The Line (8 page)

“I didn’t call for an ambulance, ’cause I could tell she was dead.”

“Oh, so you’re medically trained then? From what I have gathered from talking to your family, you are quite the student. A class or two at Savannah College of Art and Design qualifies you to determine if someone is beyond medical assistance?” His sudden aggressive turn took me by surprise, as he’d no doubt calculated it would.

“No,” I shot back, suddenly angry. “Seeing the top of her skull lying across the room and her brain popping out the top of what was left qualified me.”

Cook leaned back a bit further, attempting to look more relaxed. “I’m sorry. That came out harsher than I meant it to. I’m just incredibly frustrated with the tampering you all did at the crime scene.”

“I never touched a thing,” I replied.

“Maybe not with your hands, but you passed out on top of the body. You knocked it a good foot away from its original placement, and got your hair and clothing fibers all over.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize,” I mumbled, now understanding his consternation. I couldn’t believe that no one had told me, but then again, I would have preferred never to have found out.

“Okay. Let’s talk about the facts of life here, Miss Taylor. I really, really do not suspect that you had anything to do with your great-aunt’s death.” He bent back in and looked me squarely in the eye. “Really,” he repeated. “But I am sure you are aware that in most cases someone is murdered by someone they know. And more often than not, by someone in their own family.” He paused.

“Looks to me like whoever did the old lady in hated her,” he said. “It took three blows to take her down. She was one tough old bird. But that last blow, as you witnessed, took the top off the roof, so to speak.” He leaned back toward me and in a lowered voice, he asked, “You didn’t like her much, did you?”

“No. But I sure didn’t hate her. Not really. Certainly not enough to kill her.”

“Why did you hate her?” he asked, completely ignoring my statement to the contrary.

“What does it matter? I sure would never have hurt her.”

“I believe you, I do,” he insisted. “But if she inspired hate in you, it is likely she did the same in other family members. Maybe someone else hated her for the same reasons you did. And maybe sharing those reasons with me will help me bring her killer to justice.” He hesitated. “I know you Taylors have your own way of thinking about how things should work, but you do believe in justice, right?”

“Of course, I do. Ginny didn’t deserve to be killed, especially like that.”

“Then tell me why you hated her.”

I stopped resisting and spoke a truth I had been waiting my entire life to share. “I hated Ginny,” I replied, “because she made me feel like I was a mistake. Like I didn’t have the right to exist.”

“Go on.”

“My mother died having me. You know I have a twin sister. Maisie,” I informed him, sparing him another peek in his black book. “Ginny adored Maisie. Me, not so much. She thought my mother might have made it if there hadn’t been two of us.” Hot tears burst from my eyes, and I gasped with the pain as the words ripped out of me.

“And she made you believe that, didn’t she?” he asked. He reached out and nearly touched my hand, but he must have thought better of it because he gently pulled his hand back.

“Yeah, I guess she did.” And I realized it was true. I did believe it, and I always had. I swiped at my tears with my bare hands and tried to pull myself together.

“Well, she was wrong. I suspect Ginny Taylor was wrong about a whole lot of other things too,” he said, pulling a tissue from a pack in his jacket pocket and handing it to me.

“Really, like what?”

“Like thinking it was a good idea to leave her doors and windows unlocked. The door was unlocked when you got there, right?”

Again, I felt myself tighten up. “Yes. Aunt Ginny never locked up. She didn’t need…” I started, but then realized that if I explained how Ginny thought she could keep the bad guys out, I might be opening another whole can of worms. Cook smiled and let my faltering statement pass. He had known my family for years all right.

“So it was common knowledge among your family members that Ginny never locked her doors.”

“Well, yeah, it was common knowledge to everyone. The dry cleaner, the grocery delivery guy. Everyone, not just family.”

“I see,” Cook said, briefly flipping his black book open and then closing it again just as quickly. “So tell me, Miss Taylor. Why did you call your Aunt Iris rather than the police? Were you maybe trying to protect someone? Someone like your Uncle Connor, that is? He’s a big man, with a big temper. He’s well known for it, right?”

“Uncle Connor”—I began almost choking on the “uncle” part—“had nothing to do with Ginny’s death.”

“You sure about that? You can give him an alibi?”

“I saw him at breakfast. I’m sure he was with Iris all morning. You can ask her if you haven’t already, but I know he never would’ve done it.”

“Not even for the inheritance he’s going to get from Ginny?”

“He isn’t getting anything from Ginny,” I guffawed. “Ginny made no secret of the fact that she thought Maisie was the only one of us who was worth a spit and polish. It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving dinner without her announcing that when she was gone, she planned on leaving everything to Maisie.” I realized I had stepped in it.

“Well thank you for your time, Miss Taylor.” He stood up abruptly, if a bit stiffly. “I can let myself out.” He smiled and left the room, leaving me with the strong sense that I had just been had.

SEVEN

“Mercy! Mercy!” an excited squeal came from behind me. I almost jumped out of my skin, but then I turned to see Wren standing in the corner.

“Were you in here the entire time?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded, looking down. “I just wanted to show you this,” he said as he held up another new toy, this time a blue pickup truck.

“You know you aren’t supposed to come into a room without announcing yourself,” I said, trying my best to sound stern. But how can you get angry with a little boy who has been a little boy forever, even before you were born? A child you once played with yourself? A child who isn’t even really a child? When dealing with Wren it was easy to forget that he wasn’t real, that he had started out as Uncle Oliver’s imaginary friend. But when a young witch with as much power as Oliver has invents a playmate, that playmate can truly take on a life of its own. While Wren looked as real as could be, he was in actuality just a thought-form, a bit of imaginative energy so thoroughly well imagined that it had been able to separate itself from the one who originally envisioned it.

