Dark Homecoming

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Dark Homecoming Page 24

by William Patterson


  Variola vowed that she would find out—and that she would win.

  Because if she didn’t—everyone in this house would be destroyed.

  54

  The car was waiting outside the gallery to take Liz back to Huntington House, but she didn’t want to leave. The wine they had consumed—two whole bottles between them—was making her head spin a little, and she felt warm and safe in Roger’s cozy lounge, sitting on the small couch beside him, talking about anything and everything these past three hours.

  “Thank you for dinner,” Liz said. “It was just what I needed.”

  “You don’t have to leave,” Roger replied, taking her hands in his.

  “We both know I do have to leave,” she told him, extricating her hands from his grip and standing up. “I’d like nothing more to stay here and keep talking, but . . . it’s late, Roger.”

  She had shared everything with him. Not just her fears and worries about David and the house and Dominique, but also the stories of her father abandoning her family so long ago, and her mother’s struggles with alcohol. She’d shared the recent telephone conversation she’d had with her mother, and all sorts of long-suppressed guilt had come spilling from her mouth—how she’d abandoned her family by taking the job on the cruise ship just as her father had once walked out on them. She’d only made it worse by running off and marrying David without telling any of them. Now they were going to hear on the news that Liz’s husband was wanted for questioning in a murder. What a way to meet him!

  Liz had started to cry at that point, and Roger had held her tight. Resting her head against his chest, she’d listened to his steady heartbeat. Roger spoke low, in comforting tones, telling her he suspected she’d spent a lifetime blaming herself for other people’s problems. She needed to stop doing that, he said. As he’d spoken those words, he’d stroked her hair. Liz had felt so warm and protected.

  She was smart enough to know where the night was headed. Each time things got a little close, she extricated herself, just as she had done now, standing up from the couch and telling Roger she really needed to get home.

  He stood facing her. “Liz, if David—”

  She put a finger to his lips to silence him. “Don’t say any more.”

  “But Liz—”

  “Roger, I have to hear him out. I have to let him make this right, if he can.”

  “And if he can’t?”

  “Then . . .” Her voice hesitated. “Then, I don’t know.”

  “Then can I tell you that I love you?”

  She looked up at him, into those soulful eyes of his. “Oh, Roger, don’t say—”

  But he was kissing her. She couldn’t have stopped him. Even if she had wanted to.

  It was bliss. Liz wanted to cling to him.

  But she pulled away.

  “No,” she said. “This is wrong. I have to give David the chance to make things right.”

  Roger just nodded, and backed away.

  “Thank you for everything,” Liz said, grabbing her purse, realizing the wine was making her walk a little unsteadily. “Really, Roger, everything. Please know how grateful I am.”

  “I’m here if you need me,” he said, and walked her to the back door.

  There, away from any reporters, was the car he’d hired for her. Liz slipped into the backseat. She watched as the car drove away from the gallery. Roger stood on his back step waving at her until the driver finally turned the corner and headed back to Huntington House.

  Back home—Could this ever truly be home? Liz wondered—she was plunged right back into a dark chasm in her mind full of doubts and despair. For those few hours with Roger, she’d escaped those thoughts. But now here, back within the polished marble of Huntington House, Liz was once again tormented. The wine was muddying her thinking, so she couldn’t reason herself out of it. All that kept running through her mind was: Rita tried to show me something. She was genuinely surprised when nothing was in that room. If a woman had indeed gone in there, who was she? And where had she gone?

  The house was eerily quiet. Mrs. Hoffman and Variola were presumably sound asleep in their rooms, and the other servants had all gone home. Liz stood motionless in the parlor, breathing in and out, trying to calm her sudden attack of nerves.

  Her head was spinning faster now. She’d put away a whole bottle of wine. She tried to force herself to think clearly. To scissor through the thick haze that was clouding her reason. But she could hear only one thought banging around in her brain.

  One thought only.

  She knew what she had to do.

