The Midnight Hour

by Karen Robards

  Side by side, talking about nothing really in desultory spurts, they jogged down Spring Hill Lane, up Bellewood, over and across the railroad tracks to Hobbs Station Road, and then down Evergreen to Spring Hill Lane and home again.

  All in all, they covered a distance of about two miles. Usually their run was pure pleasure for Grace because this was an activity that she and Jess could share without strife or stress and because of the sheer joy she took in her daughter’s company. Tonight, because of the uneasiness she could not banish, it was something less than that.

  “Whew!” she gasped, winded, as they reached their front porch and she collapsed in a rocker.

  “You’re getting old, Mom,” Jessica told her cheerfully. Jessica, star forward for her basketball team last year, was not one whit out of breath. She wasn’t tired, either. Instead, she propped one ankle on the porch rail, using it as a kind of ballet barre to stretch her leg muscles.

  Did I ever have that much energy? Grace wondered, watching her.

  “Oh, by the way, I got my Spanish test back today. I got a 93. You need to sign it.”

  “That’s great. I’ll gladly sign it. Put it on the kitchen table and I’ll do it before I go to bed.”

  Jessica switched legs. “Mom.”

  “Mmm?”

  “How come you and Aunt Jackie are so different? I mean, you’re sisters and all. I always thought sisters were pretty much alike.”

  “Aunt Jackie’s a lot younger than I am—eight years.”

  “So, what difference does that make? I mean, look at you two: she’s fat, and you’re thin. You’re real successful at what you do, and she’s not. You were in a bad marriage, and you got a divorce. She’s in a bad marriage, and she’s not ever going to get a divorce as long as she lives. You know that as well as I do.”

  Grace was silent for a moment, rocking slowly back and forth as she contemplated the question. The wind chimes tinkled, the swing creaked, the leaves on the snowball bush rustled. The brisk breeze felt good against her overheated skin. Jessica was still working the porch rail like a ballet barre. Her wiry body was backlit by the light, coming from the front hall and kitchen, which streamed out through the windows in golden blocks of illumination that defied the night.

  “Jackie and I had very different childhoods, you know, despite the fact that we’re sisters. I was four-teen—just a year younger than you—when my mother died. Jackie was six. I can remember her at the funeral home, with Mom lying there in her coffin, laughing and playing with our cousins who were her age. She didn’t know, didn’t understand, what had happened, what we had lost. Then Dad got married again in less than a year. Jackie and Deborah really hit it off. I have to say, Deborah was good to Jackie, treated her pretty much like she was her own daughter. I, on the other hand, hated Deborah. Looking back, I can see that I was pretty bad to her, but at the time I thought I was standing up for my mother, defending her place in the family, so to speak, even though she was gone. That made Dad mad at me, so he and I fought all the time, too. Our house was pretty much a battleground until I finally left home.”

  “For college?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Jessica’s leg dropped, and she stood with both feet flat on the ground, knees straight, and bent at the waist as she placed her palms flat on the floor.

  “What did your mom die of?” she asked, her voice faintly muffled from her bent-over position.

  “Ovarian cancer.” To this day, Grace could not think about it without pain.

  “Was it bad? For you, I mean?”

  “Pretty bad.”

  In truth, it had been devastating. Her mother’s death had been swift, brutal, unexpected. One January day she went to her doctor for a routine checkup. Six months and countless surgeries, treatments, and hours of suffering later, she was dead. Grace had felt as if the sun had been ripped from the sky, as if her life had been swallowed up by a black hole from which there would never be any escape.

  “But you got over it.”

  “I got over it.” Grace smiled slightly, ruefully, affectionately, at her daughter as she confirmed this gross oversimplification. “Actually, I didn’t really start to get over it until I had you. You were the first thing I ever loved as much as I loved my mother. From the moment you were born, I loved you even more. Better than anything in the whole wide world.”

  Jessica straightened, and turned to grin at her, hands on hips. “And I was the most beautiful baby in the whole wide world, right?”

  “Well . . .”

