The Skeleton Haunts a House (24 page)

N
ot only were Roxanne and her inevitable scatter of papers and books in the room, but Linda was there, too. I managed not to scream or faint, and even held back the curse words that sprang to mind. I just said, “Oh, hey. What's up?”

“Roxanne pried Linda away from her family somehow so we could try to make up for lost time,” Mom said.

“I figured it was the least I could do for you Thackerys,” Linda said. “My lawyer said it was your efforts that got me out of jail.” The undergrad looked paler than she had the last time I'd seen her, but she was smiling.

“We were glad to help,” I said. “Um, Mom, can I borrow you for a little bit? I need to talk to you about something.”

“Now?” Roxanne said with a frown. “We've got a lot of work to do.”

“It shouldn't take more than a minute,” I lied.

“There have been too many minutes wasted already.”

Mom looked bemused at her student's rudeness, and said,
“I was going to go get us something to drink anyway. Georgia can talk to me while I'm pouring.” She stood up, but Roxanne shoved her back down into her chair.

“That's it! Neither you, nor Linda, nor I are going anywhere until my dissertation is done. Do you understand? No more murders. No more arrests. No. More. Distractions.”

“Roxanne, really!” Mom said.

I started toward them, then froze when I saw Roxanne pull a gun out of her backpack and aim it at Mom.

“You stay here, Dr. Thackery,” Roxanne said. “Georgia can get the drinks. I'd like a Diet Coke.” Then she actually added, “Please.”

“Roxanne, what are you doing?” Mom said. Linda just stared.

“I'm trying to get my dissertation done. Is that so hard to understand? Doesn't anybody realize how important my work is?” Her voice kept rising, and before I could warn him, Phil came in with Byron to see what the ruckus was about. As soon as he saw the gun, he stepped in front of me, and when Byron started growling, he grabbed his collar.

“You're going to help us, too,” Roxanne said to him. “Sit next to Linda. Georgia is getting drinks. Maybe some chips, too, if you've got them. But don't try to leave or call the cops. In fact, you better bring me all the phones, including everybody's cell phones.”

“Roxanne,” Linda said, “I don't understand.”

“Roxanne killed Kendall,” I said.

Roxanne nodded. “It was a mistake—I see that now. I should have waited until after I finished my dissertation. It's just that I already had my plans in place before Dr. Eberhardt denied my extension, and I wanted to get it over with before Dr. Thackery got back so I wouldn't be distracted. I'd already decided to take care of Kendall's friends later, after my oral
defense. Then Linda got arrested and I had no way to do the statistics. I thought her getting out of jail would be a good thing, but that means the police are still looking for Kendall's killer, and I realized it was just a matter of time before the police came after me.”

“But why?” Linda asked, “Did Kendall send awful e-mails to you, too?”

“Not to me—to my sister. Doreen killed herself because of it, and my parents blamed me. So what if I was a little late getting to the movie that night? It was only half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. I was working. I was wonderfully focused then. But afterward, I was so distracted my first thesis advisor said I should take time off. Which I did, but when I came back, she was gone, and it was harder to get the work done. Then my second advisor left, and I got Dr. Thackery. And then Dr. Thackery went off on sabbatical. So many distractions! When Kendall came and tried to apologize about Doreen, I was so mad. She'd done more than kill Doreen—she'd derailed my life's work! But still, I should have waited. It's like you said, Dr. Thackery—I need to focus on the work. Killing Kendall was just a distraction.”

Roxanne was saying such awful things that her voice should have sounded anguished or angry. Instead she just sounded annoyed.

“Anyway,” she went on, “none of us are leaving this house until I get my dissertation done. Linda, if you try to do anything on your computer other than statistics, I'll shoot you in the leg. It'll hurt a lot, but you'll still be able to do the work. Dr. Thackery and Dr. Thackery, the same goes for you two. And no offense, Georgia, but I need your mother and Linda, and your father can help, but you're only an adjunct. I don't need you. So I'll shoot you in the head. Now give me the phones.”

I gathered up the handsets from our landline and put them into Roxanne's backpack, and we all gave her our cell phones. My hands weren't the only ones shaking.

Roxanne said, “Now everybody tell Georgia what you want to drink.”

“I don't think I care for anything right now,” Phil said politely.

“No, you should drink something. We need to keep our strength up. So what'll it be?”

“I know what my parents like,” I said. “Is Coke all right for you, Linda?”

