Carroll and I cooked and ate a quiet chicken dinner, then made a brief stop at the town library to retrieve some books on Victorian interiors I had been meaning to look at. She and I sat in the parlor of the B&B for a few hours, reading our respective tomes. It had been an interesting day, and I wasn’t quite ready to let it all go. I sat in a plush armchair next to a standing lamp, a magnifying glass in my hand, and pored over old photos of stately homes, hoping for any hint of kitchen or bathroom furnishings in the background. We finally made it upstairs and into our beds, rather later than usual.
I awoke what seemed like minutes later to a banging sound somewhere downstairs. I picked up my phone and, blinking into its small illuminated screen, noted two things: first, that indeed, only half an hour had passed since I’d gone to bed, and second, that I’d missed six calls from Josh in the last several hours. Oops. I hadn’t exactly been paying attention to my phone as I was reading and imagining the mansion’s possibilities. The banging continued, and as I crept from the bedroom into the hallway and peered down the stairs, I ascertained that the sound was a particularly aggressive knocking at the door. What now? Should I preemptively call the police station? Hello, Officer, there’s someone pounding on my door, could you just stay on hold while I ask what he wants? But I didn’t make the call. I had a hunch.
Grabbing one of Cordelia’s golf clubs from the bedroom closet at the far end of the hall and brandishing it like I knew what I was doing, I snuck back to the staircase, crept down, and peered through the front door’s peephole. Just as I’d suspected: Josh. Why was he here now, unannounced, and pounding on the door in the middle of the night? I put down the club, unlocked the door, and flung it open, not sure if I should be frightened or annoyed.
“Can I help you?” I said as the door swung open, trying to land my tone on the droll side of exasperated. Josh’s fist was up, caught in mid-pound. He froze, looking shocked to see me.
“Kate! Are you all right? I was so worried. Can I come in?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, stepping aside. He walked in, taking the long, loping strides I so liked to watch when he crossed the broad lawn of the mansion. “Why were you worried? What’s happening?”
“You didn’t get my messages?” He walked past me and into the kitchen, pacing fitfully in front of the tiled counter as he spoke.
“No,” I said, feeling a little sheepish. “Carroll and I were doing some research, and I just crashed not that long ago. What’s going on?”
He held his breath, then let it go in a short puff. “There was a death at the mansion.”
“I…” My mind couldn’t seem to form a sentence, or even a thought, about what Josh had just said. I managed to sputter, “A new one?”
“Yes. I don’t know when exactly, but it can’t have been that long ago. I was in the back of the carriage house writing, and when I went out to stretch my legs on the lawn, I saw a bunch of police cars, and the back room of the house was all lit up.”
“The back—you mean the kitchen? Are you sure this isn’t just some follow-up to the body in the wall? Maybe they needed more samples from the staircase?”
“I thought that might be it too, but I walked over and looked in the back door. It wasn’t Reynolds or the medical examiner. It was the local guys, Asheboro PD. Now why would that case have gotten bumped down to them? Somebody saw me standing out there and asked me in for questioning—”
“Well, yeah,” I interrupted, “a strange man appearing at the back door of a possible crime scene, saying he’s been hanging out in the barn nearby this whole time? I’d want to ask you some questions too. Did you find out anything? Who was it?”
“They wouldn’t tell me. I heard someone across the room muttering something about a worker, so it could have been a member of your crew.”
“Oh no.” My eyes widened. I didn’t know what else to say. “How can we find out? Do I need to go over there right now?” I started scanning the vicinity for the shoes I had kicked off earlier in the evening, and my hand began patting my pockets for car keys—but I realized I was wearing pajamas. Josh put a hand softly on my forearm.
“Kate. You can’t do anything right now. Can you go back to bed? I can stay—if you don’t mind, I mean. It’s feeling a little spooky over at the Barton place lately.”
“You can stay—of course you can stay, Josh.” I took his hand in mine, tentatively. “But … I know you wanted to talk. Can we do that in the morning?”
“Yes. I’d be useless for conversation right now anyway. Let’s go to bed.” He looked a little uncertain, then added, “Your room?”
“Yes.” We locked the front door behind us and ascended the stairs to the lacy guest bedroom I was calling home. I flopped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, feeling flummoxed by this new development. I was asleep by the time Josh finished brushing his teeth.
