A History of Murder

by Lynn Bohart

  “Is Judge Foster even still alive?” Rudy asked.

  “I think so,” Doe replied. “At least I’ve never heard that he died. He’s not on the bench anymore, though.”

  “No,” Rudy said with a sigh. “He retired from the State Supreme Court eight or ten years ago, I think. He’s got to be in his nineties by now.”

  “Well, he’s certainly one I wouldn’t want to write about without his permission,” I said.

  I was sorting through things in the cardboard box when I found an article in Newsweek about Judge Foster. The date was 1971. I sat down to read it and learned that he and his wife, Holly, had three children. The oldest was a daughter, named Rose. The middle child was a son named Mansfield. And then they had a younger daughter named Emily. I related this to the group.

  “I think his son is also a judge,” Rudy said.

  “Jeez, two in one family,” Blair said. “I wonder if he’s as awful as his dad.”

  “Foster’s wife’s name was Holly,” I said, glancing up at Doe.

  “So?” Doe asked.

  “You might want to see this.” I passed her the old magazine.

  Doe glanced down and her dark eyes grew large. “She looks just like me.”

  Blair leaned over to study the photo. “Ewww, she does. That’s creepy.”

  Holly Foster was tall and slender, like Doe, with the same thick salt and pepper-colored hair, high cheek bones and dark eyes. The likeness was eerie. Doe passed the photo to Rudy.

  “Whoa,” Rudy said. “You have a doppelgänger.”

  “I’m not sure I like that,” Doe said.

  “Here’s something else,” I said, holding up a newspaper clipping from the The Island News. “It’s an article reporting that Rose Foster, the oldest daughter, was found dead, floating in the lake. It says here that it was a tragic accident. She was only sixteen.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Rudy said. She made a note on the pad of paper next to her. “Isn’t The Island News the old weekly around here?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I guess back when the Bremertons built the hotel, they had something called The Island Chatter. Then it became The Island News.”

  “And now it’s the Mercer Island Reporter,” Rudy said. “I’m going to check into that more.”

  “What’s in this box?” Doe asked, pulling a small wooden box toward her that we hadn’t yet opened. She flipped up the lid. “Ugh,” she grunted, waving her hand in front of her face. “It smells like smoke.”

  “Well, there have been three fires on the property,” Rudy said.

  Doe began to shuffle through the contents of the smaller box. “This stuff looks really old. In fact, I think it might be from the brothel.”

  “No kidding,” I said, moving around to look over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, look at this,” she said holding up a faded yellow garter. “And this,” she said, holding up an old, dented flask.

  “Why don’t you look through that book?” I said, pointing to a small journal. “It might tell us something.”

  Doe picked up the charred book and then sat back. We each went back to the artifacts in front of us.

  “This is another diary,” Doe said after a few minutes. “The corners of several pages are burnt, but you can read most of it. It belonged to a woman named Lollie Gates. According to the inside page, she’s from the Point Grey area in British Columbia.” She looked around at us. “I think she was one of the prostitutes.”

  “What does it say?” Blair asked.

  “She talks about how sad she is. She misses her mother and sister and feels completely alone,” she said. “And she describes the dirty men who paw at her every night. It’s disgusting,” Doe said with a shake of her head. “She sounds young.”

  “May I?” I asked, reaching for the book.

  She passed it over. I opened it and felt a slight breeze whisper past my ear. I swiped my hand against my neck, before flipping pages. I stopped to allow my eyes to skim a page dated June 10, 1935. The handwriting was small and delicate.

  “Today was so bad,” I read out loud. “Mr. Miller forced me to be with three different men. I can’t say no, or he’ll beat me. But I hate it so much. They grab me and make me do dirty things. I cry, because I know I will never see my family again. But they just laugh and make fun of me. And then just when I finally have time to myself, Mr. Miller comes for me.”

  I dropped my hands. “God, how sickening. So Miller was forcing women to prostitute for him. I wonder how old Lollie was.”

