Starter House A Novel (13 page)

She’d been putting this off day by day, waiting for the perfect time to ask Harry Rakoczy about Drew. But there would never be a perfect time to say
Did you sell me a haunted house?,
and he had already deflected her earlier questions about Drew; she had no rubric and no plan for the conversation. What did he know about her house, and why hadn’t he warned her?

Music rang from Harry’s house, as always. He came to the door with a remote in his hand, and when he saw her, he clicked a button and the music stopped. “Lacey Miszlak!” he said. “What a pleasant surprise. I have a student soon, and I made coffee. It’s one of
those
students. About as musical as a constipated frog, poor kid. Come on in.”

“No coffee for me, thanks. Baby no like.” She patted the bump.

“Orange juice? And how is baby?”

“Twenty-four weeks and he’s perfect; he’s growing. Dr. Vlk did ultrasounds; look at him! Isn’t he beautiful?” She showed him the grainy blur, arcs of black and white crossing through the image. “Look. There’s his face. Look at his tiny nose, it’s so cute. Those are his knees. He’s got toenails. Imagine, real live toenails.”

Harry took the pictures. “Is he sucking his thumb?”

“Adorable, right?”

Harry led Lacey to the kitchen and poured her a glass of juice. She tried not to make faces at the smell of his coffee, because she wanted more than a few oohs and aahs over her baby. She’d hoped the words would come, but she couldn’t bring herself to say,
I think my house is haunted and I want you to tell me what you know
. That was crazy talk.

“How are you liking the house?” Harry asked.

There’d never be a better opening. “Have people ever said anything about it? Anything weird?” Not even Ella Dane went so far as to say the house was haunted, even after what Drew did to her room.
Troubled
was what Ella Dane said.
Psychically active. In need of intervention.

“Are you hearing noises?” Harry’s face was smooth, and his dark eyes met Lacey’s with warmth and concern. But he was a performer; he’d spent half his life onstage and the other half teaching, which was another kind of stage, individual and intimate. Harry leaned forward across the table and lowered his hands over hers. Lacey had used that exact soothing touch on children who were frantic over some disagreement with a friend. Distress flashed across his face, wrinkling the skin above his eyes, leaving his mouth unmoved. Whatever he said next would be a comforting lie.

“There were squirrels in the attic three years ago,” he said. “Maybe they’ve gotten in again.”

On the day they found the house, CarolAnna had tried to warn them.
People died here,
she’d said, and Harry had smoothed the words away:
A long time ago
. True, and also a lie. She pulled her hands out of his and said, “There’s something in the house.”

“I tested for mold,” Harry said. “The termite contract never lapsed.” He looked so honest and innocent, such a sweet old man. But he kept talking, as liars always did. “The radon test came up negative.”

“Something’s not right. Didn’t anybody see something?”

He was shaking his head. The teacher voice worked on some adults, but not this one. Something moved deep under the skin of his face—a flick of the lower eyelids, a downward pull on the corners of his mouth—then he caught himself and pulled the mouth up into a smile, even forced a laugh. “What could there be to see?” he said.

Lacey couldn’t stand it another second, sitting at his table, drinking his tea. She pushed her chair back and took her glass to the sink. “Is there something wrong?” he said behind her, and if she hadn’t seen that false face a moment ago, she would have found his tone of warm solicitude entirely convincing. She filled the glass with cold water and drank it quickly.

There were framed pictures on the kitchen windowsill, pictures filling every foot of wall space, more pictures on top of the refrigerator. He must spend hours dusting. She found herself staring at half a face, a frame hidden behind another frame. Carefully, she put the glass in the sink. Glass chimed against steel, loud in the breathless room.

“Who is this?” she asked.

It was a small boy in a tuxedo. Behind him, a black piano mirrored stage lights and swallowed the child’s black suit, leaving only his face and hands. His left hand clutched the side of the keyboard, and his blond hair fell across his forehead.