  Slowly, silently, Liz moved from the parlor through the dining room and into the kitchen. The chrome and granite and stainless steel sparkled in the moonlight that poured through the window. Liz took a deep breath and crossed through the kitchen. She opened a drawer of the cupboard and withdrew a pin very much like the one Rita had used. She gripped it tightly in her fist. Then she resumed walking.

  She paused at the back stairs and looked up into the dark.

  The last room on the left.

  Carefully Liz ascended the stairs, not wanting to awaken Variola or Mrs. Hoffman. She had one goal in mind. One goal only.

  There was a woman that night, she firmly believed. Rita really had seen someone go into that room. So, the question was, how had she gotten out?

  There had to be a way.

  And might the answer to that puzzle shed light on other mysteries of this house?

  Liz reached the top of the stairs and paused again. She could hear her heart beating in her ears. She felt dizzy—the wine really had a hold on her—so she moved away from the stairs, suddenly fearful that she’d topple down to the kitchen floor.

  In the darkened hallway, she made her way.

  She reached the last door on the left.

  The door will no doubt be locked from the inside, Rita had told her.

  Why do you say, “no doubt”? Liz had asked.

  Because that’s what the instructions always were, Rita had replied.

  Who had given Rita those instructions? David, clearly. This was where they had met, where they had carried on their affair under Dominique’s nose. Now who was meeting David here? And was Dominique still aware of it—still angry—still seeking revenge?

  The door was locked. Liz opened her fist and removed the pin with her other hand. With trembling fingers she inserted the pin into the hole in the doorknob, fumbling around until she managed to pop the lock.

  The door opened with a tiny creak.

  Liz stepped inside.

  She felt for a light switch and flipped it on.

  Once again, no one. Just a twin bed and a small dresser. Liz pulled open the dresser drawers. They were all empty.

  She looked around the room. No way out. The window was too small for anyone to fit through, and besides it seemed sealed shut. There were no trapdoors on the floor, no escape hatches in the ceiling.

  Liz moved over to the closet. The door was ajar. She stepped inside, nudging the pair of wire hangers on the rod, sending a soft tinkling sound through the room. Liz moved her fingers up and down the back wall of the closet. No, nothing there either—but then, just as she was about to take her hands away, she felt something.

  A small groove running the length of the back wall of the closet, all the way down to the floor.

  Liz fished out her phone from the pocket of her pants and turned on the light. She saw she had several messages from Nicki—she’d turned off the ringer on her phone so as not to be disturbed while she was having dinner with Roger—but she’d have to read them later. Right now she had more urgent business. She trained the light on the back wall of the closet. Yes, she could see the groove. It was very difficult to discern, but now that she had felt it, she could see it clearly enough. Liz pressed against it. A soft, scraping sound followed.

  Her heart was threatening to burst up her throat and out of her mouth. Liz pressed harder against the wall. Suddenly, without any warning or any further sound, the
back wall of the closet slid inward. It was a door.

  Liz shined the light of her phone into the darkness behind the wall. I’ve heard things—her mind was racing—footsteps—they seemed to be coming from within the walls . . .

  Despite the bright white light, she couldn’t make out much. She took a step closer, moving her head slightly through the opening. She could now see out a small, very narrow passageway leading off to the right. The passage couldn’t go very far, Liz speculated, as it would end at the back wall of the house.

  Steeling herself again, she took a step into the passageway and shined her light forward. As she’d anticipated, the corridor did indeed end at the back wall of the house. But there was a ladder at the end that led up into a hole in the ceiling and another that led down into a hole in the floor.

  Liz realized the truth: these passageways led all through the house, between the walls!

  For a moment she felt brave enough to go farther, to take the ladder up into the attic or down into whatever lay below, and see what she might find. But she quickly rejected the notion. Liz had seen enough horror movies in her day to know that wasn’t a good idea. No way was she climbing through the walls of the house by herself, at night, a little woozy from too much wine.

