The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  Isabel stopped, once again, to look at the house. There was her inheritance, the local landmark that should be preserved, John James’s folly. Legs apart and hands clasped behind her, feeling like David confronting Goliath, she contemplated it.

  Maybe she should go inside.

  The thought had been in her head for a while. She was planning to go in, of course. She had the keys in her handbag. She was planning to go in when she was ready, when the time was right.

  The house stood before her, indifferent.

  Isabel had first entered that house as a cowed nine-year-old, her parents recently dead. Because her father and Merriam had been estranged, she had never been inside it until that day. She still remembered dust motes whirling in a beam of sunshine in the wide central hallway, the coat tree with its threatening curved hooks, the shadows at the top of the staircase. She had followed Merriam through the door and been engulfed.

  She remembered the green velvet curtains in the parlor, the cool marble mantelpiece, the scuffed flowers on the linoleum of the kitchen floor. The glass in her bedroom windows was old and distorted the light. She had no need to go in to be reminded of any of this.

  A crowbar. She would need a crowbar or something to pry the boards away. A crowbar, and the keys. There was a crowbar in the trailer, in the cabinet under the sink. She went to get it.

  It seemed fitting to go in the back door, since, years ago, she had left that way. She had tiptoed downstairs and through the kitchen, let herself out and crossed the creaking porch. Ben was up on the road, waiting in his car. When she saw him, saw that he had really come, she had been filled with happiness.

  Crowbar and keys in hand, she rounded the back corner of the house. The back porch was sagging badly. The wooden lattice surrounding the base of the house to keep animals out had fallen down. The screen door to the porch hung open.

  The slats that crisscrossed the kitchen door were half-rotten, the nails rusty. She used the crowbar to loosen them, but she could almost have pulled them out by hand. She dropped the boards and searched for the right key. She found it and eased it into the lock. You have to jiggle this one a little, she suddenly remembered, and then she had turned it. The door opened.

  There was a scurrying sound when she stepped in. Mice or rats, probably. The air was baking hot, with an overpowering smell of dust and mildew. The empty kitchen cabinets stood open, and the deep sink was badly rust-stained. A shiny brown palmetto beetle, two inches long at least, scuttled across the counter, sunlight glinting on its back.

  She walked into the dining room. The table and chairs were gone, the built-in sideboard empty except for a tarnished silver ladle lying on its side. A feather, a small curl of down, floated past her face. This room was slightly less hot. Air was coming in from somewhere. The floor in front of one of the tall windows was spotted with bird droppings. She crossed to the windows, which were nearly blocked by intruding undergrowth. Yes, one of them was open a crack. At some point, it must have been open wider, if birds had gotten in.

  She continued through the downstairs rooms— the front parlor, where a few pieces of furniture huddled under dust sheets in the middle of the floor; the back parlor, with a carpet rolled up against the wall; the entrance hall. The hall coat tree still stood by the door, a red baseball cap hanging on one of its hooks. Isabel picked up the cap. Beachcomber Boatel was embroidered above the brim in flowing white script. She hung the cap up again.

  She was standing at the foot of the staircase. When she had come here with Merriam, she had never lived in a place with stairs before. They had made her feel that the distances in the house were enormous.

  Having come this far, she wasn’t going to leave without looking at her former bedroom. She started up.

  She was only halfway to the top when she knew something was not right. The air had a different feel up here. Instead of the deadness of neglect, it had smells, a quality of disturbance and habitation. She stood still, her head raised.

  She heard nothing except sounds she was now accustomed to, the creakings and scrabblings that accompanied emptiness. She thought about the red gasoline can she had seen on the front steps, the open window, the cap hanging on the hall tree.

  Everything was quiet. She took another step, two more. Her head was even with the landing now. The landing was ringed with doors, all but one of them closed. The door to the corner back bedroom, the room that had been hers, stood ajar. A beam of light sifted out and made a dim gold track across the floorboards.

