The Bone House

by Brian Freeman

  It was Tresa's sexual awakening on the pages of her diary, and it was convincing enough to be real. When Delia Fischer found it on Tresa's computer, she leaped to the obvious conclusion: Mark Bradley was having sex with her seventeen-year-old daughter.

  Delia confronted Tresa, but the girl's evasive denial persuaded her mother that Tresa was covering up the truth of the affair. She didn't confront Mark about their relationship; instead, she went directly to the principal, the school board, the police, and the newspapers. Faced with allegations of criminal sexual misconduct, Mark's own denials meant nothing. No one believed him. The intimate detail in the diary spoke for itself. The only thing that saved him from prosecution and jail was Tresa's stubborn insistence that the diary was a fantasy, that there had never been any sexual relationship between herself and Mark. Without her testimony, there was no case to bring to court.

  Even so, Tresa's and Mark's denials didn't change many minds in Door County about what had really happened between them. When Tresa talked about Mark, everyone who listened to her could tell that she was in love with him. Her face glowed when she talked about him. To her mother, and to the school authorities, that meant she was protecting him.

  Mark escaped without criminal charges, but the principal, teachers, and parents of Fish Creek High School weren't about to leave him in front of a classroom. As a second-year teacher, without tenure, he had essentially no rights under the union contract. At the end of the year, he got what he knew was coming. The ax fell. The nominal excuse was budget cuts, but everyone on the peninsula knew the real reason. They all knew what kind of man Mark Bradley was, and no one was going to let him take advantage of another teenage girl.

  In the wake of Mark's dismissal, Hilary had wanted to quit, too, hut that would have left them with no income at all. She also didn't want to give anyone at the school the satisfaction of seeing them turn tail and run, as if somehow that would justify the hostility towards them, like an admission of guilt. She stayed. But since that time, it had been a long year of being shunned. She was nearing the end of her third year in the district, and she knew her own tenure decision would come down soon. Even if they granted her tenure, she and Mark were struggling with the question of whether they wanted to leave. He had no job prospects. She was tired of living under constant suspicion.

  What kept them where they were was the fact that they loved their home on Washington Island. They loved Door County. They'd moved from Chicago to the peninsula because it was exactly where they wanted to live. She just didn't know if they could stay in a place where they would never be welcome.

  Then there were the doubts. The questions. They followed her everywhere. Even the handful of friends who'd remained on her side sometimes lapsed into awkward silence, as if to say: are you sure?

  Are you sure it was just a fantasy? Did you read the diary? It was so detailed, so precise, so explicit about their sexual encounters. What if it really happened?

  That was a question Hilary refused to entertain. She never even allowed it to enter her mind. She knew her husband. If he said there was no affair, then there was no affair. But she also knew that Mark was afraid that in the end she'd begin to believe the lies. They would both be consumed by the cloud of judgement.

  That was why she'd told him how she felt on the first day and never again. If you have to say it more than once, you don't mean it.

  'I trust you.'

  'Tell me what happened,' Hilary said.

  Mark shook his head. 'Hil, I don't know. I wish I did.'

  'Start at the beginning. Did you see Glory on the beach?'

  He nodded. 'Yes.'

  'Did you talk to her?'

  'I did, but it was just for a couple of minutes.'

  'Why didn't you tell me at breakfast?' she asked, keeping her tone even. She didn't want him to hear an accusation in her voice.

  Mark hesitated. 'I should have, but I wasn't ready to drag up everything for you again. Or for me. I didn't think it mattered, because nothing happened. I saw. her, and then I walked away. As far as I knew, that was the end of the story. I have no idea who killed her.'

  'What went on between the two of you?'

  Mark sat down next to her on the sofa and stared at the carpet. 'Glory was drunk. I didn't think it was safe for her to be out there like that, so I tried to persuade her to come back to the hotel with me. She wouldn't go.'