  So she backed out of the passageway into the closet. There was plenty of time to ask questions—of David, of Mrs. Huntington, of Thad the caretaker—later. At least she knew now how the woman Rita had seen had gotten out of the room.

  Liz’s heart settled down in her chest.

  But as she was sliding the secret panel closed, the overhead light in the room behind her suddenly went out.

  Liz spun around, shining the light of her phone into the darkness.

  “Who’s there?” she asked.

  She caught a flash of something in the dark. The light from her phone was like a spotlight, picking out only the occasional shape in the room but failing to illuminate everything. Liz moved it frantically back and forth. Once again she spotted something—the flutter of some fabric—but then it was gone, and despite her attempt to follow it with her light, she couldn’t find it again. But she could hear something now. A rustling sound.

  And it was coming from behind her.

  She hadn’t closed the panel all the way. In terror Liz spun around, shining her phone in that direction, just in time to see a face—

  A deformed, twisted, purple face—

  The woman she had seen outside, in the sculpture garden!

  Hideous bulging eyes—

  Swollen cheeks—

  A mouth contorted to the side of her face—

  Long matted gray hair—

  And hands like talons reaching out for her—

  Long gnarled fingers encircled Liz’s forearm, and she screamed. Her phone went flying from her hands, skittering across the floor.

  “Get away from me!” Liz cried, yanking her arm away from the woman.

  In the darkness Liz backed away. Where had the woman gone? It was too dark in the room for Liz to see clearly. She spun around, afraid the woman was behind her. Then, off to her right, she heard a whooshing sound. A shard of moonlight from the window revealed the source.

  The long, shining blade of a knife swinging through the air.

  In that instant, Liz was overwhelmed by the fragrance of gardenias.

  “No!” she screamed as the deformed woman leapt at her from the darkness, knocking her violently to the floor. Liz kicked, clawed, and punched at the thing on top of her, knowing that at any second, that knife could make contact with her flesh and then it would be over.

  But all at once, the woman withdrew, scuttling away in the darkness. Liz sat there panting on the floor, covering her head with her hands, too terrified to move. She could still hear the woman moving around the room, swinging the blade through the air. Was she planning to leap at her again?

  Liz knew she had to make a run for the door, which was still open. It was her only hope. But just as she was about to get to her feet and run, hands were suddenly back on her, gripping her by the shoulder. Liz lunged upward and took a swing at the woman’s face.

  “Liz!”

  Her fist stopped short of its goal. The face above her was not that of her attacker.

  It was Nicki.

  “Liz, what’s wrong?” her friend asked. “What’s happened here?”

  Liz could see by the light of the moonlight that they were alone in the room. The deformed creature must have escaped through the secret panel. She tried to speak, to tell Nicki about the danger they might still be in, but all that came out of her mouth were sobs.

  “There, there, kiddo,” Nicki said, wrapping her arms around her. “Everything’s going to be okay now. You don’t have to worry about a thing anymore. Nicki’s here.”

  55

  Joe Foley sat looking at three photographs he’d placed in a row on his desk.

  Jeanette Kelly. Tonesha Lewis. Lana Paulson.

  The first two were friends of Audra McKenzie, and had gone missing around the time of Audra’s death. The last girl was just reported missing yesterday by her sister.

  Jeanette was a freckle-faced redhead. Tonesha was a striking African American beauty. Lana was a little bit older than the other two, blond, with a certain hardness to her eyes and the tattoo of a star on her neck.

  There’s no reason to think there’s a connection, Joe told himself. As far as he could see, Lana Paulson didn’t know the other two. And girls go missing every day.

  But what had compelled Joe to place the three photographs together on his desk was one small fact: Lana Paulson had disappeared on the same night that Rita Cansino was killed.

  “So what?” he muttered to himself, gathering up the photos and returning them to their respective files. It was just a silly hunch.

  But Joe tended to trust his silly hunches. They’d often turned out to be right in the past. Ever since the day he’d found his mother dead.

