“Patrick told Dorothea he was in love with you.”
A strange echoey silence crashed in my ears. “He had a crush on me.” I pushed out of the rocker. “Are you accusing me of something?” Heat had rushed to my cheeks.
“No, I’m asking a question. It’s the same one McKinney will ask, so you’d better be ready to answer.”
“You think I poisoned Patrick because I was jealous of the inn guests he flirted with?” The idea was insane. “Do I strike you as a desperate woman?”
“No, you don’t. But that’s not an answer to my question,” he said quietly. “Patrick said he loved you and that you were sleeping with him. If that’s true, I need to know.”
“I don’t believe this.”
He put his cup on the kitchen counter. “I’m trying to help you.”
“No, you’re accusing me. I’m just not sure of what. Sleeping with Patrick?” Anger hardened my tone. “Or are you accusing me of poisoning him? Am I a suspect?”
“Only someone with access to the wine at the inn could have done it. I was in the PD yesterday and overheard some deputies talking. The autopsy showed strychnine. Wine was the delivery method. Someone poisoned the wine, gave it to Patrick, and then removed the remainder of the wine. It had to be someone with unlimited access.”
Joe was very close to the truth. Only he’d never believe that Mischa poisoned Patrick. Not me. Never me. The genius of Mischa’s setup unfolded in my head. I was trapped. If I told the truth, I’d appear completely crazy.
“Does Dorothea believe I’d kill Patrick?”
“No.” He abandoned the fire and came to me in the tiny kitchen. “And I don’t either. But it doesn’t look good. Were you sleeping with him?”
The truth curled like a snake, ready to strike. “Yes. I slept with him. Once. It was a casual fling. I thought better of it and broke it off.”
“Then he was in love with you? He told Dorothea the truth.”
If Joe felt anything at my admission, he didn’t show it. “Patrick loved the idea of being in love. He wasn’t serious about me. The seduction was a game. It made him feel like a man. It was sex on a cold afternoon. It was exciting, forbidden. But it wasn’t love. To think it would be motive for murder is ridiculous.”
“Aine, call your family.”
My first impulse was to beg him to listen to me, but it wouldn’t do any good. “I didn’t betray you, Joe.”
“You didn’t? What would you call it?” The flash of his temper gave me hope.
“Once I started seeing you, I broke it off with Patrick.”
“He was in the cabin all the time.”
“He brought firewood and meals. What was I supposed to do, keep him outside in the cold? He knew I had feelings for you. Maybe he didn’t like it, but he accepted it. It only happened once. You and I hadn’t gotten serious.”
“He was a teenager, Aine. Surely you see how wrong your behavior was.”
“Patrick wasn’t an innocent. He pursued me. I resisted, but he pursued.” I flushed as I spoke, but I held my head high. “I didn’t seduce him, it was the other way around. Yes, I think it was wrong. I was lonely. And scared. He kept my fears at bay for an hour or two. Was I using him? In that sense, yes. The truth is, we didn’t harm each other.”
“And he fell in love with you.”
“No!”
“Did he threaten to tell me about the affair?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He was a teenager, not a blackmailer. If you think so little of me, if you suspect me of murdering him, why did you even come here? Maybe you’re the one who uses me for a convenience fuck.”
“Who clawed your face?” He grabbed my shoulders. “What are you playing at, Aine?”
“Turn me loose.” I tried to twist free of him but he held me. “Let go, you bastard!” I kicked at him, but he pushed me backwards onto the bed. He fell with me, covering my body with his.
“Tell me the truth.” He pressed me hard into the mattress.
I bucked, but he was much stronger. The more I fought, the heavier he became until I couldn’t catch my breath. “You’re hurting me.”
“Tell me the truth!”
I wished I could. More than anything, I wanted to tell him about Mischa—the things I knew and the things I suspected. But he’d think me insane. His anger tempered my tongue. Instead of fighting, I felt myself slipping from the present into the past. I had a clear and distinct vision of Bonnie.
