The Inn (17 page)

N
eville heard Annabel screaming as he came through the front door. He bolted toward the sound.

“Annabel!” he called. “Are you all right?”

She came bounding up the cellar steps. “Blood!” she shrieked. “Blood!”

And she held up her hand, coated in a thick, purplish goo, for him to see.

“Dear God, are you hurt?” Neville asked.

“The chimney!” Annabel was shuddering. “The chimney!”

She wasn't making any sense.

“I've got to wash this off my hand!” Annabel cried, hurrying toward the kitchen. Neville followed.

Annabel had already plunged her hand under the hot water at the sink by the time Neville made it through the kitchen door.

“Did you cut yourself?” he asked.

“No!” Annabel's eyes were wild. “There's blood in the ash dump! At the base of the chimney!”

She was scrubbing furiously, squeezing gobs of dish detergent all over her hand. The steam that rose from the gushing water from the faucet revealed just how hot it was.

“Careful you don't scald your hand now,” Neville told her.

“I don't care,” Annabel said, near panic. “I want to get all of that off me!”

Neville heard movement behind him. Jack had come through the kitchen door.

“What's going on?” he asked. “We could hear you shouting all the way in the attic.”

“There's blood in the chimney,” Annabel told him.

Jack looked at her as if she were crazy.

“Go downstairs to the basement and see for yourself,” Annabel said. “I'm never going down there again!”

“Zeke's down there now,” Jack told her. “We saw the door was open and the light was on, so he went down there to check.”

Something in the way Jack spoke seemed to unnerve Annabel.

“Go down there!” she shouted. “Please, Jack, see for yourself.”

He gave her a small smile. “I'm sure Zeke will be able to tell us what it was you thought you saw.”

Neville saw the sudden fear in Annabel's eyes. It was a different fear, not the panicky terror that had sent her rushing to the sink to wash her hands. This was very different. She turned her terrified eyes to Neville.

“You go down!” she begged him. “Please! See for yourself.”

“You want me to go down to the basement?” Neville asked.

“Yes! There's blood! I think that's where the killer put Priscilla's and Paulie's bodies!”

“Oh, dear God,” Neville muttered, horrified now himself, turning and heading out of the kitchen.

But before he could make it through the door, he ran smack-dab into the old caretaker Zeke.

“What's all this shouting for?” Zeke asked.

“Annabel thinks she saw blood in the chimney downstairs,” Jack said.

“Blood?” Zeke displayed his hand. “It's just wet soot.”

His hand was indeed black with soot. He walked calmly past Annabel over to the sink, where he washed his hands just as she had done, but without any of the mania that had gripped her.

“I saw the door to the ash dump was open, so I closed it,” Zeke said.

“There was blood inside!” Annabel insisted.

“Wet soot can look like blood,” Zeke told her, not looking around.

“But it was on my hand,” Annabel said, lifting her now pristinely clean hand in front of her face. “I know what I saw. . . .”

“Sugar cakes,” Jack said, “you know sometimes you see things that aren't there. . . .”

“You saw my hand,” Annabel said to Neville. “You saw it was blood!”

“Well, I . . .” Neville tried to think. He'd seen Annabel's hand covered in something. But was it blood, or wet soot as Zeke claimed? “I didn't really get a close look at it. You washed your hands so fast.”

“Anyway,” Zeke was saying, drying his hands with a dish towel, “I looked inside and there wasn't much of an ash buildup. I'll clean it out later today so you can continue on with your renovations, Miz Wish.”

“No, don't clean it out,” Annabel said. “I want the police chief here to inspect the chimney. . . .”

“Sweetheart,” Jack said taking her by the shoulders, “you're getting hysterical. You know your doctors told you that you might have flashbacks. . . .”

She shoved him away. “I'm not hysterical!”

But her face, so contorted and upset, made Neville think she might be.

“Annabel,” Jack told her firmly, “I think you should go lie down.”

She glared at him. She seemed to accept that she was beaten.

“All right,” she said, her voice quiet now. “Maybe I will go lie down.”

“That's a good girl,” her husband said.

He moved over to the refrigerator and popped it open. “Think this bowl of Gran's rabbit stew is still good?” he called over to Zeke.

“Sure it is,” the old caretaker said. “I'll heat some for both of us.”

