The Back Door of Midnight (22 page)

And what if someone else had made the connection and removed the evidence that Uncle Will hung out here? I stopped laughing. My eyes moved from the pond to the dark hedge set back from it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hedge, a tall wall of clipped bushes, forty or fifty feet long. Its top, traced in moonlight, was artfully cut to form notches, like those in the battlements of a castle. My eyes dropped down to the base, where a rectangle was cut through the greenery: the doorway I had passed through two times in the last ten days. I glanced back at the pond and shivered. When the owners were gone, this was more than a peaceful spot to fish; it was a perfect place for murder.

Who knew that Uncle Will came here? Aunt Iris, and Audrey, even Elliot Gill could have known. Anyone who happened to be on the water at the right time might have seen Uncle Will arrive in his boat, especially if this was a regular
habit of his. The police had found the boat adrift some distance down the creek. It had probably been cut free by his killer, so the police wouldn’t guess where my uncle had been fishing. Of course, it was possible that, as longtime neighbors, Will and Iris knew a way onto the estate that I hadn’t found; Audrey, too, as a former employee.

I passed through the door in the shrubbery and found myself in an enclosed garden, the hedge and two brick walls making three sides of the square area, the house making the fourth. Lights flicked on, outside lights—there was probably a motion sensor. I stood in the shadow of the hedge for several minutes, studying the house. Every window was dark. If there was a resident caretaker, it was likely that his windows faced the swampy or wooded sides, rather than the scenic view of pond, garden, and creek.

I surveyed the garden, which was divided by crushed stone paths into four sections with a gazebo at the center. “Well, hello,” I said softly. To my right was a human-size rabbit, shrubbery sculpted into a tall rabbit with a humanlike stance. Next to him was another tall bush pruned into the figure of a cat, and on the other side of the garden were two more topiary figures, a caterpillar that appeared to be sitting on a mushroom and some kind of rodent—a dormouse, of course! He belonged, along with the Cheshire cat, white rabbit, and caterpillar, to
Alice in Wonderland.

It was a children’s garden and, like a deserted playground, it felt lonely. While summer was in bloom everywhere else in Wisteria, these flower beds had only the headless stalks and papery leaves of dead spring flowers. I walked the garden paths, pausing to study the rabbit and the cat. Rabbit and cat! Amazed at finding the place that had figured in my O.B.E., I had momentarily forgotten about Joanna’s words:
The snake slides past a rabbit, glides past a cat.
The images she had “seen” could have been drawn from here. Topiary gardens, requiring years of pruning to create, were maintained for decades and longer. It was possible that this garden had been kept by Mick Sanchez.

Walking the perimeter of the garden with Joanna’s images swirling in my mind, I tripped. A hose had been left out, a long rubber snake with a metal head pointing to the gazebo. I turned and strolled toward the wooden structure.

The gazebo had been designed like a child’s playhouse. Four of its six sides had windows with shutters, each shutter carved with a heart. The other two sides, one facing the house, and its opposite, facing the entrance through the hedge, had doorways with a carved heart above each of them. I mounted the four steps up to the gazebo and stood inside, pivoting slowly, looking out at the garden. From this focal point, the pattern formed by each quadrant of dried stalks became clear: hearts.

Child-size chairs were pushed over to one side of the
structure. I glanced down, then clicked on my flashlight to survey the floor. A film of dirt and pollen covered the portion facing the house, but the section facing the door in the hedge, and the steps down from it, had been washed clean. I was about to turn off my light when I noticed a deep groove in the wood flooring. I traced it: a square, a door to storage beneath the gazebo. Was this my “rabbit hole,” part of my—and Uncle Will’s—route to the fire site?

It was easy to imagine a murder scenario: Uncle Will holding his fishing rod, gazing peacefully at the pond, struck on the back of the head by someone he never saw coming; Uncle Will being dragged from the pond, through the hedge, past the topiary rabbit; Uncle Will’s body stored beneath the gazebo, the murderer waiting for a way to dispose of it. I figured that the hose had been used to wash down the bloody track left behind.

