A History of Murder

by Lynn Bohart

  “Do you have any information here?” Doe asked.

  “Sure. A couple of the families, including the Bremertons who built the original hotel, left some furniture and personal possessions behind that were donated to the museum. And John St. Claire moved out without taking anything. Over the years, many of the pieces were sold off, but some of the nicer pieces were kept, plus most of their personal possessions.”

  A lump formed in my throat to think that personal things that had once belonged to Elizabeth and Chloe were still here on the island. I wondered if they knew that.

  “What about the ghosts?” Doe asked.

  Kris smiled. “Well, we don’t have anything that would prove the ghosts exist, but we have letters and diaries from some of the residents which might include stories about the ghosts. Actually, you’ll have an entire treasure trove of things to research.”

  “We’re also interested in any unusual stories about the property,” I said, thinking we’d have to get to the gossip if we were going to find information about the hidden room.

  Kris chuckled. “Well, there are lots of those. As a bona fide haunted location, there’s an abundance of odd stories.”

  “I don’t mean just about the ghosts,” I said. “But also the families. My guess is that some of them had their own quirks and eccentricities.”

  I didn’t want to push it and waited for her response. She seemed to consider my comment a moment.

  “The person you ought to talk to is Lavelle Bennett. She’s ninety-six now, I think, and lives at the Mercer Assisted Living Center. But she has all her faculties. Anyway, since she’s lived her entire life on the island, and her mother before that, she’d be the best place to start.”

  “I’ve met Lavelle,” Doe said. “A couple of times. Remember, we had that reception for her when she turned ninety?”

  “Yes. She was a long-time volunteer here,” Kris said to me. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she’ll be around to celebrate her centennial. Why don’t I ask my assistant to begin pulling some files on the property, while you take a shot at interviewing Lavelle? We can make our conference room available pretty much any time it’s not being used and the museum is open.”

  “That sounds perfect,” Doe said.

  We all stood up and began moving towards the door.

  “Should we call ahead to make an appointment with Lavelle?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. Last time I was there, she was craving visitors. I imagine she’ll be thrilled you’ve come to pay a call.”

  We left the museum and went directly to the Mercer Assisted Living Center, which sat near Luther Burbank Park, overlooking the water. It was a cream colored, three-story building, with a pleasant Southwestern style interior. We stepped up to a long counter to engage a young man. His name tag read “Ronald.”

  “We’re here to see Lavelle Bennett,” Doe said.

  It was late afternoon, so we hoped to catch Lavelle before dinner. Ronald nodded and punched something into a computer. He looked up at us.

  “She’s in the solarium right now,” he said. “I’ll need you to sign in and take visitor badges.”

  We signed the register and filled in our names on sticky name badges. When we’d finished, he leaned forward and pointed down a hallway. “Just take this hallway past the restrooms. There will be a sign.”

  We thanked him and made our way to the back of the building where a big, open room encased by windows on three walls overlooked a patio and a large patch of lawn. The lawn sloped steeply toward the water, dropping off into the lake. There were perhaps fifteen people in the room, sitting and playing cards, reading, or just gazing outside.

  Doe glanced around. “I don’t see her. Oh, wait a minute. There she is,” she said pointing outside.

  I followed her gaze and saw a woman with puffy white hair sitting outside in a wheelchair next to a glass-topped table. I followed Doe onto the patio, which extended across the back of the building just in front of the large picture windows of the solarium. There were several residents parked out there, either at tables or in wheelchairs. A two-foot, flagstone wall separated the patio from the well-manicured lawn.

  As we approached Lavelle, I decided to let Doe take the lead in introducing us. We moved in between a few of the residents and stepped around in front of Lavelle, whose eyes were closed as she dozed in the afternoon sun. Doe reached out to touch her forearm.

  “Lavelle?” Doe said quietly. The woman didn’t respond, so Doe touched her arm again. “Lavelle? Are you awake?”

  Her eyes popped open, and she let out a screech that scared the beejeezus out of me, making me jump backwards. I slammed into a wheelchair behind me.

  The chair lurched forward, and I turned just in time to see it heading for the short wall. Someone had forgotten to lock the wheels. The elderly woman in the chair let out an unearthly scream as she careened toward a nursing aide standing in front of the wall.

  Hearing the scream, the aide began to turn just before the wheelchair slammed into her, throwing her over the wall. The wheelchair came to an abrupt halt, but the poor nursing aide did a front somersault and began rolling down the hill, picking up momentum as she went.

  Time seemed to stop, as everyone watched in horror. As she approached the short drop off into the lake, I ran to the wall, not really knowing what I could do. At the last minute, she dug her toes into the grass and came to a jarring halt, inches from the ledge. In truth, the drop off was just a foot or two, so she probably wouldn’t have been hurt, but still… she lay prone on the grass, feet and arms splayed, breathing hard.

  Everyone on the patio turned to stare at me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching out to pull the old woman’s chair back.

  A burly male attendant stepped in and grabbed it.

  “I’ll take care of her,” he said. “Perhaps you could sit down somewhere before you kill someone.”

