by Anne Frasier
“Oh, dear,” Anastasia said in a fretful voice. “I wish you hadn’t looked in there.”
Smells collided, some good, some bad, the base scent being ancient wood that hadn’t seen sunlight in a hundred years. Over the top of that was Anastasia’s signature perfume that she made herself from vanilla and lavender. And then there was the odor of old wine and hard liquor that seemed to permeate everything. Along with that was the nasty tang of an unwashed body.
Anastasia had been hiding in her own house.
Elise lowered her weapon and asked a question that had been dogging her for far too long. “Doesn’t anybody stay dead around here?”
CHAPTER 25
You live up here?” Elise pulled closed the lid on the trunk, put away her gun, and grabbed her phone. It might not have been logical, but things finally made sense. She wasn’t crazy. This was a good thing. And the house wasn’t haunted—another good thing.
“I didn’t have much of a choice, now did I? It’s not like this is where I normally spend my time.” With a flourish, Anastasia motioned for Elise to follow her back to the room across the hall. There her aunt dropped into a wooden library chair with a whirl of her hippie skirt. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted red. A single thick gray braid hung over one shoulder, and tendrils of escaped hair made a wild halo around her head. This was the wrinkled face Elise had seen in the pool room. These were the eyes that had watched her through chlorine and blue water.
“I wasn’t staying up here until you decided to visit,” Anastasia said. “I figured you’d come for a few days, and then you’d be gone.” Her face softened and got a faraway look. “And I always liked you, Elise. And look.” She motioned, pointing from Elise to herself. “Here we are. Just the two of us. And you know what? I’m actually glad you found me out. Now we can talk.” Her face registered a new thought. “Now I can take a shower.” She let out a luxuriant sigh. “I can sleep in a comfortable bed. I can go for my swims without interruption.”
“Anastasia, what’s going on?”
Her aunt launched into an immediate explanation. “I didn’t want to lose the plantation. It’s my life, my identity. I haven’t been able to pay the property tax for years, and I could no longer pay the equity loan. You know how it’s been with the economy. But I couldn’t let this place go. So I made Melinda the beneficiary of my life insurance policy, faked my own death with the help of an old friend in the funeral business, and there you go.” She sat up straighter, quite proud of herself. “We were able to take that money and save the place.”
An explanation in less than a minute. This was proving to be the fastest interrogation Elise had ever been a part of. “And to what end? Do you plan to hide here forever?”
“I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. I was desperate.”
“You know I’m a cop, right?”
“And I’m so proud of you!”
Elise let out a sigh and eased herself down in a plush, red velvet chair that smelled like the dust of an old antique shop.
“I’ll make you some tea!” Like a good hostess, Anastasia jumped to her feet, bustled over to an electric teapot, turned it on, and began lifting one cup after the other, searching for a clean one. “I can’t do dishes up here, I haven’t taken a shower in a week, and I have to go outside to use the toilet or sneak down to the bathroom on the second floor. It still works, but I couldn’t flush it if you were in the house. Really, Elise, this has been terribly hard on me.”
“So it was really you in the pool.”
“I’m sorry about that. I missed my nightly swim. You know how much I like to swim. And you were on pain medication. I heard you talking about it and saw your prescription bottles. I thought you’d sleep through it.”
An hour ago, Elise hardly had any relatives left in her life. Now she had two, both of whom were supposed to be dead. And speaking of dead . . .
She looked back in the direction of the other room. “Who’s in the box?”
Anastasia spun around in a whirl of India-dyed fabric, a tea bag in her hand, her mouth an O of surprise. “You don’t remember?”
“Should I?”
“Why . . . yes.” Her aunt frowned. “You really don’t?”
“No.”
The teapot began to make noise, and steam floated from the spout. “I don’t know if I should tell you then,” Anastasia said. “Some things are better off forgotten, and this would definitely be one of them.”
