Читать книгу Never Look Back - Robert Ross - Страница 10

Vicky struggled against the ropes binding her hands behind her back to no avail. The sadistic bastard who’d chloroformed her and brought her to this strange place in the middle of nowhere had tied the knots too tightly. There was barely enough room for her to even wiggle her hands about.

She heard footsteps outside the door, which swung open, light spilling into the room. A form was outlined in the door. “Ah, Ms. Knight, have you reconsidered your foolish position?”

The tape over her mouth kept her from responding, but she shot daggers out of her eyes at him. Brick Baldwin! She might have known he was behind her kidnapping—who else would be so vile, so purely evil? Wasn’t it bad enough he was trying to steal the election? Was there no low to which he wouldn’t stoop in his insane bid for power? She had to get away, she had to finally expose his evil to the light of day—too much depended on it. The fate of everyone in Louisiana was depending on her….

He flicked the light switch on, briefly blinding her as the room flooded with light. She glanced around quickly, looking for something, anything, that could help her to escape. She had to get away—she couldn’t remain his prisoner. The information she had was too crucial. The evidence had to reach the authorities in time. “Of course, how silly of me.” He chuckled, raising the hackles on the back of her neck. His eyes glinted malevolently as they swept up and down her bound form, his eyes lingering on her heaving breasts. “You can’t answer because your mouth is taped.” In three steps he was in front of her, and she could smell the sour whiskey and stale sweat. He always stank. He narrowed his eyes, then reached up and ripped the tape off her mouth, taking skin with it. She let out a howl of pain. “You’ll never get away with this, you scum.”

“On the contrary, Ms. Knight, I’ve already gotten away with it.” He smiled, showing his crooked teeth, yellowed from years of smoking. His breath was so foul she almost gagged. He reached down and cupped her left breast in his hand. The lust in his eyes was unmistakable.

Vicky spat defiantly in his face. “I’ll never tell you who my source is, you bastard.”

“Oh, you’ll tell me, Baldwin said with an evil leer, pulling a bottle out of his jacket pocket. “You see this? It’s sulfuric acid, Ms. Knight. Have you ever seen what sulfuric acid does to skin? It eats right through it, like a warm knife through soft butter.” He stroked her cheek. “Pretty as you are, it would be a shame to spoil your looks forever, now, wouldn’t it?” He uncorked the bottle and stepped back a few steps. “Now, tell me. Who in my organization is the traitor? All you have to do is tell me and you can walk away from all of this. If you don’t”—he smiled viciously at her—“you will become so ugly no one would look at you, except with pity in their eyes.”

Vicky started to scream….

“This is crap!”

Karen ripped the headphones off her head and threw them down on her desk in disgust. She stared at the blinking cursor. Maybe that agent was right and she really was a no-talent hack. She rubbed her eyes.

No, Philip believed in her. Philip has read my work and he says I’m good.

Philip Kaye.

The famous Philip Kaye.

My husband.

With a sigh, Karen highlighted everything she’d just written and then hit the Delete key. It all vanished in the blink of an eye.

She was having trouble concentrating, that was the problem. She sighed and stood up, stretching, her back cracking in a couple of places. She walked over to the window. From the distance the neon lights of Commercial Street glowed.

She knew why she couldn’t focus on the book.

Because she couldn’t forget that the first Mrs. Kaye had died in this house.

Why hadn’t Philip told her?

And why hadn’t Philip told her about the Hatch family? All that death in this very house! It freaked her out.

That’s why he didn’t tell you, she thought. He didn’t want to frighten you. He’ll be angry with Mrs. Winn for spilling the beans before he had a chance to let her in, gently, gradually…

In the two days since Alice Winn had told her about all the death in the house, Karen hadn’t been able to focus on anything. She had hoped by now that the place would feel like home to her. But it didn’t. Her boxes might be up in the attic, her clothes might be hanging in the closet, but the place was not home to her.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the Hatches, their grisly bodies strewn across the floor downstairs, blood on the walls. Lettie Hatch took a butcher knife, and with it took her father’s life. To put an end to all her strife, she used it then on her father’s wife.

