Rory made a right turn onto Pheasant Lane where some of the houses were occupied, while others still awaited roofs and landscaping. According to Jeremy, the owners of 16 Pheasant Lane had been waiting for his sister to finish decorating the interior of their new home before they moved in. Gail had been out at the house almost daily during the previous month, supervising all the details. When the carpenter arrived on May 10 to finish the crown molding, he’d found her sprawled at the base of the circular staircase, a dark halo of blood around her head and her legs bent in ways that human limbs were never meant to bend.
Rory found number 16 in the middle of the block. It was a stately brick colonial with oversized windows and double doors of highly polished mahogany. There was a “For Sale” sign hanging from a post near the curb with the listing agent’s name. A placard announcing the open house from noon until three was suspended on hooks beneath it. There was a white Mercedes sports car in the driveway and an old Chevy parked at the curb. Rory tucked the Volvo behind the Chevy, walked up to the front door and rang the bell. When no one responded, she tried the door and found it unlocked. Having gone to a number of open houses with Mac, she knew that open-house etiquette allowed for visitors to let themselves in, since the agent was often busy showing the house to another party.
Rory walked into a large entry with a breathtaking cathedral ceiling that would have done any church proud. To the left, a wide stairway with a hand-turned oak banister led to the second story where a balcony with matching railing overlooked the entry below. The formal dining room was to her right and the living room to her left, past the stairway. Neither of the rooms was furnished. The hallway that stretched in front of her presumably led to the kitchen, family room and any other rooms that might be in the rear.
The house was very still. “Hello,” Rory called out, her voice echoing through the empty rooms without answer. She stood there for another minute before deciding to show herself around. Since she was unaccompanied and didn’t need to feign an interest in the whole house, she went straight to the staircase.
There was no evidence of Gail’s blood on the beige and white marble floor. Not that Rory had expected to find any. The kind of people who could afford a house like this would have replaced the entire floor if so much as a speck of a stain had remained.
She started up the stairs, her shoes sinking into plush beige carpeting. Even though the scene had been processed by the CSI team, she’d promised Jeremy that she would go over everything herself, so she stopped on each step to check the wall for blood residue or other evidence that a life had ended there, but the ecru silk wallpaper was pristine. She checked the banister and the railings as well, with the same results.
As she made her way up the steps in this halting fashion, she saw a young man coming toward her along the upper hallway. His head was down, and he had a knapsack slung over his arm. He was moving fast, as if he wanted to get out of there and the sooner the better. He didn’t even seem to notice her until he was brushing by her on the stairs. Then his head came up, and for an instant his eyes met hers. There was something troubling about his expression. The furtiveness of guilt? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She wondered what he was doing at the open house. Unless he was a successful rock star or one of the new dot-com millionaires, he wasn’t likely to be a prospective buyer. In fact, the odds were that he was the owner of the old Chevy parked outside.
By the time she reached the upper hallway and turned to look back down the staircase, the young man was out of sight. She made a mental note to talk to the real estate agent about him, just in case anything went missing. Then she turned her thoughts back to Gail and the ME’s report. She’d more or less memorized it after the third reading. In the absence of any evidence that Gail had been struck with a heavy object, and given the cushioning effect of the carpeting, he’d concluded that the injury to Gail’s head had come from landing on the unforgiving stone floor. So far Rory agreed with his assessment. She was still standing there, thinking that this view from the top of the stairway was the last thing Gail Oberlin ever saw, when someone grabbed her shoulder.
Chapter 6
W
hen Rory felt the hand closing on her shoulder, she instinctively jerked away. She realized too late that she’d compromised her balance. Her left foot skimmed the edge of the top step without finding purchase. Panicked, she grabbed for the banister but only chase. Panicked, she grabbed for the banister but only managed to rake her nails across the polished wood before losing contact with it completely. An image of herself, like Gail, lying broken on the marble floor below, shot through her mind in the frantic moment before she was pulled back from the edge.
“Hey, honey, take it easy; you looking to break your neck?”
