How far would they go to drive her away?
Would there be another gas leak? A fire next time?
If Helen and Nate stayed, would they wake in the trailer one night to the smell of smoke, to flames licking at the walls?
“What are you doing?” Nate asked when he walked up to the house.
“There’s a smudge on the door,” she said, polishing it with a rag.
“It’s Sunday,” Nate said. “I thought we agreed to take the day off.”
“Definitely,” Helen said. “Just tidying a little.”
“Did you turn off my cameras?” he asked.
“What? No.”
“It’s odd,” Nate said. “They were all switched off. I didn’t get any pictures from about midnight on last night.”
“Strange,” Helen said. Whoever had come and left the message on the door hadn’t wanted to be seen.
“I’m going for a hike,” he said.
Helen nodded. “Great. I think I’ll see if I can get into the historical society to do a little research,” Helen told him.
He frowned, but said only, “You’re not going to bring back any more haunted objects, right?”
“Just research, I promise,” she told him. “Enjoy your hike.”
. . .
Helen knew she couldn’t wait. She called Mary Ann Marsden and asked if she could possibly let her into the historical society. She explained that she was a friend of Riley’s.
“I know it’s a Sunday and I hate to ask, but I’m just so eager to get started on my research.”
Mary Ann chuckled and said she’d be glad to open the historical society. “I get out of church at noon and I can meet you there right after. I don’t have anything planned for the afternoon, so I’m more than happy to help.”
. . .
Mary Ann was an elderly woman in a polyester pantsuit the color of lima beans. She wore a huge enameled flower brooch pinned to her lapel, so heavy Helen was amazed its weight didn’t pull the poor woman over. She had on dark red lipstick that had run into the creases of her upper lip, making it look like veins.
“So you’re Riley’s good friend, eh?” she asked, as she unlocked the door and let Helen in.
“Yes, I’m Helen. I so appreciate you letting me in like this.”
Helen followed Mary Ann inside, watched her flip on the lights and shuffle over to the desk. All the plastic totes and cardboard boxes that had covered every surface on her last visit were gone. The place looked neat and tidy. The bulky, antiquated computer Riley had used was on a table in a back corner. A sleek new computer rested on the main desk.
“So, you’re interested in the Breckenridge family?”
“Yes, that’s right. Last time I was here, Riley showed me a painting of Hattie. I was hoping I could get another look at it.”
She didn’t expect the painting to yield any new clues, but she longed to see it, to be held in Hattie’s gaze once more. She thought it would be a good way to start her research—would bring her luck if Hattie was actually watching over her.
“Of course,” Mary Ann said, turning to go back to the cabinets. She opened drawers, pulled paintings in and out.
“Well, that’s odd,” she muttered.
“What is it?”
“It doesn’t seem to be here,” Mary Ann said. “At least, it’s not where it should be. When something’s loaned out, there’s a pink sticker that goes where the painting should be. But there’s no painting and no sticker.” She turned back to the desk, picked up a big three-ring binder and flipped through it. “When we loan paintings out, we have a form that we use. And we have a logbook when anything gets borrowed. But there’s nothing here.”
“So do you think the painting could have been stolen?”
Mary Ann laughed. “Stolen? Oh dear, no. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to steal a painting of Hattie Breckenridge! Not when we have other, much more valuable things here—silver, old coins, jewelry even.”
“So what do you think happened to it?”
“Well, maybe it just got put away someplace unusual. Or someone might have borrowed it and not done the proper paperwork. Or we misplaced the paperwork. I can’t imagine, really. We have several volunteers. I think the first step will be checking in with each of them.”
She looked at the wooden cabinet, at the blank spot in the pulled-out shelf where Hattie’s painting had been.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you with the painting—what else are you looking for?” Mary Ann asked.
“When I was here with Riley, we found a couple of photographs of Hattie—an old school picture and a couple taken at a town picnic when she was a young woman. Do you know if there might be any others?”
Mary Ann nodded. “We have the final picture taken of Hattie,” she said.
“Final picture?”
“Of the hanging,” Mary Ann said. “Surely Riley showed it to you.”
Jesus. A photograph of the hanging? It didn’t seem possible.
“Um, no. We missed that one somehow.”
“Ah,” Mary Ann said, standing, going over to a tall black file cabinet. “It’s in our special collection. Maybe Riley hasn’t seen it herself.” She opened a drawer, started looking through files. “Let’s just hope that hasn’t gone missing, too.” Mary Ann chortled a bit.
Helen secretly wished it had.
“Oh, here we are,” Mary Ann said, sounding almost giddy as she slipped a file folder out of the cabinet. She opened it up. Inside, it was lined with two sheets of paper. Between the sheets of paper, an old black-and-white photograph.
Helen cringed, had to force herself not to look away.
“Who would take a picture like this?” she asked.
“We’re not sure who the photographer was,” Mary Ann said.
Helen moved closer, studied the photograph. It was centered on a large, old tree full of thick, heavy branches.
She looked at the picture, thought of how there was a piece of that very tree in her house.
