After about an hour, in which I made several impatient loops around the parking lot on foot, going over what I knew—or thought I knew—the front door of the office building opened, and the broad-shouldered form of Detective Brady Reynolds appeared. He beckoned for me to come in, and I did, with Josh and Morgan in tow. When we got inside, the crisp air-conditioning wrapped us like a chilly blanket. Reynolds handed his business card to Bethany and thanked her; she looked stunned but fairly calm. She gathered up the bag she had brought with her, and as she made her way toward the exit, she stopped in front of me.
“Wow, Kate—I had no idea. I’m so sorry. I didn’t like the guy, you know that, but I never wanted … that to happen. It’s terrible. Did he have family?”
“There’s Lars, of course, but Steve wasn’t married, and no kids that I’m aware of. The Abernathys go way back in the history books in this town, though.”
She looked at me quizzically. “Right. Well, my sister’s picking me up in a couple of minutes. Call me when you’re ready to get back to work. If I’m still on the crew, I mean.”
“You are. Of course you are.”
“Thanks. Oh, I meant to tell you something about the house.” She looked around at the men in the office and seemed to think better of what she was saying. “Just a little thing. Wiring stuff. Call me and we can go over it later. Bye, Kate.”
I put out my hand, and she shook it. She nodded and made her way out the door. I was glad I hadn’t had to find out if I could take Bethany in a round of fisticuffs after all—the woman had a firm grip.
Reynolds beckoned me to sit, along with Josh and Morgan, but I found I was too wound up to even stand still. I paced as I considered how to unfold what I knew to the detective.
“Reynolds—I mean, Brady—I don’t know if you believe Bethany, but we need to talk.”
“Kate, I haven’t arrested her, obviously—she walked out of here a free woman. But Ms. Wallace was the last person who saw Mr. Abernathy alive. We’re keeping tabs on her while we wait for the full pathology report.”
“Detective, let me get down to it. I gave you a bag of clothing earlier, and I’d like you to pass it on to Meredith to look at. It contains the work clothes Bethany was wearing the night Steve died. You might have noticed that the garments are covered in white dust.”
“Yes, I saw that,” he replied. “I placed the garments in an evidence bag after I spoke with Ms. Wallace. She wasn’t entirely clear on why you had extracted her dirty laundry from her sister’s home before traveling here. Kate, your methods are a bit unconventional. You could have called me and—”
“I know that, Detective. But I didn’t want to clue in Bethany as to what was going on, and I didn’t want to run the risk of those clothes getting washed before your team could have a look at them. Now, as I was saying, they’re covered in a fine dust—it’s all over the basement at the mansion right now. The kitchen too. The crew has hardly started work, but as soon as you make a pilot hole or cut into a wall, the plaster dust is everywhere. Isn’t that right, Morgan?”
“It is indeed. We’ve got an ample supply of protective masks for the workers. Victorian plaster was sometimes made from lime, and I don’t want anyone breathing that in all day.”
“Of course not. I appreciate your caution—and your knowledge of the materials. Now, what did you tell me was included in that kind of plaster mix?”
“Well,” he replied, stroking his chin sagely, “lime plaster, which was used up until the turn of the century, had four main ingredients: lime—that is, either ground limestone or oyster shells—water, sand, and fiber. The makeup of the fiber content varied—horsehair, or cattle, or hog.”
“Now you tell me! I just bet Meredith a dollar on horse.”
“What?” Morgan cocked an eyebrow at me. He and Josh were looking at me like I was crazy, and the detective’s expression had grown sterner than usual. I decided I had better get to the point.
“I spoke with Meredith,” I continued, “and she told me that there was white dust on Steve’s body, but mostly just one place—his hands. The palms, specifically. It doesn’t sound like he actually did any work that day, before he took a header down the basement steps, so it makes sense that he wasn’t covered in lime all over. I’m sure Bethany told you about Steve’s actions at the mansion just before he died. It sounds like he was pretty out of it and not behaving with caution or consideration for others.”
“Yes. We don’t have the tox screen back yet, but there was a distinct smell of alcohol in the room,” Reynolds said.
“I hope she also told you that Steve grabbed her, while he was aggressively making passes at her. And if he grabbed her firmly—which it sounds like he did—that could have transferred a significant amount of lime powder from Bethany’s clothing onto his hands.”
