by Lynn Bohart
“And you were around thirteen when you lived there?”
“Yes. Thirteen and half. And I think we were there only two years or so.”
“And your father is still alive. Is that right?”
“Yes, he lives here with me,” she said. It made me think of the curtain on the second floor. “He’s in his nineties now and confined to a wheelchair. I take care of him.”
“I saw the curtain move in an upstairs window before. Was that your father? Does he like to look out the window?”
She blinked several times and tucked a clump of hair behind one ear before she replied. “Yes, that must’ve been him. He likes to watch for who comes and goes.”
“I see. And you work at the library here on Camano Island?” I asked.
“No…no, not anymore. I look after my father full-time now.”
“Your father had quite an illustrious career,” Blair said. “A district court judge and then he went to the state Supreme Court.”
She turned to Blair with a friendlier expression. “Yes. He’s a brilliant man. Everyone says so.”
“And your mother, did she work?” Blair asked, returning to the sofa.
“Of course not,” she said with a dismissive chuckle. “My father would never have allowed that. My mother’s job was to take care of my brother and me.”
“And your sister, Rose,” I said.
Her eyes shifted to me. “Yes. Of course.”
“We read some of the old Mercer Island News articles from back then. I guess Rose was quite the debutante,” Blair said.
Emily flinched as if a muscle had cramped in her face. She didn’t even look at Blair when she said, “Yes. Rose was quite beautiful. Everyone said so.” Then, she snuck a glance in Blair’s direction, and her expression darkened again.
Blair’s looks had opened a lot of doors for her during her lifetime. But on occasion, her looks, and her sense of confidence about her looks, could be intimidating. Right then, I felt that Emily Foster was silently screaming for relief.
“Rose was three years older than you, is that right?” I asked. “You must have been close.”
There was a long pause as Emily stared into her lap. “No. Rose was very popular. She made friends easily. I’m quieter.”
Right now I couldn’t imagine anyone being close to this woman.
“Still, it must have been hard. She was so young,” I said. “Just sixteen.”
“My mother took it very badly,” she said.
“And your father?” I asked.
“My father…” she started to say, flinging her hand to the side. By mistake, she swept the water glass to the floor. “Oh, blast,” she wailed.
She jumped up and disappeared again. I retrieved the glass, putting it back on the grimy side table. Emily returned with an old kitchen towel and fell to her knees. She began to rub the carpet the way you would to remove a deep stain.
“It was just water,” I said to her. “It will dry.”
It was as if she hadn’t heard me. She continued to rub the carpet furiously, making me think of Lady Macbeth and, “Out, out damn spot.” Finally, she sat back on her knees breathing hard.
“Father wouldn’t like it that I spilled. He might punish me.”
With that, she stood up and threw the towel onto the side table and sat down again. I returned to the sofa, feeling that perhaps this had been a bad idea. I heard Rudy’s warning in my head and was beginning to wonder if Emily should still be institutionalized.
“What else can I tell you?” she asked. “It’s almost time for my father’s medication.”
“I was just wondering why your family moved away after only two years,” I said. “Was it Rose’s death?”
Her expression became guarded. “You’d have to ask my father that. I don’t really know.”
My heart rate sped up. “May we speak to your father?”
“No,” she snapped, as if realizing she’d put herself in a trap. “No. He doesn’t take visitors anymore.”
She had become agitated again. “Oh, don’t worry. That’s no problem. We’re enjoying talking with you. You said your sister was very popular. Did she have a boyfriend?”
Emily seemed to stop breathing again. She stared hard at me before answering. “Rose had a lot of boys following her around.”
“Did you have any boyfriends?”
“Of course not. I was too young.”
“Of course. Sorry. And you didn’t have any other friends?” I asked.
“There was a little girl at the house. But she wasn’t my friend.”
My heart nearly leapt from my chest. “A little girl?”
“Yes. She lived there. In the walls. I don’t know what her name was, but she would steal things from my room and leave them other places. And then I would get in trouble for it.”
My heart raced. Was she talking about Chloe?
“How do you know this little girl stole things?” I asked.
“Because I saw her.” She seemed to regard me for a moment as if gauging whether I’d believe her or not. “She was always in her nightgown.”
“Did anyone else see her?” I asked.
There was a long pause, while she shifted in her seat. “I probably need to go,” she said, standing up. “I have to give my father his medication.”
“Oh…uh, of course,” I said with disappointment. “Thank you so much for your time.”
We got up and followed her into the foyer. She opened the door, letting in a cool and refreshing breeze. As Blair stepped past her, she asked, “Did a member of your family suffer from mental illness?”
Emily flinched as if someone had slapped her. “Why do you ask that?”
“I just noticed the books in your bookcase.”
“Oh, those. Those are mine,” she said stiffly. “I attended the university at one point and thought I might like to be a psychiatrist.”
Blair just nodded. “Well, thank you again.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We were both silent as Blair turned the car around and retreated up the road, as if fearful that Emily Foster might be able to hear anything we said. But once we’d cleared the gate, I blurted out, “Oh, my, God, I thought we were in the middle of a horror movie back there. That woman isn’t just weirder than weird, she’s nuts.”
