Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(77)

But I shook it off. I did not have a basement anymore, not at Maplecroft. I had sealed it off, closed it up, and put a new kitchen wall across the place where its entry used to be. There was no basement. I was not home. The wall was not really wet, it was only cool, and it was only a trick my mind played upon itself.

? ? ?

“Lizbeth? Lizbeth, are you all right?”

He sounded worried, so I snapped my head up and said, “Yes, don’t be silly. I thought I smelled something odd, that’s all,” I lied outright. “I was trying to place it—don’t mind me. So this is Storage Room Six, and these are the boxes over here—aren’t they? The ones with the axe murder files? The ones where you found Nance’s picture?”

The look on his face said he didn’t believe me, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t enthralled by the sinister forces of old memories, and that was the important thing. “These are the boxes, yes. George brought them here for safekeeping, for all the good it did him. You know, I hate to say it, but I think he might have been right about the room eating his evidence.” He pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “There was more than this, I’d swear to it.”

I joined him at the desk. The boxes held old folders, yes . . . but the cases weren’t so old, were they? “These look like they’ve been here a hundred years, rather than . . .” I checked the date on the nearest one. “Eleven months. Look at the foxing, here and there—just like an old book, or an old lithograph. Look at how faded the ink is on this page.”

“Perhaps George was coming at it from the wrong angle, and something about this place ages things prematurely,” he suggested. Then he shrugged. “Though the result is the same anyway. Things vanish. Information is lost.”

“Only the useful information, according to him.” I indicated a stack of phone directories and last month’s newspapers—undoubtedly the ones he mentioned in his note to Ruth. “Those look just fine. There’s not even a coat of dust upon them.”

“One way or another, it’s all as weird as can be. Look,” he said, abruptly adjusting the conversation, “here’s Gaspera Lorino’s file—or the file related to his attack, at least.”

He handed it to me. I strained to read the fuzzy light gray type. “His wife was killed, and he was maimed. Last word here says he was still unconscious. No one saw the need to update the files to reflect his recovery, then.” But then I flipped to the next page, and was less confident. “Or . . . or else those are some of the details taken by the room.”

The next sheet was almost blank, but not quite. The corners had gone brown, and the lines of type were almost inkless, nearly absent except for the indentations where the typewriter keys had pressed against the paper.

“Maybe it was on that page.” Wolf sighed, then brightened. “Wait, this box is new—these must be the personal effects he collected from the crucified accountant.”

“What a shame, that the poor man will be remembered that way.”

“It could be worse. He could be remembered as . . .”

“Yes?”

He didn’t respond immediately. He was pushing things around in the box. “He could always be remembered as an axe murderer.”

“I’m sorry, come again?”

“No, I didn’t mean . . . not like you,” he corrected awkwardly.

Before we could trip over each other any further, I said, “That’s not what I was suggesting. What do you mean—you think Mr. Kincaid killed all those people?”

“Here’s his desk calendar,” he said, relieved to be off the hook, I imagine. “Over here, look—the names are fading, but what do you see?”

I squinted down at the chicken-scratch handwriting. “I see . . . Bes . . . Besley? Is that what it says? Kincaid’s penmanship was terrible.”

“Besler, I’d bet you a small fortune. And the next one, what do you think that other name says, there—under the June 22 listing?”

“It’s another ‘B’ I think . . . Baldone? Is that right?”

“Do those names ring a bell?” he asked, clearly thinking they ought to.

But I didn’t recognize either one. “I’m afraid they don’t.”

“Besler and Baldone were the first two victims—or the first two universally agreed-upon victims, as there were undoubtedly others—of Harry the Hacker.”

“What a stupid name.” I put my own hand into the box and pushed the items around to see them better. I found a desk clock that folded into a travel case, a nameplate still in its holder, three pens, a copy of Vern and Hightower’s Legal Guide to Civic Accounting in the Modern Era, two old issues of Life magazine, three or four bus tokens, a white coffee mug, and a pair of reading glasses in a silk sleeve.

“It looks like you’ve located the only useful thing in the bin,” I noted.

“George didn’t say it’d all be helpful; he just said we’d find what we needed.” He flipped the calendar’s pages, looking for any other items that might be important—and by luck or by design, a small bulletin slipped out.

I caught it before it could hit the floor.

It was printed on light blue paper, and the front read, “Give Me That Old-Time Religion!” I held it up for Wolf to see. “Get a gander at this, would you? ‘The Reverend A. J. Davis hosts three days of song, sermons, and celebration at the old county fairgrounds, starting March 5, 1919! Come one, come all—bring the family, and share the Glory of God with kids and grandparents alike!’ Well—” I paused. “The author surely has a flair for exclamation points.”