As I stood before the B&B’s sweeping staircase, with one hand on the elaborately carved newel, I wavered between going right to bed and celebrating with a glass of wine first. The wine won. It had been a rocky couple of months since Lisbeth had begged me to come back to Asheboro and save the town. I had gotten approval to begin with Henry Barton’s house, but I could already tell it would be a mammoth undertaking. Given how little attention the mansion had been afforded over the years, it was a wonder the building was still standing at all. Then the most recent bank president in town had drained the maintenance fund, which left the town with no money to do anything.
I settled myself more comfortably on the plush settee in the parlor, a glass of red wine in my hand. This bed-and-breakfast had once belonged to my high school tormenter, Cordelia, back when she was briefly married to Ryan—yes, the same Ryan who was now our group’s lawyer. But she was gone now. Only a few months ago, I’d discovered Cordelia’s lifeless body sprawled on the steps of the Barton house and had to report the death to the local authorities myself. It wasn’t the best way to reintroduce myself to Asheboro, to say the least, but that chapter had passed. Ryan still technically owned the B&B, but I had plans for it; I imagined it could provide rooms for visiting guests eventually. There were four upstairs bedrooms, whose Victorian elements had largely been left intact—a miracle given Cordelia’s very un-Victorian taste—and overall, the place wasn’t in bad shape. I didn’t expect to live here forever, although where I’d go after Asheboro was kind of vague. If I was successful in reviving the town, I’d have my choice of job offers; if I failed, most likely nobody would ever notice. I could always go back to Baltimore, maybe get a plant. But I didn’t want to think about that yet.
My glass was empty, but I was having trouble convincing myself to stand up and go up the stairs. In the dim light of a single lamp, I studied the parlor. Was there any sign of a woman’s touch in the room? Cordelia had probably hired a decorator. I doubted she had had many friends left to ask for a recommendation, and in any case, Ryan had said she’d lost interest quickly in the bed-and-breakfast, particularly when she realized she’d have to cater to other people. She had preferred to be the queen bee, not the maid and concierge.
But first on my list for the next day was finding someone who knew—and respected—Victorian architecture, and could make sure that the mansion would be both structurally sound and authentically elegant. Upstairs, I went to sleep with visions of velvet portieres and a profusion of tassels dancing in my head.
I was already downstairs buttering my toast when the front doorbell rang. Luckily, I was decently clothed—or at least, clothed enough to see who was at the door. The peephole showed Carroll standing on the porch, looking fresh as a daisy. She was early. I turned off the alarm and unlocked the locks.
“Hey, was I expecting you today?” I asked as I waved her in.
“Nice to see you too, Kate,” she said, grinning at me as she crossed the threshold. “No, I was going to come later this week, but I finished my project earlier than I expected. So, surprise, here I am!” She popped her head into the kitchen, and, finding it empty, nodded toward the bedrooms upstairs. “You alone?”
She already knew about Josh and me, and whatever it was we had going on between us. But Josh wasn’t spending as much time in Asheboro as he had been. When I first blew into town, he’d been stationed in the Barton mansion’s carriage house as the resident caretaker, the latest in a succession of responsible individuals given free lodging and a minimal stipend in exchange for their minimal labor in looking after the place, making sure the estate wasn’t overrun by teenage vandals, treasure looters, or any kind of wildlife. But now that his term was over and I had more or less taken custody of the house—gulp—Josh had picked up a summer course back in the city, at Johns Hopkins. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard from him … Carroll cocked a curious eyebrow at me, and I changed the subject.
“Yes, it’s just me. We had our first meeting of the Asheboro Revitalization Project last night, and I gave everyone an outline of the plans. You hungry?”
“Yes, actually. I drove down, since I thought I might need a car here. Am I staying in this place?” She craned her head up and looked pleased as she inspected the crown moldings. Carroll also had an appreciative eye for the details of houses. I knew she’d come in handy.
“Of course you’re staying here. I even have clean sheets.”
“Ooh, luxury! I’m sticking with you, kid.” Carroll’s snappy wit was a breath of fresh air amid Asheboro’s staid manners, and she had already proven herself to be an asset to the town improvement project. Given her field of study—resources collections, with a dash of genealogy thrown in—I knew she was a good addition to my skeleton crew.
She dropped her satchel on a chair in the front parlor and assumed a businesslike stance. “Now, where are Henry’s collections?”
“Still at the library. It’s still closed, so go ahead and work there. Nobody will bother you. My goal for the moment is to find a contractor who understands Victorian buildings, who can take a look at the mansion and tell us what really needs doing.” I shuddered to imagine the estimates I’d get for this kind of job, but then again it was Mid-Atlantic Power’s money, not mine.
“Good idea. Unfortunately, I don’t know any contractors who fit that bill. Is that coffee hot?” Her eyes pointed hopefully at the pot on the stove top.
“It is. Help yourself.”
She did, filling a mug and then examining the contents of the fridge. She emerged victorious with an English muffin, which she briefly toasted; she then added a smear of marmalade whose provenance I wouldn’t have trusted, but Carroll was a braver soul than I. She chewed contentedly as she spoke. “So, what’s on the calendar?”
“I’d like our board to take a critical look at the mansion, in terms of what they want to present to the public. I asked Frances at the local paper to look for more references to Henry’s wife, Mary, because we know next to nothing about her. Did you find much when you were digging through the collections?”
