The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1) (16 page)

Beckett put a hand on Jess’s shoulder and slid it under her back. “Can you move?” She nodded tentatively. He helped her raise her head and shoulders off the floor. Sitting up caused her to wince in pain as her back muscles seized. Jess looked at her bare legs sprawled before her and realigned them, then straightened her dress over her lap. She looked at Beckett and nodded again. He took her hand in his and also supported her waist as she stood. Once she regained her feet, she looked at Tyler.

His gaze did not leave the floor.

“Hang on,” Jess said. She put both hands on the steel countertop for support and leaned over it, her eyes squeezed shut. She needed to catch her breath and find her equilibrium. Jess didn’t notice Beckett’s hands leave her.

There was a shout of surprise, then more shouts and scuffling. Someone kicked the mixing bowls on the floor and they skidded and clattered again, causing Jess to grip the counter and cringe into herself, braced for another blow. Dave and Beckett shouted at each other. By the time Jess was able to look, Dave was holding Beckett by both arms. Beckett still snarled at Tyler, but already he was relaxing against Dave’s hold. Tyler had his fists up, and Jess saw the silver end of the pocket knife where it extended from inside his fist. A trick, she knew, to add heft to his punch; thank goodness the blade was closed.

Beckett shook off Dave’s grasp. “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right!”

Dave released Beckett and positioned himself between him and Tyler, his hands out like a traffic warden. Jess figured this wasn’t his first time breaking up a fight.

Beckett offered her his arm. With his hands on her for support, she turned to leave and found the party had crammed into the kitchen. Her new neighbors stared at her, some with hands over their mouths. People looked away as she and Beckett moved slowly toward the door, parting for them as they made their slow retreat. Jess’s face began to throb, but she would not touch it or meet the look of those surrounding her, afraid of what she would see reflected in their faces.

Beckett led her outside. The water wheel’s slow turning was a remarkably pleasant sound. Jess thought if she could only sit down that sound would soothe her spiraling nerves and bring her back to herself. She wanted to mention it to Beckett, but when she lifted her head she saw Mike Cummings and the tall man in the garden. The tall man had a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Mike had his hands in his back pockets. They both stared at her, impossible to imagine what they had missed inside. Beckett’s cargo van was parked in front of the hardware store. He guided their slow promenade. Jess felt the heat of eyes on her back and knew all of Skoghall stood behind her in the garden. Beckett opened the car door and kept a hand on her elbow as Jess lowered herself into the seat.

Beckett drove in silence. Jess looked at her lap as tears of shock and pain welled in her eyes. A drop fell, landing on her dress. It soaked into the fabric turning an orange-brown. She put her fingers to her cheek and they came away wet with blood. “Oh my God.” Jess flipped the visor down in front of her and found a mirror. Blood ran down her cheek from the gash Tyler’s ring had made. She began to tremble.

Beckett tucked Jess into bed and Shakti followed her. The dog sniffed Jess’s face and gave her a warm lick before curling up against her abdomen. Beckett shifted next to her bed, turning toward the door and back again. Jess reached out to grasp his wrist. “Stay with me?”

He hesitated, then walked around the bed to the other side and lay down on top of it. When she began to tremble again, he spooned Jess and put his arm over her shoulder. Beckett shushed her, the way one shushes a baby to calm it, and rubbed her arm through the covers. Jess felt exhausted and wired at the same time, as though she’d been startled, only instead of a fleeting sensation, it was lasting all night.

The red-haired woman stood in the corner of the bedroom. Jess’s skin prickled with the sensation of being watched and she turned and kicked at the covers before waking. When she opened her eyes, the red-haired woman touched a hand to her throat then opened and closed her silent mouth. Jess slipped out of bed and stood facing the red-haired woman. She turned away from Jess and walked through the wall. Jess followed. On the other side of the wall was a bedroom decorated with planets and spaceships. A twin bed sat in place of Jess’s desk with a rocket blasting into the stars on the bedspread. Navy blue curtains hung over the windows. The red-haired woman parted the curtains. On the windowsill stood a line of cowboy and Indian figurines. Through the window, beyond the sugar maple, Jess saw the smokehouse, eerily aglow, though when she looked up into the sky, the moon was hidden by a thick layer of charcoal-colored clouds. Jess gagged, her throat suddenly too small. The red-haired woman stood quietly, holding the curtains open, her gaze fixed on the smokehouse. Jess tried to get more air into her lungs, gasping and sucking. It felt like she was trying to breath through a cocktail straw. She put her hands to her throat and clawed at her neck, but found nothing there to release.
Oh God. Oh God. I’m dying
. She tried harder to pull air into her lungs. The room began shrinking. The red-haired woman stared at her, impassive.

Something took firm hold of Jess’s arms. She swung around, her mouth gaping, her hands clawing at her throat. “Jess. Jess!” Beckett shook her.

Her throat opened and she noisily sucked in air. Jess collapsed, sinking on legs that could no longer hold her. Beckett swung her into the desk chair. Jess’s chest heaved with the panicked work of bringing oxygen back into her body while she looked at Beckett, the room, the windows. It was her office. There were no curtains. No bed. No rockets. She put her head in her hands, but when she touched the swell on her right cheek she cried out at the stinging pain. She looked up, tears running down her face. “Beckett, what’s going on?”

“Jess…” He put his hand forward to gently touch her neck. “You scratched yourself. You’re bleeding a little.”

