His arthritic knees cracked as he stood up. “I’m too old for this job,” he said under his breath. “Sarah Jane, rest up and get better.”
“I will.”
Zeke walked the sheriff to the door and stepped out into the hall with him. When he came back into the room, he found me trying to sit up, which was proving difficult with one arm.
“I know how we can prove what happened,” I said.
“I think we should wait--” Zeke started to speak but I interrupted him.
“No, his hands are tied, and he’s afraid of the consequences. He’s not going to do anything.” I grabbed the car keys from my nightstand. “We need to go to Bennett House.”
Chapter 20
Even though we had been gone for a mere twelve hours, Bennett House looked desolate and deserted when Zeke and I pulled up to the front door.
“You sure you’re up to this? You can wait in the car while I--”
“No, I know what we’re looking for. I’m going in with you.”
We got out of the car and used my key to unlock the front door. Once inside I shivered, glad for my warm sweater. I stood in the foyer, trying to conjure up the memory of Anca’s bread baking, our laundry hanging in the kitchen, Jessica’s laughter ringing in the drawing room. I couldn’t.
When Bennett House was built, there were no banks or safe places to hide money, so my great grandfather had the foresight to install a safe room, which Jessica had shown me years ago. She had regaled me with stories of pirates and faeries and all sorts of creatures that had lived in the cubby hole where my great grandfather kept his gold and silver. Those stories in themselves were treasures, an oral homage to Jessica’s talent as a storyteller. I now sought her journals, for in them she had recorded her life, her loves, her losses, and--I hoped--the stories that she hoped to publish one day. But Jessica’s dream of becoming a writer got set aside when she married Jack Bennett and they adopted a little girl.
When she discovered what her husband had intended to do, steal the stories that she had written so long ago and claim them as his own, a horrible argument had ensued. In a fit of rage, Jack had pushed Jessica who, in turn, tumbled down the stairs to her death. I had come out of my bedroom into the hall to see what the ruckus was about, had run down the stairs to Jessica, who lay in a heap at the bottom. I cradled her in my arms, and clung to her long after she had taken her last breath. The shock of their argument, Jessica’s fall, and her dying in my arms had induced amnesia. Lucky for Jack Bennett, I didn’t remember a thing from that night. Until now.
Moving so as not to stress my back, Zeke and I went through the kitchen, past the servant’s staircase, and into the room where the washing machine was kept. We went to the corner where the cubby hole was and moved all the detritus which had accumulated over the years in front of the small door. Zeke held the flashlight while I searched in the dark recesses for the proof of Jack’s big lie. There, just as I remembered them, were the journals that belonged to Jessica.
“You were right,” Zeke said. “Let me crawl in there and get those.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He crawled into the cubby hole and handed me the notebooks, one after another.
There were a dozen notebooks all told, bound in leather that was once Kelly green, but which had now faded to a dingy gray. We took all of them to the kitchen, set them on the refectory table.
Zeke got the dishcloth that Anca had hung on the hook--was that just yesterday? It seemed like a lifetime ago. After we cleaned most of the dust and grime off the journals, we set about reading them. The one I chose was written when Jessica was just a child, and although her musings were interesting, the prose in this book was not what I was looking for. Zeke read the journal he had, looking for that one sentence.
I found the story I was looking for in the last journal, the memorable opening line, “Chloe watched her brother drown in a stream--” So the story started, written in Jessica Bennett’s beautiful cursive writing. The story was a good one, thus my father’s success.
“I have it,” I said. We put the rest of the notebooks back, closed the cubbyhole, and were ready to leave Bennett House.
“This house is different,” Zeke said. “It’s gloomy now.”
“I can’t shake the feeling that we’re being watched,” I said. “I know it sounds paranoid.”
I walked ahead of Zeke. When we passed through the kitchen, I heard him groan behind me and fall to the floor.
I turned around. Jack stood over Zeke’s crumpled form, a pistol in his hand.
