A History of Murder

by Lynn Bohart

  “There is a resemblance,” I said, trying to downplay the similarity. “Who is this next to her?” I hoped to shift attention away from Doe.

  “That’s my sister, Rose,” Emily said. “She was very pretty. Everyone said so.”

  “Yes, she was,” I agreed.

  For the first time, I noticed that Rose and Emily didn’t look very much alike. Rose was fair-skinned and blond, while Emily looked more like her mother.

  “It’s sad that Rose’s boyfriend died so young. She must have been heartbroken,” Doe said.

  “Yes. She was. She blamed my father. He could get so mad sometimes.” The flat of her hand reached involuntarily for her cheek.

  “Did he hit you, Emily?” I asked.

  She pulled her hand away from her face and slipped it under her thigh. “I was bad sometimes. Father had to discipline me.”

  “Did he discipline Chris Stephens, too?”

  “Once,” she said. “He didn’t want that bastard kid hanging around Rose.”

  Doe and I exchanged glances as my heart rate sped up. Bastard kid? Had the judge been involved with Chris Stephens’ death?

  “It sounds like your father was very strict,” I said, watching her closely.

  “He just wanted to protect Rose. But it didn’t do any good.”

  “Um…how did Chris die? Was he murdered?” I asked.

  Her head snapped up, and she stopped. “Who said he was murdered?”

  A chill rippled down my back. Maybe I’d gone too far. “I’m sorry. I just thought maybe he was. Your brother said he’d been beaten up.”

  She began biting the nail on her index finger.

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she said. “I don’t know anything about any of the murders.”

  “What?” I said, thinking I hadn’t heard her correctly.

  She glanced back and forth between me and Doe. “Nothing. I…I misspoke.” She abruptly pointed to the book. “That’s Rose,” she said, pointing to a picture of her and her sister on the front porch. Rose was sitting on the steps in shorts, her long, legs drawn out in front of her. Emily stood on the top step behind her, glowering down at her sister.

  “Such a tragedy,” Doe said. “It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  Emily stared at the photo for a long moment and began to tap one heel against the floor in rapid succession. “She was strangled.”

  “Strangled? Mansfield made it sound like she drowned. He said none of you had ever had swimming lessons,” I said.

  She glanced up at me with a look of surprise. “Yes, I think you’re right. She drowned.”

  My mind raced. How could she mistake being strangled for drowning?

  “Who found her?” Doe asked.

  Her eyes seemed to glaze over. “I did. And then I had to go tell my father. He was real mad.”

  “Mad at you?”

  “Just mad. He loved Rose.” She dropped her chin to stare at the photograph again. “My mother cried.”

  “Did you cry?” Doe asked gently.

  “I don’t cry.” She suddenly reached out and grabbed Doe’s hand. “C’mon. I want to show you something.”

  She pulled Doe up and led her out into the hallway. Doe shot me a panicked look, so I followed them past the big staircase.

  There was a small service elevator at the end of the hallway, but she turned into an antiquated and filthy kitchen. Black and white floor tiles were crumbling and streaked with years of spilled soups and sauces. The counters were layered with crusted dishes. The old stove was covered with grease, and a fried onion smell hung in the air.

  We continued through the kitchen and turned left into a sun room. The room was the size of a small bedroom. A floor-to-ceiling book case lined the far wall, while a large, paned window looked out over an overgrown backyard. But that’s where the similarity to a normal room ended.

  This must have been the room that Charlotte Rowe had said was set up for Judge Foster. But now, there was a crib in the corner, filled with old porcelain dolls. A rocking chair, very similar to the one we’d found in the attic sat in the opposite corner, draped with a hand-crocheted blanket. Below the window was a long bookcase, filled with children’s books. And the floor was littered with dozens of toys.

  When I glanced at Doe, I realized she was as horrified as I was. I actually felt it difficult to breathe.

  This room looked just like the one in the barn attic.

