Mr. Mason squatted, his elderly knees cracking, and he circled the barrel of his pistol in the air. “You haven’t figured that out yet? It seems obvious to me. Your great-great-grandmother was the infamous Gabriella. The dead woman found at the bottom of Foster Hill. Her baby was the one Ivy Thorpe and Joel Cunningham, the detective, tried so hard to save.”
He might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water in Kaine’s face. She hadn’t predicted that, but it made sense. Far too much sense. The mysterious dead woman, the trafficking of women, the abuse . . . it had followed her through generations. And somehow Ivy must have found Gabriella’s child, a daughter. The hair in the locket had to have been hers.
Mr. Mason read the shock on Kaine’s face, and he tipped his head to the side and winced. The wince deepened the wrinkles at his eyes. “I’m sorry. See? This is why family should be protected, not put on display for all to see. It becomes such a tragic mess.”
“But Maggie is not Gabriella’s family. So her stealing the quilt to preserve it for the family . . . it still makes no sense. Why did she care?” Kaine’s mind raced. She could see the outline of the puzzle, but the inner pieces were still in disarray.
“I asked her the same thing when I confronted her. Told her I knew it was her who broke in. She said it was none of my business. Maggie said Gabriella’s descendents should have it so they could remember Ivy, the woman who saved Gabriella’s legacy, her child. An unspoken hero, Maggie implied. Sort of sickened me, really.”
Tears sprang to Kaine’s eyes, and she blinked them back. Joy’s grandmother had repaid Ivy’s devotion by robbing the museum at eighty-three years old. It would almost be funny if it weren’t so desperately bittersweet.
“Did she steal the missing records too?” Kaine started to push off the floor, but he noticed and his eyes sharpened. She stopped.
“No. I did. I disposed of anything else that would incriminate our family without being too obvious. It was easy to do. I could blame it all on the break-in.”
“Incriminate our family?” Kaine searched her memory, trying to piece together what Mr. Mason was saying. Our insinuated Kaine was tied to Mr. Mason. That was not an equation she was able to add up.
He filled in the gap for her. “My family. Your family. The Fosters. The ones who trafficked women through this place. Do you think that’s a legacy that should be preserved? No. It should be lost in the annals of history to protect our family name. But just like Ivy Thorpe, you had to come to Foster Hill House and unearth the family’s secrets I’ve worked so hard to bury with them.”
Kaine braced herself against her palm. The barrel of the gun was pointing toward the floor now, the conversation distracting Mr. Mason. “What do you mean ‘our family’? I’m Gabriella’s great-great-granddaughter. Not a Foster.”
His head snapped up. The gun lifted. “Oh, but you are a Foster. You are. Who do you think fathered Gabriella’s child?”
Chapter 43
Jvy
Maggie cowered in the corner of the parlor. Ivy had insisted they meet Maggie at Widow Bairns’s in an attempt to make her more comfortable. What would be peaceful about being questioned in the jail? With Arnold Foster in a cell in the next room? The poor girl would be miserable. Of course, there really was nothing tranquil about the situation in totality, but maybe the comfort of a house would seem less intimidating.
Ivy inserted herself as hostess as she poured tea into a cup painted with green ivy and lavender violets. Widow Bairns perched by Maggie, clutching the girl’s hand and tilting her chin forward. The old woman had a stubborn spirit, and for a brief moment, Ivy hoped she was like the widow someday when she was old. She handed the cup to Maggie, who took it with delicate hands that shook. Their eyes met. In them Ivy saw the same fear she had been enveloped with in the closet of Foster Hill House. Dare Ivy hope that Gabriella’s child was the only reason Maggie had stayed in Oakwood and not fled as far away as she could?
Sheriff Dunst shifted on the blue velvet settee. He was as uncomfortable in the Bairns parlor as Ivy would have been in the jailhouse. They had agreed to let Ivy begin asking the questions. Sheriff Dunst had suggested that Maggie might trust someone with feminine sensibilities, but it was evident by the expression on Joel’s face that he’d prefer to commandeer the questioning.
Ivy settled into a wing chair with scrolled wooden arms. She cleared her throat gently. It captured Maggie’s attention, and the girl lifted her head. Ivy was struck even more by the youth still in the face of this young woman. She was barely beyond her sixteenth year.
