“Oh, don’t feel so mighty looking down at me from your high horse, Althea. You left fifteen years ago and never bothered to look back. You don’t appear to me to be the picture of an ideal friend.”
“At least I had the decency to come back for her funeral. And not that it’s any of your business, Liz, but I tried to stay in touch with Claire for years and she shunned me. You were living right here with her!”
“What do you think she did to us, Althea?” Michaela asked.
The question coming from someone other than Liz caught me off guard. I had lost sight of those trenches.
“What?”
Jo took the lead. “After we graduated, once you left for New York, Claire stopped talking to all of us. She never picked up the phone. And if her mother did, she would say Claire wasn’t available. No one answered the door if you went up the hill. Claire barely ever left the house. She basically lived as a recluse until her death.”
“It didn’t seem like she wanted to hang out with us anymore,” Michaela added, “so we let her drift away. We thought it was because you were gone. You can’t hold on to someone who doesn’t want to hold on to you.”
“Wait. Wait. So, she didn’t have a job in town? Did she ever go out to―I don’t know―buy groceries?” A stream of negative replies came back. “When was the last time you saw her?”
Their answers turned out to be all different, but none of them stated less than a decade. The same as me. Claire had cut all her ties to the outside world at the same time. Why? What had happened to her?
That’s when it hit me. Their stories were from our high school years. None of us had known Claire as an adult.
“Still, that doesn’t answer why you were not at the funeral,” I continued, unable to let that wound heal.
“Well,” said Liz, “my opinion is going to be the least popular―as usual―but here it is. Funerals are not for the dead. They are for the living, for those who are left behind, so they can feel less alone in their pain. That funeral wasn’t for Claire. It was for Beatrix Appleton. I am not about to make her daughter’s death less painful for her.”
“Why do you keep up with that, Liz?” Jo intervened. “It’s not Beatrix Appleton’s fault that Claire committed suicide. That poor woman has done nothing but endure loss and tragedy in her life.”
“That woman is not innocent, Jo. She kept her daughter locked up on that hill, isolated from the world. I bet she’s the reason why Claire got so depressed; she thought the only way out was suicide!”
“You don’t know that! Explain to me how a woman in a wheelchair can force anyone to kill herself. You are delusional! The only person responsible for this is Claire; she did it to herself!” Jo was starting to lose her cool too, which was a sure sign that the fight was about to get bigger.
Tess tried to soothe her partner while Aidan and Michaela stepped in and held back Liz, who was about to shout her response to Jo.
“All right…” Michaela attempted to calm the waters. “Let’s take a breath, okay? We’re all too sensitive around this topic.”
“It’s not about sensitivity,” said Liz. “It’s about telling the truth. Look me in the eye,” she challenged Michaela and Aidan, “and tell me you don’t believe what I believe. Because I know you do. We’ve talked about this. Whether Jo wants to admit it or not, Beatrix Appleton murdered her daughter!”
The place came to a sudden halt.
Liz’s exclamation had reverberated throughout the entire room, reaching every corner and every crack on the wall. Everyone was waiting to hear the response from Aidan and Michaela. I was anticipating a negative response, and I am sure Jo was in the same boat. But the only thing that came from them was silence. A deadly type of affirmative stillness that killed the confrontation on the spot, declaring Liz the winner. I felt the eyes of the rest of the customers glued to our backs, counting the seconds away while we didn’t know how to maneuver our way back to normality.
“You know what?” Liz got to her feet while fishing the wallet out of her purse. “I think I’m going to call it a night. Althea, I’m sorry we have to see each other after all these years under such circumstances.”
“Yeah, I think we’re going to do the same.” Michaela stepped up and used the exit door Liz had kicked open. “The sitter charges double after 10:00 p.m. We better get going.”
As Michaela and her husband put their coats on, Liz searched for a pen from her purse’s pocket. She wrote down her phone number on a napkin.
