The Sense of Death: An Ann Kinnear Suspense Novel (The Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels Book 1)

by Matty Dalrymple

  He held out his badge. “Detective Joe Booth, Philadelphia Police.”

  “Yes, Detective, come in.”

  He again gave up his coat which she hung in a large, and otherwise empty, closet off the foyer. Lydia directed him to a cavernous kitchen at the back of the house from which emanated the enticing smell of freshly ground and brewed coffee. “May I get you a cup?” asked Lydia.

  “Please.”

  “Cream or sugar?”

  “Black is fine.” Joe was a little self-conscious about his choice and quantity of coffee flavoring. Plus, he found that a request for cream usually resulted in the offer of skim milk or powdered creamer which just turned the coffee an unpleasant grayish color.

  Lydia poured two cups and gestured him to one of two stools at the expansive, and otherwise empty, butcher block island; she took the other stool. “How can I help you?”

  Joe pulled his notepad out of his pocket. “As you know I’m investigating the disappearance of Elizabeth Firth and I understand you’re a close friend.”

  “Yes, we were in the same sorority in college.”

  “And you’ve kept in touch with her since then?”

  “Yes, we saw each other several times a month at dinners or at the club or for lunch.”

  “When was the last time you saw Mrs. Firth?”

  “The Tuesday before she disappeared. She stopped by here for coffee on her way to a meeting of a committee she was on.”

  “How did she seem?”

  “Fine. Her regular self.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing special. People we had seen lately. What presents we were going to get a friend who just had a baby. Things like that.”

  “Nothing that would have suggested that she was concerned for her safety?”

  “No, not at all. I certainly would have contacted the police if there had been anything like that.”

  “Of course. Do you know of anyone who might wish harm to Mrs. Firth? Did she have any enemies?”

  “Not at all, she was very well liked, well respected.”

  “What was your impression of Mr. and Mrs. Firth’s relationship?”

  “I actually didn’t spend that much time with them as a couple.”

  “But you must have gotten a sense of their relationship based on your conversations with Mrs. Firth.”

  Lydia took a sip of coffee. “I think they were growing apart. I don’t think she was getting what she had expected from the relationship when they got married. She left a very promising career at Biden’s father’s company when she married Biden.”

  “Firth Investments,” said Joe, glancing at his notepad.

  “Yes, it has huge real estate holdings in Philadelphia and Wilmington.”

  “I was sort of surprised that Mrs. Firth worked for her father-in-law rather than her father.” He glanced at his notepad again. “I understand her father owns Dormand Fixtures. Plumbing supplies?”

  “Well, yes, you could say that. It’s the Dormand Fixtures of ‘Dormand designs the finest.’ Very high end bath and kitchen fixtures. We have them here.” She gestured toward an elaborate faucet at the kitchen sink. “Have you heard of them?”

  The only faucet manufacturer Joe could think of off-hand was Delta but he nodded encouragingly.

  “The business interested her but she didn’t want people to think she got where she did because she was the boss’s daughter. Her father respected that.”

  “Why did she give up the job with Morgan Firth?”

  “Because Biden didn’t want her working there.”

  “Didn’t want her working there specifically, or didn’t want her working at all?” asked Joe.

  “I don’t think Biden wanted her to work anywhere—you know, he wanted to prove he could provide for the family on his own—but he especially didn’t like her working there, for his father. He was jealous of her.”

  “Jealous?”

  Lydia took another sip of coffee. “I think in a lot of ways Elizabeth was the son Morgan Firth wished he had had. And I don’t know that Morgan would have been very subtle about that feeling.”

  “Were Morgan Firth and Elizabeth Firth close?”

  Lydia considered. “Not emotionally close but kindred spirits in their approach to life, I would say.”

  “Was there anything going on between them?”

  “You mean sexually? Good lord, no,” said Lydia with a snort. “She didn’t need to go to her father-in-law for her kicks—” She stopped abruptly, her mouth pursed, her eyes a little too wide and innocent on Joe’s. Joe raised his eyebrows expectantly and waited.

