From Cradle to Grave (10 page)

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Sandy. ‘Tell Claire I said hi.’

ELEVEN

M
organ glanced at the deflated balloons still tied to the mailbox, and made a mental note to get scissors and cut them down. Their continued, bedraggled presence was like a reproach to Drew and Guy’s memory. She continued up the path to the house while Dusty sat tensely on his haunches in front of the door and stared at the creature coming toward him.

‘Hey, Dusty,’ said Morgan. ‘Remember me? I’m the one with the cat food.’ Dusty’s gaze was impassive. Morgan was on her guard. She really did not want to be clawed again. She had already had enough of this day. After she left Sandy’s house, she had visited the funeral home and checked on the arrangements, and then stopped for a few groceries and bought herself dinner at a little Italian place in the same strip mall as the grocery store. While she waited for her order of pasta, she had called Claire again at the prison. This time she was able to get through.

Although her voice had sounded weak and fatigued, Claire had been grateful to hear that she would be allowed to attend the services. ‘I have to warn you. I’m afraid that Guy’s father may be setting you up,’ Morgan had told her. Claire insisted that it didn’t matter, she didn’t care. She fretted, however, that she had no black clothes to wear. Morgan told her that she was on her way to the cottage, and would find the clothes she needed and bring them to the prison.

Now, edging past the cat, Morgan mounted the step and ran her hand along the trim above the door looking for the spare key in the spot where Claire told her it would be. She knew she could try the back door, but she suspected that the cop had locked it after he found her in the kitchen the night before. Morgan pulled the key down and inserted it in the front door lock. She opened the front door, and stepped inside.

Flipping on a lamp by the door, she looked around.

Claire’s normally tidy cottage was in disarray. Every drawer and cabinet seemed to have part of its contents sticking out. At first, Morgan was alarmed by the sight and then, all at once, she realized that this must be the result of the police search. With a sigh, Morgan began a cursory effort to straighten up. She stacked books, files and papers back into their drawers and on to their shelves. After a while, the place looked better. Morgan glanced down the hallway which led to the master bedroom. The worst chore awaited her. She knew she had to go in there, to get the clothes which Claire wanted. They might need washing or pressing. But the clothes were all in the closet adjacent to the bathroom where the crime had occurred. Morgan’s stomach felt like a clenched fist. It was not going to get any better, she thought. Just do it.

She walked down the hall, and hesitantly entered the master bedroom. The room was a mess with clothes strewn on the floor and the bed unmade. Once again, Morgan knew she should pick the room up, but she just wanted to get the clothes and get out. Avoiding looking at the bassinet or the changing table, she went straight to the dresser and rifled through the drawers. She found the underwear, panty hose and black sweater which Claire had asked for. Then she went over to the closet. Beside the closet, the door to the master bathroom stood ajar. Morgan tried not to look. She pulled out a slim black skirt and draped it over her arm. She knew she should turn and walk out, not look, but her gaze seemed to be drawn to the bathroom. The scene of the crime.

Just last week, Morgan had guided Claire into the large, white tiled bath, to help her get ready for the christening. Morgan had run a bath in the cast iron claw-foot tub, and filled it with bubbles, set out a fluffy white towel and even shampooed Claire’s short, fashionably cut hair. Claire had finally pulled it together and at that moment, to Morgan, it had seemed to be a day full of hope. And now, all that hope was over. Hesitantly, Morgan reached past the bathroom door to the switch on the wall and turned on the light.

Her gaze swept the room and she gasped. The walls and floors of the white room were spattered red with blood. A formerly white towel sat in a wet pool on the bathroom floor, stained an uneven pink and rusty red. There was still water pooled in the bottom of the bathtub and flies buzzed over it. The smell in the room was off, metallic, turning fetid.

Somehow Morgan had expected that the only sign of the tragedy which occurred there would be some intangible feeling in the air. Instead, the police had left it as it was, a roomful of violence and its aftermath. Morgan’s stomach lurched, and she thought she might be sick. She turned her face away from the appalling sight, and made her way blindly from the bedroom out into the hallway, and down the hallway to the living room.