  “Do you have children, Emily?” Doe asked quietly, gazing around the room.

  Emily released Doe’s hand and moved to the crib, glancing around with a look of love. “No. Father wouldn’t let me. He let Rose have a baby, but not me.”

  My stomach constricted as if someone had punched me in the gut, and I reached out to the wall for support.

  Rose had had a baby? No one had ever mentioned that. I struggled to get air into my lungs and then asked, “Is that why there was a nursery in the old barn? Up in the attic?”

  Emily whirled around with fear etched in her face. “You’re not supposed to know about that.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to sound as casual as possible.

  “We…uh…found a hidden room, a nursery like this one. We were doing some repairs. It’s no big deal. The room’s been there since the barn was built. In fact, back when there was a brothel there, they used that same room as a jail. But by the time we found it, it had an old crib and some books in it, just like this.”

  I happened to glance down to the bottom shelf of the bookcase and felt the blood drain from my face. Lined up in order, was what appeared to be the full collection of the Nancy Drew mysteries. We’d found the first in the series in our hidden room. Although I heard Emily still talking in the background to Doe, I was fixated on the lineup of books and mentally began ticking them off in order.

  “But father won’t like that you found out about that,” she said behind me, her words coming fast. “No one will like it. You’ll have to go now.” She grabbed my shoulder, bringing me back to attention. We were ushered out of the room and back down the hallway.

  “I’m sorry if we’ve upset you, Emily,” I said. We’d stopped in the entryway. “May we still use some of your pictures?” I asked, nodding to the photo album on the coffee table.

  She was biting her nails again. “No. I don’t think so. You have to go now,” she said, glancing up the stairs. “It’s late. And I have to cook dinner for my father. I can’t tell him you were here. He’ll punish me if he knows you found the room.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Our visit to Emily haunted me for the rest of the evening, especially her comment that she didn’t know anything about any of the murders. How many had there been?

  But it was Emily herself who made me most uncomfortable. We already knew that she wasn’t sane. But her behavior made the fact that she was caring for an elderly man seem dangerous. I decided to call Mansfield the next day.

  “It’s not that I think she will harm your father,” I told him the next morning. “It’s just that…well, I don’t know when you were there last, but she can barely take care of that big house, let alone an invalid in his nineties. Don’t you worry about him?”

  “I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Applegate,” he said. “My sister might suffer from a mental disorder, but she can function just fine. I think she’d tell me if there were any problems.”

  His response made me think that he just didn’t want to get involved. I had to get his attention.

  “She also said some crazy stuff, Mr. Foster.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  I paused, contemplating how much I should say. After all, I could be implicating either this man’s sister, or even his father in a murder.

  “She hinted that there had been multiple murders when you lived on the island. And I should tell you that someone else told me that your mother thought your sister, Rose, had been murdered.”

  “No. That was an accident. She drowned.”

  “But y
ou suggested it might have been suicide.”

  “I just meant that maybe she was so despondent about Chris’ death that she wasn’t careful down by the lake. That’s all.”

  “But Emily seemed to think she had been strangled. Then, she took us to a nursery set up in the back of the house, as if she’s caring for a baby. And she mentioned that Rose had had a baby. Did you know about that?”

  “What? No. This is all crazy. My parents would have told me.” He sighed, and I heard him tapping, as if he were tapping his pen on the desk again. “But thank you, Mrs. Applegate. I see what you mean. Things have gotten worse. Perhaps Emily has stopped taking her medication again. She did that once before.”

  “I just don’t want anything to happen to either of them,” I said.

  “No, of course not. I appreciate your concern. I’ll check into it right away. Thank you for calling…really.”

  I felt better after hanging up. Rather than standing on the sidelines, I’d taken action, and hopefully both Emily and Judge Foster would be taken care of as a result. I spent the rest of the day feeling as if a weight had been lifted.