  Maybe this hunch would be the exception to the rule. Maybe this one would be wrong. Still, he’d keep the name Lana Paulson in mind. He’d ask David Huntington, when they finally got to question him, if he’d ever heard of her.

  They’d certainly caused a stir by announcing to the press that Huntington was a “person of interest” in the Cansino murder. Given the two other murders of Huntington House employees, the media was running wild with theories: could the esteemed David Huntington be a serial killer, offing his employees one by one? The fact that he’d been a world away when Audra McKenzie was killed didn’t stop their speculation. And it was serious enough, apparently, for old Mr. Thomas Huntington to come down to Florida to look into it.

  The old man was sequestered with his lawyers in Chief Davis’s office at the moment. “Any word from in there yet?” Joe asked, leaning across his desk to Aggie’s.

  She shook her head. “They’ve been at it for almost two hours.”

  “The chief is a personal friend of old man Huntington. I wonder what sort of deal they’re cooking up.”

  Aggie gave him a look as if to tell him to be careful what he said.

  Joe sighed. The chief hadn’t been pleased when they’d told him that they needed to question David Huntington. Only after much cajoling from Joe and Aggie had he agreed to allow them to publicly announce that Huntington was a person of interest in the Rita Cansino murder investigation. Of course, that had brought David’s father spitting and sputtering down from New York, protesting against the insinuations and the slander against his family.

  The door to the chief’s office opened. Out filed three dark-suited, somber-faced lawyers, followed by a tall, distinguished, silver-haired, square-jawed man of about sixty years of age. His dark eyes darted around the station like a hawk’s, landing on Joe before passing on to Aggie and then to the others.

  “Don’t worry, Tom,” Chief Davis was saying, clapping him on the back. “We have it all under control. David needn’t worry about a thing when he gets back.”

  “I should hope not,” Mr. Hunt
ington said. “I expect you will do your part to quiet these completely unfounded allegations being bandied about in the press.”

  “We will do what we can,” the chief promised.

  Joe watched as Mr. Huntington and his lawyers strode out of the station, chins held high, their postures defiant. But Joe could read through that: they were scared out of their minds. What would this scandal do to Huntington Enterprises, especially if it ended up with their rising young star David Huntington arrested for murder and hauled away in handcuffs?

  Once they were gone, the chief let out a long sigh and made his way to Joe and Aggie. The chief was a getting a little soft in the gut—it happened when you were taken off the streets and consigned to a desk all day—but he still had the build of a prizefighter, short and stocky, with big arms and shoulders straining against his crisp white shirt.

  “I knew this wasn’t going to be easy,” the chief said to his detectives. “I still wish we hadn’t gone public with David’s name.”

  “We had to exert pressure on him to return, Chief,” Joe replied. “He has not responded to any of our repeated calls or to any of our attempts to reach him by email. Even the local police in Amsterdam haven’t been able to get in touch with him.”

  “He may be hiding out,” Aggie said. “Never planning on coming back.”

  “David Huntington is an upstanding member of this community,” the chief told her sharply. “He is not some criminal on the run. The Huntington family has done a great deal for this city, for this state—indeed, for this country.”

  Joe sneered. “And I imagine that’s just what Old Man Huntington was telling you in your office.”

  The chief ignored his comment. “I want you to put out a statement saying that David is not considered a suspect,” he said. “Insist that he is merely wanted to provide information. Stress that he is not a suspect in this case.”

  Joe smirked. “Can I imply he’s a suspect in other cases?”

  “Don’t get smart, Foley.”

  Joe stood up. “Come on, Chief. We have a lot of questions about this guy. He gets back from his honeymoon and bingo! Jamison Wilkes is murdered. He’s planning to fire Rita Cansino—with whom he was likely having an affair—and bingo! She’s found dead, too. And he disappears in the middle of the night, flying off to Europe, and won’t return our calls.”

 

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