Page 9

Sunday

I spend the weekend acting like the breakup was still fresh—huddled on the sofa with the dog, or crying in the shower. I keep thinking about Tim’s last moments, facing down the barrel of a gun.

Did he know it was the end? It’s comforting to think that maybe it happened so fast he didn’t have time to be afraid. I hope so.

Meanwhile, Natalie sticks close, skipping her Saturday yoga class “to study for exams.” But her main occupation seems to be sending me worried looks from the other end of the sofa.

Sunday afternoon I try to resurrect myself. I invite my father for dinner, and I roast a chicken so my daughter will stop looking so worried.

When my dad arrives, he rattles the doorknob, because it’s locked. As I cross the living room to let him in, I realize how stiff my muscles are. I’m still walking around with a heightened sense of fear—as if a murderer might be hiding behind the boxwood shrubs beside my front porch.

I open the door and find my father standing there with a small bouquet in a little galvanized pail. Three pink peonies—my favorite flower.

“ Dad ,” I gasp. “That was so nice of you.” I don’t think he’s ever brought me flowers before in my life.

“They’re not from me, honey.” He thrusts the flowers at me. “I just found them sitting here on the porch.”

I take the pail and turn it in my hands, but I don’t see a card.

“Who are those from?” Natalie asks as I carry the flowers into the living room, my dad on my heels.

“I don’t know,” I manage.

“Some friend who’s worried about you,” my father suggests. “Aren’t we all these days.”

He could be right. It’s just that peonies are my favorite, and not many people know that.

Tim did. A couple of weeks ago, we’d walked past a florist on Congress Street, and I’d pointed at the pink peonies in the window. “See those? I used to paint still lifes of peonies. I love how round they are.”

“You paint?” he asked.

“I dabbled.”

“Were you any good?”

“Not even a little,” I told him, just to watch him grin. “So now I stick to drawing floor plans.”

A week later, he surprised me with a bouquet of peonies. Much like the ones my father found on the front porch.

Fighting the irrational suspicion that the flowers were sent to me by a ghost, I put them on the coffee table and avoid looking directly at them all day.

***

Monday arrives, as it has no other choice. But I’m still a wreck. When I approach the mansion on foot, I find two police cars, a lot of yellow police tape, two different news vans, and about a dozen gawkers standing on the sidewalk.

It’s a circus. The very worst kind.

My eyes dart fearfully toward the parking lot and the place where Tim died. The spot has been cordoned off, but otherwise there’s no obvious clue as to what happened there. The rain has washed away the blood, but I know I’ll still see it when I close my eyes.

Trembling, I duck past the police tape and walk up to the porch. A uniformed officer with an acne problem stands guard outside the carved door. “Hi. I’m Rowan Gallagher,” I tell him. “I work here.”

He opens the door, puts two fingers in his mouth, and whistles. “Riley! You got a customer.”

The detective appears in the doorway. “Come in, Rowan. Let’s walk through together. I just need you to tell me if anything is missing from your office.”

“Why? Was the lock broken?”

She purses her lips. “There’s no evidence of forced entry. And the contractors I’ve spoken to haven’t reported anything missing. But Tim’s electronics were stolen from his car. We’re trying to make sure that’s all that was taken.”

“Okay. Sure.” I trail her as she struts through the atrium like she owns the place. I’m getting the feeling she spent a lot of time here this weekend.

She leads me toward the library. “They did tell me that the house is haunted.”

“And did you find that helpful?”

“Not particularly.” She moves aside when we reach the door to the library, allowing me to enter first.

Inside, I give the room a wary scan. It’s exactly as we left it. The walnut bookshelves are mostly bare, except for our collection of fabric samples, plus some lighting catalogs and paint decks I’d brought from home. “Everything looks fine. Let me just check the inner office.”

When I do, it also looks untouched. There aren’t even any new mouse droppings on my desk. “Doesn’t seem like anyone’s been in here.”

“Glad to hear it. You’re clear to come and go as usual now. But before I leave, can you just look over this list of contractors your colleague gave us on Friday? Can you think of any other person or outfit who worked here in the past month?”

I take the list, which is in Beatrice’s handwriting. It’s thorough, because Beatrice is not a slacker. The general contractor, HVAC guys, the electricians, the art conservators, the interior designer... It’s a lot. “This looks comprehensive.”

“Good.” She takes the list back. “Thank you for your time. We’ll be leaving now, but I’ll still need to keep the parking area cordoned off until my boss gives me the word.”

“Okay,” I say numbly.

Then she leaves me alone in the mansion, just a few yards from where my ex-boyfriend died.

After flipping on the desk lamp, I take a seat in my ergonomic chair. I drop my computer bag into my lap and unzip it, feeling like I’m performing a pantomime of my former life. This is how the workday is supposed to begin. The motions are correct.

