The Unquiet Dead

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  She let herself into the house. They were too late to prevent Melanie from tinkering with the lock on the den again, but Rachel doubted she’d gained access. Drayton had fortified his study well. She was right: she found the woman mixing herself a drink in Drayton’s kitchen.

  “Ms. Blessant?” Rachel held up her ID. “I’m Sergeant Rachel Getty. Hadley told me you were here.”

  Melanie Blessant snorted, choking on her drink. From the bleary-eyed look of her, it wasn’t her first.

  “Of course she did, the little rat. Anything to screw me over.”

  Not the first words Rachel expected from a woman as lushly upholstered as Melanie Blessant. The photograph had given her some indication and Newhall’s description of her dubious magic had confirmed it, but in the flesh the woman was something else.

  She’d want to be thought of as enchantingly helpless. What else, with those pillowy lips and the white-blond hair that set off china-doll eyes? Not to mention the ridiculously high heels and deep-necked zebra print that hugged her curves. It was an excess of everything. Divine effusion in the form of expensive European scent. Shiny teeth, tiny bejeweled hands, perfectly set hair. Ropes of gold and diamonds blazed between her breasts, dangled from her ears and smothered her delicate wrists. Her makeup was subdued but still eye-catching: blue eyes rimmed with smoky liner, lips emphasized by semi-nude gloss, bronzer defining nature-defying cheekbones. Altogether too much woman, too much perfume, too much everything. Rachel’s back ached at the thought of lugging around the other woman’s double-barreled weight.

  “I’ve come about the death of Mr. Drayton. I’ll have to ask you for your key to his house.”

  Melanie set her glass down unsteadily on the quartz countertop. Her flawless complexion hardened into a mask.

  “I’m not giving you anything until I’ve seen his will. This was supposed to be my house. We were supposed to be married. Then the damn fool had to go and get himself killed.”

  “Killed?” Rachel echoed.

  Melanie waved her glass at the other woman.

  “He fell, didn’t he? He fell and he didn’t even think about what that would do to me.” She yanked the bottle on the counter closer to her, possibly a plum brandy, and a potent one from the look of things.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, Ms. Blessant.”

  “My loss?” Melanie snorted. “Forget my loss. What about that wedding he promised me? What about the money?”

  With some effort, Rachel kept her expression impassive. Had Christopher Drayton really wanted to marry this woman? Granted, her breasts were enormous, but was that the only thing that counted with men anymore? How had he missed her mercenary nature? Or maybe he hadn’t cared. Maybe a man in his late sixties was looking for nothing more than ready comfort or the sexual indulgence he had long since thought himself past.

  Somehow that didn’t figure with her notion of the Italian lessons. He hadn’t only wanted Melanie. He’d cared for the girls as well.

  Khattak tapped at the patio window. Rachel moved to let him in. She nodded at Melanie Blessant, hunched over Drayton’s breakfast bar.

  “Ms. Blessant, this is Inspector Khattak of Community Policing. He has some questions for you about Mr. Drayton.”

  The woman ignored her, pouring herself another drink. And then she stopped cold when she saw Khattak’s face reflected in the mirror that hung on the far wall of the breakfast nook. Without speaking, she performed a series of subtle motions: arranging the expression on her face, running a quick tongue over her lips, drawing in her breath to boost her décolletage, sucking in her waist. Straightening her back, she turned on her stool and extended a limp hand.

  “Ms. Blessant,” he offered, as Rachel had, “I’m so sorry for your loss. I understand you and Mr. Drayton were very close.”

  “Melanie, please,” she breathed. Rachel watched, amazed, as Melanie’s blue eyes filled with tears. “It’s been terrible,” she whispered. “I don’t know how I’ll manage without my sweet Chrissie.”

  She glanced up at Khattak from beneath a thick fringe of lashes before continuing, “He was everything to me and my girls. My poor, sweet girls. They’re absolutely devastated.”

  Rachel choked back a snort of disgust. Check one for the ingenuous glamour-puss. Check two for the doting mother. Her performance went some distance toward explaining Hadley’s naked hostility.

