The Chick and the Dead (13 page)

Smile or come down to take my suitcase.

Realizing he wasn't going to, I hoisted the suitcase myself, threaded my way through the maze of construction materials, and climbed the stairs. The closer I got to the man, the stronger the smell of cigarettes became. Believe me, even when I got to the top of the steps, I kept my distance—from him and from the nasty smell—but even so, I felt as if we were too close. I skirted him and got my bearings. Like the entryway downstairs, the landing led in two directions. To my right, the hallway was carpeted and the walls were papered (more flowers and vines). The smell of Pine-Sol and lavender wafted out at me, and, grateful for the reprieve from the stench of nicotine, I inhaled deeply. The breath caught in my throat when I turned the other way. No carpeting there. No flashy wallpaper, either. I eyed the stained and pitted floorboards and the chipped plaster walls.

"You sure Merilee said left?" I asked the man. "It doesn't look like this part of the house is finished yet."

"First door on the left. Miss Bowman says."

I swallowed my misgivings and stepped that way. I'd quibble with Merilee later about the renovations (or lack thereof) in my temporary quarters. For now, getting away from this man and from the stink of cigarettes was top priority.

My hand was already on the doorknob when he spoke again. "Name's Bob," he said.

"It's nice to meet you, Bob." Years of Easter at the country club, Fourth of July at the yacht club, and Christmases spent with the social-climbing contingent of my social-climbing family down inFlorida had taught me to lie with a smile on my lips. I turned to Bob and hey, I may have been a smooth talker, but there was only so far I was willing to go when it came to making nice with weird old guys. As if they were made of Velcro, all ten of my fingers clung to the handle of my suitcase. The better not to have to shake Bob's hand. "Do you work here?"

Bob sucked on his lower lip. He was staring at the front of my shirt, and for the first time since I packed my bags and headed forOhioCity , I wished I'd chosen to wear something other than a lime green tank. His gaze flickered down to my hips and back up again. "Live here," he said. "Always have."

"You're the one who's kept the house for the Bowmans all these years." I nodded, confirming what I'd heard from Ella about how the house had never left the possession of the family. I didn't bother to mention that from the look of my side of the landing, Bob hadn't kept things too well. After all, if he'd been here since Didi's days, he might prove to be a valuable source of information. I opened the door to my room. "I guess that means we'll be seeing each other around," I said, a clear indication that—at least for me—our conversation was over.

Bob stepped forward. "She died. Right here, you know."

Was Bob a mind reader?

The question flashed through my brain, and hard on its heels, the name fell off my lips.

"Didi?" I asked.

Like I'd sucker punched him, Bob jerked back. He narrowed his eyes and looked at me hard. "What do you know about Deborah?"

It actually might have been fun to watch Bob's face when I told him my newest best friend was a woman who'd been dead for fifty years. But like I said, I couldn't afford to alienate him. At least not until I found out what he knew. About the Bowman sisters. And about So
Far the Dawn
.

"I'm a fan," I said. I stopped myself on the verge of a shrug. No use calling any more attention to my chest. "A fan of Merilee's. I've read everything ever written about her. About
So Far the Dawn
and how she wrote it right here in this house. About her family, too. Of course I've heard about Didi. I know she died young. I didn't know it was right here in the house."

Bob shook his head. His ponytail twitched across his shoulders. "That was the Lorain/Carnegie Bridge. Not here. Deborah didn't die here."

"I thought you said—"

"It was that Trish. The one who smelled so bad. Like cough drops." His nose wrinkled, he turned and stalked down the steps. "That room you're staying in, that's where she died. Just a couple of days ago."

"Great."

Now that I was alone, the sound of my own voice echoed from the high ceiling and bounced back at me from the bare floor. I shivered.

Not that I was scared, I told myself. There was no reason for me to be. Except for the fact that I was here at the request of a ghost who wanted me to prove that Merilee had built her reputation—and her considerable fortune—at the expense of her dead sister, and that if I did, I'd ruin one of the great legends of American literature…

And the fact that I'd be spending the next however many days in a decrepit house with a guy weird enough to make my skin crawl and that my new boss made Cruella De Vil look like a candidate for sainthood…

And the additional fact that I was staying in a room where a woman had recently lost her life and that I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that just because ol' Trish was dead didn't necessarily mean she was gone…

Except for all that, what did I have to worry about?

