. There was no door to the outside in this room. Her mother’s room had a door that led outside, but Ariel wasn’t sure where it went because it had been dark last night when she saw it. Did she dare take the time to check it out? Her mother had just texted that she’d be back in about an hour. She decided she would chance it, and get something to eat first.
Checking her front jeans pocket to make sure she had her cell phone, she headed for the bedroom door. Before she reached it, Ellie was up and ahead of her, leading the way to the kitchen as though she’d read her mind.
Ariel’s progress was slow and painful. Her cane, which she hadn’t had to use all week, was back at the house.
“Hey, can I fix you some breakfast?”
Gerard stood at a desk in the corner of the kitchen, holding some papers. She hadn’t noticed before how tanned he was, but not like he’d gone to the beach. His worn blue jeans looked like they spent a lot of time being dusty.
She wanted to dislike him as much as she had when he’d first been in her face about his wife, but then he’d really seemed to understand her. Here in this house she liked him even better. Here there were no voices in her head telling her not to trust him. She wondered about his dead wife and what their life together had been like. She’d found rows of clothes in the closet of the room she was staying in. Expensive winter clothes: coats trimmed in fur, long-sleeved beaded gowns, knee-length sweaters of cashmere and silky weaves of fine wool. Everything was hung with perfect neatness and looked recently cleaned. The clothes were beautiful, but they didn’t seem to be at home here the way that Gerard did.
Ellie stood in front of him and barked. Once.
“The one useful thing we trained her to do. She needs to go out. Want to take her?”
Ariel hung back in the shadow of a tall cabinet. “No, thanks. I’ll get myself something to eat.”
“Sure thing.”
As he and Ellie left the room, she felt an unexpected swell of gratitude. Now that she’d slept more hours in a row than she had in weeks, she was thinking more clearly. Agreeing to leave Bliss House had been a huge mistake. It was a mistake she could feel in every injured inch of her body. Particularly in her right leg, which wasn’t working at all the way it should.
After checking the time, she opened the giant glass canister on the counter that held the bagels and took out one with poppy seeds. In the refrigerator, she found several bottles of her favorite brand of mango and strawberry smoothie. Had Gerard bought them just for her? When?
The thought that he might have bought them before he even knew for sure she was coming here disturbed her. No. He couldn’t have.
She was being paranoid. Putting down her drink and bagel on the counter for a moment, she pulled out her phone and sent a quick text. The answer was almost immediate.
All will be well, she told herself. It has to be.
When Gerard brought Ellie back into the house, she ran first for the water bowl and then down the hall to the guest bedrooms. He smiled to think he’d been right about Ariel and Ellie hitting it off. It had been a crapshoot, bringing Rainey and Ariel here. No one had seemed excited about the idea, though no one had offered a better alternative. Rainey had trusted him, which was more than he could say for his in-laws who had already left half a dozen calls on his cell phone. But he wasn’t going to go there. Right now his job was to keep Jefferson Bliss away from Ariel, to make sure she didn’t risk her life as Karin had risked—and lost—hers. He badly wished he’d been there to see Randolph Bliss die.
But he had to stay here and wait. In the meantime there was plenty of paperwork to catch up on, and many mea culpa work phone calls to make. As he picked up some papers at the kitchen desk, he heard a faint but clearly recognizable whining coming from the other end of the house. Following it, he found Ellie sitting in front of the closed door of the bedroom where Rainey had slept the night before. He could hear the sound of a television coming from inside. Ellie inclined her head back to him and whined again.
“Come on, girl,” he whispered. “She’ll come out and play with you later. She just needs to be alone for a while.” Smiling, he hooked a finger beneath Ellie’s collar to lead her away.
Chapter 84
“Damn, girl. Why didn’t you just wrap yourself up in Christmas lights? I could see you coming through the trees half a mile away.” Jefferson downshifted, slowing the old Jee
p as they took a particularly tight curve.
