One of Us Read online

“You can tell the difference between cheap and expensive lipstick? I worry about you, Danno.”

  “I’ve dated some women who wore expensive makeup and liked to talk about it.”

  “And you paid attention?”

  “Maybe you can get some DNA from this?”

  “DNA,” he grunts. “This isn’t the city. We don’t have your resources. We’d have to send this to the state crime lab. It would take months to hear back.”

  Even if he had access to the latest technology, I know Rafe wouldn’t use it. Forensic science is an unnecessary distraction in his eyes. He believes anything can be found out by asking enough people enough questions. His crime-solving philosophy is based on one simple belief: no one can keep his mouth shut forever.

  He crooks a finger at me. I follow him into a bathroom where an image of a gallows with a stick figure dangling from it has been drawn on the medicine cabinet mirror.

  I can’t help thinking about Simon Husk’s claim that the ghost of Prosperity McNab wrote the word “Fi” on his bedroom mirror in blood that turned out to be lipstick. This time there’s no question.

  “Is that blood?” I ask.

  “Yep.”

  I examine the ghoulish artwork.

  “I suppose I don’t need to point out the similarity between this and what happened to Simon Husk when he was a boy.”

  “Nope. It’s one strange coincidence.”

  The picture is carefully and neatly rendered. The artist was calm and unrushed. I can make out brushstrokes. I think back to the high-end lipstick on the glass and the makeup brush the owner would use to apply it. A woman did this.

  “Who would have heard Simon’s ghost story?”

  “Hell, who hasn’t heard it?”

  “She’s playing on the town’s fears and superstitions. Whoever she is, she thrives on controlling and manipulating people.”

  “Who’s she? You mean the woman with the expensive lipstick? You think the killer is female?”

  “I do. Did the niece see this?” I ask, gesturing toward the drawing.

  Rafe nods.

  “I told her not to tell anyone, but I can’t make her keep her mouth shut. Something this good, by now the whole county knows.”

  “But what is there to know exactly? You’re not referring to the curse? Bloody cartoon aside, Simon Husk had a very strong link to the gallows, but Marcella Greger doesn’t.”

  “Not true. She was the cousin of Anna Greger, the Dawes family nanny.”

  “The one who doused herself in gasoline and lit herself on fire?”

  “The same.”

  I was a teenager when that happened. It was all anyone talked about for months, along with the inevitable gossip: Anna Greger was crazy, she abused the Dawes children, she professed her unrequited love for Walker in her suicide note. Mrs. Dawes did it. Mr. Dawes did it. The butler did it. The entire town was spooked. Even my dad did all his drinking at home for weeks after it happened, refusing to go to the Rabbit or anywhere else. I remember thinking he was afraid to leave the house.

  “And if you go back a few generations,” Rafe goes on, “they’re related to Peter Tully.”

  Peter was one of the first to be hung along with Prosperity. He was the only child of a widow who doted on him. He was nineteen and didn’t leave behind a wife or children. His mother fainted at the execution and followed her son into the grave a month later. The lace handkerchief she gave him that he tucked into his coat pocket as the noose was put around his neck is on display in Nora Daley’s attic.

  Rafe shows me a rental contract for a safety deposit box.

  “Found it in her desk. She also has the same number written on a piece of paper hanging on her refrigerator door.”

  “It must be important to her.”

  “I’m heading over there now to check it out. You want to tag along?”

  “Sure.”

  “Explain to me again why you’re wearing a suit?”

  “I didn’t really explain the first time. I have somewhere to go.”

  I don’t know why I haven’t told him about my impending meeting with Walker Dawes. I also didn’t tell him about the note in Tommy’s mailbox.

  “Somewhere around here that requires a suit?”

  “It’s not really required,” I reply.

  It’s more like I need it, I finish to myself.

  Superman has his cape, I have my Armani herringbone.

  THE UPS STORE IS located in a strip mall on the north side of Hellersburg along with the State Store, a Laundromat, a Rite Aid pharmacy, the Big Eats buffet restaurant, a Dollar General store, and a Christian thrift shop with a dusty front window displaying Bibles, crosses, angels, pictures of Jesus, and strangely enough, a life-size cardboard cutout of Elvis.

  It’s staffed by two heavily tattooed boys barely out of high school with identical mullets who I’m guessing spend a lot of time popping bubble wrap.

  They each have a name tag pinned to their yellow polo shirts: Shane and Matt.

  Rafe shows them his identification.

  “I didn’t know we had a detective,” Matt says, squinting at Rafe’s badge. “What kind of money you make?”

  Rafe lays out Marcella’s contract on the counter.

  “Open this box.”

  “Don’t you need a warrant?” Shane asks.

  Rafe leans into the kid’s face.

  “The owner is dead. Her key is missing. Open the box.”

  Shane holds his hands up in a dramatic display of surrender and leaves to get the key.

  Rafe takes it from him and heads to the wall of post office boxes and safety deposit boxes on the other side of an aisle of copy machines.

  “Empty,” he says upon his return.

  He pulls out a photo of Marcella Greger he took from her house and shows it to the boys.

