Nine Lives

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Odelia had mentioned Leona’s springtime study makeover. Was it Troy who had given the walls their fresh coat of yellow paint?

  For some reason, she’s bothered by the notion of him hanging around this house—around this room.

  This was Leona’s sanctuary.

  Yet Bella herself trespassed here just the other day. Who else did?

  Has Luther had a chance to look over the appointment book? When he does, he’ll notice the missing page. He’ll ask her about it.

  Or will he?

  Not if he thinks I’m the one who tore it out.

  Who knows? He might already have seen it, might already consider me a suspect. He wouldn’t let on. He’d act as if nothing is wrong.

  “Thanks, Bella,” he says with a nod as she stands aside to let him cross the threshold, followed by Steve.

  Yes, he’ll act just like this.

  Standing in the doorway, she finds herself staring at the empty spot on the table where she’d found the appointment book on her first night here. Hoping Luther didn’t notice her gaze, she guiltily shifts it to the freshly painted walls.

  That makes her wonder again about Troy, which leaves her feeling even more unsettled.

  Then she notices the pillows.

  There are three of them along the back of the window seat. Just yesterday, when she was in here with Luther and Odelia, they were perfectly aligned. She clearly remembers noticing that Luther, with his soldier-straight posture, didn’t allow his back to touch them.

  Now the pillows are askew, clustered on one end of the seat as though they were hastily tossed there.

  But they couldn’t have been. Not if they were straight before. Not if she hasn’t returned to the room or let her key out of her possession ever since she locked the door yesterday after Luther looked around and grabbed the appointment book.

  She hasn’t. Of course she hasn’t.

  It’s a classic locked-room mystery—and she alone has the key.

  Except that I don’t.

  Someone else got into this room within the last twenty-four hours. Either that person has the missing key . . .

  Or Chance the Cat isn’t the only one around here who can walk through walls.

  * * *

  Looking for something out of the ordinary, Bella keeps a close eye on the other guests as they make their way to the sunlit breakfast room.

  Everyone is eagerly anticipating this afternoon’s guest speaker, a renowned medium who may not be a household name everywhere but certainly is in the Dale.

  The doddering St. Clair sisters repeat themselves, squabble, and doze off between sentences. Fritz Dunkle reads his newspaper and occasionally expounds on some obscure topic. The Adabners chat animatedly about their upcoming aura identification seminar like it’s an AARP bus to the casino. Kelly Tookler peppers the conversation with, “Right, Jim?” and Jim dutifully salts it with, “Right.”

  Meanwhile, Bella goes about her own business—brewing coffee, wiping crumbs, replenishing the pastry platter—as though nothing unusual happened. In some moments, she almost manages to convince herself that nothing has. Maybe Steve’s near miss wasn’t significant—or particularly threatening—to anyone but Steve himself.

  But then either logic or sheer exhaustion grips her again, and she finds herself looking for signs that someone is hiding something. She shifts her gaze to the windows as if expecting to see an evil predator lurking in the mock orange shrubs with the crosshairs set on her.

  Finally, she hears the study door open and footsteps cross the parlor, heading toward the front hall. She peeks in just in time to see Steve head up the stairs.

  Luther is in the doorway. He waves her in.

  “Close the door,” he commands in a low voice. “We don’t want anyone to panic and flee.”

  Panic and flee are some strong words. The latter is exactly what Bella herself longs to do. Just grab Max and get the hell out of here.

  Max—plus Queen Chance the Cat and eight kittens?

  “Maybe everyone should leave,” she tells Luther as she closes the door. “Maybe it’s not safe here.”

  He sits in one of the wingback chairs and gestures for her to take the other. The pillows are still heaped on the window seat, and she has to make an effort not to stare at them as he speaks.

  “Nothing has happened inside of the house, Bella. Mr. Pierson wasn’t even in the Dale. And what happened to him could very well have been an accident.”

  “What about Leona?”

  “Accidents do happen.” He gestures at her bandaged hand and battered leg.

  He’s right, of course. She shouldn’t let her imagination carry her away.

  Yet she has to ask, “Don’t you think there’s a chance that neither of those things were accidents? And that one might have something to do with the other?”

  “It’s a possibility. But if that’s the case, then every single person under this roof is a potential suspect.”

  Including Bella herself. Yes, she gets that, loud and clear.

  “If we let them scatter, we risk letting someone dangerous slip away,” Luther goes on. “I think that the best thing to do right now is go on with business as usual.”

  Easy for him to say.

  “I have a five-year-old child living under this roof, Detective Ragland.”

  “Call me Luther. I haven’t forgotten that for a second, believe me . . . can I call you Bella?”

  He might as well. The nickname is no longer reserved for Sam alone. Here in the Dale, for better or worse, she seems to have become Bella.

  “I’m not asking you to stay indefinitely,” Luther tells her. “Or even overnight. I just need a chance to look into a few things, and I’d rather you didn’t mention Steve’s incident to anyone else just yet. You haven’t, have you?”

  “No, but he just went upstairs. I’m sure he’s told his wife what happened, and by now, maybe some of the others, too. And if he hasn’t, Eleanor probably will.”

