The gate was held in place by a rubber bungee cord but still moved a couple of inches squealing in counterpoint with the wind that was picking up from the mountains. I stopped and held the metal-framed gate in one hand, thankful I was wearing gloves so that my flesh didn’t stick, and ushered the first dog through; the other one stood and looked at me. “C’mon.”
He waited a short moment and then followed, keeping his distance as I looked down the path at the gables of the big house.
Douglas Moomey had built the place in the late 1890s, but after the death of his brother in the Boer War, he was called back to England from a life of drunken remittance to a life of drunken privilege. The only thing he’d left behind were illegitimate children who spoke with a vague British accent and the house. A local cattle rancher bought it and the surrounding property, and it remained in his family until the late forties, at which point Shirley Vandermier, one of the local call girls, acquired it as a result of an heir chasing aces and eights.
There was supposedly an old tunnel that had run from the whorehouse to a livery almost an eighth of a mile away, which allowed the local ranchers and cowboys ingress and, more important, egress in times of emergency—such as when the sheriff might be looking for patrons of the establishment.
As I stood among the random, rusted automobile carcasses that were stacked around it, it was hard to imagine the place in its original glory. The gigantic house squatted on a native moss-rock foundation like the place had grown there. The night clouds raced over the roof like fleeting spirits, and the tendrils of a long dead cottonwood’s split trunk ran its bony fingers through the clouds. Only the insistent bite of the northwestern wind and subzero temperatures reminded me that it was Valentine’s Day and not Halloween.
There was no paint to peel, so the structure had slowly gone monochromatic from its balustrades and verandas to its shriveled and checked shingles. More than a few of those shingles lay at my feet, most likely victim to Geo’s latest stint as chimney sweep. There was a plume of smoke coming from the blackened bricks, and it looked like there was a light on somewhere in the back of the house; I figured that Gina and Duane must have come back from the movies early.
The dogs had stopped at the base of the stairs to turn and look at me. I gave the entire house one more quick glance. “I’m coming.”
Automobile parts, scrap metal, and large, derelict appliances were scattered on the porch as well as the patchy iced yard. I picked my way around a Ford nine-inch differential, a ’50 Willys Jeepster grille, and the seat from a mid-sixties Impala. The steps were warped and cupped but held as I climbed onto the porch.
“Sheriff’s department.”
I waited but there was no response, so I opened the front door and followed the wolves inside. There was a set of stairs in the entry hall with a stained oriental runner complete with tarnished brass rails on each rise. The carpet had been tracked black, and the worn spots at the center of each tread showed the oak board underneath, the distressed wool threads drifting in the air of the opened door as if the stairwell had been disemboweled.
The green wainscoting had crinkled its stain and pulled away from the surface of the wood like a skinned alligator, and brocaded wallpaper hung in strips from the plaster-and-lath walls. In the partial moonlight of the parlor windows, the human hair that had been mixed with the plaster curlicued from the wall—mixing hair with plaster was a common practice of the period, but it was still a little unsettling.
There was a door under the stairs that must’ve led to the basement. Snakes.
Junk was everywhere—stacks of moldy books, newspapers and magazines, a portable air compressor, a broken ladder, and a floor fan with no blades were just a few of the items within reach. Amazingly, though, the air felt humid.
The dogs were waiting for me in the archway of the back hall that led to what had to be the kitchen, but I detoured to my right and stared at the bluish- gray trapezoids of moonlight revealing boot prints that disturbed the dust on the floor. There were two large, overstuffed reading chairs facing the fireplace and, as the chimney had indicated, the smoldering remains of a fire.
A small, round, battered Chippendale table with a Cole-man lantern planted on top sat between the two chairs. None of the furniture looked to be in particularly good condition, but one chair had a sheet carefully draped over it with a large book spread open on it, binding up. Overtaken with curiosity, I took the five steps and leaned in to read the gilt writing on the tattered cover, THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
I stuck a finger between the pages, lifted up the volume, and flipped it over. Act 2, scene 6, Romeo and Juliet, not the most memorable excerpt from the play—a few lines close to the bottom of the page had been underlined with a dull pencil which, upon closer examination, was also on the seat of the chair. I picked it up and placed it in the center of the open book and read.
They are but beggars that can count their worth;
But my true love is grown to such excess
I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.
My estimation of Geo Stewart was rising as I closed the pencil in the collected works, eraser out, and returned it to the seat of the chair. I glanced back into the entryway, but the dogs were not there—probably waiting for me in the kitchen. I stepped to the fireplace and unhooked a well-used fire iron, crouched, and started stoking the remnants that remained between the glowing amber eyes of the owl-shaped andirons. There were a few sparks and the ends rolled to the center, re-igniting the fire and giving the place a bit more cheer and, needless to say, warmth.
There was a noise from the kitchen, and I figured I’d better get to feeding the wild bunch before they decided to take it upon themselves. I stood and started for the main hall, looked through the glass partition toward the pantry, and thought I saw someone.
I froze and stood there without moving, blinking my eyes steadily, thinking it must’ve been the residual effect of this afternoon’s drops, but the image of a woman dressed completely in nineteenth-century clothes passed through the hallway behind the beveled glass.
With the light reflecting through the hinged doors of the kitchen and the stained-glass side panels, I could see she was wearing a deep red ball gown, complete with high collar and a bustle. I thought I should investigate and had just started toward the swinging doors, when they both opened.
“Oh, my lord . . .” She placed her hands at her chest and looked at me, wide-eyed. The doors flapped closed behind her. “Oh, my lord.”
“Mrs. Dobbs?”
I finished off my slice of apple pie and took a sip of my coffee, the communal silence weighing heavily on the two of us.
We sat at a small table by the kitchen window; the kitchen, as opposed to the rest of the house, was spotless. There was a gigantic, six-burner porcelain stove with four ovens, a massive refrigerator, and cabinets that had been scrubbed within an inch of their grain. The floor and the walls up to the chair rail were those tiny, octagonal tiles set in a pattern that, even in the dim lights of the antique fixtures, glistened around the room like a jeweler’s showcase. The only thing disturbing the décor were the two lumps of wolf-dogs that lay snoring in the corner by the back door.
“Good pie. Good coffee, too.” I set the thick china cup down.
She nodded and continued to sip from the mug she held in both hands. Her pupils were a soft blue, but the edges looked hard and dark, reminiscent of the blue-willow china that was carefully displayed in the highboy by the stove. Her hair was long, and the way she looked it was hard to remember that she was probably a member of AARP and that she’d been the one who had introduced me to big Bill Shakespeare in the ninth grade.