“It seems his grip was very firm,” Reynolds said, more quietly than usual. “She showed me the bruising on her abdomen.”
That image took my breath for a moment, and I fumed silently at Steve, though I knew he was dead and couldn’t be punished for his actions. Reynolds made some brief notes on the pad on his desk and continued. “That confirms, to my mind, that the deceased attempted to assault Ms. Wallace, but it doesn’t convince me that Ms. Wallace didn’t in some way initiate the fall that killed him. There’s a clear motive if he had acted violently toward her just moments before.”
“I can see how you might think that—I’d certainly want to shove someone who tried that with me. But don’t you believe Bethany? When I came and found her, she had no idea Steve was even dead.”
“She’s had some time to think up that story, Kate.”
I felt exasperated. Couldn’t Reynolds see that Bethany had been the victim here and was innocent of any crime—or was I just fooling myself that that was true? I let out a sigh.
“Well, I hope you’ll speak with Meredith about the evidence. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“I don’t know that you should tell me anything else now, Kate, unless you have substantive evidence to contribute. This is my case. I’ll speak with Meredith about her findings. In the meantime, we’ve got all we need from the mansion, so if you need to resume work there, go ahead.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, trying and failing to hold back a peevish tone. I turned and walked out of the building, followed by Morgan and Josh.
Morgan looked concerned. “I just hope they’ll lay off Bethany once they confirm that evidence you talked about. I’m sure she didn’t do this,” he said. “Now, this has been quite a day already—I think I’d better get back home to the missus, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, Morgan,” I said.
We three climbed once more into my car and made the trip back to the Barton mansion, the afternoon sun beaming thickly through the car windows as my air-conditioning system did its best to keep us comfortable. Morgan sat silent in the back seat, and my occasional glances at him in the rearview mirror showed a man lost in thought. A thought popped into my head just before we reached the mansion.
“Say, has anyone spoken to Lars?”
Morgan piped up from the back seat. “The detective said he’d reached him, that he was still in the city. I gave Lars a call last night and he answered, but he didn’t want to talk. Sounded very distraught, poor young man.”
“I can understand that,” Josh said. “It didn’t seem like the two of them got along well, but a brother is a brother.”
“Indeed.” Morgan looked out the window and fell silent again as we reached the gate of the mansion. I entered the code to unlock it and drove the long path down to Henry Barton’s house, where Morgan got out, climbed back into his truck, and was off to dinner with his wife. Josh and I stared at his receding taillights in the gathering dusk. Then we looked at each other.
“Should we … talk?” I asked, not sure if I really wanted to.
“Right. I’ve been meaning to speak to you about the project, but—well, other things keep happening. Why don’t we go to my place—the carriage house, that is? I’ll order takeout.”
“Sure.”
Josh was being awfully nice, but I braced myself for his imminent departure from the Asheboro project. I didn’t want to be pessimistic, but it had just been that kind of week. I was sure I’d soon be back to square one, looking for a historical consultant in addition to a new plumber, decorators, funders, and everything else this project was lacking. Josh and I walked to the carriage house, a dark form against the sun setting beyond the hill.
I hadn’t spent much time in the place, and found I was pleased by its simplicity. It was outfitted with a few sturdy wood chairs, a large table, white walls, and dark drapes, without the elaborate finery of the mansion itself. I sat looking out the window at the waning light while Josh made a call and ordered Thai food. He then went outside to wait by the gate for its arrival—he told me he’d found delivery drivers hesitant to traverse the Barton property’s long, winding driveway in his previous time here.
That left me all alone for a while. I looked at my phone. Ryan had called but left no message. I realized we had never had our conversation about administrative details—who would write the checks, who got copies of keys, the powers of the board, and so on. Exhausted as I was, I figured I might still check something off the to-do list today. I dialed him back, and to my surprise, he picked up immediately.
“Hi, Ryan—thanks for getting back to me. I have a few questions for—”
“Kate, I cannot believe you.” His tone was icy.
“Excuse me? What did I do?”
“My buddy at the Asheboro PD called to let me know about the body found on your work site. The second body. And when I say ‘your work site,’ I also mean my work site. I’m on the board, remember? What is going on there?”