  Melanie shifted onto her feet, putting an unsteady hand on Khattak’s shoulder. Her fingers tested the flesh beneath his shirt. Even with her heels, she reached no higher than his collarbone, a fact she clearly delighted in.

  “How can I help you, Inspector? I’d do anything for Chrissie.”

  With a swift look at her shoes and a perfectly straight face, Khattak asked, “Shall we walk in the garden? It’s a beautiful day for it.”

  The shoes meant that Melanie would have no choice but to avail herself of the Inspector’s strong arm. A sardonic grin on her face that Khattak ignored, Rachel followed them into the garden.

  She listened absently as he asked the routine questions about Drayton’s state of mind, the unexpectedness of his death. Melanie clung to his arm, her fingers gripping like talons. She was adamant in her denial of any suggestion of suicide. Not her Chrissie. Not when he had so much to live for. The wedding. The girls. The family they would become. He’d already prepared the house for them, both girls had their own rooms. And he’d given her a free hand in redecorating the master, paying the extravagant bills without batting an eyelash or asking her to account for any of it. If his little Mel was happy, Chrissie was happy.

  She’d been planning a gala reception at the Royal York. She had a wedding planner on retainer, one of those artsy downtown photographers booked to do the pictures, florists, caterers, wedding announcements—they’d been so busy these past few weeks. Her Vera Wang gown was hanging in Chrissie’s closet, along with the accompanying bridesmaids’ gowns he’d simply insisted on buying for Hadley and Cassidy. It doesn’t have to be Vera for them, she’d assured him. That was spoiling them too much, but Chrissie wouldn’t hear of it.

  “What’s good enough for my Mel is good enough for her girls.”

  She produced a sob on cue, turning her face into Khattak’s shoulder. No tears now, Rachel noted with a wry twist to her mouth.

  “Hadley said Mr. Drayton was against an elaborate wedding,” Rachel interjected helpfully. Well, pseudohelpfully, anyway.

  She caught the look of malice Melanie shot her from the shelter of Khattak’s shoulder.

  “I was excited, can you blame me? I might have gone a little overboard. Chrissie was the type to prefer something smaller, like in his garden. He’d crown me with lilies, he said. He was romantic like that.” This time a genuine sob escaped her throat. She stared at Rachel defiantly, attempting to disown it. “That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do what I wanted. Chrissie always did what I wanted. Besides, he knew I wouldn’t move in with the girls until the wedding had taken place. I didn’t want Dennis accusing me of negligence.” She spat the name of her ex-husband at them.

  A negligence of the heart, perhaps.

  Rachel glanced around the garden. Its vivid spires balanced against the scroll of waves that rolled and unrolled to a distant rhythm. It would have been a lovely place for a wedding, intimacy rendered sacred in these groves. In Melanie’s place, she would have agreed to it. Except she could never see herself in Melanie’s place. When she thought about what the future might hold, she saw only her work. Instead of the promise of love and companionship, there was the constant presence of loss. And work was the one thing that could make her forget, the one place she could do something that mattered, that healed. Even if Melanie didn’t seem in need of healing.

  Rachel did some quick calculations in her head. Landscaping, the Royal York, Vera Wang—it added up.

  “Perhaps Mr. Drayton had some financial troubles. A wedding in his garden would have reduced the expense considerably.”

  “No,” Melanie said petula
ntly. “He just didn’t like fuss. He didn’t even want to sit for our wedding photos.”

  She patted down her dress, admiring herself, inviting them to admire her also, bathed in the glow of autumn light.

  She pouted, an action that made Rachel think of an inquisitive puffer fish with its same moist oval of a mouth.

  “I guess I don’t blame him. Chrissie was nearly thirty years older than me. Maybe he didn’t want everyone noticing.”

  A possibility, Rachel conceded. Perhaps the contrast of so much plush flesh barely bounded by her clothes had made Drayton feel his years. The years that may have hinted at future inadequacies.

  “Was Mr. Drayton in a rush to be married?”

