Lapeer County, August
That evening after dinner, I expected to be regaled by the story of the cots in the attic, but Nora apologized, saying she was quite tired and thought she’d go to bed.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine. Just tuckered out. I had a lot of orders that needed working on. Everyone’s digging out their fall clothes and realizing they’d meant to get something fixed or they’ve lost weight and everything needs to be taken in.”
“If you’re sure.”
Nora waved a dismissive hand. “I’m perfectly fine. And I’ll tell you all about the cots tomorrow.”
My initial disappointment at the deferment was quickly supplanted with excitement. Now I could take a look behind that locked door in the basement—provided the key worked.
I tidied up the kitchen and imagined what I might find. A wine cellar, locked since the days of Prohibition? The Balsam family fortune, perhaps in gold bar form? Or—and this macabre thought began to encircle my brain like the Virginia creeper on the house—perhaps the bodies Nora had joked about?
I stood at the apron-front sink and took my time washing and drying our two plates, two forks, and two glasses. I put them in the cupboards, moving the plates to the bottom of the stack and the glasses to the back of the cupboard, according to Nora’s precise instructions.
“That way they all get the same amount of use,” she’d said after lunch.
When I was sure she was asleep, I crept into the dining room with the key and a working light bulb I had pilfered from one of the unused upstairs bedrooms. I silently slid open the drawers above the linens and found dozens of tapers and a brass candleholder. A kitchen drawer yielded a box of matches. I fitted the holder with a tall red candle, struck a match, and set it ablaze. It may still be light outside, but the cellar would be dark.
The door to the cellar squeaked open. I held my breath and listened for footsteps. When nothing happened, I started down the stairs and shut the door most of the way. There was no way I was going to shut it completely and risk getting stuck down there. Leaning forward into the space below me to get a better look, I let the light bulb slip from my hand and stifled a gasp. I waited for the sound of breaking glass. Instead I heard a dull plop.
At the bottom of the stairs, the ground reflected my meager flame. The light bulb had landed in a little puddle. I crept downstairs. Directly above the puddle a pipe dripped what must have been the remains of the dishwater. How long had it been leaking? I’d have to call a plumber.
I fished the bulb out of the water and dried it on my shirt. The ground directly beneath the light socket was not wet, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I hadn’t done extensive research into electrocution, but I did know that electricity and water didn’t mix. I imagined Nora finding me there in a smoking heap the next morning and dying from the shock of it, our bodies not to be found until they had been reduced to skeletons. I’d stick with candlelight for now.
I placed the light bulb on the bottom step and made my way to the door with the padlock. I would have prayed for success, but I was pretty sure God disapproved of invading someone’s privacy. Anyway, no prayer was needed. The key slid into the lock and the mechanism released with a click.
The small space was packed with objects, but not the ones I might have hoped for. No gold or precious stones winked back at me—but also, thankfully, no skeletons. One wall was lined with a narrow countertop, upon which a row of bottles stood watch over three shallow trays. The bottles were labeled, but they may as well not have been, as I could make no sense of their polysyllabic contents. The trays were empty. In the corner of the counter was a metal object whose purpose eluded me. Was someone doing perfidious science experiments down here?
I turned around and found myself eye to eye with a beautiful young woman. Or rather a picture of a beautiful young woman. A thin clothesline strung with black-and-white 8x10 photographs spanned the length of the room. The same striking blonde with large eyes and perfect skin was in every photo. I wanted to take them to Nora and ask who she was. But of course I couldn’t. Nora didn’t know I was down here. And the last time I went snooping into someone’s life without permission, it didn’t turn out so well.
I looked over the trays and chemicals again. There was something familiar about it all. It reminded me of when I first toured the offices at the Free Press. Though everything had gone digital, there were still vestiges of an analog past here and there in dark corners.
Then I got it. A darkroom.
Did it belong to Mr. Rich’s uncle? Had these photos been taken with the camera that now sat in the bottom of the armoire? Who had locked that door? The photographer? What was he hiding? I plucked a photo off the line. Was he hiding her?
At that moment, a motor started up just outside.
“What in the world?” I said out loud.
I double-checked that the key was in my pocket, replaced the lock, and headed up the stairs. My first step shattered the light bulb into a zillion pieces. I would have to clean it up tomorrow when I could get some real light shining down here.
I burst out the back door just as a red riding lawn mower driven by a black man in a baseball cap zipped by. I waved and shouted, but it wasn’t until his third pass that the driver noticed me and cut the motor.
“Are you William?” I asked, glad to finally lay eyes on this mysterious figure.
He smiled and got off the mower. “I’m Tyrese.”
“Are you at the wrong house?”
He frowned behind his sunglasses. “No, this is Eleanor Rich’s house. Has been for years. Are you at the wrong house?”
“Sorry. No. I just—I thought your name was William.” I extended my hand to him. “I’m Nora’s great-niece, Elizabeth.”
He shook my hand. “Yeah, sometimes Ms. Rich calls me William. I assume she’s home? I have to apologize for coming so late, but I knew I wouldn’t get a chance later in the week.”
“She’s asleep. Or she was. She might have woken up at the noise.” The wheels in my head began turning. “Hey, did she ever ask you to do anything in the house? Air out a room or clean things up or anything?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never been in the house.”
“Oh. Weird. Why does she call you William?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Just started calling me that last summer. I figured she was getting old and maybe a little confused.”
“Doesn’t that make cashing your checks a little difficult?” I joked, trying to ignore the bad feeling I was starting to get from all this.
“Ms. Rich doesn’t pay me. Mr. Rich does. He’s down in Detroit. But she doesn’t know that,” he added quickly. “He told me when I first started this job that Ms. Rich wouldn’t accept it if she knew it was him paying for it.”
I felt myself frowning. Why was James Rich going through all this trouble for a woman he was on bad terms with? “Who does she think is paying for it?”
“I told her it was her taxes.”
I gave him a doubtful look. “She seems smarter than that.”
Tyrese smiled. “She is. It took some serious convincing, and for a while she tried to pay me anyway. But a friend of mine is a staffer for a state representative, and he corroborated the story for me with some official stationery. Convinced her it was a pilot program for helping rural seniors stay in their homes.”
“Lucky for you she doesn’t get out much, or a bunch of other rural seniors would be wondering where their free lawn care was.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “Listen, I’ve got to get going on this lawn. Sun’s going down.”
“Right. Sorry. Go right ahead.”
I went inside and watched through the kitchen window as Tyrese zipped back and forth across the yard on the lawn mower. If he wasn’t William, then who was?
I wished the house around me would open up and talk. Of course I knew that houses were merely wood and plaster and brick. But it felt like this particular house had a memory and it was hiding something from me. The crumbly cellar walls had been there when the photographer dipped photos of a beautiful woman into chemical baths and strung them up to dry. The walls of my bedroom had witnessed someone bringing in the incredible carved bedstead. The house had looked on as graves were dug and headstones were placed and herbs were planted.
Yet all stood silent but for the creaking sounds that all old houses make. Were the answers to my questions there in those groans and snaps, waiting for an interpreter? Or would I have to slip into full reporter mode in order to pry the information out of my reluctant hostess? Mr. Rich had warned me to ease into talking about Nora’s past. But how did one ease into a topic that never came up?