The rust staining the century-old stucco wasn’t rust at all. But blood. Heath was right. Someone killed HC in that attic room. And walled his body in to hide it. Someone who wanted him gone. Badly. Bad enough to concoct a far-fetched story… and because the family still had some pull in the city… no one questioned the sudden death of the man from far away.
“They buried an empty coffin,” Austin mumbled behind his hands. “There’s not a single soul in the big mausoleum. And they got away with it. For one hundred years and four months.”
“And they would have gotten away with it for another century… if it wasn’t for you meddling kids and that dog,” Rory said from the doorway. Something dark in his eyes… made Austin shiver.
“Something like that, I guess.” Austin wiped his eyes and sat up straight. He pulled a stack of shipping invoices in front of him and sorted the ones they’d finished, and the ones they’d yet to open, into two stacks. One for filing. One for… getting to when they had time to get to them… before they went back to storage. Or everyone left to go their separate ways. “I’m leaving. Rory.”
“I heard,” Rory replied, his eyes still… remote, like he was distancing himself from being hurt.
“Come with me?” Because… he just needed to confuse himself even more. By hinting at the promise of a life that might not be right for either of them and taking him away from his first chance at independence. “Please.”
“No.” Rory ducked his head, the strange look in his eyes gone now as he blinked away what looked exactly like tears. “Not this time, Aus. You have to work this out for yourself. If you love… me. I’ll be here. Waiting for you to figure it out for yourself. If… it’s not me… don’t throw yourself at someone if that’s not what you want. Give it time. If it’s… real… then… fuck… Austin… You have to go where your heart leads you. If it’s me… you know where to find me.”
Austin swallowed the lump in his throat and pretended he wasn’t dying inside. He’d lost his job, his best friend, and… the fucking phone on his desk rang shrilly, cutting the pain that crackled in the air like a… “Hello. Uh. Cortlandt Manor, Doctor Baylor, speaking.”
“I love hearing you say that. Doctor Baylor - I’m so fucking proud of you, Aus. So fucking proud,” Rory said, his voice as choked as Austin’s felt.
Austin forgot about the person on the other end of the call, the pain and love swirling in Rory’s voice stunning him into… “Wait? Repeat that?... No, there has to be a mistake. We canceled all… no… you have a what? The Brougham? I wasn’t expecting…”
Heath hustled into the office, sliding past Rory without apologizing for pushing him to the side to get past him. Or to Austin for taking the phone right out of his hand.
“Yes, Mr. Cortlandt, yes. We spoke yesterday. I know. I tried calling several times today to cancel the… we’ve had a fire and most of the… yes, I understand.” Heath held the phone to his chest and closed his eyes while he dragged in a calming breath and mouthed, “Fuck.” He put the phone back to his ear. “You’ll have to use the back entrance. The front is blocked by emergency vehicles.” He waited for a long moment, then rattled off alternate directions from the side street through the cemetery to the parking area behind the former stables. And then he hung up. “FUCK!”
“I didn’t know we were getting the brougham at all.” Austin leaned back in his chair and ran his good hand through his hair. “I thought it was going somewhere else.”
“What’s a brougham?” Rory, forgotten in the doorway, interjected.
“Big fancy carriage. The only carriage the family didn’t sell. They held on to it even after they sold all the horses and fired the stable help,” Austin answered, the strange sensation on the back of his neck becoming uncomfortable. “I think I need to go take a shower. I’m itching from all the dust upstairs.”
“Mr. Cortlandt, Detective Hightower would like a word if you’re free now.” One of the cops that were clomping up and down the back stairs interrupted… but not before Austin heard someone mumble, “Sure it’s not the clap from the hussy’s taint.” From the workroom.
“Sure… give me a moment, I’ll be right up.” Heath sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. The cop went out. “All right… this is it. I’m exhausted. Help Doctor Baylor with the new delivery… and tomorrow… you are all free to return to your lives. I’ll hire a crew to close the house. And… we’re done here. Your professors will receive glowing recommendations, and unless you tell them differently, you worked your required hours. So… Everyone… You’re dismissed.”
