Dark Homecoming (3 page)

L
iz was eight years old when her father left and never came back. And forever after, she blamed herself.

“Daddy,” the little girl had asked, “where are you going?”

He stood there in front of her wearing his overcoat and holding a suitcase. The television was blaring some rerun of
Friends
in their messy little house in Trenton, New Jersey, and Liz's three-year-old sister, Deanne, was screaming at her five-year-old brother, George, to give her back her Pop-Tart, and the family dog had just pissed on the carpet. Liz's mother was nowhere to be found.

“I'm going away,” her father replied. “I can't take any more of this.”

He turned and walked out the front door. He never came back.

Standing there alone in her living room, a Cheerios box overturned on the couch, the little o's filling up the valley between the cushions, Liz blamed herself for her father leaving them. Her mother had asked her to watch the children and clean up the living room because she had a headache, and she'd told her she'd better be quick about it, because Daddy was getting fed up. Liz, however, had not done what her mother had asked. Instead, she'd sat there watching television, becoming lost in the make-believe world of Monica and Rachel and Ross. She hadn't told Deanne and George to keep their voices down. She'd just let them rant and rave. She hadn't cleaned up the Cheerios or the dog piss. And so Daddy had left.

From that moment on, Liz grew up believing that if she didn't always make things right, everyone else would leave her, too.

Certainly that had been the case with her first boyfriend. Peter Mather had been a freckle-faced redhead whom Liz had started dating during her last year in high school. They both went on to the College of New Jersey, where Liz had studied music and dance, and they stayed together all through their freshman and sophomore years. Liz had even allowed herself to imagine marrying Peter. He was studying engineering, so he was certain to get a good job, which was a good thing, since she'd be off auditioning for shows and trying to make a career for herself as a dancer. She would tell Peter that when she made it big—dancing on Broadway in some big successful musical hit—she'd support him and pay him back for all the years supporting her.

But at a party during their junior year, Liz had walked into a room to find Peter going at it with some girl with long blond hair and big breasts. Lots of tears had followed, but at the end of her grief, Liz had decided to forgive Peter. Men will be men, after all, and, after all, he'd been drunk. She was devastated, then, after telling Peter that she forgave him, he looked at her and said he was leaving her. “I'm bored in this relationship,” he explained. For the last two years, Peter told her, Liz had been boring him more and more. He'd only stayed with her because all his friends had girlfriends and he didn't want to be the odd man out.

Liz just wasn't good enough, Peter explained—or pretty enough, or smart enough. At least, that was what Liz had heard. Maybe those hadn't been the exact words he used, but those were what Liz heard. Once again, she hadn't taken care of things—she had let things go, she hadn't taken care of someone else's needs, she had been boring and inattentive—and someone she loved had left her. Soon Peter was dating the big-boobed blond girl, who Liz imagined was never boring and always very attentive.

After that, Liz moved back home, commuting her last two years of college. It was a good thing, too, as Mom was drinking more. Deanne and George tended to avoid and ignore Mom's problem, but Liz did her best to intervene. If they didn't take care of Mom, Liz argued, they'd lose her. Liz tried so hard to make things right for Mom. She took care of her mother through every one of her drinking binges, cleaning up the messes that she made, calling everyone Mom had offended and apologizing for her. When Mom finally got sober, after a long and agonizing ordeal, she said she owed her life to Liz. For once, Liz had done what she was supposed to do, and she had the results to show for it: she hadn't lost her mother.

But her mother became determined that she'd never lose Liz either. “I still need you, honey,” Mom had said when Liz had announced she was taking the job on the round-the-world cruise ship soon after her graduation from college. The idea of Liz being so far away for so long unnerved Mom—and it unnerved Liz, too, who worried Mom would backslide and start drinking. An email from Deanne, which Liz received somewhere off the coast of Iceland, confirmed Liz's worst fears. Mom had indeed hit the sauce again. She'd wrecked the car. Liz blamed herself for going away, for not sticking around to keep Mom in line. See what happened when she didn't do what she was supposed to do? Her guilt threatened to ruin the rest of the voyage for her.

“But baby,” Liz's best friend, Nicki, counseled her, sitting on the upper deck under a full white moon as the ship sliced through the cold waters of the North Atlantic, “you can't blame yourself. You can't go on living your life for your mother. You have your own life to live! This cruise was a golden opportunity for you to see the world and to do what you love most—dance! You can't go on being your mother's keeper.”

When Liz met David a short time later, she saw the wisdom of Nicki's words. If she hadn't taken the job on the ship, she never would have met David.

And to her relief, Mom's relapse didn't last. With the help of her friends in AA, Mom had once again committed to sobriety, and Liz was proud of her. Still, she wondered, deep down, if she had been the cause of Mom falling off the wagon, and if without her around, the same thing might happen all over again.

But she had hesitated only a moment when David had asked her to marry him and move with him to Florida. Nicki's words came back to her.
You can't go on living your life for your mother.
An amazing man had just asked Liz to marry him. He was kind and decent and extraordinarily wealthy. She said yes gladly.

Take that, Peter Mather!

