Ivy chose to ignore her thoughts. They would only distract her and take her to places in her grief that would result in nothing good. She pulled the tail of a stained ribbon that held the scooped neckline of the deceased’s chemise together. More bruising peeked from beneath the soiled cotton, just above the girl’s breasts. Fury mingled with Ivy’s impassioned need to find justice for this victim. She unbuttoned a tiny white button on the chemise that rested between the young woman’s cleavage.
“Stop.”
Dr. Thorpe leaned forward to examine a small mole.
“It’s not dirt,” Ivy observed, and her father nodded. Turning, he made a note of the potential identifier in his medical journal.
“Keep going.” He motioned with his hand.
She did.
Ivy admired her father’s hidden talent of postmortem examination. It wasn’t something all doctors were schooled in, but with newer medical practices coming to the fore, her father wasn’t one to be surpassed by the younger doctors. On occasion, a medical examination needed to be completed, and Oakwood boasted of a practitioner who was more than capable. Her father’s immersion into the medical world after Andrew died was even more wholehearted than when Andrew was alive.
The clearing of a throat jerked both Ivy and her father from their intensive examination. Joel Cunningham lounged in the doorway, overflowing with the self-confidence Ivy so easily remembered. That confidence had once attracted her as a young woman of fourteen. She waited for his look of discrimination at the sight of a lady assisting with a postmortem medical examination. There was none. He looked beyond her. Ivy squelched the sting of being passed over.
“What have we found?”
Joel stepped into the room. He was all business, wasn’t he? Ivy narrowed her eyes. Thank goodness her father wouldn’t answer Joel. Just because he had been at the site of the body’s discovery didn’t mean they owed him any explanations.
“It appears she may have died of strangulation.”
Well then. Maybe she was wrong.
Joel approached the table, and Ivy yanked the sheet over the young woman’s body. Indecent. The man had no propriety. He most definitely had not improved with age.
She gave him a hasty glance. Well, his personality hadn’t improved with age. His lean form hinted at a chest that had matured from a young man’s lanky frame into strength and breadth. The tailored suit coat he wore suggested he’d stepped up in the world from the orphan he once was. Why was he home in Oakwood? And why was her father handing over information as if Joel Cunningham was working for the sheriff?
“Anything you can tell about how she died might help with my investigation. The sheriff has engaged my assistance with this case, as his detective.”
Oh goodness no. He was working for the law.
“There are many variables.” Ivy couldn’t hide the snap in her tone. Detective? Was that why Joel had finally returned, to take a job with Sheriff Dunst? Or was it for another reason? What Ivy knew, and what really mattered, was that for this moment the young woman was still theirs.
Protective, Ivy leveled a glare on Joel that hurt her eyes, but when he ignored her, Ivy looked away. The sweetness of the young woman’s face, stilled in permanent sleep, increased Ivy’s irritation. The girl wasn’t a “case.” She was a lost, nameless soul. She had been a person with a story, a life.
Ivy’s hand hovered over the body before coming to rest on the shoulder with every ounce of possessiveness in her spirit. The cool skin of the young woman pressed beneath her palm.
“No one has identified her yet.” Joel’s statement ripped through the intimate connection of souls, and Ivy jerked her hand away from the body.
The woman had no identification yet. Even so, it dawned on Ivy with clarity, though she knew immediately it wasn’t supernatural. The young woman had named herself and whispered it into Ivy’s soul. Maybe this was why the town of Oakwood speculated as to whether Ivy Thorpe really was just an overcurious woman investigating the lives of the dead, or if she had some undefined connection to the afterlife. To Ivy, the dead were still alive.
She tried to control her breathing as she inhaled slowly. “Gabriella.”
“What?” Joel tipped his head, his features sharpened with suspicion.
“Call her Gabriella.”
“You know her?” Even her father was surprised. Ivy avoided looking at him. It was poetic. Gabriel. He’d been an angel. And she was—Ivy couldn’t help but transfer her gaze back onto the silent woman—she was an angel now too. She deserved a name.
