Page 56

“Lenora Hope.”
NINETEEN
I lead the way, guiding Detective Vick up the Grand Stairs.
“Watch the bloodstains,” I say dryly as we climb. I swerve around them. Detective Vick walks right over them, not breaking stride. A disappointment. I was hoping he’d react the same way I did the first time I noticed them.
I do get a reaction at the top of the stairs, though. Stepping onto the landing, the detective immediately reaches for the wall and says, “Whoa.”
“The mansion’s tilted,” I tell him, as if I’ve been here years and not mere days.
“Is that safe?” Detective Vick says.
“Probably not.”
“Man, it wasn’t like this last time I was here.”
I stop in the middle of the hallway. “What do you mean?”
“I used to work here.” Detective Vick removes his hand from the wall, thinks better of it, slaps it back onto the blue damask. “Just for one summer, plus some weekends that spring and fall. Mr. Hope used to hire boys from town when things got busy.”
“When was this?”
“It was 1929,” the detective says. “I remember because of the murders.”
“So you know Lenora?”
“Only from a distance.”
I start off down the hall again, talking over my shoulder to a still-wobbly Detective Vick. “Is that why you became a detective?”
“Because I spent a summer working in a place where there was a triple homicide?” Detective Vick chuckles, as if he finds the idea preposterous. “It was more than that, I can assure you. Detective work’s a calling. It’s in our blood to find the people who do bad things and make them pay.”
Even though I walk ahead of him, I know the detective is shooting daggers at me. I can feel his stare burning the back of my neck. No doubt he thinks I’m someone who did a bad thing and managed to get away.
For now.
I turn left into Lenora’s room, where she sits in her wheelchair, the Walkman in her lap and earphones on her head. My sudden arrival with a stranger startles her. Her left hand flutters against the blanket laid over her lap and her green eyes go wide.
She’d spent most of the day with Archie or Mrs. Baker as I waited downstairs in the sunroom. And while I’m not sure which one of them told Lenora what happened to Mary, it’s clear she knows. Once the surprise fades, her eyes shimmer with grief.
Outside, the storm clouds have gotten darker and more menacing, plunging the bedroom into a gloom that feels both suffocating and appropriate.
“Lenora,” I say as I go to her side. “This is Detective Vick. He’d like to ask you some questions about Mary. Is that okay?”
Lenora stares at him, uncertain. She looks so hesitant that I expect her response to be no. I’m surprised when, after a few more seconds of contemplation, she taps twice against her lap.
“Two taps mean yes,” I explain to Detective Vick. “One means no.”
The detective nods and approaches Lenora the way I first did—with awestruck trepidation. From the way he talked in the sunroom, I suspectthe detective thinks Lenora is guilty as sin. Still, he kneels beside her wheelchair on legs made unsteady from the slanted floor and says, “Hi, Lenora. I’m sorry about Mary. I heard the two of you were close?”
Rather than tap out an answer, she gives a slow, sad nod.
“So you liked her?”
Lenora returns to tapping, giving two quick raps.
“And Mary liked you?”