“Not about her—but I was pretty focused on Henry’s business dealings. I’m glad he saved so many of his business records, at least. They should be able to fill in some of our picture of him. Do you know where he’s buried?” Carroll asked.
“I don’t know, come to think of it.” There were three churches in Asheboro, but only one old enough to have been an option in Henry Barton’s time. I still had no idea if he was a religious man—we’d have to put that on Carroll’s research list. “You would think that Henry, being such an important man in town, would have a major tombstone or monument in the big town cemetery, right? But I never noticed one way or the other. Maybe we should add that to the committee’s to-do list.”
Carroll took a long draw from her latest cup of coffee, staring off in contemplation. Then she snapped to attention and said, “Let’s do something. I need to get my blood flowing. You want to go look at the mansion again? Maybe that will give us some fresh ideas.”
“Absolutely.” I went upstairs quickly and threw on some comfortable clothes while Carroll waited downstairs, and we were ready to go.
So far, I hadn’t lost the excitement I’d felt when I drove up to the Barton property and first saw the house. Coming over the crest of the hill and seeing the house settled in its verdant valley got me every time. The more I learned about Henry Barton, the more I came to appreciate his home. He’d fought in the Civil War, and when the war ended, somehow Henry had scraped up enough money to buy the property in a part of the state that had seen its share of warfare. After some initial digging into Henry’s records, we’d learned that the original building had been a simple farmhouse, and it was Henry who had turned it into something close to magnificent—with money he had earned, not inherited.
I wanted to guess that he had built this place for his wife, out of love, but we knew so little about her that it was hard to say. Maybe she’d been a coldhearted nag, and all Henry’s efforts had been directed at trying to impress her. But their union was more or less a mystery at this point. I hadn’t even found an obituary—we only knew Mary died before Henry by way of fragmentary town memory: somebody’s great-grandmother, somebody’s great-great-aunt, an old piece of the story passed down, incomplete.
“Inside or out?” I asked Carroll when I had pulled up in front of the mansion and parked.
“Let’s stay outdoors. I need to move—I’ve been doing a lot of driving already today. Besides, the days are so long this time of year that there’s no rush.”
“Outside it is, then,” I replied. “You know, I’m not sure I’ve actually walked the perimeter of this land. Of course, all the kids at my high school knew how to sneak in the back way, and I’m pretty sure that most of the guys, and maybe some of the girls, had learned how to pick a lock pretty young.”
“Why is that?” Carroll asked.
“Because this was the favorite make-out place in town, if you were so inclined.”
“Oh my!” Carroll feigned shock, and turned to me with a grin. “And were you?”
“Almost. Kind of. No, not really.” In fact, Ryan and I had come here once, as lovestruck high schoolers, and almost made the proverbial home run, but then my nemesis, Cordelia, had appeared with her mean-girl posse and quashed that. I stopped seeing Ryan and never tried again, or even knew anybody I’d want to try it with. I just kept my head down and waited for my senior year to end, and then left town. Carroll and I walked through the dense grass that flanked the house in silence for a few seconds. She looked at my face and changed tack.
“Sorry—I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just—I keep being surprised that so few people in this town knew this place was here, or knew much about it.”
“I’ve wondered about that too. It’s far enough out of the town center that most people don’t have any reason to come out this way, and I guess eventually they all … forgot. So, which way shall we go?”
“You mentioned a perimeter. Why don’t we just head straight to the edge of the property and then walk around. Is there a fence?”
“There was, probably still is, but I’d guess it wouldn’t keep a rabbit out these days. Worth a try anyway.” We headed in a straight line away from the house until we reached what little was left of an old chain-link fence. I was glad I wasn’t audibly panting by the time we reached it—I hadn’t been getting a lot of exercise lately.
We walked along the path of the old fence to the back end of the mansion and beyond it. Out in the open, the Barton property suddenly felt enormous. A row of gnarled old hedges came into view, and then another, and some patches of ground of a slightly different color among the weedy grass. It all looked … intentional.
“Huh,” said Carroll. “It looks like something used to be here. Formal gardens? That would be in keeping with the lavish scale of this place. Would you want to think about bringing those back?”
“I didn’t know they existed. Maybe there’s a garden club in town that would like to take on the task. Or maybe we could create a new garden club! Involve more people from the town. That’d be Lisbeth’s purview as community liaison. But gardening probably won’t happen until next spring, given the scope of all the other stuff that needs doing. How about this: next time you’re feeling energetic like you were today, I’ll give you a rake and you can have at it.”
“Ha! Thanks, Kate. And then you can wipe the pudding from my face and put me down for my nap. I’ll see what I have time for. Huh, what’s that—ooh, there’s a gazebo? That would be fun to spruce up, and maybe you could serve formal teas on the lawn. What’s that over there?” Carroll pointed at a cluster of trees and dense foliage fifty feet beyond the gazebo.
“I don’t know. Looks like it was deliberately planted—it’s not just weeds.”
We walked toward it, admiring the views as we went. There was still a lot of open land this far out from the town, and I couldn’t see a single other house. Henry had chosen well—assuming he wanted privacy and some peace.
Carroll reached the stand of trees first and disappeared into the middle of it. She stood looking at something for a long moment. I remained outside, looking at the violets and buttercups speckling the grass outside this strange clump of vegetation. The circle of vines and small trees stood like a minor fortress in the quiet landscape. Carroll carefully stepped back through the stalks she had parted, and called out to me.
“Kate? I think you need to see this.”
“What is it?”
“I believe we’ve found Henry.”