  I thrust out my chin. “It was just an accident,” I said, watching the woman who I’d turned into a human bowling ball pull herself up off the grass. She might have been in her fifties and didn’t look amused. As she hefted herself back up the slope, I felt a hand on my elbow.

  “Julia, let’s come back over here,” Doe said. She pulled me over to where Lavelle Bennett sat.

  “It was an accident,” I repeated in my defense.

  Doe just nodded. “I understand. Let’s sit down.”

  We took seats at the table next to Lavelle, who was fully awake by this time and staring at me in surprise.

  “You should play for the Seahawks,” she said with a smile.

  I tried to smile back, but came up short. My propensity for mishaps of this kind was legendary amongst my friends and a constant source of entertainment.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said to Lavelle. “I was just startled, that’s all.”

  “That’s okay,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We don’t get much entertainment around here, so this will be all the talk at dinner tonight and probably the rest of the week.”

  The woman who had taken the tumble struggled back over the wall to the patio. Her formerly starched white uniform was covered in patches of grass green and dirt brown. She leaned in to whisper something to the male attendant, and then gave me a hateful glance before disappearing inside.

  Meanwhile, Lavelle said, “Don’t worry about her. We call her Nurse Ratched. You just became our hero.” She glanced over at Doe. “You’re Doe Kovinsky. From the museum board.”

  “Yes,” Doe said with a warm smile. “I was wondering if we could talk to you for a moment.”

  You could tell that Lavelle Bennet had been a strong woman during her life. She still had good bone structure, with wide-set eyes and a square jaw. And, while her skin sagged in soft folds around her eyes and chin, her eyes glinted with life.

  “And you’re Mrs. Applegate, aren’t you?”

  I smiled. “That’s right. My name is Julia.”

  “I’ve read about you in the new
spaper. It’s so nice to have visitors,” she said in a breathy voice. “My daughter lives in Stanwood and only gets down on the weekends.”

  “We were hoping you could help us. Julia owns the St. Claire Inn, and we’re writing a book about its history. We were wondering if you recalled any interesting stories about the place,” Doe said.

  “We’re working with Kris Sargent, down at the museum,” I said. “But while she’s pulling some things together for us, she suggested we come speak to you.”

  Her eyes lit up. “I do know some stories about that place,” she said with a wry smile. “And it’s not all about the ghosts, you know.”

  My heart rate sped up a notch. “That’s exactly what we’re hoping for. We know the property has a rich history. So we want to know everything.” I pulled out a small tape recorder. “Do you mind if we record you?”

  She swished a hand in front of her face again. “Of course not. Where should we begin?”

  “As far back as you can remember, I suppose.”

  She straightened up in the chair and took a deep breath. “We lived in a small home about half a mile from the original hotel, up on SE 24th. I was born in 1923, just after the hotel burned down,” she said. “But my mother used to talk about how grand it was to have such a fancy hotel on the island. Lots of dignitaries and famous people would ferry over from Seattle to stay there. They played croquet out on the lawn during the summer and had lavish parties with fireworks over the lake. The locals would sit up on the hillside and watch. That was before all those homes were there, of course. I guess even a state senator held his daughter’s wedding at the hotel. It was a big deal because they had to bring everything over from the mainland. The island was pretty rural back then, so there weren’t a lot of services over here.”

  “And the horse barn was used for horses and carriages?” I asked.

  “Oh yes. While there were a few cars in Seattle, there weren’t many on the island, yet. Our roads weren’t very good, and it was difficult to get them over here or serviced if they broke down. I remember Mr. Bremerton had one, though. But he didn’t let anyone else drive it. He paid to have the road from the ferry to the hotel plowed every year, so he could drive it back and forth to pick up important guests. But horse and carriage was still the main means of transportation over here.”

  Lavelle went on to talk a lot about the Bremertons, who owned the hotel. Her mother had been a teacher in those days, and so knew a lot about the goings-on there through the Bremerton children. But things didn’t get interesting until Lavelle moved on to 1930, when Gramley Miller rebuilt the hotel after the fire and turned it into a brothel.

  “That was a big deal on the island, let me tell you,” she said with her eyebrows raised. “No one wanted a brothel over here. It was exactly the opposite of what the hotel had given us. Instead of lavish parties with upscale dignitaries, there were all sorts of low-life people coming over on the ferry. That was back during Prohibition, you know. But we were so isolated, the owners got away with having alcohol. And even if the law showed up, the rumor was that Miller had places to hide the booze. Anyway, drunks started appearing on people’s property and in the downtown area. And our police force was so small, they had trouble handling it.”

  “Were there any stories about trouble at the brothel?” I asked, trying to be careful not to alert her to where I was going.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I was eleven when one of the girls was murdered there.”

  “Murdered?” I said.

  “What happened?” Doe asked.

  “I guess one of the men strangled her because she wouldn’t do what he wanted her to do. Of course, back then, my mother tried to whitewash what really happened. But the kids all knew what was going on over there. Then there was the guy found floating in the lake.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked

  “No one knew. As I recall, they ruled it an accident. He’d been drinking, so they thought he might have fallen in the lake and drowned. But I know my mother thought he’d also been murdered because he had a cracked skull.”

