Kendra viewed the trail. “So do you, Mom.”
“Yes, but mine are invisible, and yours are not. Have you been following me?” Belying her peevishness, Emily slid a smooth palm across her daughter’s blistering cheek and held it there. “Helter skelter, see no shelter, you may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer.” She turned toward her husband. “Such a beautiful young lady, don’t you think, Alan? What’s your name, dear? I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.”
Kendra gazed toward her father. Mac said evenly, “Her name is Kendra.”
“Odd. That’s my daughter’s name.” She continued stroking Kendra’s face. “Skin like rice paper. You must invite her over, Alan, when we can pass the time of day. Say, at the kitchen table on a sunny afternoon, with the tea things set out and canapés stacked four high.”
Mac retraced his steps and lifted his wife’s hand into his. Over the surge of waves, he said, “Kendra is your daughter.”
“Of course she’s my daughter. Have I ever said she wasn’t? Christ, you’d think I don’t know my own flesh and blood.” She snatched back her hand and tramped toward the house, leaving footprints in the sand.
Mrs. Jellinek cast a withering look at Mac before charging off after Emily.
Mac turned on his heels, once again clutching hands at his back and fixing his eyes on the swelling lake. In a collected voice he said, “You’re starting renovations soon? On the bungalow?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“And the architect? Did he work out?”
“You were right about him. He’s talented.” With Kendra having more idle time on her hands, she and Joel decided to go ahead with the addition. By building out the attic and installing a luxury master bedroom suite, they could expand the living space as well as increase the house’s value. “He’s going to uncover the fireplace and make it the focal point.”
“The contractors start a week from Monday, don’t they? I’ll stop by, say midweek, and see how things are coming along.” He slid an arm around her shoulders. “Enjoy the moment, Kendra. This is the dying gasp of summer.”
His embrace melted away much too soon. Mac upended his chin in the direction of the Queen Anne, where Mrs. Jellinek shepherded Emily along. “We better go in. Your mother will worry.”
Chapter 7
WHEN KENDRA GREETED Joel at the front door with a kiss, he replaced her embrace with matched handholds about her arms.
“It’s nothing,” she reassured him. “Really, Joel.”
“They don’t think ...?” He had reason to worry. Three squad cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance congested their narrow one-way street.
“Of course not. One of the workers found it. Behind the fireplace. Inside the chimney.” She expected his dubious look. “That’s what’s so crazy. You have to see it to believe it.” She took him by the hand and guided him upstairs.
“Then you were right,” he said.
“About the house being haunted?”
“You don’t have to act so smug.”
“Not smug. Vindicated,” she said. And added, “It wasn’t in my head.”
In the presence of something unspeakable, hard-bitten carpenters and electricians respectfully stood or squatted in a semicircle around the remnants of the fireplace. Piles of plasterboard—crowbarred away from the walls—riddled the floor. Chalky particles rose up from the refuse and swirled in clouds.
Entering deeper into the attic was like descending into the catacombs of the ancient pharaohs. Joel instinctively understood. Like a mourner come to pay his respects, he reluctantly approached the makeshift bier.
Drywall stripped away from superstructure exposed the flue, the hearth, and the mantel to daylight. Anvils and claw hammers had further demolished the chimneystack to its structural underpinnings. Dislodged bricks and crumbled mortar lay in a pile near the base. Cindered logs from decades past were still stacked in the grate. Ash and silt dusted the stonework beneath.
Positioned above the excavated damper and arranged on a narrow ledge slept the remains of a human corpse. Partially concealed among the ruins, the child—for a child it must have been—looked as if it had been playing a game of hide-and-seek and fallen asleep in its hideaway. Resembling a doll flung carelessly out of the way, the child lay on its side. Perhaps seeking scant air and light. Or searching for comfort inside cramped quarters. Or accusing the killer, long since gone, from its final resting place. Or glimpsing a last look of the earthly realm, as dark and confined as it must have been in those final ungodly moments.
