If Mashed Potatoes Could Dance (26 page)

“She can’t remember a name, but she thinks there’s a good chance it’s in her diary. And there’s a possibility, though I still think a slim one, that the diary really is in the Monroe House. She knew the woman living there at the time, can’t remember her name either. Sally used to escape to that house to get away from her own. She wasn’t fond of how crowded her house felt.”

“I could probably find out which Monroe lived there, but it might take me some time,” Jake said. “Don’t know if that would help or not.”

My phone dinged. “From Cliff. It says: ‘Yes, Damon Rim. Turned himself in in Kansas. We think his sister is responsible for getting him here. We don’t think he’s the killer. Call you later.’”

“How disappointing,” Jake said. “Oh, that doesn’t sound right. Sorry.”

It was difficult not to be disappointed if Damon Rim wasn’t the killer. Having the killer caught and behind bars was the ultimate goal, of course, but it was more than that. If anyone should be a killer, it should be Damon Rim. He’d been a rotten kid and from all accounts a rotten adult.

It seemed that justice would be best served all around if he’d done the deeds. All that uproar and such a letdown. Jake felt it, too. I took another sip of coffee.

“He did say they didn’t
think
Damon was the killer. They don’t know for sure. They’ll figure it out,” I said.

“Betts, please have him look up who lived in the Monroe House,” Sally said.

I repeated Sally’s request.

“Why not?” Jake shrugged.

As he started to thumb through his tall plastic file folders, he said, “I asked Cliff to check into the condemnation notice.”
I felt a twinge of guilt at having forgotten to ask myself. “He said he’d get back to me, but he’s pretty busy. You know, we could go there tonight, this morning, right now.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, almost reflexively.

“You’re freaked out about that place, but it’s just a house.”

“It’s dark, it should be condemned, it’s not safe, and it won’t let a ghost enter,” I replied. “These are good reasons to stay away.”

“I admit it’s strange that Sally can’t get in, but remember how Jerome couldn’t get into the jail? And that wasn’t because of something evil. He’d just had too many bad experiences there during his life, or so we surmised. Maybe that’s all it is with Sally. It’s just an old house,” Jake said. “What are you spooked by?”

“The place scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid.”

“When you were a teenager?” Jake asked as he opened a file and peered inside it.

“Yes.”

“That was kid stuff. You were supposed to be scared; that was part of the fun,” he said.

“Everyone’s scared of something,” Sally chimed in, “but I agree with Jake; it’s just an old house. I’m not bothered that I can’t get in. Well, I am, but not scared bothered. Come on, Betts. Please. I need to know, and this might be one of the last opportunities you and Jake will get to search. They’re going to tear it down, and I don’t know how much longer I have. Though I’m not sensing my time is coming to an end, now would be better than later.”

“Here! Yes, here’s the obituary. Her name was Gertrude Monroe.” He looked at the piece of paper a moment and then continued. “And I’ll be darned, you’re mentioned in her obituary, too, Sally.”

“Really?” Sally said, though Jake didn’t hear her.

Jake put the copy of the obituary on the table, and we all gathered around as he read aloud: “Gertrude Orlean Monroe died July 1, 1893, of old age. She was ninety-seven and had done just fine living on her own until recently. It was said that the old widow didn’t want to continue living once the already infamous Sally Swarthmore died in prison less than one month ago. Her health began to fail the instant Sally was found guilty, and it never recovered. It seems that ‘Old Lady Monroe’ thought Miss Swarthmore was innocent and hadn’t received a fair trial. Mrs. Monroe is survived by her grandson, Bartholomew Monroe.”

Jake looked at me. “She
really
must have thought Sally was innocent. I’ve never spent a lot of time studying you, Sally. I just went along with the stories. I’m surprised at how much I didn’t know.”

“She was fond of you, Sally. Does this help you remember her?” I asked. “Sally?”

She’d been over my shoulder but was now gone. At first I thought she’d left, but then I noticed she’d taken a seat on the stool on my other side.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I said.

“I think Bartholomew was my father’s son. I think it was him. Bart, I suddenly remember the name Bart.”

“Hang on,” I replied and then told Jake what Sally had just said.

“That’s huge!” Jake said. “And could mean either so many things or nothing, sadly similar to the Damon Rim appearance. Look, Betts, I’m going out to that house right now. Tell Sally she can come with me. It’s still dark but not for much longer. If there’s anyone watching it, then I’ll find a way to sneak in. You can join me or not. It’s up to you.”

“Yay!” Sally clapped, but without the sound. “You have to come, Betts. He and I can’t communicate without you.”

It took me another few seconds to gather my courage. A part of me knew I was being ridiculous, but another part of me remembered being a teenager and sensing that something was awful, that something was wrong inside that house.

“Let’s go,” I finally said. “I’ll drive.”

Sally clapped silently again. “I’ll ride with you.”

As I steered the Nova around the small hill that led to the
open valley where the Monroe House and the small subdivision were located, I realized how beautiful the valley must have been without the small clutch of modern houses. There was little unnatural light in the area, the only pocket of real civilization being the subdivision. The predawn night sky was clear, and the stars and low half-moon lit the valley like something from a friendly fairy tale. The house, however, sat in darkness that was exaggerated by the tall old trees around it.

I parked across the street. Jake and I got out of the car, but Sally popped herself to the front door.

“The door’s wide open,” Jake said as we walked toward Sally. “It still looks like it’s barely attached to the hinges. And there’s a lawn chair on the front porch.”

“I saw two construction guys sitting out here before Sally and I found the fabric.”

“Just sitting? As though they were guarding, not working?” Jake said. “None of this fits. They dress like construction workers, but they act like guards.”

