The manor, p.9
The Manor, page 9
It was as if she’d been there when the children’s father pulled up minutes after the fire truck’s arrival, and the mother’s face turned to ash when she saw him. “Lacy. Where’s Lacy?” she asked.
Confusion furrowed the father’s brow. “She’s here.”
“She went with you!” The mother screamed at him, as if anger would make her words true.
He didn’t bother answering her but ran for the front door. Booker tackled him before he reached it. It took two firefighters to hold the father back. Meanwhile, Booker adjusted his face mask and climbed a ladder to the little girl’s bedroom.
He found her under her bed, terrified but unharmed. He hauled her to the open window, ready to hand her to the firefighter outside. Before that man could reach him, however, the father raced forward presumably wanting to be the one to take his child from Booker’s arms.
The altercation at the foot of the ladder wasted precious seconds. The father was restrained again, and the firefighter climbed to the window. Booker passed the little girl outside to safety, then ran down the main stairway of the house to check for other victims on his way out.
Whether it was the extra minutes spent subduing the little girl’s father, or whether it would have happened anyway, no one could say, but Willow’s father fell through the foyer floor before reaching the front door.
His department rescued him within minutes, but not before his lungs and parts of his flesh had been scorched in the conflagration in the basement. He spent the next two nights in the hospital. The burns and smoke inhalation didn’t cause lasting damage, but the trauma did. Booker was never the same after that incident.
For years Willow thought he’d blamed Lacy, the little girl, for his wounds, and that anger had transferred itself to his little girl, to her.
After months of counseling with one of the university therapists, she now understood it was the father’s horror that had been etched into Booker’s mind. The idea of losing his own daughter had suddenly seemed a real and living possibility. An obsessive need to keep Willow safe had turned him into a harsh dictator at times.
What had been, and still was, confusing was that the obsession hadn’t extended to Ash or Honey. Willow alone received the brunt of his apprehension. This had cemented her childhood belief that her father no longer loved her. Now, intellectually, she knew this was untrue, but their relationship was still mending.
The paramedics jogged outside, retrieved a gurney from the ambulance and carried it indoors. Ten minutes later, they emerged with Gerry strapped to it. Jonathan followed behind them but paused when he saw Willow sitting in the dark. “I’m going with them. You’ll be okay?”
He continued forward, not seeing her nod, nor seeming to hear her words, “Of course. Go,” she said to his back. She watched the ambulance circle the drive and speed toward the gates. When it was out of sight, she rose, dusted off her new dress and returned to the house.
MOLLY: Generally speaking when people refer to the honeymoon phase of a marriage, they’re talking about an idyllic time. If this is Willow and Jonathan’s honeymoon phase, I’d hate to see what’s coming. There’s plenty of trouble in paradise. First, Jonathan’s father dies, then Gerry gets sick. Very sick, it would seem.
And this leads me to the question of the week. If you were Willow, would you move into the apartment in the wing of the house? Or would you insist on getting a place of your own? The apartment sounds lovely, and it has a separate entrance. However, Jonathan would be at his mother’s beck and call as long as he’s on the property. If she’s heading into a serious decline, that could take up a lot of his time and attention. Talk to me, people.
Join me next time for more Murders Under the Sun.
(cue music)
VO: This episode is brought to you by Home BnB in Big Bear, California. Get 20% off holiday vacation cabins when you use the code MURDERS at check out. Murders Under the Sun is edited by Jim Wilbourne, theme music is by Eclectic Blends, and I’m your host, Molly Shure.
Part Four
MURDERS UNDER THE SUN
SEASON SIX; EPISODE THREE
* * *
MOLLY: Welcome back to Murders Under the Sun. This is Molly Shure, your host.
I loved the debate on the Facebook page this week. As usual, you were divided on the topic. I asked the question: Would you move into the apartment in the wing of Sunset House, or would you insist on finding a place of your own?
Many of you said, heck yeah, to the apartment. Why wouldn’t you move in rent free to an oceanfront home in Southern California?
Others of you pointed out there’s no free lunch—or rent—in this case. Some things are more valuable than money, like time and freedom and autonomy. These people said they might feel guilty leaving their ill mother, but not if they weren’t going far.
I agree with the second group. It would be difficult for a newly married couple to bond with all that family drama right next door. However, I’m not sure moving ten or fifteen minutes away would help all that much. It’s a difficult situation no matter how you cut it.
On another topic, at the end of last season, I told you I learned that the drama students and the film students at CS-Fullerton sometimes worked on projects together. It seemed like a good lead to follow up on, but I hadn’t yet had the chance.
Well, Camilla Jimenez, Raphael’s mother, emailed me this week. It turns out, Raphael did make a film that several of the drama department students acted in. It won a short film award. She was very proud of him and was sure we’d be able to find it if we were interested.