  “If you loved me so much, Mom, the least you can do is tell me how beautiful I was.”

  “You grew into your beauty,” Grace temporized. Jessica loved the story of how long and skinny and red and wrinkly and, yes, homely, she had been as a newborn. Craig, an idealistic twenty-two-year-old at the time, had taken one look at his infant daughter and burst into tears, appalled at how ugly she was.

  Craig had told Jessica that. Fortunately, Jessica thought it was funny.

  “I love you, Mom.” Jessica bent, dropped a kiss on Grace’s cheek, and held out her hand. “Give me the key. I’m going to go take a shower.”

  “I’ll be in in a minute. Don’t use all the hot water.”

  “I won’t—if you’re lucky.”

  The banging of the door behind her marked Jessica’s departure. Grace continued to rock back and forth in the white-painted wicker chair for a while, staring out into the darkness. There were so many ghosts out there for her, ghosts from her past, that Jessica’s questions had given renewed form and substance to. Ghosts that she couldn’t bear to remember, and, equally, couldn’t bear to forget. . ..

  “Mom!” Grace could hear Jessica’s shriek all the way from upstairs, through the closed door. “Mom!”

  Stark terror laced Jessica’s voice. Grace sprang to her feet, yanked open the door that Jessica had left unlocked for her, and sprinted down the hall. Clad only in a towel, Jessica was almost at the foot of the stairs by the time she reached her. Her face was white as paper and her eyes were huge.

  “Mom! Mom! Oh, my God, Mom!”

  “Jess, what is it?” Grace caught her daughter’s arm, looking her frantically up and down for any sign of injury. There was none that she could see. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s in my room.” Jessica was still wet from her shower. Her skin felt cold as ice beneath Grace’s hand. “Oh, God, Mom, it’s in my room! You’ve got to come and see!”

  Chapter

  18

  OFFICERS PHILLIP PETERS and Aaron Stein were the first ones on the scene. Grace took the two uniformed young men upstairs to Jessica’s room. Dressed now in jeans and a white sweatshirt, Jessica went with them. Grace realized with a pang that she was afraid to stay downstairs alone.

  The primrose comforter with its ruched ruffle all around the hem was still on the bed. The twin pillows with shams that matched the comforter still leaned against the headboard. The curtains were drawn over the windows. The bedside lamp was turned on. Except for Jessica’s jogging clothes, which were lying across the back of the armchair in the corner, the bedroom was undisturbed.

  Jessica’s hand crept into Grace’s as Grace pointed the way into the bath.

  The officers pushed open the white-painted, paneled door. The bathroom light was still on, brightly illuminating the small, pink-and-white space that contained, in a roughly triangular shape, a shower, sink, and toilet. The steam from Jessica’s shower had almost completely dissipated. The shower door stood ajar.

  The white porcelain pedestal sink stood directly opposite the shower. Above it hung a rectangular mirror-fronted medicine cabinet. The mirror had an arched top.

  In order to view the sink and the medicine cabinet above it, it was necessary to step inside the bathroom and then partly close the door.

  Officer Stein went first, followed by Officer Peters. Grace and Jessica, hands linked, brought up the rear.

  The tiny bathroom was crowded with four people crammed inside it.

  “
See,” Grace said, pointing. “On the mirror.”

  On the surface of the glass had been drawn the rough outline of a tombstone. Jessica, R.I.P. read the legend inside the outline, with Jessica on one line and R.I.P. below.

  Some sort of oil had been used to compose the drawing, so that it remained invisible until steam from a shower clouded the rest of the mirror, leaving the illustration in sharp relief. With the steam almost gone now, the marks had grown faint, but were still visible.

  “We were out running. Someone must have come into the house while we were out and written that,” Grace said.

  For a moment Officers Peters and Stein simply stared at the mirror. Then they exchanged glances.

  “Did you lock the doors before you went out?” Officer Stein asked Grace.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “We’ll check the windows and doors for signs of forced entry,” Officer Peters said. He was a nice-looking man of about thirty, tall and slim, with regular features and tobacco-brown hair. Officer Stein was shorter, stockier, with a ruddy complexion and short blond hair.