If there was any good news in all this, it was that my room didn't smell like menthol. I should know. Before I even put down my suitcase, I looked over every inch of it, sniffing as I went, convinced that if I found—or smelled—one trace of Trish, I was out of there.

The bad news was that my home away from home was a twelve-by-sixteen box with one window. It looked out at an alley. The wallpaper that had once been—maybe—dotted with pink carnations, hung in shreds and was a uniform and unattractive shade of gray. The floor was bare. The bed was squishy. When I tried to put my clothes in the one and only dresser in the room, the drawers stuck and refused to open until I gave them a healthy smack.

There was no attached bathroom, and at the same time I knew in my head that I shouldn't have expected one in a house this old, I dreaded the thought of a trip down the hallway in the middle of the night.

I wondered where Bob slept.

"Find the manuscript and get out." I gave myself the pep talk as I tucked my clothes away.

"The manuscript is in the attic." I gathered up my shampoo, conditioner, and makeup and headed out to find the bathroom, reminding myself of everything Didi had told me. "If you can get your hands on it—" As I neared the door that led from my room into the hallway, the toe of my sandals caught on a rough spot in the floor. For a second, I lost my footing. I didn't fall, but I didn't hang on to what I was holding, either. The shampoo and conditioner went one way. A bottle of Happy went the other. A brand-new tube of Pretty in Pink landed on the floor and rolled. Before I could get to it, it disappeared under the bed.

"Damn," I mumbled and stooped to pick up what I could, then knelt and gingerly lifted the ruffled skirt that covered the mattress. I peeked under the bed.

It was too dark to see anything.

"Double damn." I grumbled and reached out my hand, carefully feeling around, and when the only things I got for my effort were dust bunnies, I lay on my stomach and stretched some more, groping through the dark and the dust. Finally, my fingers connected with something. I grabbed and pulled. It was not a tube of Pretty in Pink.

I sat back, blew a strand of hair out of my eyes, and examined the roll of duct tape I'd retrieved. It hadn't been under the bed long. I could tell because in comparison with the rest of the room, the roll of tape wasn't dusty. It didn't belong to any of the construction workers, either. I could tell that because…

well, all it took was one look at my room to figure that out. No one with an eye for remodeling had set foot in this place in a long, long time.

Which meant that the duct tape might have belonged to Trish.

Which really didn't interest me in the least.

At least not as much as a new tube of lipstick did.

I tossed the tape aside and felt around under the bed some more. This time I was successful. The Pretty in Pink in hand, I sprang to my feet and set out to find the bathroom.

Another room that needed a whopping dose of TLC.

I set my cosmetics on the sink and took a gander at the pitted linoleum and the hole in the wall that provided an unobstructed view of the claw-footed bathtub—and anybody in it.

"Find the manuscript fast," I reminded myself, and as funny as it seemed, the thought gave me courage. I told myself not to forget it, combed my hair, and checked to make sure there was no dust lurking anywhere on my clothes.

Sure that I was together and as ready as I was likely to get, I went in search of Merilee. As it turned out, I didn't need to worry about my hair or my makeup. When I found Merilee, she was in her study, sitting behind a huge mahogany desk and writing in a notebook. She didn't even bother to look up.

I toed the threshold and wondered how to announce myself, and while I did, I took the opportunity to check out the room with its rich paneling and its plush Oriental carpet. Every lamp in there glittered. The empty bookcases that took up all of one wall and the tables on either side of a burgundy-colored, uncomfortable-looking sofa gleamed.

No doubt, a cleaning crew had just finished with the room. After the musty odors on my side of the house, I basked in the lemony scent of furniture polish.

Which is why the undertone of smoke in the air struck me as odd.

