She endures an agonizing wait, though it’s probably just a matter of minutes before she hears footsteps ascending to the third floor.
There’s a sharp rap on the door. “Ms. Abrams? Are you there?”
She reaches for the knob to open it, and then hesitates. What if it’s the thief himself?
“Who’s there?” she calls, moving her walking stick from her left hand to her right, prepared to brandish it in self defense if need be.
“Officer Ryan Greenlea from the MLPD, ma’am.”
Ryan Greenlea—yes, he’s one of the local boys. She hurriedly unlocks the door with her left hand, then realizes it might be a ploy: the intruder using a name she’d recognize.
“When and where did you and I first meet, Officer Greenlea?”
“Pardon?”
“I’m making sure it’s really you. Tell me where we met, and how.”
“We met right here a few years back, when I was working on my Eagle Scout project. I built the wheelchair ramp to the side porch.”
That’s correct, but he was photographed for a community service article in the Tribune. A prowler could have seen it . . .
But this is silly, wasting precious time. Tentatively, she opens the door and peeks through a crack. Yes, there he is, looking scarcely old enough to have earned a Boy Scout’s pocketknife badge, let alone a police badge that comes with a loaded gun. Yet she’s grateful for the weapon holstered at his hip, just in case . . .
“Ms. Abrams—are you all right?” His eyes dart warily around the room behind her. “Are you alone in here?”
“Yes, of course I’m alone. You didn’t catch the thief, then?”
“There’s no one down there, but—”
“I didn’t imagine it, young man, if that’s what you’re suggesting. I may be getting up there in years, but I’m not senile.”
“No, I’m not saying you imagined it. I found a window wide open downstairs, and—”
“In the room right underneath us?” she cuts in anxiously. “The window was open? Not broken?”
“No, it was open, without a screen. Unless you left it that way?”
“I didn’t. Did you see the time capsule when you came in, or did they get it?”
“No, it was there.”
One concern alleviated, she moves on to the next. “I heard glass breaking. Was it the pitcher? The chamber pot? Both?”
“Neither. The big display case in that room is shattered.”
“Oh no.” Her stomach lurches. “Is anything missing?”
“I just glanced at it. I wouldn’t be able to tell. You’ll have to come look.”
A few minutes later, she has her answer.
The museum’s most precious items were in that case. They’re hardly valuable antiques, but they are priceless.
And now they’re gone.
It hasn’t been a good morning so far.
Deb Pelham drank one too many margaritas last night at girls’ night out, then slept through the alarm this morning. After scrambling to get ready for her nine o’clock shift at the animal hospital up in Hudson, she remembered that she’s responsible for feeding the Yamazakis’ dog down in Mundy’s Landing.
Since the divorce, she hasn’t been able to make ends meet on her vet tech salary alone, so she supplements her income as a pet sitter. But as much as she loves Rita the Akita, she could do without the out-of-the-way stop this morning.
In fact, she feels that way most mornings. She tends not to mind the nightly detour on the way home, though, when she has more time. It’s relaxing after a long day to enjoy some solitude in a large, empty house than to rush home to the small apartment she shares with a roommate, her roommate’s rambunctious puppy, and two dogs of her own.
The Yamazakis are among her favorite clients, not just because she likes them and their dog, but because she loves old houses. Theirs is large, impeccably clean, and comfortable. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to hang around there last night, thanks to all those people making note of her every move.
Mrs. Yamazaki had warned her there would be a crowd, and said it was the reason they were leaving at the last minute. As soon as she saw what was going on, Deb didn’t blame her. She got in, and she got out, ignoring the crowd.
It would be nice to find that they’ve magically disappeared overnight, but she has a feeling they haven’t. As she follows a string of cars getting off the highway in Mundy’s Landing, she realizes she’s barely going to have time to hit the drive-through for coffee after she feeds Rita.
Not good.
It gets worse by the moment as she crawls slowly into The Heights. She’s going to be late for work even without the coffee stop.
Traffic seems to be snarled on State Street, the block that runs through the heart of The Heights, perpendicular to Prospect. As she inches toward the intersection, Deb sees a police car blocking access to the street. Worried that something has happened to the Yamazaki home—a fire, a break-in, vandalism—she searches in vain for a place to park her car. It will be faster to walk in, as painful as she finds the thought, given her tequila-ravaged physical state.
Spotting a trim woman wearing yoga pants, out for a brisk morning walk, Deb rolls down the window and sticks her head out.
“Excuse me,” she calls. “Do you know what’s going on down there?”
“There was a break-in.”
Uh-oh. “Do you know which house?”
“It wasn’t a house, it was the historical society. Do you live on the block?”
“No, I just need to stop by a friend’s.” She almost said she needs to feed a dog for vacationing owners, but you don’t go around telling strangers—even harmless-looking ones—that a house is empty.
Not that Deb’s purpose, presence, and lack thereof escaped the crowd gathered outside the house last night. Thank goodness the break-in hadn’t occurred there.
