by Nina Post
“Three p.m.?” Shawn got that look again.
“Yes. Anyway, then I worked at the nursery until five-thirty, and then I went home.”
“You didn’t go out after that?”
Carolyn cocked her head. “No. Just watched TV. Read some magazines, checked my email, took a shower.”
“That’s it?”
“Uh, sleeping.”
“When?”
“Twelve-ish to eight-ish,” Carolyn raised her upper lip. “Are you judging me? I like to watch TV. Is that some sort of crime now?”
“No, of course not. Let me just get this straight: you got home shortly after five-thirty, is that right?”
“Yeah. Five-forty-five.”
“And you did not leave again until when?”
“Quarter to ten on Thursday morning. Went to the nursery.”
“So you were home from five-forty-five p.m. until a quarter to ten on Thursday, is that correct?”
“Yeah.”
He waited a drawn-out moment. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“The pharmacy thing? Look, Ms. Sylvain gave me another chance. I’m not gonna let her down.”
“Are you planning on going to work again next week?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” A wrinkle formed between her eyebrows.
“Haviland Sylvain is dead.”
Carolyn’s body twitched, and her face fell. “WHAT?”
Shawn nodded.
She shook her head, mouth pursed, jaw clenched. Obstinate. “There’s no way, I just saw her.”
“When was that?”
“Wednesday!” Tone: you idiot. “I made some orders on Amazon, updated the book – “
“Did you actually see her? Talk with her?”
Carolyn was breathing faster now. Her eyes shifted from one thing to another in the room. “I had the laptop in the kitchen, and she came down for breakfast. She stopped in the kitchen, said, ‘Good morning, Carolyn, you look lovely today,’ and waited in the dining room for Robert to bring her breakfast.”
Her face crumpled and she hid it in her hands, then she wiped off tears at the edge of her eyes with her bony wrists. “I mean,” she laughed, shaking her head, “no one says I look lovely. No one. Only her.”
“And you didn’t see her again on Wednesday?”
“I think I passed her somewhere upstairs later on.” She popped a piece of gum in her mouth and chewed furiously, her jaw grinding away.
“The second floor?”
She nodded once.
“Was anyone else up there? Did you see her talk to anyone in person or on the phone?”
She thought about it. “Don’t think so. She seemed afraid of something, though.”
“Really? Afraid? Of what, do you think?”
“How should I know?” Her eyes were bleak, the lines in her face deeper-set. She looked about ten years older.
“Can anyone confirm your whereabouts during those hours I asked about?”
She shook her head no like it took all of her energy to move her head a few centimeters.
“All right. Well, stay in town in case we need to reach you.” On his way out the kitchen, he spotted a tall, simple armchair tucked away between the washer and a window.
“That’s an interesting chair.”
She flicked her eyes to him, then to the chair. “Picked it up a flea market.”
“It looks like ebonized walnut.” He leaned over to stroke it. “Unusual.”
Unusual here, but not in the Sylvain house. Where had it been, the library? The drawing room? He smiled gently and left Carolyn Lewis’s apartment, where she was staring into space, having lost her only champion, possibly because she killed her – after she stole from her.
Shawn checked the address and went to find Robert Westrom, who kept a neat one-story house with well-tended landscaping at the end of a road. He called again, went to the back, and didn’t get the feeling that anyone was home.
He returned to the Sylvain mansion to talk to Skitch. Kendall Peterson had told him that to access the sub-basement, he had to go into the carriage house and take the stairs down to a door. He knocked. He waited, then knocked again.
Shawn heard the slurred voice through the door a minute later. “Who is it?”
“Jamesville PD.”
The door was unlocked, then opened. The guy who opened it had a neck tattoo, a nose ring, and wild hair that stuck straight up. He was wearing boxers and a woman’s floor-length fur coat, possibly sable, that revealed a mostly hairless bare chest. Skitch looked like Shawn had just woken him up, even though it was afternoon.
“Dude.” He squinted and blinked at Shawn, even though it was dark in the stairwell. “I didn’t break parole.”
Seriously, what kind of process did Haviland Sylvain have for hiring these people?
“Are you Skitch?”
“Yeah.” His voice was raspy.
“What’s your real name?”
“Dan Skitch. It’s Northern English. Been changed from Sket, some reason. Too much info? You asked.”
“Right. Can I ask you some questions?”
Skitch shrugged and went back inside, leaving the door open. The sub-basement, one floor lower than Kendall’s workspace, was evidently once used as a bomb shelter or commie panic room, or maybe meat storage. It was freezing. Shawn couldn’t imagine why Skitch, or anyone, would live down here when he could live in the carriage house apartment upstairs.
“Let’s do this upstairs.” Shawn hated the bunker feeling. He opened the door again and indicated that Skitch should go out first. Shawn went up to the apartment on the first floor of the carriage house, pulled the fur coat around him regally, then took a chair at the table.
“Am I in some kind of trouble?” Skitch asked, as pulled the sable coat, which had seen better days, closer around him.
“That your coat?”
“Is now.” Skitch’s tone sounded like it should be followed with by spitting on the floor, or maybe ‘….bitch.’
“Was it a gift?”
