by Ellen Hart
“Why?” asked Jane.
She looked away. “Just between you and me, she tried it once. I suppose some would say that first attempt makes a second attempt more likely.”
This was news to Jane. “Can you tell me more?”
“It was such a long time ago.” She sighed. “Lena was living in an apartment just a few blocks from my place. We had keys to each other’s buildings. They both had security at the front door, with buzzers to let people in. Sometimes the buzzers didn’t work. It was a real pain. Lena liked to sit up on the roof. Sometimes she’d sunbathe or read a book. There was a padlock on the door up there, but it was always open. On nice summer evenings when we weren’t working, we’d buy a bottle of wine, spread a blanket, and play cards. If I came by and she wasn’t around, I’d always go up to see if she was there. She had a fear of heights, but if she stayed away from the edge, she was okay. One night when I climbed the stairs and ducked under the small doorway, I was surprised to see her standing close to the edge. She was kind of swaying, so I was terrified she’d fall. I called out to her to get away, to come back to where I was standing. She didn’t turn around and hollered for me to get lost. Her words were slurred, so I was positive she was drunk. I refused to go. That’s when she started cursing, yelling about what a loser she was, how she was stupid and worthless, that she didn’t deserve to live. She said there was nothing I could do or say to stop her from jumping. I kept talking, kept trying to engage her. It took some time, but she finally backed away from the ledge. I helped her down to her apartment, put her to bed, and decided I’d better spend the night. The next morning we talked about it. She made me a promise that she’d never do it again—not like that.” Here, Karen stopped.
“What did she mean?” asked Jane.
“She said that if she ever tried to kill herself again, it wouldn’t be during the dark of night after she’d been drinking. She promised, if she did try, that it would be on a beautiful, sunny morning, with the birds singing. She said it was the only way she’d know for sure that she was really serious, that it wasn’t just a whim or a momentary bout of depression. She swore it to me, Jane, on everything she held dear, and I believed her.”
Jane was still curious. “Did something motivate that first attempt? A bad breakup with a boyfriend?”
“No. I mean, she dated all the time. I would imagine she had her share of one-night stands. She liked the attention, but she never trusted men. If they got too serious, she’d dump them and move on. No, it had nothing to do with a breakup. She never really gave me a reason. Most of the time, you’d get the impression that she thought really highly of herself. But then, when she’d been drinking, the self-loathing would come out. It was hard to watch.”
“What caused the rift in your friendship?”
“There wasn’t a rift, per se. My boyfriend eventually popped the question. I asked Lena to be one of my bridesmaids. She agreed to do it, but backed out a few weeks before the wedding. I was pretty upset. When I confronted her, she told me that Eleanor had been diagnosed with cancer and that she planned to move into the old family house to take care of her. I couldn’t exactly get mad about that, although I didn’t really understand it since there seemed to be such a deep level of antagonism between them. And then, after I had my first child, Lena simply evaporated from my life. She’d always been clear that she didn’t like kids, and that’s what my life revolved around. I guess I just let her go.” She checked her watch. “Oh, look at the time. Was there anything else you wanted to ask? I don’t really know much about her life these days, just what I read on Facebook.”
Jane rose to help Karen on with her coat. “This has been helpful. If I find that I have a few more questions, perhaps I could give you a call.”
“Of course,” said Karen. As they entered the foyer, she stopped and turned to face Jane. “Tell me this before I go. You said you’d been hired by Lena’s niece to investigate the family. I’m assuming you can’t say much about that.”
“No,” said Jane. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay, but, can you at least give me your thoughts on Lena’s death. Do you think it was suicide?”
Jane figured she owed Karen that much. “You have to understand, this is just my opinion. But honestly? No, I don’t.”
“An accident then?”
“Possible, but unlikely.”
“So what does that leave?” asked Karen.
Jane hadn’t yet said out loud the word she’d been thinking quietly inside her mind. Now that she was about to, it took on a horrifying force. “Murder,” she said, watching the shock bloom in Karen’s eyes.
34
After work, Cordelia made straight for the Skarsvolds’ house. She was single-minded. On the hunt. Jane had tasked her with ferreting out who Quentin Henneberry, the elusive young man who shared the upper floor of the house with them, really was. Cordelia assumed he was up to no good and was intent on proving as much.
Because she didn’t have her Olive Hudson duds with her, just the blond wig, her idiom for the evening would, of necessity, be a little different. She breezed into the house wearing her tall black Cossack boots and black cape, ready with a story about being mugged by a Russian spy who demanded her clothing in exchange for his, but saw immediately that the only person around was the nefarious Mr. Henneberry, and he was watching TV in the den, unaware of her presence.
Climbing the stairs to her postage-stamp of a room, she whirled out of her cape and readied herself for battle by gazing at herself in the mirror over the tiny chest, fluffing her fake blond curls and applying an excessive coat of dark red lipstick. She stepped out of her room and was about to head back downstairs when she remembered Jane’s comment about the digital micro-recorder in the hallway by the credenza.
