I nodded and reached into my coat pocket. Finding my cell phone I punched the numbers into the keypad and waited for the dispatcher, knowing in my heart that all of our efforts were just too little, too late.
* * * *
Two hours later the county coroner had carted away Willis's body. Steven and I sat at his kitchen table with the sheriff, going over the details of finding Willis in a state of unconsciousness. Steven had found a needle and vial of insulin near where we'd first discovered Willis, and in his best estimation he said that Willis had most likely gone into diabetic distress, followed quickly by coma as his body began to shut down.
I listened while Steven told the sheriff that we'd reached him about an hour too late, "flow long had you known Willis?" the sheriff asked.
"As long as I've known my grandfather," Steven said, his voice quavering a bit. He cleared his throat, and it was a moment before he continued. "Willis was a part of my childhood here at the house. He would take me for rides on his tractor, and teach me about the plants and flowers. He was a good man."
"How long has he had diabetes?" the sheriff asked.
"Also as long as I've known him."
"Do you know who his doctor was?"
"No idea," Steven said, then thought of something and got up from the table. From the kitchen counter he picked up one of three prescription bottles, scanned the label, and said, "You can try Dr. Harris. He's in Twin Lakes."
"That's quite a hike from here," the sheriff noted.
"It's known to be the best hospital in northern Massachusetts," Steven said as he continued to sift through the prescription bottles. I saw him pause, studying one of the bottles more closely, and his stance shifted ever so subtly. He looked up at us and noted that the sheriff was busy writing. Putting his finger to his lips he quickly slipped the bottle into his pocket.
I gave him a questioning look but didn't say anything as he rejoined us at the table. "Do you know if he has any family we can contact?"
I got up and walked over to the framed picture of Janelle. I handed it to the sheriff and said, "That's his daughter, Janelle. She lives in Jamaica Plain, and I think she works at Mass. General."
The sheriff nodded. "I think that's all I need, Dr. Sable and Miss Holliday. Thank you for your efforts with Mr. Brown. I'm sure his family will appreciate that you did everything you could."
Steven and I got up from the table and walked to the door. In the doorway Steven paused, reached behind him, and grabbed my hand. I leaned into him as I squeezed back, and together we walked back through the rain to the lodge.
When we got inside I asked, "You okay?"
Steven walked into the laundry room, returning with a towel for each of us before answering. "No," he said, his shoulders slumped. "It's always been hard for me to lose a patient. And Willis was an old friend."
"I saw him, you know."
"Saw who?"
"Willis," I said. Steven cocked his head at me and I explained. "On the path. When I went to get your bag I was running back to the cabin and he called my name. When I turned around he was there."
"I don't understand."
"It was his spirit. He'd already left. There was nothing you could have done, Steven. He was already gone."
Steven stared at me for a long, long time before setting his towel down and walking over to me. Ever so gently he swept my wet hair back off my face, then leaned in and kissed me deeply. When he pulled his lips away I gave him a small smile. "What was that for?"
"Do you always need a reason?"
"No. Not especially."
"Good. Come. I think there's some rain gear around here somewhere."
That caught me off guard. "I'm sorry, what?"
Steven had already turned to walk into the hallway. "Rain gear," he said. "We have to get to Mirabelle before it's too late."
"Too late for what?"
Steven paused, dug into his pocket, and pulled something out, tossing it to me. I looked at it after I'd caught it. It was the prescription bottle from Willis's counter. "What's the relevance?" I asked as I looked at the pink pills in the container.
"Read the label. The doctor's name is in the upper right-hand corner."
I searched the label and my eyes stuck on the name: Dr. S. Sable. "Holy shit!" I said.
"Exactly," Steven said as he came back into the kitchen with two rain slickers.
"Do you think these had anything to do with Willis's death?"
"I don't know. I've never heard of that drug, and I'll have to look it up, but if it contributed in any way, I'll make sure my old man ends up paying for it."
I tucked the pills into my jeans pocket and looked up as Steven said, "Here," and he tossed a rain slicker over my shoulders. "This was my grandfather's. It might be a little big, but at least it will keep you dry."
I donned the slicker and the two of us trotted back out into the rain. It was slow going through the woods this time, as the rain had made the path slippery. Eventually we reached Mirabelle's and made our way to her big blue door. Steven knocked and was rewarded a moment later when the door opened. "Steven and M.J.," she said with surprise.
"Hello, Mirabelle," he said. "Can we come in? It's important."
"Of course," she said, opening the door wider.
We shuffled out of our wet slickers and wet shoes and I gave a shudder, damp to the bone. "Oh, you poor thing," she said to me. "Here, you come over here and sit by the fire. I just got it going a few minutes before you arrived, but it should help warm your bones."
"Thanks," I said as I followed her into the cozy living room. "We would have come by car, but we couldn't find the turnoff for your little road out there."
Mirabelle smiled as she took a seat on the couch, and Steven sat next to her. "That's because it's hidden. It's about a quarter mile away from your driveway. But you can't see it because it dips down from the road, then takes a sharp left. It blends into the woods so easily that not many people can find it."
