“You can tell me on the way to your house. Don’t bother waiting for Corey to rescue you. I sent him packing. And everyone else will be going to the cemetery and then to the Washingtons. I’m all you’ve got.”
“Heaven help me.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
“The Hound of Heaven,” Line 135
The last three days took their toll. Elise, always Ironwoman packed into five and a quarter feet and a hundred ten pounds, didn’t get sick, and didn’t get tired. But the funeral, the family, her dogs, and the odd mishap of the morning had left her wrung dry.
Aching feet dragging, shoulder and elbow throbbing, she let herself be led to the pickup. Once in, she kept close to the door to stay far from Russ.
“That was a dirty trick, Pastor Martinez. I thought more of you. Who else would manipulate a prayer that is supposed to bring comfort? It’s—it’s exploitative. It’s abusing your bully pulpit and the one you’re bullying is me.” Her voice rose in pitch and intensity. If she found energy in nothing but her anger, so be it. “I come by hate easily, Russ, and right now I really, really, hate you. What you did was shameless.”
Elise knew she possessed a sharp tongue but she seldom turned it on friends. Russell had acted like a friend the past few days, but now, as her fury built, she saw him in a new light. If he saved her she would be a notch on his belt, a feather in his cap, a star in his crown. Another soul to mount in his trophy case. The anger choked and she couldn’t continue.
Russ kept his eyes off her, but didn’t have the grace to appear defensive or even embarrassed. “You presume too much. The prayer wasn’t about that suggestion I made after prayer meeting. Saul and I had many conversations about the long shadows cast by slavery. We talked about all the masters we humans chain ourselves to, and how we rejoice to be slaves of the only Master who loves us more than we love ourselves. When he was dying, even, we talked about it. I didn’t throw it in just to jab at you.”
She clutched her purse. If Timothy had sworn he wasn’t taking a verbal poke at her she would have laughed in his face and called him a liar. Russ didn’t lie.
“But I admit, having you at the funeral made it all the more imperative to include our identity as slaves in the prayer.”
Now she was truly incensed. “I get it, Russ. You’re tied to God. He won’t release the chains and you don’t want Him to. Can’t you work it through your thick, faith-clogged head that I’m not hooked to a chain? If I ever was it snapped five years ago. God and I barely have a nodding acquaintance and that’s how I want to keep it. He blew it. When He couldn’t be bothered to take care of Christopher I realized He certainly didn’t intend to concern Himself about me. If God regrets it, too bad. He can quit chasing me like a hound or waiting patiently for my return. We’re nothing to each other.”
He didn’t answer, and once again she wondered why she resented his immunity to her sacrilegious impiety. His grip on the steering wheel didn’t even tighten.
“Let me out here, please.”
“What? Almost a mile from the estate?”
“I need the air. Thank you for the ride. Take my advice, Russell, and cut your losses. I’m not worth your time or energy or gas.”
For the first time his expression changed and his chin thrust forward. If he didn’t stop, she wasn’t sure what she would do. Jumping from a moving vehicle seemed dramatic.
“All right.” Chin still out, he nevertheless flipped his turn signal and pulled to the curb. “You win. If you call it winning. I suppose you couldn’t make your desire to be free of me any clearer. It’s been an interesting couple of days, Elise.” He waited in silence as she unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door and slid to the ground.
She pushed the door till it was almost shut, then called though the opening, “Well, goodbye.”
“Goodbye.” He reached over, gave her a second to withdraw her nose, and pulled the door shut with a click. He signaled and rejoined the sparse traffic on the road. Elise watched, waiting for him to turn back. He did not. She half turned, expecting him to go around the block and pull up behind her, insisting she get in. He didn’t. Checking to make sure her cell phone was on and the volume turned up, she started walking in the direction of the Amberson Estate and congratulated herself on how she’d gotten exactly what she wanted. Hadn’t she?
Two blocks later she would have kicked herself if every muscle wasn’t already doing so. She tripped on an uneven slab of sidewalk and her toe, unprotected now that half its nail was gone, scraped the cement.