She is sitting at the small table in the cabin she shared with Thoreau. Around the table are the dead. She questions them about crossing the distance between the dead and the living. Their answers ring with hollowness. Her eagerness to learn is evident in her posture and expression.
The door bursts open and Thoreau steps in, disgust on his features. “What is this?” He asks, but he knows the answer, has long suspected that Bonnie has been calling up the dead.
“What are you doing? You know this is wrong!” he cries.
The departed vanish, and Bonnie attempts to calm him, to explain. But his disgust is too great. The kitchen knife is lying beside the basin and he grasps it, plunging the blade into Bonnie’s heart.
The most terrible smile touches her lips as she slumps to the ground.
“Aine!” Joe slapped me lightly on the side of my face.
It was true. Call it a dream or vision or a gift to see the past, I had no doubt it was true. Thoreau murdered my aunt. He killed her in disgust and terror for her actions, for raising the dead. Joe would do the same to me.
Fury shot through me. Self-preservation. If I told Joe about Mischa, about the things she’d done, he would never believe me.
And if he did, he would blame me for opening the door. I’d unwittingly brought Mischa into his life, and she’d impacted him in only negative ways. He’d never understand, so I had to get away from him.
“Aine! What is this?” He straddled me, holding me pinned to the bed as he reached into his pocket and brought out the scrimshaw tooth. “Where did you get this?”
How had he found the tooth? It had been securely hidden in a cubbyhole in the wall behind my desk. I couldn’t answer because I had no idea what to say.
“Aine, where did this come from? The writing here. The inscription means ‘The dead never rest.’ Where did you get this? The little girl on the ship—where did it come from?” He shook me, digging into my arms and shoulders. The pain was almost a relief. “You’ll tell me the truth or you’ll regret it.”
“Get off me!” I pushed hard, and this time he climbed off, towering over me, ready to snare me if I made a break for it.
“Where did this come from?”
“I told you. My forebears were sailors. One of them must have made it. My granny gave it to me when I was a little girl. My essay about Moby Dick won a scholarship to Amberton boarding school. I used my family’s history for the paper.” I tried to snatch the tooth, but he pulled it back.
“‘The dead never rest.’ What does that mean?”
“How should I know? The tooth is two hundred years old, Joe. Someone on my distant grandfather’s ship carved it. Where did you find it?”
“You left it in my pocket, Aine. You meant me to find it.” He looked at me as if he didn’t know me. “You see things. Or you pretend to. I watch you, and it frightens me.”
Mischa, the little bitch, had planted the whale’s tooth in Joe’s pocket. She was setting me up. If he ever learned the tooth had been stolen from a New Bedford museum, he wouldn’t believe another word I said.
“Watch me all you want. I haven’t killed anyone.” I pushed his chest hard, and he drew back so I could sit up.
“You see something in the woods. What is it?” His left eye twitched.
“The wind.” No way I could tell him anything different. He would think me insane, and he already suspected I could murder. “Would you leave now? I need to work on my dissertation.”
“You’re a liar, Aine.”
“The dead are liars.” The words s
lipped from me before I realized what I was saying.
Had I slapped him, the change could not have been more profound. His gaze narrowed and he backed away from me. In a few seconds, he was out the door and gone.
41
For an hour, I lingered before the fire and did nothing. I knew what I had to do, but I feared the consequences. Bonnie’s journal was my only hope for answers. But if I opened it, I might give Mischa and her minions more corporeal power. I had begun to believe there was a direct correlation between reading the book and the strength of Mischa’s abilities. The more I read, the stronger she seemed to become. And now Patrick had manifested. As well as a brief glimpse of what I took to be Bonnie.
Or perhaps my gift to see the dead had grown and strengthened with each session with the journal. Bonnie could be transferring her gift to me as my comprehension broadened and I sensed the darker meaning behind her writing.
I needed to examine the journal, front to back, with my new understanding that Mischa was adding clues, rewriting history. Somewhere in the words there was an answer. But in reading the journal, how much energy would I give Mischa and her ilk? Limbo held me in a deadly grip.