Wren dropped to his knees and began to push the truck up to me, running it over my feet as if they were speed bumps. After a moment, he stopped playing with it and looked up at me. “I don’t like that man,” he said, trying to change the subject just as a real child might.

“I don’t think I like that man much either,” I said. I put my hand on his head, and his warm, glossy curls felt so real to me. After all these years and too many games of ring-around-the-rosy to count, I don’t know why it still surprised me, but it did. Even though he looked just like any other kid you might see riding his tricycle down the street or tagging along with his parents in a store—your average six-year-old—Wren was an uncanny creature, something unnatural to this world. And it didn’t seem right that there weren’t any outward signs of that.

Iris told me that Wren had faded away by the time Oliver hit puberty. The family had thought he was gone for good, but he had evidently been dormant, waiting for the arrival of another child to reawaken him. That child had been Ellen’s son, Paul. By the time Maisie and I were born, Wren had already returned to being an accepted part of the family, never growing or aging past his initial incarnation.

“My truck is better than Peter’s,” Wren said.

“And how do you know that?” I asked, amused.

“I’ve seen his truck. His is old.”

“Yeah, but his is real,” I said, regretting it instantly. He stood and kicked the truck away, causing it to roll into the far corner.

The door opened, and Ellen stuck her head in.

“Ellen!” Wren squeaked and ran toward her, totally deserting the toy truck that had captivated him only seconds before. She came into the room and knelt down next to him, kissing his forehead and pulling him to her.

Ginny had often complained that “it” should be dissolved and laid to rest. The family’s job was to maintain the line, not pluck at it like a guitar string. But after Ellen’s son Paul died, she had latched onto Wren. No one, not even Ginny, had had the heart to rip another child from Ellen’s arms, so in spite of Ginny’s churlishness, a tacit agreement seemed to exist in the family that Wren would be kept “alive.” I suspected it was the combination of booze and this need to hold onto an illusion that was siphoning off Ellen’s power. He had to be getting his juice from somewhere; I doubted that he was pulling much from Maisie, who had no need for him anymore, and I had none to give him.

“I can’t find my ball,” he said, addressing Ellen. His lower lip poked out comically, causing Ellen to laugh and hug him even more tightly. I was concerned about what he was doing to my aunt, and I knew it wasn’t natural for him to be here with us, but I couldn’t help it. My heart went out to him like it would to a real child.

“Don’t worry, baby,” she said. “If we don’t find it, I’ll set Connor on the case with his pendulum.” She looked up at me. “And you, young lady, don’t you worry about Adam. He’s going to realize he is barking up the wrong tree soon enough.”

“He thinks one of us did it for Ginny’s money,” I said.

“Aunt Ginny didn’t have any money of her own. She got her stipend from the trust just like the rest of the family does. Just like you and Maisie will, starting on your next birthday. Nobody’s going to gain financially from poor Ginny’s death. What she had to give wasn’t money. It was knowledge.”

She reached out and took my hand. “He’s wrong, you know, this detective. It wasn’t anyone from the family, close or extended, who hurt Ginny. If a witch with bad intentions had been approaching her, Ginny would’ve sensed the danger from a mile away.” Ellen weighed her words. “Someone born of the power, we have a signature, something like a vibration. When we get near someone like us”—she looked away from me, maybe feeling a bit guilty for excluding me—“that vibration either falls in sync and kind of hums along with ours or is like nails scraping against a chalkboard.” She let go of my hand and turned her attention back to Wren. “Ginny would have sensed it if a rage-filled witch was coming at her.”

“But if she could know when a witch was coming at her, why couldn’t she tell if a normal person was headed her way? Seems to be a hell of a blind spot,” I said and then regretted having used the word “normal” for non-witches.

“I would say ‘regular’ instead of ‘normal,’ ” Ellen corrected me, but I could tell she wasn’t really upset. “Whoever hurt Ginny was regular. But they certainly weren’t normal. My feeling is that the person was probably deranged. You know how disturbed people tend to get more excitable during a full moon?”

“Sure, it’s why we have the term lunatic,” I said.

“Precisely. It’s kind of the same when a crazy person, pardon my lack of political correctness, approaches the line. The vibration causes them to become more unhinged than they might typically be. And Ginny was the focal point, the anchor for our portion of the line. So you end up taking crazy and turbocharging it.” She paused. “As far as Ginny not picking up on a threat, I suspect she thought she could control the situation. That she underestimated the strength or craziness of whoever attacked her. All the same, the killer is not one of the family.”

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t think I helped convince Detective Cook of it.”

“Don’t worry. He will chase his tail a bit, but he is keeping an open mind. And by open, I mean open enough for me to poke around in a little.” She placed her hand on Wren’s head.

“What did you see?” I asked.

She began to stroke Wren’s blond curls, the muscles in her forehead relaxing at the contact. She took a lot of comfort from him. “One of the neighbors spotted a young man in Ginny’s yard, the morning she was killed. African American, I gather. I couldn’t pick out the actual description, just Adam’s impression of that description. It looked like no one I knew.”

“My ball,” Wren was growing impatient.

Ellen patted his head and stood. “All right, little man,” she said, taking hold of his hand. “Let’s go find it. Where do you remember playing with it last?”

“Outside,” he replied.

“Then let’s start there,” Ellen said and led Wren from the room.

Seconds later, Teague Ryan, one of the cousins, popped his head into the room. “You done in here?” he commanded more than asked. Teague’s square jaw and high forehead landed him somewhere on the looks spectrum between high school prom king and newscaster. His sense of entitlement positioned him somewhere between a spoiled six-year-old and Louis XIV, the Sun King of France.

“Yeah,” I replied. “All yours.” He stood stock still in the doorway, preventing my exit.