Treasure Box (17 page)

"Well, answers I don't believe would be a step forward. Because right now what I don't believe is that you saw your wife alive yesterday."

Quentin shook his head. "When you watched all those old
Columbo
episodes, didn't you notice that he always had a dead body before he started the murder investigation?"

"I didn't say murder," said Bolt.

"You said you didn't think I saw my wife alive yesterday. And I tell you she was as alive as she ever was."

Bolt kept opening cupboards until they were all open. Then he hitched himself up to sit on one of the grimy counters. "This is where I had my first kiss. This room. I was sitting on this counter."

"The cook?" asked Quentin.

"The owner's daughter. Rowena Tyler."

"How old?" asked Quentin.

"Who?" He must have startled the chief out of a reverie.

"Rowena. You."

"I was twenty-two. And don't ask why it was my first kiss at that age."

"My first kiss came later than that, Chief," said Quentin.

"She was fifteen."

"So were you her first kiss too?"

"I didn't ask. Judging from the chasteness of the kiss, I'd say yes. And thanks for not saying some smart remark about robbing the cradle."

"I was just thinking that it's sort of a young-adult version of
Lady Chatterley's Lover
."

"Never read it. Sounded boring compared to the
True Confessions
magazines my friends and I snuck over and read in the pharmacy when we were twelve."

"So this room is full of memories for you."

"Rowena's about your age now, wherever she is."

"Never met her, I'm afraid."

"She married and left before she was twenty. I think Mrs. Tyler knew that something had passed between us, because for the first couple of years she didn't ever mention Rowena in front of me. And then one day she did, and I didn't flinch, and then she kept me posted about her. She had a child, a daughter, in 1984. She's going to turn twelve this year."

"The woman I married was older than that."

"But younger than Rowena."

"Definitely."

"Help me with this, Mr. Fears."

"See, here's where we're running into our conflict, Chief. You seem to think I understand what happened here, and that I'm just not telling you."

"Aren't these your footprints?"

"I'm willing to bet they are."

"And your buttprint on the floor?"

"Wouldn't be surprised."

"That stairway is pitch black, day or night, when the power's off."

"If you say so."

"But your prints are surefooted."

"Flashlight?"

"And the driver says that when he dropped you and your wife off out in front, the lights were on and a servant was waiting to take Mrs. Fears's bags."

"Odd what details will stick in a person's mind."

"And the servant knew her. Called her by name."

"No, he got it wrong," said Quentin. "He called her by her maiden name, Cryer."

"Tyler."

"Cryer."

"That's what he said, too. Amazing, don't you think?"

"I hoped maybe he'd remember."

"Lights on all over the house," said Bolt.

"Well, not
all
over. A few windows."

"Not possible," said Bolt.

"What a liar that driver is."

"Did you get to him first?"

"And bribe him to tell you a story that is so obviously false? Boy am I dumb!"

Bolt shook his head. "This family matters to me, and you're doing something here and I really, really want to know what it is because even though the old lady is about as alert as a lawn these days, I owe her. More than that—I like her. She's a friend. And when she dies, this house will go to Rowena. And her I more than liked. Even if I couldn't give her what she wanted most."

"What was that?"

"A way out of Mixinack."

Quentin nodded. "Small-town blues."

"Yeah, well, I'm a small-town guy. Small-town dreams. I told her I'd go to the city with her but she said, 'And do what?' and I didn't have an answer for her."

"They have cops down there, too."

"Yeah, but the cops down there
work
for a living. And I wasn't a cop then, remember? I was a gardener's assistant."

"Starcrossed lovers."

"My point, Mr. Fears, is that you look like some kind of computer nerd and I'm a really strong guy and unless I know that you aren't going to hurt these people with your millions of dollars and your private investigators and your lawyers, well, I'm going to beat the shit out of you right here in this kitchen."

"Actually, I was kind of hoping you could protect me from
them
."

"These are good people, you rich lying asshole."

