So I raised my head. And there he stood, not six feet away from me, the boy in the photographs, wavery in the dust motes. He wore bright summer clothes. A dark elongated bruise marred his pale throat, like a long purplish smudge. He reached a hand toward me, palm up. A strand of seaweed clung to his thumb. I saw bitterness and hate well in his angel's face. Then he disappeared.
I trembled. The cold deepened for a few long moments, then vanished as though a window had been opened and warmth readmitted to my world.
I wiped a shaky hand across my eyes. I hurried about my business with thoughtless precision. I quickly-very quickly-repacked the trunk, with the exception of the jewelry box, which I stuck in my pocket. Then I sealed the trunk and stood and retrieved my still-lit candle. I warmed my hands over the bright, hot flicker. They shook above the little flame.
I retreated back down to the relative safety of my room, rapidly folding up the access door to the attic, wondering if anyone would comment if I nailed it shut.
I walked back into my room, closed the closet door behind me, and set the candle down, extinguishing its flame with a hard breath. Rain lashed against the windows, the storm's second wind fiercer than its first. Thunder cracked the sky and the firmament of the floor quivered a little with its force.
My hands still shook and I turned the hot-water tap on full blast, running the water over my fingers. I felt numb. A litany to reassure myself of my sanity began to chant its way through my mind: You do not believe in ghosts. You have never believed in ghosts. Your imagination has kicked into overdrive. It was a spooky-looking room, so you imbued it with the qualities you expect in a movie with a web-shrouded attic. The past couple of days have been hell on you mentally, so you just manufactured this little fantasy of a ghost boy for a distraction. You saw nothing. You saw only what your imagination produced for you. You must get a grip on yourself, Jordan. For God's sake.
I washed my face and used the toilet, then soaped my hands and face again. I bit my lip hard to feel the sharp reality of pain. The water felt like life against my face. I dried with a towel and stared at myself in the mirror. In the calm fluorescent light of the bathroom, my hand resting on the cool of the sink, the attic seemed far away. And seeing the daily trappings of grooming-the basin speckled with flecks of whiskers from my morning shave, my toothpaste tube dented in its middle, a bottle of aspirin with its cap not set quite straight-all this ebbed my fear and the first fingers of doubt massaged my beating heart. The cold, the vision of the boy-I'd no doubt manufactured it all in my shock.
It was nothing more. Time to deal with the pressing issues at hand. I pulled the jewelry box from my pocket and decided to hide it among my own clothes, until I decided on a course of action.
I stuck it under a Rice sweatshirt I'd brought for the cool nights that breezed across the coast, even in summer. And heard the crinkle of plastic in one sleeve as I shoved the box underneath the shirt.
I hadn't been the only one sneaking around the house. Nestled in my sweatshirt was a bag full of green pills. The delicate letters on the capsules identified them as Digoxin.
18
“These aren't mine.” I tossed the bag on the table in front of Victor Mendez. “And I don't know who planted them in my room. How about dusting them for prints?” I don't usually bark out suggestions to law-enforcement officers on how to do their job, but fingerprints equaled reality-something I desperately wanted to deal with instead of long-buried family secrets and imaginary children lurking in attics.
If Mendez noticed the tremor in my voice, he gave no sign. Instead he stared at the medicine. “You're saying someone purposefully hid these in your room?”
I resisted my natural urge toward sarcasm. My friendship with Mirabeau's own police chief had taught me that investigators often repeated what a witness told them, to be sure they had the story right. I nodded. “Yes, sir. I found them just now, hidden in one of my sweatshirt sleeves.”
From a corner chair Philip Bedrich glowered at me. “Well, Mr. Mendez. Finally something you can't accuse me of.”
“That's not true,” I answered mildly. “I don't know when the pills were stashed in my room. You had as much opportunity as anyone else.” I marveled at how controlled my voice sounded, considering the events of the past hour.
Philip shook his head. “This whole comedy of errors is bullshit. Why would I stick pills in your room?”
“I don't know, Philip. I don't know why you do half the things you do.”
“You don't understand,” he muttered. Mendez ended our cousinly concord with a wave of his hand. He slid the bag of pills into a second container, an evidence bag. “You”-he pointed at me-”outside. You stay here, Mr. Bedrich.”
“Like I've got places to go? With the rest of my family thinking I'm a murderer?” Philip mumbled. He ran a hand across his thinning hair and a look of sick worry crossed his features. I suspected the iron facade was starting to buckle; he didn't seem to have the moral fiber to endure a solitary siege. I couldn't imagine what it was like to face a police investigation without my family's support.
I did not envy him the loneliness he was bound to feel.
Mendez guided me onto the veranda. A strong, salty breeze gusted in from the water. The sun had vanished below the horizon. Clouds blotted the night sky, settling close to earth; I felt I could reach out and tangle my hand in their clammy heaviness. The wind off the Gulf was wet. The rain didn't seem to bother Mendez. He stopped by the swing where Bob Don had slapped me and regarded me with frankness.
“Why does so much in this case keep coming back to you, Mr. Poteet?” He shook the evidence bag in front of my face. I saw for the first time how young he looked; surely this was not his first homicide. But perhaps he was more accustomed to the murders of everyday life: the husband slaying the battered wife, the teenaged gang member blasting his rival into early oblivion, the careless drunk mowing down a pedestrian in her path. Lolly Throck-morton's death was the end result of a lace of complex interrelations that offered no simple answers. I wondered how Mendez's first write-up of this case would read. I didn't envy him his job.
“I don't know why. Someone here doesn't like me, or believes I might be easy to frame.”
“Why would someone want to frame you for Mrs. Throckmorton's murder?”
“I imagine to avoid prosecution,” I said mildly. “Doesn't that seem reasonable to you?”
“But why you, Mr. Poteet? You're a stranger to most of these folks, blood relation or not.” “Strangers are the best scapegoats. Less guilt that way for the perpetrator.”
“Give me another reason, Mr. Poteet. I don't think you're being entirely honest with me.”
He was not a stupid man and I had underestimated him. Lord only knew what body language my worn-out form was speaking. I made myself uncross my arms and look as open as possible. “Listen, I don't have another reason. Unless it's some of my relations have taken a serious dislike to me.”
Mendez tented his cheek with his tongue. “Yes, I can see they have. Why is that?”
“There's a lot of money at stake in this family. My uncle Emmett is terminally ill and he's worth millions. I don't think another potential heir is a particularly welcome sight.”
He unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it into his mouth. “You and Philip don't particularly get along.”
“We don't.”
“Maybe you'd like to see him sweat.”
I shook my head. “I've known Philip only a day. I don't like him particularly, but not enough to stir up trouble against him. It's worth neither the time nor the effort. I don't have a whole history of resentment against him.”
Mendez chewed, watching the scudding clouds darken the night. No star glimmered, not even one to wish on. “You see anything else unusual around here?”