I looked down at Zeke. He lay on his side with his back toward me. I tried to bend down to check if he was okay, but the pain in my back radiated like white heat up my spine, cascading in flashing stars behind my eyes. How many hits was Zeke going to take for me?
“We know what you did,” I said, brandishing the notebook. “You stole her ideas. She didn’t like it, didn’t agree to you publishing her work under your name. You fought. You pushed her down the stairs.”
“I knew it was just a matter of time before you remembered. That’s why I had to get you home, so I could keep an eye on you.”
“When did Gran discover your little secret?”
“Jessica gave a copy of that story to her mother after she wrote it. Patricia kept it all these years in that stupid box of mementos. She didn’t figure it out for a while, but when she did, she was not happy. She told me if I didn’t give her daughter the credit she was due for Arms of the Enemy, she would go the newspapers. I refused, and she became suspicious of my actions the night Jessica died.”
“So you slit her throat?” I should have been scared, but I wasn’t. I was angry. Angry that Jessica had to die, that Gran had to die, all because Jack wanted the world to think that the remarkable talent possessed by his wife belonged to him. “Why couldn’t you just let Jessica publish the book in her name?”
“Because I was desperate for the money. Jessica didn’t know that I had spent the money my father left me. What little money Jessica had was held in trust, and Patricia wouldn’t never have let me--us--have it. We had a lifestyle to maintain, and I needed to come up with the money fast. All I did was take credit for it. We could have had a symbiotic relationship. She would ghostwrite the stories for me, and I would have gone on book tours. You know how Jessica didn’t like to speak in public. We would have made a good team.”
“Lucky for you I developed amnesia,” I said.
“Everyone in town knows you’re crazy, Sarah. That rumor--started by me, thank you very much--set the stage for my grand plan. You’re going to write a confession, before you commit suicide. It will be a sad thing, especially for Zeke, but he’ll get over it. Sit at the desk.”
I sat down at Anca’s desk, the little secretary in the kitchen that she used to make her grocery lists and plan the menus for our family’s meals. Jack took a piece of paper from the top drawer and handed me a pen. He pointed the same gun he used to shoot Zeke’s bedroom door at me.
“Now write.”
“No. You’re going to have to shoot me.”
“Heroics don’t suit you, Sarah Jane.” He pointed the gun at my temple and cocked the hammer.
I picked up the pen and started to write as Jack dictated. I confessed to pushing my mother down the stairs, to murdering Gran, and to my own suicide.
“Put your hands where I can see them. Good. Now get up and walk ahead of me. We’re going to your room.”
The cast on my broken arm was too heavy to hold above my head, so I ended up walking in front of Jack with my one arm held to the sky, the other hanging painfully at my side.
Jack poked me in the back with the gun. “I hear you and my wife took quite a fall.”
White pain shot through my back, into my arms, to my fingers and toes. “Don’t you even care that she’s dead?”
“Of course, I care, but there’s nothing I can do about that, is there? I’m famous. I’ll get another wife. She’ll be young and pretty. Wives are replaceable. Re
putations are not.”
Somehow I managed to get up the stairs. When we got to my bedroom, he ordered me to sit in the chair in the corner.
“You dressed as Vivian that day on the trail, didn’t you? You threw a knife at me. Why?”
“Surely you see how perfect that would have been. No? Well, let me explain. You would be dead, and Vivian could take the blame. She was the perfect scapegoat, but you had to ruin that, didn’t you? Although all is not lost. I still may be able to take advantage of her death. At least I’ll get the insurance money.”
I stood there with my mouth agape, unable to reconcile the deranged lunatic with the man who had so lovingly welcomed me home.
“I said sit down.”
When he pushed me into the chair in the corner. I gasped from the pain.
“Don’t even think about moving,” he said.
As if I could, even if I wanted to. He went in the bathroom. Soon the water gushed into the tub and the room filled with steam.