She could only nod.

I got drinks, dumped potato chips into a bowl, and found napkins, all the while knowing that I should be doing something, anything, but every scenario I devised ended with somebody getting shot. Somebody other than Roxanne, that is. I wasn't particularly worried about her welfare.

As I came back into the dining room, Phil was saying, “No, we're the only ones in the house. Madison has gone to McHades with her aunt. They won't be back until late.”

The idea of Madison coming home to an armed madwoman made me want to throw the chips at said madwoman's head, but not when she was that close to Mom. So I said, “If it's easier, I can call Madison and suggest she spend the night with Deborah. That will give you one less person to worry about.”

Roxanne thought it over for what seemed like an eternity. “Okay, but we should do it by text.” I hadn't intended to blurt anything out on the phone, but I couldn't fault Roxanne for her attention to detail.

She wouldn't even let me do the texting. Instead I had to guide her through it, giving her my phone's password, telling her which number to select, and dictating the message. She did it one-handed, so as not to have to put the gun down.

“Have I got this right?” she asked me when she'd typed it all in. “‘Madison, Mom and Dad are helping Roxanne with her dissertation, and it's going to be an all-nighter. Why don't you spend the night with Deborah so you won't have to worry about being quiet?'”

“That's it.”

She sent it, and a few minutes later there was an answering text from Madison:

Message received. I love you!

“There, that's settled,” Roxanne said.

“Could you text back that I love her, too?”

“Is it really necessary?”

“We always do that. I don't want her to think anything is wrong.” I was hoping she wouldn't take the time to scroll through previous texts and figure out that Madison and I were more likely to end our text exchanges with bad jokes.

Apparently Roxanne decided to get the distraction over with as soon as possible, because she texted and said, “Now can we get going? Dr. Thackery, what do you think of this passage?” She handed my mother a piece of paper, and proceeded to act as if it were perfectly normal to work on an academic paper with a gun in her lap.

Mom and Phil played along as best they could, but it was harder for Linda. I could tell she was having to correct a lot of mistakes as she tried to calculate the statistics Roxanne wanted. As for me, I stayed busy filling Roxanne's requests for refills on drinks, more snacks, and so on. At one point, she told me to go lock all the doors, to make sure nobody could sneak out quickly, and had me raise all the blinds and draw all the curtains so she could see if anybody approached the house. Then I had to shut Byron up in my parent's office so he would stop growling at her. I had to
admit that once she put her mind to something, she really thought it through.

In between my errands, I tried to figure out what Roxanne had in mind for her endgame. Did she expect to be able to keep us captive until she finished the paper? And if she did, what then? Did she think the police wouldn't arrest her afterward? Or had finishing the dissertation become her only goal? Would she shoot herself afterward? As awful as that would be, I hoped that was the plan, and that she didn't intend to take the rest of us with her.

I determinedly stopped that line of thought. We had an ace in the hole. Or rather, a skeleton in the attic. I'd left Sid waiting for an all-clear signal, but knowing him, he wouldn't have waited very long. So chances were that he'd crept down to check for himself, seen and heard enough to know what was going on, then retreated quietly to the attic. So what had he done next? Why hadn't he called the police?

As time went on, I started to think that he'd been afraid to spook Roxanne. I hadn't heard sirens, no SWAT team had burst through the door, and no hostage negotiator had called to speak in soothing tones. I didn't know if Pennycross even had a SWAT team or hostage negotiator.

After what felt like a year, but which was probably more like an hour and a half, I felt a tiny nudge from under the table and was just able to stop myself from jerking. I looked down at my feet and saw a bony finger. Since it immediately started to move, I considered myself safe in assuming it was Sid's. Moving like nothing so much as a skeletal inchworm, it wriggled away toward Roxanne's chair.

Over the next half an hour or so, more of Sid's bones propelled themselves silently across the floor, passing me on their way to pile up close to Roxanne. I tried to decide if there was something Sid wanted me to do, but since I didn't know
what he was planning and I didn't want to get in his way, I did nothing. Doing nothing is a lot harder than it sounds.

In my efforts not to look at Sid, I hadn't been looking at anything, so I hadn't noticed that the neighborhood was getting unusually quiet. But Roxanne had.