  Melanie released Khattak’s arm and gave Rachel a purely woman-to-woman look. “He wasn’t missing out on anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  It hadn’t been, but it was as good a lead as any. “Was it you who was eager to get married, then?”

  Everything about the woman suggested haste. With her ex-husband no longer on a leash, maybe it had been a straightforward exchange of sex for security. The woman had a libido; the way she was eyeing Khattak was ample evidence of that.

  Melanie swept her arm wide, knocking petals from several of the roses as she did.

  “If you think this is about Audrina, let me assure you it isn’t. I’m the only woman Chrissie cared about. The only one he wanted to marry, and he was in no danger of changing his mind.”

  “Who’s Audrina?”

  Khattak was busy admiring the fruit of the Osmond brothers’ labor, so Rachel kept at it. One conversational thread was often as good as another.

  Melanie’s pouting lips snapped tight, but the massive injections of collagen she had endured meant they couldn’t look anything but sultry.

  “Some tart he picked up somewhere. I never met her, she was never at the house. Sometimes when Chrissie couldn’t sleep, I’d hear him talking about her, but if I asked him in the morning, he’d say it was nothing. Some silly crush from his past. There were no texts from her, no phone calls.”

  Khattak turned back to them, his fingers absently handling the peach-colored petals of a rose known as Joseph’s Coat.

  “Your fiancé wasn’t sleeping well?”

  Melanie renewed her pout, this time attempting a sexier twist on it. “Not for my lack of trying, Inspector. A woman does what she can.” She brought a platinum lock of her hair to her lips and twirled it. Rachel smothered a laugh. This was the Scarborough version of Marilyn Monroe’s Niagara. “I told Chrissie not to worry about it, but I guess he couldn’t get those letters off his mind.”

  “What letters, Ms. Blessant?”

  “Melanie, please.” She pressed Khattak’s outstretched hand, removing the rose from his grasp. “Oh, every now and again Chrissie would find these letters on his doorstep. Typed letters, stupid ones. They never made any sense to me.”

  As Khattak’s interest sharpened, Melanie blossomed before Rachel’s eyes.

  “Mr. Drayton showed them to you? How were they addressed?”

  Her thick-coated eyelashes flickered. “The envelopes weren’t addressed and Chrissie didn’t exactly show me the letters. I’d find pieces of them in his desk drawer from time to time.”

  The same things that Rachel and Khattak already knew.

  “Once, I found them shoved into an atlas like he was trying to keep them from me. My Chrissie never liked me to worry.” Nor would any man, her tone implied. Her raison d’être in life was to be cosseted. “It was total nonsense, anyway. What does it even mean, ‘I think it would be better if none of us had survived’? Why would anyone say that?”

  She didn’t seem to care about the answer.

  “Can you tell us anything else about the letters?” There was a stiffness in Khattak’s voice that Rachel couldn’t place.

  “I wish I could, Inspector, but Chrissie agreed with me. He said they were nonsense and he should probably burn them.” She tilted her blond head to one side, her china blue eyes widening in sudden awareness. “But he always dreamt about Audrina on those nights when he got one. Maybe the little slut was sending them to him.”

  Rachel made a note of the name. Could the candles have been for the purpose of burning the letters? If so, why had she found so many remnants in Drayton’s file cabinet? The puddles of resin had consisted only of candle wax, not residues of ash.

  She signaled Khattak. She was finding Melanie Blessant both vulgar and tedious. She wanted to get to the museum.

  “I wonder, Melanie, would you have the combination to your fiancé’s safe? Or access to any of his papers?”

  Melanie shook her head, her platinum locks bouncing, displeased at this reminder of her limited prerogatives in Drayton’s life. “I need to know about his will. Chrissie said he would take care of me. He promised he would. I know he wouldn’t leave me all alone in the world.”

  The subtraction of Hadley and Cassidy from her life didn’t surprise Rachel at all, but Khattak’s response was kind.

  “For the time being, we’ll have to ask you for your key and that you stay away from this house until we’ve completed our inquiries. You should know, however, that you are designated as the beneficiary in Mr. Drayton’s life insurance policies. Regarding his will, if you know his lawyer’s name, you should contact him. He’ll be able to guide you further.”