The pain in my back and my arm became unbearable, and I wished I had taken the morphine that Dr. Hargrove had offered earlier. The room started to move in gentle waves. I faced death, but my pain trumped even that. Jack stood in the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom where I sat.
“Now, Sarah, you’re going to have a nice simple suicide. You’re going to get into the nice warm tub and slit your wrists. It won’t hurt. You’ll just slip away.” He spoke as though we were discussing the weather. “See? Everything will be fine. The American readers are waiting for the next Jack Bennett novel. Unfortunately, I can’t give them one. But I do need money.”
"Gran’s life insurance isn’t enough?”
“There’s never enough, Sarah Jane,” he said.
When I didn’t move, he grabbed my good arm. The pain of the sudden movement brought me to my knees, but Jack pulled me up and hauled me into the bathroom. Once inside, he shut the door behind us and locked us in.
“Get in the tub.”
“No.”
“Just do it,” he shouted.
I stepped one leg into the tub.
“Now lie down.”
“No.” I stepped out of the tub, the water dripping off me and forming a puddle on the tile floor.
Jack and I both jumped when Zeke banged on the door.
“Jack, I know you’re in there. The police are here. The house is surrounded. Come out.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“You know as well as I do that you’re not going to harm Sarah. I’m coming in.” He started banging on the door, which bowed and heaved and threatened to collapse with every hit of his shoulder.
“Good bye, Sarah,” Jack said. He pointed the gun at me and pulled the trigger. I braced for the pain, for death.
Nothing happened. The gun jammed.
I had backed away from Jack, trying to get as far away from his gun as I could. I didn’t see the wrinkled floor rug behind me. When I stepped on it, I slipped and tumbled to the floor. Not wanting to land on my back, I reached toward Jack with my good arm--as if he would hold me up. We both went sprawling into a heap on the floor. Jack dropped the gun and it skidded across the tile floor, coming to rest near me.
It seemed as though I were under water. Everything moved in slow motion, Jack spoke, but I couldn’t understand what he said, as his words were muted and distorted by some strange energy that surrounded both of us. The spirit of Grace Kensington appeared. She stood between Jack and me, shimmering in a halo of white light. Her eyes lit on the gun. She picked it up, pointed it, and fired. It didn’t jam this time.
Jack’s eyes opened in surprise. He fell back against the wall, clutching at the red patch that blossomed on his shoulder. As he slid down onto the floor, the blood seeped through his fingers and onto the tile in crimson rivulets.
Zeke came crashing through the bathroom door and found me sitting on the floor with the gun in my lap. The spirit of Grace had disappeared.
Zeke took the remaining bullets out of the gun and put them in his pocket, before he tucked the gun away in the waist band of his trousers. He helped me to my feet, finally putting a strong arm around me.
“He was going to kill me. Grace--my--she--it jammed when he tried--when he tried--”
My knees gave way. Zeke held me up. Together we remained standing. Jack sat against the wall, his face white as a newly laundered sheet. In the distance, sirens wailed, their haunting cadence getting louder as they approached the house.
“You called the police?”
“Before we left the hotel.”
Soon the police cars arrived, sirens screaming. When the officers who stormed the house saw my father’s gunshot wound, they called the ambulance. Soon the house was filled with policemen and medics. The result was melee. Again.
My back throbbed. I had to lean on Zeke as we went downstairs, back once again to the library. This time we both sat on the couch. It wasn’t long before Sheriff Carpenter came in to speak to us. He took one look at me and told Zeke to take me back to the hotel. He promised to get a statement from me the next day.
Zeke led me out of Bennett House for the last time. I didn’t tell him how the spirit of Grace had saved my life. My connection with my real mother’s ghost didn’t fit the pattern of the ghost stories one read about in novels and newspapers. Those stories always involved a spirit that has unfinished business, which prevents them from crossing over until things are set right. Grace Kensington knew what Fate had in store for me. Jack intended to kill me, and would have succeeded had the spirit of Grace not intervened. My mother had come to save my life.