“Here.” She handed it to me. “Give me a call when things are not so… raw. It’ll be nice catching up in a less painful situation.” We hugged, and before she let go, Liz threw me one last piece of advice that hit me right between the eyes. “And for the love of God, get the hell out of that house.”
Chapter 11
After Aidan and Michaela said their goodbyes, wishing me the best for the upcoming award season, telling me to “bring home the gold” as if I were an Olympic athlete, Jo, Tess and I were left at the table.
Jo broke the silence. “I’m sorry things got out of hand. It wasn’t fair inviting you, only to end up like this. I apologize.”
“Stop it, Jo, it’s not your fault. I’m with you on this one. I don’t know why Liz is so stubborn, but she can’t make me think Beatrix Appleton is responsible for Claire’s death. Claire had the chance to get out of that house, to come with me to New York. Even if Liz is right and being locked up on the hill had her so depressed that the only way out she saw was death, staying there was still her choice. It pains me to say it. I don’t want to think about Claire in that way, but it is the truth. There is a part of Claire’s life we will never know. A part that will remain in shadows.”
Jo tilted her head to the side and gave me a strange look. My words seemed to have sparked her interest.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I never received a reason why she wouldn’t come with me to New York. And none of you guys ever found out why she decided to lose touch with you. There must be a cause for the way she isolated herself. Yes, she was shy. But she went from shy to hermit in the blink of an eye. One moment we are packing our bags, the next she shoves the door in my face. She did the same to you. I mean, Claire didn’t even have a job. Did she ever stop being a kid?”
The same feeling that had overtaken me at the funeral was now coming back to haunt me.
“No,” I continued, “there’s something else there. Something strange about her death. I know it. You know it. Liz, Aidan, and Michaela know it. It’s just that we can’t figure out what it is.”
Jo’s reply―or the lack of one―contributed to feed the weirdness this situation had awakened in me. Maybe Jo also perceived the eerie darkness surrounding Claire as I did.
“You know what I think?” Tess intervened. “I think the only reality now is that you all love Claire. Everyone has different interpretations of the same situation. And although you want to think there is one truth about Claire’s life and death, that is simply not possible. She lived a different life with each person she met. We all do. We are not one-dimensional beings; we have many sides. And we don’t share all of those sides with everyone. With some, we share more; while we share less with others. There are parts of us we don’t ever show to anyone. I believe that is what causes so much pain and strife among you. Claire’s suicide showed a side of her she never shared with you, the darkest side of her personality. You all have a vision of Claire as someone who was pure and innocent. Of course, this contradiction is going to be hard to deal with.”
There wasn’t much to say after Tess’s speech. She had hit the nail on the head in every aspect. But one thing remained behind in our conversation, and I decided to bring it back.
“Why were you so interested in my thoughts about Claire’s death?” Nothing came from Jo. She couldn’t even look at me. “Jo? You know something.”
I wasn’t planning on confronting her like that; it just came out. However, the time for tiptoeing around the subjec
t had expired the moment Liz proclaimed Beatrix Appleton as the only person responsible for her daughter’s death.
“Oh, great,” Jo said with discontent dripping from her words.
“I’m sorry, I don’t wish to offend you. But I want to know―”
Jo shook her head and leaned on the table. The three of us huddled closer.
“It’s not about you, Althea. It’s about him.” The policewoman gestured with her head at a place behind my back.
I turned and found myself surprised. Tom was inside the joint, removing his jacket to take a seat at the bar. “You know him?”
“Tom Huddle? Yeah, I know him all right. You want to know how I found out Claire had committed suicide?” Jo was talking to me, but her eyes remained fixed on Tom’s back. “I was the one who found her. I was the one who had to call backup to take her down.”
I asked what she meant by “take her down.”
“Don’t you know how Claire ended her life?”
