Crowned and Moldering (28 page)

Before Dain knew what was happening, Tommy circled around and grabbed his arm.

“This is an outrage,” Dain said, as sweat began to bead on his forehead. “I demand
to see my lawyer.”

“No problem,” Eric said. “Tell him to meet you at the police station.”

*   *   *

Eric and his team questioned Dismal Dain for hours that night, but his lawyer insisted
they couldn’t hold him unless they had enough evidence to support their claims that
he had something to do with Lily’s death. They didn’t. Not yet, anyway. So Dain was
let go.

Denise was also sent home after a few hours, but Brad was held for two long days before
they allowed him to leave. Basically his lawyers argued that Lily’s flowery words
about Brad in her notebook did not constitute enough evidence to hold him. Faced with
the team of expensive attorneys Denise had hired to defend her husband, Eric had no
choice but to let Brad go with a warning not to leave town.

A few days later, I called Denise to check in, see how she was doing, and ask if she
wanted to get a cup of coffee sometime.

“Let’s meet this afternoon,” she said. “I owe you for helping me tag team Dismal Dain
the other day at school. That little rodent.”

“I didn’t do much, but I was glad to see Eric drag him off to the police station.”

“Me, too.”

She had already ordered me a café latte and was waiting at a table when I walked into
the coffeehouse.

“Thanks,” I said, joining her. “How are you doing?”

“A little better than when I last saw you,” she said. “I can’t stay long. I have a
doctor’s appointment this afternoon.”

“Hope it’s nothing serious,” I said, attempting to keep things light.

“It’s a fertility specialist,” she confessed. “I told you we’ve been trying to have
kids, right? But after all these years of putting it off, I’m concerned I might’ve
waited too long.”

I grabbed her hand. “You’re still really young, so I hope not. I’ll keep a good thought
for you.”

“Thanks.”

I took a sip of my latte. “Did you hear whether Mr. Dain confessed or not?”

She waved away the question. “He’ll never confess, but I would bet a million dollars
he killed Lily. I could see it on his face.”

“I could, too. He was so contemptuous of everyone, but especially Lily.” I contemplated
my coffee cup. “For a while, I thought maybe Cliff had done it. He was so awful.”

“You’re right.” She scowled. “Between Cliff Hogarth and Dismal Dain, it’s hard to
say who was worse.”

We sipped our drinks for a full minute before I said, “Did you ever consider that
Mr. Brogan might’ve done it?”

She pressed her lips together in frustration. “Yes. Hugh Brogan was completely capable
of killing Lily. When she disappeared, I wondered if he knew she’d been hiding from
him at the mansion. I mean, if Cliff and Dain could follow her out there, Mr. Brogan
could’ve, too.”

“Do you think we’ll ever know the truth?”

“I hope so. I’d like someone to pay for killing my friend.”

We sipped our coffees in silence for a moment, and then I ventured a question. “How
did Lily and Brad get together in the first place?”

There were tears in her eyes, but she began to smile as she told the complete story,
filling in some of the blanks for me.

Lily had been desperate to get away from her parents, and Mr. Jones had been a sympathetic
listener. Lily confided that she wanted to try for a scholarship, and Brad did everything
he could to encourage her.

“I knew the exact day when Lily and Brad fell in love,” Denise said. “By then the
three of us were best friends. I loved them both so much.”

Lily was vulnerable and so beautiful, and she and Brad grew very close, very fast.
The pregnancy took them off guard. But they were both thrilled and planned to get
married after graduation.

“I was going to be the godmother,” Denise said with a sad smile.

“Did the three of you start going to the lighthouse mansion together?” I asked.

“Not exactly. I’d heard about it from one of the old hippies that used to come to
the Gardens,” Denise explained. “It had been used as a crash pad back in the sixties.
So I told Lily about it, and sometimes I would drive her out there so she could hide
from her father. Usually after he’d beaten her silly.”

I shivered. “What a horrible man.”