“You’re probably going to have to wait a while,” the woman tells her. “It’s an active investigation and they don’t want people getting in their way. The street is blocked off on the other end over on Fulton Avenue, too. My sister lives down there, and I was supposed to stop off for coffee, but the cop told me they can’t let anyone through right now unless you’re carrying ID that shows you live on that block.”
“Oh no. Are you serious?”
The woman nods. “I guess you’re out of luck. Sorry.”
Deb thanks her and rolls up her window, left with no choice but to head to work.
Poor Rita the Akita is the one who’s out of luck. At least the poor thing is crate trained. But she’s going to be famished by the time Deb gets back there tonight.
I’ll stick around for a while, she decides. I’ll take her for a long walk, and I’ll play with her.
In fact, if the police presence keeps the gawkers at bay, she might even spend the night, as she has before, in the Yamazakis’ daughter’s vacant upstairs bedroom.
From the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s Diary
June 22, 1916
More than two years ago, browsing the shelves in the public library, I came across a recently published volume of poetry by William Carlos Williams. I have long since committed my favorite to memory. The last stanza is particularly thought-provoking of late, as my brain grows more addled and my need to act more urgent.
The Sisters lie
With their arms intertwining;
Gold against blue
Their hair is shining!
The Serpent writhes!
Orion is listening!
Gold against blue
His sword is glistening!
Sleep!
There is hunting in heaven—
Sleep safe till tomorrow.
The sisters—the trio of stars that glitter in Orion’s Belt—will be united soon in eternal sleep, and I am Orion himself, the hunter. Fitting that the constellation is invisible at this time of year—ever present, yet ever elusive, lurking in broad daylight.
I must do something.
I shall.
Calliope will become the first of the sisters.
She was raised in a San Francisco orphanage that was demolished in the great quake a decade ago, at which point she fled the West Coast in terror. She got only as far as a brothel somewhere in the Midwest, and there she stayed, she informed me, until it was shut down when prostitution was outlawed over a year ago. She worked her way east and arrived in New York only last month. She lives in a crowded tenement on the Lower East Side where not one of her neighbors, she said, speaks a word of English.
The second sister has assumed the name Liberty. She speaks only broken English and recently emigrated from Sicily. She is a lovely creature with long, wavy tresses she wears flowing down her back. Her features are delicate, although her nose is quite crooked. Broken, she confided, not once but twice. The first time, by the father she gladly left behind in Palermo; the second, by her loutish American husband, a navy sailor. She pointed to a faint bruise on her wrist and told me that he’d bestowed that gift the night before he left to go to sea.
I inquired as to his current whereabouts. She shrugged and indicated that he’ll likely be gone for quite some time, as it now seems likely America will enter the war in Europe. Left to her own devices in his absence, she hopes to earn enough money so that when he returns, she will be gone.
I neglected to inform her that will, indeed, be the case regardless of her finances.
Time is growing short. I have arranged to meet Calliope on June 29—the date of the new moon, when the night will be at its darkest, away from the midway’s electric glare.
That allows a week for me to finalize my plan. I only hope that I can keep my wits about me in the interim. My head aches constantly, riddled by fatigue. One melody loops like the endless roll on the parlor’s player piano:
By the light of the silvery moon . . .
June . . .
Soon . . .
The song is punctuated by voices—of poets, of demons, of people who surround me. The relentless din has transformed my daily life into a living hell, courtesy of the third sister: the monstrous Zelda.
Chapter 16
Annabelle isn’t surprised when the doorbell rings at precisely one o’clock. At the house closing back in May, Lester Purcell had been visibly perturbed that she and Trib arrived at the attorney’s office five minutes late.
They could have been much later, considering that Annabelle had been called to the middle school that morning. Oliver was in the nurse’s office with yet another one of his stomachaches—code for panic attacks. It turned out he was trying to avoid health class, where the teacher was about to show a movie depicting the evils of tobacco. Students who’d already seen it were gleefully talking about its graphic, disturbing images, meant to scare kids so much that they’d never start smoking.
But of course, everything scares Oliver.
Annabelle called Trib from the school nurse’s office and told him to go ahead to Ralph Duvane’s office without her.
“It’s not a party, Annabelle. It’s a real estate closing. You have to be there.”
“No kidding, Trib,” she bit out, conscious of the nurse and Oliver listening. “I’ll get there as soon as I can. I’m just trying to handle something here.”
“I’ll come handle it.”
“No, I’ve got it.”
“It doesn’t sound like you do.”
Just another tension-fraught day in the life of parenting Oliver, topped off by meeting Lester Purcell, forking over more money than they’ve ever spent—or even have—and taking ownership of a Murder House.
Now Lester is here. Annabelle hurries from the kitchen to answer the door, stepping around boxes, shoes, and baskets of clean laundry she’s been trying to find time to fold all morning. What will he think when he sees the house in such a shambles? Maybe he’ll regret having sold it to them.
Good thing it’s too late for him to change his mind.
Good thing, too, that she made it back from Kim’s house in time to answer the door.