Blair didn’t respond. She turned right at the end of the drive and kept driving.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight,” I continued my rant. “I’ll probably just keep seeing that living room in my dreams. God, it looked like it came right out of the Addams Family.” I expected a chuckle, but was rewarded with silence. I turned to Blair. “What’s up? Why are you so quiet?”
Her eyes seemed locked on the road ahead, and her fingers were clasped tightly around the steering wheel. “I’m just tired,” she mumbled.
Blair was rarely tired. She was one of the few people I knew that seemed infused with an inexhaustible supply of energy.
“C’mon, Blair. What’s wrong?”
She took a deep sigh, tapped one finger on the steering wheel and then pulled the car to the side of the road. A tear glistened at the corner of her eye, and she whisked it away before saying, “Emily is clearly mentally ill, but I don’t think we should call her nuts.”
“I…uh, okay. You’re probably right.”
“I know I’ve made fun of goofy people before, and sometimes it hasn’t been too kind. But this is different. She’s been diagnosed and hospitalized. She really is mentally ill.”
“Okay. I get it. But what’s going on? You seem upset.”
She took a deep breath and stared at the surrounding countryside, as if grappling with something. Finally, she said, “I’ve never told you about my brother.”
“I didn’t even know you had a brother.”
She turned to me with a pained look in her eyes. “He died when he was 26. He was also mentally ill.”
The air in the car seemed to go still. I just stared at Blair for a long moment. “I�
�m so sorry, Blair. I…boy, I had no idea.”
There was a long pause between us. She turned to look out the window at an open field.
“It’s not your fault. I’ve never talked about it to anyone. Stuart was four years younger than me. He was diagnosed with bipolar disease when he was fifteen. At first, we thought he was just moody. One minute he’d be bouncing around the room, and the next he’d be closed up in his room for days. Eventually we couldn’t ignore it, and my parents took him to a psychiatrist.” She stopped and just stared outside.
“That must have been awful,” I said, hoping to sound supportive.
“It was. He would get so depressed sometimes, that we feared he would hurt himself. Then one day, my mother saw cuts on his arms. My parents got him into counseling, but it didn’t help. Eventually, he got into drugs. He got arrested a couple of times. My parents put him into rehab. He left after only a week and was picked up on the street in one of his manic states, running around naked. He was admitted to a psych unit for six weeks. When he came out, he did really well for about three months until he went off his medication. He said he didn’t like the side effects. It was a roller coaster. One minute we had the old Stuart back, and a couple of days later he’d be talking to himself in the corner or standing on a bridge downtown, thinking about jumping off.”
“I’m so sorry. What happened?”
Her lungs expanded with another deep breath. She let it out slowly. “I went off to college, met Ramos and got married, while my parents struggled to keep it together. It took some time, but they got Stuart into a good program that seemed to work. He was living in a halfway house. He even had a girlfriend. But then she dumped him.” She turned to me with tears in her eyes. “That was the last straw. You have to understand, that for as much pain as Stuart caused my family, it was twice as bad for him.” I inwardly flinched, knowing where this was going. “One day, he found his way onto a freeway overpass.”
She stopped talking and sat limply in her seat, tears streaming down her face. I exhaled, realizing that I’d been holding my breath. I reached out and took her hand.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“It just never came up,” she said, pulling a tissue out of her purse and dabbing at her eyes. “And if it had, I would’ve avoided it.”
I sat back and allowed my head to flop against the headrest. “God, I’m so sorry, Blair. What an idiot I am. Is that why you were so quiet in there?”
“Yes. Because as nutty as Emily Foster is, and believe me, she is nutty,” she said, with a glance my way, “we don’t know the demons she’s struggling against. And although weird, she seems to be functioning okay.”
“Agreed,” I said in defeat. “I apologize.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.” Blair shifted those blue eyes my way, the remaining tears glistening across her cheek. “But I was quiet because I was also watching her. I was trying to understand her.”
“And?”
“I think she was hearing voices. Did you see how she would tilt her head to one side?”
“So, she hears voices and saw Chloe at one time. I mean, hearing voices is different than seeing and hearing ghosts, right?”
Blair gave me a sympathetic smile. “Yes. You’re not crazy just because you see the ghosts, Julia. Besides, we’ve all seen them.”
“I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse,” I responded.
“Yes, but remember that Chloe was playing tricks on Emily,” Blair said, changing the subject. “And, Chloe only does that when she doesn’t like someone.”
“Right. But who would like Emily?” I said. Blair turned to give me a chastising look. “Sorry,” I said, raising my hand in apology. “So Chloe didn’t like Emily. What does that mean? Too bad we can’t talk to Chloe. We could probably learn a lot from her. Because let’s face it, other than confirming Emily’s…illness, we didn’t learn much from her today.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Blair said thoughtfully. “It could be we just don’t see it yet.”
My phone jingled, interrupting us. It was Rudy, and I put her on speaker phone.
“Hey, Rudy, what’s up?”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“We’re just leaving Emily Foster’s place.”