“Ryan I … I don’t know, exactly. Steve fell down the stairs, it seems, or was pushed … and he’s dead. No one’s been arrested, but the scene is cleared. Reynolds said we could get back to work now. Honestly, it looks like it was an accident, Steve had been drinking, and—”
“Kate. Listen to me. Can this not be normal? Can you just do the work? What kind of murder mansion are you running here? And your crew is drunk on the job? How is this going to look to potential investors? You need to get out in front of this story. This is ridiculous.”
I could tell Ryan was in a mood, but I was getting tired of being interrupted. “Ryan. I need you to settle down for a minute. We don’t know all the details yet. Would you have preferred that I find that old body in the wall and not tell anyone? Would that have been the adult solution? Would that even be legal? You’re the lawyer. You tell me. And of course I don’t think it’s good that Steve was possibly drinking on-site—but I had just met the man!” The week’s stresses were catching up with me. I felt heat rise up my neck and into my cheeks, and my tone grew a shade more sarcastic than good judgment would otherwise allow. “But thank you so much for thinking about the project. It means a lot that you cared enough to, you know, check in on me. Actually, now that you know the big news, I need to go over some details with you. Since you’re our lawyer and a board member, this stuff is actually your responsibility to help work out. We’re going to need more sets of keys made for the contractors, and probably some contracts drawn up, come to think of it, maybe security cameras, and…”
I stopped talking and took a deep breath. In the fever of my annoyance, I was forgetting what I actually wanted to talk about. Reality check: Ryan was an old friend. We were on the same side here—we both wanted the project to go well. I couldn’t speak for him, but perhaps I was feeling more stressed than I was admitting to myself. I stared out the window, watching Josh’s dark form walking back toward the carriage house, takeout in hand.
“Look, Ryan, I’m sorry to get heated. I can’t tell if you’re really mad at me or if you’re just surprised, but I’m not mad at you—I just need some support on this. This project is my baby, of course, and it’s going about as well as it can go right now, all things considered—but I can’t do everything alone, you know? I know the optics of two bodies in the house aren’t great. I don’t like it either! There’s nothing I can do about that. But you and I can talk more about what to tell the press when that time comes. So, if we could just make a date to go over some admin stuff, whenever you have time, I’d appreciate that.”
“Sure, Kate.” His tone had come down a few notches but was not entirely neutral. “Shoot me an email. I’ve got a big case coming up later this month, and there’s a lot of prep. Sorry. I can’t be on phone calls all day. I mean, I actually am on phone calls all day. So one more is sometimes too much.”
“Okay, I hear you. I’ll send you the details.” I took another breath and stared at the wall ahead of me. “So … truce?”
“Fine. Truce, uncle, whatever. I just need you to tell me what’s going on in a timely fashion without blowing up my phone. And please, no more dead bodies.”
“I’m trying! Really. Next time I see one, I’ll just leave it there and keep moving, okay?” I thought I could detect a smile over the phone line, but perhaps it was wishful thinking. “Anyway, I’m staying over at the carriage house for the evening. Have a good night, okay?”
“Yup. Bye, Kate.” He hung up.
Josh was still making his way down the path back to the house. That talk with Ryan had been unpleasant, but I felt I had defused the tension enough for the time being. I leafed through a book Josh had left on the table on the subject of industrial history, but was unable to focus on the words at all. My mind wouldn’t stop its whirring. Finally, Josh came in from outside, a brown paper bag under one arm. It was dotted with grease and emitted an enticing fragrance, but I wasn’t quite ready to eat. Josh had his back to me and was shuffling china in a cabinet over the sink, finding us some dinner plates.
“Josh—” I said, uncertain how to begin. And then it all came tumbling out of me. “I know you’re a busy man, with a real, full-time appointment at a prestigious institution, and now you’ve got summer school, and you’ve got a book to write on top of everything. And this is dinky little Asheboro, pretty much a nothing town, a blip on the map of history. I know—believe me, I’m from here. This Barton stuff is not your precise area of study, I know that, and you’ve been more than kind in helping us already. So I completely understand if you need to step away from the project, and…” My chest felt tight. Why was I saying all this? “But I just need you to tell me if that’s what is happening. You don’t owe me anything, you don’t owe Carroll or Henry Barton or Frances—you hardly know us at all, really. It’s just that I’ve been—we’ve been—depending on you, your affiliation, your academic pedigree and sources, to help this project get on its feet. And it’s not your fault, of course, that bodies keep turning up, making it impossible to get any work done in this town—but I did like having you here, I always do, to toss ideas around, to compare notes, to keep things moving. But you’ve been away, or distant, and I can’t tell if you want to be here anymore, and if you don’t, far be it from me to keep you. I don’t know if any of that makes sense to you. I just…” I trailed off, a ball of nerves. What did I really mean to ask this man? And then I knew: “I just need an answer. Are you in, or are you out?”