  ÷

  Doe had invited us all over for dinner at her expansive home at the top of the island. Overlooking I-90 and across the water to Seattle, her home was a one-level, brick construction that looked like it was right out of a small hamlet in England, complete with ivy-covered windows, small green spaces accented with flowers, and flagstone paths.

  Doe had made chicken enchiladas and rice, so we all pitched in to set the table and serve up the food.

  As we worked, Blair asked, “So, how did it go with Emily yesterday?” In response, Doe and I shared a glance. Blair noticed and said, “What?”

  “Well, let’s just say I’ve never met anyone weirder,” Doe said.

  I saw Blair flinch and quickly added, “She was much worse today, Blair.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Where to begin?” Doe said, sitting down.

  I hadn’t told either Rudy or Doe about Blair’s bi-polar brother and how he died. She hadn’t asked me not to, but I felt it was up to her to reveal it in her own way and in her own time. As we took our seats and began to pass platters and bowls around, I tried to explain what had happened that day without hyperbole.

  “She seemed much more agitated today,” I began. “And while we were talking about the death of her sister’s boyfriend, I asked if he might have been murdered. She got very upset with that and then implied that there was more than one murder back then.” Both Rudy and Blair stopped what they were doing and stared at me. “And then she gave a different version of the story about how Rose died.”

  “What do you mean?” Rudy asked.

  “First, she said that Rose was strangled,” I replied. “But when we mentioned that her brother had said she had drowned, she suddenly agreed with that version.”

  “That could be a natural discrepancy,” Rudy said. “Didn’t you say that he was off at boarding school when it happened and that Rose was found in the shallows of the lake? Maybe something got caught around her throat.”

  “Yes, but guess who found Rose’s body?” Doe asked.

  “Emily,” Blair replied.

  “Bingo,” Doe said, pointing her fork at her. “And then there was the creepy fact that she couldn’t take her eyes off me.”

  “Because you look so much like her mother,” Blair said.

  “Yes,” Doe said, toying with her rice. “It made me really uncomfortable.”

  “But nothing topped it off like the duplicate nursery she has set up in the back of the house,” I said. “She’s turned the sunroom into a nursery just like the one in the attic,” I replied. “Down to the shawl draped over the back of the rocker.”

  “Wow. Did she say why?” Blair asked.

  “No. But I asked her if she’d had any children, and she said no. That her father wouldn’t allow it,” Doe replied.

  Blair almost choked on a sip of wine. “What does that mean? He wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Who knows? But her father sounds like a total control freak. He adored Rose. Ignored Mansfield. And I don’t know what he felt for Emily,” I said. “But it was clear that he hit her.”

  “As in beat her?” Rudy asked.

  “Possibly. But we haven’t told you the most shocking part of it,” Doe said. “Rose had a baby.”

  The room went still. Only the overhead fan moved silently above us. Finally, Rudy spoke up. “So, the nursery in the attic might have been set up for Rose’s baby? Why?”

  “No idea,” I said. “But she admitted that the nursery was theirs. In fact, she said her father wouldn’t like it that we’d found it.”

  “So, what do we think?” Blair asked. “Rose had a baby and they locked it up?”

  “It still could have been Emily they locked up,” I said. “Maybe they tried that before they put her in the hospital. She had a bunch of porcelain dolls lined up in the crib she had in this fake nursery. And Mansfield made a big deal out of telling us that Emily pretended her dolls were real.”

  “So you’re thinking they locked Emily up because they couldn’t handle her,” Blair said.

  I shrugged. “Someone spent long periods of time up there. Whether that’s where the remains of the baby we found was kept or not, I don’t know. The two things could be unrelated.”

  “But Ruthie Crenshaw had a baby out of wedlock, too,” Doe said. “The baby we found could have belonged to either one of them.”

  “No,” Blair said. “Remember, I talked to Ruthie Crenshaw. She gave her baby up for adoption.”

  “I guess it’s looking more and more like the baby in the diaper bag may have belonged to Rose,” Rudy said quietly.

