Morgan, Josh, and I piled into my car, and I peeled out onto the local highway, heading for the other end of town. I didn’t know the exact address I was looking for, but I’d recognize it when I saw it. When we got close to the town grocery store, I made a sloping left turn into a midcentury housing development, the only residential cluster in that part of town. I slowed down and began scanning the façades of houses as we passed them. Morgan leaned forward from the back seat.
“What exactly are we looking for, Miz Kate?”
“I’ll let you know. It might be nothing, but … I’ve got a hunch.”
With no luck on the first street, I rounded the looped end of a cul-de-sac, exited onto the development’s broad central avenue, and turned right onto a tree-lined side street. The paving was just a step up from gravel—this was not a wealthy area, even for Asheboro—but islands of cheerful flowers in big aluminum tubs separated the traffic lanes. Momentarily distracted by the lilies and mammoth sunflowers peering at us from the raised beds in the median, I returned my gaze to the houses we were driving past—and immediately stepped on the brakes. I pulled over and got out of the car. The sun was hot above us.
“Stay here, you two,” I said to Josh and Morgan, who looked too confused by this whole escapade to protest. “I’ll scream if I need you. Got it?” They nodded.
I walked across the small front yard, which was planted with more sunflowers, along with several kinds of squash and string beans climbing tall trellises. I walked up to the concrete stoop of the house and knocked on the door. The blue door—only one like it among the muted color palette favored by most of Asheboro’s citizens. A few anxious seconds passed, and then I heard shuffling footsteps approaching the door. It opened, and a girl of thirteen or fourteen stood on the other side, balancing a baby on her hip.
“Can I help you?” the girl asked.
I almost lost confidence. Could I be in the wrong place? “Is … is Bethany here?”
“Oh yeah. Hold on.” She turned her head toward the inside of the house and shouted, “Auntie B! Lady here to see you.” The baby smiled, reached out a sticky starfish of a hand in my direction. The girl turned her blank gaze back to me. “You can come in, if you want. Wait—you selling something?” I shook my head, and the girl shuffled away, evidently satisfied with my answer, her too-big fuzzy slippers slapping the floor beneath her heels.
I stepped into the front room of the house, a narrow space filled with shoes ranging from tiny to adult size, a variety of raincoats and outerwear piled voluminously on hooks along one wall. I waited, a bit tensely. Could I take Bethany in a fight? Probably … Maybe? Okay, if I was honest with myself, I knew the woman could snap me between two fingers if she wanted to. But it probably wouldn’t come to that, right? I was glad I had brought my two male companions along in case things got serious, though they’d be on the other side of the door if anything went down. I heard footsteps in the hall, and Bethany appeared.
“Hi, Kate. What’s going on? Why are you at my sister’s house?”
“Bethany. I’m sorry to bother you here, but I need to talk to you. Can we sit?”
She looked confused and slightly guarded, but not unfriendly. “Sure, no problem. How did you even find me? I gave Morgan my normal address on the hiring paperwork.”
“Who else in this town has a front door painted haint blue?”
“Oh, right.” She looked with fondness at the door I had just entered through, and then waved me in. We walked into a sitting room dominated by a large flat-screen TV playing cartoons on mute. A brimming canvas laundry hamper leaned heavily against a wall in one corner of the room. “You met my nieces, I see.”
“I did. They’re cute.”
“I stop in to hang out with them a couple of times a week. Rekia’s old enough that she doesn’t really need a babysitter, but my sister just wants to make sure she doesn’t burn down the house trying to make mac and cheese or something. I don’t mind. So what do you want to talk about?” Her question had a slight edge to it.
I didn’t know where to begin. I decided to just leap in. “Bethany, I need you to tell me what happened with Steve.”
“On Thursday night? Okay, listen, I’m sorry I went MIA, but I just could not with him. I don’t know if I can come back and be on the crew if we’re going to be working at the same time. Not without an apology, first of all.”
I blinked at her a few times. “I … Okay. Right. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Yeah, sure.” She stared at the mute television screen for a moment. “Morgan left, and I kept working on my plans in the kitchen. I don’t know what Steve was doing—seemed like he was just wandering around the upstairs rooms, being nosy, but that’s not my business. I let him be. Then I went down in the basement—I was trying to see where I could put a chase. I made a few small holes, but nothing conclusive yet. After a while, I heard someone come into the house upstairs. Must have been Morgan coming back from his dinner. Then I heard Steve and Morgan yelling at each other for a couple of minutes, then a door slammed and Steve wandered down to the basement and found me. He seemed … off. He wasn’t being careful the way he moved, kind of knocking into things, which isn’t cool when you’re in a delicate work space, you know? And then I think he was trying to hit on me—but, like, really badly. He knows I’m married—and to a woman—but he kept saying things about my appearance, how I looked so good, and then he’d get in my space, try to smell me or something. It was really gross. I almost felt bad for him—it seemed like he’d been drinking, and he was not in control of himself. But then he grabbed me, and I had to draw the line. I told him to get off.”