  “Go to the last page,” Doe directed me.

  I flipped to the back of the journal.

  “Read it to us,” Rudy said.

  “It’s dated August 13, 1935 and starts with, ‘Today is my birthday. I’m twenty today, but no one cares. And I don’t feel well. My tummy is upset. Mr. Miller said I have to work anyway. It should be my time of the month, but I’ve missed it again. Now I have no excuse not to work.’” I stopped and looked up at my friends. “She was pregnant!”

  Doe nodded. “Looks that way. But keep reading.”

  I glanced down again. “She talks about wanting her mother,” I said, skimming another couple of pages. “She wishes her mom was there because she’d know how to make her feel better. She hopes her little sister, Anna, won’t befriend strange men like she did.” I glanced up. “So, she was abducted?”

  “That’s what I thought,” Doe said. “And then if you read to the end, something bad seems to happen.”

  I looked down and began to read out loud again. “I told Mr. Miller I had to lie down. I feel really sick, and I can’t eat. It just comes back up. I can’t work anymore today. I told Mr. Miller, but he said if I didn’t, I’d pay with my life. He threatens me a lot. But I just can’t do this anymore. So what if they kill me? I’m dead inside already. Oh God, I have to hide this. Someone is coming.”

  “It just stops,” I said. I flipped a page, and then another. There were no more entries. “That’s it. That’s the last entry. August 23rd,” I said, closing the book.

  “So someone came for her,” Blair said quietly. “And then what?”

  “We’ll probably never know,” Rudy said. “Maybe he threw her out because she was pregnant.”

  “I hope that’s all that happened,” I said with an edge to my voice. I placed the book on the table. “This makes me think of Rosa.” The girls all nodded, remembering the young woman we had saved from a sex trafficking ring back in December. “But with no friends and being pregnant in the middle of the Depression, this girl would have been really desperate. It makes Rosa’s freedom even more meaningful.”

  I left the book where it was and turned my attention back to the box I’d been working in, pulling out some photos from the original hotel. I shuffled through them, stopping to contemplate a picture of Mr. Bremerton.

  “Wait a minute!” Blair exclaimed, making us all look up again.

  She had Lollie Gates’ small diary in her hands, and her face was turned toward me, her eyes round with alarm.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The entries didn’t end where you said they did. There’s more.” She glanced back down at the page and suddenly sucked in a breath. “But that’s not all…this ink is fresh.” She held up her index finger to show me a dark smudge at the tip.

  “Hunh?” I hurried around to her side of the table to look over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  Blair held the little book open. “Here’s the last entry you read,” she said, pointing to the passage about someone coming up the stairs.

  Then she flipped the page. I inhaled in surprise. Written in the same careful penmanship were two short sentences. And in several places the ink glistened under the overhead light. I reached in and grabbed the book, my heart racing.

  “That was NOT there. I’m positive.” I read the two sentences silently and felt lightheaded.

  “C’mon, Julia. Read it out loud,” Doe said from across the table.

  I gulped. “It says, ‘I died her
e…and now I live in the dark.” I looked up at my friends, feeling my mouth go dry.

  “Didn’t April say she heard someone say something like that up in the attic?” Blair asked, her sprayed on tan looking decidedly pale.

  “Yes,” I replied. A chill had snaked its way down my back, leaving me feeling jittery. I let my gaze drift back to the book. And then I dropped it as if it was on fire.

  “What?” Rudy said, jumping up. “What is it?”

  I fought for breath as I pointed to the book. “The…the writing…” I stuttered. “The writing…just disappeared.”

  Rudy grabbed the book and flipped to the back. She shuffled pages back and forth, looking for the writing. She shook her head. “It’s gone.”

  Both Doe and Blair got up and hurried around to look over Rudy’s shoulder. I sat back down, my body humming. But three sets of gasps had me out of my chair again.

  “What now?”