Chapter 2
Kaine
OAKWOOD, WISCONSIN
PRESENT DAY
Kaine checked her rearview mirror. She’d made a habit of it as she traversed the country from the ocean-side walkways of San Diego to the obscure midlands of Wisconsin. No one believed her. They probably never would. Danny’s death two years ago still whispered its curses in her ear.
Your fault. Your fault.
She would never escape them, though no one else blamed her. Kaine was tired of violence touching every molecule in her body. Its ugly, poisonous fingers wrapped around her heart, squeezing until she couldn’t live life this way anymore. Danny had begged her ages ago to relocate to his beloved Midwest in order to start over and shake the shadow of depression following her.
She had refused and he had died.
The shrill ring of her cellphone shattered the silence of the car. Kaine jumped at the sound. She glanced down at the pepper spray, always handy in the passenger seat, then in the mirror again. Shadows clung under her eyes.
God, please bring me hope here.
The repetitious, old-fashioned telephone ring clamored for her attention. Kaine reached for her phone and eyed the number while her left hand clasped the steering wheel tighter. Leah. She tapped the green answer button.
“Hey.”
“Are you there yet?” Her sister’s voice was a welcome peace calming her heart.
“Almost.” Kaine ducked her head to get a better look beneath the visor that blocked the sun. “This place is really out of the way.”
“Well, it’s not San Diego.” Leah’s laugh soothed Kaine’s frayed nerves. She missed her sister. Terribly. Just to hear her laugh brought a lightness to her soul, even if it would last only for a moment.
“Not at all.” Kaine braked as a squirrel darted across the road in an erratic, nervous race against the car. “Stupid squirrel.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” Kaine readjusted her grip on the phone. Her car was too old to have Bluetooth built in, and her headset had died somewhere in Illinois. Kaine glanced around at the wooded acres that flew by her on both sides of the road.
“We should video-chat when you get there. I want to see this place.”
“It’s just a house.” An empty dream, Kaine didn’t add. “I don’t even know if I’m going to keep it once it’s fixed up. I just need a change, a new vision, to get away, and—I don’t know that I want to live in Oakwood. Permanently.”
“But it’s a historic landmark, Kaine. And according to Grandpa Prescott’s old family Bible with the family tree, our great-great-grandmother lived in the same town. That alone should excite you. Not to mention it must be beautiful there. The realtor said it was purchased after the turn of the century and restored. But now it needs some TLC. And you know Danny would’ve been behind this one hundred percent.”
Poor Leah. She was grasping at straws trying to give Kaine encouragement. Kaine’s eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them back.
“We don’t know much about Grandma Ivy, but I’m not here to play Ancestry-dot-com. Besides, the house might be historic for Oakwood, Wisconsin, but the fact I got it for a steal is what still makes me leery. No one sells historic landmarks for less than a quarter of an average mortgage in California.”
“Yeah, well, our realtor wouldn’t steer you wrong. He found our house here, and with his cousin in the same field in Wisconsin, it was a perfect connection since
you couldn’t exactly fly cross-country to inspect it.”
Kaine sincerely hoped the cousin of Leah’s real estate agent had the integrity Leah was so certain of. Most people had an inspection done on a house, but it had been a short sale. Offers were contingent on skipping the inspection, with an “as is” clause. Call it stupid and impulsive, but Kaine wanted out of San Diego. The pictures on the listing had been blurry and very unprofessional, yet what she’d seen looked mostly cosmetic. A gabled house, Gothic and East Coast in style, unique to the area, with three bedrooms, a parlor, updated plumbing, and a broad assortment of other rooms labeled with Victorian-era terms. While Kaine wasn’t very interested in old architecture, Danny had been. Still, she was taking a financial risk to come here, and she wasn’t convinced she hadn’t completely lost her mind. Especially with a few days alone in a car to think, calm down, and have a sense of reason invade her emotional angst.