Morgan flopped down on one of Claire’s overstuffed, chintz-covered loveseats, leaned her head back against the high cushions and took a few deep breaths. She tried not to think about the bloodstained bathroom but it was difficult to banish the image from her mind’s eye. She had never intended to sleep in the master bedroom, but just knowing it was there, in that condition, made her feel as if there was something festering in the center of the house.

Suddenly, Morgan felt overwhelmed. What am I doing here, she thought? Everything around me is in chaos. I’m a stranger in this town, going around making excuses for a confessed murderer. This isn’t my battle. I’m not even related to Claire. But even as she thought it, she knew it was only exhaustion that was making her think that way. Yes, Claire had confessed, but that didn’t mean it was time to walk away. Of course it was Morgan’s battle. She was closer to Claire than anyone else, and she intended to see her through this nightmare. It was just that these last few days had been nothing like she expected them to be. She thought longingly of her aborted trip to England. Today, she would still have been in London, poring over some of Harriet Martineau’s manuscripts in the British Museum, and having dinner with Simon. Tomorrow, they would have been setting out for the Lake District. She had been there several times, but only briefly. This would be a luxurious visit. Stately English homes, set like jewels in the boulder-strewn hillsides which sloped down to the crystalline lakes. Their hotel was a former manor house, with a forest surrounding it. The hotel’s brochure, which Simon had sent her, promised tea by the fire, in the most fragile of cups . . .

A pounding on the front door made Morgan jump, and she stared at the door as if it were alive and shouting at her. The knocking continued. Morgan lay Claire’s funeral clothes carefully over the arm of the sofa, smoothed down her own rumpled clothes, and got up to answer.

The couple at the door looked to be in their sixties. The man had sparse white hair sticking out from under a ball cap, a pouchy red face and rheumy eyes. He had on a worn plaid shirt and jeans. The woman’s hair was dyed a Creamsicle orange. She was a soft-bodied woman with a shy smile.

‘I’m Wayne Summers. This here is my wife, Helene,’ said the man in a rough voice with a Southern drawl. ‘I’m looking for Guy Bolton’s house.’

Morgan cringed inside. She hated to have to explain about Guy. She wondered how much she had to say to this stranger. ‘This is his house,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I’m afraid that Guy is dead.’

‘I know he’s dead,’ said the old man bluntly. ‘His wife killed him and the baby. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer fella. No, we jest come up here from West Virginia and we’ve got to be getting back home. We’re looking for our granddaughter. Eden? Thought she might still be here.’

‘Eden is your granddaughter!’ Morgan exclaimed.

‘Do you know Eden?’ Helene said hopefully.

‘Well, not really. I mean, I did meet her . . . when she first arrived.’

‘Where’d she go?’ Wayne demanded.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know . . .’ said Morgan.

‘You see a friend of ours from church saw on the CNN news what happened to Guy Bolton and that baby,’ explained Helene. ‘We tried to call Eden on her cellphone but we couldn’t reach her and we got worried about her. I mean, we knew she came up here to try and meet her father. We figured she might be all upset by this, and we better come see if she needed us to bring her home.’

Wayne Summers sighed and shook his head with exasperation. ‘I told you this was a waste of time, Helene. That girl hasn’t got the sense God gave an acorn . . .’

‘That’s not so, Wayne. She’s a very smart young girl,’ Helene corrected him staunchly. Helene turned to Morgan. ‘Our Eden is highly intelligent. Her psychologist told me so. But she has some emotional problems . . .’

‘Emotional problems,’ Wayne scoffed. ‘That psychologist is just stealin’ our money. Eden’s not right, Helene. It’s a fact of life. Her mind is . . . off . . .’