"Chief, I know you won't believe the truth if I tell you, and you obviously won't accept my silence, so you just tell me the lie that you'll believe and I'll say it. Whatever it takes to keep from getting beaten up."

"You think I won't do it? You think just because I know you'll come down on me afterward with every lawyer in the known world, I won't do it?"

"Oh, sure, maybe you'll do it, maybe you won't. If you decide to do it, I'll just stand here until you knock me down. I won't raise a hand against you because you're an officer of the law and besides, I've never raised my hand in violence against another person in my life."

"What are you, a Quaker?"

"A wimp," said Quentin. "Come on, Chief Bolt, I like you and you like me. I understand why you're threatening me but I'm not going to tell you stuff that I know will just make you madder. I'll accept how mad you are right now. I think if you beat me up when you're only this mad, I'll live through it without needing serious surgery."

The chief slid off the counter and took a step toward Quentin. He didn't flinch, though the chief's threats did scare him. Quentin had never been beaten up. He had, however, seen the Rodney King tape.

But Chief Bolt didn't hit him. Instead he slammed all the cupboard doors shut and kicked the fridge. Then he stood with his forehead pressing against the door of the freezer compartment.

"Chief," said Quentin, "thanks for not hitting me."

"You're welcome," said Chief Bolt. "It's not you I'm angry at."

"I figured that, since I'm such a nice guy."

"This place really screwed up my life. I should be happy. I've got a good job, a good wife, and some good kids. But I come back in here and it all comes pouring back over me. And I want to hurt somebody."

"I know the feeling."

"Do you? No, the real question—
did
you?"

"Chief Bolt, I don't know for sure who Madeleine is. But I do know that when I came here the other night, a servant met us outside in the drive, and the lights were on. Mad and I came down to this kitchen and sat at the table. I was at the head of the table, and she was beside me on the right."

"Housekeeper's chair."

"And we made sandwiches. My second trip to the fridge was for pickles."

Bolt reached down and snapped the lock open—it hadn't been fully engaged, apparently. He yanked open the refrigerator door. "Show me the pickles, Mr. Fears!"

The refrigerator didn't even have shelves.

"They tasted very good," said Quentin. "But the next day, after my wife disappeared, I was as hungry as if I had come down in the dark, sat on the floor, and eaten nothing but my imagination."

Bolt shook his head.

"Chief, after my wife left me, I saw this house as you see it right now. Not the kitchen, of course. The stairs were too dark to get down without a flashlight, and I didn't have one. But while she was with me, there were lights. There was food. Furniture. Everything clean and elegant. We sat down to breakfast—even though it was lunchtime—we ate in the library. No broken window. And eight of us at table. Grandmother—that's all that Madeleine ever called her—and... let's see if I can remember... me and Mad, of course, and then Uncle Stephen, Aunt Athena—no, her real name was Minerva—and Simon and Cousin Jude and Uncle Paul."

"Paul?" asked Chief Bolt. His voice sounded different. "There was a Paul who lived here."

"You know him?"

"I saw him a couple of times when I was a child. At the town Christmas party. The Easter egg hunt on the lawn out front."

"Really? What was he like?"

"Short," said the chief. "He was a toddler. He died when he was about a year and a half old."

"Must not be the same Paul," said Quentin.

"You went out to the graveyard," said the chief. "Let's go out there again. Let's look around."

"You got the heat turned on out there?" But the chief was already heading up the stairs. Quentin followed.

The snow was big flakes now, a Christmasy kind of snow instead of the nasty drizzly snow that had been falling earlier. All the old footprints were gone. But the chief seemed to have memorized Quentin's route through the graveyard.

"like you're trying to catch someone at first, big strides," said Bolt. "And then you see there's nobody in here and you have to see if there's any other way out, or if they climbed over the fence—am I right?"

"Dead on."

"And then you start looking at the headstones. I checked every single one you stopped at. Simon, Minerva, Jude, Stephen."

"I noticed the coincidence," said Quentin. "But the dates were impossible."

"See this one?" He pointed out the grave of the infant Paul who had died at the age of a year and a half.

