I closed the door behind her when she left and sank down to the floor. The atrium tiles were cold against my palms. Eric Alexander Heller, my guardian uncle, left me more than I’d dreamed of. Money, security, any number of places that I could live in if I wanted to.
Everything, in fact, but an explanation.
I took myself back to the kitchen table and read the will. Legal jargon wasn’t my strong suit, but from what I could tell, it was just what the lawyer had said. Everything he had owned was mine. No one else’s. No discussion. Now that I was alone and starting to get my bearings, about a thousand questions presented themselves. Why leave everything to me? Why hadn’t he told me about any of it? How had he made all this money?
And, top of the list, what was someone worth as much as a small nation doing in a bar in the shitty part of Denver, and did all the money that had just dropped into my lap have anything to do with why he’d been killed?
I took out the keys she’d left me. A single house key shared a ring with a green plastic tag with an address on Inca Street. Two storage keys for two different companies.
If I’d had anyone to talk to, I’d have called them. My parents, a friend, a boyfriend, anyone. A year ago, I would have had a list half as long as my arm. The world changes a lot in a year. Sometimes it changes a lot in a day.
I walked back to the bedroom and looked at my clothes, the ghost of my discomfort with the lawyer still haunting me. If I was going to go face Christ only knew what, I wasn’t going in a T-shirt. I took one of the white shirts out of the closet, held it close to my face, and breathed in. It didn’t smell like anything at all. I stripped off my shirt, found a simple white tee in Eric’s dresser, and put myself together in a good white men’s button-down. It classed up the jeans, and if it was a little too big, I could roll up the sleeves and still look more confident than I did in my own clothes. More confident than I felt.
I felt a little weird, wearing a dead man’s shirt. But it was mine now. He’d given it to me. I had the ultimate hand-me-down life. The thought brought a lump to my throat.
‘Come on, little tomato,’ I told the key ring. ‘You and me against the world.’
I called a taxi service, went out to the curb to wait, and inside forty-five minutes I was on Inca Street, standing in front of the mysterious apartment.
2
In the middle of the afternoon there wasn’t much foot traffic. The address was a warehouse complex converted into living space for the Brie and wine set. Five stories of redbrick with balconies at each level. Tasteful plants filled the three feet between the knee-high wrought iron fence and the walls. According to the paperwork, the apartment Eric owned—the one I owned—was valued at half a million.
I tried to look like I belonged there as I walked in and found my way to the elevators. It was like sneaking into a bar; I didn’t belong there, but I did. I kept expecting someone to stop me, to ask for my ID, to check my name against a list and throw me out.
Why, I asked myself, does someone have a house and an apartment both in the same city? It wasn’t like he could sleep in two beds at once. Maybe this was his getaway. Maybe it was where his lover stayed, assuming he had one.
The elevator chimed, a low, reassuring bell, like someone clearing their throat. I stepped out, checked the number on the key ring, and followed the corridor down to my left. I started to knock, then stopped.
I stood there, silent, my breath fast. The door shone like lacquer. I could see my reflection in it, blurred and imprecise. I put the key in the lock and turned. I felt the bolt open, but I didn’t hear it.
The inside of the apartment was gorgeous and surreal. Wooden floors that seemed to glow, bronze fixtures, windows that made the city outside seem like it had been arranged to be seen from this vantage point. The ceilings were raw beams and exposed ductwork so stylish they looked obvious. Books were stacked on the floor, on the deep, plush couch. History books, it looked like. Some of them were in languages I recognized, some weren’t. A whiteboard hung on one wall, covered with timetables and scribbled notes. A huge glass ashtray held the remains of at least a pack of dark brown cigarettes, the scent of old smoke tainting the air. And the art …
At each of the huge windows, a glass ball seemed to float in the air. It was only when I got close enough to breathe on them that I saw the tiny cradles, three hair-thin wire strands for each, hanging from the high ceiling. When I turned around, I saw there was one above the doorway too. Candles in thick brass candlesticks covered the dining table in three ascending rows, and a picture framed in burnished metal hung at the mouth of a hallway. It was a picture of a young woman in nineteenth-century clothes, and I wasn’t sure from looking whether it was a photograph or a drawing. It seemed as real as a photo, but the eyes and the way she held her hands looked subtly off.
Silently, I went down the hallway. A fair-size kitchen with white tiles and a brushed steel sink and refrigerator and stove. A breakfast bar with ironwork stools to match the fence outside. A bathroom with the lights out. A bedroom, and on the bed, laid out as if in state, a corpse.
I could feel the blood leaving my face. I didn’t scream, but I put my hand on the door frame to keep steady. My stomach tightened and flipped. I stepped forward. Whoever he’d been, he’d been dead for a long time. The skin was desiccated, tight, and waxy; the nose was sunken; the hands folded on his chest were fleshless as chicken wings. Blackened teeth lurked behind ruined lips. Wisps of colorless hair still clung to the scalp. He was wearing a white shirt with suspenders and pants that came up to his rib cage, like someone from a forties movie.
I crouched at the side of the bed, disgusted, fascinated, and frightened. My mind was jumping and screeching like a monkey behind my eyes, but there was something wrong. I had touched my nose before I figured it out, like my body already knew and had to give me the hint. He didn’t smell like a corpse. He didn’t smell like anything. He smelled cold.
I had started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t a body at all but some kind of desperately Goth wax sculpture when the eyes opened with a wet click.
This time, I screamed.
‘You aren’t Eric,’ it said in a voice like a rusted cattle gate opening.
‘I’m his niece,’ I said. I didn’t remember running across the room, but my back was pressed against the wall now. I tried to squeak less when I spoke again. ‘I’m Jayné.’
He repeated my name like he was tasting it. Zha-nay.
‘French?’ he asked.
‘My mother’s side,’ I said. ‘People usually say it like Jane or Janey.’
‘Monolingual fuckwits,’ he said, and sat up. I thought I could hear his joints creaking like leather, but I might have only imagined it. ‘You’re here, that means something happened to Eric?’
‘He’s dead.’
The man sighed.
‘I was afraid of that,’ he said. ‘Explains a lot. The little rat fuckers must have sussed him out.’
The skeletal, awkward hand rubbed his chin like it was checking for stubble. When he looked at me, his eyes were the yellow of old ivory. In motion, he didn’t look like a corpse, only a badly damaged man.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘where are my manners, eh? You want a drink?’
‘Um,’ I said. And then, ‘Yes.’
He led the way back to the kitchen. I perched on one of the stools while he poured two generous fingers of brandy into a water glass. I’d seen pictures of people who survived horrific burns, and while he didn’t bear those scars, the effect was much the same. I could see it when his joints—shoulder, hip, elbow—didn’t quite bend the way they were meant to. He walked carefully. I wanted to ask what had happened to him, but I couldn’t think of a way to phrase it that didn’t seem excruciatingly rude. I tried not to stare, the way you try not to look at people with harelips or missing hands, but my eyes just kept going back.