The next ten blocks were a blur of pain and self-pity and resentment that Russ had listened to her. Elise left little drops of blood every few feet. Each step jarred her shoulder and elbow. And she still owed him sixty dollars.
The gates stood open. She must be going mad. Limping down the drive, she saw the cars lined along the drive and wished she could stamp her foot. Another family confrontation must be brewing. A dusty sedan with a familiar ring to it sat humbly at the far end of the gleaming row.
“No rest for the wicked,” she muttered and opened the front door, wondering how hard it would be to slip upstairs, pack a bag, and leave. But the dogs and the gentlemen awaited her in the foyer.
“Mrs. Amberson. We were getting worried.” Detective Steven Bly pushed himself from the wall he’d been lounging against.
Not bothering to keep exasperation from her voice, she snapped, “Who is ‘we’ and why were you worried?”
“Hello, Elise.” Timmy reeled down the hall from his father’s study. He had a drink in his hand and from his gait Elise assumed it wasn’t his first of the day. “Your SUV is here but you weren’t.”
To make her joy complete, Palmer and Godfrey strode in tandem from the solarium, Mutt and Jeff gamboling at their heels. Yep. Those dogs sure needed her.
“Where have you been?” Palmer asked.
“Good golly. Are there Ambersons hiding in the window seats? Who’s going to pop out at me next?”
“I am.” Therese materialized behind her.
This was an untruth. Therese never popped. She floated and drifted, exerting minimum energy. She never would have been able to keep up with the offspring she hadn’t borne. Elise pitied Palmer, whose fondness for children was evident and unrealized. Did unhappy infertility prevent pregnancy? Or, as Elise suspected, did Therese exercise her right of refusal? On those infrequent family gatherings when Timmy Junior had his children along, Palmer gravitated toward them, one apologetic eye on his wife.
At the moment, Elise had little sympathy to spare for her brother-in-law. She wanted to be through with the lot of them. “Why are you here?” She pointed at Steven Bly. “You, especially.”
The detective, examining a painting of an Amberson ancestor, seemed content to let Godfrey take the lead.
“I got a call from the owner of the landscaping service this morning. Seems one of their employees found you outside before dawn. You were drenched and acted confused. He couldn’t be certain, but you seemed hurt. They thought I should know.”
Shouldn’t Godfrey know everything?
“It took half the family to check on my well-being?” She swung to face Detective Bly, her sore shoulder forcing her to pivot like a music box ballerina with a faulty windup. “And why are you here, again? Don’t tell me the landscapers called you too.”
“This may surprise you, but they did. And wisely. They have a reputation to protect, especially if anything unusual happens on the grounds. I called Mr. Amberson and we agreed to meet here.”
Godfrey appeared to take exception to this final statement. “We preferred to talk with Elise first, without the constraint she might feel around a…” he paused. “Around someone who reminded her of the night my son died.”
Steven Bly moved to the next painting. Elise couldn’t understand the fascination those flat renditions held. “Mr. Amberson, your fi
rm, I am guessing, doesn’t represent Elise’s interests?”
The affronted expression on Godfrey’s face answered for him.
Elise elaborated. “I have the same attorney as my parents, Steve.”
All Ambersons seemed taken aback by her familiar use of his name, and so did Steven. But he grinned and continued to study the likeness of a long-dead Amberson.
When Detective Bly ran out of paintings, he faced the family with an air of vague regret. “Here is what we’ll do. I’d like Elise to tell me what happened. This will be just another casual talk. Same as our last two.”
Three Amberson heads shot up, twisting from Elise to the policeman with speculation. The fourth head, Timmy’s, had deserted them for his father’s liquor cabinet. Elise shrugged and walked into the solarium. She really didn’t care if anyone followed or not.
Follow, they did. Palmer came last, a reluctant Timmy in tow. Elise chose the most comfortable seat—she was, after all, wounded—and waited for them to settle. Timmy, obviously angry he’d been separated from his personal happy hour, jerked his arm from his uncle’s and flounced onto the sofa. Therese narrowed eyes at him, then focused on her husband. Palmer followed his father toward a small table across from Elise and they drew chairs out to face her. Therese settled onto the love seat which left nowhere for Detective Bly but the opium chair. She gave him credit. He settled his backside with aplomb.