And he left. Austin could hear him stomping up the back stairs, following the officer up to the century-old crime scene.
“Well, I guess that’s it, then. Wasted my holiday for nothing.” Donna could be heard from the hallway.
“If you’d kept your unhappy trap shut… and why are you like that, anyway? You’re not like that in Atlanta?” Britney finally lost her cheerful demeanor. “I’ve never seen you act like this. Not once. And every time we get in this house, you get your nose bent out of shape, usually about Jemma… and Austin. Hell, Donna, you went after Rory because you thought it would hurt Jemma. And all you did was hurt Austin. I thought I was enough for you…. Guess I’m not. I’m going to my apartment and changing into boots to go mucking around the muddy stables… and… just… get over it before you come home.” Britney slammed the courtyard door, leaving a stunned silence in her wake.
“Guess I deserved that,” Donna said, her voice anything but apologetic. “Bitch.”
“She loves you, you stupid cunt,” Jemma replied, her voice tight with anger, or hurt. It was hard to tell with Jemma. “Loves you unconditionally. And you love her as best I can tell. You’ve hurt her. And everyone here. And you don’t even see it, do you? She worships you.”
“She shouldn’t. I’m not… worth…” it went quiet in the workroom. Something went thud, like someone being thrown across a room.
Austin was out of his seat in a flash, but Rory caught him at the door and kept him from running to referee.
“It’s their fight, let them work it out.” Rory held him pinned to the door frame, his lanky body a breath away from Austin’s. All he had to do was pull Rory half a step, and he’d have him… where? He’d already had sex with someone he wasn’t in love with today. He could go for a second round… but… this was Rory. And how would he know Rory wasn’t the one if they never—
When no further sounds of violence came from the other room, Austin rolled out of Rory’s loose embrace to return to his desk. “Rory?” He whispered his friend’s name. The same urge to beg and plead for him to, what? Forgive him for cheating on him with two other people?
He hadn’t cheated on anyone. And they could all go to hell for making him feel bad about enjoying something with a person he… enjoyed being with.
“You were going to say she means nothing to you, weren’t you?” Rory kept his voice down so that the two women in the other room wouldn’t hear them.
“No… actually… it was… good. I think we both needed it. Not going to regret being with her. Or make excuses for it. Or apologize.” He found his fucking spine. Finally. Shoved up his ass. He put it back where it belonged. “Not going to apologize for loving anyone, ever again.”
“Good for you,” Rory breathed, catching him off-guard when he turned him around. “You and Jemma… I didn’t see anything sexual between you… but… over the past few weeks, you work well together… the two of you. Like you were… meant to be something.”
“Pretty sure I’m not her type.” Austin wouldn’t lean against Rory. Not this time. He’d spent too much of the last couple of weeks leaning on Rory. And it was confusing both of them.
“You’re a man. Pretty sure Jemma doesn’t care past that. With all the right equipment. And I don’t mean what you’re packing between your legs. She’s… the package between your ears, Austin, that’s what she’s attracted to. The whole package, Austin, you’re the whole deal. God, you�
��re gorgeous. With a great body. And smart. So smart. And smart-ass. And… loyal. Goddamn, you’re loyal. I’ve never met anyone like you. And I love you. And I want you. But…”
“But?” This was going to hurt. So much.
Rory cradled his face with both of his hands. “I’m letting you go. Just like I said earlier. This place… it’s cursed. And it all seems to be centered on you. It’s testing your loyalties. And tearing you apart. I see that now. So…” Rory tilted his head and for one moment, the taste of his lips had Austin trembling. “You need to go. And… if it’s me. Call me and I’ll be there. I’ll drop everything for you. If it’s me.”
Austin leaned into Rory’s hand, wishing this wasn’t the end. God… he blinked back the tears that kept nagging at the back of his eyes. And stepped away. Putting sane distance between them. Another man standing just outside the door, with pain in his eyes, watching them. Without saying a word Heath left them before Rory turned and found him there.
