The Seeker A Novel (R. B. Chesterton) (30 page)

The lights of a vehicle came through the cabin window and struck the wall beside my bed. In the swath of light, Patrick faded. A few seconds later, Joe pushed against the door, trying to enter. My body blocked him, and I shifted so he could enter.

“Aine!” He sounded terrified when he saw me. “What have you done?”

I touched my cheek. Blood was seeping down my face where Patrick’s hand had claimed me.

40

Joe poured coffee for himself and pulled up my desk chair beside the fireplace where I sat, draped in a quilt in the rocker.

“We need to talk about what happened last night.” Joe stared into the fire. I’d been so upset the night before, I’d taken a sleeping pill and dove into oblivion.

“I had a bad dream and somehow scratched my own face. That’s all. I’ve been upset, and it got to my subconscious.”

A moment of silence passed. “Aine, you hurt yourself.”

My fingers lightly traced the four claw marks on my cheek. “It isn’t serious.”

“I’m worried. This has been a lot for all of us to handle. Karla, Patrick. It’s too much. Can I call your family?”

“There’s no one to call.” No one I wanted near me. “I’ve been on my own since I went to boarding school. My father and grandmother, the people who raised me, are dead. My mother died when I was a child.” I’d dodged Joe’s prior efforts to talk about my family. Whaling, bloodlust, moonshining, drugs—there wasn’t a single aspect of my family I wanted to share.

“There’s no one?” He held his mug in both hands, his elbows on his knees and his shoulders slumped.

“I’m not your responsibility. Don’t worry.” Bitterness crept into my tone.

His sigh was long. “I haven’t wanted to tell you this. The chief thinks someone at the inn poisoned Patrick. He’s been questioning the guests who were here at Christmas. McKinney won’t say it, but Patrick was poisoned on the inn grounds. It couldn’t have happened any other way. He didn’t ask, but I’m backing out of the investigation.”

There it was. Not an accusation, but a hint of suspicion. Had Joe found the wine with the poison, I’d be in a cell by now. “He
suspects
it was someone at the inn, or he
knows
it? Who would do such a thing?”

“I heard Patrick flirted with the female guests.”

I pulled the quilt more tightly around me. “So what? Patrick was a free spirit. He never harmed a soul. Those ladies enjoyed his attention, and none of it was serious.”

“Jealousy can make a person do strange things.”

I wondered if he was thinking of Karla and the way she’d attacked me. I’d never done anything to her, but I was with Joe, the man she’d set her cap for. Jealousy had driven her to extremes.

That wasn’t the case with Patrick. Still, I was tempted to let Joe think that a spurned lover was at the root of the murder. Those suspicions would lead to naught. Sipping my coffee, I chose silence.

“Aine, were you involved with Patrick?”

Even though I’d anticipated the question for some time, I choked on a swallow of coffee. Joe waited for me to finish coughing. I threw back the quilt, but he stopped me with a softly spoken query.

“Were you?”

“Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Patrick told Dorothea he was in love with you.”

A strange echoey silence crashed in my ears. “He had a crush on me.” I pushed out of the rocker. “Are you accusing me of something?” Heat had rushed to my cheeks.

“No, I’m asking a question. It’s the same one McKinney will ask, so you’d better be ready to answer.”

“You think I poisoned Patrick because I was jealous of the inn guests he flirted with?” The idea was insane. “Do I strike you as a desperate woman?”

“No, you don’t. But that’s not an answer to my question,” he said quietly. “Patrick said he loved you and that you were sleeping with him. If that’s true, I need to know.”

“I don’t believe this.”

He put his cup on the kitchen counter. “I’m trying to help you.”

“No, you’re accusing me. I’m just not sure of what. Sleeping with Patrick?” Anger hardened my tone. “Or are you accusing me of poisoning him? Am I a suspect?”

“Only someone with access to the wine at the inn could have done it. I was in the PD yesterday and overheard some deputies talking. The autopsy showed strychnine. Wine was the delivery method. Someone poisoned the wine, gave it to Patrick, and then removed the remainder of the wine. It had to be someone with unlimited access.”

