Esther’s eyes lit up, and she exchanged a quick glance with Millie. Esther said, “The
old painted lady
. Right, Millie?”
“Yup, that’s her all right.”
Meredith was perplexed. “Painted lady?”
Esther looked at Millie and said, “They’re too young, aren’t they, dearest?”
“Yup.”
Esther looked back at Meredith and said, “Sometimes Victorian houses were called painted ladies because of the pretty colors used to paint them.”
“Rose,” Meredith said.
Dani shot a questioning glance her way.
“Oh, I noticed the color the other day when I took Mikey to taekwondo.” Meredith turned back to Esther. “That shade of rose, leaning toward pink, is just lovely.”
“I do love it. The paint’s all chipping and peeling now. Isn’t it, Millie?”
“Yup. Been a long time since I’ve been able to do any work on her.”
Meredith looked at Millie. “Do you own the house?”
Millie laughed a hearty laugh. Meredith suddenly got a crazy mental picture of Millie sitting in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe, and telling tall tales of days gone by. She shook the thought out of her head and wondered where such a warped idea of this sweet old woman came from.
“Me? Own the house?” Millie leaned her head back and laughed again. “Not me.” She nodded her head toward Esther in the bed.
Meredith turned toward Esther. “Mrs. Randall? Do you own the house?”
Esther scowled. “No and yes. No to the Mrs., but yes to owning the house.”
Meredith didn’t quite know how to interpret her response. Millie seemed to pick up on that and said, “My Esther here isn’t married. Well, not in the legal sense anyway.”
“Millie!” Esther scolded her again. Meredith got the feeling that Esther scolded Millie often.
“Okay, okay. Sorry. I’ll just sit here and do my puzzle.” Millie leaned back in the armchair. Meredith smiled when she pictured the pipe and rocking chair again.
“Oh, girls, don’t mind her.” Esther flipped her hand in dismissal at Millie. “She’s just crazy bored sitting here all day while my hip heals.”
“How rude of us, Miss Randall. How are you feeling?” Meredith was careful not to use the word Mrs.
“Oh, I’ve seen better days, my dear, but they tell me my hip wasn’t fractured too badly. It’s not broken all the way through and should heal pretty much on its own. Rudy told me they’re going to start me on physical therapy next week. I can even get around a little with that walker. Hate using it. I’m not old enough for a walker. Am I Millie?”
“Nope.” She didn’t look up from the crossword.
“Rudy said I was lucky, but I sure don’t feel lucky. I’ve never tripped like that before, have I Millie?”
“Nope.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what happened. I slipped in the front hallway and then tripped over the rug. That’s when I fell. Thank goodness Gregory was up visiting for the weekend. He was such a big help, but he didn’t find anything when he checked around the rug. We were already at Albany Medical by that time. Millie was by my side the whole time. Right, Millie?”
“Yup.”
“Anyway,” Esther continued, “they moved me here to Hudson Pines for bed rest and some really fun pain medication. I’ll be here for about two or three weeks. That’s right, Millie, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
Meredith smiled sympathetically at Esther. “Well, we sure hope you feel better soon.”
“Yeah,” Dani added, “I think there’s a jig you’re supposed to be doing soon, right?”
Esther laughed. “You girls are fun. So what can we tell you about our old painted lady?”
Meredith cleared her throat. She wasn’t sure what to ask. Before they left that afternoon, she figured Dani would do all the talking. “Um, can you tell us a little bit about the history of your house? Do you still live there?”
Dani jotted down notes while Meredith and Esther talked about the house. For almost an hour, Esther Randall, with some help from her friend Millie Bradley, relayed the story of the Victorian House. The Randall House was well over a hundred years old, built in the early 1890’s by Esther’s great grandfather, Charles Bickford Randall. Large tracts of land had once surrounded the property, but as Whickett grew, the property shrank.
Esther talked about her days as a young girl growing up in Whickett. She had been born in 1936 during the Great Depression, but couldn’t claim to remember much about it. She had been too young. World War II, however, did make a big impression on her, and she told them about her volunteer work collecting nylon stockings, used cooking grease, and old tires for the war effort.
