No Place Like Home

by Mary Higgins Clark

  18

  When Georgette phoned to suggest seeing other houses, I was quick to respond. Once we are out of this house and living in a different one, we will simply be the new people in town. We will have regained our anonymity. That thought kept me going all through the afternoon.

  Alex had asked the movers to put his desk, his computer, and boxes of books in the library, a large room facing the back of the house. On my birthday, when he and the agent, Henry Paley, led me from room to room, Alex had enthusiastically announced that he would take the library as his home office, and pointed out that it would also accommodate his grand piano. I was nervous about asking him if he had canceled delivery of the piano from the storage house, scheduled for next week.

  After our late lunch, with its strained atmosphere, Alex escaped to the library and began unpacking his books, at least those he intended to make accessible. When Jack woke up, I brought him upstairs. Luckily, he’s a child who can amuse himself. In the joy of late parenthood, Larry swamped him with gifts, but it was clear from the beginning that blocks were his favorite toys. Jack loved to build with them, creating houses and bridges and the occasional skyscraper. I remember Larry commenting, “Well your father was an architect, Celia. Must be in his genes.”

  The genes of an architect are acceptable, I thought as I watched my son sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner of my old playroom. While he played, I busied myself going through the files I had meant to clean out before we moved.

  By five o’clock, Jack had tired of the blocks, so we went downstairs. Tentatively I looked into the library. Alex had papers scattered over the surface of his desk. He often brings home the file of a case he is working on, but I could also see a pile of newspapers on the floor beside him. He looked up and smiled when we came in. “Hey, you two, I was getting lonesome down here. Jack, we never did get very far with your pony ride did we? How about we try it now?”

  Of course that was all Jack needed to hear. He rushed for the back door. Alex got up, came to me, and cradled my face in his hands. It is a loving gesture that never fails to make me feel protected.

  “Ceil, I reread those newspapers. I think I’m beginning to understand how you feel about living here. Maybe this house is cursed. At least, a lot of people apparently think it is. Personally, I don’t believe in that stuff, but my first and only goal is your happiness. Do you believe that?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said over the lump in my throat, thinking that Alex didn’t need another weeping session.

  The phone in the kitchen rang. I hurried to answer it, and Alex followed me on his way to the backyard. It was Georgette Grove telling me about a wonderful farmhouse that she wanted me to see. I agreed to meet her, then got off quickly because I heard the “call waiting” click. I switched to the other call as Alex started out the back door. He must have heard me gasp, because he turned quickly, but then I shook my head and hung up the phone. “The beginning of a sales pitch,” I lied.

  I had forgotten to ask the phone company to keep our phone number unlisted. What I had heard was a husky voice, obviously disguised, whispering, “May I speak to Little Lizzie, please?”

  * * *

  The three of us went out for dinner that evening, but all I could think of was the call. Had someone recognized me, I wondered anxiously, or was it the kind of prank kids play? I did my best to act festive with Alex and Jack, but I knew I wasn’t fooling Alex. When we got home, I pleaded a headache and went to bed early.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, Alex woke me up.

  “Ceil, you’re crying in your sleep,” he said.

  And I was. It was the same as after I fainted. I simply could not stop crying. Alex held me, and after awhile I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder. In the morning he waited to have breakfast with Jack and me. Then, when Jack ran back upstairs to get dressed, he said to me quietly, “Ceil, you’ve got to see a doctor, either the one you go to in New York, or someone out here. That fainting spell and these crying sessions may mean something is physically wrong with you. And if it isn’t physical, then you must make an appointment with a psychologist or a psychiatrist. My cousin suffered from clinical depression, and that started with crying sessions.”

  “I’m not depressed,” I protested. “It’s just . . . ”

  I heard my voice trail off. When my adoptive parents took me to California I saw a psychologist, Dr. Moran, for seven years, stopping only when I left to attend the Fashion Institute. Dr. Moran wanted me to continue to be treated in New York, but I said no to that suggestion. I didn’t want to rake over my past with a new shrink. Instead, from time to time, I phoned Dr. Moran, something I still do.

  “To please you, I will get a checkup,” I promised, “and we might as well find someone out here, but I promise you there’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “Let’s be sure of that, Ceil. I’ll ask around at the club and get some names. And now I’d better get out of here. Good luck with your house hunting.”

  There is something that seems so normal about a husband who is in a bit of a hurry, kissing his wife and rushing out to the car. I stood at the window, watching Alex go, his well-tailored jacket accentuating the width of his shoulders. He gave a last quick wave and blew me a kiss as he drove away.

  I tidied up the kitchen, went upstairs, showered, dressed, and made the beds, realizing as I did it that I would have to start looking for a housekeeper and a babysitter for Jack. After I dropped Jack off at pre-K, I picked up the papers and stopped again at the diner for coffee. I skimmed the papers quickly, finding thankfully that there was nothing about the vandalism except a brief item stating that the police were continuing their investigation. Finishing my coffee, I headed out to keep my appointment with Georgette Grove.