  “Whoever it was might have gotten in through the kitchen door. It doesn’t always latch properly,” Grace said.

  “We’ll check it.”

  The quartet trooped down the stairs. While the officers looked around, Grace and Jessica waited in the kitchen. In less than ten minutes the officers joined them there.

  “No sign of forced entry,” Officer Stein said, shaking his head. “We can take a report.”

  “I want you to do more than take a report,” Grace said with authority, her hand tight around Jessica’s. “I want whoever did this caught.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. We’ll do our best, ma’am.” Officer Stein’s tone was respectful.

  The doorbell rang. Knowing who it had to be, Grace hurried to answer. Jessica was right behind her, and the two police officers were behind Jessica.

  Grace opened the door. Tony Marino looked at her through the screen. Behind him stood Dominick Marino. Grace had called Tony Marino’s pager number even before she had called the Bexley police.

  Meeting his gaze through the fine black mesh, she realized that she was surprisingly glad to see him. At least he knew enough to put what had occurred into its proper context, she thought.

  “Hi,” Tony Marino said to Grace, reaching for the handle of the screen door even as Grace pushed it open. He stepped inside. Dominick followed. Both looked past her to Officers Peters and Stein.

  “You’re Phil Peters, aren’t you?” Tony asked.

  “That’s right, Detective. This is my partner, Aaron Stein.”

  “Dominick Marino,” Dominick said, and the men shook hands all around. Then Tony’s gaze slid to Grace.

  “What’s up?”

  “Somebody got into the house while Jessica and I were out running and wrote . . .” Grace hesitated, thinking of Jessica behind her “. . . a very unpleasant message on Jessica’s bathroom mirror.”

  “A death threat,” Jessica said in a small voice. Her hand in Grace’s was very cold.

  “A death threat?” Marino did not sound—quite—skeptical. But his tone was close enough to rouse Grace’s ire.

  “Come upstairs and I’ll show you,” she said, her voice tart. This, she considered, was largely his fault, though she didn’t mean to say so in front of her daughter and the others.

  With Jessica in tow, Grace led the way upstairs. Tony and Dominick Marino and the other two police officers followed.

  With six people in the bathroom, Grace could barely draw breath. Standing directly behind Tony Marino, with Jessica squashed against her side, she was surrounded by men, all of whom were larger and taller than she. In the sneakers she wore, to see the mirror, she had to look over Tony’s shoulder, the top of which was on a level with her eyebrows. As a woman who prided herself on being in control, Grace found the unaccustomed sensation of being femininely “smaller than” disconcerting.

  “There’s no sign of forced entry, Detective,” Stein volunteered. “We already checked.”

  “Judge Hart told us the lock on the kitchen door doesn’t always work right, though. Somebody could have come in that way, maybe,” Peters added.

  “It looks like some kind of oil,” Dominick said, leaning close to the mirror and touching the drawing with a questing finger. He rubbed his fingers together, testing the substance. “It’s oil. I’m sure of it.”

  “Take pictures. Take a sample of the oil for testing. Then dust for fingerprints. Everywhere in the bathroom, the bedroom doorknob, the kitchen door, and the front door,” Tony directed the two uniformed officers. To Grace, who stood close against his back, he added with a glance over his shoulder: “This could be a prank, you know. Let’s get out of this bathroom and talk about it.”

  “I don’t think it’s a prank.” Grace led the way downstairs. Jessica still clung to her hand. Tony and Dominick Marino followed. At the base of the stairs, the two uniformed officers headed out the front door in search of a camera. Grace steered the remainder of the party into the kitchen. “I think it’s a continuation of what’s been happening to Jessica at school.”

  “Maybe,” Tony said. Prudently left unspoken, but obvious to Grace nonetheless, was the corollary: maybe not.

  “Sit down, baby,” Grace said to Jessica, pushing her gently in the direction of a bar stool. “I’ll make you some hot chocolate.” To the Marinos, who had stopped rather awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, she added, “I’m making hot chocolate for Jessica, and I’m going to have a cup of coffee. Would either one of you like something?”