Joe was very close to the truth. Only he’d never believe that Mischa poisoned Patrick. Not me. Never me. The genius of Mischa’s setup unfolded in my head. I was trapped. If I told the truth, I’d appear completely crazy.

“Does Dorothea believe I’d kill Patrick?”

“No.” He abandoned the fire and came to me in the tiny kitchen. “And I don’t either. But it doesn’t look good. Were you sleeping with him?”

The truth curled like a snake, ready to strike. “Yes. I slept with him. Once. It was a casual fling. I thought better of it and broke it off.”

“Then he was in love with you? He told Dorothea the truth.”

If Joe felt anything at my admission, he didn’t show it. “Patrick loved the idea of being in love. He wasn’t serious about me. The seduction was a game. It made him feel like a man. It was sex on a cold afternoon. It was exciting, forbidden. But it wasn’t love. To think it would be motive for murder is ridiculous.”

“Aine, call your family.”

My first impulse was to beg him to listen to me, but it wouldn’t do any good. “I didn’t betray you, Joe.”

“You didn’t? What would you call it?” The flash of his temper gave me hope.

“Once I started seeing you, I broke it off with Patrick.”

“He was in the cabin all the time.”

“He brought firewood and meals. What was I supposed to do, keep him outside in the cold? He knew I had feelings for you. Maybe he didn’t like it, but he accepted it. It only happened once. You and I hadn’t gotten serious.”

“He was a teenager, Aine. Surely you see how wrong your behavior was.”

“Patrick wasn’t an innocent. He pursued me. I resisted, but he pursued.” I flushed as I spoke, but I held my head high. “I didn’t seduce him, it was the other way around. Yes, I think it was wrong. I was lonely. And scared. He kept my fears at bay for an hour or two. Was I using him? In that sense, yes. The truth is, we didn’t harm each other.”

“And he fell in love with you.”

“No!”

“Did he threaten to tell me about the affair?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He was a teenager, not a blackmailer. If you think so little of me, if you suspect me of murdering him, why did you even come here? Maybe
you’re
the one who uses
me
for a convenience fuck.”

“Who clawed your face?” He grabbed my shoulders. “What are you playing at, Aine?”

“Turn me loose.” I tried to twist free of him but he held me. “Let go, you bastard!” I kicked at him, but he pushed me backwards onto the bed. He fell with me, covering my body with his.

“Tell me the truth.” He pressed me hard into the mattress.

I bucked, but he was much stronger. The more I fought, the heavier he became until I couldn’t catch my breath. “You’re hurting me.”

“Tell me the truth!”

I wished I could. More than anything, I wanted to tell him about Mischa—the things I knew and the things I suspected. But he’d think me insane. His anger tempered my tongue. Instead of fighting, I felt myself slipping from the present into the past. I had a clear and distinct vision of Bonnie.

She is sitting at the small table in the cabin she shared with Thoreau. Around the table are the dead. She questions them about crossing the distance between the dead and the living. Their answers ring with hollowness. Her eagerness to learn is evident in her posture and expression.

The door bursts open and Thoreau steps in, disgust on his features. “What is this?” He asks, but he knows the answer, has long suspected that Bonnie has been calling up the dead.

“What are you doing? You know this is wrong!” he cries.

The departed vanish, and Bonnie attempts to calm him, to explain. But his disgust is too great. The kitchen knife is lying beside the basin and he grasps it, plunging the blade into Bonnie’s heart.

The most terrible smile touches her lips as she slumps to the ground.

“Aine!” Joe slapped me lightly on the side of my face.

It was true. Call it a dream or vision or a gift to see the past, I had no doubt it was true. Thoreau murdered my aunt. He killed her in disgust and terror for her actions, for raising the dead. Joe would do the same to me.

Fury shot through me. Self-preservation. If I told Joe about Mischa, about the things she’d done, he would never believe me.

And if he did, he would blame me for opening the door. I’d unwittingly brought Mischa into his life, and she’d impacted him in only negative ways. He’d never understand, so I had to get away from him.

“Aine! What is this?” He straddled me, holding me pinned to the bed as he reached into his pocket and brought out the scrimshaw tooth. “Where did you get this?”

How had he found the tooth? It had been securely hidden in a cubbyhole in the wall behind my desk. I couldn’t answer because I had no idea what to say.

