From how Bettyanne described it, Cockerville made its southern neighbor look like Paris, France.
“Town’s so small we’re buying our first stoplight on layaway,” she joked in a cigarette addict’s crag. “Can’t blame the girl for leaving. Wasn’t nothing for her here. Especially after what happened.”
“The girl” was Abby Crouch, which—from Bettyanne’s detailed description—was our Abigail.
“There wasn’t a man or boy within twenty miles that didn’t know who Abby Crouch was. I don’t mean that in the lewd sense. I just mean she turned heads,” Bettyanne told me. “She wasn’t the prettiest girl around, but she was pretty enough. She had a look about her. Confidence, I guess it was. Men find that sort of thing attractive until they’re up close with it. Then they start thinking they might prefer something a little meeker.”
Five minutes on the phone and I was ready to adopt Bettyanne as the cranky grandmother I never knew.
“All that’s speculation, mind you,” she continued. “My husband and I went to First Methodist, and so did the Crouch family. One Sunday I’d hear that Abby was seeing so-and-so. Two or three Sundays later, I’d hear they’d called it quits.”
“Are her parents still around?” I asked.
“No. Her mother died young. Not in childbirth, but soon after, I think,” Bettyanne said. “Raised by her father and older brother. Can’t recall the brother’s name. Something odd. A family name. Orlando? Orren? Something like that.”
She trailed off as she tried to pull the name out of her memory. For a second I thought I’d lost her, but she snapped back. “Father ran a small farm. Quiet type. Kept to himself. He died. Can’t remember when exactly. After she left, I think. I switched churches after Clarence—that’s my husband—after he passed. Haven’t thought about the Crouches in ages.”
“You mentioned that you couldn’t blame Abby for leaving,” I said, reeling her back in. “That there was some messy business. What business was that?”
“Awful thing. Just awful.” Her pack-a-day voice developed a quiver. “Only time something like that has happened around here. At least with a boy that young. His whole life ahead of him.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Billy McCray. A boy Abby was dating. Or I think she was dating him. They might have been through when it happened. It’s been so long. You think your memory is sharp as a knife and then…”
If Ma Bell had offered a way to gently shake somebody through the phone, I’d have taken them up on it.
“What happened to Billy McCray?” I prodded.
“Oh, he killed himself, dear,” she said, as if that should have been perfectly obvious. “He blew his brains out with his daddy’s shotgun.”
CHAPTER 21
I eased the Cadillac into a space directly across the street from number 215. I looked over at the park, searching for the babushkas. The sun had set already, and if they’d been there, they’d left.
It had taken me a good fifteen minutes to get Bettyanne off the line. I got the sense she didn’t get many visitors and a phone call from a New York City detective was the most exciting thing to come her way in a month of Sundays.
She hadn’t been able to tell me much more. Billy McCray had been a bright, handsome lad who’d been expected to eventually take over his father’s hardware store. His suicide had come as a shock to the entire town. The McCrays closed up shop not long after and moved south, where the winters were milder and the bad memories not so thick on the ground.
I hit her with a baker’s dozen of follow-up questions, but her well had run dry. She said she’d look up the name and number of Abigail’s brother and give me a call. If she came through, I’d send her roses. Maybe one of those chatty parakeets to keep her company.
I caught Ms. Pentecost up on developments as we made our way to the Village, tossing the scant details of Abigail’s early life into the backseat.
“You think she might have killed him?” I asked. “That can’t be a coincidence. Two men shooting themselves.”
Ms. P was solidly on the fence.
“A boyfriend of several weeks when she was sixteen. A husband of two decades when she was nearly forty.” In the rearview I saw her hold out her hands like scales, balancing those two points on Abigail’s biography. “There’s undoubtedly a similarity,” she said, “but it’s difficult to call it a pattern when the skeins are so far separated.”
“Sure, it’s threadbare,” I admitted. “But I know how you feel about coincidences in a murder case.”
All I got was a scowl and a grumble. The rest of the ride was conducted in silence, except for the occasional invective spat at my fellow drivers. I didn’t want to badger her. She was doing whatever geniuses do to get their heads right when they’re about to face an adversary.
That’s how I was thinking of Belestrade—an adversary. Smart, devious, attractive—if that kind of thing does it for you—and dangerous. She might not have been a murderer, but she was likely a blackmailer, certainly a fraud, and definitely not someone to be trifled with.
Good thing my boss didn’t trifle.
The plan, she told me, was to let Belestrade guide the evening. Give her as much rope as she wanted. Then hit her with the blackmail question at the end.
“The more time we are in the room with her, the more we can glean about her methods,” Ms. P explained.
She took a few seconds after getting out of the car to straighten her outfit—a gray worsted suit over a shirt the color of blood, accented by a black tie fixed with a silver tiepin. Her going-to-war ensemble. All her features seemed bigger: her chin sharper, her mouth wider, her nose just a little more hooked. Her eyes, real and glass alike, were shining bright.
She didn’t forget her cane tonight. Better to show the prop than wobble when she didn’t want to.
We knocked on the door.