Creeping over to it, she got down on her hands and knees to do a thorough examination. The first thing she noticed was that it didn’t appear to be on. She put that down to voice activation. Next she noticed a wire coming out of one end. She followed it, her knees thudding against the wood floor, until she located a remote mic halfway up Eleanor’s doorway, stuck to the edge of the door frame by a piece of clear tape.
The plot thickened.
“Hey, there, you little pissant,” she whispered into the mic. “It’s not nice to snoop. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that? I may—or may not—report you to the FBI. Consider yourself warned.”
Struggling to her feet, she brushed off her jeans, straightened her ski sweater, smoothed each eyebrow, and then, squaring her shoulders, walked with all the dignity she could muster down the stairs.
When she entered the den, she saw that the diabolical Mr. Henneberry was sitting in a wing chair, scrolling through various Netflix offerings. She sank down on the recliner next to him. “Good evening,” she said, doing her most lugubrious Alfred Hitchcock impersonation.
He glanced at her sideways. “Hi.”
“I’m not picky about what we watch. As long as you have good taste.”
“You’re one of the renters. The one in the small room.”
“Let’s face it, Quentin. It’s a freakin’ closet.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Olive.”
He seemed ill at ease with her sitting so close, which was fine with her. This would be a chess game. She would use every advantage to win. If she was lucky, he wouldn’t have the brain power to play chess and would end up playing checkers. “You a student at one of our fine colleges?” By the looks of him, she figured he couldn’t be more than sixteen.
“I graduated from MIT last spring.”
“MIT,” she repeated. “You have a degree?”
“Physics, with an emphasis on quantum mechanics.”
Okay, so scientists weren’t always old or mega smart. He could be an idiot savant. Besides, she’d lived much longer than he had, experienced the world in ways he could only dream about. She remained confident that she could, by force of her razor-sharp intellect, ferret out his deepest, darkest se
crets. “Impressive. You from the Boston area?”
“Austin.”
“Texas?”
“Minnesota. I’m taking a year off to earn some money. Among other things.” He edged away from her. “Before I go off to graduate school next fall.”
“Where’s graduate school?”
“University of Edinburgh.”
Okay, so she was well matched. He would be Moriarty to her Sherlock. She would need to use all her cunning to find out why he’d rented that room.
He clicked on the Netflix original, Grace and Frankie.
He didn’t seem like the Grace and Frankie type. “Already seen it,” she said. “Pretty awful about poor Lena,” she added, continuing to ease ever closer, invading his space to knock him off his game. “I assume you know what happened.”
“Could you stop crowding me?”
“Oh, was I? Sorry.” She moved back, but only slightly.
“I hear it was suicide,” he said.
“Really?”
“Liquor and Tylenol.”
“Heavens. Did you ever talk to her?”
He sat forward in his chair. “She mistook me for a ghost the other night.”
Cordelia hooted. “Being a student of physics, you probably thought that was rich.”
“Rich?”
“Peculiar. Silly. Uninformed.”
“I thought she was drunk.” He clicked on Orange Is the New Black.
“Already watched that, too,” said Cordelia. “FYI, I believe in ghosts.”
“So do I.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You’re kidding, right?”
He shrugged.
“There’s this theater that I … where I work. The onetime owners, Gilbert and Hilda King, haunt the place. I know, I know. They’re dead. But I hear them on the stairways. They’re not scary. They bicker. And there’s a ghost cat. You think I’m crazy, don’t you. It’s okay. I’m used to it.”
“No,” he said, giving her another sideways look. “I think it’s more than possible that this theater is haunted. Is it old?”
“Turn of the century, give or take.”
He switched off the TV. Rising from his chair, he dragged it in front of her and then sat back down. “In fact, I’d like to know more about the theater.”
“You would?”
“When I was a kid, I had a friend who lived on a farm not far from town. We both liked playing in the barn. We were up in the hayloft one sweltering summer afternoon and because we were thirsty, he offered to go get us some cold black cherry pop from the kitchen fridge. It’s always been my favorite.”
Her eyes widened. “Seriously? Do you like strawberry?” If she’d been straight, he’d be her dream man.
“Oh, sure. That’s the other one. Love the stuff.”
He might be Moriarty, but at least he was a fellow gastronome.
“Anyway, while he was gone, I began to feel this presence. It was an old woman. I’m not sure I ever actually saw her, but I sensed her, if you can understand that.”
“Oh, I do.”
“I was sitting with my back against a hay bale when I suddenly felt my hair being stroked. It was very gentle. Nothing scary. It actually happened a couple of times. She would only come out when I was alone. It was something I never forgot.”
“Bet your physics professors wouldn’t much like hearing that story.”
“You’d be surprised.”
This was turning into a more interesting, less adversarial, conversation. Cordelia scolded herself for not challenging him more, not demanding answers. She needed to stay on point, not be sidetracked by their similarities.
Quentin sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “That’s why I’m attending the University of Edinburgh. It’s the best school out there for people who want to get an accredited degree in paranormal studies. I’m hoping to get my doctorate. But before I dove in, I wanted to have a good grounding in quantum physics. See, at heart, even though I’m what they call a ‘sensitive,’ I see myself as a skeptic. Quantum theory posits that the universe splits into separate branches, only one of which corresponds to our view of how the world works. There’s a bigger connection between science and anomalous experience than most people would guess. That’s what I want to spend my life pursuing. It’s why I’m here in this house.”