Mom hadn't been happy when she learned that Liz had eloped. She was furious, in fact. But what upset her more was that Liz was moving permanently so far away from her. At least before, her mother had consoled herself that the cruise ship gig would eventually end. Now Liz was taking up residence more than a thousand miles away. Liz had tried assuring her mother that if she ever needed her, she would come to her. David could afford to fly her anywhere at any time. But Mom was still brooding about it. There was an edge to her voice every time Liz called her. Liz constantly worried her mother would start drinking again.

Liz had rocked the boat, quite literally, by going off on the cruise, and Mom had suffered. Now she had married and moved away—leaving Mom on her own to fend for herself. Sure, she had Deanne and George, but George was a pothead and Deanne was still in school.

Once again, Nicki's words:
You can't go on living your life for your mother.

But Mom was only as fragile as she was because Dad had left her, and Dad had only left because Liz and her siblings had been too much to handle.

That was the guilt that festered in Liz's heart of hearts.

And that was why she didn't want to rock the boat with David. That was why she was so timid with him, so reticent about asking him hard questions or requesting he take down his first wife's portrait right away. She wasn't going to make a big deal about comments made by an unhinged young man. If Jamison needed to be fired, that was David's decision. But Liz wasn't going to speak of it again. If she did—if she proved to be too much trouble, if she didn't do what she was supposed to do—she believed subconsciously that David would leave her, just as Daddy did all those years ago.

T
hat night, at Mickey's Bar, a very dejected young man asked for a beer. The bartender complied, filling up the glass at the tap and sliding it across the bar toward the young man. He took a sip, getting foam on his upper lip.

“Why so glum, Jamison?” a female voice asked from behind him.

Jamison turned around. “Oh, hello, Rita,” he said.

The pretty maid from Huntington House sidled onto the next stool. “You look like you just got run over by a truck,” she said, signaling to the bartender to pour her a beer as well.

“I might as well have,” Jamison replied. “I was fired.”

“No way!”

“Mr. Huntington fired me. Told me to get out and not come back.”

Rita sipped her beer, daintily wiping her lips with her napkin. “That doesn't sound like Mr. Huntington. He's usually so nice.”

“Well, he wasn't very nice tonight.”

“But whatever did he fire you for? What reason did he give?” She smiled, batting her lashes lightly at him. “I think you're a very hard worker, Jamison.”

The young man scowled. “He fired me because I told the truth.”

Rita lifted an elegantly manicured eyebrow in his direction. “The truth?”

Jamison nodded. “I told the new Mrs. Huntington about Audra.”

Rita was silent for a moment, seeming unable to absorb what Jamison had just said. Then a small smile tickled the ends of her mouth. “You . . . did . . . not!”

“I did. I just couldn't see that poor unsuspecting girl brought into that room and not being told about what had happened there.” Suddenly Jamison banged his fist on the bar, nearly upsetting his glass of beer. “I was raised to be a good Christian, Rita, and you just don't withhold that kind of information from someone! That's not being very charitable, to say the least. If anything had happened to Mrs. Huntington, and I hadn't said anything, then I'd be partly to blame.” He looked intently over at her. “We all have to watch out for each other. That's Christ's teaching, right there.”

“Well, I admire your convictions,” Rita said, “but telling the boss's new wife something like that before he has the chance to tell her himself was really asking for trouble, Jamison. You have to see that.”

“He
wasn't
going to tell her,” the young man insisted. “That's just it. That's why I had to speak up.”

“How do you know he wasn't going to tell her?”

Jamison's eyes were big like saucers, full of indignation. “Mrs. Hoffman told me before they arrived that Mr. Huntington would never say a word to his wife about Audra, or about anything bad that had happened in the house since the first Mrs. Huntington died.” He slumped back on his stool, chin on his chest. “I just felt she had a right to know.”

“Maybe so, but it wasn't your place . . .”

His eyes darted back up to her. “I ask myself every day: What would Jesus do? And I believe Jesus would have told her.”

“Yeah, but Jesus doesn't work for Mr. Huntington.”

Jamison took another sip of his beer. “I don't care. I did what I did and I'm glad. He can stuff his stupid job up his stupid ass.”

“That kind of talk is hardly Christlike,” Rita gently scolded, unable to suppress a smile.

“Pardon my language,” Jamison said, slumping back on his stool again.

“But are you sure Audra's body was found in that room?” Rita leaned in toward him. “I've heard so many crazy stories since her death. I heard she was found outside on the grounds and it was some old boyfriend of hers who surprised her and slashed her—”

“She died in that room! I know! I saw her! I helped Mrs. Hoffman move the body!”

Rita was even more dumbfounded upon hearing this news than she had been before. “You—did—
what
?”

“I've kept it a secret all this time, but what the heck, I no longer work there.” Jamison chugged down a long gulp of beer. “I was working late, when all of a sudden Mrs. Hoffman came running in to find me, all out of breath. She begged me to help her. She was really freaking out!”

“I can't imagine that plastic mannequin ever getting that worked up,” Rita said.

“Well, she was this night. She told me to follow her upstairs, to Mrs. Huntington's room—the
late
Mrs. Huntington—and there, right in the middle of the floor, I saw Audra's body in a pool of bright red blood.”