Although I had followed the path of Uncle Will’s murder during my O.B.E., I didn’t think I had actually been present at his death. I would have sensed someone else on the paths of this garden, the way I had sensed the crowd on the night of the fire. Somehow, for some reason, Uncle Will chose to lead me along the path he had traveled from his death to the fire. I gazed down at the door to the storage area. There could be evidence here: hair, threads from clothing, a weapon, somthing. I knelt down.
Feeling around the edge of the door, I found an indentation that allowed me to slip my fingers under the boards and lift.

I stared in horror. The beam of my flashlight illuminated the lower end of a leg. The victim’s foot was bare, the skin pale and splotchy. My stomach heaved, and I thought I was going to throw up. Then the foot moved.

“AUNT IRIS. WHAT
are you doing in there?”

She slowly shifted position, her face edging out of the shadow created by the gazebo’s flooring. “Get in.”

“No way,” I said.

“You must get in.”

She reached up to grasp my arm. I pulled back.

“You must do what I say.”

“I won’t.”

I shone my light into the dark hole, but I couldn’t tell how big it was or what it contained. Aunt Iris’s eyes shone back at me with a peculiar light. I wasn’t sure if I was gazing into the eyes of a psychic or a madwoman. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be the next one to die.

“Then you must get in, Anna.”

She’d spoken as if she had heard my thoughts, and she had called me Anna. The floodlights, which I had triggered earlier
and which had begun to dim, suddenly flashed on again.
Someone else is here,
I thought.

Iris gripped my arms, pulling with all her strength. “If harm comes to you, William will never forgive me. Get in!”

The floodlights went off quickly, not fading, the way they had before. There was no time to reason through the situation. I climbed into the hole with her and lowered the door.

The area beneath the gazebo was about three feet deep and appeared to extend to the edges of the structure.

“Put out your light,” Aunt Iris said. “It’ll shine through the cracks.”

I did so with great reluctance. The moist earth smelled strong, a mix of something cloyingly sweet—mulch, I thought—and something rotten that I couldn’t identify.

Aunt Iris heard me sniffing. “What do you smell?”

“I—I don’t know. It’s cold in here.”

“He can’t help it.”

I did not find it reassuring that she believed Uncle Will was in there with us. After all that had happened, I was no longer certain that only the things I saw existed. I sat hunched, the wetness of the earth seeping through my shorts. When I rested my hands on the dirt beneath me, it felt sticky. Blood-soaked, I thought.

“His blood has dried,” Aunt Iris assured me.

“Dried here?”

“Yes. Be quiet. She’s coming.”

“Who?”

“Quiet!”

My ears strained to hear something. Minutes ticked by. No one came. Still, something was going on with the outside lights.

“Aunt Iris, why are you hiding in here?” I whispered.

“I don’t exactly know.”

Oh, great,
I thought.

“I knew I had to come here, just as you and she had to come here, but I don’t know which one of us is drawing the other two.”

I repeated her words in my head, trying to tease out their meaning.

“Anna?” The voice came from beyond the gazebo, from the direction of the house. “Anna, where are you? Are you all right?”

Breathing a sigh of relief, I pressed my fingertips against the boards above us to open the door. Aunt Iris’s powerful hands grasped mine and pulled them down.

“It’s Marcy,” I said.

“Of course it is!” she hissed.

“But—” I stopped. My aunt’s tone of voice was that of a frustrated teacher speaking to a student who was slow to catch on. I struggled to piece together events.

I had left a note for Zack. Marcy had probably read it. She considered me her responsibility. She probably had keys to the property, knew the gate code, and—no, wait—I hadn’t told Zack I was coming here. I hadn’t even mentioned borrowing the boat.

“She’ll look in here,” Iris whispered. “Push back as far as you can from the opening. I’ll go out and talk to her.”

I heard footsteps on the gravel. Marcy was approaching the gazebo, walking more slowly as she drew closer. Aunt Iris gave me a final shove with her bare foot, raised the trapdoor, and climbed out.

“Well, look who it is.” Marcy’s voice had a strange flatness to it; I couldn’t tell if she was surprised.

“Hello, Marcy. I was expecting you.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Same thing as you are,” Aunt Iris replied.

“I don’t think so.”

“Cleaning up,” Aunt Iris went on. “You’ve been sloppy, leaving the hose out, washing only half the gazebo floor. I hope you properly disposed of the weapon.”

“I did.”

