The Dark House

by John Sedgwick

  Afterward, they drowsed again until dawn, when Rollins let his fingers stray down to her pelvis, and they went at it once more. “It’s been a while for you, hasn’t it?” she asked him when they were done. “I mean, before me.” When Rollins nodded, she kissed him. “Poor baby.”

  Rollins played with her nipple. “Do I have to go through hell to get you?” he asked. “Is that how it works?”

  Marj pressed a fingertip down on his nose, just as Neely had. “If you do get me.”

  The words frightened him, but they were quickly dispelled by her hand, which reached down to encircle him once more.

  They were both sound asleep when the telephone rang at nine. It was Schecter. He’d gone out to Wayne Jeffries’ house in Somerville, a piece of information that Rollins had trouble processing right then. “I thought if I had a talk with him,” Schecter went on, “I might be able to clear this whole thing up.” Unfortunately, Jeffries had driven off the exact moment Schecter pulled up, and Schecter had followed him to a small two-family in Melrose. The detective was parked outside there now, talking to Rollins from his cell phone. Rollins realized he could hear the street noises in the background.

  “But get this,” Schecter told him. “I checked the name on the mailbox. It’s Mancuso. No first name, but I figured it’s got to be that neighbor of yours.”

  Rollins was horrified to think that a temptress like Tina and the frightening Jeffries had formed such a tight alliance against him.

  “I can’t see if she’s inside there, too, and I’d like to know what I’m dealing with.” Schecter wanted Rollins to find out if Tina was in her North End apartment. “I tried to call, but the number was unlisted, and I don’t have time to hustle it down. Check on her, would you please? Because if she’s not there, I bet she’s here with loverboy.”

  Rollins leaned back against the headboard, thrust a hand into his hair. As Marj eyed him uneasily from the other side of the bed, he tried to calm the panic that was rising in his chest.

  “Al, are you sure this is the way to go?” he asked. “Jeffries seems a little wild to me.” Schecter was going right at Rollins’ pursuers, when every instinct told him that it was better to keep quiet, to watch and wait.

  “I can handle wild,” Schecter said. “Crazy, now that’s something else.”

  Rollins pointedly didn’t ask what Schecter had in mind. With the detective, he’d always sensed there were certain aspects to his investigations that he’d just as soon not know about. All he knew for sure was that Schecter got results. “All right,” Rollins told him. “I’ll go right over, and I’ll call you back.”

  “Be quick about it.”

  Marj did not like the idea of paying Tina a surprise visit, but she didn’t want to stay behind, either. The two of them pulled on their clothes—Rollins in his Californian outfit, and Marj in her running clothes, all of them cleaned and pressed by the Ritz. And they tidied themselves up as much as they could. Then they grabbed a couple of pastries from the continental breakfast buffet downstairs and climbed into the Nissan the moment the valet brought it around.

  It gave Rollins a strange feeling to be behind the wheel again. The car seemed a little tighter than he remembered, and older, too. He’d had it only six years, and it still ran fine, but there were 350,000 miles on it, and he realized the engine sounded rougher than it used to, impeding conversation, and the clutch point was lower than it should be. Of course, it was wonderful to see Marj in the passenger seat beside him, her slim bare legs making sticky sounds on the vinyl, her hair fluttering in the breeze of the open window. But it was odd, too, inexpressibly so, as if her presence required a different car altogether—a larger one perhaps, or possibly a different model, something more in a family line than this tiny Nissan.

  It was a lovely summer morning, the rising sun beginning to burn off the moist coolness that had settled in overnight. Rollins drove up over Beacon Hill and around the back of Government Center to the North End. He pulled up on a side street around the corner from his Hanover Street apartment; the Nissan would be less conspicuous there. He told Marj to wait in the car and lock the doors. She did so, glumly. He was beginning to sense that she resented being told to do things, even if they were obviously for her protection. She also lowered the visors, and slumped down low in her seat.