Fear finally jolted me from the rocker to the stash beneath my bed where I kept the journal hidden. It was then that I discovered that the wine bottle and glasses, such incriminating evidence, were missing. I hadn’t forgotten them, but inertia and fear had prevented me from disposing of them. Now it was too late. They were gone, and Mischa would make certain they reappeared in the worst possible place. This was a game to her. She played it out, baiting the trap, setting the snare, and waiting.
I searched beneath the bed again, but my grasping fingers clutched only the leather-bound journal. The pages flaked as I pulled it toward me. In the last week, the journal had grown more delicate. The fear that it would disintegrate before I could glean its knowledge took hold of me once again.
Settling into the rocker, I held the journal in my lap, acutely aware of the brittle and worn leather cover. The image of a crow was burned into the leather like a brand. I’d never appreciated the significance, but now my finger traced the outline of the large bird.
I opened to a passage about Thoreau near the beginning. He and Bonnie had been formally introduced on the street and then later at a salon. Then she met him in the woods near Walden Pond while searching for herbs. Her interest was piqued.
The most interesting man has entered my life. I’ve met him several times in the woods while I was gathering herbs, seemingly by accident. He talks of nature. He is a shy man, and I find that refreshing. We have spent several hours together, walking about the woods at Walden Pond. He explains how all things in the natural world are connected. His deliberate movements, and the tiny silences that punctuate his speech, give me to think he is a man careful of word and deed. I want to know more of him.
This was as I remembered, but now I saw that I had no idea what Bonnie was doing in the Walden woods except the one statement she made about hunting herbs. She had been a governess, not a cook or medicine woman.
I skipped ahead and began to read again. A sharp clack at the window startled me. The hair on my neck stood straight up, and I feared to turn around. The noise came again. Clack. Someone was demanding admittance.
My hands trembled as I turned the page. The brittle paper buckled and half a sheet drifted to the floor. My aunt’s spidery handwriting—black ink across the yellowed page—stared up at me.
The Sluagh haunt the woods of Walden. Since the trees have all been cut in Concord proper, the birds have no home but the woods. The young man, Henry, is building a cabin in the midst of the stand of trees. Near the pond. He tells me he intends to live here for two years, two months, and two days. He wants to learn the value of solitude. I fear he will learn something else, something dangerous.
There is a child in the woods who watches him. Perhaps she longs for a father, or a brother. Yet when my blood pounds harshly in my veins, I think it is something else she wants. She knows I see her, and she has no fear of me. I am not a threat to her ambitions.
This had never been part of the original journal. Glass shattered. I turned slowly to see the windowpane beside the front door had been broken. Pieces scattered the cabin floor. Perched on a jagged edge of glass was a crow. He stood tall, cocking his head from side to side as if assessing me.
“Shoo!” I waved a hand at him, but he ignored me. Any moment, he’d enter the cabin. The idea galvanized me to action, and I dropped the journal and ran at the bird. He held his ground until the last minute, when he lazily fluttered to the edge of the porch. He confronted me, head tilting to the left. His eyes, so black and shiny that they reminded me of stones, reflected my own image back to me.
Desperate to keep the bird out of the cabin, I jammed a piece of cardboard in the place of the broken glass. I would call a glazier to repair the damage when I went to the inn.
When I returned to the rocker and the book, I couldn’t bring myself to lift it. The pages might contain wisdom, but the price for it would be dear.
It was becoming hard to ignore the parallel between Bonnie and Henry and me and Joe. A cabin in the woods near Concord. And a little girl with ulterior motives. My aunt had ended up murdered by her lover, if Patrick and my visions could be believed. The dead were liars, and I didn’t know how trustworthy my visions were. Still, as I’d seen this morning, Joe’s attitude toward me had changed greatly. No longer was he the tender lover. He’d become cold and accusing.
Much as Thoreau had done to Bonnie, according to Patrick. In Patrick’s version of history, my aunt had ended up stabbed and buried on a rocky hillside.
