Behind the Walls

A Selection of Recent Titles by Merry Jones

The Harper Jennings Series

SUMMER SESSION *

BEHIND THE WALLS *

THE NANNY MURDERS

THE RIVER KILLINGS

THE DEADLY NEIGHBORS

THE BORROWED AND BLUE MURDERS

* available from Severn House

A Harper Jennings Mystery

First world edition published 2012

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2012 by Merry Jones.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Jones, Merry Bloch.

Behind the walls.

1. Women veterans–Fiction. 2. Iraq War, 2003–

Veterans–Fiction. 3. Post-traumatic stress disorder–

Patients–Fiction. 4. Cornell University–Employees–

Fiction. 5. Antiquities, Prehistoric–America–Catalogs–

Fiction. 6. Blessing and cursing–Fiction. 7. Suspense

fiction.

I. Title

813.6-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-202-3 (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8118-2 (cased)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being
described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this
publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons
is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

To Robin, Baille and Neely

Acknowledgments

In writing
Behind the Walls
, I had support and encouragement from lots of people, too many to list. But special thanks to:

my agent, Rebecca Strauss at McIntosh and Otis;

my editor, Rachel Simpson Hutchens at Severn House Publishers;

my fellow Liars: Greg Frost, Jon McGoran, Jonathan Maberry, Don Lafferty, Kelly Simmons, Marie Lamba, Dennis Tafoya, Keith Strunk, Solomon Jones, Ed Pettit, Keith DeCandido;

my friends and family, especially Robin, Baille and Neely.

October, 1989

T
he crate was smaller than most, simply marked ‘Utah’. No dates, like all the others. No specific dig sites either. Odd; Professor Langston was obsessive about labeling his collection. Maybe the labels were inside, taped to the lid? Or maybe they’d been lost.

Carla Prentiss sighed, glanced at her watch. Almost four. Without a list, there probably wouldn’t be time to identify and catalogue the contents before sunset, and she didn’t want to be caught there after dark. The professor’s rambling old Victorian mansion was spooky enough in daylight. The place had been built in the early twentieth century by some hermetic silent movie star whose name she couldn’t remember but who, in his paranoia, had designed the place with secret passages and hidden vaults, setting it deep in the woods outside Ithaca where, even now, it had no near neighbors. When he’d offered her the assistantship, Professor Langston had told her with some pride that his house was probably haunted.

‘Haunted?’ she’d parroted.

‘Its inhabitants have led, shall we say  . . . uncommon lives.’ He’d smiled, wheezing heavily as air forced its way through his dense nose hairs. ‘In the twenties, a young woman – a starlet named Chloe Manning – simply disappeared during a visit. Some say she’s still in the house, wandering the passages in the walls.’

Carla had blinked at the walls of the study. Wondered if the bookshelves concealed secret doors. And bodies.

Under his white, unruly brows, Langston’s eyes had twinkled, amused. He’d lowered his voice to a gravelly whisper. ‘Some years later, a maid suddenly fell or jumped – or was pushed – over the balcony. Broke her neck. And then, in the fifties, well  . . .’ His eyes had narrowed, drifted across his study.

‘What?’ she’d pressed him. ‘What happened in the fifties?’

He’d drawn a dramatic breath. ‘Well, these things happen, even today.’

What things? She’d waited for him to explain.

‘Sometimes men run amok. They snap and release pent-up aggressions on to their family members.’

‘Professor, what happened?’

‘Well.’ He’d cleared his throat, reached for a pipe. ‘The man of the house – Fredericks was his name. One night, he simply hacked his wife and three children to death. Damaged the walls a bit, too.’

Carla had felt a chill, held her breath.

‘But it worked out well for me; I was able to acquire the place for a very reasonable price afterwards.’ Professor Langston had smiled slyly. Pleased with himself.

Carla, of course, didn’t believe in ghosts or haunting. As an archeologist, she believed in history. In science. And so, despite the professor’s grisly tales, she was thrilled at the opportunity to work with him, cataloguing the massive and disorganized collection of artifacts he’d accumulated in digs from Peru to Pennsylvania over the course of some five decades. Now in his seventies, Professor Langston had decided to write his will. And the Archeology Department, hoping that he’d leave a generous part of his conglomeration to the university, had offered to pay a graduate student to help him get it organized and itemized.

And that graduate student, Carla Prentiss, welcomed the income that came with the assistantship, not to mention the chance to see – to actually touch and examine – rare Pre-Columbian relics. So she overlooked the dusty cobwebs, eerie history and damp chill of the house. Not for the first time, she shook off the sense that she wasn’t alone, and focused on the crate in front of her.

Utah.

An hour before dark. Maybe there would be time to do this one crate, depending on what was inside. Probably, it wouldn’t take long. It wasn’t heavy, might not have much in it. Glancing again at her watch, she reached for a lever to pry up the lid. As she wedged the tool in-between slats of wood, the light shifted. A shadow fell over her from behind.

‘Professor?’ She turned, expecting to see him. But, of course, he wasn’t there – Professor Langston hobbled with a cane. Made thudding sounds as he walked. Carla listened, heard no footsteps. Nothing. Just her own breathing and the silence of dust.

Uneasy, Carla surveyed the storage room. Saw nobody, just rows of metal shelves holding oddly shaped packages. Stacks of wooden crates and cardboard barrels lining the walls. The door slightly ajar. The row of cut-glass windows, revealing slivers of orange and red treetops, a gray cloud crossing above them.

The cloud – that was it. It must have blocked the sunlight for a moment, casting a shadow, darkening the room. That was all. She needed to relax.