  Hilary saw the tension in how her husband was holding himself. His body was taut, like a coiled spring. There was something else that he was reluctant to tell her, and she made a guess about what it was. 'Glory came on to you, didn't she?'

  Mark exhaled in a loud hiss. 'Ah, shit.'

  'Tell me.'

  'Yes, she kept asking me to have sex with her. I said no.'

  'I get it,' Hilary said. 'Look, we both know Glory is the wild one compared to Tresa. I'm sure she liked the idea of trying to seduce the man her sister was in love with.'

  'Nothing happened,' he insisted.

  'You already said that.'

  'Most of it was just talk, but the one thing she did - she took her bikini top off.'

  Hilary closed her eyes. 'What did you do?'

  'Nothing. That was it. I gave up trying to get her to go back to the hotel with me. I left.' He added, 'Things were getting out of control, Hil. I just needed to get away.'

  'Don't blame yourself,' she told him.

  'I do. I should have told someone she was out there, but she was threatening to say we had sex. She said no one would believe me, and she was right. I couldn't take the risk, not after last year. I couldn't put myself in the middle of it. Or you.'

  We're in the middle of it anyway, Hilary thought, but she didn't need to say it out loud. Mark knew the score.

  'They're going to come after me,' he said. 'They know I'm in the hotel. The police are going to paint a bullseye on my chest.'

  'You're probably right,' she acknowledged, 'but let's not panic, OK? Did anyone see you leaving the room? Did anyone see you on the beach or see you when you came back?'

  She watched him mentally retrace his footsteps. 'I don't know. There may have been a hotel employee on the patio when I left our room, i but that's a couple hundred yards away. I'm not sure whether he saw me or would recognize me.'

  'Did you see anyone with Glory on the beach?' she asked. 'Someone killed her. Whoever it was may have been watching the two of you.'

  Mark shook his head. 'I didn't see anyone.'

  She heard hesitation in his voice. 'But?'

  'I don't know. I felt like we were being watched. I felt like Glory saw someone, but I didn't see anyone there.'

  'Did she talk about anyone else?'

  'Just Tresa,' he said. 'And her boyfriend. Troy Geier.'

  'What did she say?'

  'She talked about Troy being jealous. And she said - well, she said

  Tresa saw the two of us during the competition, and she got rattled. That was why she didn't do well.'

  Hilary nodded. She'd actually felt guilty being in the audience during Tresa's performance. Despite everything that had happened, she still liked the girl, and she hated to see her do poorly.

  Mark leaned back into the sofa and stared at the ceiling. The room was gloomy and cold. 'So what do I do?'

  'Right now, nothing,' Hilary said.

  'I should tell the police what I know,' Mark insisted. He paused. 'Or do you think I should shut up? I mean, if no one saw me ...'

  He let the thought drift away, but she knew what he was thinking. If no one saw him on the beach, should he really put his head into the lion's mouth by admitting he was out there with Glory?

  'We need to talk to a lawyer,' she said. 'Right now. Today. Until we do, I think you shouldn't say anything. We don't lie, but we don't volunteer. OK?'

  Mark nodded. 'OK.'

  'We'll get through this,' she said.

  He frowned and said what she was thinking. 'It's going to be just like last year, Hil, you know that. Everyone's going to think I'm guilty
.'

  'You're not.'

  'I'm not sure how much more of this we can take.'

  'I know.'

  Mark leaned over to embrace her, but before he could, their heads snapped around. Someone rapped sharply on the door of the hotel room.

  Without looking through the peephole, Hilary already knew. It was beginning.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  Cab Bolton had to knock twice before the attractive blonde woman answered the hotel door. When she did, he made a show of checking his notes. 'Mrs Bradley, is that right? Hilary Bradley?'

  She smiled politely at him without saying yes or no. 'May I help you?'

  'My name is Cab Bolton. I'm a detective with the Criminal Investigations Division of the Naples Police Bureau.' He flipped open the leather folder for his badge and handed it to her to review, which she did.

  'What is this about?' she asked.

