She stopped and took a shuddering breath. Lydia and Jeffrey were silent, allowing her to collect her thoughts.
“When Jack was murdered, things became unbearable for us in that town. All they had was each other, James and Julian. None of the other children would play with them; at school they were taunted, bullied. James was fighting every week, defending himself and his sister. They became inseparable, united against the rest of the town. But then James started to change. I’d seen it before in Paul. The mental illness, the delusions, the terrible rages.
Lydia imagined James and Julian, their father murdered, their mother accused, the people of the town treating them like pariahs. Adolescence is such a tortured time under the best of circumstances; there was no telling how additional pressures like that could damage a person.
“But there is no incest in our family, if those are the rumors you’ve heard. James and Julian loved each other, needed each other, were closer than other siblings because they were twins. That’s it.
Eleanor was crying now. Silent tears streamed down her face and she looked old, frail, shattered. Her regal posture sagged, as though the truth had deflated her.
“What can you tell me about your relationship with Maura Hodge?”
Lydia saw Eleanor cringe at the sound of her name.
“Maura Hodge.” She said the name as if it were sour on her tongue. “She hates us. Hates our family. Hates me most of all.”
“Why?”
“She’ll tell you it’s because of years of injustice, starting with Hiram Ross. I’m sure you’ve heard about that curse. She’s made sure that that legend never dies with that library of hers. She’s been commissioning writers and historians for decades, making sure the history of Haunted is preserved forever. As if anyone cares but her.”
“She claims not to believe in the curse, either,” said Lydia, remembering what Maura had said about the Ross family cursing themselves.
“Whether she believes or not, she used it to turn the town against us when Jack was killed. A part of me holds her responsible for James losing his mind.”
“How’s that?”
“I just wonder if the people in the town hadn’t been so cruel, hadn’t bought into all the rumors and made James and Julian feel like monsters, maybe James would have recovered. Maybe-” Eleanor stopped herself short. She looked past Lydia, rested her gaze on something far away.
“But Paul and James are dead now,” she said after a moment, with a kind of relief in her voice, as if everything had been settled. “They’re at peace.”
“Great,” said Lydia. “But that doesn’t explain who killed your husband or who killed Tad Jenson and Richard Stratton. That doesn’t help Julian.”
Lydia waited for Eleanor to respond, but she didn’t. The emotion she’d displayed earlier seemed to have drained from her and her former chilly demeanor returned. She wiped her eyes and straightened her back.
“Do you think Maura Hodge could be behind the murders?” asked Lydia, reaching now.
“I suppose it’s possible,” she said without conviction, almost without interest.
“Eleanor, you must have some idea. Some theory.”
“Actually, dear,” she said, “that’s why I hired you.”
The Eleanor who had raged about Haunted and the Eleanor who now sat cold and hard as an ice sculpture were two entirely different women.
“What are you hiding, Eleanor? What don’t you want us to know?” asked Lydia.
“I have nothing else to say. I’ve told you all I can.”
They had been dismissed.
chapter twenty-two
“Dead men don’t eat Milky Way bars,” said Lydia, handing over to Ford the baggies of evidence she’d collected in the Ross basement.
They stood in Ford’s office, which was a little bigger, but not by much, than a broom closet. In the back of the main homicide office, a maze of busy cubicles and ringing phones, it was dank and dusty, but at least there was a door to pull closed. The blinds were pulled down over the only window and the room was lit by a flickering fluorescent overhead and a small desk halogen.
“Well,” he said, handing her a document, “Chief Clay had the hospital records department fax over his death certificate. Whoever it was did that to your face, it wasn’t James Ross.”
“I know what I saw,” Lydia said stubbornly, perusing the paper in her hand.
“You lost consciousness, right? You have a concussion? You can’t be sure of what you saw,” said Ford.
She looked at the document in her hand.
“You’d just seen the photograph of Julian’s twin. It was a moment of intense stress. And it was very dark,” said Jeff pragmatically. “Isn’t it possible that you just imagined his face on whoever it was that attacked us?”
Lydia shook her head. She had been frightened in the moment and injured afterward, but she certainly wasn’t going to let anyone convince her that she couldn’t believe her own eyes.
“According to Chief Clay, his body was found in the Ross home last year by some kids who snuck in there to do some drinking, fool around,” said Ford. “He’d hanged himself from the landing over the foyer.”
“Jesus,” said Jeffrey.
Lydia still hadn’t taken her eyes off the paper Ford had handed her. According to the death certificate, James Ross had been found last April 16, dead over a week, cause of death determined as suicide by asphyxiation. He was positively identified by his dental records. She looked down at the signature. Dr. Franklin Wetterau.
“If James Ross was found dead, then why didn’t Dr. Wetterau tell us that last night?” she said, showing Jeffrey the doctor’s name on the document.
Jeffrey shrugged. “No idea,” he said.
“Maura Hodge never mentioned that Julian even had a twin brother. Henry Clay didn’t say anything about him when the two of you spoke yesterday. Eleanor never even mentioned him until we confronted her, and he’s her son. Doesn’t that seem odd to either one of you?”
“Maybe we just weren’t asking the right questions,” said Jeffrey.
“Anyway, what difference does it make? He’s no good to me dead,” said Ford. “If he’s in the ground over a year, he didn’t kill Richard Stratton.”
“But he could have killed Tad Jenson.”
“I suppose he could have. But that case is cold. I need to solve
“Just see if the hairs match the ones from the Jenson case, Ford. See if there’s any DNA on the candy bar wrapper.”
“And what if there is? How does that help this case? Even if the hairs match and the wrapper has the DNA from James Ross’s ghost, what does that tell me about Richard Stratton?”
She looked at him and shook her head slightly, but didn’t bother arguing. He had a case to solve and their investigation was becoming too far-fetched for him, she could see it in his eyes. It was like this when you were a private investigator; cops sometimes cooperated when they thought you might help. And Jeffrey had a lot of contacts, people who owed him favors, people he’d worked with in the past either with the FBI or as a private consultant, who gave them the kind of access of which other PIs could only dream. But when you started to get in the way, you got the official boot. She didn’t blame him, that’s just the way it was.
“Look,” he said, “you guys are all over the board here… curses, ghosts, incest, family feuds. Sometimes, you know, the simplest solution is the right solution. Maybe someone hired a killer to do Richard Stratton. Maybe someone wants you to think James Ross is still alive, stalking his sister and murdering her husbands.”
She nodded. “Maybe you’re right,” she said.