They sat in uncompanionable silence a few minutes while Steven took out his notebook, paged through it, and tucked it back in a pocket.
“Mrs. Amberson—”
“Elise.” She flashed him a warm smile.
“Oh. Sure. What I’d like you to do is to tell us everything you remember leading up to the incident the landscaping company reported.”
“And how far back should I go, Steve?”
“Why don’t you start with a general overview of yesterday, after we talked.”
Again the Family Amberson leaned forward in avid curiosity at the mention of a previous conversation. The detective observed this with a poorly concealed grin, so they sat back and feigned disinterest.
Adjusting her shoulder, Elise thought back to the long previous day. The prayer meeting seemed a good place to begin, for the sheer shock value it would give her in-laws. She skipped over her emotional meltdown—she’d really been having trouble with Russ’s prayers. She told about Jeff’s inexplicable interest in the north side of the garage, his insistence that he go out in the wee hours of the morning, her panic when he disappeared around the same corner and didn’t come back. “I couldn’t go there. It’s a nasty spot.”
Godfrey frowned as though he took this personally. Therese’s reaction was one of vague scorn and Palmer wore his lawyer poker face. But Timmy shuddered and she knew he felt the same distaste.
“So I went to the back and turned on every light I could for the yard. I still don’t know where Jeff was. He wasn’t behind the garage—” she stopped and frowned, trying to remember how she’d known he wasn’t there. “Because the light was on…”
Concentrating on the memory, she didn’t realize for several seconds that everyone had eyes glued on her. No, not everyone. Therese lost interest and began digging in her purse. Detective Bly held his pen very still above the notebook.
It probably was nothing. “I couldn’t find Jeff. And then I saw something floating…” Elise gulped air, “in the water.”
Steven waited a tactful minute for her to get control. “And you thought it was your dog?”
“I did. The morning before I’d found Mutt in a closet, almost dead. And Timothy, last week…”
The detective nodded. “Very understandable, why you’d think it might be your dog.”
Elise continued. “The lights from the yard weren’t bright enough for me to see clearly. I’m not sure exactly how I got down there. I slipped on the flagstones and fell. Then I made it to the side of the pool and the thing in the water looked like it had four legs and a tail.” Why did this have to be so hard? Jeff lay at her feet right now, his chin on her foot. But that moment by the pool stayed with her.
“The wind was pretty strong. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the water with Jeff looking at me from the edge. And my hair hurt.”
She finally had Therese’s attention. “Your hair?”
“It got caught on the branch. I think that’s what I thought was Jeff. Russ thinks the branch saved me from drowning.”
“Dad.” Palmer turned to his father. “We need to get a tree trimmer here. Too many limbs falling.”
“It sounds,” her father-in-law said with a wry twist to his mouth, “as though it’s lucky for Elise they do.”
Mutt chose that moment to cavort into the room and launch himself onto Therese’s lap. With a single languid motion she pushed him to the floor and, undaunted, he levitated to Timmy.
“Anything else you remember Mrs.-I-mean-Elise? Did you see or hear anyone?”
Therese spoke into her purse, once again the only object of interest in the room. “You’ve probably mentioned that you sleepwalk, am I correct Elise?”
Steven’s head swiveled to the thin, chic woman on the love seat before redirecting attention to Elise. Palmer, with a throat-clearing and uneasy shifting on his chair, spoke. “Therese. This isn’t the time to air family laundry.”
She raised perfect brows at him. “There’s nothing dirty about sleepwalking, Palmer dear. It’s a medical condition. Elise isn’t to blame. As a matter of fact, acknowledging it is the first step to seeking treatment. And if it has a bearing on the events of the past week…” She shrugged. “It certainly should be part of the conversation.”
