by Audrey Keown
“There was a servant staircase going all the way to the third floor originally, but it was closed during the conversion to the hotel.”
I sighed. “And the balconies, the outside one and the conservatory side?”
“The door to the conservatory balcony is sealed and locked while the spiral staircase is being rebuilt, as you well know, and the outside balcony entrance would require a ladder tall enough to be dangerous and quite noticeable to one of the staff, or else some kind of machinery like a cherry picker, which I feel sure we would have heard and seen also.”
“Is it possible someone could have scaled the wall?” Chattanooga was a rock climbers’ mecca.
He shook his head and drew down the corners of his mouth. “Please. Don’t pursue this. The truth will out.”
The truth would be great. The facts troubled me. “Let me get this straight—you were the only one with access to the room during the tour, the last one to see the victim alive, and since you’re staff, your DNA will be all over the room. Yeah, the police are bound to get it right this time.”
“So I know we’ve addressed some of the ways you’ve responded to your mother’s leaving, Ivy.” My therapist, Gina, sat catty-corner from me without a notepad.
After I told my dad last year that I’d stopped seeing my psychiatrist, he’d recommended that I try a counselor next, and Gina had come highly recommended by a college friend of mine. Sometimes I felt like sending that friend a thank-you note. Other times I considered a chain letter.
Gina was competent and professional, but I wasn’t sure that I liked her. As taskmaster of the self-exploration I had to do, she was relentless.
She glanced down at her lap and back at me, as if she could see the thoughts behind my eyes. “But I suspect that there are memories from before the day your mother left that are also continuing to cause you distress.”
I shifted in my seat. “It’s possible, I guess.”
Her office was all white and greige, pale pillows and soft angles. But the work we were doing in here was dark, dirty, and uncomfortable.
There was a danger in letting things lie.
The childhood trauma I’d experienced hadn’t died but hibernated. When I finally revisited its dark lair (dodging briars and cutting back overgrown branches), I’d found a ravenous, waking monster surrounded by the bones of my positive thinking.
I didn’t blame myself. Seven-year-old me had made all the sense she could of what happened, but the unprocessed hurts that I had left in the forgotten woods grew sly and dangerous and watched for me now to lose my footing.
“You can think about those memories, see if anything comes up, and I’ll ask you again next time.” Her tone brightened slightly. “Have you ever heard of attachment disorder, Ivy?”
In front of the window, a blast from the vent agitated a snapped frond on her potted fern.
It was hard in the moment to care about things that had happened to me a million years ago when I had a murder to investigate. I knew that putting on my own oxygen mask before helping Mr. Fig was best practice, but sorting out what was going on with me wasn’t a one-day fix.
“Um, yeah. It happens to kids who are, like, neglected by a caregiver, right?” I said.
“Yes, that’s a common way for the disorder to set in, and like we’ve talked about, we were all kids once. People with attachment disorder learned to stop trusting other people early in life.”
“I think I know what you’re saying. My mom left, and it was hard, and now I can’t form proper attachments to people.”
“You’re an insightful person, Ivy. I know I’m not really telling you anything you don’t know. As a child, you attached yourself quite firmly to your dad, before the trauma that caused you to isolate yourself. But since then, you seem to have very few close relationships.”
Ugh. I hated when she said things like this, but that probably meant she was doing a good job.
Since time was money, I had to choose carefully what subjects to bring up in therapy, and sometimes that left holes for Gina. I was attached to more people than George and my dad. I had some friends from school and other jobs who I still met up with now and then. And Mr. Fig. I would count him as a friend, even though he was my manager.
“What effects do you think this lack of connection has on you?” Gina asked.
The clock behind her said we had fifteen minutes left in the session.
“I don’t know.” I clenched my toes inside my Chucks and unclenched them again.
“That’s okay. You can think about it, and we can circle back. In the meantime, I want you to be aware of how you may be pulling back from people out of the belief that any relationship you form is suspect.”
Suspect. After this, I had to figure out an excuse for visiting Clyde. He was still the most likely suspect in my mind. “Okay, sure.”
Now that the police had released the Achilles Room, maybe I could get some of Clyde’s things and bring them to him.
I decided to run out the clock on a topic that seemed more immediately helpful to me. “I had another panic attack out of nowhere last night.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Ivy.” She tilted her head. “Were you able to try the grounding techniques we talked about?”
“Yeah. It was dark, but I focused on sounds and sensations.”
“And did that help?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I think I pulled out of it faster this time.”
“That’s great. Any progress is something to celebrate. And that doesn’t mean it’s a steady climb from here, but you are growing.”
“Thanks. But I—I don’t understand how I’m able to do things sometimes that are really significant and hard, and then other times, I turn to slush at the first sign of conflict.”
“I can see how that’s troubling.” She nodded. “You mentioned that your dad is seeing someone new?”
“Right.”
“And you feel like you’re getting less time with George lately.”
I nodded back at her. Dang it, she was good. I’d mentioned that last month, but I hadn’t even told her about Bea flirting with him.
“So, it’s likely, given what you’ve been through, that a part of you feels deeply threatened by those things.”
