The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1) (38 page)

“My name is Jess.”

The girl lifted her chin to look at Jess with incredible green eyes. “My name is Isabella. I’m not supposed to introduce myself to grown-ups. Only Mama or Papa are supposed to introduce me around. But they’ve been gone an awful long time. I think we would never know each other’s names if I continued waiting for them to make us acquainted.”

“Do you live here?”

“Yes. I was born right over there.” She raised her arm to point out into the hallway and across to the largest of the larger of the bedrooms.

“What year were you born, Isabella?”

“1911.”

Jess stepped away from the closet and put a hand to her head. She looked toward the front bedroom, then back at the girl.

“What is it?”

“I’m not very good at math, so you’ll have to tell me how old you are now.”

“I’ll be eight next month.” Isabella had the pleased expression of all children who were anticipating a birthday’s arrival.

“That is just what I would have guessed.” Jess studied the girl’s round face and smooth, pale skin. Was she imagining the dark circles under her eyes now that the girl had confirmed her suspicion? “Isabella, when did you last see your parents?”

“It’s been a few days now.” She put a hand behind her ear and scratched under the ribbon thoughtfully. “Maybe more? I was very ill. Mama was sitting on my bedside and she was crying. I told her everything was all right. I told her I would come back from the dark place soon.” Isabella looked away from Jess before making her confession. “When I came back, they were gone.”

“Gone?”

“I had the feverenza, see? I went to sleep in the dark place and when I came back, I felt better, but my family had gone.”

“Feverenza?” Jess said.

Isabella nodded. “Sometimes I go sleep in the dark place and sometimes I wait here for my family to come back for me.”

Jess thought she understood. The influenza pandemic hit the United States in the fall of 1918 and cut short more lives than World War I. Jess was about to ask Isabella her birthdate when they heard someone coming up the stairs. Isabella put a finger to her lips and slid back into the closet, allowing the dresses to close over her hiding spot.

“There you are,” Lora said, as though speaking to an errant child. Jess glanced at the closet, wondering if Lora knew about her guest. “What’s the story with that typewriter?” A pair of cat-eye glasses perched in her immaculately piled curls like a hair accessory. Her figure-hugging top had three tiny pearl buttons at the bust and tucked into a flouncy summer skirt. Her sandals showed off a stylish French pedicure. Jess glanced down at her own feet, grateful the black rubber toes of her Keens hid her lack of anything resembling a pedicure.

“It fell off the desk.”

“Fell?”

Jess nodded.

Lora sighed. “I don’t know how a typewriter falls off a desk. It’s not like you can just bump it and send it flying, but whatever.” Lora was already heading out of the room toward the staircase. “I have to watch the front. Come down with me.”

Jess shook her head, amazed at the way some people were comfortable giving other people directions. As she left the room, she heard Isabella’s familiar giggle from the closet. She watched Lora for any sign that she had heard, but didn’t notice so much as a twitch.

“Beckett thought you might know someone who could repair my typewriter.” Lora did twitch at the mention of Beckett. It was slight, but unmistakable.

“Sure.” She resumed her place behind the counter and sat on a stool facing the register. “I have lots of contacts in restoration.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a receipt. She wrote something on it and handed the carbon copy to Jess. “Check back in three days. I’ll have a quote for you by then, if not the repair.”

“Okay.” Jess felt herself dismissed, but hesitated to turn away. She had not, after all, agreed to a course of action; however, instead of redirecting the typewriter matter, she asked, “Do you know the history of this house?”

“Only vaguely. There’s a brochure in the village hall across the street that lists the original owners of all the buildings and what they were used for.” She turned toward the back counter and tucked her copy of the receipt into the keys of the Underwood. “Why?”

“I’m just interested in local history.”

Jess left the antique store feeling anxious. Lora seemed to have that effect on her, and now her beloved Underwood was in that woman’s hands. There was something more, an itch that began when she mentioned Beckett. Jess tried not let the cascade of thoughts his name prompted overrun her. The last thing he said to her before she left the studio echoed in her mind:
I guess we’ll see after tomorrow night
. She had to prepare, and worrying about what might become of them wouldn’t help her with Bonnie.

The Village Hall was open. Jess found the brochure Lora had mentioned, “The First Families of Skoghall,” and paused to run her hand over a wicker doll carriage with a wax-head lady doll propped inside. Jess picked up the doll and examined her tiny hands, the hat and hair that were molded into the doll’s head, its faded face, and the finely made jacket and dress complete with a narrow bustle and apron. A marker next to it on the floor read, “DO NOT TOUCH. Doll and carriage early 1900s, believed the property of Isabella Osterlund.”

The humidity had been building all day, making it difficult to do anything at all. Shakti lay around, only perking up when Jess offered her ice cubes to chew on. Jess kept her hair up in a messy bun just to get it away from her neck. The tendrils that fell loose were stuck to her damp skin. She sat in her office while the sun scorched and withered everything below and tried to feel Bonnie’s presence. Jess searched information on hauntings and ghosts. Her hope was that someone before her had tried what she was planning and had reported on it. There was plenty of information about ghosts. A lot of it attempting to dispel myths and discredit frauds. A lot of it sensational. Most of it useless. Jess would have to dig deep to find something pertinent and she didn’t have time for that.