“It's not always this empty around here, is it? I haven't seen a car go by in ages,” she said, swiveling her head to look out the windows. I don't know what she saw, but whatever it was, it was enough to convince her that the jig was up. “Damn,” she said mildly. “I told you people not to call the cops. Now how am I going to finish this?” She sighed, sounding more exasperated than frightened. Then she picked the gun up from her lap and aimed it at me. “Maybe this will keep them away.”

At the time, the next few seconds were a blur, but later I was able to figure out what happened. My parents must have had one of their silent conversations in the midst of everything else, because they reacted instantly. Mom threw herself over Linda while Phil threw himself over me. At least he tried to, because I was doing my best to throw myself over him. But as fast as we moved, Sid was faster. He rose up behind Roxanne's chair, grabbed both her arms, and jerked them upward. The shot, when it came, went into the ceiling instead of any of us.

Roxanne was so shocked that she let Sid wrestle the gun away from her, and Phil and I untangled ourselves so we could grab her.

“This is the police! We're coming in!” said a voice via megaphone. “Hands up, and put down your weapons!”

“Armoire!” I said to Sid, and put my hand over Roxanne's eyes in a bizarre game of peek-a-boo so she wouldn't see him slide the gun across the floor, scurry away, and shut himself up in his hidey-hole. Mom still had Linda, who'd
burst into tears, and she was patting her and making comforting noises as she blocked Sid from view. Phil and I kept a tight hold on Roxanne as what seemed like two dozen police officers with bulletproof vests and large weapons burst in, with Louis in front. In seconds, they had the gun and Roxanne was flung to the floor and handcuffed.

I
t got confusing after that, as if I were watching a slide show of random events instead of living through the next half an hour. A pair of EMTs came in to make sure nobody had been shot, and seemed vaguely disappointed when they didn't get to bandage anybody. Then Linda started hyperventilating and came perilously close to fainting, so they got to carry her out on a stretcher to where her family was waiting. Speaking of family, Deborah and Madison pushed their way into the house a few minutes later.

“You should have stayed at the Howl,” I said to Madison.

“I figured if I wasn't here, Aunt Deborah would want to charge in with the cops, and she'd just get into trouble.”

“You may be right,” I admitted. I could tell my sister had been worried—when I'd hugged her, she'd actually hugged back instead of just enduring it.

“Your daughter picked up on your clue right away,” Louis said.

“The text? I was hoping she'd catch it. She knows I hadn't called Phil
Dad
in decades.”

“Though how she and Deborah realized you were being held captive just from that is beyond me.”

“My daughters and granddaughter are just that clever,” Phil said complacently, and Mom nodded while Madison, Deborah, and I tried to look both clever and modest. Not one of us so much as glanced in the direction of the armoire.

The officers who'd been dealing with Roxanne started to lead her out, and Mom said, “Excuse me, Louis,” before marching toward Roxanne. “Under the circumstances, Ms. Beale, I will not be continuing as your thesis advisor and will, in fact, recommend that your enrollment at McQuaid be terminated immediately. And on a personal note, I want to advise you that my daughter, Dr. Georgia O'Keeffe Thackery, is ten times the scholar that you are, and the quality of her doctoral dissertation makes your unfinished jumble of concepts look like an elementary school composition.” Then she turned away from her with an air of finality. “Now, Louis, if you could get this person and her pathetic papers out of my house, I would be most grateful.”

Roxanne opened and shut her mouth a few times, like a fish who was wondering where its water had disappeared to, but before she could find anything to say, a couple of officers hustled her out.

I wish the rest of the police had gone with her, but of course they couldn't do that, not when they had questions to ask, and ask again in a different way to see if they'd get a different answer, and then go back to the first version to ask one more time. At last they decided we were telling them the truth, which we mostly were. The only parts we were leaving out were the Sid-related ones. As soon as the door shut behind them and Madison ran around to close all the curtains, the door to the armoire started to open.

“Man, it's about time—”

The doorbell rang.

I shoved Sid back inside the armoire and shut it while Deborah opened the door. Oscar was on the porch, with Louis standing right behind him, looking exceedingly aggravated.

“Deborah, are you okay?” Oscar said.

“Why wouldn't I be? I was outside during the shooting.”

“I told you that,” Louis snapped.

“I just wanted to be sure,” Oscar snapped back. “Her family was in danger—she might be upset.”

“I'm fine, Oscar,” Deborah said, “but thanks for asking.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Louis asked, apparently not wanting to be outclassed in the thoughtfulness competition.

“Not a thing, Louis. Thank you for asking.”