  After a few moments Lydia said chirpily, “More coffee?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “I think I’ll have some.” She went to the coffee maker and topped off her nearly full mug.

  When she sat down again Joe said, “So. Who is she getting her kicks with?”

  “No one,” said Lydia.

  “Not her husband?”

  Lydia grimaced. “I don’t tend to think of ‘Biden’ and ‘kicks’ in the same sentence.”

  Joe jotted a note on his notepad. “Did Mrs. Firth have any male friends who might have been a cause for jealousy from her husband?”

  “No,” said Lydia coolly.

  “If she did, do you think she would have told you about it?”

  “Yes,” said Lydia, ending that line of questioning.

  Joe glanced at the notes in his notepad. “Mr. Firth said his wife could be a difficult woman, although he said she would probably say the same about him.”

  Lydia gave a smile, although not a friendly one. “I doubt that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I do agree that Elizabeth could be difficult—she was a strong-willed person.”

  “Used to getting her way, Mr. Firth said.”

  “Yes, that’s true, although I don’t fault a person for trying to get what they want out of life. But I doubt that Elizabeth ever complained about Biden trying to get what he wanted—in fact, I think that her biggest complaint about Biden was that he was too passive. He wasn’t difficult enough. He let himself get carried along on his father and father-in-law’s coattails.”

  “I understand he was trying to get into the restaurant business.”

  Lydia snorted. “That sounds like an excellent way to lose some money. There are some people who are born to win and some who are born to lose and Biden Firth is the latter.”

  “What about Elizabeth Firth?”

  “She was a winner.”

  “You say ‘was.’”

  Lydia sighed and pushed her coffee away. “She’s been gone for a week. I don’t know what happened to her but if she were alive we would have heard from her by now.”

  *****

  After a few more minutes of generally unrevealing conversation regarding Elizabeth Firth’s friends (a who’s who of the Main Line gentry), committee affiliations (mainly museum-related), and hobbies (art, decorating, and tennis), Joe excused himself with what he hoped were appropriate compliments on the fabulousness of the Levere home. He drove around the corner and pulled to the side of the road, killing the engine. He sipped the cold remains of his Wawa coffee for a few minutes, then got out his phone and speed dialed the precinct.

  “Sergeant Little.”

  “Hey, Mouse, it’s Joe.”

  “Hi, Booth,” said The Mouse sullenly, reminding Joe that the nickname was not one of Little’s choosing. Sergeant Little’s parents had named him Stuart—Joe chose to assume they were not familiar with E. B. White’s rodent hero.

  “Can you get in touch with Biden Firth’s father, Morgan, and see if I can talk to him today?”

  “You have a number?”

  “No, but try his work number first, Firth Investments. If he’s not there his home number should be in the file.”

  “OK, you on your cell?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’ll call you back,” The Mouse said and hung up.

>   A couple of hours and a Wawa hoagie later, Joe was ushered into Morgan Firth’s office. Through the large windows behind the desk Joe could look down on the statue of William Penn atop City Hall. The office was decorated with lots of glass, black leather, and chrome, with large, abstract posters in black and white on the walls.

  The spare style of the room contrasted sharply with Morgan Firth himself. Firth had a full head of fluffy white hair and a bushy white mustache, with broad features and a florid complexion. Joe imagined Firth might have been as athletic-looking as his son at one time but an appreciation of good living had added pounds, although the effect was not one of softness but rather of added heft and power. As Joe expected, Firth’s handshake was bone-crushing.

  “Booth,” said Firth by way of greeting. “Coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” said Joe, relieved that the interview didn’t seem to call for social niceties such as sharing coffee. Firth waved his secretary out of the office.

  “Have a seat,” said Firth, gesturing to a black leather and chrome chair in front of his desk and resuming his seat. Joe sat down and immediately slid to the back of the chair, leaving him looking up at Morgan Firth. “What can I do for you?”