Meredith found that she wasn’t shy around these two strangers. She wasn’t normally outgoing by nature, but she felt good talking with Esther and Millie. Her self-imposed bindings had loosened a little. She knew it was probably temporary, but she could almost understand why Dani was so perplexed at her introverted nature.
Meredith asked, “So you inherited the house when your father passed?”
“Yes. That was a sad time. It was just Daddy and me then. Mama had passed about ten years earlier. My sister Bernice had already moved out and was living downstate in Pearl River. That’s near New Jersey. We never understood why she wanted to live there, but her new husband wanted to be near the city. New York City, that is. So when Daddy passed on, Bernice sold me her share of the house. I was thirty five at the time, and it was right about then I met my Millie. Right, Millie?”
Meredith thought that Millie had fallen asleep in the armchair, but Millie’s eyes flew open. She leaned forward and poked the air. “Best damn day of my life.”
“Millie!”
Millie just smiled and leaned back in the armchair.
Meredith smiled at Millie and turned to smile at Dani. She was surprised to see Dani grinning like a cat.
“Anyway, girls,” Esther continued. “We decided after my hip accident that the house was just too big for us. Well, to be honest, we’d been thinking that way for a while now, so my Millie hired some movers to take our things to a two-bedroom first-floor apartment over on Market Street we’d been looking at. It’s one of those over fifty-five housing complexes. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it.”
Meredith looked sheepish. “I have to say that I haven’t. Sorry.”
Just then Esther yawned. “Oh, I’m sorry girls. This is my usual nap time.”
Meredith stood up, “Oh, goodness, we should be going.” Meredith was mortified that they had tired out the convalescing older woman. “Would you mind if we took a couple of quick pictures of you for our project?”
Esther sat up and smoothed her hair. “Of course you can, honey. I’m not looking my best these days, but, sure, go ahead.” She turned to face Millie. “We have some old pictures of the house the girls can use, don’t we Millie?”
“Yup. I was going to unpack that box when I got home tonight.”
Meredith smiled. “Thank you so much, both of you. This will really help our project. We’re putting together a PowerPoint—a kind of slide show—for our class and some old pictures would be perfect.”
Dani added, “I’ll scan them on my computer and get your pictures back to you right away.”
Meredith pulled her coat off the back of the fold-up chair and patted down the pockets for her digital camera. “Oh, shoot. I think I left my camera in the truck. Let me go—”
“I’ll get it.” Dani sprang to her feet. “I’ll be right back.” She grabbed her letterman’s jacket and shrugged it on as she bolted from the room.
Millie leaned forward and gestured toward the open door. She said to Meredith, “She’s quite a catch.”
“Millie!” Esther reprimanded.
“Cute, too.” Millie teased. “Those pretty blue eyes. That golden blond hair. I used to have hair like that. Okay, I was six at the time, but still.”
“Don’t mind Millie,” Esther said to Meredith. “What she means is that you’re very lucky to have such an attentive girlfriend.”
Meredith cleared her throat and asked, “What do you mean?”
Millie gestured at the chairs. “Well, she put your chair out for you. She let you introduce yourself first and waited in the background. Then she jumps up and runs.” She turned to Esther. “Did you see her run?”
“Reminds me of you, Millie.”
Millie smiled and looked back at Meredith. “Yeah, she’s a keeper all right. I have an intuition about these things.”
Meredith’s confusion must have shown because Esther changed the subject with a nervous laugh. “Did we tell you about our plans for the house?”
“Uh, no. No, you didn’t.” Meredith was relieved the subject had turned.
“Millie and I want to renovate the house into a sanctuary for women who need help getting back on their feet.” She looked at Millie with hopeful eyes. “Oh, Millie, I hope we can pull this off.”
“We’ll do it, Esther, we’ll do it.”
Just then Dani raced back into the room, out of breath. She handed the camera to Meredith.
Meredith thanked her and took the camera out of its case. “We took some pictures of the house last weekend. I hope you don’t mind.”
Esther said, “No, of course not, honey. You girls take as many pictures as you like. Millie, do you still have a key under the flower pot?”
“Yup.”
Esther looked back at them. “If you girls want to take a good look inside, Millie keeps a key hidden under the clay pot on the front landing. Go ahead and let yourself in anytime you want. The heat’s on, but set low, so turn it up when you get inside. Just remember to turn it back down when you leave.”