  She had reached the top of the stairs. She called out, “Hello? Is anybody here?”

  Silence. An insect whined. She crossed the landing and pushed the open door.

  It swung inward silently and she stood on the threshold. Nobody was in the room, but it was neither empty nor uninhabited. Sunlight, coming in through torn places in the disintegrating window shades, illuminated a roomful of clutter: a sleeping bag, a tangle of snorkels and masks, an ice chest, a wadded T-shirt. In the middle of the floor lay three medium-sized iron balls, their surfaces flaking with rust. In the corner where her bed used to be were shelves holding a battered-looking pewter pitcher, an enamel dishpan, various distorted-looking pieces of metal, bottles of chemicals.

  “Anybody here?” she said again, with less trepidation. She stepped into the room. Somebody had been staying here in reasonable comfort, it seemed. She looked in the ice chest. Half-submerged in a sloshy combination of water and ice were cartons of yogurt, a package of cheese, a jar of peanut butter, a couple of bottles of club soda, and a tomato.

  She checked the closet. It was empty except for a pile of burlap sacks in the darkest corner. She started to close the door again, then reached in and looked underneath the pile. Concealed there was a beige plastic tackle box closed with a combination lock. She pulled at the lock, but it didn’t give. After a minute or two, she rearranged the burlap over it. Why padlock a tackle box?

  Someone had been here all this time, living in her old room, hiding.

  She knelt to examine the iron balls. She poked at one, then picked it up. It was about the size to fit in her two cupped hands, heavy, rusty enough so the surface crumbled against her fingers. She wondered for a moment whether these could be old-fashioned bowling balls, then shook her head. Surely they were cannonballs. She put down the one she was holding, wiped her hands against the legs of her shorts, and moved on to the objects on the shelves. There was the pewter pitcher, as well as bottles of chemicals, a coffee can containing square-headed nails, several misshapen pieces of corroded metal. And an enamel dishpan half full of pieces of broken porcelain.

  Blue-and-white porcelain.

  She sorted through the dishpan, picked out a large piece, and took it nearer the window. Flowering branches and flying birds: The pattern was identical to the pattern of the bottle in the trailer, the bottle John James had given Merriam.

  Isabel stood by the window, rubbing her thumb over the porcelain surface. She was thinking hard about Harry Mercer.

  After a while, she put the fragment in her pocket. She left the bedroom door ajar, as it had been. She descended the stairs noiselessly and let herself out the back door.

  The boards that had been nailed across the door lay with rusty nails protruding. She replaced them as best she could, pushing the nails back into their holes. It didn’t look exactly as it had before, but it didn’t look too different.

  The air seemed almost cool after the close atmosphere of the house. Isabel pulled her damp shirt away from her body. Crowbar in hand, she returned to the trailer.

  The blue-and-white patterns were exactly the same. She held the bottle and the shard under a table lamp. Not only were the patterns identical, but the thickness and weight of the glass seemed similar to her untrained eye. There were probably tests that could determine the truth once and for all, but for now she would assume they had come from the same place.

  Which meant— what?

  For one thing, it meant Harry Mercer was involved in whatever was going o
n in the house. His puzzling reaction to the porcelain bottle was not so puzzling now. Harry, she was sure, had known about these broken pieces.

  Isabel was stung. She had responded to Harry, made love with him. The encounter had been ill-considered, even wrong, but full of tenderness. Or so she had thought. Now, she had to ask herself what his underlying motives were.

  She snapped off the lamp. What was going on here? Cannonballs, a pewter pitcher— these objects seemed to be historical artifacts. Given the corroded cannonballs and the diving equipment, she guessed they might have been taken from a shipwreck. Harry, and whoever else was involved, wanted to keep their activities secret. That’s why they had commandeered the broken-down, deserted Anders place, the old house nobody cared about.

  This must have been going on while Merriam was still here, living in the trailer. Merriam, her eyesight and hearing not as sharp as they used to be, would have been fairly easy to fool.