As they were distracted by the stew, Annabel turned to leave. Neville watched her with fascination. As she passed him, she paused for just a second, and spoke in a whisper that he could barely make out.

But he heard her.

“Go down there,” she said. “Key on a nail up above.”

Then she was gone.

Zeke was pouring the stew into a pan on the stove. Jack had settled down at the table, reading a newspaper.

Neville slipped out of the kitchen.

Every nerve in his body trembling, he found the door to the basement steps. He opened it slowly, hoping it didn't creak. Then he scampered down into the darkness. Yanking the string to light the bulb overhead, he saw the base of the chimney. A chest and a rake were positioned in front of it. Right away Neville knew this was how Annabel had gotten the key that was on “a nail up above.”

But the door to the ash dump was securely padlocked.

And while Neville could see the nail protruding from the bricks above, there was no key hanging from it.

Somehow that fact confirmed for him that Annabel had been right.

There was indeed blood in that chimney.

Behind that small iron door, Neville was convinced, lay Priscilla's body.

“Y
ou're really going to keep working at that scary old place?” Tammy asked, sliding Chad's scrambled eggs and home fries in front of him on the diner counter.

“I was hired to do a job,” Chad told her, “and I'm gonna do it.” He brought a fry to his mouth and took a bite. “My way of paying tribute to Paulie.”

“Well, I think that's pretty brave of you,” Tammy said. “I feel bad for that couple that just arrived to fix up the place. Now they're forever haunted by Roger's hand.” She shuddered.

Chad smiled up at her. “How you doing with that, Tam? You dealing with his death okay?”

“I made a resolution when I got up this morning,” the pretty, dark-eyed waitress told him. “I was moving on with my life. I'm going to be just fine on my own.”

“Hear, hear!” Chad said.

“I'm going back to school, and I'm going to get a degree,” Tammy told him, before smirking. “If I can afford it on my tips from this place.”

Chad thought a moment. “You know, if I recall, you fixed your place up pretty nice. Refinished the floor yourself. Laid down some new tile.”

Tammy beamed. “That I did. With good advice from you.”

“I could use an assistant like you,” Chad told her. “It would mean going out to the Blue Boy Inn, but I could help you make a few extra bucks.”

“What would I do?” Tammy asked.

“Help me with painting and sanding, to start,” Chad told her, bringing a forkful of eggs to his mouth and afterward wiping his lips with the paper napkin. “Would it creep you out too much, going to a place where Roger's hand was found?”

“Not at all,” Tammy answered. “When do I start?”

“Come with me this afternoon when you get off here,” he said.

“All right. I'll have my mom pick Jessica up at school and watch her until I get home. She's been after me to get a better job anyway. She'll be happy to do it.”

“Then welcome to Appleby Contracting, Ms. Morelli,” Chad said, extending his hand across the counter.

They shook.

A
nnabel lay in bed. She hadn't left her bed since coming up here yesterday afternoon, shaken by her discovery of blood in the chimney.

She was certain the blood wasn't there anymore, however.

Zeke had cleaned it out. She knew that in her gut. That was why he'd locked it back up and taken the key, as Neville had reported to her late last night, so he could go back later and clean it all out. He would destroy the evidence of any body ever being stuffed into the chimney.

Since Annabel's cell phone didn't have reception, and she didn't dare use the house phone, Neville had promised that he would drive into town this morning and tell the police chief what Annabel had found.

She realized the significance of the fact that she didn't dare use the house phone.

It was because she was afraid of being overheard.

Jack and Zeke knew something. They were hiding something. Somehow, they were covering up the murders.

Might they—Annabel trembled to think it—have committed them?

She'd thought Jack was sound asleep that morning. But had he snuck out while she was at the store? Zeke had claimed to be in the attic. But he, too, could have come downstairs while Annabel was gone.

But why?

Annabel felt frozen. She lay there immobile on the bed. All night, she had been awake, listening as Jack breathed beside her. When he'd come in the night before, she'd pretended to be asleep. They hadn't spoken a word. All through the night, Annabel had had the sense that Jack, too, was awake, lying beside her, waiting and listening for her to make a move. So Annabel had kept as still as she could, breathing shallowly but regularly, hoping he believed her to be asleep. In the morning, when Jack had finally risen and left the room, Annabel had let out a long, relieved breath.