The problem is that I’ve forgotten how to be this person, and after I open the laptop, I stare at the login screen for a moment, until the desk lamp suddenly flickers. My gaze jumps to the green glass shade, just as it steadies again.

The last time the lights flickered, one of the conservators made a comment about ghosts, and I’d found it charming.

I don’t anymore.

***

A couple of hours later, I’m up in the Blue Room, measuring the paintings I’d discussed with Hank just days before. I still can’t seem to focus, and it takes me three tries before I successfully write down the proportions in my notebook.

Rationally, I know that whoever killed Tim isn’t coming for me next, but I don’t feel safe here, even in the daylight. I’ve already checked the FriendFinder app several times today, just to see Natalie’s icon securely at school. As if knowing her whereabouts would keep her safe.

Tim’s avatar is gone, of course, and I wonder absurdly if he might still be alive if I hadn’t unfollowed him.

Leaving the room, I wander out onto the second-floor gallery. The conservators are working in the next room, and I give the door a knock. Nobody answers, and after another tap, I push the door open.

Zoya and Bert are standing on separate scaffolds, both of them dabbing the walls with cotton balls. And both are wearing headphones.

Bert jerks when he sees me, and Zoya picks up on the motion and whirls, whipping off her headphones.

“Sorry, guys,” I say, my voice rusty from disuse. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Zoya puts a hand to her chest. “Not your fault. We’re just jumpy.”

I don’t have to ask why. We’re all jumpy. Beatrice spent her morning ordering new security cameras that will cover every exterior inch of the property. That’s in addition to the new keypads on the doors.

“I have a very aggravating question for you two. Don’t”—I almost say “shoot the messenger” before I realize the callousness of that cliché—“be too annoyed.”

“Well, let’s hear it,” Bert says. “Do I need to climb down for this?”

I shake my head. “Regarding the murals in the Blue Room, would it be possible, in your opinion, to move a panel?”

His gaze sharpens. “Why the hell would you want to?”

“I don’t,” I admit. “But I may need to consider it. If the door to the room could be closer to the corner, it would save my floor plan.”

“Do I have this right?” Zoya asks. “You want to move a hundred-fifty-year-old mural to make your floor plan a little sleeker?”

“ Easy ,” Bert says. “I’m sure Rowan would prefer to leave the walls where they are.” He removes his cap and gives his graying head a shake. “You could make it work. We’d use a very fine saw to remove that panel and relocate it. Then we’d essentially caulk it back into place in its new home. There’d be some risk to the artwork. The plaster could crumble. But it probably won’t.”

“Okay. Thanks. I’ll view it as a last resort.”

“The very last,” Zoya growls. “The artist arranged those scenes the way he wanted them.”

“Understood.”

I walk toward the door. “Should I close this after myself?”

“No, wait.” Zoya hops down off the platform. “There’s something I need to show you in the smaller sitting room.”

My stomach drops. “Please don’t tell me there’s another mural in there.” Another delay might get me fired.

“Not exactly,” she says. “Just look.”

I follow her next door to a small room facing the back of the house. It was originally the ladies’ sitting room—somewhere the women could gather while the men were smoking or playing billiards. The wallpaper we’d removed from this room wasn’t in good condition, and there was nothing interesting beneath it.

Or so I believed.

Zoya marches past the lovely empty walls and opens a closet door. “I found more of the beige paint in here, and I wondered why they needed it.”

“Inside the closet?”

Her nod is grim. “I did some patch tests with my solvents. Look.” She points indignantly down at the interior wall near the floor. “It’s a cry for help.”

I wave her out of the closet so I can get a look. And what I find there sends a shudder down my spine. Scrawled on the wall in a shaky hand are the words: Help me. I want out .

“That’s awful,” I mutter.

“Right?”

“Can you tell when this was written?”

“Well, it’s pigment based, probably with xylene and toluene as binding agents.”

I straighten up. “In English?”

“Sharpie marker,” she says. “They were introduced in the mid-sixties.”

“Oh.” I glance down at the desperate scrawl again. At that time, the house was being used as a girls’ home. I can appreciate the sentiment of the message, because this week has shaken me to the core. But the message could be decades old, and it’s not a problem I’m meant to solve. “That’s dark.”

“Someone painted over it,” Zoya sniffs, “to shut her up.”

“I realize that,” I say softly. “But we don’t know who wrote it. Is there more marker under there?”

“Not sure,” she says. “I’m going to spot-check a few more areas, though.”

“Okay,” I say heavily.

“I also took some photos. I’ll send them to you.”

“Okay,” I repeat. “Thank you for showing me.”

