“Please tell me you’re not going into Lawrence’s room,” Liz said, her voice low, her shoulders hunched.
“Just keep thinking about your article.” Anna angled the flashlight upward, letting the beam play over the wall just above eye level. “There,” she said. She aimed the light again, running it down the wall to her right. “And there.” She stepped forward, rested her finger atop a nail head, and looked at Liz.
“Something used to hang there.”
“What do you want to bet there’s at least one more nail this way?” Anna directed the flashlight ahead, illuminating the wall across from Lawrence’s bedroom door. “There it is,” she said, moving forward and pointing the beam directly at another nail in the wall. “That’s three, Liz. Three nails in the wall, three times the painting at our end of the hall changed.”
Liz looked at the nails then, slowly turning her face, toward the other end of the hall, at the abstract collage that now hung next to her bedroom. “Were there ever paintings at this end?” she said as she looked back at Anna.
“These are the only bare nails I’ve seen in the house, and there are three in a row.”
The more Anna thought about it, the more she was certain who had moved the paintings, and why. Alice wanted nothing to do with the Birches, yet she felt an abiding connection to them, a poisonous nostalgia about her days here. She was staying at the carriage house with Mitch, and he had already secured the earrings for her. Was he entering the house at night to take souvenirs for his aunt?
“Remember the night before last, when Mitch interrupted Lawrence in the library?” she said. “What was he doing in the house after one o’clock in the morning?”
“Gardeners and groundskeepers get up at the crack of dawn.”
“What if Mitch has been taking paintings for Aunt Alice?”
“But why would Alice want those ugly things?”
Anna couldn’t mention Alice’s daughter, and that because of her daughter Alice no doubt felt she was owed some of the Birches’ belongings, but Alice’s sad longing for the old days, despite the death and rot they had produced, was explanation enough. “I’ve never met anyone so in love with the past. Those paintings probably go back to her days in the Forsythia Room. She may think they’re beautiful.”
“She’d be wrong.”
“Or they’re only mementos, and no one cares what mementos look like.”
“Like cheap hotel ashtrays.”
“Or ticket stubs.”
“So why not just take the paintings? Why move them first?”
“I think she wanted the pig man first. She must remember it. Maybe it’s been hanging between those doors since she stayed here. So Mitch replaced it with the charcoal man from Lawrence’s end of the hall, thinking he wouldn’t notice a nail in the wall.”
“But we would,” Liz said. “We might not notice a change of painting, but we’d notice if there suddenly wasn’t a painting.”
Anna looked toward the staircase, on alert for a figure heading up the stairs, footsteps muffled by the carpeting. “Mitch kept rotating the paintings. Taking one off the wall at our end, giving it to Alice, then replacing it with a painting from Lawrence’s end. After Lawrence went missing, it was even easier.”
“Eventually he would have run out of paintings in our hall.”
“He probably planned to move on before then. Maybe to one of the bedrooms.”
“I remember his face at dinner last night when you mentioned the paintings. You had him worried.”
“Nilla was terrified.”
Anna edged toward Lawrence’s room and paused at the door, looking to Liz for her approval.
“Yes, I need to do this,” she said. “Let’s go for it.”
Liz the investigator was back.
“Eat your heart out, Herald.” Anna raised her hand, turned the knob, and pushed open the door, surveying the room before moving inside.
Like the Forsythia and Larkspur Rooms, Lawrence’s room was dominated by one color. The room’s walls, comforter, nightstand lampshade, and armchair were all hunter green—a shade so dark it swallowed the light from the room’s two windows.
Liz stepped inside, wrinkled her nose in preparation for an unpleasant surprise, and sniffed the air.
“What are you doing?” Anna asked.
“A dead body would stink after a couple days. I don’t smell anything except dust.”
“Maybe we should open the attic door and take a sniff.”
“What does old hippie smell like?”