  'You may not have heard, but there was a serious crime committed on the beach outside the hotel overnight. A teenage girl was murdered.'

  He looked for surprise in her face and didn't see any. She knew exactly why he was there. You could always see intelligence in the eyes, like a window on to the machinery of the mind. Hilary Bradley was a smart woman.

  'That's awful,' she replied, 'but I'm not sure how I can help you.'

  Cab pointed one of his absurdly long fingers over her shoulder at the glass doors leading to the beach. 'Your room looks out on the area where the crime took place.'

  'I see. Well, come in. I don't have much time, though, and I don't believe I can help you.'

  Cab ducked his head as he went through the doorway, which was what he had to do with most doorways. Behind him, Hilary Bradley let the heavy door swing shut. As he walked into the center of the room, he was conscious of the closed bathroom door and the noise of the shower. He noted two open suitcases pushed against the wall, half-filled with clothes. Laid messily on top of one suitcase was a bright yellow man's tank top with a logo that read DC. He continued past the unmade king-sized bed to the far end of the room, where he had a view through the patio doors out on to the Gulf. The beach was sheltered by a web of palm trees with drooping fronds. He saw the crime scene team at work near the water. He recognized Lala's jet- black hair.

  'Beautiful view,' he commented.

  Behind him, Hilary said nothing. He slid open the door and stepped on to the square stone patio, which was dusty with sand and featured two lounge chairs and a metal table. From the patio, you could walk down two steps to a walkway that led to the beach. He eyed the hotel rooms on either side of him, which all had similar waterfront access. It would be easy to come and go undetected in the middle of the night.

  When he went back inside the hotel room, he noticed that both suitcases were now closed. Hilary Bradley waited with her arms folded over her chest. She made a point of not sitting down and not suggesting that he sit down. She wasn't interested in prolonging his visit.

  'The guests in this wing are all potential witnesses,' Cab told her. 'We're interviewing everyone.'

  'I'm afraid I didn't see anything.'

  'Nothing at all?'

  'No, I didn't look out overnight.'

  'Did you hear anything?'

  'I was asleep.'

  'Did you get up at all during the night? Did you go to the bathroom?'

  'No, I didn't.'

  Cab nodded and let the polite dance play out between them. He wanted to put her at ease and not imply that there was anything special about his visit. She and her husband were two of many guests looking out on the beach, not suspects with a connection to the victim. Even so, he had little doubt that she'd already seen through him and was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  He studied the woman in front of him. Hilary Bradley was smart, and she was pretty, too, in a mature, self-confident way. He figured she was a few years older than he was, maybe forty, or maybe knocking on the door. Her face was rounded, with blue eyes and thin black glasses, and dangly earrings that looked like red sour balls. She wore a simple burgundy top, tan slacks that emphasized her long legs, and sandals. Despite her shoulder-length blond hair, she wasn't a classic bombshell, and he didn't imagine she ever had been one, even when she was younger. Nonetheless, she had the sexiness of a woman who knew she was two steps ahead of you in just about everything.

  She looked up at Cab. Based on his height, almost everyone did. He could feel her taking his measure, even as he did the same to her. Most people underestimated him. They thought he was a spoiled beach bum; he didn't look like a man who'd graduated from UCLA in three years. They saw the pomade in his hair, the exfoliated complexion, the earring, the suit, all of it on top of a lean body that made the ceilings look low, and they wrote him off as a shallow metrosexual. He didn't care. He also didn't think Hilary Bradley was the kind of woman who would make that mistake about him. Her face was a mask as she stared at him, revealing nothing, but she had the look of someone who didn't misjudge an enemy.

  Cab glanced at the hotel roster in his hand. 'You're not here alone, are you, Mrs Bradley? Your husband is with you?'

  Her voice was cool. 'That's right.'

  'His name is Mark?'

  'Yes.'

  'Is that him I hear in the shower?'

  'Of course.'

  'I'd like to talk to him, too,' Cab told her.