Somehow, even worse was thinking about Ivy Kaye. Alice Winn didn’t know any details about Karen’s predecessor’s suicide—she’d been hired afterward. All she knew was gossip she’d heard around town, and she refused to spread gossip, she said. Karen had just smiled wryly, remembering how quickly she’d told her about Lettie Hatch.

Karen certainly couldn’t talk to Jessie about it. In fact, she couldn’t talk to Jessie about anything. Every time she tried to make even the slightest conversation with the girl, all Jessie would do was stare at her with her big brown eyes and shrug. Outside of her schoolwork, all Jessie seemed to do was write in that notebook of hers. Her fingers seemed to be permanently stained with blue ink.

“Do you want to be a writer?” Karen asked her that afternoon at lunch, hoping to finally draw something—anything—out of her stepdaughter.

But there was only a shrug.

“You know that I’m a writer, too,” Karen said, still trying. “I’m writing a novel.”

Nothing this time. No response of any kind. She might as well have been talking to her plate. Jessie finished eating her sandwich, picked up her notebook, and headed back up to her room. The door slammed behind her.

It’s not healthy to stay cooped up in the house all the time, Karen thought. Doesn’t she have any friends? Isn’t she interested in boys? Isn’t she interested in anything at all?

And if that wasn’t enough, Philip hadn’t called all day. She’d tried his cell phone a few times, always getting his voice mail. She tried to keep her voice light, as if there weren’t anything wrong—Philip doesn’t like needy women, she kept reminding herself, he’s said that many times. She even left messages for him at the hotels he’d been staying at—and he still hadn’t called.

Who have I married? What have I gotten myself into here?

But she stopped that line of thought dead in its tracks—that would be admitting her mother was right, that they should have waited to get married, that Karen was making a mistake rushing into this marriage.

Even if he was Philip Kaye.

Her hero.

Her husband.

She’d rather die than admit her mother was right.

After she’d finished drinking her tea, she’d gone straight to the computer and searched the Internet for information about the Hatch murders. What she’d found had chilled her. There was a site called lettiehatchet.net that some scholar from Boston had put together; she didn’t know how true any of the information on the site was, but if even half of it was true—she shuddered and hugged herself tightly.

She picked up the stack of printouts.

The Hatch murders were among the most notorious in Massachusetts history; at the time the Hatch murders were all anyone on Cape Cod—and Boston—could talk about. The Hatches were not only wealthy but politically connected. Horace Hatch, the father of Lettie Hatch, had served several terms in the U.S. Senate, and was said to have presidential aspirations. After his murder, a memorial service was held in Washington attended by President Coolidge and his wife. President Coolidge himself spoke in glowing terms of all the “great work” Senator Hatch had done, not only for his Massachusetts constituency, but for the country as a whole:

“Senator Hatch will surely be remembered by history as one of the great Massachusetts patriots, on a level with President Adams, John Hancock, and Paul Revere,” he’d said during his speech.

Modern historians don’t quite agree with President Coolidge’s assessment. Senator Hatch’s voting record was not only spotty but often contradictory. He opposed women’s suffrage, for example, despite the fact that he married a suffragette. He was also against American involvement in World War I, opposed almost any legislation that originated in the Wilson White House, and was credited at the time as one of the legislators who led the fight to defeat American ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. He was a vocal opponent of American involvement in the League of Nations—and most historians agree that this doomed the League of Nations to failure and ineptitude, which resulted in the Second World War and the rise of Hitler.