  Or would she? Merriam’s “accident,” the “fall” Isabel had found so hard to credit, began to seem even more sinister. The idea that Harry might have been involved made her sick.

  The anonymous letters. Isabel had suspected Harry of sending them. She could understand now why he would want her to go away, leave him to whatever secret operation he was involved in. Now you can go back where you came from, you whore. She thought of his promise to put a stop to the letters. What could be easier, if he was writing them himself?

  All right, she had been stupid. She admitted it. She waited for the flood of heat to subside from her face.

  It must be against the law to take objects from shipwrecks without permission. Surely there were regulations governing it. Shipwrecks would have historical value, archaeological importance.

  Underwater archaeology, you might call it.

  Clem Davenant had used that term, talking about his son’s diving accident. Was Clem involved, too?

  The thought of something more valuable than cannonballs came into her mind.

  Sunken treasure? Oh please. That was a topic out of kids’ adventure stories. Chests spilling over with coins, bars of gold, ropes of pearls, surrounded by cartoon fish blowing cartoon bubbles.

  There had been cases in recent years, though. She reached into a hazy memory of newspaper articles skimmed on the subway. Sunken treasure, from Spanish galleons and other ships, had been found from time to time— down in the Keys, off South Carolina, in Bermuda, the Bahamas, or somewhere. Gold was recovered, millions of dollars’ worth.

  What she remembered best, better than she remembered anything else, was that treasure hunting was a business these days. It was carried on by well-financed consortiums with high-tech equipment and legions of experts. She had trouble squaring this with rusting cannonballs and a locked tackle box— she had just remembered the tackle box— in a bedroom in a derelict house.

  She looked out at the house. The dining room window had been open a crack. That would be how he got in and out— on the other side, where she wouldn’t see. She’d been easy to fool.

  The other question was the porcelain bottle. John James had given that bottle to Merriam in 1922. How did it connect with the broken pieces of porcelain in the enamel dishpan? John James Anders had not been a scuba diver, or any sort of diver. The bottle could have washed up in the storm, she supposed, although it seemed too fragile to have stayed in one piece.

  She wished she could stop thinking about Harry. The idea that he had used her so cynically didn’t square with what she thought she knew of him. Clearly, he still resented the way she had treated him years ago. Was he using the house to get back at her, somehow? He wasn’t like that. She didn’t think he was like that.

  In an effort to clear her mind, she tried to work on The Children from the Sea. The sketches she had done of Kimmie Dee were full of verve, but right now she couldn’t connect to them. She was sitting with her chin in her hands, staring at the beige Formica of the tabletop, when the telephone rang.

  It was Clem Davenant. “I got a call this afternoon, out of the blue. I may have a buyer for your property,” he said.

  “A buyer?” She could hear how vacant she sounded.

  “Remember you said you’d probably have to sell?”

  Sure, she’d said she’d have to sell. Of course she remembered. But that would be sometime in the future, not a mere day after she’d said it. “I didn’t know you thought selling was such a good idea.”

  “I don’t, particularly. Am I dreaming? I was sure you said—”

  “You’re right. I did say it. What’s the story?”

  There wasn’t much of a story so far. Clem had gotten a call from a developer in Bay City, strictly exploratory. Clem had put the man off until he could talk to Isabel. “I thought you might like to come here for dinner and discuss it.”

  “I can’t keep coming to your place for dinner. Eve is going to think I’m a terrible freeloader.”

  “Actually, Eve will be at choir practice.” While Isabel took this in, he went on. “I was going to bake a red snapper. It’s my specialty. I haven’t made one in a long time.”

  She could ask him about the underwater archaeology project. She was sick of the trailer and her thoughts. She accepted the invitation.

  When she arrived Clem, his face flushed from the kitchen heat, was wearing a red-checked apron over Bermuda shorts. He said, “I’ll get you a drink and put you on the porch for a few minutes, all right? Do you like garlic?”