  Rudy put the book on the table and pushed it forward so that we could all see. We watched in fascination as letters begun to form again in that same careful script. The two sentences that emerged made my heart feel too big for my chest.

  “I died here,” the words said again. Followed by, “I was murdered.”

  And then the words faded and were gone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We quit after that. Frankly, we were spooked. We replaced things in their containers and returned to Kris’ office where she gave us a large envelope for the copies we’d made. We never mentioned the mysterious writing.

  On the way back to the inn, we were quiet. The ghostly writing had unnerved us. But when we got to the inn, we agreed to take assignments. I volunteered to talk to Angela about the judge and to find out whether he was still around. Rudy would research old newspapers to find out more about the brothel. Doe would use her various board connections to try to ID community roles for some of the people in question. And Blair would talk with Ginger Graves, the realtor.

  After everyone left, I called my daughter.

  “You want to know about Judge Foster?” Angela asked. “Why?”

  I explained about the hidden room and the book we were writing. Since Angela worked in the prosecuting attorney’s office in Seattle, I thought she might have a lead on the judge.

  “We’ve been doing some research down at the museum,” I told her, getting a chill again at the memory of the automatic writing. “And it turns out the judge and his family lived here for a couple of years in the late sixties.”

  “Really? Well, I don’t know much about him. He’d retired by the time I started practicing. But his reputation still lingers in the halls of justice around here, believe me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For one thing, the current prosecuting attorney clerked for him at one point. You’d think he might be an admirer of Judge Foster. But there used to be a painting of the old judge down the hallway from the prosecuting attorney’s office, and he had it removed before he moved in.”

  “Ouch!”

  “No kidding. My understanding is that no one wanted it, so they finally hung it in one of the lower courts.”

  “So, Foster wasn’t well-liked even amongst his peers?”

  “I guess not. And he’s also been the fodder for some well-worn jokes that have circulated around the courthouse for years. Believe me when I say that no one is sorry he retired.”

  “But you don’t know anything about his family life?”

  “No. He’d already moved on to Olympia and the Supreme Court by the time I entered law school. But the rumors continued after he went to Olympia. Some people think he took bribes under the table, and that’s how he was able to buy a big piece of property up on Camano Island. Others say he often cheated on his wife. Others snicker about his sexual proclivities.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. I know one guy who says he swears he saw the judge leaving a gay bar many years back, and another guy who said he knows someone who participated in a swinger’s club with him. But I suppose if you want to know more about Judge Foster, you ought to talk to Dad. After all, he actually had to argue cases in front of him.”

  My husband and I had separated amicably and maintained a friendly relationship over the years. But that didn’t mean I enjoyed calling him. Mainly because most often I had to go through his thirty-three year old, pencil-thin wife, Kitty, who had the vocabulary of a second grader and relied on garbled clichés to make a point.

  “Okay, thanks, sweetheart,” I said without enthusiasm.

  After dinner, I called the governor’s mansion in Olympia. When I called after hours, Graham wanted me to call the landline, which meant I almost always got Kitty. I think he enjoyed forcing me to engage with his new wife.

  “Hi, Kitty. It’s Julia,” I said when she answered. “I hope you’re enjoying this warm weather.”

  “Oh, hi Julia,” she said with a lazy drawl. “Yes, thank God the rain has stopped. I hate the spring. It plays haddock with my allergies.”

  Count to three.

  I held my breath for a moment longer, hoping I wouldn’t laugh out loud.

  “Um…mine, too,” I said with a shake of my head. “Well…I know it’s late, but I was wondering if there’s any chance I can speak to Graham.”

  She sighed. “Sure. I’ll get him.”

  I heard her high heels clickity-clack away from the phone and clenched my teeth in frustration at the thought that I’d been replaced by a cross between Dolly Parton and one of Lily Tomlin’s TV characters. As I contemplated the successor to my throne, a voice said, “Julia, how are you?”

