All the Dark Places(46)
“Four in all then?” Detective Myers asks.
“Yes.”
“Where was everyone staying, Mrs. Bradley?”
I lead her into the master bedroom first. “Jay and I were in here.” It’s the biggest room, has its own bath, and is the most private of all the bedrooms. We have our own fireplace and sitting area, so when you’re in here you hardly notice anyone else is around.
The door to the summer porch is just beyond our room, and I point that out. “Alice and her dad slept out there. It was really hot that week.”
The other bedroom on the first floor is on the other side of the house. “This is where the Westmores stayed,” I say. Detective Fuller walks the perimeter of the room, peers out the window that looks out on the back lawn. I watch Detective Myers write in her notebook, and I notice that she’s drawing as well.
“Okay,” she says. “What about upstairs?”
I lead them to the staircase that runs halfway up, opening to the great room before turning on a landing and continuing to the upper floor. “There are two bedrooms up here, with a shared bath between them. The Pearsons stayed in the room on the right, and the Ferrises were on the left.”
“Any kids here that weekend?”
“No. They were all with the grandparents. Well, except Alice.”
“Convenient,” she says. “Where were Mr. Branch and his daughter staying?”
“Downstairs,” Alice says, totally at ease in the adult conversation. “We slept on the summer porch.” Alice puts pencil to paper as if she’s an integral part of the proceedings.
Detective Myers looks at her as though she’s just noticed her. “Hmmm. Okay.” She tips her head up and points to the panel on the ceiling. “Attic access?”
“Yes.”
“That where your husband would’ve had to go to get to that window?”
“Yes.”
Detective Fuller pulls the cord, and we all step aside as it creaks open and frigid air rushes out like a trapped demon. I wrap my arms around my stomach. Sadie pulls close to my side. Fuller swings the stairs down, and we’re practically pinned against the walls of the hallway.
“Mind if Detective Fuller and I look around up there by ourselves?”
I shake my head. “No. Be my guest. We’ll wait downstairs.”
CHAPTER 32
Rita
THE HOUSE IS PRETTY COOL. I CAN PICTURE TEDDY ROOSEVELT OR Ernest Hemingway walking through the front door with a dead animal draped over his shoulders. Not that I’m a fan of hunting. I’m not. But the place is interesting and rustic posh. I can see Hemingway sitting on the deck, notebook in one hand, bottle in the other.
Mrs. Bradley has been pretty shaky, her voice coming out in nervous bursts as she walked us through the rooms and pointed out where everyone slept. I don’t know if the nerves are the result of her husband’s murder, which is understandable, or if it’s her nature. But there’s something about her, something deeper that makes me think there’s more going on, a latent hysteria that lives just under the surface of this woman.
I’ve drawn a floor map and labeled each bedroom with its occupants. I want to take a closer look at the attic without the Mrs. and her entourage over my shoulder, so I sent them downstairs. As we reach the top of the folding stairs, Chase feels around for a light switch, and the room comes into focus. It’s still fairly dark since there’s only one bare bulb overhead and one of the two windows is boarded up. Chase puts his phone on flashlight and fans the room. He starts to walk forward when I grab his jacket.
“Wait.” I stow my notebook and fish my flashlight out of my satchel, thumb it on, and bright light illuminates the attic. I sweep the beam across the wooden plank floor.
The windows would look out on either side of the house to the side yards. There are boxes and trunks, dust-covered, packed tightly in the corners. The light lands on the back wall, and I bobble my flashlight. Dark eyes shimmer, and it takes me a frightened second before my brain registers the stares of dead animal heads, dozens of them stacked like the relics of an ancient hunt.
“That’s freaking scary,” Chase says.
I take a deep breath. “Yeah. Creepy.” I swing my light beam over the other side of the attic, where dust lies in a pretty heavy blanket. Away from the broken window. I swing the beam back. “Over here, the dust’s been disturbed. You can see where Dr. Bradley worked.”
When we approach the boarded-up window, chunks of glass shimmer on the floor and crunch underfoot. The plywood is neatly nailed into place, but he didn’t bother to clean up. Why leave a mess?
CHAPTER 33
Molly
ALICE AND I SIT ON THE SOFA THAT FACES THE BACKYARD TOWARD the mountains. Several sheriff’s deputies are trudging through the snow, back and forth.
“What do they think they’ll find out there?” Alice asks, standing, hands on her hips.
I’d told her about the necklace and that the detectives think it belonged to a local woman who disappeared last summer.
“I don’t know.”
“They’re making a mess,” she says, and she’s right. When we first got here, the view was like a postcard. Mountains in the background, beyond our pristine snow-covered lawn that runs downhill until meeting a stand of pine trees, where the river lies. “It was so pretty,” Alice says. “So white and still. Can we go out and take a walk before they mess it all up?”