His much younger second wife, Sarah Jane McConnell, had been a suffragette and quite a famous one, at that. She had written several articles on the subject of women’s suffrage, had been arrested several times in protest marches, and had participated in the notorious hunger strikes. There is no record of how the suffragette met the senator, nor of any romance between the two. Their marriage, from all accounts, was sudden and unexpected—particularly from the point of view of Washington hostess Eliza Washburn, whom most Washington insiders thought to have the inside track on becoming the second Mrs. Hatch. A letter from the widowed Mrs. Washburn to her sister has survived; in it, Mrs. Washburn is quite frank about her anger at being so unceremoniously jilted for a much younger, far less socially connected woman. She went so far as to call the second Mrs. Hatch a “scheming viper.” After the murders, Mrs. Washburn wrote her sister again to say that the senator “certainly received his just deserts.”

Except for her suffrage work, nothing much is known of the second Mrs. Hatch. She seems to have appeared in Washington from nowhere, taken up residence at a women’s boardinghouse, and started working on the suffrage movement. Her surviving writings show her to be a lucid thinker, capable of making and defending arguments, with no small skill at the use of language. Once she married Senator Hatch, however, her writings stopped. She certainly never published again.

Little is known, either, about the first Mrs. Hatch, born Ellen Chamberlain into a prominent Boston family who traced their history back to the May-flower. This first Mrs. Hatch never resided in Washington, choosing to remain in Boston or in Provincetown, where the senator had a summer house. She didn’t campaign for her husband, and most gossip from the time holds that the marriage had been over for quite some time. Publicly, the senator always claimed that his wife was an invalid—although Provincetown gossip claimed otherwise. Ellen Hatch died rather suddenly from unknown causes several years before his remarriage; there was only one child from his first marriage—the soon-to-be notorious Lettie. Even after her mother’s death, Lettie remained in Provincetown with her governess rather than going to live with her father.

Witnesses from the time testified at Lettie’s trial that she had hated her stepmother—which her governess, Anna Windham, claimed was just “malicious gossip.” Miss Windham claimed that the Hatch family had gotten along beautifully—that Lettie and her stepmother, while not having a “mother-daughter” relationship (which, she claimed, would have been absurd given the closeness in their ages), were very close. Lettie herself never gave any testimony other than to protest her innocence; and it is very likely that without the alibi Miss Windham gave her she would have been convicted and hanged. Public sentiment was definitely against young Lettie—she was crucified in the newspapers, people crossed the street rather than come face-to-face with her; the Hatch house was frequently vandalized. At one point, an angry mob showed up on the doorstep, shouting epithets and throwing bottles and rocks, and the local constabulary was forced to disperse them.

Was Miss Windham telling the truth? Most newspapers and citizens of Provincetown at the time didn’t believe so. Miss Windham’s story held that at the time someone was inside butchering Horace and Sarah Jane Hatch, she and Lettie were walking along the sand dunes on the other side of the Cape. Miss Windham claimed that Lettie had never been out of her sight that entire day, and so someone else must have committed the murders.

No witnesses ever came forward to corroborate their story, however, and indeed, contradictory testimony was presented at the trial—testimony claiming Lettie had not been with Miss Windham for at least an hour around the time the crimes were committed. Yet that testimony—from a gardener who was known to drink heavily and to have a grudge against both Miss Windham and Lettie—was shaken up by Lettie’s attorney at the trial; ultimately the jury chose to believe Miss Windham rather than the gardener. The gardener, a young man of Portuguese descent named Pedro Fournier, claimed that he’d seen Lettie go into the house by herself shortly after Sarah Jane had returned from the grocer’s. Lettie’s attorney brought to light the fact that young Pedro had attempted to court Lettie and been spurned.

The butcher knife used to commit the crimes was never recovered, although a particularly large one was missing from the Hatch kitchen. Investigators believed the missing knife was the one used in the commission of the crime. The best the prosecution could do was show a knife “similar” to the one used in the commission of the murders.

It also hurt the prosecution’s case that the clothes Lettie was wearing at the time the bodies were found showed no trace of blood, and there was no way—given the bloodbath the Hatch house was turned into—that she could have committed the murders without becoming completely drenched in blood. And several people testified that the clothes she was wearing at the time of the bodies’ discovery were the same clothes she had on that morning. The prosecution insisted she had changed clothes to commit the crime, then destroyed the blood-spattered clothes and bathed, dressing again in the clothes witnesses had seen her in that morning—but it was only a theory they couldn’t prove, since they were unable to recover the clothes they theorized she’d changed into.