  “I’ll have coffee,” Tony said, while Dominick shook his head.

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “Sit down. Please.”

  Dominick did, settling onto the bar stool beside Jessica, while Tony leaned against the counter. They were both wearing dark sweat suits and jogging shoes. Grace wondered, vaguely, where they had been. Running, like Jessica and her? Somehow it didn’t seem likely. Dismissing the issue from her mind as unimportant, she poured chocolate milk into a mug and put it in the microwave to heat. Then she poured out two cups of coffee.

  “Cream? Sugar?” she asked Tony just as the microwave pinged.

  “One spoonful of sugar,” he said. Grace retrieved the hot chocolate from the microwave and passed it to Jessica, then added a spoonful of sugar to one of the coffees and handed it to Tony.

  “Okay,” Tony said, taking a sip of coffee. His gaze was on Grace. “You think somebody broke in here while you were gone and wrote that message to Jessica, right?”

  “Right,” Grace said. She was already on her third sip and was feeling marginally more able to cope.

  “How long were you gone?”

  Grace looked at Jessica. “About . . . twenty minutes?”

  Jessica nodded.

  “So whoever it was had twenty minutes to break into your house, go up to Jessica’s room, and write that message in oil or whatever on her mirror, worrying all the time that you might return at any second,” Tony said. “Let’s think about that. Twenty minutes is not a very long time.”

  “Long enough, apparently,” Grace said darkly, sipping her coffee.

  “In that twenty minutes, the perpetrator would have had to enter your house, either with a key or through your possibly improperly latched kitchen door or by some other means not yet discovered, go up to Jessica’s room, write the message with a substance he either found in the house or brought with him, and get out of the house again without either of you seeing him—or her. Possible, I suppose, but the timing’s tricky.”

  “We stayed out on the porch for a few minutes after we got back,” Grace recalled. “Maybe five minutes. Maybe even ten.”

  “I think it was more like five,” Jessica put in. Her voice sounded a little stronger, too. “Then I went in to take a shower.”

  “Obviously you saw no one in the house, right, or nothing that would make you suspect someone was in the house?”

  “If I had, I would
have screamed the place down,” Jessica gave Tony a lopsided little smile. Grace was glad to see that smile. It meant that Jessica was starting to recover.

  “That’s what I thought.” Tony smiled back at Jessica. “So the message already had to be on the mirror and the perp out when you came into the house. That means that whoever wrote it had to be watching you and your mom pretty closely to know that the house was empty. Do you go running every night at the same time?”

  Grace and Jessica both shook their heads.

  “About three nights a week, usually, but we don’t go on specific days, or at specific times. Just whenever we feel like it,” Grace said.

  “So whoever it was couldn’t have known you would be gone at that time.”

  “I don’t see how.” Grace took another reviving sip of coffee.

  “So for this scenario to work, you had to be under direct observation.”

  Grace shivered at the thought.

  Jessica said. “That’s scary.”

  Tony looked from one to the other of them. “Do either of you ladies possess any oil that could have been used to write the message?”

  “I have bath oil beads,” Jessica volunteered. “I keep them right in the medicine cabinet. I’ve never used them, though. I usually take a shower.”

  Grace thought. “I have some bath oil. And some baby oil. And some makeup remover that’s kind of oily.”

  “Let’s go check it out.”

  The four of them went upstairs again. The Marinos and Jessica went on into Jessica’s room, while Grace collected the required items from her bathroom.

  “We’ve got pictures of the mirror.” Standing in the bathroom doorway, Peters was talking to the Marinos, who were in Jessica’s bedroom. He looked past them as Grace entered. The Marinos glanced around, too. Stein was inside the bathroom clicking away with a black, 35-millimeter camera. He lowered the camera and also glanced toward her as she joined them.

  “All done,” he said, waving the camera as he turned toward the others.

  “Go ahead and fingerprint the front and back doors,” Tony said. “Leave fingerprinting the bathroom for last.”