“Aine, where did this come from? The writing here. The inscription means ‘The dead never rest.’ Where did you get this? The little girl on the ship—where did it come from?” He shook me, digging into my arms and shoulders. The pain was almost a relief. “You’ll tell me the truth or you’ll regret it.”

“Get off me!” I pushed hard, and this time he climbed off, towering over me, ready to snare me if I made a break for it.

“Where did this come from?”

“I told you. My forebears were sailors. One of them must have made it. My granny gave it to me when I was a little girl. My essay about
Moby Dick
won a scholarship to Amberton boarding school. I used my family’s history for the paper.” I tried to snatch the tooth, but he pulled it back.

“‘The dead never rest.’ What does that mean?”

“How should I know? The tooth is two hundred years old, Joe. Someone on my distant grandfather’s ship carved it. Where did you find it?”

“You left it in my pocket, Aine. You meant me to find it.” He looked at me as if he didn’t know me. “You see things. Or you pretend to. I watch you, and it frightens me.”

Mischa, the little bitch, had planted the whale’s tooth in Joe’s pocket. She was setting me up. If he ever learned the tooth had been stolen from a New Bedford museum, he wouldn’t believe another word I said.

“Watch me all you want. I haven’t killed anyone.” I pushed his chest hard, and he drew back so I could sit up.

“You see something in the woods. What is it?” His left eye twitched.

“The wind.” No way I could tell him anything different. He would think me insane, and he already suspected I could murder. “Would you leave now? I need to work on my dissertation.”

“You’re a liar, Aine.”

“The dead are liars.” The words slipped from me before I realized what I was saying.

Had I slapped him, the change could not have been more profound. His gaze narrowed and he backed away from me. In a few seconds, he was out the door and gone.

41

For an hour, I lingered before the fire and did nothing. I knew what I had to do, but I feared the consequences. Bonnie’s journal was my only hope for answers. But if I opened it, I might give Mischa and her minions more corporeal power. I had begun to believe there was a direct correlation between reading the book and the strength of Mischa’s abilities. The more I read, the stronger she seemed to become. And now Patrick had manifested. As well as a brief glimpse of what I took to be Bonnie.

Or perhaps my gift to see the dead had grown and strengthened with each session with the journal. Bonnie could be transferring her gift to me as my comprehension broadened and I sensed the darker meaning behind her writing.

I needed to examine the journal, front to back, with my new understanding that Mischa was adding clues, rewriting history. Somewhere in the words there was an answer. But in reading the journal, how much energy would I give Mischa and her ilk? Limbo held me in a deadly grip.

Fear finally jolted me from the rocker to the stash beneath my bed where I kept the journal hidden. It was then that I discovered that the wine bottle and glasses, such incriminating evidence, were missing. I hadn’t forgotten them, but inertia and fear had prevented me from disposing of them. Now it was too late. They were gone, and Mischa would make certain they reappeared in the worst possible place. This was a game to her. She played it out, baiting the trap, setting the snare, and waiting.

I searched beneath the bed again, but my grasping fingers clutched only the leather-bound journal. The pages flaked as I pulled it toward me. In the last week, the journal had grown more delicate. The fear that it would disintegrate before I could glean its knowledge took hold of me once again.

Settling into the rocker, I held the journal in my lap, acutely aware of the brittle and worn leather cover. The image of a crow was burned into the leather like a brand. I’d never appreciated the significance, but now my finger traced the outline of the large bird.

I opened to a passage about Thoreau near the beginning. He and Bonnie had been formally introduced on the street and then later at a salon. Then she met him in the woods near Walden Pond while searching for herbs. Her interest was piqued.

The most interesting man has entered my life. I’ve met him several times in the woods while I was gathering herbs, seemingly by accident. He talks of nature. He is a shy man, and I find that refreshing. We have spent several hours together, walking about the woods at Walden Pond. He explains how all things in the natural world are connected. His deliberate movements, and the tiny silences that punctuate his speech, give me to think he is a man careful of word and deed. I want to know more of him.

This was as I remembered, but now I saw that I had no idea what Bonnie was doing in the Walden woods except the one statement she made about hunting herbs. She had been a governess, not a cook or medicine woman.