So, was Lettie Hatch indeed “Lettie Hatchet”—a notorious murderer—or merely a victim of circumstance? The secret died with Lettie in 1962, forty years after the crimes were committed. Many thought the fact she continued to live in the house where her parents were murdered was evidence of her guilt. “How,” people asked, “could anyone live in that house?” was their line of reasoning. Others, however, saw it as proof of Lettie’s innocence. Miss Windham, who died in 1947, lived with Lettie until her own death.

After the verdict of not guilty was returned, both women refused to ever discuss the case again. No killer was ever brought to justice for the crimes that were the talk of Cape Cod that winter of 1922. Whatever the two women knew, they took it to their graves with them.

As a side note, another, less well-known murder had occurred only a few weeks before the Hatch murders—that of a young artist named Orville Axelrod. His body was found hacked to death a few blocks from the Hatch house. Axelrod was known to be quite a ladies’ man, and no one was ever arrested for that crime, either. Many theorists have conjectured that the two crimes were somehow related—but no link could ever be conclusively drawn between the crimes. It is doubtful if Axelrod, who was part of the artists’ colony at the time and certainly not on the social plane of the Hatches, even was acquainted with the senator or his family.

Karen had read all of this, over and over. There was more she had printed out, too, more speculation, theories, and even photographs of all the principals in the case. The photograph of Lettie Hatch was from 1943. No longer a teenager, she looked serious and severe. She looked as though she never laughed, never smiled. She stared grimly at the camera, her hair pulled back into a tight bun behind her head, her blouse buttoned up to her chin. Her eyes were cold and distant. It wasn’t, Karen thought, hard to imagine her taking a butcher knife to her father and stepmother.

Stepmother.

That was the part that bothered Karen the most, even though she knew she was being stupid and irrational. A prominent father, a second wife almost the daughter’s age, a governess, and a teenaged girl—all living in this house over eighty years ago. The similarities—

Stop it, Karen, she commanded herself. Jessie is not Lettie Hatch, and I’m not Sarah Jane. In spite of herself, she shivered. She picked up the page with the photos of Horace and Sarah Jane. Horace was a frightening-looking man with intense eyes and a grimace on his face. It couldn’t have been easy to be married to him, she thought, and looked at the image of Sarah Jane. She wasn’t smiling either, but it was easy to see she had been quite a beauty—long curling blond hair, and a pert cupid’s bow mouth. She put the printouts down and shivered. So much death.

It brought her mind back to the first Mrs. Kaye. Her predecessor.

Why had Ivy killed herself?

And why didn’t Philip call?

Why the hell did I come up here?

Why did I marry him?

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. From the back of the house the waves kept up a steady crash on the beach. It was so quiet, so still. Not a mile away the town was a raucous party of life, but here, in this house, it was quiet…

Quiet as a grave.

Both Alice and Jessie were in bed. It was after ten. They’d had dinner together; Alice had made a nice chicken salad with vegetables on the side. They’d eaten in silence. Karen had again tried to draw Jessie out, get her to say something, anything, but she was either given a shrug in response or just ignored. The air of tension made her almost want to scream.

Finally, she stopped trying.

She tried to feel compassion for the girl. If I’m to be her stepmother, I’m going to have to try to feel something for her. Karen tried to imagine what it would be like to find her mother’s body, hanging lifelessly from some beam, and couldn’t. Her own mother was so vital and alive, always in motion, always talking or cleaning or cooking or doing something. She couldn’t imagine coming into a room and seeing her hanging from the rafters—

Stop it, Karen, you’re scaring yourself.

“I need to get out of this house,” she said aloud.

She headed into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She loved the shower—the three heads with strong sprays of water always felt so good. Feeling a little foolish, she locked the door behind her. She stepped into the water and let it flow over her. You need a break from this place, Karen, she commanded herself. It’ll do you some good to get out of the house.