Now I lay me down to sleep ....
First impressions often replace shocking truths with optimistic lies. Once comprehended, however, the story becomes more sinister than a Grimm’s fairy tale. For an unknown but firm hand must have sealed the child inside its crypt, there to stay forever, or until an outside force came along to expose its awful fate.
The tiny skeleton was intact. The diminutive hand and foot bones resembled stone. The blanched skull gleamed. Enfolding arms protected a diminutive ribcage. Empty eye sockets seemed large and all seeing. Strips of decayed clothing clung to the bones. Fine blond hair draped around open shoulder blades. Frozen in death—but also frozen in time—the child had resigned itself to a bleak loneliness.
Kendra never saw anything quite so serene. “Don’t you see?” she whispered to Joel. “Someone covered up the fireplace for a reason. Years and years ago. She’s no more than two or three. She’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
“She?”
Kendra assigned a gender to the child, even though the medical examiner, since come and gone, declined making a pronouncement either way. “The skeleton is perfectly preserved. Mummified. They don’t know how she died, but it wasn’t from natural causes. That’s why they bricked up the fireplace downstairs, too. This is her tomb. They didn’t want anyone to disturb her.”
“They?”
“Whoever did this to her. The rats were trying to tell us.”
“Now you’re dreaming.”
“If I am, pray don’t wake me. It’s proof of the afterlife.” She sought comfort in their handclasp. “I’m all right, Joel. I’ve never been so right. This proves that ....” She didn’t finish the sentence but instead glanced toward the window. Remnants of the day were fading into twilight. “I ought to call the Mortons and Cohns. They might think you murdered me.”
“Or the reverse.”
“I wouldn’t want them to worry either way.”
They still held hands. When she moved to break away, he checked her with a tug. “How will the police treat this?”
“As a homicide.” The speaker was looking on with the other men, sitting on his heels Indian-style, his hands draped forward for counterbalance. By appearances, he could have been one of the construction workers. But the worn bomber jacket and his dog-tired face identified him as a species apart.
“Joel, this is Detective Wakeman.”
He unwound his bulky frame and stood, his head brushing just short of the sloping rafters. Reaching out a hand, he said, “Your husband isn’t by any chance a pedophile?” The detective gazed out from a honey-sweet face, ascetically white against a mass of dark curls. Thrown by the suggestion, Joel looked to Kendra for reassurance. Wakeman assuaged his concerns. “Cop humor. Comes with the job. You’re an attorney.”
“Guilty.”
“Criminal law?”
“Not on your life.”
“Thank God for small favors.” His eyes rested briefly on Kendra before refocusing on the ruined fireplace. “Someone made sure she wouldn’t be found.”
“Then she was murdered.”
Wakeman scratched the corner of his mouth. “Dunno. Maybe she climbed up there on her own and got stuck.”
“And plastered herself inside?” Kendra said.
“You’d make a good detective, Mrs. Swain.”
“Not a detective,” Joel corrected. “Psychic.”
Curious, Wakeman raised his brow. “She has a sixth sense?”
“She does not like being referred to in the third person,” Kendra said.
The detective smiled, more from embarrassment than amusement. The way he rubbed a thumb across his mouth was an apology of sorts.
Kendra decided she liked him, even though she couldn’t entirely trust him. “We’d like to give her a proper burial her, if at all possible.”
“Ah. Another psychic reading.” He was making fun of her. The small smile told her so. “You get the distinct impression nobody will step forward to claim the body.”
She didn’t appreciate his condescending manner. “This house is more than a hundred years old. Her family could have died long ago.”
“So noted, Mrs. Swain.” The smile was gone, but the glint in his eyes remained. “Appreciate your concern.”
“But don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
Two hours later, after the ambulance extracted the tiny body and took it away, Kendra and Joel dined on pizza and beer by the downstairs fireplace. They lounged on beanbags and spoke in whispers lest the ghosts overhear. While a storm brewed outside, electric logs crackled and hissed in the grate.