I glanced toward the fireplace. Two huge oil paintings hung above the mantel. One of them was of a woman with flashing blue eyes and cascades of golden hair. Her gown had a wide skirt and a tight waist. It was the color of sapphires and cut low enough to show off her shoulders and her slender neck. The other picture was of a dark-haired man with a bushy mustache. He had the hint of a smile on his lips and a naughty twinkle in his eyes. He was wearing a blue uniform.

The mantel itself was chock-full of knickknacks, china figurines of women in gowns (one was the same deep blue as the woman's in the picture) and men in old-fashioned clothing. It didn't take much of an imagination to figure out that they represented characters from
SFTD
. Like the rest of the room, they were as clean as can be, and the oak mantel itself was sleek and glossy. I guess that's why the small pile of ashes in the hearth looked out of place.

"It's too warm for a fire."

I didn't need to worry that Merilee had heard me. She was so deep into whatever she was deep into, she never budged.

Of course, that didn't mean that no one answered.

"We never had a fire." Didi's voice was breathless. It bounced over the words. "Mother said it was too dangerous. A house down the street burned down, you know. When I was little. After that, Mother never allowed a fire."

I turned just in time to see her materialize. She was wearing a plaid skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was in pigtails. She was jumping rope.

I rolled my eyes. Enough said.

"Don't like the little-girl look, huh?" Didi laughed, and in the blink of an eye, she was back to normal. At least as normal as a ghost can be. "Hey, you can't blame me for trying to relive my childhood. This is where I grew up."

"And it's where you wrote the book, right?"

"Of course it's where I wrote the book." Merilee's voice came at me from across the room. "If you'd been paying attention, you'd know that."

I turned toward her and forced an enthusiasm I didn't feel into my voice. "I was just kidding. I'm sure Ella told you, I'm a huge fan."

"Of course you are." The desk was piled with books. Merilee closed one of them and set it aside. She took off the glasses that were perched on the end of her nose and put down her pen, studying me intensely. It didn't take a detective to figure out that she still hadn't forgiven me for mentioning Didi back at Garden View. She might have accepted me as Trish's replacement, but no way was she going to make this easy.

"Clevelandhad an especially interesting place in the Civil War," she said, her voice as crisp and clipped as if she was giving a lecture. "But then, if you're a fan, no doubt you know that, too. I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunities this summer for some lively discussions, you and I. We can talk about the increase in petroleum refining and the growth of the railroads during the war years." I could hardly wait.

"And then, of course…" Merilee aimed a laser look at me. "There's Elizabeth and Kurt. Since you're such a huge fan, I expect you'll have plenty of questions to ask about them, too." The names were vaguely familiar.

Which didn't make it any easier to make small talk when I didn't know who we were small-talking about.

"Psst." Didi's whisper was close to my ear. I don't know why. It wasn't like Merilee could hear her. "The paintings." She tipped her head in that direction. "Elizabeth Goddard is the blond bombshell in the blue dress. She played Opal in the movie, and they were lucky to get her. At the time filming started, no one knew she was knocked up. Another couple of months and there was no way she could have been Opal. And Kurt." One hand on her heart, she stared up at the picture of the man with the mustache. "He was Palmer. Their first choice was Gable but let's face it, he was too old, and not half the actor Kurt was. For a while, they even talked about giving Cary Grant the part. Imagine!" I smiled across the room at Merilee. "Can't wait to hear what you have to say about Elizabeth and Kurt," I told her. "I mean, that whole thing about Elizabeth being pregnant and no one knowing it. That must have caused quite a stir. AndCary Grant as Palmer!" I laughed as if I actually knew who this Cary Grant guy was and why the idea of him playing Palmer was so funny. "Imagine!"

"Yes. Really. Imagine." Merilee's expression soured. She didn't like to lose. But then, she'd pretty much told me that back at Garden View. Merilee didn't like surprises. Wouldn't she get a big one if I could prove Didi wrote
SFTD
?

I decided now was as good a time as any to start.

Doing my best to sound interested like a fan might be interested and not like a private investigator might be interested, I closed in on her. "So tell me about when you were writing the book. I mean, it must have been so much work. And you had a full-time job, too, didn't you?"