“And his fishing gear?”

“Temporarily, but I will take care of it. Thomas isn’t due back from his vacation for another week. No one’s minding the
place, so there was no need to hurry. Nor was it possible—I’ve had my hands full, keeping track of Anna.”

“I want you to leave her alone, Marcy.”

“Do you, now? Don’t tell me, you’ve become fond of her!” There was something creepy about Marcy’s voice—an artificial cheerfulness. Then it darkened. “You foolish old woman, don’t you realize why Anna has come?”

“Because William died.”

“Because William was applying for guardianship of you. We have discussed this a hundred times. Once he had guardianship, he would have legal control over your money—”

“I’m not listening to you,” Iris said defiantly.

“Control over where and how you live, control over your health care—”

“I’m not listening!”

“Control over your entire life. And once he did, he and Anna would arrange to have you committed.”

“No!”

“He did it before,” Marcy reminded her. “Or have you forgotten those days with your special, sniffling, filthy-haired friends?”

“William promised he’d take care of me.”

“Of course. Of course he’d take care of you, by shipping you off to an asylum.”

“No! He promised he wouldn’t do that again. He—he swore it.” Aunt Iris’s voice, confident when the argument started, had begun to waver.

“It wouldn’t require much effort,” Marcy continued calmly, “not with his legal power and a bright young niece to support his claims. That’s why you killed him, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t.”

“Tell the truth,” Marcy challenged.

“I
didn’t
!” Aunt Iris insisted, but her denial melted to a rough whisper. “At least, I don’t remember doing it.”

“You let it happen,” Marcy replied. “You knew I would try and you let me. Just like you let me kill Joanna.”

I shoved my fist in my mouth to keep any sound from escaping.

“I didn’t want you to,” Iris argued. “I didn’t mean for you to.”

“What else could you have intended? You told me Joanna was using her gift, figuring out how Mick died,” Marcy said. “It wasn’t a matter of what you didn’t want to happen but, rather, what you wanted more: whatever was best for your little girl. I’ll always be your little girl. You’ll always love me best, Mommy Iris.” Marcy’s childlike lisp turned my skin to gooseflesh. “So, where is Anna?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know.”

“But you know what has to be done, don’t you, Mommy Iris? Perhaps you foresaw it.”

“I can’t stand any more killing!”

“Anna is piecing together our story, and she is not going to give up on it. There’s some family resemblance between her and me. We have the same approach to life’s little challenges, and I have found that unexpectedly enjoyable. It’s unfortunate that we both can’t survive this.”

“I can’t stand the voices!” Iris cried. “I can’t endure any more ghosts!”

“Close your eyes, Mommy Iris, and you won’t see them.”

“I will always see them,” Iris replied. “Only a—a psychotic, heartless person would not.”

There was a moment of silence, followed by a sound that made my muscles tighten, a soft, fleshy thump.

“Don’t!” Aunt Iris cried. “Don’t!”

I pushed open the trapdoor. Aunt Iris lay sprawled on the ground. Marcy, with her hand still raised, turned quickly. “Pop goes the weasel.”

“If you’ve hurt her . . . ,” I warned, starting toward Aunt Iris.

“I find it touching the way you two have bonded.”

The pale skin of Iris’s left cheek was darkening with a bruise, and the corner of her mouth oozed blood. I tried to raise her, but she was dazed, unable to sit up without my arm around her.
If I ran for help, I’d have to leave her behind.

“There was no need to come to her rescue,” Marcy told me, resentment seeping into her voice. “I wouldn’t kill my own mother.”

“You killed your father,” I replied. “The image in my mother’s reading referred to you. You were the seed of Mick that produced a snake rather than a flower.”

“He hated me.”

“You killed him in the car accident. The snake was masked. I don’t know how you pulled it off, but his death only appeared to be a heart attack.”

Marcy laughed her bright, tinkly laugh. “Oh, it was a genuine coronary. Mick took heart medicine. I changed his pills for something a bit more exciting.”

She spoke in the same light and informative way as she did when explaining trends in holiday ornaments. Not a hair of her smoothly styled cut was out of place. Her pressed shirt was tucked neatly into casual pants. Did she have a weapon? The night was too warm, I thought, to be wearing that jacket.