Morgan could see that Eden’s grandfather had little patience for her. Morgan knew what it was like to live in a house where you felt unwanted under your own roof. Even though the death of her parents in the hotel bombing had left Morgan with a trust fund for her expenses, Morgan could remember how her uncle would curse his late brother, with whom he had never been close, for visiting this extra child on his household. It sometimes seemed that he wanted her to hear it, wanted her to feel guilty for existing. She wondered, briefly, if that was what Eden’s life had been like. She was a grandchild, whom these people had never intended to raise. ‘Eden’s been through a lot this last week,’ said Morgan. ‘She finally met her father . . .’

‘How did that go?’ Helene asked anxiously.

‘I guess, not too well,’ said Morgan.

Helene sighed. ‘I was afraid of that.’

‘Who are you anyway?’ Wayne Summers asked suspiciously.

‘I’m . . . My name is Morgan Adair. I’m a friend of Guy’s wife, Claire.’

‘The one who killed him?’ Wayne asked.

Morgan looked at him coldly, trying to formulate a reply.

‘Hey, don’t glare at me, little lady. I’ve nothin’ against her. In fact, I’d like to shake that Claire’s hand.’

‘Wayne Summers, you hush,’ Helene insisted.

‘I won’t,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Guy Bolton finally got what was due him.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Morgan asked.

‘Why? He killed our Kimberlee, that’s why.’

Helene gave her husband a look full of warning. She turned to Morgan and rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s a mad dog on this subject.’

‘Like hell. It’s the God’s truth,’ Wayne exclaimed. ‘I don’t care what the police said. He killed her as sure as I’m standing here.’

Helene ignored him. ‘Maybe Eden’s back at the Spauldings by now. That’s the woman who sent her the article from the paper about the baby. Our Kimba worked for them one summer. They’ve got a hotel called the Captain’s House and our daughter was a chambermaid there.’

‘The Captain’s House,’ Morgan exclaimed. ‘Sure, I know that place. I stayed there.’

‘Well, then you know what a nice lady that Mrs Spaulding is. She never forgot about Kimba. Or Eden. She sent Eden a Christmas card with five dollars in it every single year,’ Helene explained amiably.

‘Don’t call her by that niggerish name,’ Wayne protested. ‘Her name was Kimberlee.’

Morgan could hardly believe her ears. ‘Niggerish?’ she said.

Helene apologized for her husband. ‘Don’t mind him. She decided she wanted to be called Kimba back when she was going to art school in New York City. More modern, I guess.’

‘More colored,’ Wayne scoffed. ‘Sounds like a name straight out of Swahililand.’

‘That girl of ours could sew anything,’ said Helene wistfully. ‘She won a contest and she got a scholarship. She wanted to be in fashion.’

‘When I catch up to Eden . . .’ said Wayne in a threatening tone, interrupting his wife’s reverie about their long-lost daughter. ‘Helene, come along.’

‘I’m coming, dear. I just wondered,’ said Helene, turning to Morgan. ‘Would you mind very much if I used your little girls’ room?’

Immediately, Morgan remembered the bloodstained bathroom off the master bedroom, and shuddered. ‘Uh, yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Just use the one up the stairs. On your right.’

Helene started up the stairs.

‘I’ll wait in the truck,’ said Wayne. ‘If Eden turns up back here, you tell her I’m too old for her games. She best get on that bike of hers and head for home. And tell my wife I’m outside.’ Before Morgan could reply, Wayne left the house.

In a few moments, Helene returned to the living room.

‘Your husband’s waiting for you outside,’ said Morgan.

‘Oh thank you. And don’t mind him. He’s just oldfashioned,’ said Helene as she started for the door.

As if racism was some sort of charmingly nostalgic trait, Morgan thought. But as offended as she was by the old man’s remarks, she was most curious about something he had said. ‘Wait,’ said Morgan. She put her hand on the woman’s sleeve. Helene’s arm was as soft as a marshmallow. ‘I can’t help wondering. What did your husband mean about Guy killing your daughter? I thought your daughter died in an accident.’