"I'm afraid we have some sad news," Steven said, getting to the point. He then explained what had happened to Willis. Mirabelle's eyes misted over, and she reached out to squeeze Steven's hand. "I didn't know him well," she said. "But what I knew of him was that he was a lovely man."
Steven went on then to tell her about the deed that Roger had tried to sell to Steven Senior that guaranteed her the right to the property for as long as she lived.
"That rat bastard," Mirabelle said, her face pinched with fury. "The next time I see that weaselly son of a gun I'm going to kick him straight in his gonads."
Steven gave the smallest of smiles. "Do you mean Roger, or my father?"
"Little of both," she said, getting up to poke angrily at the fire.
"We have the deed," I offered as I reached into my jean jacket and pulled it out. "We're willing to get it recorded for you, if you like."
Mirabelle held out her hand and I gave her the paper. She studied it for a moment, tracing her fingers along Andrew's signature at the bottom, and said, “Thank you, but this is my responsibility. The county clerk's should be open for another hour. Would you two mind if I went right over there to take care of this?"
"Of course not," Steven said, getting up. "But there's one more thing you should know," he said. "I think you should be very careful around here."
"Careful?" Mirabelle asked, giving Steven a quizzical look.
"We've learned that my father has a financial interest in this property. If something should happen to either one or both of us, he will benefit. And with Willis now dead, and his parcel of land going back to the estate, it would be a good idea to watch behind you."
Mirabelle's mouth opened a fraction, then closed with determination. "Don't you worry about me, Steven. I can smell a rat bastard a mile away, and I'm a very good shot, just so you know."
Mirabelle offered to drive us back to the lodge, but I noticed she sneaked a glance at her watch as she asked. "That's okay, Mirabelle. You need to get that deed recorded, and it's getting late.
We've got slickers; we'll be fine."
"Thanks for understanding," she said as we hurried to the door.
Just then something struck me, and I turned back to her to ask, "One last thing, though. Do you remember hearing any rumors of Andrew having an affair with someone other than your mother?"
Mirabelle gave me an odd look, then said, "Yes. And trust me, that is a story. I don't have time to tell you about it now, but how about after I get this recorded I stop by and give you the down and dirty?"
"Awesome," I said. "But, just out of curiosity, did the woman's name begin with an M?"
I was rewarded with a bright smile. "Yes, it did. Is that intuition of yours on overdrive?"
I laughed. "I'd love to take credit for it, but we found some love letters to Andrew back at the house, and I just had this feeling that they weren't from your mother."
Mirabelle glanced again at her watch as we reached her driveway. "I'd love to take a look at them when I get back. I'll be as quick as I can," she called as she jogged to her car.
Steven and I trudged back up the hill, grateful at least that the wind seemed to be letting up. About midway to the lodge my cell phone chirped, and I pulled it out of my back pocket. Noting that the caller ID said GILLEY, I quickly answered the call. "Hey, buddy," I said. "What's the word?"
"I have so much to tell you!" he began. "First, the police report on the break-in at Steven's is very odd. Until the good doctor returns, they can't determine whether anything was stolen, but the digital pictures taken at the scene are so weird."
"Why are they weird?"
"The bathroom was ransacked. The police think that the thief was looking for drugs, but I don't think that's it. And I'll tell you why in a minute."
"I'm listening," I said, ducking low under a branch.
"After I checked out the police report I moved on to do a little more research on that pharmaceutical company and came across something very interesting."
"Do tell."
"There is a recently published white paper from one of the staff members at the company that reports that some of their stem-cell research indicates that one of the drugs used to treat mice in the laboratory actually affected their DNA."
There was a pause on my end as I digested that and tried to find the relevance. "I don't get the connection," I finally said.
"Isn't it obvious?" Gilley asked. "If you were Steven Senior, and you knew that the one way to convince a court of law that you were not the father of an illegitimate son was to submit a DNA sample which was guaranteed not to match said son …" Gilley's voice trailed off with his implication.
"Oh. My. God," I said, finally understanding how Senior planned on getting around a possible match in DNA to Steven. "That's why Steven's bathroom was the only room ransacked! The thief was after his DNA so that Sable Senior could test it against his first to make sure it didn't match, and if it did, then he'd take the drug and alter it so that it wouldn't!"
"Bingo. He could then successfully challenge the will and lay claim to the property. The only other fly in his ointment would be that deed, M.J. You two have got to get that thing recorded before it's too late!"
"Mirabelle's on her way to get it recorded right now," I said.
"Good. In the meantime, you two be very careful."
"Planning on it," I said. "Great work, Gil, and we'll see you soon."
Steven waited for me to tuck my cell back into my pocket before coming up beside me. "Was that Gilley?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'll explain everything when we get out of this rain."
A while later we broke through the woods and hurried to the kitchen door, but it was locked. "Damn," Steven said as he tried the handle. "I must have locked it when we came out to go to Mirabelle's. Come on; I have the key to the front door."
We circled our way around to the front and came up short. There, parked in the driveway with its windshield wipers going, was a silver Rolls-Royce, and next to that was that gray sedan I'd seen all over town. "No way," Steven said as he walked with purpose to the front door. Unlocking it, he pushed the door open and said, "Go inside. This won't take long."
