Between the Lies (Book One - The Northern Lights Series) (11 page)

“Stay right where you are, Olivia,” Harper said, her words sounding sharp and staccato in the tomb-like hallway. She ordered the officer with her to stand guard. “No one in or out unless it’s okayed by me,” she instructed him.

I have no idea how long I sat there, but the sunlight from the stained glass window above the couch dimmed. Someone turned the hallway lights on. The sconces cast long beams of yellow light onto the walls, leaving murky shadows in between. The lifeless stares of the grumpy ancestors felt fierce, their lips stern and brows condemning. One old codger holding a spyglass like the one in Mr. Lyons’ room looked like he was about to point a bony finger at me and to cry out, “Guilty!” The brass buttons on what might have been a naval jacket made me think his next sentence might be, “Walk the plank, you wretched woman!”

I tried to banish death penalty thoughts as police officers and the coroner came and went. I couldn’t shut out the words, “suspected homicide” and “autopsy.” Finally, a gurney with Mrs. Lyons in a body bag appeared through the door.

I watched them carry her down the elegant staircase, angrier at the man who killed her than I ever was at her.

“Olivia, I need to take you to the station for questioning,” Harper said.

“Am I under arrest?” I asked.

“Should you be?”

“No,” I heard myself say with quiet conviction. “I didn’t kill her.”

“You are not under arrest yet, but you are the only witness to the death of Mrs. Lyons, and we have to get to the bottom of this.”

I stood and heard Alan say from deep inside his father’s room, “Detective, could you please come here?”

“Sit down,” Harper instructed me before saying to the young officer standing nearby, “Same rules apply.”

When I sat down, I felt nausea stretch across my stomach along with a slow cramp of pain. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I told the guard.

He looked at me and pointed to the floor. “There’s a wastebasket beside the couch. Use that if you need it.”

I tucked the brass urn between my feet, deciding it would be better to puke into an antique than onto the carpet.

Alan and Michelle came out of the bedroom. Before escorting his wife downstairs, he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “You have always been more trouble than you were worth.”

Harper walked out into the hallway and said into her phone, “Call Brett in. We need him tonight. Yes, we may have found video evidence and the family is signing it over to us. I’m also bringing in the only eyewitness we have in the case, Olivia Morgan.”

I used the spittoon.

“Seems like you throw up a lot, Olivia,” Harper said.

“I do . . . ever since the first time Gus . . .”

“Gus what?” she pushed.

“Visited my room. I’ve learned to vomit quietly, but even that doesn’t help in public.”

“Sorry. But look at it this way; when is the last time you puked into an antique that could be worth more than my monthly salary?”

“Wow, lucky me,” I said, not enjoying her joke as much as she apparently did.

“Yeah, well let’s hope your luck lasts,” she said.

I was escorted to the same barren and mirrored interrogation room. A female officer brought me a bottle of water. “If you need anything, push that button.” The door shut with the kind of click that let me know a lock engaged.

She hadn’t been gone long when I pushed the button embedded in the table.

The female officer returned. “What can I do for you?” she asked with her hands on her substantial hips.

“Do you know how long detective Harper will be?”

“No idea. She’s reviewing some new evidence.”

“Can you ask Harper if I can have a pencil and some paper?”

“What for?” she asked.

“I want to draw what I remember.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” she said.

She returned a few minutes later with a stack of copy paper, two pencils, and a pen.

A few strokes into my first drawing was like stepping back into the room where Mrs. Lyons had died. In my mind it had become a sinister place. In my memory, I heard her ask for a drink, and I was suddenly parched. Thankful for the water, I took a long drink.

I sketched Mrs. Lyons face when she greeted me, when she saw the male nurse, and as she spoke her last words to me. I drew her hands before the attack and then cruelly embraced by the restraints. Next came the syringe. Finally, I drew him from his head down. When I finished, I said to the wall-sized mirror, “Harper. His shoes. They weren’t the kind a nurse would wear. They were brown penny loafers. That seems odd to me. “

Harper and Michelle entered the room a few minutes later.

“Do you remember his face?” Harper asked.

“Only his profile. He never looked directly at me, but I felt like I’d seen him before.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know . . . maybe the hospital when Jillian was sick, but that doesn’t feel right.”

After both had looked carefully at my sketches, Harper said, “You’re one lucky woman,” She collected my drawings, and added, “I’ll keep these if you don’t mind. You’re free to go with your attorney.”

