The Third Heiress (31 page)

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Authors: Brenda Joyce

BOOK: The Third Heiress
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She discovered a door, undoubtedly leading to the kitchen, and it wasn’t boarded up. But a padlock was on the door, hanging there with a thick, rusty chain. Jill grabbed the chain and tugged. It was not going to break apart in her hands.
Jill suddenly stopped what she was doing, chills sweeping over her. She could hear Alex in front of the house, prying the plywood off of the front door. The hairs on her nape felt as if they were prickling. She almost felt as if she were being watched.
Jill dropped the padlock, stepping away from the side door. She glanced around, at the overgrown lawn, the few trees in the yard, the stone wall that abutted the road. She did not see anyone, but the odd feeling remained.
If anything, it grew stronger.
As if someone were spying upon them—upon her.
Jill decided to return to the front of the house, where Alex was. She began to move away, hurrying now, glancing over her shoulder, when she tripped.
She looked down. It was only the trapdoor of a root cellar, so overgrown with grass and weeds that it was hardly visible.
Almost running, she rushed around the house as Alex pulled the last piece of plywood from the front door. “Just in time,” he said merrily. Then he stared. “What’s wrong now?”
“Nothing.” She forced a smile, breathless, her pulse pounding. She was not going to tell Alex she had felt a presence lurking about, in the yard, perhaps, or the woods. He already questioned her judgment, he would think her a certifiable nut.
Jill told herself that if she had not been imagining things, it had
probably just been a village teenager with nothing better to do than loiter and eavesdrop.
Alex twisted the heavy brass knob. It turned readily and the door swung open. Jill hurried over, peering past him.
A small parlor greeted her view, the furnishings covered in faded sheets, as she had seen before from the window. There was a stone hearth in the parlor as well. They entered, almost cautiously. The floors were dark oak. A stairwell led to the upstairs directly in front of them.
Alex sniffed the air. “Odd,” he said.
Jill did not relax. She was far more tense now than before. Maybe coming to Coke’s Way, maybe exploring the tower, had been mistake. “What’s odd?” she asked. She did not smell anything unusual.
“Nothing,” he said with a shake of his head.
Jill walked cautiously past him, into the parlor. Only the couch and chairs had been covered. A long, not particularly exciting side table was against one wall. It was empty except for a very outdated lamp that might have been gas-lit and some old, faded hardcover books. No letters were even visible on their fabric bindings.
Alex walked past her, to the table. He picked up a book, turning it over, opening it. “A Henry James novel,” he mused.
“Washington Square.”
He flipped to a front page. “It’s a first edition.”
Jill was seized with excitement. She hurried to him. “I wonder if Kate read that book? Is there an inscription? Anything?”
“No.” He handed it to her. His gaze was piercing. “Don’t jump ahead of the game.”
She decided not to offer a rebuttal. Kate had stayed here. Either that, or she had stayed in the tower.
Jill had never been more certain of anything.
Alex walked past her into a small kitchen. Jill was now inspecting the other book, which was by Thomas Melville. Then she heard Alex exclaim from the kitchen. “Christ!”
She rushed to the doorway and found him standing in the center of the poorly illuminated room, with stone floors, wooden rafters, and a large brick fireplace at one end. Then she realized why he had cried out.
There was a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes on the wooden counter. Beside it was a container of instant coffee. Some plates and silverware were in a rubber drying rack beside the sink.
Alex faced her. “This place didn’t smell as if it had been closed up for years and years. Look at this! Someone was here—recently.” He picked up
the cereal box and dumped some cereal into his hand. “But not that recently. This cereal’s past its prime.”
“Maybe it was a homeless person,” Jill suggested, quite certain it was not.
“How did he get in?” Alex returned, looking under the sink. Jill realized he was inspecting the garbage—but it had been emptied.
“There’s a side door, but it’s padlocked,” Jill told him. “Maybe someone has the key.”
“Or a homeless person could have used one of the windows. We’ll check when we leave.”
Jill thought about the upstairs windows on the second floor of the left side of the house—which were not boarded up. “Let’s go upstairs.”
They left the kitchen, traversed the parlor, Alex pausing to glance at the hearth. “Charred kindling,” he announced. “And ashes.” He rose to his full height. “Someone made themselves right at home. I’ll check to see if we leased this place out to some oddball recently.”
They walked upstairs in silence, Jill preceding Alex now. She did not pause, going to the end of the corridor. “Do you know something that I don’t know?” Alex asked from behind her.
“Didn’t you notice the windows on this side of the house?” Jill returned. The last door was open. The other two doors they had just passed had been closed.
Uncertain of what to expect, Jill paused on the bedroom’s threshold. A single bed with four low posters was in the center of the room. A blue quilt had been pulled up over white cotton sheets. An electric lamp was on the bedside table. A glass ashtray was beside the lamp and there was an electric heater on the floor.
Jill’s glance swung around. There was a bureau on the facing wall with a mirror on top of it. While the bureau and mirror, like the bed, dated back perhaps a century, if not more, the items on top of the bureau, like the sheets and quilt and heater, did not.
Jill saw a pile of magazines. Her heart stopped. The top one was
Photography Today
and she recognized it immediately.
“Hal stayed here,” Alex said from behind her. He, too, had seen the magazines. “I just peeked in the bathroom. There’re towels, soap, shaving cream, a razor.”
Jill could not move. Hal had stayed here, perhaps just before she, Jill, had met him. And this place was connected to Kate. Why had Hal stayed here? Or was the question now absurd?
He had stayed here because of Kate. Jill felt it.
She sat down on the bed, nauseous and shaken. Could she handle the truth? Could she handle more discoveries about the man she had once, completely, loved?
