Home Before Dark: A Novel (21 page)

In the morning, I spend an hour blow-drying my still-damp clothes before checking out of the motel. It says a lot about the accommodations in Bartleby that I’d rather return to an allegedly haunted house that had a skeleton in the ceiling than spend another night at the Two Pines.

But it’s more than just the sad state of the motel that brings me back to Baneberry Hall. I return because I need to. The truth—about why we left, about why my father kept coming back, about what happened to poor Petra—is getting closer. Now it’s just a matter of finding it.

I even get a police escort, courtesy of Chief Alcott, who stops by the motel as I’m checking out to give me the all-clear to return home. She insists on steering her battered Dodge Charger ahead of me the whole way home. When we reach Baneberry Hall, I understand why.

The front gate is blocked by reporters from both print and television. Several news vans have set up camp on the side of the road, their back doors open and beefy cameramen waiting inside like bored children. They leap from their vans when we pull up to the gate, cameras swinging my way. The reporters crush around my truck, including
Brian Prince, his bow tie giving his I-told-you-so expression an extra veneer of smugness.

“Maggie!” he shouts. “Do you think your father murdered Petra Ditmer?”

I keep driving, inching the truck forward until I’m at the gate. Chief Alcott climbs out of her cruiser, armed with the keys I handed to her before we left the Two Pines. She ambles through the crowd and unlocks the gate.

“Come on now,” she says to the scrum of reporters, clearing them with several sweeps of her arms. “Let her through.”

Brian Prince is the last to move. He raps on the truck’s window, begging me for a quote.

“Talk to me, Maggie. Tell me your side of the story.”

I pound the gas pedal and the truck surges forward, leaving Brian flailing in a cloud of dust. I don’t slow until I’m up the hill and in front of Baneberry Hall. It looks more sinister now than it did this time yesterday, even though I know that’s impossible. The only things that have changed are what I now know about the place and the length of broken police tape dangling from the front door.

Chief Alcott pulls into the driveway behind me. She gets out of her Charger, and I hop out of the truck. We stand at a distance, facing each other like movie cowboys before a gunfight, both of us fully aware that we might not be on the same side. It all depends on how guilty I think my father is, something that changes by the minute.

“I was hoping we could talk,” she says. “The folks in Waterbury did a preliminary examination of the remains last night.”

“It’s Petra, isn’t it?”

“Not officially. They still need to check dental records. But the bones belonged to a female in her late teens. So, it’s looking pretty likely that it’s her.”

Even though I’m not surprised, the news leaves me feeling unmoored. I go to the porch and sit on the steps, my damp jeans chafing
my thighs. I’d feel more comfortable in a change of clothes, but I’m not quite ready to enter Baneberry Hall.

“Do they know her cause of death?”

“Not definitively,” Chief Alcott says. “Her skull was fractured. That’s the only damage they could positively identify. They can’t conclude that’s what killed her. That’ll be hard to do, considering the condition those bones were in.”

“Why did you think Petra ran away all those years ago?” I say.

“Who says I did?”

“Brian Prince.”

“Figures,” she mutters. “The truth is that I
did
suspect something might have happened to Petra.”

“Why didn’t you do anything about it?”

“I wasn’t in charge, so I didn’t call the shots. That was three chiefs ago. No one else on the force gave two shits about a teenage girl. I did, but I stayed quiet anyway, which is something I’ve regretted every damn day for the past twenty-five years.” Chief Alcott takes a deep breath to collect herself. “But now I
do
get to call the shots. And I want to know what happened to that poor girl. So, let’s talk suspects. Other than your father, who else do you think could have put that body under your floorboards?”

“I should be asking you that,” I say. “Come to think of it, should we be discussing this at all?”

The chief removes her hat and runs a hand through her short silver hair. “I don’t see any harm in us talking. I’m just trying to cover all the bases. You shouldn’t consider me the enemy, Maggie.”

“You think my father murdered someone.”

“You haven’t given me any reason to think otherwise.”

Had my mother called me back, I might be better equipped for this conversation. But she didn’t, even after I called her again this morning. Now I can only blindly toss theories like darts in a dive bar.

“I know my father looks guilty,” I say. “And, for all I know, he
might have done it. But if he did, then it doesn’t make sense why he mentioned Petra so much in his book. If he had some kind of affair with her, like Brian Prince thinks, or he killed her, like probably everyone thinks, it would have made more sense not to mention her at all.”

“Maybe that’s what he was hoping we’d think,” Chief Alcott suggests.

“Or maybe someone else did it.”

The chief jerks her head in the direction of the front door. “There wasn’t a whole lot of people with access to that house.”

“Walt Hibbets,” I say. “He had keys to the place.”

“True,” Chief Alcott says. “But what would his motive have been? Petra lived across the road from him all her life. He would have had plenty of chances to kill her. Not that old Walt was the killing type. But if he was, why wait until then?”

“Maybe he knew Baneberry Hall was empty,” I say, grasping. “And he put the body there to frame my father.”

“Hiding a body isn’t the best way to frame someone. But it’s interesting you mentioned someone from the Hibbets family.” The chief’s tone is loaded, making me squirm in discomfort. My jeans squeak on the steps. “I was surprised to see Dane here yesterday.”

“He’s helping me work on the house,” I say. “Why is that a surprise? He’s a contractor, after all, although he said business was light.”

“Did you ever stop to wonder why?”

I hadn’t. I didn’t give it any thought whatsoever. I needed help, Dane was there, we made a deal.

“What are you getting at?” I ask.