Rory couldn’t manage a reply. The adrenalin that had surged through her body at the prospect of death was now sluicing out of her; she was left gasping for air as if she’d just been rescued from drowning. Her legs were wobbly and making no promises to keep her upright. She leaned back against the wall, thankful for the solid feel of it.
“Are you all right?” her rescuer asked, eyeing her warily, as if she might have suicide on her mind.
He was only a few inches taller than she was, but broad shouldered and lean muscled, with intense blue eyes and the sun-streaked hair of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. He was wearing a gray polo shirt tucked into faded jeans and Docksiders without socks. He looked more like a surfer than a real estate agent, Rory thought, taking stock of him. She didn’t know whether she should be angry with him for sneaking up behind her or grateful to him for saving her life. Anger won out.
“What the hell were you thinking?” she demanded once her heart had stopped pounding in her ears. “You should never sneak up on someone like that, especially at the top of a staircase.”
“I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you at all,” he replied, clearly bewildered by her rage.
“But you did a remarkably good job of it anyway,” she snapped. He could have at least said “hi there” or “hello” as he approached her. Even a polite cough or throat clearing would have helped.
“I was on the phone in the study down the hall when you got here. As soon as the conversation was over, I came out to welcome you. To be honest, when I saw you there at the edge of the stairs, you looked like you were going to do a half gainer. I was afraid to speak or do anything that might startle you.”
“Yeah, well that worked out well,” she said dryly.
“Point taken. I apologize.”
“Apology accepted.” Rory took a few tentative steps away from the wall. Okay, her legs were under her control again. She held out her hand to him. “Rory McCain.”
“Vince Conti,” he said, covering her hand in his larger one.
“I take it you’re the real estate agent?”
“For today I am. Are you a prospective buyer?”
“I suppose I am,” she said, since she didn’t want to say she was investigating Gail’s death.
Conti nodded, and Rory saw him glance at her left hand. “As you can see, it’s a magnificent house, but maybe too much house for a single woman?”
“You shouldn’t make assumptions, Mr. Conti. For all you know, I’m married with four kids, a mother-in-law and two dogs.”
“Okay then,” he said, laughing, “let me show you around.”
It was a charming laugh that was easy on the ears, and Rory couldn’t help but smile back at him. She wasn’t sure that he was buying her story, but he seemed willing enough to play along for now.
“So, Mr. Conti, what are you when you’re not a real estate agent?” she asked as they walked down the hall.
“It’s Vince, please. And to answer your question, I’m the builder of the development. This is the last house for sale here. Tomorrow I start work on a new subdivision. So when my real estate agent had an emergency, I decided to run the open house myself. I like to have things tied up before I move on, if possible.”
He showed her into the first bedroom. It was elegant but understated, in navy and ecru; silk draperies framed the windows and puddled richly on the floor.
“There are five bedrooms total,” he said as Rory walked around the room, “including a maid’s quarters off the kitchen. Each bedroom has its own bath, and there’s also a powder room on the main floor.”
“It’s beautifully decorated,” Rory murmured, admiring the way the different patterns worked so well together. If she had tried to pull that off, the room would have looked like a huge patchwork quilt. She was beginning to understand why Gail was so sought after.
“The owners were planning to use this as a guest room,” Vince said.
“Owners? But I thought you said that it hadn’t been sold.” Rory waited to see if he was going to be upfront about what had happened here.
He shrugged. “The people who bought it changed their minds before they even moved in. You know the type, so much money that losing a hundred grand is like losing cab fare to them. So I bought it back, made a little profit and got some furniture in the bargain.”
They walked down the hallway to the next bedroom, which had clearly been decorated for a little girl. It was all lilac and white with French provincial furniture, yards of sheer, billowy curtains, and an elaborate dolls’ tea party set up in one corner.
“So you don’t think their decision to sell had anything to do with that woman who died here?” Rory had seen her colleagues conduct enough interviews to know that sometimes taking the direct approach worked best at catching people off guard.
“You know about that, huh?” Vince smiled sheepishly.
Rory gave him credit for having the decency to be embarrassed over the deliberate omission.
“Yeah, I’m sure it figured into their decision,” he said. “But if you think about it, there must be an enormous number of houses where people have died. Cancers, heart attacks, strokes, accidents, you name it. This one just got a little more press.”