“Oh.”
“Your brain is responding to those threats the best way it knows how, but we’re going to work together to train it to respond better. Speaking of which—I want to loan you this book on epigenetics.” She stood up and went to her bookshelf.
“Epige-who?”
“Epigenetics.” She pulled the book she wanted and offered it to me. “It’s the study of how factors other than DNA can change your gene activity, including the way your body responds to certain stimuli.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I took it from her, knowing I wouldn’t have time to look at it for a while.
Even the hour I’d spent at this appointment felt like more than I could spare. I’d picked up an extra shift tonight, since Mr. Fig’s absence left us stretched thin at the hotel. If I’d known more about the suspects in Renee’s murder coming in today, I might have been able to redeem the time questioning Gina about traits and motives. There could be a psychological element to this case, but I didn’t know enough about Clyde or anyone else yet to confirm that.
As I hefted myself onto my hand-me-down Schwinn outside the counseling office, Gina’s questions, rather than my own, rang in my head. I stomped my pedal in frustration.
I rode a rickety wagon down a track through a dark tunnel of rock. I pulled a lever in front of me, and the brake engaged.
My small leather trunk was surprisingly difficult to lift from the cart and set on the rough stone floor. Before me was an enormous green metal door with a dozen latches and locks, each one distinct and powerful. One by one, they clicked and slid and turned open, as if by telekinesis.
I put a palm against the cold metal and pushed the door open with a loud squeak.
Stacks of boxes, canisters, and chests filled the vault, a
nd a space beckoned under a nearby shelf, just large enough for the trunk I carried. I dragged it into the room, feeling the grit of the floor under its edge, and slid the trunk back against the wall. I turned my back on it, closed the door and all its locks, and walked away.
I opened my eyes. My shoulders felt lighter already. My eyes, more alert.
It was a compartmentalizing trick Gina had taught me, and I was suspicious of it, but it worked today. Mostly. My worries about George, Dad, and especially my mother would be somewhat deactivated, stowed away until I was ready to look at them again.
Now to tackle the doors that stood in front of me in reality.
I couldn’t stand the thought of Mr. Fig in that gross cell even one more night, and Captain De Luna of the Chattanooga Police Department owed me a favor. Without my intervention in the murder at the hotel last year, a killer would still be on the loose.
At the downtown station, I told the small man behind the desk that I was headed to the captain’s office.
“Aw, nah, she’s still on vacation, Little Bit.”
“Vacation, huh? When will she be back?”
“End of next week, I think? Anyway, doll, it’s Saturday. Even if she wasn’t gone, she wouldn’t probably be here. You should’ve emailed first.”
“Right. Thanks,” I said. “Doll.” Sure, email would’ve saved me a trip, but I was impatient, and I knew I’d get more results from De Luna in person.
Gravity felt double as I trudged back toward the entrance.
But I wouldn’t be so easily defeated. I’d come all the way here. It was worth talking to Bennett. I’d bet he was working this weekend, seeing as he had a case to solve. He might be overdramatic and wrong about nearly everything, but he wasn’t cruel, not from what I’d seen. There had to be something human behind his grim detective front. Maybe I could make him care about Mr. Fig’s predicament.
I wandered the halls until I found his office and knocked on the open door. Bennett’s moustache twitched, and he greeted me with a frown. I caught him noticing the bandage on my arm. I didn’t mind the sympathy if it got me somewhere.
“May I come in?”
He didn’t answer, so I took that as permission.
Bennett’s office was nothing like Captain De Luna’s. Where hers had a window, his had a corkboard. Where she displayed framed photos, he had a row of books with titles like The Process of Investigation and The Forensic Casebook, props that made him seem like a more serious detective than her, although I knew the opposite to be true.
I stood across from him, splayed my hands on his desk, and conveyed with as little sentimentality as possible the indecent conditions in which I had found Mr. Fig that morning.
He clicked his mouse and stared at the desktop screen in front of him, from which he’d barely raised his eyes since I’d come in. (Solitaire, I guessed.) “Due process must take its course.”
“Please.”
“I already told you to stay out of this.” Bennett looked pointedly at my hands.
My fingers were spread on his desktop calendar. I withdrew them but didn’t apologize.
“You know what’s really criminal? Locking up innocent people before they’ve even been tried.” I’d bet there was a name that would get his attention, if I knew it. Some commissioner with power over him, or better yet, a local organization for citizens’ rights that cared about the conditions of the jail and the fact that people were held there without bail and without arraignment.
“Take it up with your county government. That’s nothing to do with me.” Bennett strode to the door and gripped it, looking at me meaningfully.
I didn’t move. Still facing his desk, I glanced down at his calendar. “I can find out things for you, you know. The people who actually knew Renee—unlike Mr. Fig—are coming and going from the hotel all the time.”
Among Bennett’s calendar appointments for the day was Truman, 2:00. Was that Autumn or Tom?
The detective stepped toward me and swept his long arm in my direction. “Ralph Fig will await arraignment just like any other defendant.”