Beneath the tree in the old photo, probably three dozen people were gathered, all turned toward the camera, posing. Some were smiling. Some looked down at the ground. It looked like it could have been a picture taken at a town dance or country fair—Hartsboro’s finest gathered in celebration. Some wore dusty work clothes and looked as though they’d come straight from plowing the fields or shoveling coal into a steam engine. Others were in suit and tie, the women in dresses with their hair neatly fastened.
And above them, their kill.
Hattie Breckenridge hung by a thick rope from a high branch. Helen could make out the noose around her neck. She wore a white dress that was dirty, stained. Her shoes were caked with mud. Her eyes were closed, her face placid. There was a woman right below her—a woman with light hair. She was smiling and holding something in her hands, something that seemed to glint in the light.
“What’s that woman got?” Helen asked, leaning in.
“I’m not sure,” Mary Ann said, squinting down. Helen saw a magnifying glass on the desk and reached for it. She studied the photograph through it and could see what it was: a necklace. Helen peered closer, and though it was hard to make out, she was sure it was the same necklace Hattie had been wearing in the portrait with a strange design: a circle, triangle, and square all tucked inside each other.
“Who’s this woman?” Helen asked, pointing to the woman holding Hattie’s necklace like a trophy, a sickening smile on her face that seemed to say, The witch is dead.
“I believe that’s Candace Bishkoff. Her daughter, Lucy, had been killed in the fire. The story goes that she’s the one who led the townspeople to Hattie’s that afternoon.”
“Bishkoff? Are any of her relatives still around?”
“Why sure. There are plenty of them. They own the pig farm and smokehouse—Uncle Fred’
s Smokehouse—you know it?”
She nodded. “I’ve driven by.”
Mary Ann carefully replaced the photo in its folder and rubbed her hands together excitedly. “Well! Enough of that! Let’s get started with that research! What exactly are you looking for?”
“I’m trying to trace Hattie’s family tree, to find any living descendants she may have.”
I’m trying to save one of them.
Helen continued. “I know she had a daughter, Jane . . .”
“No one knows what happened to Jane,” Mary Ann said sadly, shaking her head. “She disappeared soon after the hanging and was never heard from again.”
“Actually, I’m fairly certain she went up to Lewisburg and eventually married a man named Silas Whitcomb. They had two children, Ann and Mark. Jane was killed in a fire at the Donovan and Sons Mill when the children were young. Her daughter, Ann, later married a Samuel Gray—they lived over in Elsbury. Samuel and Ann had a son, Jason, and a daughter, Gloria. Samuel and Ann were killed . . . a murder-suicide, and the children went off to live with relatives.”
“My goodness,” Mary Ann said. “You certainly have learned a lot! You should come volunteer here. We could always use someone with good research skills!”
“I’d love to. Maybe once the house is finished and I have more free time—right now, I’m looking for any other family. And I’d like to know what happened to Jason and Gloria—who they went to live with, where they are now.”
Mary Ann was amazingly adept at using both the computer and microfiche reader. In fact, she was a much faster typist than Helen—her fingers flew across the keyboard.
Together, they looked through genealogy websites, public records, census data, and old newspapers. Helen’s eyes got bleary and she felt a little queasy from flipping through page after page of birth and death records in state newspapers on the microfiche reader. She read articles about the mill fire that killed Jane, about Ann’s murder.
The first thing they discovered was that after Jane’s death, Silas Whitcomb remarried and had four more children, giving Ann and Mark half siblings, each of whom then married and had children.
Through Mary Ann’s skillful navigation of public records, they learned that Mark Whitcomb moved to Keene, New Hampshire, and married a woman named Sara Sharpe in 1965. They had three daughters: Rebecca, Stacy, and Marie. Mary Ann pulled up copies of birth certificates for all three.
“Riley can help me with this tomorrow,” Helen said after they’d been working for nearly two hours. “I don’t want you to have to be here all day.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” Mary Ann said. “I’m actually enjoying the detective work. I had no idea that Hattie Breckenridge had left such a legacy. It’s fascinating that there are living relatives out there somewhere, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely,” Helen said.
“You know,” Mary Ann confessed, “I always thought it was unfair—the way people treated Hattie, the way the whole town talks about her still. I don’t think it’s right, to vilify a person like that.”
Helen smiled at her. “That’s part of what’s pulling me to do this research. I want to know her side of the story.”
Helen took a break and ran across to the general store to get them sandwiches, cups of coffee, and a box of raspberry Danish.
“I brought us provisions,” she announced when she got back.
“I’ve got some information on Samuel Gray here,” Mary Ann said, eyes on the computer screen. “He was one of eight siblings, and his mother, Eliza Gray, lived until 2002. She was in Duxbury, so the kids could have gone to her.”
Helen reached into her bag for her notebook to start writing down the list of names they came up with, but her notebook wasn’t there.
“Damn,” she muttered.
“Everything all right?”
“Sorry, I thought I had my notes with me, but I guess not.”
She must have left the notebook back at home. By the computer there, maybe. Careless. If Nate found it . . . but he wouldn’t find it, would he?
Mary Ann found her a blank legal pad. Helen started to write down the names and dates of birth of every family member they’d found whom Jason and Gloria might have gone to live with.