  “So do we think that Rose had a Down’s Syndrome baby, and Emily killed it and then they locked her up?” Doe said.

  Blair reached for the rice as she said, “That makes more sense.”

  I sat back and sighed. “I don’t know. I have a hard time believing that she would kill a baby. She seems more enthralled with them. But, there is something else I noticed just before she told us to leave.”

  “What’s that?” Rudy asked.

  “She had the full collection of the old Nancy Drew books.”

  Rudy’s eyes lit up. “Wasn’t there a Nancy Drew book up in the attic room?”

  “Yes. The Case of the Missing Clock,” I said. “I know that collection really well. I’ve sold a couple complete sets. And guess which book was missing from her collection?”

  “Oh, God,” Blair said. “The Case of the Missing Clock. So there you have it. It was Emily who was stuck up there. Maybe with Rose’s baby. How incredibly sad.”

  It seemed like most of us had lost our appetites and were just playing with our food by this time. There was a long silence.

  “The candlestick,” I finally said.

  Everyone stopped and looked at me.

  “What?” Rudy asked.

  “The candlestick. I think the baby was struck with the candlestick.”

  “I don’t get it,” Doe said.

  “Don’t you remember? There were two candles in the room when we found it, but only one candlestick. Plus…” I glanced at Blair. “We haven’t told you what happened Thursday night in the attic.”

  Blair and I told them about the strange visitor roaming the attic with the candle.

  “Now I have the chills,” Doe said, pushing her plate away.

  “I think Lollie, or someone, is trying to tell us something,” I said. “To get us to pay attention to the candlestick.”

  “Because you think that’s what killed the baby,” Blair said.

  I nodded, and Doe said, “What’s going on? All we were going to do was some basic research on the inn and write up a nice little history book. So far, we’ve uncovered the possible murders of a prostitute, a teenage boy and the daughter of a prominent judge. Not to mention the death of a baby, a possible case of sex slavery, new ghosts in the barn, and a crazy woman who
absolutely gives me the willies.”

  Doe got up and went to the refrigerator. She stopped with her hand on the door for a moment as if to compose herself, and then finally opened it and pulled out a pitcher of ice water to bring back to the table.

  “Maybe we should just stop,” I said. “We certainly don’t need to do this book. It won’t make any real difference to the inn.”

  I looked around the table. The faces of my beautiful, sweet friends were all drawn and haggard looking. My eyes drifted over to Blair. We hadn’t mentioned the scheduled break-in to Frank Miller’s office. Blair barely shook her head, as if to say ‘no.’ She didn’t want to say anything.

  Rudy took a deep breath. “Look,” she began. “Once again, I vote we continue. At least now we have a pretty good idea what the hidden room was used for. We don’t have all the answers for the baby we found, but Julia can tell David what we’ve pieced together and let the police handle it. Meanwhile, we can still fill in pieces about the history of the inn. Personally, I’d like to verify what that woman told you about the Formosas.”

  We all glanced over to Doe, who had a resigned look on her face. Her dark eyes shifted from Blair, to Rudy, and then to me. “Okay,” she said with a sigh. “That sounds safe enough.”

  In a perfect world, she would’ve been right.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It was just after midnight. Bill Haley and the Comets began to play “Rock Around the Clock,” pulling me from a deep sleep. At first I thought it was part of a dream. But as the song continued, I shook myself awake and reached out to grab my cell phone off the bedside table and flick it on.

  “Mom?” I mumbled.

  “Julia! I smell smoke!”

  “What?” I said, rubbing my eyes. “What do you mean you smell smoke? How can you smell anything from where you are?”

  “I don’t know. I just smell smoke, and somehow it’s connected to you. Is something on fire?”

  My mother had been a heavy smoker when she was alive and even died from emphysema. So I often associated her with the smell of cigarette smoke. But I didn’t think she was talking about that.