She shuts the closet door carefully and pauses. “You know, when people are trying to figure out why an old house feels creepy, they ask if anyone died there. But that’s the wrong question. What they should really be asking is did anyone suffer there. It leaves a darker mark.”

Once again, I don’t have the vocabulary to respond to that.

“You should let Hank Wincott know,” she presses.

“That’s a good idea,” I lie. It’s one thing to be fascinated by an old family Bible pulled from the floorboards, but Hank won’t give a damn about some graffiti in the closet. “Thank you for showing me. Let me know if you find anything else.”

“Oh, I definitely will.”

We head back to the room where she and Bert are working, and she climbs back onto her platform. “Can I put some music on the speaker?” she asks Bert. “Not too keen on leaving my headphones on today.”

“Sure, honey,” he says. “But you don’t have to worry, ZeeZee. I’d fight the killer off with my palette knife.”

She gives him a tender smile, and I leave the room just as one of Bach’s cello suites begins. I close the door and go back to the Blue Room to take another photo of the wall section I’m thinking of moving.

But then a glance out the window makes me do a double take. Hank’s car is out there. Hell . Did I forget a meeting? I’m not sure he can get inside, unless Beatrice already texted him the new passcode.

I leave the room again and pull up short in the gallery. Hank’s voice echoes from downstairs, and it’s angry.

“You realize this fucks everything up. I can’t make an announcement while there are police cars outside.”

What announcement? I pause beside a painter’s ladder to listen.

Beatrice replies, but her words are harder to make out. “... get past this. When the news cycle changes, people will stop hearing your name in the same breath as a murder. It’s going to be okay.”

“Did I ask for your opinion?” His voice is so sharp that I have to draw a slow breath. And then Beatrice replies in a voice too low to hear.

“I can count , Bea,” he snarls. “But the cops should be done by now. Can’t they get the hell off our lawn?”

Yikes . The second-floor gallery has shockingly good acoustics. The Wincott family must have had a fun time eavesdropping on one another, because I can make out almost every word.

“I’ll ask the cops for an update,” Beatrice says. “But a man died out there, Hank. Do you want to be the rich guy who’s getting in the cops’ faces?”

“No, I want you to do that.”

I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed Hank losing his temper before. Not even in high school. He was more the kind to charm his way out of a situation. But today he’s worked himself into a real lather.

“You want a job at the mansion? Then lock this down . Park a damn excavator in front of the police tape if you have to. The goddamn show is over . Get off my fucking lawn and get my name out of your fucking headline!”

I’m practically trembling on her behalf, so when she answers in a voice like ice chips, I’m surprised. “Hank. Do not, for one second , pretend like you’re the only one who cares about protecting the family. That’s insulting, especially when you rarely make it through a day without asking me to cover your ass. I said I’m on it. That means I’m on it .”

Whoa . There can’t be many people who aren’t afraid to push back at Hank Wincott.

“Fine,” he grunts. There’s an extended silence, as if they’re both taking a minute to get their tempers under control. “What other fires need putting out?” he asks. “How’s our architect holding up? Any problems there?”

Once again, I stop breathing.

There’s a pause before Beatrice answers. “Honestly? She’s kind of a mess. But give her a few days. We’ll be back on schedule.”

“As if,” he grumbles. “I need you to deliver a message to her—no speaking to the press. Absolute blackout. We don’t want her describing the murder scene on TV.”

Gosh, you think?

“No problem, Hank.”

“She’s too straightforward, you know? Probably isn’t any good at spin.”

I want to be offended by this, but he’s right. Spin is not my specialty.

“We’ll have a conversation,” Beatrice says firmly. “She’s not a sharer, though. Can you really see Rowan holding court on Channel Four?”

“No. But if she’s stressed out and distracted...”

“Okay. You’ve been heard. I already told you we’ll have a conversation.”

“Thank you.” There’s a tense silence. “What else? Anyone scared? Any issues with the contractors?”

“Lots of whispering. This is worse than the damn ghost stories. But so far everyone has shown up for work. I called the electrician this morning and ordered him to get the new exterior lighting done yesterday. And the security company got here an hour after I rang them. So that’s something.”

A sudden bang startles me. I practically jump out of my skin until I spot the source at my feet—a metal paint scraper that’s somehow leapt off the ladder. I must have bumped it.

Below me, the voices stop. If Hank and Beatrice leave the library, they’ll spot me. Heart pounding, I ease back into the Blue Room.

A moment later, I hear their voices start again, at a murmur this time. I can still feel the tension between them.

I lean against the window and give Poseidon a sulky eye. He’s the part of the mural that’s causing all the trouble. If I move him to the other side of the door, the symmetry will be ruined.

My head pounds, and I can’t remember why I should care about a single thing in this building. The whole place is tainted now.

I want to walk out the front door and never come back.