  'I doubt he saw anything either.'

  'How do you know? You said you were sleeping.'

  Hilary got a little frown on her face, as if she was annoyed at being outfoxed by his question, if my husband saw anything overnight, he would have told me.'

  'I still need to speak to him myself.'

  'We'll try to find you before we leave, Detective,' she said, with a glance at the door to the room. Her meaning was clear: she wanted the interview to be over.

  Cab stroked the point of his protruding chin and stayed where he was. 'Do you mind if I ask what you two are doing in Naples?'

  'We're on vacation. I'm a high school teacher, and it's spring break. We had some hotel points on our credit card, so we used them to get a free week here.'

  'Nice. How did you happen to choose this hotel?'

  He watched her think through her response, as if she was trying to understand his motives in asking. Or maybe she was trying to assess how little she could say without lying. 'In addition to my academic teaching, I've been a dance coach for many years,' she explained finally. 'Some of my former students were performing in a college competition at the hotel this week.'

  'So when you're not coaching dance, what do you teach?'

  'Math.'

  'Math was never my subject,' Cab said, which was a lie. He'd aced every class in school. Except geography. His brain didn't process directions. He needed a map to find his own bathroom.

  'Where do you teach?' he continued.

  'It's a high school in Door County, Wisconsin.'

  'Where exactly is that?' he asked.

  'If you look at a map of Wisconsin, Door County is like the state's pinky finger. The peninsula juts out into the water between Green Bay and Lake Michigan.'

  'Sounds like a pretty spot.' 'It is.'

  'Do you know a family named Fischer living in that area?'

  Hilary's blue eyes turned cold. Cab figured that Lake Michigan was probably cold, but it would have felt as balmy as the Gulf compared to this woman's eyes.

  'Do you think I'm stupid, Detective?'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'I know you're not here because we happen to have a room that overlooks the beach. I don't imagine the lead detective on a murder investigation does the grunt work of interviewing hundreds of potential witnesses.'

  Cab smiled. 'There's a lot more grunt work than you might imagine.'

  'Someone already told me that the dead girl is Glory Fischer, and someone obviously told you about me and my husband.'

  'Yes, your husband's name did come up.'

  'Mark had nothing to do with this.'

  'Maybe not, but
you can understand my concern, given his relationship with the Fischers. Particularly the dead girl's sister.'

  'There was no relationship,' Hilary insisted. 'The accusations against him were false.'

  'I don't really care,' Cab told her. it raises suspicions about him cither way.'

  'My husband didn't kill Glory Fischer.'

  'Except we've already established that you were sleeping, Mrs Bradley, so you really don't know what he was doing.'

  'I know Mark.'

  'Nobody knows anybody,' Cab said.

  'Maybe you don't, but I do. I'm not going to see my husband subjected to another witch-hunt, Detective.'

  'I don't do witch-hunts. I don't believe what anyone tells me, good or bad, until I can prove it one way or another. So right now, what I'd really like is for your husband to stop hiding behind the bathroom door pretending he's in the shower, and instead have him come out and talk to me.'

  'I'll let him know you stopped by,' Hilary said.

  'If your husband has nothing to hide, let him answer a few questions.'

  'You've already lied about your reasons for coming here, Detective,' she snapped. 'So spare me the "nothing to hide" speech. Mark and I don't trust people any more than you do. We've learned that we can only trust each other.'

  'I've seen a lot of wives who think that,' Cab told her. 'Most of them wind up disappointed.'

  'Do I look like a naive twenty-five year old to you?'

  'No, you don't,' he said.

  'Then don't treat me like one.'

  Cab dug in his pocket. 'Your husband is going to have to answer questions sooner or later. Here's my card. Have him call me. Don't bother leaving town today, because you'll just have to fly back here again.'

  'Are you finished?'

  'No, if your husband won't answer questions, then I'll ask you. Did you know Glory Fischer and her sister were here at this hotel?'

  'I've said all I plan to say for now,' Hilary told him.