“In other words, it’s been tough to sell.”
“You could say that.” Vince stopped outside the next room and turned to face her. “You’re not really interested in buying this place, are you?”
“Well I might be, if I could afford it,” she said, aware that she’d played the game to its end.
“So you’re here because . . . ?”
“Curiosity I guess.”
“Fair enough. There’s a lot to be said for honesty. Apparently anything else can just come back to bite you in the ass.”
“Thanks for the graphics,” Rory said wryly. If Vince was right about that, she was going to have a very sore posterior.
“Sorry. I guess I should be more careful what I say when I’m wearing the real estate agent’s hat. Look, since you’re here anyway, would you like to see the rest of the house?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“It would be my pleasure. But may I ask if there really is a husband, mother-in-law and two dogs?”
“None of the above, but I’d love to have two dogs some day.”
“Touché.” Vince laughed, shaking his head.
“I almost forgot,” Rory said as they left the girl’s room. “I saw a young man bolting down the stairs when I was coming up. Did you see him?”
“You must mean Andy. Knapsack, skittish looking?”
“Yeah, he was in such a hurry I thought he might have stolen something.”
Vince shook his head. “No, Andy’s a good kid, just a little slow and socially inept. He’s my real estate agent’s son. He didn’t know his dad was off today.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rory said. “I feel terrible for having even mentioned it.”
“Don’t be silly; you had no way of knowing. And it’s a legitimate concern with open houses. I’ve had things stolen in the past.”
Rory knew he was trying to make her feel better, but she wasn’t about to absolve herself so easily. She shouldn’t make snap judgments about people like that.
Vince showed her through the rest of the second floor, including the study he’d mentioned earlier and a large master suite. Then he took her down the back stairs that led into the kitchen by way of a butler’s pantry. He was a pleasant enough tour guide, but Rory needed to tour the house by herself. She couldn’t really inspect the rooms for potential clues with him at her side. She would have to make another visit, preferably at night and alone. Of course, that would require picking the lock, and probably dealing with an alarm system. There was sure to be all sorts of unpleasantness if she were caught. She’d have to come up with something less likely to lead to a jail sentence.
“Did you have a chance to sign the visitor’s log when you came in?” Vince asked as they returned to the entry. He motioned to a parson’s table that stood against one of the entry walls. A small leather-clad book lay open on it.
“No, I didn’t know I was expected to,” she said.
“If you wouldn’t mind. It’s just your name, address and phone number. You never know, I might just decide to drop the price on the property, or I might find myself in need of a charming dinner date.”
“Well, in that case,” Rory said, “how can I refuse?”
She walked over to the table and picked up the pen that lay along the inner binding of the book. The date had been written at the top of the left-hand page, and beneath it two other visitors had printed their information. She added hers, then rejoined Vince at the door and thanked him for the house tour.
“No problem. It’s not like potential buyers are knocking each other over to get in here today. Just promise me one thing,” he said as he opened the door for her.
“Sure, name it.”
“When you win the lottery you’ll come back and make me an offer.”
“You’ve got it. Of course it might take some time, since I never actually play the lottery.”
On the drive back to Woodbury, Rory thought about her conversation with Vince. One thing in particular had stuck in her mind. Although she’d never really thought about it before, he was right. Houses had always been the theaters in which both the tragedies and joys of life played out, where some lives began and others ended. The number of houses that had borne silent witness to all manner of death throughout the centuries must be mind boggling. In that context, Zeke Drummond was just one of the unfortunates souls, unwilling or unable to let go. Somehow, thinking of it in that way made the prospect of sharing Mac’s house with the marshal easier to accept. But when her mind tiptoed over to the “g” word, her logic mainframe once again threatened to crash. She reminded herself that Mac had lived peacefully with Drummond for years and that he believed she could benefit from the experience as well. How could she give up without even trying? Especially since Mac had always talked about keeping the house in the family. He’d invested so much of himself in the restoration, working right alongside the contractors. No detail had been too small for his attention. He’d spent days picking out the finest faucets, the perfect door-knobs, the most ergonomic light switches.