Reinserting the lever into the crate, Carla pushed down on it to force up the lid. Her stomach growled with the exertion, complaining that she’d skipped lunch. Reminding her that it was her turn to cook dinner. Curried chicken with apricots. She could almost smell it.

Or no – wait. The smell wasn’t her imagination. Nor was it curried chicken. What was it? She sniffed the crate where she’d loosened the lid, got a whiff of wood shavings and musty air. She straightened, sniffing, but couldn’t figure out the source of the scent, so she continued her work. Inserting the lever on the other end of the crate. Pushing until the lid came up with a squeak of resistance. Or was the floor creaking? Carla looked around again. The smell was stronger. Musky and warm. Smoky. Sweet. Like incense? Or cheap cologne?

She thought of that starlet – Chloe somebody? The one who’d disappeared years ago, whose ghost might live in the walls. Oh God, was she smelling Chloe’s stale perfume?

Ridiculous. Even so, the hairs on Carla’s neck stood on alert, and she shivered at the idea. Probably, she reasoned, the odor was drifting up from downstairs. One of the professor’s sons must be burning incense or scented candles. Or some exotic wood in the fireplace. That was all.

Calmer, Carla turned back to the crate just as another shadow fell over her. Not a cloud, this time. No, this shadow flickered from over head. And something darted above her – a bird? Lord, was there a bird trapped in the room? Cautiously, Carla looked up to see a tiny creature, flapping its wings, disappearing behind a beam high on the ceiling.

Damn. A bat? The house had bats? Cringing, she reached for the light switch and flipped it on. Examined the ceiling again. Saw no sign of the thing, couldn’t see where it might have escaped. But, fine. Bats were harmless. They ate bugs, didn’t they? Weren’t they a sign of a healthy ecology? In an old house like the professor’s, they probably weren’t unusual, probably came out as the sun went down. No reason for alarm.

A little on edge, Carla continued her work. Carefully, she lifted the lid, set it on the table beside the crate. And looked inside.

When the first blow struck, she went down hard, her head banging the table. She tried to get up, but she was dizzy, blinded by pain. Carla huddled, protecting herself, trying to escape sharp swiping blows. Twisting, she had the impression of a large cat – a jaguar? Or no. A man? She crawled, kicking, and, even as her flesh tore, she told herself that the attack was not possible. There was no such thing as a man who was also a cat. But this not-quite-man-not-quite-cat kept ripping at her. Digging at her chest.

Fading, Carla had three final thoughts. The first was that she never should have stayed to open the Utah crate.

The second was that she was having her final thoughts.

The third was that, damn, she wouldn’t get to have that curried chicken.

October, 2011

A
t first, they didn’t hear the banging. Maybe they mistook it for loose garbage cans clattering around in the driveway. Or maybe it got lost in the screaming howls of wind that gusted against the house, buzzing through cracks in the window frames, drowning out all other sounds.

Vicki Manning, clearing dinner plates, waited for the wind to subside before speaking. ‘Wow. That was almost as loud as Trent’s snoring.’

Harper Jennings laughed, nodding. She’d heard those snores; Vicki’s husband could shake walls when he slept.

‘Need. Putty. Fix.’ Hank Jennings put down his wine glass. He’d cooked again, had become quite adept in the kitchen in the last year. ‘In. Sulate. Before winter.’

‘Put it on the to-do list.’ Harper picked up a salad bowl, planted a kiss on his cheek on her way to the kitchen sink. She had become accustomed to Hank’s speech; he had aphasia due to brain injuries from a fall from the roof. Most of the time, she understood his meaning perfectly, and she’d convinced herself that his speech was steadily improving.

Vicki took Hank’s dish. ‘The pasta was yummy, Hank. Thanks.’ She’d been eating with them on Tuesday nights while Trent taught an evening class. ‘You should open a restaurant—’

Her voice was drowned out by rapping sounds and another anguished groan from the windows. Tree branches blew against the house, scraped against glass panes.

Hank shook his head. ‘House com. Plaining. Old. Arth. Ritis.’

Indeed. The house was old, over a hundred years. And he and Harper had been renovating it, by themselves. To Harper, the process seemed endless, as if every job they completed led to ten more. But, with Hank’s aphasia making him unable to teach, the endless work wasn’t so bad; rehabbing gave Hank a focus. Something positive to work on.

Vicki poured herself the last of the wine as Harper washed pots and pans, gazing out the window into the darkness. Hedges, firs, branches of the oak tree bent to the wind. Night came early, felt stark and dangerous. But lights from the fraternity house next door spilled into the yard, defining shapes. Reminding her that she was safe, that the shadows held no snipers. That she was home in Ithaca not back in Iraq, surrounded by war and terror.

‘Where’s a towel? I’ll dry.’

‘There was one on the—’ She stopped mid-sentence, interrupted by loud banging. It didn’t sound like the wind. It came from the front door.

‘Trent maybe?’ Hank turned toward the sound. The dish towel was draped on his shoulder.

‘Can’t be,’ Vicki glanced at the clock. ‘He’s still teaching.’

Harper grabbed the dish towel off of Hank, tossed it at Vicki as she headed for the door. The banging grew louder, more rapid. Urgent. Harper hurried, hearing shouts.

‘Harper? Are you in there?’

She didn’t recognize the voice.

Harper stopped beside the door, cautious. Old instincts, trained responses.

‘Who?’ Hank came up behind her, limping slightly.

Harper turned on the porch light, peered through the window. And saw Zina Salim. Zina Salim? Really? Why? But there she was, her hair flying in the wind, her dark eyes wide. Her fist raised to pound some more.