SEEKERS INQUIRE WITHIN
A moment later, it was opened by Neal Watkins—raven hair plastered in an impeccable wave and wearing a suit an undertaker would have put back on the rack for being too grim.
“Good evening,” he said. I think he was going for his boss’s hypnotic tone, but it came off more as sleepy. “Ms. Belestrade will be ready in a few minutes. If you don’t mind waiting.”
He sat us in a narrow room with padded benches on either side and a pair of heavy oak doors on one end. Ms. P and I took one bench. After asking if either of us would like something to drink—neither of us did—Neal perched on the other.
“Ms. Belestrade has been greatly anticipating your visit,” he said.
“Really? Why is that?” Ms. P asked.
“I think she sees you as a challenge,” Neal declared. “A nonbeliever who, nonetheless, has the same goals as her.”
“And what are those?”
“Providing assistance for those who need it.”
“Is that what drew you to her employ?” she asked. “She provided an opportunity for altruism that a university history department did not?”
If Neal was flustered by that nugget we’d picked up from Dr. Waterhouse, he didn’t show it.
“That was part of it. Also, it’s interesting work. And Ms. Belestrade pays well. More than any teaching assistantship,” Neal said, brushing his flop away from his forehead again. “The answer to your other questions is uniformly ‘No, I’m afraid not.’ ”
“My other questions?”
“No, I did not get out of the car the night of the party. No, I didn’t see anything suspicious. No, I’m afraid I don’t know who murdered Abigail Collins.” He gave what he probably thought was a charming smile, which made him look like exactly what he was: a wannabe academic training to be a second-rate con man.
He didn’t get the chance to foretell our follow-ups. A soft chime rang from behind the double doors.
“She’s ready fo
r you,” Neal said, standing.
We followed his lead. With a flourish, he flung open the oak doors.
We crossed the threshold into what looked like the kind of parlor you’d find in any well-to-do New York brownstone: a half-dozen softly upholstered chairs, a chaise longue against one wall, a scattering of end tables and Tiffany lamps, and a small electric chandelier that reflected pleasantly off the wood. The paintings on the walls were tasteful nudes and American landscapes. I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure I spotted an original Hopper in the mix.
No draped silks. No esoteric symbols scrawled on the walls. Also no windows or curtains for Neal to hide behind.
The only thing in the room that lived up to my expectations was our hostess. She stood barefoot in the center of the room in a white silk number that was half evening dress, half nightgown. She had rings on every finger and her black bob was fixed with a piece of jade shaped like a spider.
The smile on her face when she greeted us was wide and sincere. I didn’t trust it for a second.
“Ms. Pentecost. Miss Parker. Welcome to my home,” she said. “Please sit wherever you’re most comfortable.”
I was tempted to go outside and sit in the car, that being the most comfortable of available options. But Neal had closed the doors behind us, so I followed Ms. P’s lead. She took one of a trio of armchairs, and I grabbed the one next to her. But not before shifting it a few degrees so I was facing the closed double doors. I wasn’t really expecting anything to burst through and try to do us in, but I also hadn’t forgotten my .38 tucked away in a holster beneath my vest.
Belestrade looked amused by my chair choreography.
“You’re safe here, Miss Parker,” she said. “You have nothing to fear.”
“You said ‘comfortable,’ ” I reminded her. “I’m never comfortable with my back to a door.”
The smile faded and was replaced by a look of pity.
“I find that very sad,” she said. “Your experience with the world has taught you that doorways are things to fear rather than opportunities for wonder and adventure.”
I came up with half a dozen quick retorts, but all involved language unfit for nice parlors. Besides, this was Ms. Pentecost’s show. So I just smiled politely as our host took the third seat. The clairvoyant made herself comfortable, crossing her legs and showing off matching silver toe rings.
For a good five count, no one in the semicircle spoke. Ms. P and Belestrade looked at each other—my boss’s mouth a straight line, our host’s a gently curving grin. I was considering telling a joke I’d heard about a postman and a farmer’s daughter when Belestrade broke the silence.
“I’m not unaware of or ungrateful for how unique this experience is. For both of us,” she said with equal parts honey and spice. “I’ve invited skeptics to my home before. Dr. Waterhouse, for example. But only as observers. Never as a spiritual focus. Just as I’m sure you are always the one in the room seeking answers, not the one whose soul is being exposed.”
I don’t know how Ms. Pentecost felt about that, but I certainly bristled. If there was any exposing to be done, it’d be my boss pulling back the curtain.
“I don’t mean that in a threatening sense,” Belestrade said. “To you, ‘expose’ has harsh connotations—revelations of misconduct and murder. To me, exposure is light and air—bringing things out of the dark so they can grow and bloom.”
Ms. P laid one hand, palm up, on her lap. “How do we proceed?” she asked.
“Close your eyes,” Belestrade instructed. “You, too, Miss Parker. Don’t worry. Nothing will harm you here.”
Seeing Ms. P close her eyes, I did the same. But you better believe I kept an ear cocked for the creak of a door or the faintest click of a toe ring.