In the limo Michelle and Alan filled in a few of the blank spaces for me.

“My mother was a bit on the paranoid side these last few weeks,” Alan started. “She convinced her main nurse to secretly install small video cameras in strategic locations in her room. Only the nurses knew about them and the laptop they used to record and save what the cameras captured. They were live except when she was being bathed.”

When he paused, Michelle picked up where he left off. “Alan turned them over to the police. While you were waiting, both agent Newman and detective Harper viewed them. We’re told they show the exact scenario you described.”

“And the police officer still on the scene found a latex glove in the little hallway between the rooms. They will check it for fingerprints,” Alan said.

As I exited the car I asked, “Alan, right before your mother died, she mentioned Aggie. Is that important?”

“They were close. It’s natural Mother would think of her, and no, it’s not important,” he said and shut the door.

I heard the car window slide down and Michelle said, “Olivia, call me if you remember anything else or if you need to talk.” The window slid up, and the car moved ahead before I could think of a response.

Lloyd was waiting. “I’m here to make sure you get to the apartment safely, Olivia,” he said.

We rode the elevator in silence as I tried to wrap my mind around his words.

After unlocking the door to the apartment, I said, “Lloyd, I’m scared.”

“That’s wise. Someone let you witness the murder of Mrs. Lyons and set you up to take the blame. That was the strategic act of a killer with a plan. He may or may not be done.”

I made it to the bathroom just before the dry heaves drove me to my knees.

Sleep evaded me so I did what I do best when something nags at the edges of my mind. I drew. That night, it was the shoes over and over again; something was wrong and I needed to get it right. Then I saw it—the way the heels were worn as if the person scuffed the outside of his heels with each step he took.

I’d seen shoes marked like that before.

Dizzy with fear, I called Harper. She sounded groggy, but my manners seemed to have been misplaced. “Harper! He wore penny loafers with a worn heel,” I shouted.

“Olivia. Do you know what time it is?”

“No. The rapist—he wore the same shoes as the guy who killed Mrs. Lyons.”

She cleared her voice and said, “What rapist?”

“The man who raped me here in this building over ten years ago.”

“You’d better call Michelle. I’ll be over after I shower and have at least one cup of coffee. And I’m going to need food.”

After I called Michelle and got a similar response, I dressed and put on a pot of water to boil. My stomach needed peppermint tea. I didn’t have much food on hand, but found three raspberry muffins in my freezer that would microwave nicely. I rinsed off some green dinner grapes and sliced Havarti cheese.

When the two women arrived, I asked, “Is it safe to talk here?”

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Michelle asked.

“I don’t feel safe here,” I said as a shiver ran up my spine ending in a shudder.

“We don’t have a lot of options. I don’t have an office, Alan is at home, it’s not appropriate to use Harper’s home, and although you want to talk about the case, this isn’t an official police call,” Michelle said.

Harper added, “I’m uncomfortable talking here, but I agree. We don’t have another option. Are you willing to take the chance, Olivia?”

“I need you to know these things, so yes, I’ll risk it. There’s something I have to show you, but I have to find it first.” They followed me down the hallway to the master bedroom. I opened the closet door and carefully touched a spot on the wall. At eye level, a notebook-sized section of the wall opened with a soft click.

“What’s this?” Harper asked.

“I don’t know what you call it, but I discovered it one day when I was switching out my fall/winter wardrobe for my spring/summer one. When I found it, there was an empty removable jewelry box-like insert. After taking that out, I used the space to hide my sketches.”

“Why did you hide them?” Michelle asked.

I felt the red of shame on my face and neck as I said once again, “Alan didn’t like me to do my art. Besides, a girl has to have secrets, right?”

My attempt at levity was obviously poorly timed.

I pulled out an old sketchbook and a small journal. “Without this release, I think I would have lost my mind after the rape,” I whispered.

They followed me to the kitchen where I fixed us all cups of tea.

“I’m not a tea drinker, Olivia,” Harper said. “But the smell of this makes me want to reconsider.” She took a sip and smiled, the way nice people do when they don’t like what they’ve been served, then pushed it away.

Michelle was wearing the same look when she said, “I like English black tea, but not herbal.”

While the coffee brewed, I put out the food, and opened the sketchbook. Michelle said, “This is the hallway of this floor. The pattern of the wood is distinct.”

“Yes, he raped me out there.” I felt time slip away and I became the narrator of my own story as I turned the pages.