“I can’t shake the feeling we’re not alone.”
Joel leaned over and left a kiss on her mouth. “We are now.”
“Someone must have loved her once, don’t you think?”
His face glowed orange in the faux firelight. “You’re a witch.”
“Do you think the rats will go away? Now that she’s gone?”
“A positive witch.” He reached out and tamped an eyelash from her cheek, immediately showing it to her on the tip of his finger. “I laid traps. There aren’t any rats.”
She saw herself in his paired eyes—two Kendras—eyes fiery with exhilaration but facial expressions luminescent with joy. “Maybe you didn’t set them right.”
“I’m glad they found her. For your sake. For mine, too.” He set aside the beer bottle and joined Kendra. They settled back, the single beanbag encapsulating them. “Do you think we can have a baby now?”
“Nothing’s changed.” Kendra delighted in snuggling into the warmth of his arms on a chilly night.
“The child haunted you.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with her.”
“Your mother’s illness isn’t contagious.”
“My reaction to it is.”
“We can do it right. Find the best doctors in the field. Or adopt, if that’s what you want. You’d be a great mom.”
He spoke in melodious words that should have convinced her, but they only made her uncomfortable. “I won’t have a child, Joel. I won’t bring an innocent life into this world.”
“I want to make love to you. I want to make a baby. Our baby.”
“Please don’t ask me again.” Her plea lacked conviction. The sandcastle she built for years was crumbling beneath a rising tide. She placed a hand over his heart. In a whisper, she said, “I might have to say yes.”
“You want it as much as me. Admit it.”
He was right. She wanted his baby. Wanted it from the first moment she laid eyes on him. She could picture how it would look. Taking the best features from both parents, but favoring its father more than its mother since Joel owned the strongest, perhaps prettiest, features.
They shifted and lay face to face. Kendra skimmed her fingertips along his jaw line. He let out an appreciative sigh. Sometimes the small intimate moments between them were more wonderful than a night of torrid lovemaking. “How can she rest?”
“Let it go, Kendra. Her murderer is dead and buried.”
“Is he?”
He swept back a tendril of hair and wrapped it behind her ear. “Why does it have to be a he?”
“A mother would never abandon her own child.”
He found a delicious part of her neck and nibbled. “Like you told the cop, the bones could be a hundred years old.”
“You don’t know that. Someone could have put her there five years ago. Or twenty. Even if it happened fifty years ago, her murderer might still be out there. He could be watching the house right this minute.”
His right hand clasped her left hand. They intertwined fingers. He trailed kisses along her throat. “No one’s watching the house.”
“They may have taken her bones away, but she hasn’t left.”
“Kendra?”
“How can she ever rest?”
“Where’s your wedding ring? Your engagement ring?”
“She can’t rest, not until her killer pays for what’s he’s done.”
“Would you fucking stop it? All this crap about a child who’s got nothing to do with us!” When he wrenched himself away, the separation came as a jolt. The magic was gone. Joel had ripped it away. He was a stranger, someone she didn’t know, a man who looked like her husband but wasn’t. “When’s the last time you took them off?”
“Took what off?”
“Your wedding rings?” He reached for the hand closest to her heart and held it up.
She spread out her fingers as if trying on a glove. Rings adorned every one. Except her ring finger—where a blinding marquis diamond usually united the bridal set—was naked.
“Is this your way of saying our marriage is over?”
“I was ... when they found her ... I was in the kitchen ... washing up. I must’ve ...”
The floorboards pounded with his anger. She heard him rattling around the kitchen. Throwing open cabinet doors. Banging drawers. Running water in the sink.
Hoping to make the rising panic go away, Kendra sat up and drew knees against her chest. She was colder than winter.
When he returned, he lingered behind an invisible partition separating the dining room from the front room.
“I ... I’ll call the plumber,” she said. “First thing in the morning.”
He stepped back and disappeared. The back door hammered shut. His shoes tromped across the porch and down the wood-planked stairs. Minutes later, the Carrera backed into the alley and roared off toward Addison Street.