“It won’t be me,” Rory said so softly Austin thought he’d imagined it. Like so many other conversations he’d overheard in this house when he thought he was alone. “It was never going to be me. And I know this. Just… promise me, Aus, just… make sure it’s real. Whoever it is.”
And he left before Austin could say another word. He went back to the workroom with the others. “So… I’d like to see this brogan thing before I have to go back for the dinner rush. Or have all you people conveniently forgotten there’s a big truck idling out behind the apartments?”
“Crap… I need boots. It’s muddy out there.” Donna was the first to speak. “Or am I invited? Should I go pack and turn in my keys or something?”
“No, of course not, and miss the pièce de résistance of this whole project? Well, one of them.” The unmistakable sound of a large truck backing up in the distance interrupted Heath’s moment. “Okay, someone has to be out there. Looks like it’s me. Austin?” Heath called out just as one of the police officers came into his office. “Are you coming?”
“Give me ten minutes. I’ll be out there.” He shouted back as the detective pulled out a chair without asking. “Make it twenty.”
“Okay, we’ll wait for you, hurry up,” Heath called back. And then it was quiet in the back of the house.
“What can I help you with, detective?” He’d given his statement a million times that morning.
“Just wrapping up. You were the first to find the body. Walk me through what lead up to that if you would please?”
“I’ve already…” he sighed, no use arguing. The faster he gave his statement, the quicker he’d get the cops out of his hair. “We were upstairs, securing the top two floors after the fire last night. The fire department had given us the all-clear and—”
“How sure are you, the body is who you claim it is?” The detective, his notebook open to a blank page, cut Austin off.
“Can’t be entirely certain, but the clothing matches the period, and he would have been the only male of that age in the household. Best I can do is formulate a hypothesis based on the photographs I’ve curated the past few weeks, and my knowledge of the era. You’d need DNA to prove if it was one of the family.” Austin leaned back in his chair. He tried to steeple his fingers in front of his chin, hoping that would give him an air of authority that he wasn’t feeling in the slightest. The cast just made him look silly.
“Mr. Cortlandt has agreed to donate a sample tomorrow. My notes indicate you were the one to discover the body, is this correct?”
“Well, if by discover, you mean, I’m the one who stuck his head in through a hole in a wall the fire helped uncover… then yes. I suppose so.”
“Tell me what you saw, exactly.”
Austin sighed again. He was about to do that when he’d been interrupted. “We pulled enough wall down to get the small lantern inside. There’s no power to the building at the moment. I was closest. So, I went in. And came right back out. Fell on my ass… uh, sorry for the language. I wasn’t expecting to find a body in the attic. Not sure how to even begin to prepare for something like that. To the best of our records, the family was all accounted for as of Christmas 1917.”
“Interesting. And you say there were children in the household, then?”
“Yes, one newborn infant, he would be the current Mr. Cortlandt’s grandfather. And two daughters. One around the age of thirteen. Fairly tall for a girl her age, according to the photos. And a small daughter of undetermined age, we’re guessing around five. She was killed in a car accident on Christmas Eve, the same accident that took the life of Mr. Cortlandt’s great-grandfather. The aunt, teenage daughter, and the newborn were the only survivors. HC, the patriarch, was reportedly killed in Savannah that summer. His body returned for burial. Records indicate the daughter-in-law, along with Heath’s great-grandfather, and the female child, Ruth, were all laid to rest in the family cemetery next to the old man’s mausoleum. The aunt was laid to rest somewhere else. We have no records as to where. Nor of the surviving daughter. We can only assume she married and lived out her life somewhere else.”
“That was far more than I asked for.” The detective stopped scribbling in his notebook to gaze at Austin.
“Sorry, I’m a historian first, an anthropologist second. And these people have been… interesting, to say the least.”
“Interesting how?” The cop looked at him in a way that put Austin on guard. Like he was being tested… or suspected of something he couldn’t possibly have done.
“I can’t explain exactly. They had secrets. I suppose all families do. And everything wasn’t as… well, they were like most people of their class. Everything had to look perfect. The perfect family. Perfect clothes. Everyone brushed and polished and wearing their best. Happy smiles on their faces. The epitome of early twentieth century golden age success. But… too many dead wives. Too many… uh… stray children. Missing servants. Yet they still maintained the status quo while their wealth was dwindling to nothing. But… I wasn’t there and most of the family records have not survived. We’ve done our best to piece together that much. Why do you ask?”