  Rollins walked up Hanover, the street glowing a peach color in the morning light, and unlocked the front door to his apartment building. He stood for a moment in the hall, listening for any sounds from the second floor. Then he quietly climbed the stairs. At the top, he checked to make sure his own door was still securely locked. Then he made his way down to the Mancusos’. His plan was simply to listen at the door, then slip away the moment he heard Tina’s voice. He was cautiously inclining his ear toward the door when it flew open with a shout. “Boo!”

  Rollins recoiled and shot his hands up in the air. But it was only Heather. She leaped onto him and clung to him like a monkey. “Hi, mister!” she said. “Scared you, huh?”

  “Sssh.” Rollins whispered, quickly setting her down behind him. “Is your mother inside?”

  Heather shook her head. “Nope. She went out.”

  “She say where?”

  “I think she went back to our house.”

  “You have a house somewhere?”

  “Yup.” She wrinkled her nose. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

  “And she just left you here?”

  “Yup,” Heather said again, pouting. “After she promised to take me to the beach.”

  Rollins could see now that she was wearing her bathing suit, a bright blue one with green stars.

  “Can you take me, mister?” She folded her hands in prayer. “Please?”

  His mind formed several excellent reasons why he couldn’t, but before he could voice any of them, Heather had dashed inside. In another moment, she was standing in front of him again, towel and teddy bear in hand. “I’m ready.”

  Rollins groaned inwardly and told her to wait a moment while he went to call Schecter from his apartment. Heather followed him in, anyway, and made straight for his refrigerator. This time, he shut the door behind her.

  On the phone, Schecter thanked Rollins for the information. He’d wait there at the house until he could catch either Jeffries or Tina alone. “Him or her, I don’t care.”

  Rollins hoped it wouldn’t be Tina, but he was in no position to tell Schecter that. “Just to find out why they’ve been following me?” he asked.

  “To figure out what they know about what happened to Cornelia. That’s what this is about, Rollins. I spoke to Rose Glieberman yesterday night. Took me ten phone calls, and I woke up half the city. But I got her. She’s split up now with that douche-bag husband of hers. That’s why they’re selling. She’d known your dad out in Oregon, years back. I guess they’d had something going out there.”

  Rollins had heard more than he wanted to know about his father’s love life, as Schecter must have sensed because he switched back to Cornelia. “I don’t like the fact that she was mixed up with these lowlifes. That Jeffries is an animal. He could have killed her and never given it a thought.”

  Rollins closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe he’d ever taken Jeffries for an insurance agent. He had been watching so carefully all those years, making such shrewd deductions about the strangers he pursued, and yet he hadn’t grasped the first thing about them. It was jarring to think how much he had missed, how much time he had wasted with his absurd suppositions.

  “And get this,” Schecter went on. “Rose had the impression that Cornelia had come into some more dough after her disappearance.”

  “She did,” Rollins replied. “From her grandmother. Might be as much as eight or ten million by now.”

  Schecter was silent a moment. “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Maybe ten million bucks and you didn’t think this might have been worth mentioning? You got shit for brains or what?”

  It wasn’t good to talk about money. The numbe
rs commanded attention they didn’t deserve. “I didn’t think anybody would know about it. The family’s kept it pretty quiet.”

  “They obviously didn’t keep it too quiet if the fucking Gliebermans know!”

  “That money doesn’t have anything to do with me,” Rollins insisted.

  “That’s what you think.”

  Once again, Rollins resented his superior tone. “So you tell me—what’s the link?”

  “To you? I don’t know, but I’ll pull it out of ’em, don’t worry.”

  When Rollins hung up the phone, Heather was standing right in front of him. “Ready?”

  Marj was slumped down deep in her seat when he returned. “Took you a while,” she said as he opened the door. Then, seeing Heather, she added, “Well, look who we have here.”

  Rollins explained to her about Tina’s absence, and then, more hesitantly, about the beach plan.

  “I don’t think we’re dressed for it, Rolo,” Marj replied, and she set her mouth in a sulky expression that Rollins had learned to watch out for.