Kaine had already sunk the remainder of Danny’s life insurance policy into buying the old place on pretense of a new beginning but charged with the reality of a hopeful escape. Just because she had some savings to fall back on for repairs and living expenses didn’t mean she could afford an entire renovation. Maybe if she did this, she could keep Danny close. Perhaps he would be able to look down from heaven and be reassured that, in the end, she really did love him.
“Are you okay?”
The question was simple, but the answer was so complicated all Kaine could muster was “Yeah.”
“I don’t believe you.” Leah. She was a mother. Protective, nurturing, and full of emotional comfort.
“I’ll be fine, Leah.”
Kaine started reading the fire numbers. That’s what they called them here in Wisconsin. Fire numbers were addresses on blue, narrow, rectangular signs attached to metal posts, located at the ends of driveways.
“Video-call me when you get there.” Leah’s voice became a distant echo in Kaine’s ear.
W12943 Foster Hill Road
Kaine turned onto the gravel drive, and the woods opened to a clearing. A hill sloped with rocky boulders, enormous oak trees, and pasture grasses waving in the spring breeze.
“Oh, my landy-love.” Kaine used her grandfather’s substitute cussword.
“What? What!” Leah’s eagerness clashed with the disappointment that slammed into Kaine’s body.
“I gotta go.” Kaine hit the End button on her phone and tossed it on the passenger seat. Video-chatting with Leah, in this moment, would not end well. So much for God’s intervention and leading. Kaine had officially taken a dive off the deep end of sanity. No wonder the San Diego police didn’t believe her when she claimed her husband had been murdered and the killer was stalking her. It was too . . . nuts. She was nuts.
Cavernous windows opened in a silent scream on the face of the Gothic house that tilted on the crest of Foster Hill. Its gables towered as if to mock her, and balconies curved in permanent, evil grins. The front door gaped open with a black shadow, evidence that somewhere, at some time, it had been opened and never closed. Abandoned.
The tires crunched on the gravel as her car rolled up the hill, slowly, as if it didn’t want to get any closer. Her reticence was reflected in the speed. This was more than a little fixer-upper. This was a demolish-and-start-over! The pictures she’d seen on the realty site had been taken from creative angles to downplay the state of the house.
The clapboard siding was hanging lopsidedly on the east gable, but seemed somewhat intact on the other gable. She could hear the real estate agent in her mind: Snap a pic of that nicer gable! The brick foundation looked as though an earthquake had rendered its mortar ineffective. The house summoned old imaginings of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. Kaine had read the book in high school and never forgotten it. Haunted was too cliché a word for this house, its deed now branded with her signature. Even ghosts would have abandoned the home years ago.
Could she truly credit God with leading her here? He knew she hadn’t credited Him with much lately, and it was for reasons like this. Not to mention, you didn’t thank the Lord for the murder of your husband and the fact that not even the police believed you. That they thought you were crazy to think he’d never have been a bad enough driver to face off with a concrete pillar of an underpass. That someone kept intruding into your house while you were away, moving things and leaving daffodils to taunt you. Nor could she thank the Lord for the displacement of her life and a career so depressing it hurt to even remember it.
“Okay. I can do this.” Kaine’s car rolled to a stop. She craned her neck to stare up through the windshield. “I can’t do this. No. I can’t.”
It was too creepy. Too dark. Now she was talking to herself. And that was getting old. She needed a dog. For protection. A guard dog. Yes. She would adopt a dog.
She shook her head to collect her thoughts from random escapades. Exiting her car, Kaine made her way past the crooked fence to the front stairs that led up to a porch void of paint and weathered from the sun.
Her throat closed, and she clapped her hand over her mouth.
It couldn’t be. No, no, no!
She backed away a step. Her eyes were fixed on the flower propped against the doorframe of the entrance like a wax garden ornament. A daffodil. Its sunny color mocked the taunting nature of its existence. He had left it. Just as he had left them in her house in San Diego. He had met her here.