“I hadn’t been given access to the private elevator yet. When I exited the public elevator, I saw a dark red rose in an ornate vase—like the ones that have been left lately—outside the door. He came out of the shadows. I heard his shoes make the kind of sound my sixth grade teacher’s did on the school’s wooden floor. A new leather squeak followed by a scuffing sound.”

While I talked, Harper paced then asked, “Can I take a look in the hallway?”

Michelle and I waited in silence.

When Harper returned, I continued my story. “He said, ‘Olivia, at last you will be mine. I will ruin you for him forever.’ He wore a mask.”

After the sketch of the hallway with every detail recorded, each following page contained one piece of my personal puzzle—up close. The pages revealed the details branded into my memory; the hallway was bathed in a soft gloomy light from the same kind of wall sconces lining the walls in the Lyons’ mansion, the intricately carved door, the rose and vase, his shoes, his gloved hands, eyes through the slits in the black mask, and his shoes.

“What’s with his eyes?” Michelle asked.

“They were different colors. One was very dark brown and the other was hazel-colored in a way that was both green and gold.”

“I think the coffee is done,” Harper said stretching her arms above her head.

I filled three cups with the strong, black brew and brought them to the table on a tray with the sugar bowl and the creamer.

Harper put something on the table. “I found this in the hallway. It was in a dark corner,” she said.

A large piece of crystal from one of the vases glistened in the light.

“That’s a piece from the last vase,” I said. They all have the same cut design in the glass, but they have all been shaped slightly different. This piece looks like it came from the angled rim.”

“Someone missed a piece in the last hurried cleanup,” Harper said as she bagged it and removed her gloves. “The coffee smells good,” she said, shifting my attention from the crystal to the present.

“What color was his hair?” Michelle asked. “I can see it’s light, but light brown or dark blond?” She seemed mesmerized by the drawings.

“Just a minute,” I said. “I’ll show you.”

I returned to the table with my new extra-soft colored pencils. I started adding colors and blending them. Within seconds I was lost in the art and the past.

When I finished, Harper asked, “How did he rape you?”

I handed her the journal without opening it. “This is where I used words to record his act of violence against me.”

“Does Alan know about this?” Michelle asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“Yes.

“Has he seen your drawings?” she pressed, her green eyes full of tears.

“Yes, he’s seen them and told me to destroy them . . . he said it was the only way to get past it. I disobeyed,” I whispered.

“Did you report it?” Harper asked.

“No. Alan didn’t think the police would believe me—a young woman from a trailer park in the care of an older, rich man. He made it sound like telling anyone would ruin my future and damage his. At the time I felt like he was protecting me from more hurt.”

Harper went back to the picture of the shoes. “Michelle, I’m no expert, but these look expensive, maybe even custom-made.”

Michelle stared at the sketch as if in a trance. “Yes. They do.”

“Do you know any shoemakers in the area?” Harper asked.

“I’ll get you a list,” Michelle said.

“Olivia, is there a place you can put these for safe-keeping outside of this apartment?” Harper asked, pointing at the journal and sketch pad.

Before I could answer, she said, “Don’t say where. Just take them there.”

“I have no idea where to put them,” I said, feeling my head shake slowly back and forth as if to reinforce my helplessness.

While Harper mentioned a few options, like a bank box, Alan’s safe, or my attorney’s office, Michelle scribbled a message on a sticky note which she handed to Harper. After reading it, the detective handed it to me. It said,
On your way out, give them to Lloyd. He knows a place and can be trusted.

Harper nodded and asked, “Are there any more hidey holes in the apartment?”

“I know of a couple, but as far as I know they are empty. The one in Jillian’s closet is more like a cubby. We made it into a little fort. The other one is right here,” I said, standing.

By the front door, I pressed on one of the wooden panels. It clicked softly then opened to reveal a small, eye-level cubbyhole that was empty except for some dust.

“We have one like that at the house,” Michelle said. “Mother Lyons’ said it was where her husband hid a pistol for protection. If someone was at the door he didn’t trust, he could access it quickly. I’m told he was quite paranoid. Perhaps you could put the notebooks here. It looks like they’d fit.”

I looked at her wondering if she’d lost her memory and noticed her finger was on her lips as if warning me to say only what I wanted to be heard.

“That might work,” I agreed quietly. Fear, with a touch of my own paranoia, caused me to lower my voice.

From the looks on the faces of my attorney and the detective, I realized it was contagious.