  “I am,” Heather said. “See?”

  “I don’t believe this,” Marj mumbled, turning away.

  “So I thought Heather would like to get out of the house for a while,” Rollins wound up. “Have a little fun. Besides, I think we could all use a break.”

  Marj turned to him again. “You might have asked me first, all right? Not told. Asked. I’m in on this, too, you know.”

  Heather piped up from the backseat. “Is everything okay, mister?”

  Rollins glanced back at her. She’d fastened her seat belt over the hump, and she’d belted in her teddy on the seat beside her. “We still going to the beach?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Rollins said.

  “Yay!” She clapped her hands.

  Marj glanced back at Heather for the first time. “Hi, honey, I guess we’re going to the beach.”

  In Rollins’ estimation, the only beach worth visiting was the one by his grandmother’s big house in Gloucester. After crossing the Charles, he veered off 93 onto Route 1, where he pointed out to Heather all the cartoonish highlights along the roadside: the bright orange dinosaur on the miniature golf place, the giant cows at the Hilltop Steak House, the forty-foot Leaning Tower of Pizza. Rollins was pleased with himself. Maybe he had a way with children, after all.

  It took about forty minutes to get to Gloucester, which was out Cape Ann on the North Shore at the very end of route 128. The center of town was a seedy fishing village, its air thick with noisy seagulls scavenging for garbage and heavy with a briny sea smell. But his grandmother’s was away from all that, by Coffin’s Beach, well to the north. Along the way, Rollins told her what Schecter had in mind, although he had to do it obliquely since Heather had perched herself on the armrest between the two rear seats and was watching the two of them very intently. Rollins didn’t think that Heather should hear too much about the possibility of Schecter grilling her mother.

  As Rollins pulled into the driveway, its shattered clamshells crunching under the Nissan’s tires, he could see a few cars with New York license plates parked by the barn. Some of his Arnold cousins must be visiting, children of his mother’s brother, Lloyd, a big New York investor and his second wife, a pretty Parisian named Marie.

  Rollins had filled Marj in about the greater family on the way up. And he’d tried to impress her with the scale of the house itself, which was commensurate with the size of the family. As a child, he’d always been delighted that it afforded him so many places to hide. It probably wasn’t much bigger than the Brookline house, but it had an entirely different feeling. The Brookline house was filled mostly with empty space, but the Gloucester place was crammed with adventure. There were over fifteen bedrooms, each one seemingly filled with a cousin or two, and any number of sitting rooms, parlors, pantries, nooks, and intriguing back halls. There was even a bowling alley in an annex off the barn, where hammerhead sharks and barracudas were mounted on the walls. And all of it was commanded by Rollins’ late grandmother, invariably enthusiastic and carefree and not at all the stiflingly proper society matron that her daughter, Rollins’ mother, became. Neely had visited with them once, that last, lovely summer before Stephanie died, and, with Rollins’ grandmother leading her on, she’d led many a game of Capture the Flag on the sand flats at low tide. But the gloom that had enveloped the family after Stephanie’s death had extended even to here, and Rollins had never had anywhere near as good a time afterward. The family continued to come for a few years, but finally stopped after the divorce when everything seemed to become such an effort for his mother.

  “It is big,” Marj said as she stepped out of the car. “It’s like the Ritz.”

  Heather said nothing, merely craned her head up at an extreme angle to take in the whole structure.

  A stiff breeze was blowing. Some flags flapped on their high pole out front, and Rollins’ shirtsleeves fluttered as he stepped onto the wide wraparound porch to the front door. “Anybody home?” he shouted. When no one answered, he pulled open the screen door and stepped inside. The big front hall was cool and dark, with musty air that seemed to have been preserved for generations like everything else. All around, there were red and blue winners’ pennants, crisscrossed tennis rackets, water-stained prints of yachts, and other testaments of the active summer life hanging off the high pine walls.