“Sorry.” Ariel’s response was little more than a mumble. She felt stupid about wearing the brightly-colored jacket. She’d been wearing it the day he kissed her, and it made her feel happy. Secure. Plus, it was good for hiding her face, and kept Jefferson from seeing what she looked like away from the house. But of course he had already seen her at the party, when things had just started to change, and only a few nights earlier at the springhouse.
“There’s a hat and a blanket on the backseat. Put those on.”
As much as she wanted to tell him to shut up and stop telling her what to do, she quickly obeyed. He was doing her a huge favor by getting her back into the house. Once she was there no one could make her leave again.
He’d texted her overnight, apologizing for leaving her there in the underground room. He’d freaked out, he told her, and was going to come back and get her, but then his father had told him he should hide out for a while because the police were looking for him.
It’s not my fault my old man’s crazy, he’d texted. I’M SORRY!
He’d attached a picture of himself with a big, sad frown on his face. She’d smiled there in the dark, alone in that strange bedroom.
He might be a jerk, but he was her only friend. She had to trust him. Going back to the house was the only thing that was going to make her feel better, and if he was the only way to get there then that was how it had to be. If he knew his father was dead, he wasn’t saying. Should she tell him? She didn’t feel like she should be the one to do it, but she knew she would want to know right away.
After she put the grubby golf hat on and hurriedly wrapped the blanket around her, she sank low in the seat without being asked. It was noisy inside the old Jeep. The ragtop was torn in places and hot August air rumbled through. Outside the window the landscape was unlike the Missouri countryside she knew. It looked more like the backroads of Kentucky she’d driven with her parents on the way to the Kentucky Horse Park, with the road hugging the hillsides, the tree branches leaning close so that she thought she might be able to open the window and touch them.
She’d been allowed to ride in the backseat of her mother’s Lexus without a seatbelt, lying down, playing her portable video game or reading or watching a film. Her parents joked around in the front or her father sang. Her mother used the road atlas and GPS to find more interesting routes to get where they were going. They’d strayed close enough to Mammoth Cave to decide to make a detour and spend the night at a funny little hotel with a miniature golf course in the huge basement.
How old had she been? Eight? Just after third grade.
Daddy, where did you go? I miss you.
She understood that he wasn’t at the house as she’d imagined. The house had tried to trick her, but she wasn’t that naïve anymore. Her father was gone, and she had only herself left to depend on. She’d seen how her mother had smiled at Gerard the night before, and wondered if she was glad his wife was dead.
Maybe she’s glad Daddy’s dead, too.
No! That couldn’t be true. She wasn’t stupid. She knew her mother had made herself sick with guilt over the explosion. She wasn’t a bad person. She just didn’t understand.
“I don’t see them near the house,” Jefferson said.
They were crouched in the woods not more than two hundred feet away on the garden side of the house, Jefferson’s backpack on the ground between them. The leaves on the trees scattered sunlight back and forth over the canvas, making it look almost alive. It reminded Ariel of something, and not in a good way.
“They’ve got their trucks and stuff parked out by the springhouse. I think they’re just too fucking scared to use the stairs to get down there.”
“You don’t need to come in with me,” she said. Her leg throbbed. Because she was no longer wrapped in the blanket, the top half of her body was barely covered. The cami hid nothing. She felt like some hideous thing exposed to the eyes of the world. She couldn’t wait to get into the house where she was safe.
“That’s the thing about a house with a bad reputation,” Jefferson said, lowering his compact binoculars. “Nobody wants to mess with it.”
From this vantage point Bliss House looked benign but lonesome. Sure, there were things about it that frightened her, but she knew she could handle them. The worst threats had come from actual human beings.
While they waited a few minutes to make sure there really wasn’t anyone at the house, Jefferson told her his father wasn’t going to bother her anymore. He was “pretty sure” that he’d killed Karin Powell, and was mixed up with Nick Cunetta’s death, too. Worse, he believed his father had something to do with the attack on his mom.
As he told her these things she realized he either didn’t know his father was dead or was a very good liar.
“What kind of person tries to have his wife killed?” he asked her. “I should kill him myself.”