The two men stood there, and I would have given even odds for one of them either embracing Deborah or slugging the other. Or maybe they were planning to stand there all night.

Deborah finally said, “Do you two have phones?”

“Of course,” Oscar said, and Louis nearly broke a finger trying to get his out of a pocket.

“Good. Now if either one of you—or both of you—care to do something other than make cow eyes at me, you can call me like a regular person and ask me out on a date. But not tonight. I have plans with my family.” She shut the door on the two astonished faces.

Sid shoved the armoire door open and started hooting. “Way to go, Deborah. You've got those two—”

The doorbell rang.

“Sacrum!” Sid said, but he went back into the armoire while Deborah answered it again.

“Now what?” she said.

Only it was neither of her smitten swains. It was Brownie.

Deborah lifted one eyebrow and stepped aside for him to come inside.

“Is everybody okay?” he asked, looking at me.

“We're fine,” I said. “I take it you heard what happened.”

“Most of it. Maybe someday you can tell me the whole story.”

“Bring me some of Stewpot's chicken and dumplings, and I think something can be arranged.”

“It's a deal.” Unlike Oscar or Louis, he had no problem figuring out what to do next. He leaned over to give me a kiss on the cheek, and when I pulled him closer for something more thorough, he was happy to comply. He probably thought the cheer came from Madison or Phil, but I knew it was Sid. After that, he said he had to get back to the carnival, but shook hands and offered hugs all around.

Then, at last, Sid could come out of the armoire, and there was even more hugging. Though everybody was praised for presence of mind and/or bravery, Sid got the prize for jumping Roxanne, and I'd never seen him look prouder.

The next day was Halloween, and Deborah and Madison insisted they were up to working at McHades Hall. They even talked Mom and Phil into helping out again. Sid and I stayed home to deal with trick-or-treaters. I was in charge of handing out treats, and Sid took care of the tricks. He kept it mild, though. The only ones he really scared were the two boys who started to run off with the jack-o'-lantern Madison had carved that afternoon. I was almost certain they had to change their pants after they escaped my favorite screaming skeleton.

Sunday was considerably quieter, and passed in a relaxed glow of movies, Phil's finest cooking, and leftover Halloween candy. The following week was more or less normal, punctuated by more questions from the police, phone calls from reporters, and much curiosity at work. On the good side, I got those chicken and dumplings—on the bad side,
Sara Weiss cornered me for an interrogation that made the police's questions seem like idle chitchat.

The happy finale was when Brownie asked me out on an honest-to-God, makeup-wearing, no-Mom-jeans dinner date on Friday night. I think Mom and Madison were more anxious about my outfit than I was, finally settling on a pair of black slacks, simple but elegant flats, and a sapphire blue sweater they said had just enough depth in the neckline to entice without looking cheap. They actually had it laid out for me when I got home Friday evening, which turned out to be a good thing because I was running behind schedule. I did insist on doing my own hair and makeup, though I had to lock my bedroom door to keep them out.

With all that, I was slow getting downstairs, which gave Madison time to complete her usual what-are-your-intentions-toward-my-mother interview. Brownie acquitted himself admirably, but seemed just as glad to get going.

“Sorry to rush,” he said, “but we've got reservations.”

“No need to apologize. It's my fault for being late.”

“I hope you're in the mood for Italian.”

“Always.”

After we were seated with our orders put in, I said, “I expected Fenton's to be packed up and gone by now. Not that I mind you still being around.”

“This is our last stand of the year, so we can take our time. Besides, my parents have spent most of the past few days meeting with the powers that be at McQuaid.”

“Are your father and his lawyer going to pursue his claim on McQuaid Hall and the environs?”

“Nope. For one thing, the lawyer backed out of the deal. Apparently his daughter's involvement caused a conflict of interest.”

“His daughter? Who's the lawyer?”

“A guy named Salvatore Primo.”

I finally put it together. “He must be Alexis's father, which makes him Vivienne's ex-husband. I bet the rest of the Quintet was furious about his involvement.”

“Is it any wonder why I didn't want to meet my so-called relatives?”

“Treasure Hunt could get another lawyer.”

“He could, but Mom and I talked him out of it. She told him how much he'd have to pay a lawyer, plus how much time he'd waste. Then I gave him a better idea for getting back at his family.”

“Does it involve smoke bombs?”

“That would have been good, too, but no. He's going to sign over his property to the university for good.”