Bethany’s shoulders were pulled up, her arms crossed in front of her, her breaths quick, as if she were reliving this moment while reciting it. She went on, “So I twisted to get away from him, told him he needed to cut it out. And he kind of went berserk. Like he thought he was entitled to treat me that way and I was denying his rights or something. He started saying threatening stuff—not even about me but, like, wouldn’t it be a shame if this place burned down? And how he had a tank of kerosene in his truck outside. Which I doubt was true. But he could really have done something. So I told him I was calling the cops. He didn’t care. I called the Asheboro station and told them he was drunk and disorderly, he was making threats about arson, endangering town property. I didn’t know if that would stick, but I needed to do something. And then I left. I wasn’t about to wait for the cops to show up. Steve started to follow me up the stairs, but he wasn’t moving too fast. I got out of there and came here—I’ve been here since, honestly. I just needed some time to decompress from that whole thing. So, again, I’m sorry I didn’t call you—my phone service just got shut off, and things have been tight lately, so I wasn’t going to re-up it until I got my first paycheck from Morgan. You’re not going to fire me over this, are you? If there’s a problem with the crew, I think you should really take a look at Steve.”
“Oh, I have.” I sighed. Now it was my turn to stare at the silent television, its display showing a garish pink cartoon forest with green mushroom people walking through it on some kind of quest. I tried to digest what I had just heard. So, it looked like Bethany wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, assuming she was telling the truth. I believed that she didn’t even know Steve was dead, and I wasn’t looking forward to telling her. But what had happened to Steve? No answers were appearing.
I knew what we had to do next. I asked Bethany to wait a minute, stepped into the hallway, and called Detective Reynolds. He said he was in his office at the nearby field station, and that I’d better come over with Bethany right away. I returned to Bethany, who was again staring at the TV while rubbing at a knot in her strong forearm.
“Bethany? I need you to come with me. I’m not firing you, don’t worry—but someone else needs to hear what you just told me. People have been looking for you, you know. Can you leave here for a little while?” She nodded, confused but willing, and stepped out briefly to speak with her older niece. Satisfied that no mac-and-cheese fires would occur in her absence, she grabbed her bag and headed with me toward the door. As we left the room, my gaze fell on the heaping laundry basket, atop which sat a dusty pair of work pants and a black T-shirt.
“Bethany, are those the work clothes you were wearing on Thursday?”
“Yeah, why? I haven’t gotten around to doing laundry.”
“Oh, believe me—no judgment here. Do you have a plastic bag I can borrow?”
She walked back to the kitchen and retrieved a disposable grocery bag, its thin white plastic printed with the logo of the store a few blocks from where we stood. I picked out the pants and T-shirt from the top of the laundry pile and placed them into the bag, tied it at the top, and took it with me. Bethany looked at me as if I had two heads, but she didn’t argue. It had clearly been an odd few days for her too. We left the house and found Morgan and Josh leaning against the side of my car.
“Don’t say anything, you two. We have another stop to make.”
Bethany got into the passenger’s seat, the two men climbed into the back, and we made the fairly long drive out to Reynolds’s field office without speaking. When we arrived, I led Bethany in the front door and asked her to tell the detective what she’d told me. I handed Reynolds the bag of clothing, telling him I’d explain in due time. He brought Bethany into his office, nodded at me, and closed the door. I went back outside and sat on the hood of my car, looking through the storefront office’s glass façade for any signs of movement, though I knew it could be a while. Josh and Morgan stood nearby, chatting, but clearly waiting for some sort of explanation. I took out my phone and dialed Meredith, the forensic pathologist who’d extracted the mystery body from the wall only days ago. To my surprise, she picked up.
“Meredith? It’s Kate Hamilton. By any chance, are you working on the body of Steve Abernathy, who was found in the Barton house two nights ago?”
“How did you know? It’s not often one gets two bodies in the same house, one hundred years apart. What a strange turn of events! I couldn’t resist.”
“Listen, I need to know something. Was there any dust on Steve’s body? White powder, or some sort of dry residue?”
“There was, yes.”
“Where was it?”
“On the man’s hands. Palms, fingers—all over.”
“Is that the only place?”
“Yes. Well, mostly—a few scuffs of it here and there, probably picked up as he was falling down the stairs. But the palms—I thought that was odd. Residue on a victim’s hands can indicate a struggle of some sort, but he’s got no defensive wounds. So I figured I’d analyze the stuff.”
“Were you able to identify it?”
“Not yet. I sent samples to the lab, but they haven’t come back yet.”
“Meredith, I’ll bet you a dollar you’ll find some horse DNA in that dust.”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind. Thank you for the information. And please call Brady Reynolds when you have a chance—he’s got a new piece of evidence for you to analyze.”
“I will, Kate. And just so you know, equine genetic material was not at the top of my list on the workup, but I’ll make a note. You have a good day.” She sounded confused but a little excited too—the woman was good at her job. I hung up and returned to Josh and Morgan.
“What’s going on here, Kate?” Josh demanded.
Morgan looked toward the office door with some concern. “Is Bethany in trouble? Did she…” I could see he didn’t want to finish the question.
“I don’t think Bethany killed Steve,” I told them. “If she’s telling the truth, she didn’t even know he was dead. She left the house before it happened. And from what she and you both told me about the condition Steve was in that night, it sounds like he was perfectly capable of falling down a flight of stairs all by himself.”
“I can’t say with certainty, but sadly, I think you’re right,” Morgan said, removing his cap to give his damp head some air. “Then what the devil are we all doing here?”
I stared hard at the building’s façade, willing Bethany and the detective to talk faster. “Gentlemen,” I said, “I’ll tell you as soon as that door opens.”