I’d love to see whether it gave us any clue to what happened to him or not. It might give Abby and I more insight into who he was, and whether or not he knew Ariana Blackstone. I’ll let you all know what I find out.
And, speaking of finding things out, we need to get into today’s episode. When we left her, Willow was watching an ambulance drive away with her mother-in-law in the back. She’s really been thrust into the middle of Jonathan’s family crisis.
This wouldn’t be an easy issue for a couple who’d been together for a decade to navigate. I don’t think Willow and Jonathan have been married for ten days. Let’s see how she’s handling things.
Willow dozed by the fire, waiting for news. Everyone else had driven to the hospital. She’d pulled on a jacket, intending to go, but Chloe had said, “Hospitals are petri dishes.”
Ms. Dunfrey had said, “Think of the baby.”
A vision of a pimply-faced Roger standing over her as she lay on the floor of the karate dojo had inserted itself in her brain like a bad rerun. She’d slipped off her jacket and acquiesced. The Peach was her priority.
Anthony had been the last to leave. She’d watched the door close behind him with a hollow thud. That thud heralded the first time she’d been alone in Sunset House. It hadn’t bothered her at the time. She’d been so drowsy from the food, the little bit of wine she’d drunk, and the exhaustion that comes after strong emotion that she’d collapsed on the couch, pulled up a blanket, and closed her eyes.
Something brought her out of her light sleep. She lay listening to the old, empty house and was now aware of room upon room on either side of her and above her, each filled with furniture older than she was. Each one empty of life. She sat up and pushed the blanket away, feeling suddenly vulnerable. What time was it? The clock on the mantel said 12:15, but that couldn’t be right.
She left the great room and headed toward the back stairs. Normally, she kept her cell phone with her, but Gerry disliked phones at the dinner table, so Willow had left it in her room. As she climbed the stairs, every third or fourth riser creaked. She’d never noticed the creaks before, but she’d never wandered alone in the house so late at night before. The setup was classic grade-B horror flick, and her pulse raced by the time she reached her room.
The glow of the bedside table lamps, Jonathan’s discarded jeans,and her own cast-off flip-flops were comforting. Everything was the way they’d left it. What had she expected? Did pregnancy cause over-active imagination? She’d had some strange dreams the past month, but she’d chalked them up to all the stress she’d been under. She’d have to ask the doctor on her next visit.
She crossed the room, found her phone on the vanity and flipped it over to check the screen. No calls, which was both a relief and a disappointment. No news was good news, as they say, but she ached to hear the sound of Jonathan’s voice.
Her thumb hovered over his number. Hospitals insisted that cell phones be turned off, but maybe he was at the cafeteria or on a walk. She punched his number. The phone rang five times and went to voice mail. She disconnected and stood staring at the dark screen.
There was no point in staying up. When there was news, Jonathan would call. She might as well get ready for bed. She took two steps toward the closet and heard a muffled slam somewhere in the house. Willow spun.
She stared through the bedroom doorway into the dim hall. “Hello?” Her voice sounded reedy.
There was no response. She strained her ears until she began to doubt there’d ever been a noise. She walked to the door to shut it but paused with her hand on the knob. She’d never been the kid who pulled the covers over her head. If there was danger, she wanted to face it head on.
What if it had been this same noise that had woken her when she was downstairs in the great room? What if there was someone else in the house? She’d locked the door behind Anthony, hadn’t she? The events of the evening were a blur. She’d walked him to the door, but had she locked it? She couldn’t remember.
Her father’s face, set in stern lines, appeared in her mind. “Lock the door, Willow. If you’re home alone, you have to lock the door.” He’d tested her regularly in her growing-up years, leaving her alone ostensibly for the evening but returning minutes later to see if she’d followed his orders. The importance of security had been ingrained in her through repetition in the way a pet owner teaches a dog tricks. She wouldn’t be able to rest until she’d checked the front doors.
Front doors. In a place as big as Sunset House there had to be as many as ten doors leading outside. There were two in the great room, one in the kitchen, one in Gerry’s morning room, and lord knew how many in the left wing. The enormity of the house overwhelmed her again. She closed her eyes and placed a hand over her heart until the spike of panic receded.
When it did, she took her off her wedge-heeled sandals, slid into flip-flops, grabbed her phone, and headed to the stairs. Three risers down, and the slam came again, this time followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. She stopped, heart battering her ribcage. There was someone in the house.
She had two options. No, three. She could follow the sound and find out who was causing it. She could lock herself in her room and call the police. She could race out of the house, find a car that wasn’t locked up in that damn garage, and go home to her parents.