“So McQuaid Hall is safe?”

“Not exactly. What he's giving them is the Dana Fenton Building.”

“Excuse me?”

“He thought Mom deserved to have a building named after her more than any of the McQuaids.”

“That's brilliant! A present for your mother and a slap in the face to the McQuaids, all in one fell swoop.”

“That's only half the deal. The other half is a present for you.”

“For me?”

“For you, for me, for Charles, for all the adjuncts. The university has agreed to convert the Dana Fenton Building for use by adjuncts. That means each of us gets our own cubicle with walls at least five feet tall for privacy. Plus there will be conference rooms where we can meet with students; a break room with a refrigerator and microwave; a copier and a printer; and new furniture.”

“The university agreed to spend that kind of money?”

“Mom added up how much they'd save by agreeing instead of fighting it out in court. Plus it seems that some of
the tenured faculty have been pushing for treating adjuncts better, and they were threatening to make a public stink.”

“That would be my parents' work,” I said, remembering all the time they'd been spending with colleagues. “But what about McHades Hall?”

“Not our problem. The McQuaid Quintet has a year to come up with a new location. Dad suggested that they use the family mansion, but I don't think that's happening.”

“Probably not. That's really good news, Brownie.”

“Yeah? You don't sound that excited.”

“No, I think it's terrific. I just wish I were going to be here to enjoy it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The reason I was late tonight was because I had a meeting with Dr. Eberhardt this afternoon. The department won't be renewing my contract next semester. Eberhardt says that with my parents back from sabbatical, they won't need as many adjuncts. So they picked a duck out of the pond, and I lost.”

“That is such bull.”

“Of course it is, and I called him on it. He eventually admitted that the McQuaid Quintet had insisted. Because of me, Alexis was exposed as an Internet bully who framed an innocent girl for murder. Appropriately enough, the story has gone viral, so their fair name has been besmirched.”

“Fair name! Alexis isn't the only bully in that family.”

“Yeah, I'd say the acorn didn't fall far from the tree. Anyway, Eberhardt is embarrassed by the situation, but due to the black eye the department has been given because of our murderous grad student, he doesn't feel he can fight it. So he's promised to use his connections to find me another position close enough to Pennycross that I won't have to move out of town.”

“You know what?” he said. “As soon as we're finished eating, we're going to go talk to my parents and get them to
modify their agreement with the university to say that they have to keep you.”

I considered it, but only for a moment. “That's really sweet, but no. I don't want to queer the deal for the building, and if the department kept me, they'd have to fire another adjunct and I don't want that on my conscience. Plus I'd just be on borrowed time until they could find an excuse to get rid of me, and when that happened, Eberhardt wouldn't lift a finger to help me find another job. In fact, he'd probably go out of his way to spread dirt about me to every college within range.”

“You've really thought this through.”

“Sometimes I don't need a Ferris wheel to give me perspective. I've been fired before—I've always survived.”

“Of course, if you're going to be close to Pennycross, then you'll be within the range of the show's stands.”

“I'm glad to hear that. I'd really miss Stewpot's cooking.”

“Is that's all you'd miss?”

“There might be something else.” I leaned over and showed him. Several times. Unfortunately our food arrived, and we had to break it off long enough to eat. Dinnertime conversation was considerably less intense, but very pleasant, and afterward Brownie took me back to the carnival. It was shut down, and most of the rides were in the process of being disassembled, but the Ferris wheel was still lit up and operational, and Gameboy was on hand to give us a long, private ride. It was a crisp, clear night, and we spent a good while up there trying to pick out my next school. Eventually the wind started to blow, overwhelming Brownie's efforts to keep me warm, so he suggested hot chocolate in his trailer.

I don't know where Charles spent that night, but it wasn't in Brownie's trailer.

In deference to my parent's sensibilities and Madison's presumed innocence, Brownie got me home before daylight.
I was trying not to disturb anybody, but Sid was waiting for me in the living room.

“So?” he said. “How was your date?”

“Very nice.”

“Was there canoodling?”

“What is canoodling, anyway?”

“You were the one who was out all night. You tell me.”

“Why don't I tell you about what Treasure Hunt, aka Nelson McQuaid, is planning?”

“I'm all ear holes!”

Sid was much impressed by the solution Treasure Hunt had come up with. “I just wish I could have been eavesdropping when they broke the news to the Quintet! They must have been livid.”