“I’m saying that most folks here aren’t too keen on hiring an ex-con,” the chief says.

My breath catches in my throat. This bit of news isn’t quite as shocking as yesterday’s events, but few things are.

“What did he do?”

“Aggravated assault,” the chief says. “This was in Burlington. About eight years back. There was a bar fight. Dane got overzealous and beat the other guy until he was unconscious. Cut him up real bad, to boot. His victim spent a month in the hospital, and Dane spent a year in prison.”

My mind seizes on an image of Dane in a dive bar, slamming his fist repeatedly into a stranger’s dazed, bloody face. I want to think he isn’t capable of such violence, but I’m unsure of everything, at least when it comes to the men in my life.

Chief Alcott senses this and says, “I wouldn’t fret over it, if I were you.” She stands, but not before giving my knee a friendly pat. “You have bigger things to worry about.”

She puts her hat back on, returns to her cruiser, and drives away, leaving me alone on the steps to consider three things. One, that Dane—the man I came
this
close to sleeping with last night—has a violent streak. Two, that I never did come up with a good reason as to why Chief Alcott shouldn’t suspect my father. And three, that it’s possible she brought up the former to prevent me from doing the latter.

This prompts one last thought—that despite her assurances to the contrary, maybe Chief Tess Alcott has her own agenda.

I don’t enter the house until thirty minutes after Chief Alcott departs. Part of that time is spent talking to an understandably pissed-off Allie.

“Why didn’t you tell me a dead girl was found inside Baneberry Hall?” she says as soon as I answer the phone.

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Well, I am,” she says. “Especially because I had to see it on Twitter. ‘Body found in
House of Horrors
mansion.’ That’s what the headline said. And for a second, I thought it was you.”

My heart sinks, for multiple reasons. I hate the fact that Allie,
even for a moment, thought something bad had happened to me. Then there’s the matter of Baneberry Hall once again being national news. Because if Allie saw it, lots of people have as well.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have told you.”

“Damn right, you should have.”

“But everything is crazy right now. I found the body of that poor girl, and the police think my father did it, and someone broke into the house.”

“There was an intruder?” Allie says, unable to conceal her alarm. “When?”

“Two nights ago. They didn’t do anything. Just roamed through the house a little.”

“That sounds like something,” Allie says.

“I’m not in any danger.”

“Yet.” Allie pauses to take a calming breath I can hear through the phone. “Maggie, I get that you need answers. I really do. But this isn’t worth it.”

“It will be,” I say. “Something happened in that house the night we left. And I’ve spent most of my life wondering what it was. I can’t leave now. I have to see this through.”

Allie says she understands, even though it’s clear she doesn’t. I don’t expect her to. Most people faced with such a fucked-up situation would be content to go home, let the police handle it, and wait for answers. But cut-and-dried answers about how Petra died will tell me only half the story.

I need context.

I need details.

I need
truth
.

If my father killed Petra, I want to know about it, mostly because then I’ll know how to feel about him.

I came here hoping to forgive my father.

I won’t be able to forgive a murderer.

Which is why I also can’t let go of the idea that he’s innocent. I am my father’s daughter. We chose different paths and we had our share of disagreements, but I had more in common with him than I do with my mother. He and I were far more alike than we were different. If he’s a killer, what does that make me?

After ending the call with Allie, it takes me ten more minutes before I get the courage to enter Baneberry Hall. On my way in, I yank off the remnant of police tape, which flutters away like a windblown leaf. I pause in the vestibule, tentative. A replay of my arrival. The only difference is that now Baneberry Hall actually feels haunted.

I tread quietly deeper into the house. Out of respect to Petra, I suppose. Or maybe a subconscious fear that her spirit still lingers. In the Indigo Room, the area rug’s been rolled against the wall. The police took the floorboards that used to lie under it as evidence. Now there’s a hole in the floor roughly the same size and shape as a child’s coffin.

I peer through it to the kitchen below, which has been cleared of all ceiling debris. That’s likely also evidence now, swept into cardboard boxes and carried out of the house.

I go to the parlor next. Sitting on the hulking secretary desk is the photo of my family in its gold frame. I turn it around and face the image of us together and happy and completely oblivious about what was to come. My handsome, charming father. My smiling mother. Gap-toothed me. All of them strangers to me now.

I spend a moment gazing wistfully at the picture.

Then I slam it against the desk.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I keep slamming until the glass is broken into a hundred pieces, the metal is bent, and the image of my family is creased beyond recognition.

A more accurate depiction.

My actions, though cathartic, have left the desk littered with glass shards. I try to sweep them together with the nearest piece of paper I can find, which turns out to be the folded note bearing that single, quizzical word.

WHERE??

I’d forgotten about it in the turmoil of the last few days. At the time, I had no idea what it meant. Seeing it again brings a flash of understanding.

Petra.

Someone had been looking for her, even if the police weren’t. And they came right to the source—my father.

I search the desk, looking for similar messages. I find them in a lower drawer. Stuffed inside, in no discernible order, are dozens of sheets of paper. Some are folded. Others lie flat. Some bear edges made crisp by time. Others are as white as down.

I pick one up, its message written in a wide, messy script.

WHY?

I grab another page. A yellow-edged one. The handwriting is the same, albeit slightly neater. The lines aren’t as wobbly. The script less frenzied.

TELL ME WHERE SHE IS

I scoop up every page that’s been shoved into the desk, arranging them in a flat pile. I then shuffle through them, reading each one. They all bear similar messages.

WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER????

I sort through the stack again, slapping the pages on top of one another like a bank teller counting out cash.

There are twenty-four of them.