Elise knew she hadn’t been sleeping when she went into the water and almost as certain she hadn’t shut Mutt in the closet. If she were going to walk on the night of Timothy’s funeral, she doubted it would be into his study. More likely she would have woken up at a drive-through ordering a hamburger from a non-sustainable restaurant chain. She came out of her reverie to hear Palmer squawking.
“What do you mean, Therese, by ‘the events of the past week’?”
A smile played around the corners of the woman’s mouth. She snapped the bag shut and turned to Elise. “You didn’t think that your friendship with this fine detective means he’s written you off a suspect list, do you? Honestly. You and Timothy fought all the time. You have a nice chunk of change coming to you as his widow. And there’s that yummy young pastor playing Sir Lancelot to your Guinevere. With so much stimuli, any sleepwalker might be tempted to act on repressed impulses.” She smiled brightly at the assemblage. “I’ve been doing my homework on somnambulism.”
Timmy straightened, fingers digging into Mutt’s fur. “Is it true? Is she still a suspect in my father’s murder?”
“No suspects at this time, I’m sorry to report. Elise, anything else you can remember?”
Godfrey rose. “I’m not your attorney, Elise. But if he were here I believe he would tell you that you’ve been more than cooperative and need answer no more questions.” He added stiffly, “I apologize for my daughter-in-law’s insinuations. And you are welcome to stay here as long as you need.”
Godfrey, always cold and distant, must extend his strong sense of family to her. Murderer or not, she still bore the name “Amberson.”
“Thank you, Godfrey. Steve, I don’t remember anything else, and, to be honest, I don’t want to answer any more questions right now.” She let a hint of pleading into her voice. “I need to take painkillers every four hours as needed, and the dislocated shoulder I didn’t get from sleepwalking into the pool”—she let her eyes slide toward Therese—“is beginning to ache.”
Steven tucked away the notebook and wriggled out of the opium chair. “I’m going to look around the grounds, but I don’t have much hope of finding anything. Elise, it might be better if you got out of here. Maybe”—he swept a hand to include all Ambersons present—“stay with family?” When no one jumped to offer an invitation, he amended with a phil
osophical shrug. “Make sure you lock up tight, then. And tell your dogs they can hold it if they want to go out in the middle of the night. You need some rest.”
Godfrey, stiff and correct, walked out with the detective. Therese smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her dress.
“About the house, dear. It really isn’t Godfrey’s to offer. He voluntarily passed his right to occupy to his oldest child. Now that is Palmer. We—he has some buyers interested.”
Before Elise could react, Palmer bounced to his feet, blustering and embarrassed. “Therese. What has gotten into you? Hinting she killed Timothy and now kicking her out to the street? Yes, Elise,” he turned to her apologetically. “Timothy’s children and I have talked. With Father’s blessing we will probably sell. But you certainly needn’t pack your bags. Just yet.”
A strangled cry came from Timmy. “Yes, she does! Please, Elise. The faster we get rid of this place the better.” His breathing shallow, his eyes glazed, Timmy Junior was very drunk indeed. He confirmed this when he burst out, “Don’t you understand? This house is cursed!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
“The Hound of Heaven,” Line 169
Timothy’s vodka-numbed tongue couldn’t work its way around the word ‘cursed’ but Elise had no desire to laugh. Mutt, never a rock during passionate human outbursts, made himself scarce. Jeff had been on the alert since emotions began rising. With an apologetic nuzzle for Elise, he lumbered to Timmy’s side. The young man broke down and buried his face in the broad back, shoulders shaking.
They all should have seen it coming. Timmy was, Elise knew, emotionally just barely stable. He had leaned heavily if reluctantly on his cold, distant father and now, without him, collapsed—an abandoned marionette. She would have expected the estate to be his link to Timothy, not a house of horrors. Elise narrowed her eyes. Unless, like his sister, he needed the money and chose this unique method of convincing the family to sell.
Palmer, rolling on the balls of his feet, forced a laugh. “Better not use that word with potential buyers, right? We should talk, son. Tell you what. Bring Tiffanie and the kids over later. I can cook out and—”
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