I was embarrassed to admit it, but the truth was that I’d felt so overwhelmed by the entire situation and the pressure of coming back to Ashwell that I never asked how she had done it. I don’t think it had slipped my mind, as if something of that caliber could actually be forgotten. Truth was, I didn’t want to picture her death. I didn’t want that in my head because, once those images find their way into your mind, they never go away. And I didn’t want my memories of Claire to be tainted by such horrible things.
“She hanged herself,” Jo stated, almost punching me with the fact. “Mrs. Appleton called the police because Claire had not left her bedroom during the entire day, and it seemed to be locked from the inside. By midafternoon, when Mrs. Appleton noticed her daughter was still in there, she panicked. I had to take down the door. She was right; it was locked from the inside. And Claire was hanging from the chandelier.”
There it was. Not many words were needed to paint the image in full color in my imagination. I knew it would remain imprinted on me for the rest of my life.
“Why is that weird?”
“Because of the way the room was staged. Claire hanged herself using the wires coming out of the ceiling through a hole where they connect to the chandelier. I have seen my fair share of hangings by now. But it’s the first time I’ve seen someone using wires from a lamp to hang themselves. And for the wires to support the weight of the person? That’s odd. It’s an old house. All the wiring must be decades old. It didn’t make any sense. The thing was wrapped around her neck several times. Also, the ladder… Why do you think it took a week for forensics to deliver the body to Mrs. Appleton so she could bury her? They have many questions. And so do I.”
“Wait a minute, Jo. What about the ladder? What ladder? Are you talking about the bedroom that has a balcony?” I asked, realizing I had woken up that day in the same place where Claire took her life.
“That’s my point, Althea. There was no ladder. How on earth did Claire manage to reach the chandelier, take one of the wires, wrap it around her neck and hang herself without a ladder? Someone else had to be there,” Jo concluded. She refocused on Tom, burning holes in his back as he remained at the bar, quietly drinking. “No one else has access to the hill. He is the estate’s gardener and handyman, according to Mrs. Appleton. He has tools and access to a ladder. He could’ve easily used it to climb in and out of the bedroom through the balcony. It’s not impossible.”
“What are you saying, Jo?”
The policewoman leaned even closer, staring at me dead in the eye.
“I’m saying I believe Tom Huddle had a thing, an unrequited thing for Claire. Or maybe she did correspond him, but the relationship turned violent. Everyone around town knows that Tom Huddle has a temper.”
Jo’s assertions became heavier and more palpable, made more so by the fact that I could attest to Tom’s violent temper. I saw Tess nodding, joining forces with her partner. It was not a secret. Yet I was barely able to wrap my head around what Jo was saying.
Claire’s death wasn’t a suicide, but a murder?
“What about the police? Are you investigating anything? And the forensic report?”
“The investigation is still open, Althea. Although Claire’s death seems impossible to explain, we don’t have the evidence to support the murder hypothesis. There is no proof that Tom was inside the room. No fingerprints, no DNA material. No signs of any sort of attack. Nothing. No scratches on the balcony’s banister from the ladder he had to use to climb into the house. It’s a dead end, unfortunately.”
That’s why Jo had stopped Liz’s ramblings on Beatrix Appleton’s culpability. She knew something else was up. Somehow, understanding I wasn’t alone wading through the waters of Claire’s unnerving disappearance made the whole picture look clearer. Was this the weirdness I had picked up at the cemetery? Perhaps. I wasn’t sure.
“You need to be careful when you’re up on the hill. When is your flight?”
I replied I wasn’t sure as Mrs. Appleton was still waiting for her sister Rose to arrive.
“I’ll give you my phone number, just in case. I know there isn’t much of a signal up there, but they do have a landline. If you see anything, anything strange―”
The screeching noise of a stool being dragged behind my back called my attention. I looked over my shoulder once again, only to find myself under the scrutiny of Appleton Hill’s gardener. Tom had left his place along with some money on the counter, and was now walking toward the exit door while staring at me. And making no effort to conceal it. I had to give it to Jo, there was something menacing about him.
Was I unknowingly cohabitating with an alleged murderer? Had I shared a ride with my best friend’s killer?