“I don’t know what’s going on. She was in the room with us. She wanted me to see something.”

“It was a dream. You were sleepwalking.”

Jess stood up, suddenly remembering, and went to the closet against the wall shared with her bedroom. “I walked through this wall.”

“No, you didn’t. Jess…”

Jess looked at Beckett and noticed for the first time that he was only wearing boxers.

“I figured I’d get comfortable if I was sleeping here,” he said.

“Did you see me leave the bedroom?”

“No.”

“Turn on the light.” She had to stand still, blinking until her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, then stepped inside the closet. It was really two small closets, one to each side of the door with short hanging bars. Jess patted the wall between them. “This is where she goes. She walks through right here.”

“Who?” Beckett rubbed his goatee.

“The red-haired woman. The ghost.” She knocked on the wall. “Look at the closet. Why would someone make it like this, unless there was a door here?”

“I don’t know, Jess. It’s 3:00 in the morning.”

“The last owner remodeled the bedroom and bathroom. She could have walled up the doorway.”

“I suppose.” Beckett sat in the desk chair and rocked backwards, then, noticing the cowboy, he rocked forward and picked it up.

“That’s hers. Whenever I put it away somewhere, no matter where in the house I hide it, it ends up right there.” Beckett considered the cowboy a moment and put it back. “She showed me something tonight…”

He held up his hand to stop Jess. “Look, if we’re going to do this now, I need a drink.”

“Coffee? Tea? Cocoa?”

“We
are
going back to sleep, aren’t we? You know, like at 4:00?” Beckett sighed. “I need a drink-drink.”

Jess found she had to take it slow going downstairs. Each step caused pain in her back. She had avoided looking at herself in the mirror, but could tell from the feel of things that she had a solid lump on her cheek and a large bruise above her hip. Shakti followed them, pausing to scratch behind her ear on the landing, then whined, an alarmed squeak when Jess and Beckett got too far ahead of her. Beckett went back for her and carried her to the kitchen.

Jess stood in the butler’s pantry gathering supplies. “Do you like white Russians or black Russians?”

“Well, I try to be color blind when I meet people.”

She stepped into the kitchen, a bottle of Kahlua and vodka in her hands. “Funny.” She smiled and winced. “Ouch. Don’t make me laugh. ”

“That’s a hell of a bruise.” Beckett handed her the glasses with ice.

“I’m afraid to look.” She gave Beckett his drink, a black Russian, then added some milk to hers.

The sat in the living room with their drinks in the middle of the night like they were an old couple beyond the pretense of vanity. Jess told Beckett about all that had happened since they had talked in his studio. The red-haired woman had been haunting her dreams, but these were not regular dreams, they were messages, of that Jess was certain. Tonight was the first time she had gotten out of bed to follow her. There was something in the smokehouse—that horrible pink torso. And the cowboy was important, but she didn’t know how. “And then there’s this.” Jess stood up from the couch and went to the music room. She had brought the sheet of paper downstairs to read over her writing exercises, to see if there was anything worth keeping. “Look.” She handed Beckett the paper and pointed to the bottom of the page. Beckett took the sheet and looked at it.

“Find him?”

“I didn’t get it until now. I think she took me back in time tonight. My office was a little boy’s bedroom. It was decorated with space ships.”

“It makes sense of your door theory if the smaller room was used as a nursery.”

Jess picked up her drink and took a sip, then touched the cool glass to her cheek.

“You need to get that X-rayed tomorrow. You could have a fracture.”

Jess groaned. “Does it look as bad as it feels?”

“I don’t know about that, but it looks pretty awful.”

“Beckett?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t lose this house.” Jess felt her lip begin to quiver and tried to stop the vibration before she burst into tears.

Beckett scooted closer and put his arms around her, then drew her into a hug. Everything seemed better, as though Beckett had parted the sea of confusion and fear that threatened to sink her life. As long as she stayed there, with her good cheek against his warm skin, everything would be all right.

Chapter Ten

There was a knock on the door, soft at first and then louder. Jess rose from her groggy half-sleep. Beckett had left only fifteen or twenty minutes ago and she’d drifted off again. He must have forgotten something. Jess got out of bed and went to the stairs, Shakti on her heels. As she lowered her foot to take the first step, her back clenched with pain. “Damn,” she said as she put one hand on the rail and the other on the bruise on her back. “Coming,” she shouted down the stairs. “Not very fast,” she muttered to herself. Shakti took the stairs at her own pace, carefully lowering her front paws, then swinging her hind legs and rump down to meet them. They made it to the bottom hallway together in record slow time.

Jess opened the front door.

Tyler stood on the porch before her. He held her purse before him like an offering. When he lifted his head to look at her, she saw the shock and pain in his eyes and the edge of her fear softened. “Jess,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I would like to explain.”

“Explain?”

“I would never hurt you. It was an accident and…” His words trailed off as he searched her face for some sign of understanding or forgiveness. “I’ll pay for any medical bills, of course.” Tyler dropped his head and held out her purse.

Jess took the purse from him. She was still in her pajamas, a pair of cotton shorts and tank top, and the morning air chilled her arms and legs. Shakti brushed past her ankles and went outside before Jess could stop her. She skirted around Tyler and made her way down to the grass. Jess shielded her eyes from the sun as she watched Shakti sniff around the base of the sugar maple. She couldn’t help looking beyond the tree to the smokehouse. What was the red-haired woman trying to show her last night?