I woke feeling fantastically well rested, clear sunlight streaming in through the bedroom windows. I began to mentally tick off what I needed to do today—and then my heart sank as I remembered Josh’s words from last night: There was a death at the mansion. What an odd phrasing. A death as a new fact in the landscape. Because what was a death, in fact, but an erasure, a removal, the disappearing of a life? Now here it was like a great dark smear across the day. I took a deep breath and got out of bed, then dressed quickly, wanting to get down to business. Walking into the bathroom, I almost bumped into Josh, who was standing in front of the mirror and brushing his teeth.
“Didn’t I just leave you here a few hours ago?”
“I haven’t been here brushing this whole time, I swear. I’m not that into oral hygiene.” He put an arm around me as I grabbed my own toothbrush. “You sure went out like a light last night.”
“Long day. Several, actually. And no sign of that stopping, apparently.”
He nodded. We both finished dressing and headed downstairs, with few other words passing between us. Josh was making a distinct effort at friendliness, but given his rather distant tone the last few days, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to bail on this project. I looked at my phone and saw a missed call from a few minutes before: Detective Reynolds. I’d figured it would come sooner or later. When we landed in the kitchen and Josh set to making coffee, I called Reynolds back. He picked up after three rings.
“Kate. I’m going to need to see you at the mansion. There’s been a death.”
“People keep saying that to me,” I muttered.
“What?” Reynolds almost barked. Maybe he was tired of bodies turning up on my work site too.
“Nothing. Sorry. I haven’t had coffee yet. I heard there was … well, I don’t know. ‘A death.’ What does that mean? A murder? Accident? Did someone break in? Who is it?”
“Why don’t you come on down here and I’ll tell you as much as I can. Half an hour?”
“Okay.”
He hung up before I could say anything else. He sounded gruff, but I figured he wasn’t going to arrest me, whatever may have happened over there. I had an alibi. As if summoned by my thoughts of last night, Carroll plodded down the stairs and into the kitchen, looking slightly bedraggled.
“I slept terribly,” she said. “I had this dream that someone was pounding on the door at midnight.”
“Sorry about that,” Josh said sheepishly. “I was just worried about you. Both of you.”
“Why?” Carroll cocked her head at Josh.
“There’s been a…” I searched for words and found only the one I’d heard two people ominously say already. “A death. Something happened at the mansion, I don’t know what, but I have to get over there and talk to Reynolds. Now.”
We three ate a fast breakfast, and I headed out to my car.
Josh called out from the door. “Hey! Want company?”
I nodded, and he grabbed his boots and followed me into the car. We drove in silence. I wasn’t unhappy to have him along, but the idea of a mysterious new body at the site I was desperately trying to oversee was causing considerable stress. Neither of us brought up the conversation we’d agreed to have when Josh showed up last night. If he was planning on skipping town for his real job and bailing out of the Asheboro project just as it got going, I didn’t want to hear about it this morning.
When we arrived at the mansion, we found a uniformed officer standing by the front door. I briefly introduced myself, and he let us pass without argument. Once inside, I wasn’t sure where to proceed. I noticed that the door to the library on my left was shut. That was new—we usually left the house’s interior doors open for airflow. I walked straight ahead toward the kitchen; that seemed to be where the activity was taking place. Josh followed behind me. The hallway felt impossibly long. Just as I reached the entrance to the kitchen, Detective Reynolds appeared in the doorway, a boxy silhouette against the light spilling from the bright room into the dark hall.
“Kate.” He put up a hand, literally stopping us in place. “Please, join me in the parlor.” How formal. Josh and I followed him into the front sitting room. Ensconced in an elegant blue wingback chair, the detective sat back, steepled his fingers, and spoke.
“How well do you know Steve Abernathy?”
“Steve? He’s the plumbing lead on this project. I can’t say I know him well. Morgan hired him. Oh no—did he do something?” I thought back to my interactions with Steve, which had ranged from mildly annoying to unsettling, even leading me to question my safety with him. And I remembered Carroll’s discomfort with his behavior toward her, a complete stranger. How had I been so stupid? Had Steve actually killed someone? My mind spun.
“I don’t know what he did or didn’t do, Ms. Hamilton, but whatever it was, he’s dead at the bottom of the basement stairs.”