Chapter 12
Jo’s car stopped at the same spot where it had picked me up a few hours before. The conversation during the ride back to the hill had steered miles away from Claire and her untimely departure. Now Jo rambled on and on about her job. Apparently, missing person cases had decreased dramatically in the last ten years, a phenomenon that peaked during the three decades leading up to our high school years. She attributed the fact to a new police chief in charge. I remembered some of what Jo was talking about. When my mother and I first arrived at Ashwell, people were holding town hall meetings, demanding justice for those who were gone, and protection for those who remained.
The menace was palpable among Ashwell’s citizens. I was too new and too young to realize that the reason behind my mother finding a job in this town, despite her awful track record, was the fact that its population was decreasing. They needed working hands. My mother had shaky hands, but in lieu of the dire options, she was enough.
I merely nodded along, my mind still reeling from the events at the bar. In light of Jo’s most recent disclosure, my mood was at an impossible low. If anything, all I felt was anxiety. I knew I’d promised Claire to find whatever was wrong with her death and the obscurity surrounding it. But if the police had hit a wall, what was left for me?
“I already said it, but I am sorry the gathering took such a sad turn.”
“Don’t worry about it, Jo. It is a sad situation; you didn’t make it worse. If anything, I think the entire exchange was… enlightening. I realize now my memories of Claire were frozen in time, back at that moment when I left Ashwell. Now that you guys have shared all of this with me, I understand I did not know Claire as much as I thought I did. She led a life that was completely separate from me.”
“It was completely separate from us too, Althea. She cut us all off. If there’s anything I have to concede to Liz”―Jo stared at her hands resting on the wheel―“it’s that Claire seemed to lead a life that wasn’t healthy. Even when I saw her at a distance, out here in the hill’s gardens, it was clear her appearance had deteriorated. I’m not just talking about getting older. I don’t know. Maybe there is something about this place. Maybe we need to come in with more agents and…”
Jo lifted her eyes and looked out of the windshield at the back entrance of t
he manor. Her expression morphed from concern over something that she did not know how to fix to anger over the poor abilities shown in someone else’s work.
“God, does that creep even do his job? I mean, I know Mrs. Appleton doesn’t use those steps but, come on! The weeds and climbing plants are so overgrown they’re entering the house. Look at that!”
I did look and, although I couldn’t believe my eyes, I kept this surprise to myself. The steps leading up to the back entrance―a door that gave into the kitchen―had been clean when she picked me up. Tom did do his job but, apparently, the weeds around the hill were vicious. The police officer exhaled loudly, revealing her frustration.
“Okay. You’ve got my phone number, right?” She changed topics, probably estimating there was nothing she could do about Tom. I nodded. “If you see anything strange at all, you call me, all right? I don’t care what time it is, and even if you think it’s something stupid, you pick up the phone anyway. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Let me know when you need a ride to the airport. Just tell Mrs. Appleton I already offered, so Tom will not be necessary.”
“Will do. Thank you, Jo.”
We said our goodbyes, and I climbed out of the car. I waved at her, hoping to see her sooner than I anticipated, while a question arose in me. I was leaving the hill in the next few days, but what about Mrs. Appleton and her sister? Would they be safe around Tom Huddle? At least I was aware of the possibility of danger. Maybe I had to say something to her. Or maybe Jo should do it instead of me.
As the car became smaller and smaller, I realized I had ignored a huge opportunity during my stay at the bar. Downtown the cell phone signal was decent, and I had missed that window of opportunity.
“Damn it, I should’ve called Lena. She’ll be furious when I’m not back at the office tomorrow!”
I fished my phone out of my satchel to confirm what I already knew. There was no signal, and a bunch of notifications had inundated my cell while at the bar. I walked up and down the driveway, holding my phone up, trying to be a human antenna. Appleton Hill was definitely disconnected from the world.
The Haunting of Appleton Hill Page 7