"Yeah, I saw it," said Quentin.

"Paul was Rowena's brother. She never knew him, though. He was older, and he died a couple of years before she was born. But she came here a lot, to look at his grave."

"Grim," said Quentin.

"After I kissed her that time, after she was sure I was in love with her, she told me a secret. The reason why she wanted to get away from this house."

Quentin said nothing. This was obviously a very difficult memory for Chief Bolt—he was trembling, and his voice was thick with emotion.

"She told me her brother had been murdered."

Quentin felt a chill run through him.

But the chief wasn't done yet. "She told me her mother killed him."

What a wonderful family, thought Quentin. Grandmother, with blood on her hands.

"I take it you never arrested Mrs. Tyler for the crime," said Quentin.

"I didn't believe her. I told Rowena that she must have overheard something and misunderstood it. What evidence did she have, I asked. How could she possibly know something that happened before she was born? And she just looked at me and said, 'I know what I know, Mike.' "

"And?"

"And when I didn't believe her, she didn't see me anymore. She wasn't in the kitchen when I finished my day's work. I hung around each day, waiting. Came early and stayed late. Worked especially hard, but I never saw her."

"She hid from you?"

"I couldn't even ask, because if I asked that would imply that I had some right to ask, and I was the gardener's assistant, for Pete's sake. But I didn't have to ask, I knew what she was telling me. After a couple of weeks I quit and became a cop in Albany, which was a bigger city than I wanted to live in, and after a couple of years the job I've got now was open and they hired me and I came back and I just couldn't stay away from this house, I'd stop by here and Mrs. Tyler would talk to me and tell me news about Rowena and how she was sorry I just missed her. And then she got married and I told you the rest."

"Do you believe her now?"

"I was five when Paul Tyler died. But I looked it up in the library. The Mixinack paper was a daily in those days and the story filled the front page for a week. A real tragedy. The chauffeur backed over the baby. Didn't see him toddle behind the car after he started it up."

"Doesn't sound like murder."

"Chauffeur left at once for England. Distraught, poor guy. Wasn't even here for the inquest. The family didn't blame him, they even paid his way. Out of the country. He was the only witness."

"But who would doubt what happened?"

"So here you are, with a New York limo driver to back up your story about seeing lights and servants here, and a wife who claimed to have grown up in this house. And you have breakfast with people whose names are all on headstones in the graveyard. Including a boy that Rowena told me was murdered by his own mother. If that was true, how could she know? How?"

Quentin didn't answer.

"Because in this house," said Bolt, "the dead walk."

Quentin looked away. Walked to the entrance of the graveyard and looked out over the falling snow. He heard Bolt come up behind him, looked over his shoulder at him.

"So I'm crazy, is that it?" asked Bolt.

"Have you ever seen anything yourself?" asked Quentin.

"Only one thing," said Bolt.

Quentin waited.

"The door at the back of the entry hall, the back left—it doesn't open."

The parlor door.

"Your footprints led right up to that door, and then back out again, but I didn't see where you turned around," said Bolt. "You've been in that room, haven't you?"

Quentin nodded.

"It opened for you."

"I sure can't go through walls."

"The cook said that nobody ever went in that room," said Bolt.

"I'm not surprised to hear it," said Quentin.

"Can't see in through the windows."

Quentin looked over at the house. "Takes kind of a tall ladder to find that out, doesn't it?"

"The old lady asked me to keep an eye on the house."

"Apparently the parlor is an exception."

"Am I right?" asked Bolt.

Quentin nodded. "As far as I know. Yeah, you're right. I ate breakfast with some dead people."

"Except one," said Bolt.

"Grandmother," said Quentin.

"You see why I had to have your answer before I took you out to see her."

"Well what was that about beating me up in the kitchen?"

"Because I was hoping I was wrong and you were just a rich guy jerking people around."

"Why would that be better?"

"Because if baby Paul was murdered, that would explain why the house is haunted. And that would explain how Rowena knew that somebody murdered him."