Page 38 of The Witch’s Orchard
THIRTY-ONE
F ROM THE OUTSIDE THIS house had looked huge, and yet, once I’m standing in the great room, I realize that this is a partial illusion created by its position on a mountaintop and the two-story bank of windows on its front.
The windows had reflected the sunlight, the mountain atmosphere, the rolling horizon.
They had made the house seem immense but, inside, I realize the great room alone probably takes up a third of the home’s square footage.
Standing still, I feel eyes upon me and look around to find a variety of exotic animal heads mounted on the wall. Elk, ibex, some kind of toothy cat I don’t know the name of. Their glass eyes are polished to a high shine, and they watch me as I take another step into the room.
One more time, just in case, I shout, “Deena! Mrs. Drake, are you here?”
No answer. I commence to snooping.
I breathe in the scent of the house, like dewy flowers and woodsmoke, and walk past the vintage sofa and chairs, the glossy grand piano that sits on a mini stage nearest the bank of windows.
I walk into the kitchen, where all the appliances are top-of-the-line.
They don’t look new, but they look like they were bought to last a lifetime.
There’s a plate of cookies on the counter, a jar of honey alongside antique cream and sugar containers, a bowl of fruit, half full.
Off the kitchen is a little office space with a computer and printer and old-fashioned ledger on top of an old cherry desk.
I tap the computer’s space bar and the monitor comes on, prompting me to put in a password.
I leave it, nudge open the ledger. Deena has been using it as a household accounting book, and I take a brief look through it to find bills for groceries, utilities, insurance.
Every month, there is a cash withdrawal.
Always one thousand dollars, always at the start of the month.
Deena’s spending budget, I’d guess. And it probably goes back to Harvey Drake’s handing her a grand of pin money every month and, even before that, to her likely sizable allowance as a Savannah debutante.
There’s an old filing cabinet, but forensic sleuthing takes weeks or months of combing through numbers; it’s not the kind of thing one can accomplish with a quick rummage around.
I leave the office and continue down the hall, where I find a guest room, made up and smelling a little stale. It looks clean but completely unused.
I pop into the bathroom, but there is nothing more exciting in it than the fact that Deena refills her fancy glass hand soap dispenser with a store brand.
The floor, mirror, and even toilet shine.
I try to picture Deena in here on her hands and knees with a scrub brush and decide she obviously has a maid.
Across the hall is a small library with a huge old grandfather clock and wall-to-wall bookshelves, another desk, and two armchairs.
Scanning the spines, I find mostly hard copies of war histories and Walt Whitman, along with a few books on business theory and some gardening books with titles like Growing Champion Roses and Practical Hedge Paths , which looks very well worn, and a newer paperback of Wildflowers of Appalachia: A Botanical Guide .
There are several classic novels with the spines more or less intact.
I notice that Bleak House seems pristine while Wuthering Heights looks to have been well-thumbed.
I could spend hours in here, I realize. But, as with the filing cabinet and the ledger, it would take more time than I have to go through them all.
I pull myself from the library and pad back down the hallway toward the great room where I peek outside for any sign of Deena Drake—still nothing—and then head upstairs.
Because half of this floor is open to the great room, there’s less square footage to cover.
The walls here feature yet more dead animals and a few decommissioned, antique rifles, mounted on glossy plaques.
One of them, a vintage Remington, would make even Leo drool.
There’s a bedroom that has been converted into storage, with a few trunks lining the wall and old clothing packed into the closet.
Another guest bedroom that looks completely unused.
Another bathroom, this one with an impeccable little shower stall.
And then, finally, at the end of the hall, the primary bedroom.
“Wow,” I breathe, taking in the room.
The walls are all Tudor-style with white wattle-and-daub panels between what looks like old-growth beams. A ceiling fan hangs down from the high ceiling, but the room is illuminated with skylights.
A gigantic four-poster bed dressed in actual linen linens rests against the far wall between two medieval-style tapestries depicting deer hunts.
The bed looks like it could fit about six people, and I imagine the petite, slender Deena Drake curled up in it, alone.
The idea makes me slightly sad, and I move away from the bed toward what I assume is the closet door.
Inside is a carpeted walk-in closet that, by itself, is probably half the size of my whole apartment.
With the help of a skylight, I find a dressing table with a small jewelry box—containing a few vintage rings and one modern locket, all tasteful—and a wall of Deena’s dresses.
The other wall is, I’m surprised to find, all men’s suits and shoes.
About half are in old-looking dry-cleaning bags but many hang free.
I open the lapel of one of them and find the words “Made Especially for Harvey Drake” and then the logo of a fancy tailor I’ve never heard of.
“Geez,” I whisper. It’s hard to imagine the prim and fastidious Deena Drake as a pack rat, and so I can only assume she’s kept all of this out of sentimentality, grief. I feel just a little bit bad being in this room. This house. Uninvited. Unwelcome.
I think, as I walk into the bathroom and over to the window that over looks the mountainside, that I’m likely just wasting my time.
I admit to myself, standing there among her private things, that if Deena had taken those girls she would have left with them, years ago.
She had the means to leave, to start over.
Yes, she was at the church and the picnic and even Molly’s house.
Yes, she was connected to the church. But now that I’ve gone through nearly all of her house, I have to admit to myself that there’s nothing here but evidence of a sad, lonely widow.
That my prejudices about pampered women with money might have clouded my judgment.
“You gotta watch that blind spot, Annie.”
That’s what Leo told me. It was the first case I worked for him in the OSI.
We’d been looking into possible skimming from certain Air Force accounts.
I’d ignored evidence pointing to an airwoman I’d sympathized with—a single mom from a poor background—and spent hours digging up dirt on a bad-tempered officer from a wealthy family who turned out to be completely innocent.
Leo pulled me into his office after the airwoman shot her friend and fellow airman when the guy found and confronted her about the same evidence I’d ignored.
The airman was in the hospital in critical condition and Leo had spent the whole morning dealing with the fallout.
“I don’t have a blind spot,” I said defensively.
He shook his head and sighed.
“It’s about a mile wide,” he said, then crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me long and hard and said, “And one of these days, if you’re not careful, something’s gonna crawl out of it and bite you in the ass.”
Now, as I stand in Deena’s quiet bedroom, I feel the same flush of embarrassment I felt that day in Leo’s office when I’d willfully overlooked evidence and spent valuable time investigating the wrong person and nearly got a man killed.
I let out a long breath and look out the window, thinking.
I see the valley and the town, several farms, and even Max’s farmhouse.
Little cabins dot the hillsides and hide among the trees.
Larger houses are tucked back from wider lanes.
And leading to me is Lilac Overlook Lane, which empties out into Deena’s driveway.
I watch the trees waver in the breeze, the rustle of the mountain laurels, and Honey sitting quietly in the driveway, and it occurs to me, like a gentle tapping at the base of my skull, that something about this view is off.
Something is wrong. From this vista, I study the horizon.
I look again at the little train set of a town, the patchwork of farms, the ribbons of asphalt that connect everyone.
Again, I have the same thought. Something is off.
“What is it?” I ask myself. “What is missing?”
And then I squint at the road, because on it, the sparse sun glinting off the red body, is Deena Drake’s Range Rover, making its way home.
“Shit,” I hiss. And break into a jog.