  “I love garlic.” Within minutes, she was settled on the back porch with a gin and tonic, while he rattled around in the kitchen. The lawn under the moss-hung trees was dappled with the last rays of the sun. It was almost as if things were normal, instead of threatening, disturbing, and possibly dangerous.

  Soon, Clem joined her. As they sipped their drinks, the smell of garlic and Parmesan cheese began to fill the air. He chatted about the Bay City developer. The man wanted to build a subdivision of town houses. He had had his eye on the Anders property for a while. “He told me he had contacted Miss Merriam once and offered to buy it, but she didn’t even want to discuss it. When he heard she’d passed on, he didn’t waste any time getting back in touch.”

  “He certainly didn’t.” Isabel wondered whether her irritation was because of the developer’s indelicacy or her own ambivalence. She pictured rows of identical town houses, streets with names like Seashore Drive. What would the subdivision be called? Cape Estates? Sunny Shores? “If Merriam was so determined not to sell, it seems crummy to start doing deals before she’s been dead a week.”

  He looked surprised. “If I’d known you felt this way, I would have told him to back off.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m confused. I’m not sure what I want to do.”

  She gave his shoulder a conciliatory pat and was surprised when he caught her hand and squeezed her fingers briefly. He got up and said, “Better check on the snapper. It can get overdone if it’s in a minute too long.”

  The snapper was delicious. The developer wasn’t mentioned again, and Isabel couldn’t quite shake the idea that he had been no more than an excuse for the occasion. Clem talked freely, asked questions about her work and her life in New York, listened to her intently. As yet there had been no opportunity to bring up underwater archaeology. She noticed that he made excuses to touch her, brushing against her when he refilled her wineglass, ushering her into the living room for coffee with his hand on the small of her back.

  She sat on the sofa. He poured the coffee, handed her a cup, and took a chair nearby. He said, “I’m glad you were willing to come here tonight, Isabel.”

  “I’ve enjoyed it.”

  “This is the first time since Andrea left that I’ve wanted to be with somebody.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  Yet she was uncertain about Clem. She wasn’t sure anyone could overmatch the darkness that had him in its grip.

  He put his cup aside and moved to sit by her, taking her saucer out of her hand and putting it on a side table. When he kisse
d her, his ferocity was startling. He was very strong, his grip painful. His mouth ground against hers until she could hardly breathe. There was no tenderness here, no companionability, no mutuality— only his raw, desperate need.

  At last, she managed to pull her head away. “Don’t, Clem.”

  He wound his arms tightly around her, straining against her. His breath rushed, hoarse and ragged, next to her ear. He said, groaned, a word that might have been her name. She thought, Eve— choir practice— neighbors, and prepared herself to fight. “Stop it!” she gasped.

  He shivered, pulled back, and said, “Oh God. Oh no.” He let her go and sat forward, his face in his hands.

  Isabel cooled her lips with cold fingertips. Her face prickled. It had happened so fast. She could still taste her last swallow of coffee.

  “Sorry,” Clem said, his voice tight.

  Isabel was still too astonished to speak. All right, she had seen it coming, but— Clem Davenant? He was so proper, so buttoned-down.

  “Don’t walk out. Don’t leave,” he said. “Wait a while, all right? Eve will be back pretty soon.”

  Warily, Isabel began, “Clem, I can’t—”

  “Just stay, don’t walk out. Here. Your coffee’s still warm.” He handed it to her, the cup clattering against the saucer.

  She took it and drank. It was only lukewarm.

  He retrieved his own cup and returned to sit beside her. After a few minutes, he said, “I haven’t been functioning. As a man, I mean. For a while it didn’t matter, but now I’m getting— desperate.”

  “I understand.”

  “It doesn’t give me the right to prey on you.”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  He said, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to bend your ear about Edward again.”

  She had wanted to talk about Edward, hadn’t she? “I don’t mind.”

  “No. It’s time to stop imposing, on you and everybody.”

  “Actually, I was wondering about something. The underwater archaeology project you mentioned.”