After making arrangements for Lester to visit, she’d decided it wasn’t a good idea to have Oliver here when he arrived. If her son doesn’t like laid-back Steve Reed, imagine how he’d react to the cheerless Lester Purcell. Anyway, she’d rather he didn’t overhear her discussing the murders—especially since she hasn’t even had a chance to tell Trib the latest.
She was planning to discuss it with him when she returned from the pool, but he was dressed, with his car keys and go-mug of coffee in hand, ready to head out to the office an hour earlier than usual.
“I have a lot to do,” he said, kissing her good-bye in passing, “and I have to leave early tonight because of the gala. Oh, and my tuxedo shirt is hanging in the bathroom. I was hoping the shower would steam out some of the creases.”
“I’ll press it for you if I can figure out which box has the iron,” she promised.
She searched fruitlessly for it all morning in between other chores, then made lunch for Oliver and walked him down the street. She’d told Kim she had a couple of errands to run and didn’t want to drag him around with her.
“Catherine is here,” Kim said. “She can keep him occupied.”
“He can just watch TV, or hang around in Connor’s room and play video games.”
“Let me phrase it differently: he can keep Catherine occupied. She’s been horrible all morning. We’ve been at each other’s throats. Having Oliver here will help.”
Annabelle left him there second-guessing her own judgment. Which is worse: Oliver meeting Lester? Or being forced on a teenage girl who will only resent her mother, and possibly Oliver as well?
Guess I’m about to find out, she thinks, unlocking the dead bolt.
She opens the door just as Lester is about to press the doorbell again.
“You are home.”
“I am home,” she agrees mildly. “How are you, Mr. Purcell? It’s good to see you again.”
People are still milling around out on the sidewalk in front of the house. She wonders whether anyone recognized him. Probably not. He, like his aunt Augusta, avoided the press.
“I’m well,” he says, and they shake hands. His is so cool and dry that hers feels, by contrast, as though it’s been pulling taffy.
She’d envisioned that he’d show up in a bow tie and tweed jacket as he had at the closing, but today he’s casually, if drably, dressed in brown slacks and a tan dress shirt. His gray hair is neatly combed, and his gaunt face bears a humanizing hint of stubble.
Annabelle leads him toward the back of the house, cautioning him not to trip over a stepstool sitting squarely in their path. She’d climbed up to change a bulb in the overhead fixture earlier, only to realize she couldn’t reach anywhere near the towering ceiling. When she stuck her head into the natatorium to borrow Steve’s stepladder, he was standing on top of it.
He’s not here now, though. He was leaving just as she walked Oliver down the street. “Going to lunch?” she’d asked him, and he’d laughed.
“I did that two hours ago. When you eat breakfast at five, you’re hungry for lunch by eleven. I’m on my way to the hardware store. I’ll be back soon. Well, I’ll try. Damn traffic is a nightmare today.”
“No rush,” she said, and meant it. She’d been trying to figure out how to show Lester the statue with Steve hanging around. Now they’ll have the natatorium to themselves for a little while.
As she leads the way to the back of the house, she thanks Lester for coming.
“Not a problem,” he assures her. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve stepped over that threshold.”
She glances to see if his face betrays any trace of emotion, or resentment. His utter lack of expression is equally disconcerting.
Ora’s words echo back: I wouldn’t mention anything to Lester.
Yes, well . . . too late to reconsider.
“Ora?”
She looks up to see Rowan Mundy in the doorway of the kitchen, looking concerned.
“I just got here and heard what happened. Are you all right?”
“I wasn’t physically harmed,” Ora tells her. “But several items were stolen from the special exhibits room.”
She nearly admits the truth—that she’d prefer to be lying in a hospital bed right now to sitting here staring at a long-lukewarm cup of tea and mourning her lost artifacts.
“Thank goodness you weren’t hurt, though.” As Rowan sits beside her, Ora remembers that she knows a thing or two about grappling with armed and dangerous intruders.
“No. Whoever broke into the museum this morning wasn’t a killer. He was a thief. But the way I feel now,” she adds darkly, “that’s nearly the same thing.”
As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she regrets them.
“I’m sorry, dear,” she tells Rowan. “That was insensitive of me after all you and your family have been through.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’m just upset.”
“Of course you are.” Rowan touches her arm. “It’s a violation.”
Her empathy sounds genuine, but Ora suspects it’s gratuitous. Surely she’s thinking about the close call she and her loved ones experienced in December—and about the casualties.
Ora considers pointing out that she herself no longer has a family or even a house to call her own. This old building is her home, and its relics—including Rosie, of course—are her nearest and dearest. This is all she has in the world. To her, the loss is fresh and devastating. To think that after she’s spent the better part of a lifetime guarding her treasures, someone could boldly walk in here and steal one of them . . .
“What happened is awful,” Rowan is saying, shaking her head, “but at least it doesn’t seem to have kept people away. Marcia says they’re coming in even after they hear that the special exhibit is closed today.”
Marcia, a fellow volunteer, is manning the door today. Rowan was supposed to be here this morning, but was delayed taking her daughter to the doctor.
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