“The elder gentleman wasn’t the only body in the wall.” The detective seemed to take pleasure in that big reveal.
Every single hair on Austin’s body went on full alert. He’d be surprised if the detective couldn’t feel the electricity buzzing through him from across his desk. “Was it a teenage boy, most likely wearing brown trousers and a blue chambray shirt? Red hair. Freckles.”
“Oddly specific, but… no. We found what appears to be a male child, in a white lace dress, around the age of five. With what looks like a pair of black stockings tied around his ankles and wrists. His body bent in an unnatural position. And… that’s not all. The elder gentleman’s trousers were around his ankles.”
“Dear God.” Austin covered his face with his good hand. “The man was a monster. That poor child… wait… there’s no mention of a male five-year-old anywhere. Where the hell did he get a—” The images in the photographs of the child, they all assumed was Ruth, came to mind. “What if there were two, twins? The daughter seems to have been, uh… well, we can’t tell for sure, but Downs Syndrome has been discussed… possibly high functioning. What if there was another? One they kept hidden… one that wasn’t as lucky as the sister?”
“And you’re basing your theory on?” The detective continued writing, but Austin could tell he’d shocked him. Maybe simply by rambling on. But damn, he’d been gobsmacked by that one.
“We found scrapbooks in that room earlier this week. There are candid photos. Taken by an amateur. But… we’ve had other problems to deal with, so… those crates were stored in the workroom, until after the grand opening.”
“I’d like to have the scrapbooks. And if you’d remind Mr. Cortlandt of the DNA sample… we’re wrapping this up, upstairs. I’ll get out of your hair so you can join your staff outside. But… Doctor Baylor, we may have more questions. And if you’ll pass along to Mr. Cortlandt th
at we will likely seek to exhume his ancestor, that would be appreciated.”
He rose to leave. Austin followed him to the front of the house where the coroner was closing up his van and the last of the cops were clearing out. He locked the front door behind them and raced out the courtyard door.
Not caring about the mud, he trudged past the front part of the old stables, the scent of horses strong in the air, to catch up with his team.
He got there in time to see the truck driving off in the distance. His crew of misfits standing around gawking as if they’d never seen a luxury carriage before in their lives. But oh, how beautiful with gleaming wood and bronze accents, all restored and polished to within an inch of their lives. The old brougham looked just like it did in the photos.
“It’s a beauty,” he said coming up behind Heath, suddenly aware of his disquiet, and the silence of those gathered, but not understanding.
“I thought it would be… I don’t know. It’s a horse carriage.” Leave it to Rory to point out the obvious. “Y’all get worked up about the weirdest things around here. So… I saw it. And I will be late for work. So…”
“No, you haven’t seen the inside yet.” Austin grabbed his hand and pulled him back into the stable. “Heath, is it okay? I mean, you’re the owner. Can we open it? Sit inside?” God… he sounded like a yappy little schoolboy.
“Yeah, sure. I guess. Just don’t get mud inside. Maybe take your shoes off first. And don’t scratch anything.” Heath looked at him strangely. “You know the drill. You taught me how to treat artifacts. Just… maybe wear gloves.”
“Does anyone have any gloves?” Austin asked, reaching for the door handle. The scent of horses assailing him. Making him dizzy. He didn’t wait for anyone to answer in the affirmative. He pulled the door open and—
Heath shouting his name, the last thing he heard.
Chapter Forty-Three
No one had been in this part of the stables in weeks. Not since the last time they went to church in town as a family. Most of the family was inside having the after-supper quiet time that his aunt oversaw with an iron fist. His father had escaped the torture of sitting and staring at words on a page or out the windows hoping for something interesting to happen. He’d gone off to do whatever he did in the evenings. Heath knew he’d be away until the early hours of the morning and come home reeking of cigar smoke and other scents Heath didn’t recognize.
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