It was unbelievable.

She was frightened of her husband.

Jack—who had stood with her through all her trials in the past.

Annabel felt as if she was going mad.

She smelled coffee brewing downstairs. She had yet to hear a car crunch across the gravel driveway, so Neville had not yet left for the police station. If he didn't leave soon, she would jump up when she heard Officer Burrell make his daily drive-through checking on the place. She'd scream from the window for him to come in and arrest Jack and Zeke!

But for what?

Maybe she was going mad.

Annabel tried to focus, to make sense of what was happening. She was fearful that Jack was involved in murder—or that he was covering it up. But such an idea was crazy! She couldn't think straight. Jack and Zeke were hiding something in the attic. That much Annabel knew. And then they had prevented her from exposing the blood in the basement.

Was that it? Was she was just imagining things?

Maybe Jack and Zeke really had been fixing the rafters and the floorboards in the attic. Maybe that really had been wet soot in the chimney.

Annabel heard a sound.

She sat up on her bed. Looking across the room, she watched in disbelief as the panel on the far wall slid back. The same panel where she had found those terrible books. Zeke had never nailed it shut.

From the darkness behind the wall within emerged two little blue feet.

“No,” Annabel murmured, pulling her legs under her and wrapping her arms around her body.

Tommy Tricky crept out of the hole in the wall.

He looked up at her, his blue eyes shining.

He gnashed his sharp little teeth.

But then—even worse—his twin emerged from the dark space, following him out into the room.

The two little creatures stood there looking up at Annabel. She was so terrified she couldn't make a sound.

Then they gave a little laugh and dashed across the room, under her bed.

Annabel screamed at the top of her lungs.

Her fear turned everything white. Blindingly white. The next thing she knew Jack was standing over her, trying to hold her down on the bed, telling her to calm down and stop screaming. Zeke was there, looming over her as well. And Neville, too! They were all in on it! They were all out to get her!

Annabel passed out.

N
eville left Annabel's room completely mystified.

“What happened to her?” he asked Jack and Zeke. “She seemed fine earlier.”

“She has a history of hallucinations, of histrionics,” Jack said, peering in at her one last time, making sure she was resting comfortably before he shut the door. She had seemed to calm down, but Neville thought she might start thrashing about again anytime, so great had been her distress. “Her doctors told us she could occasionally have relapses,” Jack continued, and he looked sincerely worried about his wife.

If that was so, Neville thought, perhaps he'd been wrong to believe Annabel's story about blood in the chimney.

He would wait for a while before talking with the police. Jack seemed perfectly reasonable; it was Annabel who was the raving lunatic at the moment. Neville didn't want to start trouble.

In fact, all he wanted to do was leave. He was certain now that Priscilla wasn't coming back. He just wanted to get on an airplane and go home, get back to work, visit his parents and his brother and his nieces and nephews. Neville just wanted some normalcy in his life again. The past few days were enough fear and confusion and chaos to last a lifetime.

But he couldn't leave. Not quite yet. He liked Annabel, and he wanted to make sure she was all right. Tomorrow, he figured. If she was up and about tomorrow, talking sensibly, he'd leave tomorrow.

“I'm going to the store,” Jack announced. “Not Millie's market, but the supermarket in Great Barrington. I want to get some real groceries. Frankly, I need some meat. Some steak and potatoes, since all that's in the fridge are Annabel's vegetables.” He smiled over at Neville. “Can I get you anything, buddy?”

“No, thank you,” Neville told him. “I've come to quite enjoy carrot and cucumber sandwiches.”

“Have it your way,” Jack said. He turned to Zeke. “You'll look in on Annabel? If she wakes up, tell her I'll be back in about an hour.”

“Will do,” the old man replied.

Neville watched from the window as Jack drove off.

“I'm going to finish some work in the attic,” Zeke told him. “If the telephone rings, you can let it go to the answering machine.”

“I'm happy to answer it and take a message for you,” Neville said. “I'm just going to settle down here in the parlor and read a book.”

“Very good.”

Neville took a chair opposite the fireplace. How he wished there was a fire crackling in front of him, sending off waves of heat across the room. The day was so terribly cold. Neville shivered a little, buttoning his wool cardigan sweater all the way down. Opening his book, he began to read.