Anastasia handed Elise her tea in a delicate floral cup and saucer. Elise tried to ignore the lipstick stain. “It’s lemon ginger,” Anastasia announced. “Good for digestion.” She sat down on the bed with her own cup, crossing her legs like someone forty years younger.
“Tell me,” Elise said.
Anastasia stared into her teacup, then looked up at Elise. “Do you remember the last time you visited here? I think you were about eleven.”
“I loved that summer.”
Anastasia nodded. “It was a wonderful time. Until . . .” She glanced in the direction of the box, then took a distracted sip of tea. “He just showed up one day, like so many people showed up here. He seemed like a nice enough person. Young. Funny. His name, if it really was his name, was Scott. We all got drunk and stoned one night . . . the way we often did. I don’t know. It was late. You were sleepy . . . Does any of this ring a bell?”
Elise frowned. The name Scott . . . “Maybe . . . Tell me more.”
“Oh, my God, Elise, let’s don’t go there. Please. Let’s just drink our tea and maybe go for a swim. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Anastasia had always been about creating peace and harmony. But it was hard to ignore the dead body just a few feet away. “I’m not feeling like a swim,” Elise said. She took a sip of tea and tried not to make a face. It was bitter as hell.
“I’ll go for a swim and you can dangle your feet in the water.” Anastasia looked quite pleased with that idea.
This was the woman from Elise’s childhood, and it wasn’t. But Elise supposed her memories of her aunt weren’t accurate, painted with a child’s view of the world. Back then her aunt had seemed so powerful and so right. As if she could do or say no wrong. Elise had worshipped her. Now she seemed bizarre and flamboyant and perhaps a bit unstable.
“Let’s forget about that.” Her aunt motioned toward the room across the hall. “The past is the past.”
“Anastasia . . .”
She sighed. “It’s lovely seeing you, but your being here is such an inconvenience.”
Elise laughed. She couldn’t help it. And she certainly couldn’t deny that she was glad and relieved to find that her aunt was very much alive. Just days ago she’d been sad to think they’d never reconnected. And now, here she was.
But then she thought about the reason she was sitting across from a woman who was supposed to be dead. “Did you call my mother?”
“Oh, Grace.” Anastasia’s voice dropped in disgust, and she waved her hand as if to erase the woman from her mind as well as from the empty space in front of her. “What a vapid woman. It’s hard when your own sister is just so boring, so dreadfully bland. She had nothing to do with me while I was alive. You know what I mean. And now she’s sticking her nose in my business.”
“But you called her, right?” Elise repeated. Would she have to point out that Anastasia had started this? That Elise wouldn’t even be here right now if Anastasia hadn’t made that phone call?
Anastasia frowned in annoyance. “I might have. Maybe one night when I’d had a little too much wine and was feeling alone and sentimental.”
Elise looked at the empty bottles that littered the room. A little? At least three were empty fifths of vodka. Which meant Anastasia had put away a lot of booze in a matter of days.
“Your aunt is a lush,” Elise’s mother had said years ago after Elise had come home from her last and final visit. “You ca
n’t stay at the plantation anymore.”
“It’s hard to be dead, sweetie,” Anastasia said. “Harder than I thought. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t do anything, or see my friends. It’s awful.”
“I’m sure it is.” Elise tried to sound sympathetic. “But you aren’t really dead,” she felt compelled to point out. Was there more going on here than simple eccentricity? Had her aunt lost her freakin’ mind? Because that’s what it seemed like. She thought about Gould’s words when he spotted the crumbling mansion. “Why are the windows painted blue?” Elise asked.
“Well you know, Elise, it’s never a bad idea to paint your windows and doors a haint blue. Nothing wrong with being proactive. But in all honesty, I did it to scare people away. I figured if anybody came snooping around here, they’d be afraid to come inside if they saw that fresh coat of haint-blue paint. And, darlin’, I hate to say this, but I was hoping it would keep you away. With your background and all . . .”