“Yes.”

“It’s strange.”

“I agree.”

There wasn’t any sort of posted notice that the property had been condemned or was scheduled for destruction. It was disquieting, but much to my relief, I didn’t sense anything evil.

“Look,” Sally said. She was in her more dimensional form, and I could see very clearly that she could step across the open door’s threshold. “Maybe it’s because you’re here, Betts, like the darkness thing. Maybe.”

“Sally can get in,” I said. She was, in fact, in her dimensional state.

“That’s good. Let’s follow her,” Jake said.

“Fine. You follow me. I’ll stick with her, and we won’t get far from each other. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jake moved behind me as I stood in the doorway.

“I’m really in!” Sally said from the large and empty front room. “Why in the world couldn’t I get in before? Come on, let’s check the attic.” She put her hand on the banister at the bottom of the tall stairway.

“I can’t see a thing,” Jake said.

I could because of Sally’s glow.

“Use your cell phone,” I said. “Hang on just a second, Sally.”

The house was empty and in bad shape, but as Jake had mentioned, the woodwork of the intricate banister was beautiful, or clearly would have been if it had been taken care of.
We were in the entryway, but the front room loomed large to our left. The walls were striped in old wallpaper, some of it hanging by a few threads on the walls, some of it long gone. The floors were dirty and dusty. I imagined the place was covered in rodent droppings, but I didn’t immediately notice any, and I wasn’t about to take the time to inspect corners. There was a closed door to our right. I didn’t care what was on the other side of it. The stairway started at the edge of the closed door; a dark hallway on the other side led somewhere else I didn’t care to explore.

“Look,” Jake said as he aimed his cell phone light. “Footsteps.”

The dust and grime over the stairs had been disturbed. Streaks and spots of cleaner wood showed through here and there, as well as some definite bootlike prints.

“I’m sure lots of people have been walking around in here,” I said, “especially people with work boots.”

Teddy wore work boots all the time, and I’d often noticed the waffled prints he left behind.

“Yeah, probably,” he said as though he was deep in thought.

I looked to see if he was trying to spook me, but he wasn’t. His focus was on the prints.

“Just try to step around them, I think,” he continued.

“Sure.”

We climbed the staircase, and I still didn’t have a sense of anything extraordinarily spooky or off-kilter. In fact, the house was stuffy and smelled so warm, stale, and uninviting that it seemed like even evil wouldn’t want to hang out in it.

“The attic is up there,” Sally said when we reached the second-floor landing. She pointed to another closed door. “Open it, Betts.”

The landing was wide but not very deep. It was full of
closed doors, five in fact. Again, I didn’t want to know what was behind any of them, but a determination to get this search over with made me reach for the attic doorknob.

It turned easily. I pulled and the door opened with predictably squeaky hinges. We were greeted with another set of stairs, a very narrow and steep set that seemed to lead almost straight upward.

“Up there,” Sally pointed again.

“Look, Betts,” Jake said as he redirected his light. Sally could have been disappearing and reappearing elsewhere if she chose, but instead she’d been walking with us. She pulled her foot back from the step that was in Jake’s light.

“More footprints,” I said.

“Fresh ones, I think,” Sally said.

“Sally says they’re fresh. What do you think, Jake?”

“I agree. That’s what got my attention down there.” He swung the light back down the first staircase and then back to the current one.

“Why do you think they’re fresh? Does it matter?” I asked.

“They just look it to me,” Jake said. “I don’t know if it matters yet, but it’s something to note is all.”

“Remember when we were talking about the footprints in the barn, or the lack of footprints the prosecution tried to use against me?” Sally said. I nodded as I put my hand on Jake’s arm to convey that I was listening to the ghost.

“I told my lawyer that some places are just dusty and dirty enough to cover up footprints again pretty quickly. I think I was here, in the attic, at the time of the murder, but I know that whenever I went into my barn and made footprints on the dusty floor, they’d disappear again quickly, covered up by more dust. In places like this and places like my barn, there’s
always air moving around here and there. It’s impossible to keep footprints clear for very long.”

I lowered my voice. “Do you suppose that means there’s someone in the house with us, maybe up there?”

“Dunno,” Jake said as he peered up the attic steps. “If there is, they’re probably harmless, though. Someone looking to explore or looking for a place to sleep for the night. We don’t have a lot of homeless people around, but we do have some. It’s possible.”

The only thing that kept me from leaving the house at that moment was the instinctual sense that everything was okay. Yes, we were in an old dirty house, but it didn’t feel unsafe and I wasn’t scared, or at least that’s what I told myself. The thought that I should call Cliff and ask him to join us passed through my mind, but I knew he was busy and I also knew we weren’t supposed to be where we were even if we did feel safe.

“Sally, pop up there and see if you see anyone,” I said.

“Sure.”

She was suddenly gone, but an instant later her voice called from the attic level. “Come on up. There’s nobody here, but it sure seems like there was not too long ago.”

I told Jake and he led the way this time as I followed closely, now needing his light as much as he did.

The attic was exactly what I expected. Its dormered ceiling spread the width of the entire house. There were a total of six small windows set in narrow alcoves—one on each side, two in the front, and two in the back. The windows must not have been opened recently because the attic was even stuffier and staler than the rest of the house. I briefly pictured the entire space full of the stuff that people put in attics—trunks, old clothes, unused furniture, et cetera—but the only things
currently in residence were six more lawn chairs, several discarded paper food wrappers, and an empty Diet Pepsi can on its side on the floor next to one of the chairs.

“Someone’s been eating up here?” I said, surprised that anyone would want to spend time doing much of anything in the uncomfortable space, particularly eating. I wasn’t even sure the thick dirty air was safe to breathe.