“Listen, I understand that at face value, he was the only one in the right place at the right time.” I had no choice but to back toward the door. “But it’s illogical. What motive could he even have?”
“You can thank yourself for that.”
“What?” How could I have had anything to do with it?
“If there’s one thing I understand about Ralph Fig, it’s that he’s loyal as a retriever to that big yellow house.”
I stared at him. He was right about that, but what did Mr. Fig’s loyalty have to do with Renee? “So?”
“So—” He got out his little notebook and flipped a few pages. “You told me yourself that Ms. Gallagher, quote, ‘laughed at the furnishings.’ ”
Whaaaaat? I shook my head. “You think this was some kind of honor killing? Or you think Mr. Fig’s feelings were hurt?”
“Not quite. You see, I did a little digging. It turns out our Ms. Gallagher was a”—he checked his notes—“an ‘Instagram influencer.’ She’s got more than ten thousand followers, and she’s reviewed a few hotels already this year.”
I never would have pegged Renee for an influencer, but an online platform could be the one place she felt free to speak her mind. “You’re saying Mr. Fig murdered this woman to stop her from ruining the hotel’s reputation?”
“Bingo.” He rested both fists at his waist. “Especially considering your hotel’s lost some business since those murders last year.”
“But Mr. Fig wouldn’t commit violence over some small offense like that. And wouldn’t another murder hurt the hotel’s reputation just as much?” I couldn’t keep my voice under control. “You’re … you’re unhinged!”
His thick moustache twitched once. “If you’re not careful, Ivy Nichols, you’re gonna find yourself on the wrong side of the law.”
On the last word of his sentence, he slung the door my way.
I jumped back so it wouldn’t hit me in the face.
Jeez. If he wanted to be menacing, he needed to stop using so many clichés. Still, there was real authority behind his theatrics.
When I got back outside, I couldn’t seem to move on. I paced back and forth in front of the station. My shoulders knotted up again, and my hands were two dead trout on the ends of my arms. It was bad enough that Bennett wouldn’t help me but worse that he wouldn’t accept help or input from anyone else.
I shoved a hand in my pocket and remembered the hairs from the Achilles suite that I’d put in there this morning. Was it worth going back to give them to Bennett, or would he dismiss them anyway?
I was overwhelmed by how much the police already knew about Renee’s murder. And how little chance I had of getting that info.
I’d meant what I’d told Bennett about playing witness to the guests of the hotel, and I knew that was important, but did I need to figure out the murder weapon too, or was it enough to know that Renee had been strangled?
Deep down, I was afraid I didn’t have it in me to solve another crime.
I remembered Mr. Fig’s relief last year when he realized I’d cleared the hotel of scandal. Even though he didn’t want me doing the same for him now, he had said he believed I could.
I admired so much about him, but what qualities of mine could he think would help me solve this? My stubbornness? My willingness to break the rules?
Bennett was just as stubborn but legally bound to follow procedure, to slog through paperwork like wet sand.
I just needed to start talking to people. There was treasure buried in the memories of those gravestone association guests, and I would dig down and find it.
VIII
See Seven States
I zipped around a bend on the eastern side of Lookout Mountain in Dad’s Volvo. I certainly wasn’t going to conquer the steep highway on my Schwinn, and this was faster.
On my right was a wall of shale dusted with snow. The higher I climbed, the lower the tem
perature dropped and the more snow hung around on the landscape.
To my left, the forest along the bluff was budding out in early green, crimson, and purple, getting dressed for the full, leafy goodness of spring. As I neared the top of the mountain, the trees dropped away, the view opened up, and the signature precipice of Rock City jutted out into the clear blue sky over the valley.
Just ahead, streaming out from underneath the arched bridge past Lover’s Leap, the High Falls weren’t any less breathtaking for having been artificially created in the 1930s.
If I dared peel my gaze from the road and look down from the mountain, it was one of the best views around. I could see all of Chattanooga at once and more.
As advertised on barn roofs near and far, Rock City touted a view of seven states. When I was a kid, I’d expected to see borders showing me the familiar shapes of all of them, as if the landscape were a life-sized map.
“See seven states” had its origins in journal writings from both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Battle of Lookout Mountain claiming that landmarks from all seven could be spotted from the overlook. But that was before modern air pollution.
When I reached the town on top of the mountain, I pulled into the pea-gravel parking lot of the Chanticleer Inn, which, like most of the buildings around here, was overwhelmingly adorable and built out of stone. Little storybook cottages sprang up around a central office that looked straight out of Hansel and Gretel.
This neighborhood, Fairyland, had been developed in the 1920s by local entrepreneur Garnet Carter and his wife, Frieda, whose fascination with European fairy tales had resulted in all of these streets being named “Peter Pan Road,” “Mother Goose Trail,” and the like. Their original concept for the community included a golf course, which was downsized to become Tom Thumb Golf, the country’s first mini golf.
I loved mini golf.
Back at the hotel, I’d overheard Tom and Autumn saying Clyde had taken sanctuary up here, and having just lost Renee, he was more likely to be in his room than at the convention center today, I thought.