  “Anyone home?” Rollins called again. Finally, he heard footsteps slowly coming his way through the dining room and an elderly woman in blue appeared. There was a moment’s pause as Rollins strained to recognize her, and, evidently, vice versa. “Edward?” she called out at last. “Gracious sakes alive. Is that you?”

  “Alice?” Rollins replied.

  It was indeed Alice Farnsworth, the house’s longtime caretaker. Rollins remembered her from his own childhood, although she must have been well into her sixties now. She gave him a hug, then took a step back from him to declare that he hadn’t changed a bit, while they both smiled at the obvious untruth of such a statement.

  Alice’s gaze turned to Marj and Heather, standing together a few steps back. Rollins quickly introduced his “two friends.” Then, seeing Heather’s impatience, he added: “We’re very eager to go to the beach.”

  “Well, come on, then. Tide’s just coming in.” Seeing they lacked towels, Alice went to get some from the linen cabinet upstairs. When she returned, she explained that his Arnold cousins were off sailing at the yacht club, and she filled him in on exactly which members of the family had come. The older two, Whit and Geena, had each brought “special friends,” Alice said with raised eyebrows. “Your grandfather would never have stood it.” Unlike his grandmother, his grandfather, also long dead, had always been a strict constructionist where propriety was concerned. Rollins thought he should translate for Marj, explaining who was who, but her eyes seemed slightly glazed, and he let it go. Finally, Heather plucked loudly at the hem of her bathing suit, and Alice handed him the towels. She offered to find some trunks for him, but he didn’t think he was up for a dip just now. Alice said nothing to Marj, but she told Alice, “I don’t need anything either, thanks.” Alice looked mystified for a moment and sent them on their way.

  “I don’t think that woman liked me,” Marj told Rollins as they set off across the road and down a narrow earthen path through a field of wildflowers to the beach. The sun’s warmth seemed to radiate off the hard-packed ground as they ambled along.

  “She just doesn’t know you,” Rollins reassured her.

  “You didn’t do too much to fix that, now did you?” she snapped, and then, leaving him to ponder that, she went on ahead with Heather.

  Rollins caught up to them at the bluff, where they took in the view of the long beach, very wide now at low tide. Although the Arnolds owned the meadow, the beach itself was public, and there was a motley array of bathers with parasols, radios, Frisbees, and air mattresses scattered about. Marj led Heather down a weather-beaten staircase, and, with Heather beckoning,
Rollins followed. He found a secluded spot to lay out a couple of the towels. But Heather ran on down to the water, with Marj trailing after. Holding his hand up against the sun, Rollins watched Heather hop up with a shout when a wave splashed over her feet, then run shrieking from what must have been a sand crab. He could see Marj hold up a tiny wriggling creature and make reassuring gestures. In moments, Heather came racing back to him to plop her teddy bear down on Rollins’ towel and beg him to come down with her. “You have to!” she cried as she reached down and gave Rollins’ hand a yank. “Please?”

  “Oh, all right.” He reluctantly removed his shoes and rolled up the pant legs of his new trousers, and followed her down. Neely had played here as a teenager, years ago. She was fleet-footed and a wonderful swimmer. But with Heather there, and Marj watching, he couldn’t form a clear memory. Did she wear a bikini? Flip-flops? Did her nose burn? Any image of her kept dissolving to the sight of Marj in her running clothes bending down to Heather, now holding up a starfish. Distracted, Rollins nearly jumped when an icy wavelet splashed up toward him and lapped at his toes. He couldn’t believe that the water had always been this cold.

  Marj started laughing.

  “What?” Rollins asked.

  “You! You’re such a geek.” Marj mimed him reacting to the frigid water.

  “It’s cold.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Come on, everybody!” Heather grabbed Rollins’ hand, then Marj’s, and tugged them a few more steps into the water. It wasn’t too bad, once his feet went numb, and Rollins enjoyed feeling the water swish past his ankles. But after a rogue wave drenched a few inches of his pants, he declared he’d had enough and retreated to higher ground.