“Ms. Sylvain gave it to me when I moved into that place.” Skitch cocked his head toward the floor. “Used to be her mother-in-law’s, I think.”
She must have hated her mother-in-law to give a coat like that to this guy.
“Must keep you pretty warm in there.”
Skitch rubbed his eyes. “Helps, yeah.”
“How long have you worked at this house?”
“Almost a year.”
Shawn wondered what the hell happened to Haviland Sylvain a year ago to make her take in these criminals? “Were you here last night?”
“No, man, I was out.”
“Where?”
“Bar. Then a friend’s place.”
“What time?”
“Nine ‘til sunrise.”
“Doing what?”
Skitch feigned holding onto someone and grinding into them. “Some of that.”
Classy. “I need their information. Name and number.”
“Aw, c’mon, man.”
Shawn just looked at him. Skitch picked up the pen in front of him, scrawled down a woman’s name and the name of a restaurant. The Buckhead. “I don’t know her last name or number. But she works at this place as a hostess or something. Got those pants, you know, those tight black pants all the hostesses wear. Only looks good on some of ‘em.”
“What’s your job here at the house?”
“I look into coincidences.” Skitch said clearly, and smiled at Shawn’s expression. “Crazy, right? Havi hates coincidences.”
“Havi?”
“What I call her.”
“She okay with that?”
Skitch grinned. “She likes it. She laughs when I call her that.”
“Tell me about this job,” Shawn asked.
“Like I said, Havi, she hates coincidences.”
“I don’t —”
Skitch put his hand flat on the table and leaned forward. “Here’s the thing. I don’t have a regular work schedule h
ere. I’m kind of ‘on call.’ If she’s freaked out about something, she’ll call me, but I also check for stuff like that around the house or in the paper or on TV. She wants to know. And it’s not just coincidences, it’s any kind of strange stuff.”
“Such as?”
Skitch shook his head, crossed his arms, then looked at the ceiling. “Okay.” He looked back at Shawn. “This one time, she had a feeling of déjà vu. A really strong one. She called me at two in the morning and had me just walk through the house with her. This other time, she said there was a time slip ‘cause sounds were muffled and everything looked weird. And there was the time she had me come to the solarium to see if the stars looked farther away.”
“Why you?”
Skitch chuckled and stretched his arms in front of him, in the coat. “She thinks I’m sensitive and perceptive to that kind of stuff. I was interviewed in the Jamesville Tribune about a shooting at the old Gulf station, and I just pointed out what a weird-ass coincidence it was that the killer had gone to community college on a scholarship that the owner of the station had started. She called me in for an interview, like this. Only she’s pretty and you’re a dude. She thought I had some kind of perception other people didn’t.”
“Because you knew one fact?”
“It was other stuff, too. Maybe ‘cause I’ve done so much LSD and mescaline.” Skitch grinned.
Shawn leaned back and crossed a leg over a knee. He put his hand over the top of his notebook.
“Do you know why Haviland Sylvain was so afraid of coincidences, things like that?” Shawn remembered what Kendall had said about how Ms. Sylvain wanted him to weigh every single anvil weekly in case the weights had changed.
“No, man. Maybe there was a good reason, but we never talked about it. She must’ve cracked somewhere along the line.”
“Did you come back here at all last night?”
“I was with Monica all night. I met her at The Reaverly, we hit it off, and she took me home with her.” He wiggled his eyebrows and smiled, showing one tooth folded slightly over the other.
The Reaverly, a hotel bar Shawn was dimly aware of. “What time did you leave the bar with her?”
“It was the second round of that heavyweight fight that was on. Around ten, I guess.”
“Do you own a knife?”
“It’s illegal to own knives now?”
“No, not to own them.”
“Got a couple,” Skitch shrugged, though it was hard to tell with the coat. “Don’t really use them, though.”
“Don’t really?”
He almost looked embarrassed. “I’ve never had to use ‘em. I just have ‘em, you know?”
Shawn waited.
Skitch narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t done nothing wrong.”
“You’ll have to leave that up to me to decide. How did you feel about Haviland Sylvain?”
“About Havi?” He settled down. “A real cool lady. Misunderstood. Never left the house. Actually, she liked to go out in the back with her tortoise, and over to the other buildings —”
“Like this one?”
“This one, and the greenhouse. Why, did something happen?”
“What else,” Shawn said flatly. “Did she ever make you mad?”
Skitch blew out a laugh. “She was the only one who didn’t make me mad. Sometimes, when I wanted to like, be a giant and just scythe through the whole world, she’d talk to me.”
“And?”
“Dude, and what?”
“She made you feel better? Cheered you up?”
Skitch scoffed. “No, man. She didn’t cheer me up. That’s impossible. She just made me see that here was this one cool, kind person in the world, and she must feel the same way as I do, ‘cause she’s got all this money and she never leaves the property. She doesn’t want to be a part of all that, either.” Skitch waved his hands around and looked side to side as if indicating everything outside of them.
“All that what?” Shawn asked, hoping for some clarification.
Skitch looked askance at Shawn, like he couldn’t wrap his mind around how unfathomably dumb detectives were compared to TV. Shawn didn’t mind.