  I knew exactly where Holland Road is located. My grandmother had a cousin who had lived on that road, and when I was little I used to visit there. I remembered that it’s in a beautiful section. On one side of the road, you look down into the valley; on the other, the properties are built along the hill. The moment I saw the house and property where I was meeting Georgette, I thought, Oh God, this could be the answer. I knew immediately that at least from the outside appearance, it was a house Alex would like, and in a location that would please him.

  The gate of the split-rail fence was open and I could see Georgette’s silver BMW sedan in front of the house. I glanced at my watch. It was only quarter to ten. I parked behind the BMW and went up on the porch and rang the bell. I waited, then rang it again. Perhaps she’s in the basement or attic, and can’t hear me, I thought. Not quite sure what to do, I turned the doorknob and found it unlocked. Pushing the door open, I went into the house and called Georgette’s name as I walked from room to room.

  The house is bigger than the one in Old Mill Lane. In addition to the family room and library, it has a second smaller dining room and a study. I checked all of them, even knocking on the doors of the three powder rooms, and opening them when there was no response.

  Georgette was nowhere on the downstairs floor. I stood at the bottom of the front staircase and called out her name, but there was only silence from the second floor. The day had begun sunny, but had clouded over, and suddenly the house seemed very dark. I began to feel uneasy, but then told myself that it was ridiculous to worry. Georgette had to be there somewhere.

  I remembered that in the kitchen I had noticed that the door to the lower level of the house was open a few inches, so I decided to look for her down there first. I walked back to the kitchen, pulled that door open wide, and switched on the light. I could see from the oak paneling along the stairway that this area of the house was no ordinary basement. I called Georgette’s name again and started down the stairs, growing more uneasy with every step. My instinct now told me something was terribly wrong. Had Georgette had an accident? I wondered.

  I turned on the switch at the foot of the stairs and the recreation room blazed with overhead lights. The back wall was completely glass, with sliding doo
rs that led out to a patio. I walked over to them, thinking Georgette might have gone outside, but I found them locked. Then I realized there was a faint but pungent odor in the room, a smell I recognized as turpentine.

  It became stronger as I crossed the room and went down a hall, past another bathroom. As I turned a corner, I stumbled over a foot.

  Georgette was lying on the floor, her eyes open, drying blood caked on her forehead. A can of turpentine was at her side, the contents seeping onto the carpet. She was still holding a rag in her hand. The gun that had killed her was lying precisely in the center of a splotch of red paint on the floor.

  I remember screaming.

  I remember running out of the house and into my car.

  I remember driving home.

  I remember dialing 911 at some point, but I could not get a word out when the operator answered.

  I was sitting in my house, still clutching the phone when the police arrived, and the next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital and hearing Sergeant Earley ask me why I had dialed 911.

  19

  Jarrett Alberti, a locksmith, was the second person to find the body of Georgette Grove. He had an appointment to meet Georgette at the farmhouse on Holland Road at eleven thirty. When he got there, he parked behind Georgette’s car, saw that the front door was open, and, like Celia Nolan, went inside looking for her. Not knowing that he was duplicating Celia’s grim search, he went through the rooms calling out Georgette’s name.

  In the kitchen, he could see that the lights to the lower level were on, so he went downstairs. He caught the odor of turpentine and followed it until, like Celia an hour earlier, he turned the corner and found Georgette’s body.

  An ex-marine, the stocky twenty-eight-year-old was familiar with death on the battlefield, having served two tours in Iraq before being discharged for a wound that had shattered his ankle. This death was different though—Georgette Grove was a lifetime friend of his family.

  He stood still for a full minute, taking in the scene. Then, in a disciplined response, he turned around, walked outside, dialed 911, and waited on the porch until the police arrived.

  An hour later he observed in a detached way that the place was swarming with activity. Yellow tape was being put in place to keep the media and the neighbors away. The coroner was with the body, and the forensic team was searching the house and grounds for evidence. Jarrett had already assured them that he had touched neither the body nor anything around it.

  Prosecutor Jeff MacKingsley and Lola Spaulding, a detective from the police department, were questioning him on the porch. “I’m a locksmith,” Jarrett explained. “Last night Georgette called me at home.”

  “What time did she call you?” MacKingsley asked.

  “About nine o’clock.”

  “Isn’t that pretty late to make a business call?”

  “Georgette was my mom’s best friend. She used to call herself my surrogate aunt. She always called me if a house she was trying to sell needed locks fixed or replaced.” Jarrett thought of how Georgette had sat with him at his mother’s bedside when his mother was dying.

  “What did she say she wanted done?”

  “She said that the key was missing for a storage closet in this house. She wanted me to get over here by nine o’clock to replace the lock. I told her I couldn’t get here until ten, and she said in that case to make it eleven thirty.”

  “Why was that?” Jeff asked.

  “She said that she didn’t want me working on the lock while her client was here, and that she surely would be gone by eleven thirty.”

  “Georgette referred to the client as ‘she.’ ”

  “Yes,” Jarrett confirmed. He hesitated, then added, “I told Georgette that it would be a lot easier for my schedule to come at just about ten, but she said absolutely not. She didn’t want the client around when the closet was opened. I thought that was kind of funny, so I jokingly asked her if she thought there was gold hidden in it. I said, ‘You can trust me, Georgette, I won’t steal it.’ ”

  “And . . . ”

  The shock Jarrett had been feeling ever since he found the body was fading. In its place a sense of loss was settling in. Georgette Grove had been part of his life for all his twenty-eight years, and now somebody had shot her, killing her.