Seeing the look of sincerity in his face, a chill went through her. She knew he meant it.
He picked up the binoculars and again checked out the house.
“I think we’re good to go. Welcome home.”
Chapter 85
Gerard found Ellie pressed up against the closed bedroom door where Ariel was resting. The television inside was tuned to a reality show he recognized as one that Karin had watched. Ellie looked up at him and gave a little whimper. She hated to be away from the most interesting thing going on in the house, and now that Karin was gone she’d decided Ariel was it.
“I bet she just forgot about you.” He bent to scratch her behind the ear, but she got up ready to go inside the room.
Gerard tapped lightly on the door. When there was no answer he tapped louder. Ellie whimpered again.
“Hey, Ariel. Can I let Ellie in to hang out with you?”
When there was no response or corresponding change in the TV volume, he considered going outside and peering in the door that opened on the garden, but dismissed the idea as being too creepy. He knocked one more time and waited, wondering if he should open the door a crack to check on her or just leave her alone.
He decided Rainey would definitely want him to open the door.
He’d only opened it a few inches, calling Ariel’s name, when Ellie pushed through the crack, forcing it open all the way.
The TV was playing to an empty room. On the other side of the bed the garden doors stood open, and the room’s temperature had risen several degrees above that of the rest of the house. The bed was neatly made. There was no sign anyone had been there except for the blaring TV, and Rainey’s overnight bag on the suitcase stand.
Ellie lifted her nose, sniffing as she walked around the bed. Gerard followed her into the bathroom, but there was no one inside.
“Maybe she’s outside?”
Hearing the word “outside” Ellie went to stand in the doorway to the garden. When a mayfly flew over her on its way inside, she lifted her head and gave it a desultory snap.
Gerard called Ariel’s name again, hoping against hope that she was just outside looking at flowers or catching butterflies or whatever a fourteen-year-old girl did to pass the time the day after she’d been assaulted by an insane county judge.
“Shit,” he said. He double-checked the garden knowing that she wasn’t there, then called Ellie in and closed and locked the doors.
There was no question about where she’d gone. But how was she getting there? The only answer that came to him was one that made his gut go cold.
Before going to his truck he went to the safe in his bedroom and grabbed the Glock 9mm he used as a carry piece when traveling. He tucked it into his waistband and pulled his shirt down over it, praying he wouldn’t have to use it.
Rainey answered on the first ring.
“I was just getting ready to call you,” she said, already sounding frantic. “I’ve been trying to reach Ariel, but her phone seems to be off. Will you check on her?”
When Gerard hesitated, she got louder.
“I’m driving to your house right now,” he said. “Ariel left. I don’t know when. But that has to be where she’s going.”
“How could you let her . . .”
Gerard cut her off. “I’m sorry. She got breakfast and went back to your room and shut the door. I’m sorry, Rainey. I’ll find her.”
“We never should’ve made her leave the house. We should’ve stayed there and protected her, where she felt safe.”
“She wasn’t safe. She’s not safe at all in that house.”
“She’s obviously not any safer with you.”
It stung, but he knew she was right.
“I’m on the way to my car. I’ll be there soon,” she said and hung up before he could say another word.
Chapter 86
Lucas parked his car at the end of the pavement near the carriage house. The ME’s van and the crime scene people had driven through the grass to park their SUVs close to the springhouse. The generators they’d set up hummed across the distance. The scene investigators had discovered that the third underground room contained a closed-off entrance to what looked to be a second tunnel. So far they hadn’t gone into it because it looked like it hadn’t been used in at least several decades.
God, how he hated this place.
He took off his jacket and left it on the passenger seat before heading across the grass. The day was already as humid as a wet dishrag. The only thing he was looking forward to about going underground was the relative chill of the tunnel.
Since the previous night the tunnel had been filled with portable lights. Moving deeper inside he could see the careful detail of the tunnel’s construction. Not plaster, but some kind of mudding method made the earthen walls smooth and obviously stable. How old the walls were, they would have to figure out.