“Patchouli. Or cloves.” Anna kept an eye on Jackson as he explored the room, on the alert for raised fur or other signs of anxiety, but although he was curious, he was calm and relaxed. He pushed his nose into the green blanket draped over the corner armchair then pawed at the rug at the foot of the bed.
When he nosed the sage green bed skirt, Anna lowered herself to the floor, raised the skirt, and pointed her flashlight. Seeing a canvas strap under the bed, she dropped the flashlight and tugged on the strap until a duffel bag appeared. “An overnight bag,” she said, sitting up. “Do you think?”
Liz crouched down. “We should to find out.” She unzipped the bag and spread the canvas wide, revealing a rolled pair of jeans, t-shirts, men’s underwear, and a navy blue sweatshirt.
“I think that’s Lawrence’s,” Anna said. She unfolded the sweatshirt and found it was a hoodie—except for the color, the same as the hoodie she’d seen him in earlier.
“This is either very good news or very bad news,” Liz said.
“Either Lawrence plans to come back or he’s never coming back.”
“God.” Liz shuddered, stood quickly, and pushed the bag back under the bed with her foot. “Let’s get out of here.”
Jackson trotted down the hall and bounded down the stairs, Anna and Liz not far behind. As they entered the library, Jackson leapt onto his blanket.
Standing behind her chair, her hands resting on its back, Anna’s thoughts tumbled. Why did Lawrence leave his bag here? The simple explanation was that he was coming back, as the Birches expected him to do. He’d just begun work on the Birch Papers, so he was obligated to return. Unless . . .
No, there could be a dozen explanations, and most of them didn’t involve foul play. He might have stolen something from the house and run. He might have taken the day off without telling anyone—an explanation that fit Lawrence’s attitude regarding his superior station in life. Why, then, did she feel uneasy? Given the same circumstances in a brightly lit office building in Elk Park, would she give the matter a second thought?
She needed to make order of things before she could make sense of them. “So what do we have after all our research?” she asked Liz. She began to pace between Jackson’s armchair and the small table at the other end of the library. “We have Alice, a ghost who is very much alive, three letters from priests that focus more and more on Matthew Birch as the problem, the probability that Kurt Ellison was murdered, the possibility that Charlene Birch was murdered, then—”
“Don’t forget Jean Birch, Paxton’s grandmother,” Liz said, leaning back in her seat. “She hated alcohol, Bee said, so why did she die of a drug and alcohol overdose?”
“Then there’s Devin Sherwood.”
“Lawrence?”
“I’m trying not to jump to conclusions.”
“We solved the mystery of the moving paintings,” Liz said hopefully.
“For the twenty-first century at least.” Standing over Jackson, Anna watched the storm through the window. The charcoal-colored sky, milky with rain clouds, would soon go black. Her eyes dropped to the red Buddha. “Matthew Birch was a man who terrified his wife and child, who explored every religion and cult that came his way—courtesy of his father. But he loathed Christianity.”
“And he wrote ‘rosary from the pit of hell’ on that receipt.”
Anna turned from the window. “I’m not sure about that. Do you still have it?”
Liz grabbed the ledger, slipped the
receipt from its pages, unfolded it, and held it out.
As Anna read, she began to shake her head. “It reads, ‘Rosary from the pit of hell, from a degraded soul with one leg stuck in hell.’ That’s not right.” She looked up. “Matthew wouldn’t have believed in hell. He was a new age hippie who drew mandalas. And he wouldn’t have described anyone as a degraded soul.” She held up the paper, pointing to the date in the upper-right corner. “This is from November 1980, when Charlene was still alive. I think it was written about Matthew.”
“But why write on the receipt?”
“Maybe Charlene was trying to say something without really saying it. Like Alice.” Anna stood near the doorway and gazed into the sitting room and the entryway beyond. “Where is everybody?”
23
Anna ran her hand behind the stack of books until she found the red box. She laid the box on the table, stood directly over it, and placed a hand on either side of its lid, ready to lift it.
“What are you waiting for?” Liz asked. “Or are you as creeped out by those rosaries as I am?” She rose, circled the table, and stood next to Anna.