When we made it back to the hotel, I kicked off my shoes and, too tired to change into pajamas, got under the covers and fell asleep in my clothes. I slept the rest of the day and all through the night. When I awoke the next morning, Zeke had gone. He left a note in an envelope next to my pillow.
Sarah,
I got called away and had to catch a plane in the middle of the night. You were sleeping so peacefully that I didn’t want to awaken you. I don’t know when I will see you again, but I do know that I love you, and the thought of your sweet face and kind eyes will provide me with a glimmer of light as I confront the darkness that awaits me.
It would be presumptuous of me to ask you to wait, but I will find you when this is over. If you are happy with another, I won’t begrudge you that. God knows you deserve some peace in your life.
Be well, my love.
Chapter 21
Things happened fast after that night. I moved to San Francisco and stayed with Anca and her sister. I helped with the cleaning and the shopping, forcing myself to settle into a routine. Magda, Anca’s sister, had the patience of a saint and was teaching me to cook.
My heart had a gaping void where Zeke should have been. I did my best to expunge all thoughts of him. Sometimes I succeeded. At other times, the physical ache of my longing for him would invade my entire being, body and soul. I would cry, wondering what could have been, then force myself to snap out of it.
Jack had suffered a complete breakdown on the day he was arrested. He ranted and raved like a madman. I thought he was faking it. Finally, they put him in a straightjacket, gave him a shot of something that dulled him instantly, and took him away. He was being held in a psychiatric facility, pending his trial for the murder of his mother-in-law and the attempted murder of me. The bitter irony of Jack’s commitment to an asylum was not lost on me. There wasn’t sufficient proof that he pushed Jessica down the stairs. Hamish managed to keep Jack’s plagiarism a secret. His books were flying off the shelves. Arms of the Enemy was now in its third printing and had been on the bestseller list for thirty weeks in a row. I tried every day to forget about Jack, Vivian, and my time at Bennett House.
Bennett Cove made the headlines after an FBI sting operation led to the arrest of a dozen spies working for the German American Bund. This group had plans to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge and Union Square, but their efforts were thwarted by J. Edgar H
oover and his dedicated agents. I couldn’t help but wonder what role Zeke played in their capture. For a few weeks, Vivian Mason’s picture was on the cover of every national newspaper.
Rather than drift along without purpose, I enrolled in Miss Macky’s Secretarial College in San Francisco. Grace Kensington left me enough money to live on, provided I was frugal, but I wanted to do my part for the war effort. It was time for me to set out on my own and make my own way in the world. I even made a few friends, women I would study with during the week and go to the museums and art galleries and restaurants with on the weekends. We went to the Top of the Mark and Bimbo’s and danced with soldiers to the big band sounds of Stan Kenton, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. San Francisco was alive. We were alive with it.
My friends all offered to fix me up with their brothers or friends of friends. I explained that I just lost the love of my life, and since so many young men were dying every day, my story rang true. Soon the invitations stopped coming, which suited me just fine because I knew deep in my heart that Zeke and I would be together again.
***
I buried Gran on a cold, gray day in December. I returned to Bennett Cove with Anca to attend the funeral at the little church in town, which was filled to capacity with friends of Gran’s that I hadn’t seen in years.
After the service, everyone filed out of the church, squeezing my hand, kissing my cheek, and wishing me well. Old friends hugged me, told fond stories of Gran’s antics, and expressed their sorrow at the circumstances surrounding her death. No one, not even the children who came to the service, called me Spooky Sarah. No one mentioned Jack Bennett. The graveside service was cathartic. I said my goodbyes to Gran and felt better for it. Soon we were in the limousine, part of the long train of cars in the funeral procession headed back to Gran’s cottage for refreshments.
Mrs. Tolliver and Anca had cleaned the cottage and prepared the food for the luncheon that was a celebration of Gran’s memory. Now the two women rode in the limousine with me. Mrs. Tolliver, dressed in her Sunday best, was overwhelmed at the big car.
The Spirit of Grace Page 18