Cordelia blinked. Could it be this easy? “Why are you here?”
“I don’t usually announce the fact that I’m a ghost hunter, but if asked, I wouldn’t deny it.”
“I’ll be jiggered.”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“But why here? Why this house?”
“My parents are always on the lookout for stories about haunted houses. My mom read something in the paper about this place, so I thought I’d spend a week seeing what I could track down.”
“That’s why you set up the digital recorder upstairs.”
“Oh, you saw that?”
Trying her best to look innocent, Cordelia said, “I may have whispered something into the mic that wasn’t … entirely appropriate.”
He laughed.
“But tell me. Are there ghosts in this house?”
“Nothing conclusive. One cold spot. An odd compass reading. Oh, and there were a couple times when I had the strong sense of being watched. I haven’t downloaded anything from the voice recorder yet. I did stand in the middle of the landing upstairs and ask a bunch of questions. I do that every day, when nobody’s around. And I took all the normal baseline readings. Relative humidity. Temperature. Normal decibel levels in the house. My feeling is, that yes, the house does have some paranormal activity. As a scientist, I would simply point out that what we don’t know is far greater than what we do know.”
“So … you’re not related to the Skarsvold family.”
“What? No, of course not.”
“And you don’t know anything about the bones of the murdered man found in the garage?”
“Murder,” he said, sitting up straight.
“Did you see Lena last night while you were out doing your nightly wandering?”
“I didn’t see her. I did walk past her bedroom. The French doors were closed, but I could hear her talking to Eleanor.”
“What were they saying?”
“Ghost hunters don’t make a habit of eavesdropping.”
“What time was it?”
“Oh, maybe one in the morning. I spent some time in the basement. I was in bed by two. Before I fell asleep, I heard Eleanor come up and go into her room.”
Cordelia would need to run this past Jane, but if memory served, Eleanor had said she’d gone up to bed around eight last night, not two in the morning. If that statement turned out to be accurate, Eleanor had lied to Jane. “You’re sure it was Eleanor you heard?”
“Pretty sure. I’m used to hearing her door open and close. Who else would go into her room that late at night?”
Who else indeed, thought Cordelia, drumming her painted nails on the arm of the recliner. The plot, in her estimation, hadn’t just thickened, it had completely curdled.
35
Butch sat in his Yukon with the motor running and the lights off. He’d found Jenny’s home in Saint Bonifacius without any trouble, though he was a little surprised by how big it was. The house, which sat on a hill that sloped down to a wooded area, looked almost new. It was a two-story with a three-stall garage and a kids’ jungle gym in the backyard off a walk-out basement. It wasn’t special in any way, but stood out because it seemed so much bigger and more expensive than the houses that surrounded it. Christmas lights had been strung around three pine trees in the front yard.
Both sides of the street in front of the place as well as the driveway were so packed with cars that Butch was forced to pull up next to a red Jeep so he could use his binoculars to see inside. With lights burning across the entire first floor, he could easily see in. A party, or perhaps more accurately, a family gathering was in progress. People stood in the living room in small gro
ups, eating from paper plates. It might be a pre-funeral event, or a gathering after the funeral had taken place. Either way, he had no business interrupting.
Butch spent the next hour driving around town, getting a feel for the area. He’d always been drawn to small towns, probably because he’d grown up in one. He liked the pace in a place like Saint Bonifacius, and the fact that, if you lived here, you had fewer choices demanding your attention. Maybe that seemed un-American, but it was the way he liked it.
Even though he wasn’t particularly hungry, he decided to stop at a bar, one that served food. He had to kill more time before he returned to the house. Sitting down at a table near the door, he ordered a burger and a brew from a pretty waitress who was trying her best to ignore the sexual innuendo coming from two obnoxious men sitting at the counter. They were rough looking, young and greasy, and tossing back shots like they were water, well on their way to a night of alcohol-fueled oblivion. Butch felt sorry for her and was ready to run interference if they kept it up.
And keep it up they did. As she carried Butch’s beer over to his table, one of the men got up and made a grab for her. Butch shoved his chair back and stood. “Get away from her.”
“Says who?” said the guy, his face puckering into a snarl.
“I got a hundred pounds on you and I know how to fight. You wanna take this outside?”
The guy glanced at his friend. Giving Butch the finger, he threw his leg over the stool and sat back down, turning to hunch over his shot glass.
“Thank you,” whispered the waitress as she set Butch’s beer in front of him.
“Are they in here a lot?”
“I went to high school with both of them. They’re losers. Maybe I’ll tell their mothers what they’re up to. They both still live at home.”
Butch shook his head. Halfway through his beer, the two guys pushed their stools back and got up, tossed some cash on the counter, and sauntered drunkenly to the door.
“Have a nicey-nice night, Kieren,” called the one who’d given Butch the finger.
“You got our phone numbers if you change your mind,” called the other.