“Empty your mind of the day,” the spiritualist said. “From morning until this moment. All the events, the encounters, the chores, the thoughts, the desire—take it all in your arms, hold it tight to your breast, then let it go. Breathe deep, and let it go.”
She repeated that last again and again until it became a chant.
“Breathe deep, and let it go. Breathe deep, and let it go. Breathe deep, and let it go. Breathe deep, and let it go.”
The words began to blur together until it was a single chain of syllables. When I’d closed my eyes, my nerves were practically vibrating. But that woman with her voice and its cadence was actually making me relax.
“Breathe deep, and let it go.”
I heard a faint and muffled ticking beneath her words. Like a clock was hidden somewhere in the walls. Or the deathwatch beetles my grandmother told me about at my mother’s funeral. The ones that gather in the walls when death gets near.
“Breathe deep, and let it go.”
I began to float in my chair.
“Breathe deep, and let it go.”
She was quiet for a long stretch. All I heard was the faint ticking. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Time was getting blurry around the edges. How long had we been sitting in that room? I didn’t know.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
“I want you to tarry a moment in this empty space, this warm hollow in your heart,” Belestrade said. “I want you to listen. Listen for the voices of those who have gone beyond the veil. Not gone forever. Just obscured. Muffled by the desires of daily life. Listen. Listen for their voices. Their whispers.”
I listened.
Tick, tick, tick, tick. Was there something else beneath that sound?
“There are so many around you,” the spiritualist whispered. “You carry so many spirits in your wake. Listen.”
I almost heard them. Or imagined I did. The soft murmuring.
Faces started to swim up out of the darkness behind my eyelids. My mother’s. My grandmother’s. Lovely Lulu, who’d died in a pneumonia ward two months before I left the circus. McCloskey, his face a mask of pain and confusion, trying to pry the knife from his back. A girl I’d seen stabbed to death in a dockside bar. All the bodies I’d seen spread out on Hiram’s cold table.
I saw each of them for a fleeting moment before they sank back into the darkness.
“Now open your eyes.”
I did. The clairvoyant hadn’t moved, but something was different. The rest of the room was shrouded in darkness and the light seemed to be focused in a narrow circle around our chairs, like reality itself was condensing around us.
While our eyes were open, Belestrade’s were closed, her head cocked as if listening.
“So many,” she whispered. “So many dead trailing behind you. A retinue of the lost.”
I glanced at Ms. P. She had a new line carving across the center of her brow. I wondered whose faces she’d seen.
“You hear them, don’t you?” the spiritualist asked. “You hear them crying out—in your dreams, your quiet thoughts—but you can’t make out what they’re saying. You think they’re calling for vengeance, for justice, but you don’t know.”
Belstrade’s fingers gripped the arms of the seat, nails digging into the soft upholstery.
“I hear her,” she hissed, writhing in her chair. “Calling to you. You’re afraid that her death will go unavenged. She’s saying that you…you…You should let her go. Let her go. Do not clasp her death to your heart. It only brings her pain. It only brings you pain.”
Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed Ms. Pentecost’s lip curl into the slightest of sneers.
“If this is a gambit to convince me to drop my investigation into the murder of Abigail Collins, it is misguided and beneath us both,” she said.
Eyes still clamped shut, Belestrade shook her head.
“Nooooo.” The word escaped her lips like a dying breath. Quick as a snake, her hand darted out and grabbed my wrist. I tried to pull away, but her fingers were like steel.
“You have to let it go, Willowjean. You have
to let me go.” Belestrade’s voice was different. It had an oh-so-familiar Midwestern flatness with hints of the Deep South. I knew that voice.
“You were right,” she said. “What you always thought. It was him that killed me. He didn’t pull a trigger, but it was him all the same.”
Tears were streaming down Belestrade’s cheeks. Her eyelids fluttered open, showing white.
“You have to let me go,” she croaked. “You couldn’t have done a thing. You have to stop blaming yourself. You were just a child. You were just—”
There’s a blank space here. Drunks would call it a blackout, except I don’t drink. All I know is that one moment I was hearing my mother’s voice being parroted by that fraud, the next I was standing, pointing my gun at her head and yelling.
“Shut up! Shut your goddamn mouth!”
My chair was tipped over behind me. Tears were streaming down my face. Neal was standing in the doorway, mouth open in shock. And Belestrade was silent, utterly calm as she stared down the barrel. There wasn’t an ounce of fear in those wide, dark eyes. Only triumph.
Very slowly, Ms. Pentecost placed her hand over mine—the one holding the pistol.
“Will,” she whispered. “Put it away. She’s not worth it.”
Breathe, and let it go.
Whatever had possessed me retreated. I lowered the gun and slid it back into my holster.
“I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was apologizing to.
“It’s all right,” my boss told me. “We’re leaving.”
She turned to our host and in a voice as cold and level as a coffin she said, “You’ve made a grave mistake tonight. To challenge me is foolhardy. But to taunt my companions?”
Ms. Pentecost rapped the end of her cane hard into the floor. Her knuckles were white around its brass handle.
Fortune Favors the Dead Page 18