What if Hal had been with her because she was Kate’s great-granddaughter?
Alex had moved past her and opened up the bureau drawers. They were empty. He then sorted through the magazines, his hands stilling. And Jill saw that a manila envelope lay beneath the stack.
A feeling of overwhelming dread settled over her and she stiffened, hands clasped tightly in her lap, waiting for the next blow.
As Alex opened the envelope, he pulled out a series of eighty-by-ten glossies. Even from a distance, Jill could tell they were black-and-white. She did not have to see them to know that they were Hal’s.
He stared at the top one, not saying a word. Jill grew concerned. His hands seemed to tremble, and a slight pink color had crept along his high cheekbones.
He slipped it beneath the others, stared at the second one, then quickly went through the dozen or so photographs.
“What is it?” Jill was standing. She hadn’t been aware of rising to her feet. Her voice had sounded like a croak.
He faced her. “Here.” He shoved the stack at her.
Jill took one look at the photo, instantly recognizing Hal’s work, and in the next instant, she almost fainted, because she was staring at Kate, naked and so very beautiful, curled up in a plush upholstered chair. The pose was so tasteful that the photograph could have been in
Vogue
magazine. Neither her nipples nor her pubis was visible, but she was rampant femininity and sensuality rolled into one, her breasts spilling over her folded arms, her narrow waist giving way to a lush hip and curved thighs. Her head was lolling back, and there was such a suggestive and dreamy look in her eyes that it was clear that she was in love with the photographer.
But Hal could not have photographed Kate.
Instantly Jill realized she was looking at
herself
, not at Kate.
She recalled the shoot immediately, her hands shaking, and it felt as though her cheeks had erupted into fire.
She stared at herself. She did not really look this way—Hal had softened the angles of her body and her face with his skillful manipulation of light and shadow. God, for one instant, one terrifying instant, she had thought she was looking at Kate.
Her hands shaking more than before, she flipped through. The other
shots were more revealing—in one she was standing, facing the camera almost but not quite directly, pushing back her hair with one hand, sunlight streaming onto one side of her body from an open window. In this shot she did not look like Kate at all—she was all lean, toned muscle, a dancer with a dancer’s body. Jill grimaced and held the stack of glossies to her chest.
Her heart was pounding. She managed to meet Alex’s gaze.
He did not smile. “Well, Hal was very talented—but we already knew that.”
What could she say? “Yes.” Then, “You’re blushing.” She tried to keep her tone casual. She knew she failed. “You’ve seen naked women before.”
“Not you.” Their gazes locked.
Jill stood, retrieved the envelope, shoved the photos inside, and laid it back on the bureau.
“Did you model for him often?”
Jill met his eyes again. He had tried to sound casual and he had also failed. Somehow the air had thickened in the room. “Sometimes. Actually, yes. But not always nude.”
“You look great, actually,” Alex said, his gaze unwavering.
Jill couldn’t look away. It was a stupidly male comment, but she could not chastise him. She could not even respond. Her mind had gone blank, her feelings, numb.
“Well,” Alex said. “I guess you’d better keep these.” He picked up the manila envelope and handed it to her. “How about lunch? I don’t really know what we were looking for, but we certainly found out something.” Without waiting for her, he strode to the door and through it.
Jill stared after him. It was a long moment before she could move; she could only think.
Hal had been in love with Kate.
She was certain of it.
J
ill sloshed through shallow puddles in the park behind Stainesmore. Her mind refused to quit. She almost did not know what to do with herself.
Hal had photographed her in such a way that she had looked exactly like Kate—her face appearing rounder, her body more lush, and her hair, pushed untidily up, had given the illusion that it was long and curly. Oh, God.
The pieces of the puzzle were falling together—and Jill did not like it one bit.
Hal, Kate, herself. Clearly, amazingly, the three of them formed some kind of time-crossed lover’s triangle. Maybe Hal had even tracked her down because of Kate. It was a horrid notion.
And Jill couldn’t even begin to speculate on how Marisa fit in. But she felt sorrier for her now than she had before. Loving Hal had not been easy for either of them, apparently.
There was a small stabbing pain below her left breast. At least Alex had not noticed the similarity. She didn’t know why this small fact relieved her, but it did.
She had been walking for a long time, taking small bites out of a granola bar that she had found in her pocket. The rain had finally ceased, but a thick mist hung over the grounds, making it hard to see. Jill paused, looking back over her shoulder the way she had come. She was stunned to find that she could not even see a turret or chimney of the house.
She was about to go back, but something made her glance around. The mist swirled. It lifted slightly. Jill made out the faint outlines of a chapel perhaps a hundred yards to her right.
She squinted. It must be the very same chapel she had noticed when Alex had driven her back from Coke’s Way a few hours ago. She was disoriented—she had no sense of direction—but the small chapel had to be on the other side of the road, which Jill could not see.
Not that it mattered. She should go back before she got lost.
The mist continued to swirl, and before Jill could turn, she saw several headstones shimmering in the wet fog directly ahead of her. She had somehow stumbled across a cemetery.
The cemetery did not interest her, especially as it was getting darker out. But she wondered if it belonged to the family, or to the surrounding villages. Jill walked over to the closest granite stone and read the name Martha Watts Benson upon it. The dates for this particular soul were given as February 11, 1901–May 1, 1954. Well, that answered that question, she thought.
Jill turned to go, intending to head back to Stainesmore, hoping that she would not get lost. That possibility seemed distinct now, because Jill had no markers to orient herself with. Damn it, she thought.

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