“Maggie,” Ivy started softly, “thank you for being willing to speak with us.”
Maggie glanced anxiously at the two men, then nodded. Widow Bairns patted the girl’s hand in comfort.
Ivy took a sip of her own tea, and Maggie followed suit. “Will you tell me about Foster Hill House? How did you come to be there?”
Maggie looked down at the floor. She was silent for a long time. Sheriff Dunst coughed, and Ivy held her hand up to stop him from saying anything. Poor Maggie needed time. Time to summon courage. Time to open up the memories. She finally spoke, in a voice barely above a whisper.
“My parents died last year. There was an advertisement in the paper for housemaids, so I applied. When I met the man who was to help place me, he took me and I was helpless to fight him off. I was loaded on a steamer along with some other girls, and we crossed Lake Superior into Wisconsin. That’s where Foster met us.”
“What happened to the other girls? Was Gabriella with you?” Sheriff Dunst interrupted.
“Gabriella?” Confusion filtered across Maggie’s face.
“The dead girl,” Joel supplied before Ivy could say it more tactfully.
“Oh.” Something akin to grief and resignation changed Maggie’s posture. Her shoulders sagged. “She was with Foster and some other girls he already had with him.” Maggie nodded her head. “We traveled south, and Foster left all of us girls at a brothel outside a logging camp in northern Wisconsin.” Her face blanched, and Maggie shut her eyes as if closing away memories, locking them tight and refusing to revisit those moments.
Ivy could only imagine. She didn’t want to imagine, but the leering look she’d seen in Foster’s eyes made the intent of selfish men far too obvious. Ivy swallowed back emotion. Poor Maggie. She was a child. A child. Maggie began to speak again, and Ivy shoved down the inner rage that rose as she pictured Foster sitting less than a mile away in his cell. God forgive her, but Ivy hoped he rotted there—painfully.
Maggie looked between the two men sitting in the parlor and then at Widow Bairns as she spoke. The widow rested her wrinkled hand on Maggie’s shoulder. Maggie continued.
“Gabriella was expecting and she told me it was Foster’s baby. She was having difficulties carrying it and needed someone to assist her. Foster was more invested in Gabriella, as you call her, than the baby.” A shudder visibly shook Maggie. She picked at a fingernail, her eyes focused on it. “So he brought me here, with her.”
“Why you and not one of the other girls?” Joel asked. Ivy cast him a stern look. If they kept interrupting, Maggie might completely withdraw.
“I thought he chose me by chance.” Maggie met Joel’s eyes briefly. “But Gabriella said it was by providence. She wasn’t well. She almost lost the baby on the way to Foster Hill.” Her voice turned watery.
“And Foster cared?” Sheriff Dunst snorted.
Ivy gritted her teeth. There was no hope in silencing the overzealous men.
Maggie’s hands twisted in the folds of her calico dress. “Not for the baby, no. Like I said, he thought Gabriella belonged to him.” She focused on Ivy, and Ivy gave her a nod of encouragement. “Gabriella was his possession.”
Ivy saw Maggie’s eyes fill with tears, reminding Ivy of her own terrifying moments at the mercy of Arnold Foster. “Maggie, what happened when you arrived at Foster Hill House?”
Maggie blinked and took a nervous sip of her tea. She swallowed. “He said he wou
ld take me south to Chicago once Gabriella was well enough to travel. We were at the house for maybe two weeks. We were told to stay inside and not go out, and at night we could use a candle only if we were upstairs in the bedroom. If he left the house, he locked us in the . . . there’s a secret space.”
“Yes. I know.” Ivy remembered—all too well.
“Why didn’t you run?” Joel sat on the edge of his chair, leaning forward. “If you weren’t always locked away, what made you obey him?”
“How could we run?” Maggie pleaded for understanding. “She . . . Gabriella, she could barely walk. Even then h-he came for her sometimes.” Tears escaped the corners of Maggie’s eyes. “I wasn’t going to leave her alone. She kept me safe from him. I owed her that.”
Ivy nodded. She hurt for Maggie, agonized for Gabriella, but she had to bite her tongue not to scream out the question that plagued her. Where was Gabriella’s baby?