“He really was,” Denise said. “When she disappeared, Brad and I both thought her father
had done something to her. Brad went out to the mansion to look for her, but didn’t
find her. I thought maybe her father had hurt her so badly that she’d finally run
away. I thought I would hear from her eventually.” She shook her head in helpless
frustration.

“When Brad and I heard that Lily’s remains had been discovered, we wondered if maybe
she died from a fall.” Denise gripped her coffee cup. “We never imagined that someone
had followed one of us out there and then waited for his chance.”

“It’s too terrible to contemplate,” I said. “And I hate to say it, but it’s starting
to sound like her father might have been the one who killed her.”

“She must’ve been so frightened,” Denise murmured, her cheeks damp with tears.

Clearly we were both struck by the horror of what Lily had gone through in the last
minutes of her life. We continued drinking our lattes in silence.

“Just one more question,” I said, breaking the quiet. “You told Dain that Lily had
a diary. Was that true?”

She grimaced. “I didn’t realize the police had already found her notebook. That’s
where she wrote down all of her thoughts.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the notebook had given the police all the
evidence they needed to take her husband in for questioning. I doubted there was anything
in the book that would incriminate Dain, but I prayed there was nothing else that
would further condemn Brad Jones.

*   *   *

I had a crew of six working on the lighthouse mansion the next day. I wanted to do
a big push to finish up the kitchen demo and start work on the basement beams. When
Mac and Wade and I finally got the chance to walk through the basement for the first
time, we were surprised to find many of the crossbeams and posts were in fairly good
shape, despite years of abuse from ocean spray, offshore breezes, and the usual termite
infestation that occurred in houses built near water. Despite their decent shape,
though, Mac and I decided to replace all of the crossbeams and the posts, not only
to give his new house a fresh start, but also to guarantee that those crucial load-bearing
beams had a long, healthy life. They would be supporting the weight of the entire
house, after all.

By four o’clock most of the crew had left and it was just Carla and me finishing up
in the kitchen. I felt a sense of accomplishment when all three layers of linoleum
were ripped up and thrown outside. But now the subflooring was exposed, and I was
surprised the entire floor hadn’t buckled or that one of us hadn’t fallen through
to the basement. The one-by-four slats that made up the subfloor weren’t level, and
some of the slats were missing altogether. Of the ones that remained, many were warped.

The old pipes running every which way along the walls of the kitchen were in bad shape,
too, with several of them tied and nailed to the strips of lath to keep them in place.

“We have our work cut out for us in here,” Carla said.

I gazed around at the exposed walls and floor. “I’ll say.”

“Are you ready to leave?” she asked, checking her wristwatch. “I’ve got to pick up
Keely at ballet practice.”

I smiled. Her five-year-old daughter, Keely, was on her way to becoming a prima ballerina.
“You go ahead. I’m going to take a quick look around the house and make a priority
list of things to do tomorrow.”

“Okay.” She picked up the small red toolbox she always brought with her. “I’ll see
you in the morning.”

“Thanks, Carla.”

After she left, I wandered from room to room, making a list of projects that needed
work. I was struck again by the number of doors in the place, and how most of them
were in disrepair and needed restoring or replacement. Some had been cut short at
the bottom edge. I’d seen this in other Victorian homes and it was because the owners—or
in this case, the navy—had installed new carpeting that was too thick to allow the
doors to close. So instead of replacing the carpet or replacing the door, they would
simply saw off four or five inches. Naturally, that would create a whole other set
of problems to deal with.

I had a feeling these doors would be a project for years to come. I wondered if Mac
would be happy to see me showing up every other month or so to work on a door in some
room. I smiled at the thought.

I was kneeling down to check the flue in the secret servants’-quarters fireplace when
I heard a creaking sound coming from the front of the house. It was dark out, almost
six o’clock, and I wondered who was coming by this late. Mac, maybe?

“Hello,” I shouted. “Mac?”

No one responded.

I heard another creak and that one sounded like it was over my head. Was someone on
the second floor? Now I had to wonder if Aldous had returned to the house.