I blinked at the handsome man in the gray suit seated across from me. His words didn’t make sense. All I could think to say at first was, “Oh.” Josh and I looked at each other blankly. I didn’t know what to think—I hadn’t gotten a good feeling from Steve, had found myself actually disliking the man, but I certainly didn’t wish him dead. Had someone else? I turned to face the detective again. “What happened to him?”
“That’s uncertain at the moment. We’re still analyzing the scene. But I’d like you to take a look in the basement and tell me if anything seems out of place. Would you feel comfortable doing that?”
“I … guess so.” I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of seeing another dead body, and a fresh one at that, but I wanted to help—and I certainly did want to know if anything was out of place in that basement too. This was still my work site, after all. Could someone have broken in to rob the place and a tussle ensued? Had Steve actually been a hero in this situation? I decided I’d better reserve judgment. Maybe he’d done us a good turn after all, or tried to. We all stood, and as I began moving toward the hallway to head down the basement stairs, Reynolds put up a hand again.
“I’ll need you to come in through the outside entrance. The body is still where we found it.”
“Oh,” I said again intelligently. “If you’ll just unbar the door from inside, we’ll come right around.”
Josh and I walked back out the front door and circled the house. The day wasn’t yet at its hottest point, but the sun felt crisp on my neck as we walked. I wanted to drift into a reverie of some future time, sitting peacefully on this lawn, kicking off my shoes and reclining on a lawn chair—but I knew that a man had died in this house. Recently. And now Josh and I were about to confront the scene of it. When we reached the back cellar entrance, a ground-level double door, Reynolds’s assistant, another young uniformed cop, was just swinging the big doors open. The dark stairs descending into the basement came into view. I stepped aside and gestured for Josh to go through first. He obliged, affording me a few extra seconds of not having to look at a freshly dead body. Then I was following his blue Johns Hopkins T-shirt down the steps, ducking to enter the low passage, putting up a hand to steady myself on the wall while my eyes adjusted—and then we were standing side by side in Henry Barton’s basement. It was a rough-hewn space, unfinished, but there was a grandeur in its sheer size, stretching the full length of the house above; it could have been midnight or a hundred years ago, so well did the thick foundation block out the day. Just as I cast a glance back to the double door we’d come through, the young officer was shutting it again, closing off any available sunlight.
I looked around. The police had brought back their stand lamps from the other day, and shocking fields of white light flooded the far end of the basement, where several technicians were hovering around the base of the stairs. Nothing seemed out of place, though I had to admit I hadn’t been spending that much time in the basement prior to this. Reynolds beckoned from the bottom of the staircase, across the room. I walked toward him, and as he stepped out of the way to give me a view of the body, I stopped cold. It was Steve, all right, but his neck was bent at an angle not found in nature. I took one long look at the body and turned away. Reynolds met me by the wall halfway across the room, where I was avoiding the scene of the crime—if it was a crime—by examining some chalk marks left on the stone wall by one of the workers. I hadn’t the slightest idea what they meant, but I convinced myself I was engrossed, so baffled was I by the scene at the other end of the basement.
“Anything leap out at you, Kate?”
“No—other than the dead body over there, the place looks normal. Honestly, there’s not much going on down here yet. We’ve only just started work. Or tried to.” Reynolds, to his credit, seemed to sense my frustration, and relaxed his face as he nodded. I continued, trying my luck at extracting some details from this conversation. “What can you tell me about the scene?”
Reynolds obliged. “Well, his injuries are consistent with a fall. There are no major signs of struggle. His fingernails are clean and intact, nothing out of place on his clothes or hair. But he reeks of alcohol. You said he was on your work crew—were you ever aware of him drinking on the job?”
“Not that I’d ever noticed. But I’d only met him a handful of times. He was technically working for me, but we’ve barely gotten started. It was Morgan Wheeler who hired him—hired the whole team, actually—and he said Steve was a good plumber. That’s about all I know.” I considered whether or not to go into what I’d heard about Steve’s character. Maybe Reynolds needed to know. “And, well, I don’t know if there’s a polite way to say this, but he may have been a little handsy in mixed company. He made one of the women on our board uncomfortable.”
“Who?”
“Do I have to tell you?”