Joel didn’t come home until well after midnight, stumbling around the bedroom, chuckling like a tomcat after a good fight, and making sweet, sweet love to Kendra as if nothing had happened. But something had happened. Had been happening for years. A wall had gone up between them, brick by brick and layer by layer until neither could see over the top. She blamed herself. For being an imperfect wife, a bad cook, an apathetic housekeeper, and a distant lover. For replacing wifely duties with work. For having a crooked eyetooth and curly hair. For being taller than Joel in high heels. For having a fashion sense that harkened back to the 40s, when men were men and women knew their place. For lacking self-esteem. For being forgetful. But mostly for being the daughter of her mother.
In the morning, Kendra didn’t call the plumber. Instead, she called Detective Ethan Wakeman and begged him for a favor. He was amenable enough, but wary. Why shouldn’t he be? When the skeletal remains of a child are found in your house, it’s best to leave well enough alone. Kendra should have left well enough alone, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to know more about the child who had haunted her dreams and her wakefulness.
They met at the Cook County Morgue. He escorted her through the endless corridors while giving her sage advice, all for the price of vending machine coffee. “I can see why you’re curious, Mrs. Swain, but don’t be. Asking questions about an ongoing homicide investigation isn’t the brightest idea.”
“Are you going to arrest me for disorderly curiosity?” she asked.
He hid his smile by clearing his throat. “If I were you, I’d stay clear of this business.”
“Now that we’ve gotten the official crap out of the way, we can talk like people.”
As before, his expression was serious and somewhat morose but amused. He was younger than she supposed. Though he purposely dressed down in a way that made him appear world-weary, he was around her age, possibly younger.
“Then you are,” she said. “Classifying it as a homicide.”
Kendra imagined bodies stacked five high. White-clothed gurneys speeding by. Blood dripping down the walls. And morbidity clinging to the air. But only Detective Wakeman and the benign whiff of Pine-Sol mixed with rubbing alcohol greeted her at the entrance. Since then, a parade of unremarkable staff members, neutral walls, and scrubbed floors passed in revue.
“I went to the County Recorder of Deeds,” she said. “Room 120 and I are fast friends. We traced the ownership of the house back to the beginning of time. Or close enough.”
Their footfalls echoed off polished surfaces and sealed doors. Kendra wondered what lurked behind those doors. And what stories emanated from the human remains that traveled these sterile corridors every day.
“You’re speaking of the bungalow.” Black satin eyes peered at her between Asian-shaped eyelids. He was an odd combination of traits. Nearly black hair yet pale skin. Broad face with narrow eyes. Wild haired and clean-shaven. Tall frame and stooped posture. Every one of his contradictory characteristics put Kendra on guard.
“It’s become personal.” She was nervous about being here. About appearing nosy, or worse, obsessed. Although nothing about the little girl or her ghost was remotely funny, laughter escaped her. The knot in her stomach dissipated, but the gnawing fear remained. “I can’t explain it.”
“And why should you?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“The circumstances interest you. The child, the place, the timing, the ghost.”
“I don’t recall mentioning a ghost.”
He tossed his drained coffee cup into a nearby canister and faced her. “Didn’t have to. The unexplained conjures ghosts. You’re not alone. Or even unusual. Except a couple hundred years ago, they hanged women for less.”
Wakeman presented his ID to a white-coated attendant. Another passage to walk, another door to open, and within minutes, Kendra was gazing down at the child. The remains reposed serenely on a shiny bed of metal. Refrigerator cold, Kendra hugged her arms. She nodded at the file folder splayed between the detective’s bulky hands. “Has the coroner determined cause of death?”
He flipped the report pages with interest but shook the locks of his head. “No visible signs of violence. Her neck wasn’t broken. Skull’s intact. The M.E. confirms she was a female between three and four years of age. Racial composition, Caucasian. If it’s any consolation, there’s every reason to believe she died of natural causes.”
Trick of the Mind Page 6