Josh paused, momentarily studying the old china pattern on the plates he was holding. After an impossibly long silence that was probably five seconds, he spoke.
“Kate. I appreciate your candor. And you’re right; I am a busy man. I thought this summer class might be easy, but it’s kicking my butt, to be honest.” He paused, weighing his words, and went on. “So, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. This project at the mansion—the whole town, really—just kind of fell into your lap, didn’t it? You didn’t go to school for restoration, or sweat through a PhD in a garret apartment studying Victoriana. You just kind of … appeared. What makes this particular project feel so important to you? Haven’t you made your bones overseeing swanky new hotels, in big cities?”
I felt like a cat whose fur was beginning to stand up. The men in my life were asking me a few too many pointed questions today. I tried to keep my tone even, but realized being honest with Josh was more important.
“Okay, Mr. Professor—you want to know why? It’s because anybody—with enough money—can put together a new mansion, or a good replica of an old one. I’ve seen enough rich city people install immaculate copies of Renaissance frescoes over penthouse hot tubs to know that money can get you anything, believe me. But Henry Barton was special. Look at his life! He was born into a middle-class family. He joined up to fight in the Civil War mainly because his brothers did, and ended up serving far from where he started. He never went home again, but stayed here in Maryland, married, took over a farm—and look what he made of it! He made a family here, as much as he could. He started and grew a business. He knew Clara Barton, and they helped each other. He took on Thomas Edison, the genius of his era, and beat him at his own game. He more or less kept Asheboro alive, without demanding any credit for it. Then his wife died and left him rambling around a gorgeous home, which he probably built to make her happy in the first place. He went on with his business, living a quiet life. And then he died. And now, even the local people have forgotten who he was and what he did with his life! How can that be? Now I have a chance to reclaim a little of his fame for him, tell this amazing story, and do a good turn for my hometown as well. Is that not enough reason to be here? You want more?” I realized I was almost foaming at the mouth. Did Josh not feel what I felt for the house, or was he just poking fun at me?
Josh was silent. He stepped forward and set the dinner plates gently on the table between us. Then he took a deep breath and laughed.
“Kate. Of course I don’t need more! You’ve got quite a spiel about this place—and I buy it all, I really do. I just wanted to hear it from your mouth. Your passion for this job is inspiring—I mean that. The thing is … I’m rather impressed by Henry Barton too. I didn’t know how to tell you, but I’ve been thinking of narrowing the focus of my book.”
“Your book? What do you mean?”
“I’ve been working on a history of industrialization in the region for years now, but looking at Barton’s story, I’m thinking a more personal focus might be the way to go. It’ll appeal to the academic presses—that kind of narrative is in vogue lately, to be frank—but it’s more than that. Now, I don’t want to tell the romance story of Henry and Mary you seem to be dreaming up in your head”—he smiled sideways at me, a little snidely—“but one man’s visionary contribution to industrial and economic life in a depressed postwar town? There’s a lot there. I’ve been hesitant to come out and tell you because the Barton documents are your purview now, and Carroll’s, and I don’t want to step on any scholarly toes.”
“So you do want to stick around? And write about Henry?” I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “That’s … amazing. But what about Carroll? She’ll probably end up doing some writing from her studies of Henry’s papers too—and not just pamphlets for tourists at the mansion. She might want to write a book herself. Can you two play nice?”
“Absolutely.” Josh smiled, more broadly this time, bending his tall form into the chair across from mine and taking my hand in his. “I’ll speak with her, person to person. I’m sure we can work something out.”
I felt like I’d just put down the big rock I was carrying. There was still so much to be done at the mansion, but knowing Josh would be around to help was a distinct comfort. I took my hand from his and ripped open the bag of food, which we ate with gusto before ascending the stairs and falling happily into bed.