“It may be relevant to the case.”
“Carroll Peterson, my lead researcher on the Barton papers. But if you’re thinking she pushed him down the stairs or something, I can assure you she had nothing to do with it. Besides being a slip of a girl who probably couldn’t punch her way out of a wet paper bag, she was with me at the B&B all last night.”
“I see. Thank you, Ms. Hamilton.” He made a note on a small pad, which he returned to his pocket before looking back up at me. “I think that’s all we’ll need from you for now. You’re free to go.”
“Thanks. When can I get my work site back? Do you know how long this investigation is going to take?”
“We’ll remove the body by end of day, but we may need another day or two before we clear the scene. I’ll keep you apprised.” I had a sudden feeling of déjà vu.
“Okay,” I said, feeling a bit defeated. “How much of this can I tell the rest of the crew? I’ll need to let them know not to come in to work, but they might want to know why.”
“Would this be, uh”—he consulted the small notepad again—“Morgan Wheeler, Bethany Wallace, and Lars Abernathy?”
“Yes, that’s them. Why?”
“I don’t think you’ll have to tell them not to come to work. I spoke with Lars to break the news early this morning. And Morgan Wheeler is down at the Asheboro Police Station now. I’m headed over there to speak with him.”
“What? Why? Is he under arrest? And where’s Bethany?”
“No one has been arrested in this matter. We just brought Mr. Wheeler in for questioning. It appears both he and Miss Wallace were in the house at the time of Mr. Abernathy’s death. We have yet to locate Miss Wallace to speak with her, however.”
My face went white. Could my crew—the good Quaker Morgan, and Bethany, who’d taught me about the spiritual qualities of paint colors—have had some part in Steve’s death? I didn’t want to think so. But there had clearly been some enmity among the group when I’d walked in on their heated conversation the day before. I thanked Detective Reynolds and turned to go.
When Josh and I had almost made it back to the outer door, Reynolds called out, “Oh, Kate—there’s one more thing. Does this mean anything to you?” He approached me and produced from a manila folder under his arm a leather-bound book not much larger than a deck of cards. Its gilded spine looked vaguely familiar. I took it from him and turned to the title page. Trollope.
“I’m not sure,” I replied, “but I’d bet this came from the library of this house. It looks like the right vintage, and Barton definitely had some of this author’s works. Check for an empty spot on the shelf by the big mirror, east side of the room.”
“Will do.” He took the book from me and returned it precisely to the folder.
“But … what does that have to do with anything?”
“We found it in the deceased’s back pocket.”
“Huh. I see.” I distinctly did not recall saying Steve could borrow antique books from the mansion’s library. There could be some items of real value in there. I kicked myself for not having installed security cameras in this place.
Josh and I said goodbye to the detective and climbed back up the steep outer stairs, emerging onto the back lawn. It was a fine day outside, clear and calm. I wished I felt the same. You’re out of your depth, Hamilton. I tried my best to shrug off that thought. I needed to know what had happened here. I took out my phone and called Morgan. No answer. I tried Bethany next, and she didn’t respond either. Josh and I rounded the house and climbed back into my car, and I mutely started driving back to the B&B.
When we arrived, Carroll had just showered and was looking over some scans of Henry Barton’s financial documents on her laptop. As I explained the events of the past hour, her eyes grew wider and wider. She was mildly alarmed to hear that her name had come up in connection with Steve, but I reminded her that I was her alibi for last night—and we were probably visible on the library’s security camera, if it came to that—so any call Reynolds paid to her would likely be only to confirm what I’d told him. We shared a plate of cheese and crackers, brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and stared into space together for a few minutes, mulling over the strangeness of this latest development. Josh headed upstairs for a nap, not having slept well after his run-in with the police and subsequent worry over my safety last night.
Carroll returned to her research, and I sat in the kitchen, feeling stuck. What was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t work on the mansion—heck, it seemed like I couldn’t even set foot in the mansion without finding a body there. I needed to talk to Morgan. What was really going on with his crew—and was he a person of interest in Steve’s death?
Just then, my phone rang. I looked at the screen, wondering if the device had read my thoughts—but it was Lisbeth. What could she want? I let it go to voice mail. Feeling defeated, I walked back into the parlor, plopped down in a chair, and tried to focus on my research.