  “And Georgette said that she knew she could trust me, which was more than she could say about certain other people in her life.”

  “She didn’t elaborate on that statement?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where she was when she called you?”

  “Yes. She told me she was still in her office.”

  “Jarrett, when the body is removed, can you open the door to the storage closet for us?”

  “That’s what I came here to do, isn’t it?” Jarrett replied. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll wait in my van until you need me.” He was not ashamed that he was becoming upset.

  Forty minutes later he watched as the body bag was carried out and placed in the coroner’s mortuary ambulance. Detective Spaulding came over to his van. “We’re ready for you downstairs,” she said.

  Removing the lock to the storage closet was a simple operation. Without being asked, Jarrett pushed open the door. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but he believed that whatever was in this closet was responsible for his friend’s death.

  The light went on automatically. He found himself staring at shelves with neatly aligned paint cans, most of them sealed and labeled with the name of the room for which they were intended.

  “There’s nothing but paint cans in here,” he exclaimed. “Nobody shot Georgette because of paint cans, did they?”

  Jeff MacKingsley did not answer him. He was looking at the cans on the bottom shelf. They were the only ones that were not sealed. Three of them were empty. The fourth was half full. The lid was missing. The splotch on the floor that Georgette Grove had been trying to clean up probably came from this one, Jeff thought. All the open cans were labeled “dining room.” All had contained red paint. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this was where the vandals got the paint they used on the Nolans’ house, he thought. Is that why Georgette Grove was murdered? Would it be worth killing her to keep her quiet?

  “Is it okay if I take off now?” Jarrett asked.

  “Of course. We will need to get a formal statement from you, but that can be done later. Thanks for all your help, Jarrett.”

  Jarrett nodded and walked down the hall, taking care to avoid the chalked outline of where Georgette’s body had fallen. As he did, Clyde Earley came down the stairs, his expression grim. He crossed the recreation room and went up to MacKingsley.

  “I just came from the hospital,” Earley said. “We took Celia Nolan there in an ambulance. At ten after ten she dialed 911, then didn’t say anything, just was gasping into the phone. They alerted us, so we went to her house. She was in shock. No response to our questions. We took her to the hospital. In the emergency room, she started to come out of it. She was here this morning. She says she found the body and drove home.”

  “She found the body and drove home!” Jeff exclaimed.

  “She says she remembers seeing the body, running out of the house, then getting in her car and driving home. She remembers trying to call us. She doesn’t remember anything else until she started to come out of shock in the hospital.”

  “How is she now?” Jeff asked.

  “Sedated, but okay. They reached the husband. He’s on his way to the hospital, and she insists she’s going home with him. There was a scene at the school when she didn’t pick up her son. The kid got hysterical. He saw her faint the other day, and apparently is scared she’s going to die. One of the teachers brought him to the hospital. He’s with her now.”

  “We have to talk to her,” Jeff said. “She must have been the client Georgette Grove was expecting to meet.”

  “Well, I don’t think she’ll be in the mood to buy this place now,” Earley commente
d. “Looks like she has her hands full living in one crime scene.”

  “Did she say what time she got here?”

  “Quarter of ten. She was early.”

  Then we lost over an hour from the time she saw the body until Jarrett Alberti called us, Jeff thought.

  “Jeff, we found something in the victim’s shoulder bag that might be interesting.” With gloved hands, Detective Spaulding was holding a newspaper clipping. She brought it over for him to see. It was the picture of Celia Nolan fainting that had appeared in the newspaper the day before. “It looks as if it was put in Georgette’s bag after she was killed,” Spaulding said. “We’ve already checked it for fingerprints and there aren’t any on it.”

  20

  I think what really calmed me down was the absolute panic I saw in Jack’s face. When he came into the emergency room cubicle where they had settled me, he was still sobbing. He usually goes willingly into Alex’s arms, but after his scare when I wasn’t there to pick him up at school, he would only cling to me.

  We rode home in the back seat of the car, Jack’s hand in mine. Alex was heartsick for both of us. “God, Ceil,” he said. “I can’t even imagine what a horrible experience that was for you. What’s going on in this town?”

  What indeed? I thought.

  It was nearly quarter to two, and we were all hungry. Alex opened a can of soup for us and made Jack his favorite, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The hot soup helped me shake off the grogginess caused by the sedative the doctor had injected into my arm.

  We had barely finished eating when reporters started ringing the doorbell. I glanced out the window and noticed that one of them was an older woman with wild gray hair. I remembered that she had been running toward me just as I had fainted on the day we moved in.

  Alex went outside. For the second time in forty-eight hours, he made a statement to the press: “After the vandalism that we found when we moved into this house on Tuesday, we decided it would be better for us to choose a different home in the area. Georgette Grove arranged to meet my wife in a house being offered for sale on Holland Road. When Celia arrived, she found Ms. Grove’s body and rushed home to notify the police.”