  “Just gathering information, confirming some of the information I got from Detective Deng.”

  Firth looked at his watch. “Got about fifteen minutes.”

  “We shouldn’t need more than that,” said Joe. “I understand Elizabeth Firth worked for you ...?”

  “Yes, before she was married, she worked on my Wilmington properties.”

  “But left when she got married.”

  “Yes, I hated to see her go but letting a husband and wife work at the same place is never a good idea, you don’t want them bringing home problems into work. And I could hardly fire my own son.”

  “Did Elizabeth and Biden have home problems?”

  Firth scowled. “I didn’t mean them specifically, just husbands and wives in general.”

  Joe waited a beat to see if Firth would continue his thought but got nothing more than a continued scowl. Joe decided to switch tacks.

  “I’d be interested in your perspective on the other people in Elizabeth and Biden’s household—Joan Davies and Esme Brouwer.”

  Firth’s scowl lessened slightly. “Joan’s been with them forever—very reliable, very trustworthy. Takes good care of Sophie when the nanny isn’t around. Don’t know what we would have done without Joan, Biden being understandably ...” Firth fished for a word “... distraught by Elizabeth’s disappearance.”

  “Is Joan especially close to either Mr. or Mrs. Firth?”

  Firth resumed his scowl. “It’s not the place of the employees to be ‘close’ to their employers. Joan knows her job and she’s good at it.”

  Joe itched to jot a note but decided that the more Firth thought of this as a conversation and the less as an official interview the better.

  “And the nanny?”

  “Don’t know her. New.”

  “How long has she worked for the Firths?”

  Morgan shrugged his shoulders. “Three, four months.”

  “Was it just Joan before that?”

  “No, there was a nanny before this one but Biden caught her going through his desk.”

  Joe raised his eyebrows. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  “No, we didn’t report it. We took care of it.”

  “In what way?”

  “What do you think?” said Firth with exasperation. “We fired her.”

  “Any bad feelings? Was Mrs. Firth involved in the firing?”

  “I have no idea,” said Firth peevishly. “I imagine Biden found her going through the desk and said, ‘You’re fired.’ I doubt she came back after all this time to do something to Elizabeth for revenge. She was a mousy little thing as I remember.”

  “What do you think happened to Mrs. Firth?”

  Morgan Firth’s face lapsed into what looked to Joe like honest unhappiness. “Who knows. At first I thought maybe she had been kidnapped and we would get a ransom request but I guess that only happens in other countries these days. Probably just some drug-crazed ...” He fiddled with a stapler on his desk then shoved it away. “I don’t know what happened to her. That’s your job to find out.”

  Chapter 7

  “I see something. A blue light.” Ann gestured toward the stairs with her chin.

  “Where?” said Mavis Van Dyke, Ann’s client, excitedly.

  “Coming up the stairs,” said Ann.

  The light was suffusing the attic, illuminating its contents—boxes and suitcases and old furniture that Ann imagined might have been up there for a hundred years—in a soft, dim glow. Ann could see Mavis faintly, sitting a few feet away on a wooden trunk, wrapped in a fur coat, her eyes turned in the direction of the stairs but her gaze general and unfocused.

  “Can you see anything?” Ann asked, seeing her breath condensing in the cold of the attic.

  “No, it’s completely dark,” said Mavis.

  “Hold your hands up in front of you,” said Ann. “Hold up a different number of fingers on each hand.”

  Mavis did as she was told.

  “Three on the left and one on the right,” said Ann.

  A delighted smile lit up Mavis’s face. “Extraordinary.”

  The light, which had originally been diffuse, was coalescing at the top of the stairs and began to move slowly toward the center of the attic, directly toward the rickety wooden chair where Ann was sitting—she had found the chair lying on its side when she and Mavis had come up to the attic. Ann stood slowly and backed away from the chair, the hairs on the back of her neck rising with proximity of the spirit.