I stood up and listened for another creak. I couldn’t say if it was a good thing or
a bad thing, but nobody would ever be able to walk around this house without the owner
knowing there was someone else inside. Every floorboard and door creaked or groaned
when it was moved or walked upon. I would be able to fix some of them, but right now
I just wanted to know who else was in here with me.

“Hello?”

Again there was no answer. And that was when I felt a shiver of doubt. Lily had died
in this house. And so had an innocent serving girl named Betsy. I didn’t want to be
the hat trick.

And with that disturbing thought hovering in my head, I pulled out my phone and texted
Eric.

“At Mac’s place. Someone is prowling around. Help!”

I rolled my eyes at the cryptic message, knowing Eric would blow a gasket. But I hit
Send anyway. Then, just for good measure, I texted the same basic message to Mac.

Footsteps sounded on the subfloor of the kitchen and I knew my visitor was getting
too close. I burrowed into the space between the brick fireplace and the wall. It
was barely a foot wide but I squeezed in there, trying to hide from whoever was stalking
around. It couldn’t be a friend. He or she would’ve shouted out a greeting right away.

The footsteps grew softer, and I pictured the intruder walking toward the service
porch at the far end of the kitchen. Maybe he or she would leave the house through
the kitchen door and I would be able to come out of hiding. I felt ridiculous.

A door creaked open, but I could tell it wasn’t the door leading outside. No, it was
the sound of the basement door opening. But who would be crazy enough to go down to
a cold, dark basement all alone?

Sure enough, I could hear the light pounding of footsteps on the wooden stairs leading
down to where Lily’s bones had been found. I wondered,
Is this person returning to the scene of the crime?

But the basement hadn’t been the scene of the crime. I assumed that the real crime
had occurred in the third-floor attic, where Lily apparently had been killed and shoved
into the dumbwaiter shaft.

So who in the world was down in Mac’s basement?

By now I was a trembling mass of nerves. I had to do something. If the prowler stayed
downstairs for a few minutes, I could run to the front door and reach my truck before
he or she made it back upstairs.

I pushed myself out of my hiding place and tiptoed toward the front hall. But the
wooden floor of the servants’ room was so old, it creaked even louder than the subflooring
in the kitchen. I had no choice but to keep going, especially when I suddenly heard
the sound of feet pounding up the basement stairs.

“Oh, God!” I careened around the corner into the wide front hall, forgetting about
the ladder folded up against the wall. A dozen sample cans of paint were stacked nearby,
along with rollers and folded tarps. My hip bumped into the ladder and threw me off
balance. All I could do as I fell was try to protect my head from banging into anything
else.

“Well, well, aren’t you graceful?”

I hated to be trite, but the sound of that voice had the exact same effect as fingernails
scraping on a chalkboard. Every nerve ending in my body clenched as I glared up at
him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, pushing the ladder aside and dragging myself up
off the floor.

Dismal Dain sniffed as though he’d caught a whiff of something unpleasant. “Not that
it’s any of your business, but I misplaced something the last time I was here.”

I hated to show weakness, but I was forced to rest my hand on the wall to steady myself
from the fall. “The last time you were here,” I said slowly. “You mean, the time you
came out here to kill Lily?”

He bared his teeth. “You think you’re clever, but you’re nothing. You’re as useless
and stupid as she was.”

I was so sick of him. “You like thinking you’re smarter than everyone else, don’t
you, Mr. Dain? But clearly you’re not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, desperately
trying to find something you should’ve taken with you fifteen years ago.”

“Nobody will miss you,” he said softly, and that was when I saw the tire iron he was
holding.

With any luck, Eric or Mac would be here in the next ten minutes, but that wouldn’t
be soon enough. I had to think fast, or I’d be another victim. I had to keep Dismal
Dain talking. I suddenly remembered something Denise had said to him the other day,
about Lily keeping a diary. I knew she meant the notebook, but did Dain know that?

“You came out here to find Lily’s diary, didn’t you? I don’t think you’ll find it.”

“I’ll find it,” he insisted, swinging the tire iron as he spoke. There was no doubt
he intended to kill me.

“W-were you in love with her?” I asked.