  That deep melodic sound could still start my engine. But this time, I drew a mental picture of David, erasing anything I might still feel for Graham.

  “I’m good, Graham. How are you?” I replied, taking a deep breath.

  “Good, if you think sitting in a suffocating room for four hours this afternoon arguing over the education budget is a fun way to spend your time.”

  “Oh,” I murmured, stifling a laugh. “Sorry. I guess being governor isn’t just shaking hands and going to cocktail parties.”

  “Hardly. But what can I do for you? Everything okay at the inn?”

  “Yes. In fact, we’re booked solid until Halloween. I just wanted to ask you something. The girls and I are writing a history of the inn, and I wanted to know what you could tell me about Judge Wendell Foster. For instance, is he even still alive?”

  “As far as I know. But why?”

  “He lived here for a couple of years back in the late sixties.”

  “No wonder I never felt comfortable there.”

  “Wait a minute! You always said you loved the inn.”

  “I loved what we did with the place. But I never felt comfortable there. There’s a weird feeling there, Julia, and you know it.”

  “The ghosts, you mean?”

  “You know I don’t talk about ghosts,” he said quickly.

  I chuckled. “Oh, that’s right. It wouldn’t look good.”

  “No, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s just that…well, not everyone is as open-minded as you are.”

  “Graham, whether you like it or not, you saw Elizabeth that time on the stairs. You were as fascinated by her as I was. You can’t deny it.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But if anyone asks, I can’t say with confidence that I wasn’t hallucinating. By the way, what does your new boyfriend think of the ghosts?”

  There it was.

  “So you know about David.”

  “I’m the governor. People tell me things.”

  “Well then I’m sure you know that David is a cop. And yet he’s open-minded enough to accept the possibility of ghosts.” I wasn’t sure I’d just portrayed David accurately, but hell if I was going to tell Graham. “Anyway, forget it. I didn’t call to talk about ghosts. Just tell me what you know about Wendell Foster. Angie said there were lots of stories about him - possible bribes, womanizing, stuff like that.”

  “Yo
u’re not going to put that in your book, are you?”

  “No. Of course not. But I’m trying to find out who he was and what life must have been like for his family on the island. What do you know about him?”

  “Not much. He had a legendary temper. There were a lot of rumors about him, like Angela said. But nothing anyone could prove,” he added. “You didn’t tangle with Judge Foster or he’d exact his revenge on you. But I know that the death of his daughter nearly derailed him.”

  “I read about his daughter’s death. What do you mean by ‘derailed?’?”

  “He was a bastard on the bench, but always in complete control. And yet when Rose died, he started acting…I don’t know…strange. He’d mumble to himself, get off track…even talk gibberish. He finally had to take a leave of absence.”

  “I suppose the death of a child might cause anyone to lose it,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I bumped into him once in the hallway and told him how sorry I was to hear about Rose. He turned away and mumbled, ‘Damn my children.’ I have no idea what that meant.”

  I heaved a big sigh. “Still not anything I could use in the book. Is there something positive I could say about him?”

  Graham chuckled. “He was a brilliant legal mind, there’s no doubt about that. Young law clerks and attorneys alike would hang around his court just to see what they could learn from him.”

  “I could use that,” I said with enthusiasm.

  “Listen,” Graham said. “If you want to know more about Judge Foster, you ought to talk to Charlotte Rowe. She was his secretary for years. She’s retired now, but I think she lives on Queen Anne Hill. Do you want me to see if I can find her address?”

  “Would you? That would be great.”

  “Okay, I’ll text you. I’ll even give her a call to introduce you if you want to go talk to her. Hey, since I have you, I’ve got a favor.”

  “What?” I asked cautiously.

  “It’s nothing big, really. It’s just that it’s Kitty’s birthday next week. I was never very good at birthday presents…”

  “You’re kidding, right?” I interrupted him. “I still treasure that humidifier you bought me for our tenth anniversary.”