  “Where are you going?” asked Mavis.

  “It’s moving toward me. I’m giving it some room.”

  “Can you see anything other than the light?”

  “No. But the light is coming together, forming a shape, about five feet to your right.”

  Mavis turned in that direction and scanned the area, unseeing. “What’s it doing?”

  “I can’t tell yet,” said Ann.

  Minutes passed and nothing happened other than that the light further solidified into a space about the height and width of a human body. At times she felt she could almost perceive what might be a head but then the light would swirl and it would be gone.

  After a minute Mavis whispered, “What’s it doing now?”

  “I still can’t tell,” said Ann.

  She searched for something recognizable in the glow. From downstairs she heard the faint sound of the grandfather clock in the inn’s entrance hall strike the half hour. At the same moment the chair where she had been sitting moved a few inches toward the body of light, the chair’s legs scraping on the floor.

  Mavis jumped. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not doing anything, that was the spirit.”

  “Really?” said Mavis, her voice rising an octave. “What’s it doing?”

  The light began to rise from the floor, solidifying over the chair, then a tendril separated itself from the main body of light and stretched up toward one of the rafters.

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Ann as she realized what she was seeing.

  “What?” said Mavis, looking blindly around the room.

  Suddenly the chair fell to its side and ...

  ... the body of light dropped, stopping with a jerk that seemed to shatter the light and the room was plunged into darkness again.

  Ann took a step backwards, tripped over something, and fell, banging her back into something hard and unyielding before landing with a thud on the floor.

  “What??” said Mavis, beginning to sound frantic.

  “It’s OK,” said Ann, despite a stab of pain coming from her back. “It’s OK, it’s gone. You can turn the light on.”

  She heard Mavis fumbling for the flashlight and flinched as Mavis aimed the light in her face. “Not on me,” she said sharply.

  Mavis swung the light a
way from Ann’s face and across the room, briefly revealing the object that Ann had tripped on to be a coil of rope. Ann heard steps on the staircase below and Mike calling out, “Everything OK up there?”

  “What happened?” whispered Mavis urgently.

  “She hanged herself,” said Ann, feeling the onset of the nausea that often followed the sensing of a spirit.

  *****

  Ann rinsed her mouth again then splashed water on her face, leaning over the old-fashioned marble sink. She could hear the murmur of conversation from the parlor. She imagined the scene—Mavis wanting to talk to her, to dissect the experience; Mike assuring her that Ann needed a little rest after the rigors of the sensing; Lawrence, Mavis’s husband, smiling affectionately at his wife’s excitement.

  Mavis and Lawrence Van Dyke lived in a large, elegant, but unhaunted house outside Collegeville, Pennsylvania, about thirty miles northwest of Philadelphia. Lawrence’s recent retirement had finally given Mavis the opportunity to pursue her life-long goal of living in a house that was inhabited by a friendly spirit.

  Over the last few years, Mavis had hired Ann to visit a number of houses to check out their qualifications. Most were homes whose potential of housing a spirit was indicated only by being of an age when people died more often in their homes than in the hospital. The Chestertown, Maryland, house was an exception, actually having a reputation for being haunted. Somehow Mavis had talked—or paid—the sellers into vacating their home for a night and letting these odd but seemingly well-heeled potential buyers stay overnight. Lawrence had turned it into a party with a picnic basket provided by the Van Dyke housekeeper and several bottles of wine provided from his cellar.

  Now, as she waited for the nausea from the sensing to pass—her face drawn and pale in the mirror over the sink—she heard a knock on the frame of the open bathroom door.

  “Hey, you OK?” Her brother stood in the doorway, two glasses of wine in his hands.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she said tiredly.

  “Lawrence sent a glass of the Bordeaux up for you, said it would ‘buck you up.’”

  Ann groaned. “Wine is about the last thing I want. What I’d really like is a glass of water.”