It didn’t matter. What mattered was the body in the box.
Elise gulped down the rest of her tea, fast, to get it over with, and then she reached into her pocket for her cell phone, thinking she’d text Gould, briefly forgetting that it was the middle of the night.
When her aunt saw what she was about, she said, “Elise, please don’t contact the police about this. It happened so many years ago. Nobody ever came looking for him. Nobody ever reported him missing. Just let it go.” Her mind jumped again. “I have an idea. Why don’t you move in here? With me? Forget about the world out there. We’ll have our own world here.”
“I have a daughter.”
“Bring her!”
“She’s in high school.” Elise slipped her phone back into her pocket. The body wasn’t going anywhere.
“Take her out of school. Homeschool her.”
For a moment Elise imagined puttering around the grounds with Anastasia; feeding hundreds of stray cats; drinking tea, good tea; and going for swims in the river. Maybe setting up easels under the shade of a live oak, painting peaceful landscapes of tranquil water and curtains of Spanish moss. And heaven help her, it seemed appealing. Appealing.
Just days ago, Elise had been internally bemoaning her life. She wanted a change. Anastasia was offering it.
Step into this safe, insular world I’ve created. Join me here. Forget about everything else beyond the gates. Forget about Atticus Tremain. Forget about what he did to you. Forget about the Organ Thief. And maybe even forget about David Gould.
Elise shoved a stack of books aside, clearing a small space, and put her teacup and saucer down on a black, doily-shrouded dresser. “Let’s get back to the man in the box,” she said, hoping her aunt wasn’t astute enough to have picked up on those seconds that Elise had found herself actually contemplating her aunt’s suggestion.
“Oh, Elise.” This was spoken sadly, as if Anastasia thought her very disappointment would be enough to convince her niece to drop the unpleasant subject. It would have worked years ago. Years ago, Elise would have bowed her head in shame.
“What about the body?” Elise asked. “How did it happen?”
“You don’t want to know. You truly don’t. All you need to know is that he was an evil man, and he got what he deserved.”
That must have been how her aunt justified hiding him for so long. “I need to know.”
Anastasia’s shoulders sagged, and Elise almost felt bad. She doubted those shoulders had done much sagging in their sixty years.
Her aunt put her teacup aside and unfolded herself from the bed to stand tall. And then she crossed the room and lit some incense, shook out the match, and tossed it in an ashtray.
“I know that smell,” Elise said.
“I used to burn it all the time. Kind of triggers my asthma nowadays, but I thought it might help you remember. You know how it is with smells.” Then she circled the room to stand behind Elise’s chair. “Close your eyes,” she said in a soft voice. “That might help too.”
Elise complied, and let her head fall back against the softness of the chair.
Anastasia ran her fingers across Elise’s scalp, then she rubbed Elise’s temples with her thumbs, bracelets jingling, and whispered, “You’ve been in this room before.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Yes, you have. Just believe me and let your memory take you there. Smells and sounds . . . They can bring it all back . . . if you want it.”
The mysterious scent of the incense, burned nightly years ago; the scent of her aunt’s perfume; the stale, sweet, organic odor that permeated the room, smells of alcohol and wood that had housed a million worms and a hundred years of sun followed by a hundred years of darkness—all blended into a cocktail that could have been bottled and sold.
The scent carried with it a whisper of the past. Elise felt the air shift, and she heard the soft whisper of her aunt’s bare feet on the floor. A pause, followed by the sound of a record falling, and the tck, tck, tck, of a needle on scratched vinyl. A song she used to hear in her aunt’s living room, a folksy, bluesy number recorded at the plantation.
Memories fired in her brain like snapshots. Things just out of reach, just around the corner. Almost . . . she could almost see it . . .
Elise got to her feet, pulled out her phone light, walked across the hall to the trunk, lifted the lid, and let it drop against the wall. Yellow-and-black flannel shirt. So familiar . . .