“People?” Skitch said. “Everything? It’s hard. You may not think so. You’re all normal, got your job and your co-workers and probably a big family you do cookouts with.”
Shawn suppressed a laugh. Hilarious. “Does anyone else have a problem with her?”
“For real, man, did something happen?”
“There was a crime.”
“What kind of crime?”
Shawn ignored this. “Did anyone else have a problem with her?”
“She only ever deals with us.” Skitch rolled his eyes. He was catching on that Shawn would want clarification. “The employees.”
“Anyone resent her for her money?”
Skitch laughed. “I’m sure everyone envies her for that money. Who doesn’t want money? But who could resent her — it’s not as though she goes out and spends the money like crazy. Look at what she does with it: she maintains the house, and a tortoise, and she took in a bunch of misfits who,” he laughed softly, “honestly, man, have no business working in a house like this, with a woman like her.” A cloud passed under his expression.
“What?”
“Just, she’s too, I don’t know, trusting.”
“Does she have any family you know about, who perhaps came to the house?”
“Nah. Never saw any family. Just us freaks. And Lyle, of course.”
Shawn knew, after some quick research, that Haviland’s husband, Ludivicus Sylvain, III, had died of a heart attack, after his mother had died of the same thing. Ludivicus’s survivors included his sister and nephew. And evidently, Haviland had no relatives.
“What do you know about Lyle?” Shawn asked.
“He’s old,” Skitch said. “Her husband’s family had him before she did, and another one before that. He eats hay, and these expensive, pre-made salads that Robert buys. He’s always getting stuck somewhere. And he went to school, you can believe that.”
“He went to school?”
“Yeah,” Skitch laughed and brightened. “Havi’s mother-in-law sent him away to boarding school. She sent a tortoise to boarding school!”
That explained the crest jacket.
“Rich people, man.” Skitch gestured dismissively. “Havi’s not like that. She’s cool. You know she was a professor of physics?”
Shawn nodded.
“I hope nothing happened to her. You’re a dick for not telling me. You find her lab?”
“What lab?”
Skitch stood and gathered the fur coat like Queen Victoria. “I’ll show you.”
“Let me just get my Antarctic suit.”
They went back down to the basement-level apartment. Skitch crossed through his freezing domicile, still barefoot but in that fur coat, to a barely perceptible door with a round handle like a sub. He turned it hard, and the door creaked open. Shawn shivered as Skitch felt around the wall inside.
A ceiling light came on.
Inside was a massive piece of equipment, and a long table to the side.
“She does her experiments here.” Skitch gestured and his coat fell open across his skinny chest. “Weird physics stuff. I have no idea what that thing does, but it’s like, jet engine loud.”
The coincidence-watcher walked past the massive white thing to the other end of the room, where there was another door. He opened that one the same way, revealing a tight spiral staircase.
“What’s this?” Shawn asked.
“Follow me,” Skitch went up the stairs to a door, which he opened without unlocking, and they were in another stairwell.
“Where the hell are we now?”
“The kitchen.” Skitch took the second staircase up to a small landing and opened another door. Shawn followed Skitch into Haviland Sylvain’s bedroom.
“Holy crap,” Shawn couldn’t help saying.
“I know, right?” Skitch b
roke into a big smile. “I hope she’s not here right now.”
“She’s not,” Shawn said, and the tone of his voice caused Skitch to turn and look at him, face tight.
Shawn had the techs process the hidden staircase from the kitchen to the heiress’s bedroom. The techs were peeved over the discovery of even more space to print and spray and inspect.
Sarah was walking out to the driveway to her car. He jogged a little to catch up just as she got to her door.
“Mister Suit.”
“Charles in Charge.”
“You look discombobulated.”
“Yeah, I just… ” He exhaled. “Went down a rabbit hole, I guess. How did your interview go?”
“It was wonderful,” she said in a grand voice. “They served high tea with a fine selection of cakes and pastries, and I sat in the parlor. We discussed art, reason, and the joys of being a flaneur.”
Surprising himself, he said, “I have to stop at home for a few minutes, then go back to the squad room. Do you want some coffee? Meet my cat?”
“Are you inviting me to your house?” Sarah asked, a tiny smile playing on the corners of her lips.
“Yes. My cat likes new people, and only ever sees me.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“For your delightful company?”
She laughed.
Shawn unlocked his front door and let Sarah inside first. She had followed him in her car from the Sylvain mansion. He had fixated on the connecting basement room — what experiments was Haviland Sylvain doing in there?— and the hidden staircase the whole way.
Comet wound around Sarah’s ankles the second she stepped over the threshold of the door. She crouched down to say hello and Shawn went directly for the thermostat to turn on the heat. He went into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee and put food in Comet’s bowl, and had just put fresh Kona grounds in the coffeemaker when Sarah said, “Didn’t you say you had just the one cat?”
“Yeah. Comet. He’s an Aquarius and enjoys napping.”
“You may want to come see this, then.”
He closed the top of the lid and pushed the button to start the coffee brewing, then went out to the living room. There were eleven cats sitting on his trampoline — including, he presumed, the cat he saw on the way out to the Sylvain mansion early that morning.