“I’m trying to figure out why Lawrence took them.”
“He took the ledger too.”
“I don’t think he wanted the ledger. I think he wanted this box, and he took something else to cover up what he really wanted. The ledger just happened to be nearby.”
“Open it.” Liz nudged closer.
Anna let her hands fall to her side. “I don’t understand why Charlene would write on that receipt. She was Catholic. You said that ledger recorded all Matthew’s trips and purchases up to the early 1980s, right?”
Liz reached across the table and snapped up the ledger book. “July 1979 to July 1981.”
“I could be wrong about that book being important. Bee said Matthew took Charlene to Indonesia for their second honeymoon. What if he bought that rosary there and recorded it in the ledger?”
“He kept a record of every cent he spent on vacations.” Starting at the back of the book, Liz flipped forward until she came to 1980, then ran her finger down the page, examining the entries. “Here it is. November 18, 1980. He bought a rosary in Pontianak”—she fumbled the word, guessing its pronunciation—“however you say it. On the island of Borneo.”
“Honeymoon capital of the world.” Slowly, Anna lifted the lid on the box and put it to the side. “So which one of these is the rosary from hell?”
Liz tilted her head, peering down at the box, but kept her body stiff, maintaining her distance. “None of them look right. I don’t understand why they weren’t thrown out.”
“Storm’s getting closer,” Anna said as lightning, brighter now, lit up the library. Her eyes dropped again to the Buddha. Blood red, all belly and earlobes. I’d throw that out too, she thought. I’d take both hands, wrap them around its jolly head, and haul it to the trash.
She again studied the tangle of rosaries in the box. The purple one, with quartz or amethyst beads, was ordinary. Even if you could buy it on Borneo, why would you? The same with the rosary strung with pale pink beads. The orange one looked plastic—not a likely candidate—but the wooden rosary, its cross nearly split in half by something heavy, was more promising. Then her eye was caught by the simple red rosary. She bent low. “That one,” she said, pointing. “Those are seeds. Look, they’re red with black tips, and some of them are crushed.”
“They do look kind of native.”
Liz reached for the rosary and Anna seized her hand, pulling it back from the box. “Don’t touch it,” she said sternly.
“Now who’s being superstitious?”
“It’s not superstition. That rosary is made of seeds.” She stood erect and swiftly pushed the lid down on the box. “What if that’s the rosary Matthew shoved into Charlene’s mouth? The first two letters written by priests didn’t mention any act of violence—only the one written in 1981 did. So why would Matthew suddenly assault Charlene, and with a rosary of all things?”
“Two days before she died.”
“Maybe Father Stafford didn’t sign her death warrant with his letter. Maybe Matthew Birch had already signed it.”
Liz pulled out a chair and sat. “You’re saying the rosary was toxic.”
“That could be why some of the seeds are crushed.”
“Charlene might have bitten into them when Matthew . . .” The full horror of Charlene’s fate began to dawn on Liz.
Anna dropped into her chair. “Then why keep the rosary? It’s like keeping a murder weapon.”
“Maybe it’s a memento, like the paintings. Though that doesn’t explain why Lawrence took the box.”
Anna smacked her hand down on the arm of her chair. “I know why you’d keep a murder weapon. To use it again. Especially if it’s the perfect weapon.”
“But that doesn’t explain why Matthew would kill Charlene.”
When lightning flashed a fraction of a second before the thunder that followed, Anna knew the bolt had struck near the house.
“Cripes,” she said, jumping in her seat. Liz shot around the table to her laptop, yanked the plug from the back, and let the cord fall to the floor.
Two seconds later another boom was accompanied by a crackling noise—the sound an ice cube makes when it hits liquid—and the lights, from the library to the sitting room and out to the entryway, went out.
Anna heard Jackson hop from his chair and felt him move under the table, his fur sweeping across her legs. She reached down to reassure him. His haunches quivered momentarily before he relaxed and laid his head on her lap.