She finished her shower, put on some clothes—a black T-shirt reading It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity, and a pair of jean shorts—and crept down the stairs. Jessie’s bedroom door was shut, her lights out. Karen grabbed her purse and checked for her keys and wallet.

She slipped out the front door into the warm night and walked down the street. By August vacation time, it was still early; the tourists were out in force on the sidewalk. Karen breathed the warm night air and tasted salt from the sea. She hadn’t really explored the town yet. It was high time she did so, if this was going to be her home.

She walked past several clubs, crowded full of people drinking, music blaring. She paused outside one of them, felt tempted to go inside, but finally just kept walking. The crowd was her age, early- to midtwenties, but she was different now. She wasn’t a single woman out for a good time anymore. She was a married woman.

Despite the warmth of the night, she felt cold and hugged her arms around herself. What was I thinking coming out tonight? I don’t want to deal with getting hit on or anything. I just want to drink something—drink a few somethings and forget about everything, forget that—

—forget that maybe marrying Philip was a mistake.

“Stop it, Karen Kaye.” She shook her head. Loud music was coming out of a bar just ahead of her. She held her head up high and paid a five-dollar cover to a bald-headed man with muscles bulging under his tight black T-shirt who smiled at her. She smiled back and entered the darkness.

She paused for a moment to get her bearings. Buoys, fishing nets, and other maritime paraphernalia hung from the aged weathered wooden walls. The place smelled of beer and sweat. Two pierced, tattooed men were slinging drinks at a long bar to her immediate left, and another couple of bars were placed throughout the room. There was a small dance floor off to the side, but few were actually dancing.

Here goes, Karen thought, and walked determinedly up to the bar and ordered a beer. She took a swig from the bottle and leaned back against the bar.

That’s when it hit her she was the only woman in the place.

Perfect, she thought, smiling to herself, a gay bar.

She had nothing against gay bars—back in New Orleans, she and Dave had often gone dancing at the gay bars in the Quarter. In fact, this was perfect. Absolutely perfect. Nobody would probably talk to her, but she’d be in a crowd of warm bodies nonetheless, and she sure didn’t have to worry about being hit on. She took another swig.

The music stopped, and the lights dimmed. “Ladies and gentlemen, the A House is proud to present the vocal stylings of Miss Zsa Zsa Lahore!”

Zsa Zsa Lahore? Karen stifled a giggle.

“Hello, everyone!” A small figure climbed up onto the small stage, wearing a black leather miniskirt over fishnet stockings and spike heels. A huge blonde Dolly Parton–esque wig towered over the performer’s head, and long curly thick blond ringlets dropped down to bare shoulders. Dangly rhinestone earrings swung wildly with every movement, and a teardrop necklace dropped itself right down into the cleavage inside a red satin shirt.

“Welcome to my fans and all of you wonderful tourists who keep our li’l town alive! Bless you and spend all your money! We need it!”

The crowd cheered, and Karen found herself smiling. She’d been to drag shows before in New Orleans, but without exception she almost always could tell the performers were men in dresses. Zsa Zsa, though, was a master illusionist. If Karen didn’t know better, she would have sworn Zsa Zsa was a woman.

She recognized the opening bars of Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” as Zsa Zsa began her act. And what an act it was. Zsa Zsa had the song down perfectly. She didn’t just stand there making minimal movements, she actually danced around, every once in a while letting loose with a high kick Karen wouldn’t have thought possible in that tight miniskirt. People crowded up to the stage to offer dollar bills, which Zsa Zsa gratefully accepted and tucked into her cleavage. The song ended, and another started—Karen recognized “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child—and she couldn’t help but laugh as Zsa Zsa worked her “booty” for the crowd, turning her back to them and bending over and slapping it.

At the end, she finished and bowed to thunderous applause, thanking the crowd before introducing the next performer—Floretta Flynn, a three-hundred-pound drag queen in full Nashville regalia. She launched into “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man” as Zsa Zsa disappeared into the crowd.