If I hadn't been shivering so hard that my teeth were chattering I would have stayed and watched the fireworks, but the cold won out and I moved inside. Taking off my rain slicker, I moved into the kitchen to heat some water and make tea when I stopped cold. There at the counter was Maria, and in front of her were the love letters to Andrew.
My breath caught in my throat as everything clicked into place, and, like a movie, I saw it all unfold in my head. She must have heard me behind her, because she turned her head and her tearstained cheeks confirmed everything I believed. "It was you," I said to her. "You pushed Andrew off that roof."
She gasped and shook her head vehemently back and forth. "No! No, I would never do that!" she said, then buried her face in her hands. I knew she was telling the truth, and as I stood there the movie in my head changed and I felt a knowing confirmation that I was absolutely right on target this time.
"It was your suicide note, not Andrew's," I said.
Maria sobbed but nodded her head.
"You were going to kill yourself by diving off the roof, but Andrew found you and tried to save you, and he slipped."
Again, a vigorous nod yes.
"And you were the one who pushed Maureen down the stairs."
Maria stopped sobbing abruptly and looked up at me, her eyes large and frightened. "Yes," she said at last. "It was me. I loved him from the moment I began working for him. All those years of caring for him like he was my husband. She did not love him like I did, but always, he wanted her. The night of the ball she was so full of herself, so sure that she and Andrew were going to be together. I was young and foolish, and when she sniped at me to keep away from him, I reacted, but I never meant for her to die!" she said, her eyes pleading with me to believe her. "I was angry, and I wanted to teach her a lesson, but I never meant to do any real harm."
"Did Andrew know?"
Maria hung her head. "Yes, he knew. The moment he saw her at the bottom of the stairs he knew I'd done it. I had a temper, you see. He never said as much, though, at least, not until right before he died, so I fooled myself into believing that he didn't suspect me. But then, a few weeks before his death he called me into his study, and he told me the way of it. He said that he would make sure that Willis was taken care of, and Mirabella, but for my sin I could never be rewarded for what I'd done. He said that he would make good on the retirement account he'd set up for me, but that when he died I would never be a part of this house. He was holding me accountable."
"And you couldn't live with the guilt of knowing that he understood what had really happened on that staircase."
"I couldn't bear it. That morning he ordered his oatmeal and began to speak of hiring someone else to care for him. He was even kind about it. He said that I had worked for him long enough, and that perhaps someone younger should come in to take my place."
"That was the last straw, then," I said. "And you headed to the roof."
"Yes," she said, her voice a whisper.
Thinking of something else I said, "The morning we found you here. You were looking for your old love letters, weren't you?"
Maria's eyes became large again. "Yes. But you three arrived before I could get them on the third floor. I figured they were safe up there, but you managed to find them."
"That's why Maureen pushed Gilley. She was confused, and she thought it was you!" I said.
"Your friend was pushed down the stairs?" Maria said, worry in her voice.
"Yes, but luckily he's all right. You were pushed that time when Steven first came here, weren't you, Maria? The ghost of Maureen shoved you down the stairs."
She nodded. "Yes, that time and two others, but by then I had learned to hold tight to the banister. I always knew it was her, coming back to claim her revenge."
"I'm amazed you continued to work here," I said.
"I understood her need to hu
rt me. I deserved it, after all, and I wanted to be near my Andrew. I was careful."
"So you came back today to retrieve the letters," I said, putting all the pieces together.
"Yes. I spotted you and Steven going into the woods. I wanted to get the letters before you two got back."
"And is that your gray sedan out front? The one that's been flanking us?"
"No," Maria said with a puzzled look on her face. "My car is at Willis's. I brought him some food, but he must be out, because when I knocked he didn't answer."
I winced. I considered telling her about Willis, but decided to wait and see if I could get a little more info out of her first.
"Was it you in the woods that night, Maria? And in the tunnel?" I asked carefully.
Maria's expression seemed to go blank. "The woods? A tunnel? What are you talking about?"
At that moment angry voices erupted from the front hallway, and I realized that Stevens Junior and Senior had just burst into the house. Maria and I left our conversation and hurried to the front foyer. Steven Junior was yelling something at his father, and he was so angry that the sentences held both Spanish and German words. His father simply looked at him with a sneer on his face, and it was then that I caught the two in profile and realized something with a jolt: The family resemblance was unmistakable. Both had identical ears, matching jawlines, and the same small bump on the ridge of the nose. Even their hairlines were similar from the side.
"I will ask you only one more time," Senior said with menace when Junior had finished. "Where is the deed?"
"Get out of my house!" Steven roared. Senior didn't budge, but there was movement to his side, and that was when I saw another man partially hidden beside Senior and felt goose bumps line my arms.
"It's not your house!" Senior roared back. "It belongs to the Sable bloodline, of which you are not a part."
"Prove it," Steven sneered. "Come on, old man. Offer me some DNA to give a sleep to this matter."
"Oh, I plan on it," Senior snarled back. "In the next few weeks, you little Argentinean bastard, expect to be served!"
What's a Ghoul to Do? Page 25