I doubted Joe would stab me, but he would pin a murder on me if he thought me guilty. No matter how absurd the accusation, he would believe I was guilty if evidence was found. To that end, I had to find the wine bottle and glasses. Had I been thinking clearly, I would have washed the glasses and bottle and simply put them away in the cabin. Now Mischa had them. They could reappear at any time.
I couldn’t afford for that to happen.
I found a plastic bag I’d tucked under the sink and put it in my pocket. The day outside was bright and sunny, a winter day with no sharp wind. It would be a good day for walking, and I knew exactly where to go. Walden Pond. If Mischa was up to planting evidence, that would be the place.
42
The roadblock into Walden Pond was up—today was an official holiday. Since I was on foot, it was easy to duck under it. I did so and followed the main road in. There was no snow, and I checked behind me to be sure my footprints were not distinctive. The hard ground barely registered my passing.
At the cabin, I stopped long enough to pick up a shovel from the little tool shed. I knew the combination to the lock. Joe had shown me once, and I had a good mind for numbers. I meant to be prepared if I happened upon the missing evidence.
I followed the trails to the place where Karla had been murdered. The yellow crime-scene tape fluttered in the wind. No one had taken it down. It remained strung between the beautiful oaks, catching the wind with a gentle flapping sound.
At first I didn’t see anything, but when I shifted, the sunlight glinted off the glasses. They’d been left on a fallen tree as if someone had set up a picnic—the two glasses, the bottle, and a small bouquet of leaves.
Before I approached, I searched for her. This was too easy.
If she was near, I couldn’t see her or sense her, and I set to work. The place I chose to bury the bottle and the glasses was near a small shrub. There were no stones there, and I dug swiftly, down two feet. I put the two glasses and the empty bottle in and filled the hole. Gathering debris and leaves, I covered all traces of my work.
I scattered a few more leaves, checking to be sure I left no trace of my visit. Picking up the shovel, I turned. Mischa stood some thirty yards away, watching. Her smile was superior.
“Stay away from me,” I said. I couldn’t let her spook me into a hasty mistake.
&nb
sp; “Up to no good, are we, Aine?” She came forward, her hood low over her eyes, revealing only the curve of her cheek and her smile.
“You set me up, but I figured it out.”
“Poor Patrick. He does like to talk, doesn’t he?”
The urge to kill her was overwhelming. “He was a harmless young man. You didn’t have to poison him.”
“He talked too much, and he had things he meant to tell Joe. I explained this to you. I acted to protect you.”
“The same reason you killed Karla. To protect me.”
“You aren’t as dumb as you look,” she said, swishing back and forth like a child.
“Don’t do that. You’re not a little girl.” I started back to the tool shed to replace the shovel.
“Better wipe off your prints.”
I froze. I’d taken my gloves off to scatter the leaves and then picked up the shovel. She was right. I dredged my gloves from a pocket and put them on. Using the bottom of my coat, I wiped down the handle.
“You have questions. Go ahead and ask. Maybe I’ll answer them.”
“Why Bonnie? Why Thoreau? Why me?”
“You know the answer to that, silly.” We hiked in tandem. “It’s the Cahill Curse.” She burst ahead of me and twirled around before she faced me, walking backward. “I’m the Cahill Curse.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Think about it, and it will.” She giggled. “Shall I give you a hint? I’ll give you a hint.” She galloped ahead, spun and stopped, a finger to her lips as if to shush me. “I’m your Moby Dick.”
Before I could ask her what she meant, she ran off through the woods. Her red coat flashed through the bare black and gray trunks, and then she was gone.
A deep exhaustion bored into my bones as soon as I entered my cabin. My actions had cost me Joe, and there was no undoing it. I’d come to rely on him, on his presence during the dark nights, the weight of his body a wall against fear and danger.
Depression fell upon me like a suffocating blanket. Sleep, the joy of escape, beckoned me, but I was afraid. Patrick haunted my dreams, and I didn’t know if my heart could take a second go-round with him.
The Seeker A Novel (R. B. Chesterton) Page 24