Karen turned back to the bar, finishing her beer and putting the empty down. The bartender was at the other end of the bar mixing what looked like kamikazes. She fished a five out of her wallet and tried to get his attention, to no avail.

“Hello, gorgeous,” a deep voice said next to her.

She turned her head and found herself looking right into Zsa Zsa’s heavily made up face. Zsa Zsa had the deepest green eyes she’d ever seen.

Karen smiled. “Hi,” she managed to say. “You were wonderful—and you look fabulous.”

“Aren’t you sweet?” Zsa Zsa adjusted her breasts with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “God, I can’t wait to get home and out of these fucking shoes!” She glared at the bartender, who was talking to a shirtless blond in his early twenties. “Joey!” she screamed in her cracked falsetto. “Who does a bitch have to blow in this bar to get a fucking drink?”

Joey walked down to them with a scowl on his face. “How many times do I have to tell you, Zsa Zsa, that you use your teeth too much for that offer to work?” He winked at Karen, who smiled.

“You hear what I have to put up with from the trash in this bar?” Zsa Zsa said to Karen, throwing her hands up to the sky. “Do you think Shania has to put up with this kind of crap?”

“Shania probably knows not to use her teeth,” Joey quipped as he mixed Zsa Zsa a vodka tonic without asking. He gave Karen a dazzling smile. “Another beer?”

“Thanks,” she said.

“Put it on my tab,” Zsa Zsa commanded regally.

“About your tab—”

“You have customers,” Zsa Zsa said pointedly. He laughed and moved back down the bar.

“Thank you,” Karen said, toasting Zsa Zsa with her bottle.

“You’re welcome.” Zsa Zsa took a long swig of her own drink. “So, tell me, where you from?”

“New Orleans originally.” Karen couldn’t help but smile. One of Zsa Zsa’s long false eyelashes was loose. “But I live here now—I just arrived yesterday.”

“A new local?” Zsa Zsa’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t hear about anyone new. Where do you live, honey?”

“In the east end. A gorgeous old Victorian on the water.”

“Hmmmm.” Zsa Zsa’s eyes lit up. “Don’t tell me you’re the new Mrs. Philip Kaye? I heard you were young, but you’re practically jailbait.”

Karen bristled. “I’m twenty-three.”

“Honey—it’s your business. Personally, I adore older men. Younger ones don’t really know what they’re doing in the sack, and I’m tired of breaking them in.” Zsa Zsa winked at her, and sighed. “You want to get out of here and get some pizza? I’m fucking starving. I was afraid to eat—this outfit is getting a little too tight, if you know what I mean. No offense, but this hardly seems like your kind of dive.”

What the hell, I wanted safe company, and it doesn’t get much safer than a drag queen, Karen thought, finishing her beer. “Lead on, Zsa Zsa.”

Spiritus Pizza wasn’t yet crowded—Karen had heard the stories of the place becoming a mob scene once the bars let out—so they were able to actually find a table inside. Zsa Zsa devoured her slice of pepperoni before Karen had finished putting red pepper on hers. “So, New Orleans girl, what do you think of our little town?”

“It’s nice.” Karen took a bite, and sighed. “I mean, I’ve only been here a few days, and I’ve been unpacking, but from what I’ve seen—”

“Different from New Orleans.” Zsa Zsa sighed and waved at a couple of men who walked in holding hands. “I’ve only been down there twice—I performed at Mardi Gras a couple of times—and I loved it there. Such a fun place. I’ve always wanted to go back when I wasn’t working, to really enjoy it, you know—but never managed to.”

“Well, if you ever need a tour guide, Zsa Zsa…”

“Call me Bobbie. That’s my real name—Bobbie Noble, when I’m not in this getup.” She laughed. “Bobbie Noble, carpenter by day—Zsa Zsa Lahore, superstar by night.”

“You’re a carpenter?”

“What can I say? I like working with wood.” Bobbie winked.