Meredith couldn’t believe that Miss Randall and Miss Bradley would tell virtual strangers where they kept the key to their house hidden. Meredith tried to keep her disbelief from showing. “No one lives there now?”
“No, honey. I haven’t been there since my hip, and Millie hasn’t been there in weeks, either.”
“That’s probably why it looked so lonely the other day.” Meredith smiled sympathetically.
Millie frowned. “It’s lonely without my Esther and with the furniture gone. It gives me the heebie jeebies. That’s why I stay away.”
“I live here at majestic Hudson Pines for now. Millie’s at our new place on Market Street with all our things. Well, we had to put some of the bigger furniture in storage, but no one’s at the house to bother you, so you girls go ahead and take all the pictures you need.”
“Thank you both so much.” Meredith put a hand to her heart. “I promise we’ll take good care of your painted lady.”
Millie stood up and said, “Hey, anything for a sister.”
“Millie!”
Meredith had no idea what Millie meant by her comment, she just laughed at the silly antics of the two older women. She smiled and turned on her camera. “Here are the pictures we took of your house the other night. She stood up and leaned toward the older woman in the bed. Millie, already standing, leaned in from the other side. Dani moved in behind Meredith to look over her shoulder.
Meredith said, “We haven’t even looked at them ourselves.” When Meredith scrolled to the last picture, she laughed. “I took this one just before the banister broke and Dani fell off the landing.”
“I’ll pay for it,” Dani said quickly.
Esther reached for Dani. “Don’t worry about that, honey. Are you all right?” Esther didn’t wait for an answer and turned to Millie. “See? I told you that old place is cursed. The old painted lady reached out and hurt this child, too.”
“Pah,” Millie said. “The old painted lady is just old. She’s not cursed.”
While Esther and Millie bantered back and forth, Meredith looked more closely at the photograph. She held the camera out so Dani could see the image. They looked at each other wide-eyed.
Meredith whispered, “Is that a face in the window?”
Chapter Seven
The Old Painted Lady
THE TRIP FROM the Hudson Pines Senior Center to Esther Randall and Millie Bradley’s Victorian house took them ten minutes. Meredith felt bad staying warm in the truck while Dani pulled up the metal latch holding the drive gate shut, but Dani jumped out of the truck as soon as they pulled into the small length of driveway in front of the gate. Dani walked the gate open and pushed the metal rod into the ground so it wouldn’t swing shut as they drove through. Dani turned and gave Meredith a thumbs-up. Meredith smiled but motioned for Dani to get back into the truck quickly.
Dani opened the driver’s side door and jumped back in. “What’s the hurry? Esther and Millie said we could check out the house any time we wanted to.” She pulled the truck up the long narrow driveway alongside the old house.
“I know, but it’s getting dark, and I don’t want to be around this house in the dark.” Meredith shivered. “I still say that was a face in the window of that picture.”
“Maybe it was a trick of the light, or...”
“Or what?”
With an evil laugh, Dani said, “Or maybe the house is cursed.”
“Danielle Lassiter. You cut that out. That’s not funny.” Meredith crossed her arms.
“Okay, okay.” Dani’s voice took on a more serious tone. “I was just kidding. By the way, my middle name is Anne. It sounds more threatening if you say ‘Danielle Anne Lassiter’ like my mom does when she’s pissed at me.”
“Well,” Meredith said unfolding her arms, “Miss Danielle Anne Lassiter, I suggest we get going, because the light is fading fast. So, chop, chop. Let’s go.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Dani put the truck in park and turned off the engine. She opened her door and hopped out. Meredith met her in front of the truck.
“Can you go see if that key is up there? I’m going to wait here. Just in case.”
“Chicken.” Dani laughed. Her feet crunched the frozen grass as she took a short cut from the driveway to the front porch. The house stood higher than the surrounding buildings giving it a look of superiority over the rest of Center Street.
The late afternoon shadows reminded Meredith of the scare they had the first time they checked out the house. The loud bang, the face in the window—maybe someone had been trying to scare them.
What was taking her so long? Meredith tried to keep the nerves out of her voice when she called, “Dani? Is it there?”
“Yeah, right here. C’mon up.”