“I don’t want to make things more difficult,” Mary Ann said, “but I think it’s important to remember that they might have been taken in by a distant cousin, the sister-in-law of an aunt or uncle—anyone.”
In the end, after she and Mary Ann had been at it for over four hours (and had polished off their sandwiches along with all the raspberry Danish), she had a long list of aunts and uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles, cousins, in-laws. She had four pieces of paper taped together on which she’d sketched a rough outline of Hattie’s family tree—the branches twisted and tangled, heavy with names.
. . .
Helen flicked on her turn signal when the smiling cartoon pig on the Uncle Fred’s Smokehouse sign came into view. Under the pig sign hung another that said: bacon, sausages, ham. There was a low single-story building with a green metal roof and an awning that said simply: meats. Behind it, a small shed with a metal chimney that sweet hickory smoke poured out of.
Helen walked in the door of the shop, where there was a large refrigerated case full of smoked meat: sausages, hams, thick slabs of fatty bacon. Helen’s stomach felt a little queasy—it was all too much, the sweet smoky smell, the fatty cuts of pork, rinds red from smoke. The rest of the shop was full of knickknacks tourists might buy—stuffed toy moose with ilovermont T-shirts, maple syrup, local hot sauces, jellies and jams, quilted pot holders, beeswax candles—all of it seemingly covered with a thin layer of greasy dust. An old metal fan sat in a corner, chugging, doing its best to stir the thick air.
“Can I help you?” asked a young woman behind the counter. Helen guessed she was still in high school or maybe college. She didn’t look old enough to drink legally, but she was wearing a Long Trail Ale T-shirt and so much eye shadow and mascara that Helen was amazed the girl could keep her eyes open.
“I’m not sure,” Helen said. “I’m looking for family of Candace Bishkoff.”
“Candace?” the girl asked, looking up at the ceiling, thinking. “I don’t think I know any Candace, and I know pretty much all the Bishkoffs. My boyfriend, Tony, he’s a Bishkoff.” She smiled at Helen, proud to be showing her allegiance to this clan of the smoked meat Bishkoffs; maybe one day she and Tony would get married, and their children would grow up and learn the secrets of brining and sausage making.
“Candace would be dead by now,” Helen explained. “She was around back in the early 1900s.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “You’re talking old-time Bishkoffs. That’s the cool thing about this family—they’ve been around here for-ev-er!”
Helen nodded. “Is anyone from the family around at the moment? Anyone who might know anything about Candace?”
“Sure, hang on a sec, let me get Marty for you. Marty knows everyone.”
“Oh, great! Thanks,” Helen said.
“No prob,” the girl chirped, going through a back door and calling, “Marty! MAR-TY!”
Soon, the girl was back, followed by a gray-haired man who shuffled in in worn overalls. He was thin and gangly and reminded Helen of a scarecrow who had come to life and just climbed down off his post. His face and neck were patchy with stubble, like he’d tried to shave but missed huge spots. His eyes were rheumy.
The girl took her seat behind the counter, stared down at her phone and started typing on it.
“Help you?” the old man grunted.
“I hope so. You’re Marty?”
He nodded.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Helen. I was looking for someone who might know something about a woman named Candace Bishkoff?”
He nodded. “She was my grandmother.”
“Did you . . .
did you know her?” Helen pictured the woman from the photograph, young then, holding the necklace, smiling a victorious smile.
“She died when I was young, but I remember her some, yes. She taught me to play checkers. No one could beat that old lady. I mean no one.”
Helen believed that.
“Lived to be ninety-nine years old,” he said. “Almost a century. Imagine that.”
“That’s wonderful,” Helen said. “This might sound odd, but I’m wondering about a piece of jewelry your grandmother might have owned. A necklace with a circle, triangle, and square.”
He nodded. “I know the one you mean.”
Helen’s heart jumped. She’d been right.
“Do you have it? Is it still in your family? I’d love to have a look at it.”
He shook his head. “We sold it. A little over a year ago. Lady came in here, just like you, asking all sorts of questions about it. She offered cash. Three hundred bucks. A lot of money to pay for an ugly old necklace, if you ask me,” he said.
“Three hundred bucks?” the girl behind the counter asked. “Really?”
The man nodded.
“Well, maybe it was really old and valuable, like a relic or something. Something that belongs in a museum,” the girl suggested. “Maybe it was really worth way more than that and that lady took you for a ride.”
“I don’t think so,” the man said. “And to be honest with you, Louise and I, we were happy to get rid of it. Louise used to say that necklace was cursed.”
“Why would she say that?” the girl asked.
“Because it once belonged to Hattie Breckenridge.”
“No kidding?” the girl said. “The witch? The one that got hung out by the bog?”
Marty nodded, ran a hand over one of the straps of his overalls.
Helen winced as she remembered the photograph: the smiling crowd gathered at the base of the tree while Hattie swung up above them. The witch was dead.
She looked at Marty, thought, Your grandmother did that. She was there. Her smile was biggest, the most satisfied. Helen felt her own throat tighten, as if there were an invisible noose around her neck.
The Invited (ARC) Page 32