Harry reached for the picture, and Lacey held it in both hands, turning it in the sunlight. “This is my son, Ted,” he said. “When he was little.”

“He’s in Australia, right?”

“Yes, he’s a baritone, sings at Sydney most of the time, a bit of Rossini all over the world, you want the barber of Seville, Ted Rakoczy’s your man.”

He was babbling. Trying to talk his way over something. Too much explanation; truth did not need this much defense. This child was almost Drew, except the hair was darker, the eyebrows brown instead of blond. “Did you ever have any other kids?” Lacey asked, looking at the little boy’s sweet smile.

Harry moved faster than she expected, twitching the frame from her hand and putting the picture back in its place. “Why do you ask?”

It was Lacey’s turn to babble. “We can’t decide if we should try for another baby right away, or wait a few years. Some people say you should have them quick, and other people say you should space them out, what do you think?”

“I think nobody can tell you what to do,” Harry said firmly, “but I’m not the one to ask. We only had Ted.”

She kept up the chatter of siblings and family spacing as she let Harry lead her from the house. So that was his son the opera singer. Not Drew, and not a brother if Harry was telling the truth about Ted being an only child, but a close relative. Harry knew Drew, no matter how he went on about termites and radon, but he’d never admit it. She’d have to find some other source.

Chapter Sixteen

“HAPPY THURSDAY,” SAMMIE SAID,
coming into Eric’s office with the Hall file.

“What’s so happy?” Eric looked up from his computer. He had just finished transferring money from savings to checking to cover Lacey’s check to the handyman who had fixed Ella Dane’s window—whatever Ella Dane had been doing in there, moon dances or some kind of hyperactive yoga, there was no way a branch had caused that damage. It was easier to pay than to argue. He’d have to close the savings account; this transfer had put the balance below the minimum, and the bank would charge ten dollars a month to keep it open.

And this was his life now. He couldn’t even keep three hundred dollars in a savings account.

Sammie laughed. “After this, the rest of the week’s wall-to-wall judies. You need to get this guy in on Monday or Tuesday. Thursday’s too late.”

Eric shrugged her suggestion away and snapped his fingers for the file.

She shook it at him. “You don’t get like that,” she said. “Snapping your fingers at me. I don’t
think
so. You listen. These nut clients, you don’t want to deal with them on a Thursday or Friday.”

“Why not?”

“You give them bad news early in the week. They go back to work. By the weekend, they’re mad at somebody else. You’ve got to take him seriously. Always take the nuts seriously, ’specially the ones who know where you live.”

“Lex Hall doesn’t know where I live.”

Sammie dropped the file on his desk. “You wish. Happy Thursday.”

The top page was Sammie’s précis of her investigation into Lexington Hall. His legal record: twice, he’d reported neighbors to DHHS, and both cases were dismissed. Both families sued, and one lost the case because Lex had recorded the noises. The second family settled for three thousand dollars. The child was hospitalized with a fractured shoulder four months later and was removed from the parents’ custody.

Then there was one case of simple assault. Could this be the dirt that Cambrick MacAvoy mentioned? Again, children were involved. Last year, Lex Hall, recently promoted to produce manager at MacArthur’s, had seen a woman send her children through the store to shoplift. Three children, the oldest only eight, loaded up on meat and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. He tackled the woman in the parking lot. Lex and the mother were arrested. When the dust cleared, the prosecutor dropped the charges against Lex; the children were taken into the system.

So: righteous indignation in defense of the young. Not exactly a deal breaker in family court. What had Sammie meant, Lex Hall knew where he lived? He riffled Sammie’s printouts and photocopies—if all this represented billable hours, she must have blown through Lex’s retainer and then some—and he had only five minutes before the man arrived.

Sammie’s note:

Records of Lexington Hall begin at age 20. No information prior to 1983. No birth certificate, no educational records, no military record. First legal appearance of LH: sold 571 Forrester Lane to Harry Rakoczy in 1983
.