Maggie’s expression grew distant. She fiddled with a button on the sleeve of her brown calico. “Gabriella found a pencil stub and hid it away in a bedroom upstairs. She would write prayers. She would pray out loud. She had a book, Great Expectations, that Foster must have let her have from his library. She would write in it and rip out the pages and hide them. ‘To remember,’ she said. ‘To remember who I am. I belong to the Lord, not to him.’”
“But you finally did run away, didn’t you?” Widow Bairns took Maggie’s hand in hers. The elderly woman reached up and brushed aside the brown hair from the pitiful girl’s face.
Maggie nodded. “I helped her give birth. Gabriella called her little girl Hallie. Screaming little baby. She had to give birth while Foster was playing that piano downstairs to drown out the sound. He always played it, late at night, when he thought no one would pass by the house. One song, over and over again. He said his mama used to play it, and Gabriella said it was the only thing that seemed to calm the crazy in him.”
Ivy glanced at Joel. He gave her a short, meaningful nod. Andrew had heard it once. Even then, while they were innocent children having adventures in the woods, the horrors were taking place in Foster Hill House. They had played in its shadows.
“What happened, Maggie?” Ivy tightened her grip on her teacup. “What happened the night Gabriella died?”
Maggie’s eyes instantly glossed over. She swiped at them, to strike away the tears that came unwanted. “It was awful. Two nights after Hallie was born, Gabriella pulled me aside and said she saw a note Foster had written to his contact saying he was going to pack up his ‘things’ and meet this person. She said that we were Foster’s ‘things’ and she was frightened for Hallie, but also for me. Now that her girl was born, sick or not, Gabriella planned on running that night, to get the baby away from Foster. She made me promise, if anything happened, I’d take Hallie. I’d take her and act as her mama so no one knew where she came from.”
Stunned, Sheriff Dunst fell back against the settee.
“Maggie. You never told me,” Widow Bairns gasped, holding her hand over her mouth.
Maggie wiped more tears from her cheeks. “We ran. But, Hallie started crying, and it woke up Foster. He chased us down that hill. Gabriella . . . she was weak. Oh, Lord have mercy.” Maggie’s voice caught in a sob. She covered her mouth with her hands.
“Shh.” Ivy reached over and rested her hand on Maggie’s knee. She wanted to march down to the jailhouse and slap Foster across the face. Hard. Or worse.
Maggie’s eyes were huge in her face. “Plain and simple, she pushed Hallie into my arms and told me to run and not look back. She told me she would be all right. That the good Lord had much bigger places for her to be, but she wanted Hallie to live. Free of her pa. Free of that legacy. So I ran.”
“And then you left Hallie at the orphanage? Why didn’t you just take her with you and leave Oakwood forever?” Ivy bit her cheek. She couldn’t press Maggie too hard, but hope welled within her at the idea that Gabriella’s baby was well and alive.
“I hadn’t eaten in a few days.” Maggie glanced at the widow for support, then turned her attention back to Ivy. “And, I didn’t think I could make it very far. The orphanage was there, in my path, it seemed. As if God—and Gabriella—led me to it.” A slight smile touched Maggie’s lips. “And then I met the widow here, and she took me in.”
“She was hiding in my garden shed,” Widow Bairns inserted. “Poor child told me most of this, and I had no intention of turning her out.”
“And you had no intention of involving the authorities?” Joel said. Sheriff Dunst must have had a similar frame of mind because he sat on the edge of his seat, skewering the elderly benefactress with a glare.
Widow Bairns scowled protectively and waved her lace-glove-covered hand in the air as if to dismiss them. “Intentions, yes! Gumption, absolutely! But you look into this poor face, Sheriff Dunst, and tell me that bringing in burly males from all over to rain justice down on that empty old house’s owner wouldn’t upset her more.”
“Or save more girls’ lives?” Sheriff Dunst barked.
Widow Bairns’s white eyebrows rose as if speaking to an obstinate child. “All in due time, Sheriff. We thought Foster had moved on to Chicago and the house was empty for now. Maggie needed some time before this—” the widow swept her arm through the air—“this interrogation was to happen!”
Apparently, the widow had no recognition that perhaps Foster hadn’t returned to Chicago, and perhaps he could have been waylaid sooner. Ivy couldn’t hold such naiveté against the old woman. Widow Bairns was a heroine in Ivy’s opinion, whether her choices and methods had been properly vetted or not.