It took Karen a couple of seconds to get the joke. Then she laughed.

“Though I have to say,” Bobbie said, “it’s a bitch on the hands.” He held up his callused palms. “Hardly the hands of a lady, right?” He laughed. “So what do you do, Mrs. Kaye?”

“Karen.” She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Well, I want to be—” She stopped herself. She heard Philip’s voice in her head. Never say you want to be a writer—you are a writer. “I’m a writer,” she said obediently.

“Of course. Would Philip Kaye marry anything but?”

It hit her that she didn’t know what the first Mrs. Kaye had done.

“So have you published anything?” Bobbie waved over at a guy who had just walked in. “By the way, stay away from that one. She’s a crystal head.” Bobbie made a face. “Tweaking all the time.”

Karen smiled. The crystal head was gorgeous all the same. What gene did gay guys have that made them all so sexy?

“To answer your question,” she said, moving her eyes back to Bobbie, “I haven’t published anything yet, but I’m writing a murder mystery.”

Bobbie made a face. “Weeeeelll, I’d say you certainly live in the right house for that.”

“You mean the Hatches.”

“I don’t mean the Munsters.”

“I’ve heard all about the grisly murders. In fact, I came out tonight trying to forget them.”

“Consider the subject closed then.”

“Actually,” Karen said, “how long have you been in Provincetown?”

“Oh God, girl. Too long. Sometimes I think I was here before the Pilgrims got off their boat.”

Karen played with the crust of her pizza. “Well, by any chance, do you know anything about the first Mrs. Kaye?”

Bobbie gave her a look. “Didn’t your husband tell you?”

Karen blushed. “All I know is that she hanged herself. I just found out about it a couple of days ago.”

Bobbie looked at her with compassion. “Ivy Kaye was a strange lady. She was a poet, but I never read anything she wrote, you know? But she looked like one—she always dressed in black and had this tortured look on her face. She liked to hang out in coffee shops, and always had a notebook with her.”

Just like Jessie.

“That poor Jessie,” Bobbie said, shaking his head. “The kids around her call her ‘Spook,’ you know. After her mother died, she started dressing like her and acting like her—like she’s trying to be her mom or something.”

“Well, I’m going to be a good stepmom. At least, I hope I will be.”

“Oh, she needs it, honey. She needs something. Nothing against your husband, of course, because I’m a huge, huge, huge fan, but…” Bobbie paused. “It’s just that he’s gone so much, and I see poor little Jessie roaming all over town, all by herself.” He took a sip of his Diet Coke. “I take it Mr. Kaye is out of town now, huh? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be out prowling gay bars.”

Karen smiled weakly. “A book tour.”

Bobbie nodded. “Well, you’ll be good for Jessie. I mean, imagine what it must have been like to come home and find your mom hanging in the living room. No note, no explanation, nothing.”

Karen covered her face with her hands, then removed them, looking over at Bobbie’s heavily madeup face. “I have to admit the house kind of creeps me out. All of its history. Ivy Kaye. Lettie Hatch…”

“Honey, the Hatch murders were more than eighty years ago. It’s just a house where some bad things happened. You’re bringing new energy in that’s gonna push all that bad shit right out.” He leaned in closer to her. “You know, I’ve always wanted to see the inside of that house.”

Karen smirked. “There’s no blood on the floor, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Karen.” Bobbie placed a hand over his heart. “You wound me for thinking my motives so crass. It’s just that it’s a classic example of New England Victorian architecture, that’s all.”

Karen laughed. “Sorry.” She thought of something. “You’re a carpenter, right? Do you do renovations?”

“My bread and butter.” He pulled off his wig. For the first time Karen saw his own short, thick black hair. “This is just for fun.”

“Well…” Karen hesitated, but then remembered Philip saying, It’s your money now, too. “I’d like to fix the attic up into an office. Would that be something you’d be able to do?”

Bobbie beamed. “Honey, I have the feeling this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”

They knocked together the paper cups of Diet Coke.