“Oh my God, Jamison. What did you do?”

“Mrs. Hoffman was terrified. I thought she was going to start screaming. I asked her who had done this.” Jamison shuddered. “I'll never forget what she said.”

“What? Tell me!”

“She just said, ‘Her.'”

“Her?”

“Yes.
Her
. She was looking around the room, as if she was scared to death.”

“But what did she mean by
her
?”

“She meant Mrs. Huntington.” Jamison looked directly into Rita's eyes. “The late Mrs. Huntington.”

“Dominique Huntington.”

The young man nodded.

“Oh, come on, Jamison,” Rita said. “You don't believe in ghosts, so you? A good Christian boy like you?”

“I believe in the devil. And I remember the things Mrs. Huntington used to do . . . the things she and Variola used to talk about . . . those secret meetings and the chanting . . .”

“Oh, but they were just fooling around,” Rita said. “Variola always talks about that black magic stuff from the islands. I've never taken her seriously.”

“You should. Because that night, I saw the work of the devil.” Jamison finished his beer, then looked hard at Rita. “Bloody footsteps . . . leading away from Audra's body, then disappearing at the wall.”

Rita frowned. “Are you saying . . . Dominique's ghost slashed Audra to death, then walked away through the wall?”

“The evidence was right there.” He smirked. “Ghosts can walk through walls. It's one of the perks of being dead, I guess.”

“This is crazy.”

“I'm telling you the God's honest truth. But Mrs. Hoffman—she said it would never do to find the body in that room. It would cause a panic. It would be too much of a scandal for poor Mr. Huntington.”

“So you moved the body?”

Jamison nodded. “I'm not proud of the fact. But I did. I was so scared. And I didn't want to lose my job.” He frowned, then gestured toward the bartender for a refill of his glass. “Lot of good my cooperation did. I'm still out on my ass.”

“You carried the body down the stairs?”

He nodded. “We wrapped it in a shower curtain and I carried poor Audra down to the backyard, where I placed her on the grass. Only then did Mrs. Hoffman call the police.”

Rita had seen enough
CSI
s and
Law & Order
s to know that forensics would have spotted something not quite right. “Why didn't the police notice there wasn't much blood under her on the grass? They would have suspected she'd been moved . . .”

Jamison smiled tightly. “It was pouring rain. By the time Mrs. Hoffman called and by the time the cops got to the estate, poor Audra was soaking wet, lying in five inches of mud.”

Rita just shuddered.

“I'm going to the police and telling them everything I know,” Jamison said, taking a sip of his second beer. “Mr. Huntington made a big mistake firing me.”

“I gather Mrs. Hoffman didn't know he did so?” Rita asked. “I imagine she wouldn't be happy knowing you were let loose carrying this particular secret of hers.”

Jamison nodded. “That's right. She had gone to bed. At first, I wanted to wake her, and tell her I was being fired. I figured she'd want to keep me, so I wouldn't tell what I knew. I even thought of telling Mr. Huntington—telling him that I had moved Audra's body out to the grounds, and that I hadn't been lying when I'd told his new wife that the poor girl had died in her room. I figured I could threaten him with dredging up the scandal and making things worse.” He took another gulp of beer. “But then I thought: Why do I want to work in a place like this? A place possessed by the devil?” He narrowed his eyes at Rita. “He's still there, you know. The devil. He operates freely at Huntington House.”

“I don't believe in the devil,” Rita said.

“Well, you should. And so should that poor girl Mr. Huntington just married.” He drank down the last of his beer, and seemed a bit drunk all of a sudden. “I'm going to the police in the morning and tell them everything. It's the least I can do for that poor girl.”

“How will telling the police help the new Mrs. Huntington?”

“It might get her out of that room. Maybe even the house.”

Rita smiled. “You think it would drive the poor girl away? You think she might leave Mr. Huntington?”

“Well, if she knows the crime that was committed there, and covered up . . .”

Rita looked over at him. “Mrs. Hoffman might be charged with lying to police, with tampering with evidence in a murder investigation.”

“So be it. She's the devil's handmaiden, after all. You remember how close she was to the first Mrs. Huntington.”

“Yeah, she was a freakishly possessive of her. Like some sort of kinky girl-crush.”

Jamison was nodding. “If Dominique and Variola were casting spells, I'm sure Mrs. Hoffman was part of it.”

Rita smiled. “You silly boy. Believing in such things as spells and ghosts.” Her smile disappeared. “But clearly something happened in that house. Something is being covered up. You should definitely go to the police. If you don't, they might charge you with the same things they might charge Mrs. Hoffman with. After all, you moved the body.”

“But if I confess, they will probably not press charges.” He got up off his stool, standing shakily beside the bar. “And if not, if they arrest me, then so be it. I did wrong. I'll take my punishment.”

“Are you all right to drive home?” Rita asked as Jamison turned to leave.

“I can handle two beers,” he replied.

She lifted hers in salute. “Thanks for telling me all this stuff.”

He looked back at her. “You should know. Everyone should know. That way you can get out of that devil's house.”

Rita just smiled.

She had no intention of leaving Huntington House.

At least, not without David.