  “Do you recognize her?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t seen her in here lately? Think hard.”

  “Nah. Never seen her.”

  “Did anyone come in here yesterday or this morning and take something out of one of those boxes? Anyone at all.”

  “We got a couple regulars who come in every day to check their PO boxes,” Shane replies.

  “What about that woman?” Matt interjects excitedly.

  “Oh, yeah.” Shane gives us a lewd smile. “She was hot. Supermodel hot.”

  “Supermodel?” Rafe asks skeptically.

  “Yeah, she was tall and had amazing legs.”

  “And her hair was tousled,” Matt volunteers.

  Rafe rolls his eyes.

  “What color was this tousled hair?”

  “Brown,” insists Shane.

  “Red,” insists Matt.

  “It wasn’t red. It was brown.”

  “It was red.”

  “What was she wearing?” Rafe interrupts them.

  “She was classy. She looked rich.”

  “Did she talk to you?”

  “We tried to get her to talk to us. We asked her if she needed any help. We tried to talk to her about the weather.”

  “We said it was cold,” Matt contributes, nodding.

  “She ignored us.”

  “Hard to believe,” Rafe comments. “What did she do while she was in here?”

  “She opened up one of the boxes.”

  “Did she take anything out?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure. Then she left.”

  “Anything else you can tell me about her? Anything at all?”

  They fall silent and think.

  “Hey, remember after she left what you said to me?” Shane says to Matt.

  “Let’s go to Sheetz and get an MTO?”

  “No, you said she looked like a fembot.”

  “A fembot?” Rafe repeat
s.

  Shane nods.

  “More like a clone.”

  “Not a clone,” Matt argues. “A cyborg.”

  “Definitely something with consciousness. It wasn’t like you thought she was a machine. She just didn’t seem completely human.”

  “It was her eyes, mostly. The way they stared at you.”

  “What color were her eyes?” Rafe asks.

  “Brown.”

  “Green.”

  “Brownish green.”

  “They weren’t blue.”

  Rafe sighs.

  “So a supermodel or possibly a fembot came in here yesterday who may or may not have had red or brown hair and may or may not have taken something out of one of the lockboxes, then stared at you in a way that may or may not have been entirely human, then refused to make any kind of small talk with you and left. Is that correct?”

  They look at each other and nod.

  Back outside the snow has turned to freezing rain. I pull up the collar of my coat. Rafe yanks up the hood on his camouflage jacket.

  “I shouldn’t even be working right now,” he says. “I’ve maxed out my overtime the past few days. I’m going to start this paperwork then grab a beer at the Rabbit and go home to bed.”

  “I need to get going, too,” I tell him.

  Rafe doesn’t seem to hear me. He stares across the parking lot, blinking against the icy droplets blowing in his face.

  “What is it?” I ask him. “What are you thinking?”

  He slips another piece of candy into his mouth.

  “I’m trying to figure out if they were the worst or the best witnesses I’ve ever interviewed.”

  fifteen

  MY PHONE VIBRATES IN my coat pocket as I get into my Jag. I’ve been dodging Max’s texts and calls. I’m going to have to touch base with him eventually, but I’ve been putting it off because I haven’t decided yet how long I’m staying and I haven’t accomplished any work. He’s going to chastise me even though he has no business doing it. The problem with having a highly competent, efficient personal assistant is he sometimes makes you feel like you work for him.

  I reach into my glove compartment for a bottle of Tylenol and some chewable antacids. I’ve been here for three nights and two were plagued with bad dreams, one a standard from my childhood with a new twist at the end, the other entirely new.

  They both featured fathers and I can’t ignore the subconscious message I’m sending myself. I need to visit my dad. I just can’t do it quite yet.

  I don’t know what kind of relationship Walker Dawes had with his father or what kind of father he has been to his two children.

  It’s been said he bears a much closer resemblance to the first Walker Dawes physically and in temperament than to his own father, Walker III, nicknamed Trigger, who was a quick-tempered, jowly, unpolished cigar chomper who purposely mangled his grammar and never went anywhere without his black and tan coonhound.

  Trigger’s father, Deuce, had been a well-known disappointment to his pretentious dandy of a father. A sloppy, portly boy who didn’t care at all about his heritage or personal appearance, he preferred the company of the Irish servants to children of his own class and listening to their folk tales over his father’s dinnertime lectures on stock markets and labor disputes.

  When the first Walker was struck down by the scarlet fever that would kill him, Deuce prayed harder than anyone that he would survive. He feared and disliked his father, but he feared and disliked the idea of running Lost Creek Coal & Oil even more. He only did it for a decade, handing over the reins to his son, Trigger, as soon as he was out of college.

  Deuce’s most notable public act as a Dawes was to sell the gallows and jail, but long before he did this, the miners liked to joke that his most courageous private act was to impregnate his wife. He was saddled with the explicit directive of providing a grandson to carry on his father’s name, so it was assumed he’d have some difficulties in the bedroom. Rumors abounded about the various methods his wife employed to get him to make love to her, one of the favorites being that she rubbed powdered sugar into her skin to make herself smell like a cake.