  “Don’t be so sure. He doesn’t want any of this getting out. They both want to protect his job and his retirement benefits. I’m guessing he’s not going to tell anyone anything unless they ask. I hope you won’t, either.”

  She hesitates before responding. “I won’t. But—”

  “I honestly don’t think there’s any immediate danger.”

  “So you don’t think it’s time to call the police?” she asks, even though she’s pretty certain that there’s no way to involve the authorities in Steve’s brush with danger without potentially opening the door to an official investigation into Leona’s death.

  “Steve’s not ready to do it at this point,” Luther says. “He wants me to ask around, find out if maybe someone saw a speeding car this morning around Bear Lake.”

  “And you don’t think we should report it?”

  “We don’t have any solid evidence that a crime occurred this morning.”

  “Just like with Leona’s death.”

  “Exactly.” Luther’s comment is punctuated by his ringing cell phone.

  “Sorry,” he says, taking it out of his pocket and glancing at it. “I have to take this call.”

  He steps out of the room with the phone, leaving her alone to eye the bench beneath the window.

  Does it, like the one in the living room, have a storage compartment beneath? Is that why the pillows were moved? Did someone open it, looking for something?

  Maybe she should open it now.

  But if Luther catches her, he might think she’s hiding something.

  So? I’m not.

  But if she gives him even the slightest reason to think she’s guilty, he might go to the police after all, behind her back. They’ll come to question her. They might take her away for questioning, and that would mean leaving Max with . . .

  Someone else.

  I can’t afford to trust anyone, Bella realizes. Not right now. Not even Luther.

  He reappears in the doorway, looking harried.

  “I have to get
to the hospital. My mom isn’t doing very well this morning.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. I don’t like to leave this way, but I’ve got to run. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. Think you can hang tight for now?”

  She assures him that she can.

  If “hang tight” means fighting off panic while continuing through the motions of an anything-but-ordinary day, then she’s got it covered.

  After seeing Luther to the door, she returns to the study. This time, she locks it behind her from the inside. Going over to the window seat, she tosses the pillows onto the floor and lifts the cushion, feeling around along the edges of the bench.

  Sure enough, there’s a concealed hinge and latch. The bench doubles as the lid of a storage area.

  Tugging it open, Bella sees that it, like the other window seat compartment, is home to a mishmash of household clutter.

  She sorts through it, looking for a torn-out page from the appointment book or the missing notebook or laptop.

  They aren’t here.

  Either they never were or someone else got to them first.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Just before ten o’clock, Bella trudges wearily up the stairs to feed Spidey again, wishing she were on her way back to bed instead.

  This day has been plenty long enough, and it’s still merely midmorning. How on earth is she going to stay upright for another twelve hours or so?

  Even when she finally does finally get to climb under the covers tonight, she’ll still have to set her alarm to wake her every other hour.

  Yes, but at least she knows exactly what she has to do to keep the kitten alive.

  When it comes to everything—everyone—else . . .

  All bets are off.

  Surely the driver who tried to run over Steve Pierson on Bachellor Hill Road this morning hadn’t made a road trip from Massachusetts and wasn’t motivated by overinflated school taxes. As disturbing as that scenario might be, it would, in the grand scheme of things, provide Bella some measure of comfort.

  But it’s simply too farfetched, isn’t it? Especially when Steve Pierson’s near miss happened so close—in timing and proximity—to Leona’s death.

  After replacing the window seat cushion, repositioning the pillows, and locking the study door behind her, she busied herself again with breakfast for her guests, who lingered in the breakfast room chatting and eating.

  Still conspicuously missing were the Piersons and Grant Everard.

  Less conspicuously: Bonnie Barrington.

  Bella hadn’t given her absence a second thought until Kelly Tookler asked if she’d seen her. “We had plans to go to the sweat lodge together. The ceremony starts at ten.”

  “Maybe she decided to sleep in instead.”

  “Bonnie never sleeps in. She hardly sleeps at all. She has insomnia. I knocked on her door. She wasn’t in there.”

  Maybe she’s hiding, Bella thought grumpily. Maybe she just didn’t feel like sweating or . . . or lodging. Or hearing, “Right, Bonnie?” all day long.

  Kelly was concerned, but Bella has too many other things on her mind to worry about whether one of the guests is going to be late for some bizarre ceremony.

  Sweat lodge ceremonies, aura identification workshops . . .

  Business as usual in a place where weird things happen all day—and all night.

  Bella can pretend she’s immune to the weirdness, and she can try to resist or ignore it.

  But there’s no denying that she herself has witnessed—and okay, experienced—some things she can’t quite explain.

  She first dreamed about Leona brushing her hair before she even knew what Leona looked like—and Odelia seemed to have almost the same dream minus the crazy wind chimes.

  Wind chimes—just the other day, she witnessed the ones in the backyard moving, clanging, without the slightest gust of wind.

  And almost in that very spot, she saw that hand—she swears it was a hand—in the lake.