“That hit the house, or darn close to it,” Liz said.
Distant flashes illuminated the night sky while other bolts of lightning, yellow-white, struck closer to the house. It happened almost every May in Colorado—fire in the sky. There was nothing like a Colorado lightning storm.
The bolt that had severed the electricity had also left a hole in one of the panes, with fractures, extending like sinewy legs, radiating from it. A glass spider, forever frozen in place.
“Liz, look at the window. Is that a lightning strike or did a rock hit it?”
“Where’s our flashlight?”
Anna started to move for the chair where she’d put her purse, thinking she must have left the flashlight on it, but halted. “I think I left it in Lawrence’s room.” She heard a grunt escape Liz’s lips. “Oh, Liz, I had it when I saw the duffel bag, but I don’t remember bringing it back down.”
“We have to get it. It’s almost dark out and my nerves are shredded.”
Anna saw a small orb of light, reflected momentarily on the framed map behind Liz, and spun backward.
“Ladies.” The orb angled and became a beam that lit Bee from the neck up. Beads of moisture glistened on her throat and raindrops hung like jewels from the hair that framed her face. “It’s just me.”
Anna threw a hand to her chest. “Bee, you scared me.”
“Didn’t I give you a flashlight?” She lowered the beam and pointed it at the table.
“We left it upstairs,” Liz said quickly.
“We didn’t know anyone was here,” Anna said. “We haven’t heard a sound since we got back.”
“I’ve been in the kitchen,” Bee said. She again tilted the beam toward her face. “Making sandwiches. No hot dinner tonight.”
Anna froze. The heck she’d been in the kitchen. Not unless she’d spent time with her head under the faucet. Her heart began to race. All her fears and suspicions about Sparrow House came flooding back at once, freezing her in place, locking her in time to this single moment, to this single encounter with Bee.
Bee aimed the flashlight at Anna. “What’s wrong?”
“Your hair is wet.” She held a hand up to her face, blocking the flashlight’s beam until Bee pointed it at the ceiling. “You haven’t been in the kitchen.”
Bee raised her free hand to her head, patting her bangs and the wet tendrils at her temples. Her face crumpled and she sunk in
ward, lowering the flashlight. “God, how stupid of me.”
“What’s going on, Bee?” Anna tensed and took a backward step.
Bee extended a hand and took a step toward Anna. “No, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just now ran in. Oh, how stupid, with everything that’s been going on around here. I was outside.”
“Obviously.”
“I thought I was going to get hit by lightning.”
“That could happen.”
Bee’s shoulders drooped in defeat. She’d have to tell the truth. “I was with Mitch at the carriage house.” She straightened her spine, daring Anna to comment. “It’s my business.” Now that her secret was out, she became adamant, her foot tapping hard on the library floor, punctuating her words. “I have no privacy here. Nilla and Paxton are together in town for once, and I took a private moment, just one, in my very unprivate life.”
It sounded plausible. Anna wanted to believe her. There was one way to find out if she was telling the truth. “Is there someone staying with Mitch?”
Bee’s head jerked. “How did you know?”
“Who? Tell me who, Bee, or I can’t believe you.”
“His aunt.” She nearly shouted the words. “Good grief, she’s visiting from somewhere in Colorado.”
Anna relaxed, realizing as she did that she’d been making fists and her palms stung from the pressure of her fingernails.
“What on earth is going on?” Bee asked. “I know this is an old house and the lights went out, but honestly.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little more than an electrical outage that has us on edge?” Liz asked.
Bee pointed the flashlight in Liz’s direction then once again aimed the beam at the ceiling. “You mean Devin and Lawrence.”
“Charlene Birch, Jean Birch, Kurt Ellison,” Anna said. “How many people have died in this house or on its grounds? Maybe Paxton doesn’t have a haunted house, but he has a dangerous one.”
Headlights raked the library as a car bumped up the driveway and pulled to the front door. Anna heard the soft thuds of closing car doors.
Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3 Page 48
