But they became enchanted with their wealth, and wanted a lot more power than owning a single small city would give them. The great-grandsons of the original family moved to Portland, where they bought even grander houses on even grander hills. Their sons became politicians, and their children became drug-addicted deadbeats who had every privilege.
Somewhere along the way, the holdings here got sold. Then the houses in Portland went, and finally, the famous family, now down to an infamous few, had only enough left to maintain their townhouses in Washington, D.C.
The Moorhead house, symbol of the wealth and power of a bygone age, had — even before the federal government decided to protect it — become the symbol of death and destruction in the modern age.
“A museum?” I asked.
“People love a mystery,” Greg said in that dryly bland voice, the one I always thought of as his political voice. “And the house is truly historical. The museum will have one room dedicated to the murders, but it’ll be upstairs. The rest’ll talk about city history, the impact of the Moorheads, and the way that this part of Oregon once seemed like the center of the universe.”
Then I knew he was being sarcastic. He never used that phrase in serious conversation.
“Whose idea was this?” I asked.
“You read about it in the papers?” he asked as if that was an answer.
“No,” I said.
“Then think about it.”
I did, and it only took me a minute to understand. The mayor had done this. The mayor, Louise Vogel, had set herself up as a minor dictator, much to the disgust of everyone outside of her party and even some within.
She had the benefit of being one of the few people in the city who would take the job, which paid next to nothing for the amount of work involved. Greg had become deputy mayor as a sort of oversight position, but she had defanged him quickly. She owned much of the council, bought, I was told, with a combination of blood money and blackmail threats. The woman knew how to run small-city politics.
“Why in the world would Louise want the Moorhead house as a museum?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Greg said. “Makes as much sense to me as holding a Christmas party there. So, are you coming?”
“I cleaned the place, Greg,” I said softly. “I had to testify at the trial.”
“Oh.” He was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. “I’m supposed to jolly people into attending.”
“Has it been working?”
“So far,” he said. “Apparently, people like to pretend they’re not interested in death houses, but they really are.”
Unless they see the houses in full aftermath.
“I suppose it’ll be a grand affair,” I said, mimicking his dry voice.
“It’ll be memorable, that’s for sure,” he said, and signed off.
I held onto the phone for a moment longer, mostly to fend off Debbie’s questions. As she listened to my conversation, she seemed to have gotten ahold of herself. She shook her head and shifted from foot to foot.
I set the receiver down. “It’s no joke.”
She swallowed. “Are we going?”
The city’s party was always the highlight of our year.
“Greg says the party’ll be memorable,” I said.
“People will talk about it for a long time,” she said.
I adjusted some of the checks in front of me. My pleasure in my unusual wealth at year’s end had faded.
“Let’s make attendance optional this year,” I said. “And before anyone agrees to go, make sure they know that the party’ll be at Moorhead house.”
“Okay.” Debbie started to leave my office, then she paused at the door. “You going?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and realized, to my surprise, that I had just spoken the truth.
I suppose, politically, I should have said I was going to go. My job, after all, was to make buildings habitable again. Part of habitable was holding festive events — weddings, bar mitzvahs, Christmas parties.
But habitable was different from comfortable. And habitable wasn’t always possible.
Places like the Moorhead house were notorious, and notoriety lingered long after the physical examples of the crimes had disappeared.
In the end, it was my curiosity that took me there. I wanted to see the house in all its glory. I wanted to know if it could still have glory.
And I wanted to know exactly what Louise Vogel was up to this time.
No one else from the office wanted to go. Debbie actually called me ghoulish, even though I wasn’t the person holding the party. Dwayne looked at me with pity, asked me if I was sure, and when I said I was, he visibly shuddered. Then he told me, quietly, that he’d never go in that house again, not even if I paid him to do so.
In the end, Marcus went with me, mostly because he was curious. He’d been hired long after I did the first part of the Moorhead house job, but he was there for the tail end of the trial, and for Dwayne’s run at the tiny bones in the sewers. Marcus told me he’d always wanted to go inside, and acknowledged that it was an unhealthy curiosity, based as much on the missing bodies as it was on the effect the entire place had had on our office.
He picked me up at eight. I’d forgotten how well he cleaned up. He wore a long jacket over dress pants — a modern suit that harked back to the Old West — and instead of looking like a football player stuffed into his younger brother’s clothing, he looked like something out of GQ.
I felt dowdy in comparison. I wore a black velvet dress, and I decked it with a red scarf and some glittery (but fake) jewelry I’d inherited from my great-aunt. My matching black velvet heels required, of all things, dusting, and I had to run out an hour before the party to buy panty hose without runs or pulls.
Marcus waited inside my foyer while I dithered over coats and purses, feeling more like a girl-girl than I had for a while. Once upon a time, I had cared about things like makeup and matching purses with shoes, but I had lost that at nineteen when I’d come home from college to find my mother dead of a stroke on the kitchen floor.
She had been there for a week. My parents were divorced — my father lived in another state — and I was an only child. I had come home to surprise my mother, and instead, she had surprised me.
Marcus had a 1960s Mustang that he took out for special occasions, and apparently this ranked as one of those. He drove to the Moorhead house in silence. Normally, we would have chattered the entire way — Marcus and I share the same taste in movies, books, and politics — but those subjects paled in comparison to the house.
The Mustang rode lower than my van, so the view of the Moorhead house as we turned onto the street below seemed even more impressive than usual. This close to Christmas, you’d think other homes on the block would have decorations on the windows or lights strung outside, but the Moorhead house seemed to be the only one with Christmas spirit.
I looked up at the place as we started toward the drive, and those icicle lights still sent a chill through me. I almost told Marcus to turn around and I’d buy him dinner at a nearby steakhouse so we wouldn’t waste the dress-up clothes, but I didn’t. I knew better than to seem weak in front of one of my employees.
I’d learned that lesson as a female firefighter. Even when you felt uncomfortable, you took a deep breath and went into the smoke. To do anything less meant you couldn’t perform your duties.
And somehow, this party had become one of my duties.
We were arriving deliberately late. I hated showing up early to any party. Marcus pulled the Mustang into the circular drive, and my breath caught.
Some things were different: The hedges had been clipped to the bone and did not have lights hanging from them as they had that murderous Christmas season. Signs had been planted in what had been the yard but was now obviously going to be a garden, warning guests to stay on the paths. The signs had been hand-calligraphed, and looked expensive. They even had little drawings of holly around the edges.