Twice

Eleanor Ross. She didn’t need him skulking in the corner of her office like a gargoyle while she tried to extract more information from the old woman.

“I dunno,” he said innocently, looking behind him at Jeffrey’s office door. “I’ll go talk to Jeff.”

“Fine,” she said, shutting the door behind her.

Eleanor looked up from her documents.

“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting long,” said Lydia. She approached Eleanor and waited for her to relinquish the spot she’d chosen at Lydia’s desk and move over to the chairs clearly designated for visitors. The fact that Eleanor had chosen to seat herself behind Lydia’s desk in the first place was extremely annoying, a clear violation of Lydia’s personal space. She certainly wasn’t going to sit on the couch or in one of the chairs opposite her desk, allowing Eleanor the power position. After a long moment, the woman got up, looking at her watch.

“For all the money you charge, I’d imagine you’d be on time,” she said, moving past Lydia.

Lydia smiled politely, reminded of the reason she hated being on somebody’s payroll. She seated herself at her desk and took a cursory glance to see that nothing had been disturbed.

“I’ll just take a moment to establish a few ground rules, Ms. Ross,” she said sweetly. “First of all, you pay this firm for the service of finding the answers to your questions. Those answers may not always be the answers you wanted. Second, I am not your employee. This firm may choose to walk away from your case at any time, should we feel that your demands exceed our resources or that you have been dishonest with us in a way that hinders our ability to meet your goals. Is that understood?”

The woman began to bluster. “I don’t appreciate-”

“Do you understand my terms, Ms. Ross? If there’s a problem, we can terminate this agreement before you’ve inconvenienced yourself further with the paperwork.”

There was a moment when Lydia expected Eleanor to get up and walk out. She had drawn herself up and sat rigid and tall, her eyes blazing indignation and anger. But the moment passed and Eleanor’s attitude softened. “I understand,” she said finally, though the words seemed to choke her.

“Good. Now, with that said, I’d like to know why you didn’t consider it relevant that you were tried in 1965 in Haunted, New York, for the murder of your husband, Jack Proctor. Particularly when the manner of death was so eerily similar to the murder of both of your late sons-in-law.”

Eleanor Ross went quite pale. She seemed to swoon a bit, but Lydia didn’t rush over to her to see if she was all right. Eleanor Ross was a strong woman and Lydia knew it.

“Can I have some water?” the old woman said quietly. Lydia rose to walk across her office, passing the large windows that offered an expansive view of uptown Manhattan and to a small refrigerator that sat behind a large black leather sofa. Her office was almost as large as Jeffrey’s and decorated in the same warm colors-cream, rust, browns, and greens. She took a small bottle of Evian and handed it to Eleanor, who cracked the top and took a delicate sip. Lydia walked back over to her high-varnished mahogany desk and waited.

“I didn’t kill my husband, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Eleanor said without looking at Lydia.

“Who did?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, and the grief that shadowed her features and darkened her eyes suggested she might be telling the truth. But Lydia wasn’t quite convinced.

“But you believe that the three murders are connected.”

“Doesn’t it seem likely?” asked Eleanor, turning her gaze to Lydia.

“So why didn’t you say anything about it?”

“It’s a chapter of my life, as I’m sure you understand, that I was not eager to reopen.”

“It seems as though it has been reopened for you. I guess the question is, Eleanor, by whom?”

They sat in silence for a second, with Eleanor looking down at her hands and Lydia watching her intently, looking for some sign of the inner workings of her mind. Eleanor’s arms were folded across her body and she hugged herself tightly. She’s protecting herself, thought Lydia. Lydia knew that it was often the furtive gesture, the nervous tick, the tapping foot that communicated the most about a person. Words were chosen, but the body never lied.

“You never remarried,” said Lydia, breaking the silence.

“No…” said Eleanor.

“Why not?”

Eleanor stood up and walked over toward the windows. “I loved enough for one lifetime. My husband… no one could have compared to him. It was a rare love; we were lovers, friends, and partners in this life. It’s a hard thing to replace. I never tried.”

Her words struck a chord inside Lydia. It reminded her of Jeffrey and how she loved him. Reminded her of her old fears of losing him to death, how she knew that if he was gone all the light would drain from her life. She shuddered inside, pressed the feelings down.

“Who do you think killed him, Eleanor?” said Lydia, her voice softer now.

“I don’t know,” she said again, her voice catching and dropping to a whisper. Her eyes seemed to look into her past, flip through a catalog of bad memories. There were things there she didn’t want to look at again and things she didn’t want to share.

“You suspected no one, Eleanor?” Lydia pressed. “You were in the house when it happened, weren’t you? Just like Julian.”

“I was in the garden, tending to my roses. I was far from the house out by a gazebo near a lake on our property,” she said, defensive now, raising her voice. “I saw nothing and heard nothing.”

The woman was shaking and Lydia backed off for a second. She took a breath and let Eleanor move back to the couch and sit for a minute, sipping her water and sifting through the past. People clung to denial like a shield in a hail of arrows. Convincing them to put it down and face the truth was like convincing someone to commit suicide.

“I’m not sure why you’ve hired us. You believe that the murders of Julian’s husbands are connected to the murder of your own, but you failed to reveal that to us. Did you hire us because you want answers? Because from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t really seem like you do.”

“I hired you because I want the killing to stop,” she said with a sudden ferocity. There was real emotion on her face now, her careful facade slipping to reveal the true woman. “Because I want someone in this family to grow up without tragedy.”

She looked up at the ceiling and clenched her fists. “I begged her not to marry again,” she hissed.

Eleanor sat on the couch and put her head in her hands, anger and frustration coming off her in waves. Lydia sat forward on her chair, confused and intrigued.

“Why, Eleanor?” she asked, shaking her head. “Why shouldn’t Julian have married again?”

“Because for generations,” Eleanor said, looking up from her hands, tears falling now unattractively down her face in black rivulets, her mouth quivering, “someone has been killing our husbands.”

Her words hung in the silence and Lydia looked at Eleanor Ross, wondering if there was a history of mental illness in the family.

“My husband, my father, my grandfather before him. Probably further back. Every generation, every woman thinks that she will be the one to escape it. Every time, she’s wrong. I need you to find out what’s happening to our family… and stop it. Enough is enough.”

chapter nine

The sky had turned from bright blue to gunmetal gray and the air smelled like snow as Lydia and Ford McKirdy sped up I-95 toward the New York State Facility for the Criminally Insane.

“She didn’t have any idea who might be behind these multigenerational murders?” asked Ford, not bothering to keep the disbelief out of his voice.

“She claimed not to have the faintest idea,” said Lydia, looking out the window at the gray trees, some brightly colored leaves still clinging to their branches. The road and the foliage had taken on a kind of silver tinge in the sunlight pushing through the thick cloud cover. The world was cast in the eerie light that portends a storm.