Kaine spun on her heel and raced across the barren yard, her hip smashing against the edge of the fence and sending a rotted slat flying. She scrambled into her car and slammed the door shut, hitting the lock button.
Turning the key, Kaine cast one more glance at Foster Hill House and the daffodil that had been left to greet her. This house was a reflection of what was in Kaine’s soul. This house was terrifying. This house was dead.
Kaine’s foot was solid on the gas pedal as she sped toward town. Population 2,000 was posted just below the Welcome to Oakwood sign. Numbers offered security, didn’t they? But two thousand seemed paltry compared with San Diego’s one million plus. This was a dark little village with a creepy old house, not the country home with wildflowers Kaine had imagined in her mind. A relaxing bed-and-breakfast type of a house. An oasis in the countryside.
Kaine massaged the steering wheel with cold, clammy hands. Crowds. No matter the size, she’d be safe there. There was something reassuring about the stimulation of a crowd, the sound of hundreds of voices murmuring around her. She was safe, and she wasn’t alone. Kaine counted at least two, three, okay, five taverns down the main street. Welcome to Wisconsin, she supposed, one of the leading states for drinking and alcoholism. A woman jogged along the sidewalk, her Nike shirt a fluorescent yellow. Kaine glanced at her as she passed. The woman lifted her hand in a wave. At least someone seemed friendly.
The vision of that glorious daffodil stabbed deeper than any knife. Her tentative thread of security was lost. Broken. Where was the witness protection program for the abused and hunted? Kaine had long wondered that. In her line of work, she had seen it over and over again. The prey, the hunter, the victimization. Now it was her turn.
Harvey’s Auto & Gas. Well, that was a welcome reprieve. Any living body at this point might be at risk of being hugged, and Kaine wasn’t a hugger. She leaned her head back against the seat. The corner station boasted a green metal roof, three gas pumps that didn’t accept credit cards, and a small store. Maybe she’d grab a candy bar. A Snickers. She deserved chocolate, even though it wouldn’t fix this problem.
Kaine crawled from the car, her legs still stiff from her four-day cross-country drive. Her hand brushed the small wooden cross that dangled on a pink ribbon from the rearview mirror. It was a remnant of her faith. A bruised faith.
A robin hopped across her path, then fluttered away as Kaine walked to the building. The tinny clang of an old bell greeted her ears as the gas station door pulled inward just as she reached for it. Off-balance by the unexpected swing of the door, Kaine stumb
led. A firm grip on her upper arm steadied her.
“So sorry.”
Kaine met an apologetic pair of hazel eyes. She didn’t typically find scruffy men striking, but this one was—in an artsy, earthy sort of way. His black plastic-framed glasses were trendy, and his sandy-blond hair was in enough disarray to make her question whether it was purposefully styled to look like he’d just crawled out of bed.
Kaine pulled her arm away. She was betraying her dead husband with her appreciative flutter toward the good-looking stranger.
“It’s all right.” She rubbed her hand over the sleeve of her jacket.
“Are you okay?”
Oh for heaven’s sake, she’d tripped, not flown over the edge of the Grand Canyon. Kaine sucked back her defensive retort. He didn’t deserve it. He gave her such a remorseful look, she got the distinct impression he was a mama’s boy.
“Fine. I’m fine.” She really wasn’t, but that was on so many levels deeper than tripping over a man in the doorway of a gas station.
“’Kay.”
They danced in the doorway. He moved one direction as she did, then the other, and then he chuckled and stepped aside. “Go ahead.” His arm extended toward the inside of the station.
Chivalry wasn’t dead.
Kaine avoided his gaze. It was—unnerving.
The smell of coffee slammed into her senses as she entered the store, accompanied by the reedy sound of a polka playing through an archaic radio perched behind the counter. A display of brilliant yellow foam cheese triangles greeted her. Ahh, yes. The famed Wisconsin “cheeseheads.” Mama’s boys and cheeseheads. This town was . . . promising?
The House on Foster Hill Page 2