  Melanie’s impossible heels saw her sway into Khattak’s chest.

  “Thank you, Inspector, thank you! You don’t know how worried I’ve been. Does the policy say—?”

  “One hundred thousand dollars each. There are two of them. But they won’t be settled until we’ve ascertained that Mr. Drayton’s death was no more than an accident.”

  Melanie stared at them shrewdly, her whole mood brightening.

  “Chrissie didn’t kill himself. He had no reason to. I’ll swear that to anyone who asks.”

  She had the confidence of a woman who knew that the objections of any rational male could be softened by a comprehensive glance at her cleavage.

  She turned in her key without protest, a spring in her step as she let herself out of the garden.

  6.

  Do you still believe that we die

  only the first death

  and never receive any requital?

  “I want to look for that atlas, Rachel.”

  “I’d like to get to that museum before it closes, sir. And shouldn’t we get something to eat?” The breakfast sandwich being a faded memory at this point, leaving her purse redolent of egg whites, cheese, and sausage.

  “After this, I promise.”

  Rachel screwed up her face in concentration. Only one section of Drayton’s bookshelves held any atlases—the same one that contained the teen fiction she now ascribed to Hadley and Cassidy. They were heavy books. She took them out one at a time, shifting them to the surface of Drayton’s desk. Khattak shook them out. No letters fell loose, none were concealed between the endpapers or slipped inside their covers.

  “No luck, sir,” she concluded.

  She was in the act of setting the final one back when she saw that Drayton had folded down the corner of a particular page. She opened the atlas to study the borders of the country mapped on its pages. It wasn’t Russia or Albania.

  In a quick flash of intuition she connected the name of the woman Melanie had called a little slut. Audrina. Shortened, it was a five letter word. A word dark-penciled on the map.

  She left the atlas open on the desk to make her way to the safe, adrenaline juicing her veins. The glimmer of an idea was taking root in her mind.

  “What is it?”

  She pointed Khattak to the atlas.

  “I think I might be able to figure out the combination.”

  If it was as simple as a substitution code. Numbers for a name Drayton hadn’t been able to get out of his mind, a name that kept him up at night. A preliminary attempt taught her that a straightforward substitution wouldn’t fit the five-digit display. Using pa
per from Drayton’s desk, she tried another tack. If she divided the alphabet in half and assigned the numbers one through thirteen, only one combination would spell the name she had found on the map. She punched in the numbers 45911 and the digital display lit up. As she pulled the small lever forward, she heard a click. The safe opened without resistance.

  Drayton hadn’t been mumbling the name of another woman in his sleep.

  He’d said Drina, not Audrina. The name on the map was also the code.

  Dozens of letters cascaded from the safe into her lap. She shifted through them, catching odd phrases here and there.

  Yellow ants, your days are numbered.

  Bend down, drink the water by the kerb like dogs.

  Take the town. Comb the streets house by house.

  Make them shoot each other. Then kill the rest.

  They took my son. They shot him before my eyes.

  I’m thirsty, so thirsty.

  How sorry I am to die here so thirsty.

  A terrible sense of dread pressed against Rachel’s heart. Her stomach dropped, her palms went damp. She knew what she was looking at, but she wanted to hear it confirmed. She needed Khattak to admit what he long must have known.

  The letters were never meant for Christopher Drayton.

  They identified another man altogether.

  Her voice raspy in her throat, she skewered Khattak with a look.

  “Who the hell is Dražen Krstić?”

  7.

  Under a big pear tree there was a heap of between ten and twelve bodies. It was difficult to count them because they were covered over with earth, but heads and hands were sticking out of the little mound.

  There’s never any joy.

  Khattak’s phone rang, a temporary reprieve from questions he could no longer ignore. He didn’t believe the truth would set him free. The truth in this case was a trap. One he had willingly entered, on the word of an old friend. Because friendship was more than a source of comfort, or a place of belonging. It was a responsibility. One that Nate had failed. He wouldn’t fail Tom in turn.