She reached inside and fingered the fabric of the untucked tail. So familiar . . . Suddenly she imagined the touch of the fabric against her skin, and she could hear a man’s labored breathing, and she could feel a man’s arms around her . . .
CHAPTER 26
Evenings at the plantation were pretty much the same. Magical. Full of talking and laughing and happy people. Good food. And sometimes her aunt would even let Elise take a sip of wine.
“Just a little,” Anastasia would say, and then she’d laugh.
After dinner, the adults took candles and lanterns down to the dock so they could swim in the black river. Never flashlights. Flashlights weren’t allowed. “They spoil the mood,” Anastasia said.
“Gators in there,” a man named Joe told Elise as he leaned his back against the trunk of a tree and took a deep drag from his cigarette. “Don’t go in that water.”
Elise remembered that.
“Sit down here by me and let’s just watch the stars,” he said.
She sat beside the man until Anastasia broke in: “That baby’s sleepy. Somebody take her up and put her to bed.”
Elise remembered that.
She wanted Anastasia to take her, or maybe one of the women who all seemed the same, who followed on the men’s heels and cooked their meals and smoked a lot of marijuana—something she couldn’t tell her mother once she went back home. She understood that this was a secret. This was a part of Anastasia’s world, and if she told her mother what went on here, she might never be allowed to return.
“I’ll take her.”
The words came from someone named Scott. A guy who made Elise’s heart race. A guy she couldn’t quit thinking about. He was handsome and had a nice smile, and he played guitar while Anastasia sang. He said he’d written two albums’ worth of songs, and if he could record them he might be able to find a label.
“I’ll take her,” Scott repeated.
The man who’d warned her about the alligators made some sound of protest, but not much.
“Where’re your shoes, honey?” Scott asked.
Elise mumbled something, some sleepy apology about forgetting them in the house.
“And you walked down here barefoot?”
She nodded while all the adults stared at her.
Then Anastasia forgot about Elise. Her aunt tugged off her clothes and ran to the end of the dock, jumping in the water with a big splash. She was followed by several others, and t
he laughter seemed to bounce off the moon that hung low in the sky.
The man swung Elise up into his arms, and, as she watched the tree branches move against the clouds, she was aware of her nightgown and her body pressed against the man’s chest. She felt his hands, and she smelled the cigarettes and the beer on his hot breath against her cheek.
“I can walk,” she said.
“That’s okay, kid. I gotcha.”
His breathing became labored as he carried her up the stone steps set in the hillside, then through the back door, the screen slamming behind them. And then they were winding their way upstairs. She thought he would finally put her down when they reached the second story. Instead, he kept going, up another flight of stairs.
“My room’s on the second floor,” she said, her heart beginning to pound. She was afraid, but she didn’t know why.
He didn’t say anything. He just kept going, up to an area of the house where she’d been forbidden to go.
“It’s not safe,” Anastasia had said. “It’s full of bats and mice and spiders and who knows what. You just stay down here where there are no secrets.”
“Auntie A says I can’t come up here,” Elise told the man.
He didn’t answer.
Her adoptive father was just a stranger who came home in the evening and ate dinner at the table before Elise went to bed, so she didn’t know much about men, and she was a little intrigued by them and also scared of them because they were mysterious.
There was a wrong feeling to everything right now, a feeling she didn’t like, but she was afraid of making the man mad if she spoke up. After all, he’d offered to take her inside. That was nice of him, wasn’t it?
But when he put her down on a stack of mattresses, when he reached under her nightgown and pressed a hand to her mouth so she couldn’t scream, that’s when she knew he was bad.
She kicked and tried to twist away, but he was big and he was strong, and an eleven-year-old child didn’t stand a chance against a man like him. She kind of knew about sex, and she’d heard people whispering about rape, and when she heard the sound of his belt buckle she knew what was going to happen to her.