“Well, I’ve been researching Lollie Gates, and I talked to my old boss, Rush Dooley. He used to be the editor at the Seattle Times. Anyway, I told him what we were doing, and he already knew about the hidden room.”
“You’re kidding. How?”
“One of his reporters found out about it years ago when he was doing a story on Gramley Miller’s brothel. He was trying to corroborate rumors about the sex trafficking and underage girls.”
“Did they ever run the story?” Blair asked.
“No. There wasn’t enough corroboration, so Rush killed it. Anyway, Rush told me that Gramley Miller’s grandson, Frank Miller, owns a bar down in Puyallup called the Hardliner Pub. I’m headed to Canada tomorrow to check into Lollie Gates family, but thought maybe you and Blair would want to drive down and see what you can find out.
I glanced over at Blair. “I’m in,” she said. “What should we ask?”
“I’d play it cool. I certainly wouldn’t say anything about Lollie’s diary or the letter April found from her mother. But maybe there were stories about the brothel passed down through the family,” Rudy said. “Maybe he even has old photos from back then. I’d just tread lightly. I did a little research on him, and he has a record for assault and battery. He’s not an easy guy to get along with, so to speak. So I wouldn’t go in there suggesting that his grandfather was trafficking in women.”
“Okay,” Blair said. She turned to me. “You good with that?”
I nodded. “Okay, we’ll take a trip down there tomorrow,” I said. “How’s the rest of your research going?”
“I made a bunch of phone calls this afternoon to newspapers in Canada. I have a solid lead on Lollie’s family. I think they still live in the Vancouver area. And I’m hoping to find out something on that detective – Bourbonaise.”
“Sounds like you have your work cut out for you,” I said.
“Yeah, and with a little luck, I’ll come back with some solid information. So what happened with Emily Foster?”
“Besides the fact that Julia wants to burn her clothes?” Blair said.
“We didn’t learn that much,” I said.
“Okay, well good luck with Frank Miller.”
÷
After Blair dropped me off, she left to do some errands. I checked in with Crystal and was about to go find April when I glanced through the breakfast room windows. Mr. Piper’s van was parked next to the bakery. He was back on the job, and I felt a sense of relief at getting the work done. I walked over to the barn and climbed the stairs to check in with him.
I entered the room, but before I could even say hello, he blurted, “Mrs. Applegate, I’m so glad you’re back. I’m afraid we found something you need to see.”
“Not again,” I said with a light chuckle.
He didn’t share my smile. Instead, he glanced at Barry, who was standing at the end of the room with the shop vac in his hand. Barry’s face was drawn and pale, making my adrenalin kick in.
“What is it this time?”
“We finally made it up under the rafters,” Mr. Piper said. “And we…well, we found this.”
He gestured to his feet. I glanced down to where an old, faded pink diaper bag sat on the floor. It had been torn and chewed by rats, and had streaks of something dark down the inner sides.
“I don’t get it. It’s a diaper bag.”
“You need to look inside,” he urged me. The edge to his voice gave me pause.
“Okaaay,” I replied.
I crouched down and pulled it open, thinking I’d find some antique porcelain dolls or something. Once again my nose was assaulted with the smell of rat urine. I peered inside, but it took a few seconds for
my eyes to make out the contents. When they did, I inhaled sharply.
“You okay?” Mr. Piper asked.
“Oh, my God,” I exclaimed, struggling to stand again. Mr. Piper reached out a hand to help me up. “Where…where did this come from?” I asked, gasping for air.
“Under the roof,” he said, pointing to the small latched door in the ceiling of the room I had begun to think of as the nursery. “I found this along the side of the building, tucked behind a support beam. I thought it was just trash and almost left it, but grabbed it at the last minute. I…I could tell from the weight that something was in it, so I brought it in here to check. That’s when…” He shook his head, took a breath and stopped speaking, unable to continue.
I glanced back down at the object at my feet, a chill crawling up my spine. From inside the bag, the hollow eye sockets of a small, misshapen skull peered back at me.
“It’s a baby,” I said quietly. “The bones of a baby.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
David told me to leave everything where it was until he could extricate himself from a burglary case. Meanwhile, I called April, and she joined us in the attic, even though I feared her headache might return. I watched her as she crouched down to take a look into the diaper bag. Instead of tensing, her facial muscles seemed relaxed.
“How do you feel?” I asked her.
“Fine,” she said. “But how sad.” She shook her head and then put a hand to her right ear and leaned into it.
“What?” I asked, watching her.
She paused and then stood up. “I heard something.”
Mr. Piper eyed her curiously. He had dismissed Barry for the day, but stood guard with us as we waited for David.
“I don’t know,” April said. “Whispering again. I only caught a snippet, but it sounded this time like the name Mary.”
“We heard some whispering up here, too,” Mr. Piper said. “I just thought it was…uh, just a breeze or something.”
The sound of tires on gravel made me glance out the dormer window. David’s big SUV had pulled up, and he emerged from the driver’s side. A patrol officer climbed out from the passenger side, a camera slung over his shoulder. I met them at the top of the stairs and led them to where Mr. Piper and April waited.