Eric felt as if he’d walked around a corner and met himself coming the other way. The Miszlaks’ house, Harry Rakoczy’s house, Lex Hall’s house . . . What did it mean?

Sammie buzzed him. “Mr. Hall is here,” she said in her receptionist voice.

“Thanks, Sammie. Listen, about that property, what about its title history?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’ll look into that. Mr. Hall’s coming right in.”

He opened the door for Lex, who entered with a blue nylon shopping bag from MacArthur’s, and the scent of pineapple. He thumped the bag onto Eric’s desk. “Could you move that to the floor, please, Mr. Hall?” Eric said mildly.

Lex set it on the floor, then reached in and pulled out a pineapple, the largest Eric had ever seen, and put it on the desk. “This is a big pineapple,” Lex announced.

“It truly is, Mr. Hall.”

“I brought it for a present.” Most of its scales were golden, some streaked with orange, and juice glistened in its seams and creases. “It’s ripe. Most people buy the pineapple green and eat it green.”

“Mr. Hall, we need to go over some things. There’s a temporary custody and visitation order.”

“When do I get my baby?”

Eric hated this part. “There were problems. The test you took, the MMPI—the personality test—it came back unresponsive.”

“Did I fail?”

“It means you were nervous on the day you took the test, and they couldn’t get a clear reading on you.” He couldn’t get a clear reading on Lex, even face-to-face. The man was opaque. The flesh around his eyes never moved, and his mouth twitched as if he were talking to himself, practicing what to say. He was forty-eight, supposedly. If he claimed seventy, nobody would blink. “It means you’ll have to take it again. You just relax and answer the questions truthfully.”

“I didn’t understand the questions. It’s forever the same test. They used to make me take it all the time when I was in that place. I never understood the questions. When do I get my baby?”

When I was in that place
: Eric wrote these words on his notepad to ask Sammie about later. What place, why, and for how long? Theo’s guardian ad litem had interviewed Lex at home and had reported the home was clean, child-proofed and well maintained, but recommended supervised visitation because Lex was hinky.
Hinky
. What did that mean in a court of law? The judge rightly disregarded it. “The temporary order is joint custody. The baby stays with Jeanne during the week, and you get her on the weekends.”

“I’ve got evidence now. I’ve got pictures. She’s giving my baby a piece of chicken. Force feeding. Look.”

Eric laid the pictures on his printer to scan them. “We’re deposing the pediatrician next week,” he said. “I’m not sure if pictures of Jeanne feeding Theo are going to help.”

“Force feeding.”

“Do these pictures show force?” Eric didn’t give him time to answer; this was not an argument. “Mr. Hall, I met your wife’s lawyer, and she told me there’s dirt in your past. I can handle it if I can get out in front of it. What I can’t handle is a surprise. If she shows up with something I’m not ready for, you’re done. Have you ever been arrested?”

This was Lex’s test, and he passed it. He looked down, looked away, stroked the pineapple, and then told Eric, in short spitting sentences, everything Sammie had laid out for him. The child abuse reports, the lawsuits, the assault arrest, everything.

“Is there anything else?” Eric asked.

“I brought you a pineapple.” Lex held out his hand to Eric. “Smell my fingers.”

“No thanks, I’m good.”

“When you touch fruit, you should smell of fruit. Then you know it’s ripe.” He reached into the blue nylon bag at his feet and pulled out a big heavy knife, as big as a chef’s knife but heavier, the blade corroded black but the edge silver with use and sharpening. Eric pushed back from the desk. Where was the panic button? Did he even have a panic button? He’d taken a seminar in risk management in law school and now he couldn’t remember anything except
make sure you have a panic button.

Lex raised the machete over the desk, and the ceiling fan interrupted the light and sent it running along the edge like a string of boxcars. Eric couldn’t stop looking at it. His hands touched and discarded potential weapons on his desk—pencil cup, iPad—and settled on his laptop. He raised it like a shield. Someone said strongly and calmly, “Put that down, Lex,” and it was his own voice.