  He paced outside the bedroom door for an entire day while she was in labor. When the nurse finally brought the swaddled bundle out into the hallway for him to see, sweat droplets exploded from his forehead and he went deathly pale. She pulled back the blanket and a faint smile flickered across his lips before he passed out cold at the sight of the tiny pecker.

  Like his great-grandfather before him, the man I’m about to meet doesn’t tolerate nicknames. Apparently, he also doesn’t want to share his full name with anyone else and broke family tradition by naming his own son Wesley instead of Walker.

  As I drive onto the estate, passing through the stone pillars topped with a gold W and D entwined in black marble antlers, and head up the long, curving road lined by massive maples that must blaze with incredible color in the fall, I think about the Dawes men and the stories surrounding them and wonder at the fact that no one has ever seemed to know anything about their wives.

  The first Walker was unique among the coal barons of his day in that he chose to build his home where his mines were located. Most of his peers lived far away on Fifth Avenue, Rittenhouse Square, or in Back Bay.

  People speculated as to why he stuck around. Some said it was out of love for the area. Others said it was out of a pathological need for control. He was obsessed with knowing every detail of what went on inside his mines and his town. It was one of the many reasons the Nellies were doomed from the start. He had spies everywhere.

  The house appears all at once looming pinkly on a low mountain ridge. The property abounds with the ostentation of formal rose gardens, fountains, and manicured topiaries, but they do nothing to alleviate the sullen presence of the dark woods and hills surrounding it.

  Aside from the unusual color, the most striking features are the five gables stretching across the length of the roof like a child’s depiction of a mountain range and the amount of diamond-shaped windows. When the sun shines, the mansion must glitter like a diamond, but on a day like today, this amount of glass only serves to make it seem filled with murky water.

  A housekeeper answers the door and deposits me in an enormous great room dominated by a priceless gilded chandelier hung with crystal droplets the size of chicken eggs and filled with an eccentric mishmash of past grandeur. Persian carpets are scattered over the ebony hardwood floors. The windows are hung with heavy brocaded drapes. The furniture is an odd collection of pink and gold velvet sofas, high-backed dark oak chairs, and an excessive amount of end tables each displaying a Tiffany lamp and a figurine of either a circus performer or a waterfowl.

  A pair of bronze stags prance across the mantel set above a fireplace of cerulean blue and sea green marble tiles and above them are hung oversize oil portraits of Walker the First, Deuce, Trig, and Walker IV. I stand in front of each one in turn trying to decipher what kind of man he was based on his stance, attire, and the expression in his eyes.

  I decide to give them names worthy of the Seven Dwarves, another group of legendary miners: Cocky, Droopy, Feisty, and Bored.

  There’s not a single picture of any of the wives or of the only daughter, but Roscoe, the coonhound, has been memorialized. He lies fast asleep at his master’s feet.

  The housekeeper returns and leads me to Walker Dawes’ study, a room I’m fairly certain hasn’t been altered at all since the original one put his mark on it, his heirs not having the nerve or the inclination to touch anything. The walls are lined with books, most of them leather bound and appearing to be volumes in collections. The desk is a massive, immovable table of mahogany with roses carved into its legs. Stacks of papers cover its surface, and a chair of hunter green leather studded in burnished gold sits behind it turned toward a set of floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the Dawes
land extending to the mountains beyond. An intricately patterned rug of rich, dark colors and swirls of copper thread covers most of the hardwood floor. I don’t know much about the prized rugs of the Middle East and North Africa, but I know enough to realize this one is very old and very valuable.

  A set of matching ceramic urns, standing at least four feet tall, covered in scenes of Oriental men and women dancing with a red, snakelike dragon breathing black flames are positioned on either side of the doorway. I look closer and realize the people aren’t laughing, they’re screaming. They’re not dancing, they’re running for their lives.

  The current Walker Dawes walks across the priceless rug without giving it a second thought and extends his hand to me.

  He’s dressed casually in brown corduroys, a bulky cream-colored cardigan over a blue chambray shirt, and perfectly aged buttery leather loafers that would barely leave a bruise if he decided to kick his son.

  His hair is the color of lead. He wears it slicked back and still has plenty of it. He’s in good shape. Time and the lush life haven’t softened or widened him. I’d say he looks younger than his seventy-something years but not young by any means, despite the traces of a pretty boy lingering beneath the lined face.

  He has a strong grip.

  “The great-great grandson of Prosperity McNab shaking hands with the great-grandson of Walker Dawes,” he says, smiling.

  “I guess one of us should be nervous,” I say, returning the smile.

  He laughs and releases my hand.

  “Come have a seat.”

  I start to follow him toward the desk when I’m suddenly immobilized by the sight of another large portrait of Walker the First, but this time posing in front of the gallows.

  The picture is done in dramatic slashes of black and white, as if strikes of lightning had created it. Everything is sharp and jagged, including the planes of his face. The artist managed to capture both cruelty and delight in his expression.

  The only color is a dot of red in the middle of his pleated shirtfront where a man might aim a bullet or stab an accusatory finger: the famed Dawes ruby.

  I couldn’t be more shocked if he had Prosperity’s head mounted on the wall.