  And what about the identical pregnant cats four hundred miles apart and the nonexistent billboard for the nonexistent Summer Pines Campground?

  And what about Max? What about his uncanny knowledge of Chance’s full name and the fact that she’d have seven—or eight—kittens on the exact day?

  It—all of it, every strange thing that’s happened here—can be chalked up to lucky guesses or sheer imagination or coincidence, but . . .

  There are no coincidences.

  Darn you, Odelia.

  The medium next door is getting to her.

  At the top of the stairs, she notices that Grant’s door is still closed. Is he in there, sound asleep? Is he awake? Is he there at all?

  Was he walking down the hall at four thirty in the morning?

  Was he speeding down Bachellor Hill Road two hours later?

  But what could he possibly have against Steve Pierson?

  What would Grant stand to gain from harming him?

  The questions pelt like buckshot in her gut. Reeling, she unlocks the door to the Rose Room.

  Stepping inside, she braces herself to find that something is off here, too.

  But as she casts a wary eye around the room, her topsy-turvy world gradually rights itself again.

  There’s Max, snug and safe, asleep in the big bed. There’s Chance, placidly licking one of her kittens—not Spidey—as the others suckle, wriggle, cry, and nap at her side.

  The room is sun drenched and serene. A gentle breeze billows the lace curtains. Summer sounds seep through the screen: kids’ voices calling out to each other, the hum of a Jet Ski on the lake, cars passing on the road with the windows rolled down and music playing.

  If only this—the sheer ordinariness of a warm July morning—could be Bella’s real life.

  If only this place were some other place, some mundane small town where people don’t die under mysterious circumstances—and once they’re dead, they stay dead. A place where the living talk only among themselves.

  Then Max and I would be able to make our fresh start here.

  The sudden longing doesn’t make any more sense than anything else that’s happened today. A minute or two ago, she wanted nothing more than to flee Lily Dale.

  Now more than anything in the entire world, she wants to stay here?

  It’s only because she’s not ready for more good-byes. Not even to people she’s just met and a place she’s just discovered.

  She’s tired of making difficult decisions and even more tired of having them made for her.

  She pushes away the troubling thoughts and rubs the ache between her shoulder blades.

  Surely once she’s caught up on sleep and capable of rational thinking, she’ll find herself looking forward to moving on again. And if not . . .

  One thing at a time. First, feed the kitten. Then wake the kid. Then . . .

  Catch the killer?

  Sure. Something like that.

  She wearily plucks Spidey from the litter and looks down at his precious little face.

  Why, she wonders, did she, of all people, wind up with this little guy who needs so much more than she can possibly give? Why wasn’t he born to some other stray cat? Why here? Why now?

  Everything happens for a reason.

  In Bella’s lifetime—in the whole history of the world, for that matter—Odelia isn’t the first person who ever said those words. But they keep coming back to her. She keeps looking for meaning in the smallest things.

  “Why did Chance find her way to me? And why did you find your way to her?” she asks the little cat as she settles into the chair with him on her lap. “Is it because it’s so much harder for me to walk away from someone who needs me so much?”

  He only mews in response to her questions, as starved for nourishment as she is for some answers.

  She swaddles him the way Doctor Bailey showed her, making him feel safe, and the kitten ingests the formula drop by drop, courageously determined to eat, to survive.

  “Good job,�
�� she whispers, running a fingertip along his fragile little spine, stroking the downy black fur between his folded ears.

  “Mom?”

  Max has awakened at last.

  “Good morning.” She forces a jaunty note into her voice, but Max isn’t fooled for a second.

  “Why are you sad?” he asks.

  “Sad? What makes you think I’m sad?”

  “I just know.”

  Here we go again.

  “Do you want me to cheer you up?”

  “I’m fine, Max. Really. How’d you sleep?”

  “I had a bad dream.”

  Her hand goes still on the kitten’s toothpick of a spine. “What was it about?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That’s okay.”

  I don’t think I want to hear about it. Not right now.

  “How’s Chance the Cat? And the kittens? How’s Spidey?”

  “Everyone is doing great. Growing big and strong.”

  “Really?” Max gets out of bed and pads over.

  His hair, in desperate need of a barber, is sticking straight up, his eyes are rimmed in dark circles, and his pajama top is on inside out. It’s all testimony to the long, late night—and perhaps, Bella thinks with a pang, to bad mothering on her part.

  “You’re a good boy, Spidey,” Max croons, gently stroking the kitten’s head. “I’m so glad you’re our kitty. Don’t worry, Mom’s going to take good care of you.”

  Bella swallows a hard lump of regret. She can’t bring herself to tell Max that she can barely take good care of him, let alone this forlorn little creature.

  “Hey,” he says. “You cleaned up the mess.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The papers.” He gestures at the stack on the dresser. “The ones that were on the floor.”

  “Where did you find them, Max?”

  “On the floor.”

  “No, I mean before you dropped them on the floor. Where were they?”

  “I didn’t drop them on the floor. They were there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yesterday, when I came upstairs to look for Chance the Cat. There were papers all over the floor.”

  “So you didn’t take them out of the closet? Off the shelf?”