  “Boy, I had no idea,” I said. “I wonder if we’ll be able to corroborate any of that. Do you remember when it was?”

  “We had a little weekly newspaper back then,” she said. “I forget what it was called.”

  “Kris said it was the Island Chatter,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said. “It didn’t have a very big circulation, but I bet Kris has copies in the museum. You might be able to find a story or two. There’s lots of history to your property,” she said to me. “My dad told me years later that there was even a room upstairs in the barn where they’d lock up the drunks until they sobered up.”

  A light bulb burst to life in my head. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I guess it was a makeshift jail. Makes sense,” she said with a shrug. “There was a jail downtown, but it was small and getting people down there would have been a problem. So if someone was too drunk or causing trouble, my mom said they’d lock them up in the barn overnight. Anyway, after the brothel burned down, the property stood empty for quite a while. We kids would go over and play in the barn. There was never a good feeling upstairs in that attic though, so we just played down where they kept the horses.”

  “That bad feeling is still there,” I told her. “No one likes to go up there.”

  “Well, there’s no telling what Miller did to the girls over there. He was a mean son-of-a-bitch,” she said with distaste. “He’d shoot people’s dogs or livestock if they strayed onto his property, and rumor had it that he forced the women to work there. I guess a lot of them were young and poor and weren’t there willingly.”

  “So he might have kept women as prisoners?” I asked, horrified.

  “That could’ve just been a rumor, of course, but I wouldn’t have put it past him. His wife was gone, but he had a son my age. His name was Joshua. I hated that kid. He was as mean as his dad. He’d try to feel up all the girls, and I remember once he cut the head off a squirrel and put it in someone’s desk, just because the kid wouldn’t hand over his lunch to him the day before. Believe me, no one was sorry when the place burned down and they moved away.”

  “Do you think someone could have set the fire on purpose?” Doe asked.

  “Funny you should ask. The fire happened just after Prohibition ended. Other bars were opening up in Seattle, and the business here on the island dropped off. Rumor had it that Miller set the fire himself so he could collect the insurance.”

  She gave us a ‘know what I mean?’ wink just as the dinner bell rang.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We offered to wheel Lavelle to the dining room, which was just down the hall. As we rolled her in, we were greeted with a polite applause from a table of women by the door.

  “Told you,” Lavelle said over her shoulder. “You’re a celebrity.”

  Doe deposited Lavelle at a table in the middle of the room. “Thanks, Lavelle. I hope we can visit you again soon.”

  “Absolutely,” she replied, taking Doe’s hand. “I have a lot more I could tell you.”

  Doe patted her shoulder. As we turned to leave, Lavelle’s dinner companions giggled, throwing glances at me. I assumed it was in reference to Nurse Ratched’s near death experience on the lawn outside. I hurried out, avoiding any more eye contact.

  “The Hero of Mercer Island strikes again,” Doe said under her breath as we walked toward the front counter.

  “Very funny,” I spat back. “But the Mayor gave us those awards because we saved a young woman from a sex trafficking ring and helped bring a murderer to justice, not because we were taking out aides at a nursing home.”

  “This isn’t a nursing home,” Doe chided me as we turned in our name badges and signed out.

  “I know that. That’s not the point. I just don’t want people thinking I knocked that woman down the hill on purpose.”

  Doe put a hand on my shoulder. “No one ever thinks you do these things on purpose, Julia. W
e know it’s just…circumstance.”

  “And that I’m a klutz.”

  “No. You’re not a klutz. Things just seem to happen to you.”

  “Things that don’t happen to other people,” I said churlishly.

  I turned for the front door and pushed through to the walkway.

  “We all bear our burdens, Julia,” Doe continued as we headed toward the car. “I’m obsessed with work to the exclusion of hobbies, or frankly, even men. Rudy is cynical to the point I think it blurs her vision at times. And Blair…well, Blair is just Blair.”

  I laughed. “No need to explain that one.”

  We got to Doe’s Mercedes, and I stopped at the curb. Another car was just pulling into the space next to it.

  “Personally, I find your…klutziness…as you call it, one of the most endearing things about you,” Doe said from the other side of the car. “Really. I do.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that,” I said, stepping off the curb and up to the car door.

  I grabbed the straps of my purse and swung the bag around to loop it over my shoulder, but my timing was off. I slammed it right into the face of the man getting out of the car next to us. He rebounded against his car door with a cry of surprise, his hand to the side of his face.

  I glanced quickly at Doe. She cocked her head to one side with a smile and got into the car, while I turned to make my apologies and render aid.

  ÷

  Doe left me at the inn, and I was just about to make dinner when I got a call from David. Since Sean, his boss, was serving on the task force investigating the serial killings, David was holding down the fort on Mercer Island. He sounded tired and frustrated and asked if he could take a break and stop by. He offered to bring Italian food, so I offered to set a table on the back patio.

  The Welches were out for dinner in Seattle and things were quiet. April had retired to the guest house early. Our night manager was on duty at the front desk until 10:00 p.m., when I would take over and be on call until morning.