Jess closed her eyes. She quieted her mind and let herself become receptive. Bonnie was not with her in the room, not yet. But her…
imprint
—Jess decided imprint was the right word—was on the room, creating an atmosphere peculiar to this spot, Johnny’s nursery. Jess breathed it in. She felt…bereft. The weight of Bonnie’s grief, a grief Jess now understood, was oppressive. She tried to close herself to it and go back to her computer, but it was no use. She stared at the window behind her desk and felt useless. A ridiculous fraud. She gave  up and left the room.

When Beckett arrived that evening, the sun was already behind the house, somewhere west of the Mississippi, though it wouldn’t set for another hour as they neared the longest day of the year. Jess went out into the yard to greet him, pausing to wipe the sweat from the back of her neck. She looked behind her house and saw clouds to the west, their tops aglow, but with a dark underside. “Think we’ll get rain?” she asked.

Beckett closed his car door with a shove that bordered on aggressive. “I hope so,” he said. “Well? What’s this big plan of yours?”

“Straight to business, then.” Jess looked over at the smokehouse. Its door stood open. She hadn’t gone near it since the flies came pouring out. She had a feeling tonight would involve that place one way or another, and every time she gave the smokehouse a moment’s attention her stomach lurched.

Shakti greeted Beckett with her usual enthusiasm. He held her and stroked her head while Jess made them each a drink, hoping it would ease her nerves and his tension. She handed Beckett a vodka tonic, the glass already slick with condensation.

“Thanks. So this plan of yours?”

They sat in the rockers on the front porch while Shakti lazily sniffed around the base of the sugar maple. Jess explained that she wanted to hang a lantern in the smokehouse and set up a video recorder in the bedroom. She asked Beckett to pick it up and record anything he could if they got moving.

“Okay,” he said, “but what do you think is going to happen?”

Jess sighed and looked at the smokehouse. A breeze had come up and the door swung lazily on its hinges. “I think Bonnie is going to give me the last puzzle piece, the one that will exonerate John.”

“How?” Beckett leaned forward in his rocker, resting his elbows on his knees. He was staring at Jess, the lines in his forehead deepening to creases of concern.

“I can see her. And I feel her emotional state.” Jess looked at her drink and smoothed the condensation into a flat smear of moisture on the glass. She had thought about what was happening between her and Bonnie so much it seemed the only thing she could really concentrate on, but she hadn’t tried to explain it to anyone else before now. “And I think something weird will happen, like the flies coming out of the smokehouse.” She lifted her face to meet Beckett’s gaze. “I don’t know what will happen. I just know it’ll be big.”

“All right. So I’m the camera guy? I just record things and make sure you don’t get hurt, right?”

“Um…” Jess pulled her lower lip between her teeth and looked at Beckett. “I need something else.” He sat back in the rocking chair and crossed his arms over his chest, his expression of concern shifting to a look more like irritation. “It’s no big deal. It’s just…”

“Jess. If it’s no big deal, just spit it out.”

“You know how Tyler belted my hands together?”

“How could I forget?” He shifted his weight and the chair rocked too quickly, its posts slapping against the house behind him.

“I want you to do that. I think if we recreate what we know happened, it’ll help Bonnie to show me whatever she needs to show me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really know. Maybe it’s just a hunch…no, intuition. The more emotional things get, the stronger she gets. I haven’t figured it out, but she shows up when things are happening. I mean, Johnny was here. In his old nursery, even. She didn’t show up for that, but everything was calm. If I’m nervous or scared or excited, that seems to help.”

“I don’t know, Jess. She threw that typewriter off the desk and we were just getting showered. And you weren’t scared before the flies turned up.”

“I know. I don’t get it completely. I’m just saying more often than not, the stronger my emotions the stronger she is. I think it will help if we reenact as much as we can.”

“Do you want her strong? What if she chokes you again?”

“She won’t.”

“Jesus, Jess. You don’t know that.” Beckett swished the tiny nubs of ice around in his glass, then tilted it to his mouth and drained the liquid.

“This is all I have to go on and I need to do it now, before John dies. Just help me. Please.”

Beckett stared at her, his face set in a hard expression. “It’s too much.” He stood up from the rocker and looked around himself before setting the glass on the table beside his chair. “It’s just too much.” He left the porch still shaking his head.

Jess watched him bound down the steps, her mouth open. He was at his car door before she stood up from her rocker. “Beckett, wait!” She sprinted across the yard to him. Even that small exertion left her wearing a new sheen of perspiration and flushed her cheeks. While she stood before him, catching her breath, she was aware of him looking her over, his expression shifting from aggravated to thoughtful. “Wait, please.” She pushed her palms across her cheeks and up over her forehead, wiping away the sweat. “I can’t do this alone.”

“This is crazy.” His expression softened as he stared at her.

“I know. But it’s real. And it’s dangerous. I need someone else here. Please.”

Beckett looked over his shoulder toward the barn, then twisted further around so he could see the smokehouse. “That’s where her body was found?”

Jess nodded. She hadn’t figured out what was troubling Beckett so deeply, so she held her breath and waited.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The sun set at 9:01, the last of its light glowing above the trees behind the house as Beckett took the lantern out to the smokehouse. Jess watched him from the porch with her arms folded across her chest. She couldn’t help the nervous anticipation, the way her stomach fluttered every couple of minutes, and it seemed she found her lip between her teeth anytime she wasn’t talking. Beckett joined her on the porch, but kept some distance between them. Jess dropped her arms and extended a hand toward Beckett. When her fingers brushed his, he shoved both hands in the pockets of his shorts.