Page 103 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

“Let’s do this.” Quarter reached into his pocket. He slapped a quarter on the table beside the peeled apple. He said, “The Stanford Team is ready.”

Manic depression. Schizoid tendencies. Violent recidivism.

Paula fell into a chair as she placed a penny on the table. “Chicago’s been ready for a month.”

Anti-social behavior. Kleptomania. Anorexia nervosa. Akiltism.

Nick flipped a nickel into the air. He caught it in his hand and dropped it onto the table. “New York is raring to go.”

Sociopathy. Impulse control disorder. Cocaine addiction.

Andrew looked at Jane again before reaching into his pocket. He placed a dime with the other change and sat down. “Oslo is complete.”

Anxiety disorder. Depression. Suicidal ideation. Drug-induced psychosis.

They all turned to Jane. She reached into her jacket pocket, but Nick stopped her.

“Take this upstairs, would you, darling?” He handed Jane the apple that Quarter had peeled.

“I can do it,” Paula offered.

“Can you be quiet?” Nick was not telling her to shut up. He was asking a question.

Paula sat back down.

Jane took the apple. The fruit made a wet spot on her leather glove. She felt around on the secret panel until she found the button to push. One of Nick’s clever ideas. They wanted to make it as hard as possible for anyone to find the stairs. Jane pulled back the panel, then used the hook to close it firmly behind her.

There was a sharp click as the release mechanism went back in place.

She climbed the stairs slowly, trying to make out what they were saying. The Pink Floyd song blaring from a tinny speaker was doing too good a job. Only Paula’s raised voice could be heard over the soaring instrumental of “Comfortably Numb.”

“Fuckers,” she kept saying, obviously trying to impress Nick with her rabid devotion. “We’ll show those stupid motherfuckers.”

Jane could feel an almost animalistic excitement rising through the floorboards as she reached the top of the stairs. There was incense burning inside the locked room. She could smell lavender. Paula had likely brought one of her voodoo talismans to keep the spirits at peace.

Laura Juneau had kept lavender in her house. This was one of the many stray details that Andrew had managed to relay in his coded letters. Like that Laura enjoyed pottery. That, like Andrew, she was a fairly good painter. That she had just come from the garden outside her house and was on her knees in the living room looking for a vase in the cupboard when Robert Juneau had used his key to unlock the front door.

A single shot to the head of a five-year-old.

Two bullets into a sixteen-year-old’s chest.

Two more bullets into the body of a fourteen-year-old girl.

One of those bullets lodged into Laura Juneau’s spine.

The last bullet, the final bullet, had entered Robert Juneau’s skull from beneath his chin.

Thorazine. Valium. Xanax. Round-the-clock care. Doctors. Nurses. Accountants. Janitors. Mop & Glo.

“Do you know how much it costs to commit a man full-time?” Martin had demanded of Jane. They were sitting at the breakfast table. The newspaper was spread in front of them, garish headlines capturing the horror of a mass murder: MAN MURDERS FAMILY THEN SELF. Jane was asking her father how this had happened—why Robert Juneau had been kicked out of so many Queller Homes.

“Almost one hundred thousand dollars a year.” Martin was stirring his coffee with an antique Liberty & Company silver spoon that had been gifted to a distant Queller. He asked Jane, “Do you know how many trips to Europe that represents? Cars for your brothers? How many road trips and tours and lessons with your precious Pechenikov?”

Why did you give up performing?

Because I could no longer play with blood on my hands.

Jane found the key on a hook and pushed it into the deadbolt lock. On the other side of the door, the record had reached the part where David Gilmour took over the chorus—