Maggie’s eyes widened in earnest determination to defend her benefactress’s decisions. “I begged her not to say anything yet. I can’t—couldn’t—speak of it.” Tears ran down the girl’s face as she pleaded with the sheriff to understand. “I’m not like Gabriella. I’m not brave,” she ended in a whisper.
Ivy opened her mouth to argue but was surprised when Joel pushed himself off his chair and knelt before the girl. He didn’t touch her or reach out, but his eyes searched her face earnestly until Maggie met them.
“You are brave, Maggie. You saved Gabriella’s baby.”
“I left her in an orphanage!” Guilt stretched over Maggie’s face. “I couldn’t leave Oakwood—I had to stay for Gabriella. I made a promise I’d watch over her girl. She watched over me, kept Foster from touching me—she kept me safe! I owe her my life. But I deserted her baby.”
“No.” Joel sat back on his heels, and Ivy found herself blinking fast to avoid matching tears to Maggie’s. “No. You are Hallie’s guardian, just as Widow Bairns is yours. Hallie will forever thank you for that.”
Maggie swiped at her tears with her arm, wiping them on her sleeve. She nodded, seeming only to half believe what Joel stated.
Silence pervaded the room. After a moment, Joel cleared his throat. “Maggie, what was Gabriella’s real name?”
Maggie raised her head, spearing him with a determined expression. “I’ll never tell.” Her voice was hard. “Her daddy sold her to Foster. Plain out sold his daughter for money. I won’t have him coming for his granddaughter so he can do it all over again. That’s one secret you will leave with me and I will take to my grave. I swear it—on my body and my soul.”
Chapter 44
Kaine
Kaine heard the sound of footsteps on the porch and the sirens screaming up the road. Mr. Mason heard it too. She launched to her feet the moment his gun rose, and the front door flew open as Grant charged through.
“He’s got a gun!” Kaine screamed. It was all happening as if someone had stilled the moment. She saw Mr. Mason pointing his pistol at Grant. Without hesitation, Grant hurtled toward Mr. Mason, putting his body in front of Kaine’s. Tackling an elderly man brought no remorse to Grant as he straddled Mr. Mason. Gripping the older man’s wrist, Grant slammed it against the floor twice until Mr. Mason released the pistol. Kaine sprung forward and snagged it, holding it by
the grip with both hands and aiming it at the man who claimed to be her distant relative via the Foster line.
“Kaine. Better set that down. I’ve got him.” Grant shot her a sideways glance.
She looked at the pistol that shook erratically in her hands. Adrenaline was seeping from her, leaving behind a horrible quake.
“Just lay it down,” Grant said again.
Surprised by the firmness in his voice, Kaine laid the pistol on the floor by the window. She wrapped her arms around her body. No way was she stepping away from the gun.
“There’s no use holding me down. I’m not fighting anymore.” Mr. Mason’s personality seemed to morph back into the aged, weaker man of the museum. Grant moved off him, then yanked him off the floor with little gentleness. He shoved him onto the bottom step of the staircase and waved his fingers at Kaine.
“The gun.”
Kaine bent and retrieved the pistol, placing it in Grant’s outstretched hand. He stuffed the gun in the back of his jeans. Any other day, in any other setting, Kaine would have no problem admitting that Grant looked remarkably sexy just now. But physical attraction was quite low on the bullet list of importance at the moment.
Grant reached for Kaine. She backed away, shaking her head. She didn’t want to be near Mr. Mason. She didn’t want to hear his ridiculous tales of ancestry, the idea that she’d descended from the Fosters. That the very people Kaine had spent her entire career working against were the sort Mr. Mason claimed she came from.
“He’s crazy.” Kaine reached behind her head and tightened her loosened ponytail, more for something to do with her hands than anything. Grant stood over the elderly man, even as he cast a glance out the window at the police pulling to a stop outside the house.
“He told me that Gabriella, not Ivy, was my great-great-grandmother, and that her baby’s father was Myrtle Foster’s son! I mean, he’s nuts, right?”
Grant’s jaw clenched.
“What is it, Grant?”
The House on Foster Hill Page 29