She dismissed the third option immediately. She wasn’t a child anymore. She couldn’t go running to Mommy and Daddy whenever she was afraid. She was a grown woman with a child of her own on the way.
The second option seemed extreme. To call the police because she heard a sound in a house as big and full of residents as Sunset House was laughable. Having been raised by a first responder, she had a healthy respect for emergency services. Trivial 911 calls cost lives.
Option one it was then. Willow pulled up the emergency call button on her phone, just in case, then ascended the few stairs she’d walked down. The sound had been on this floor, and it had come from the front of the house. She followed the hallway forward.
The only upstairs room she’d been in was hers and Jonathan’s, so this was all new territory. Her shoes slapped against her feet. The sound seemed to echo off the ecru walls, and she wished she’d worn slippers.
There were four doors in this section of the hall. She passed her room and stopped at the next door. She placed her ear on the wood and listened for a long moment. Pulse racing, she put a hand on the knob and turned.
The room was black. She felt along the wall to the left of the door and found a switch. She flipped it on, and light filled the space. A queen-sized bed was pressed against the inner wall, flanked by marble-topped bedside tables. A low bureau rested on one wall and a highboy on the other. This room was a mirror image of hers. There were no hidden corners. She could see it was empty, and her nose confirmed it. The air inside was stale and musty. She flicked off the light and walked on.
She didn’t bother opening the doors across the hall. She pressed her ear against them for a second or two and was satisfied they were empty as well. Besides, she was fairly certain the sounds she’d heard had come from somewhere up ahead.
The hallway made a sharp right turn and opened into a broader space where the doors were farther apart. This was where the noise had come from. She was sure of it. She tapped on the first door she came to. No one responded, so she turned the knob.
Moonlight illuminated the space enough for her to take it in without switching on lights. It was an apartment, not a single bedroom like Jonathan and she were sharing. She could see a small living room with a fireplace which opened onto a separate sleeping area. Beyond that was a door she assumed led to a bathroom. The room was in use. There were personal items scattered about, a novel on a side table by the fire, a pair of soft slippers peeking out from under an easy chair. Chloe’s room, perhaps. Or maybe Ms. Dunfrey’s. She pulled the door shut and moved forward.
As she approached the next door, the slam came again. It was more distinct this time. She thought it sounded as if someone had flung a cupboard door closed. Someone looking for something, searching cupboards and not finding what they were seeking perhaps?
All Willow’s years of music training had developed her auditory skills. She was convinced the noise came from the room two doors up on the left. As she drew closer, she saw the door was slightly ajar.
She hesitated. The room faced west, which meant it had a panoramic ocean view. The other doors in the hallway were spaced closer to each other than to this door; therefore, it was the biggest apartment. If she was calculating correctly, this was the master suite. It was Gerry’s room.
But Gerry wasn’t coming home tonight. Willow knew that for a certainty. She stood near the door, blood pulsing in her ears so loudly it drowned out almost all other sound. Should she call out? Throw open the door? Run and call the police?
In the end, she did none of those things. As she deliberated, the door opened wider and the room’s light spilled into the hallway. Willow took two quick steps backward.
A second later, Ms. Dunfrey exited and skidded to a stop. “Willow?” Her face blanched. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard something,” she said. “I wondered... How’s Gerry?”
Ms. Dunfrey lifted an overnight bag in explanation. “I came to get a few things for her. She likes her own nightgown. Those cotton hospital gowns—” Her voice caught.
“She’s going to be there for a while then?” Willow asked.
Ms. Dunfrey shrugged her wide swimmer’s shoulders. “She’s not well.”
The tight-jawed look on Jonathan’s face at his father’s funeral crossed the screen of Willow’s mind. Losing a father was a horrible thing. Losing both parents so close together was unthinkable. “What’s wrong with her?”
“They’re not completely sure yet. It seems her liver is failing.” Ms. Dunfrey’s gaze dropped to the patterned carpet runner beneath their feet. “I can’t understand it.”
I drank wine every day when I was pregnant. It didn’t do Jonathan and Chloe any harm. Gerry’s words from earlier that evening rang in Willow’s head. Could Gerry be an alcoholic? Jonathan had never hinted at that. Some people hid it well, but could a mother hide it from her own child?
“I’d better get back,” Ms. Dunfrey said, but she didn’t move.
The two women stared at each other for a beat, then Willow realized she was blocking Dunfrey’s path. She flattened herself against the wall with an apologetic grunt. Ms. Dunfrey strode past her and disappeared down the central staircase. Willow heard her steps clack across the tile entryway and the front door open, then close. Silence reigned in the empty building again.
Willow pivoted toward her room but stopped. No, she wasn’t going through that again. She’d make sure the doors were secured before she got into bed. She trotted after Dunfrey, checked the locks on the heavy front doors, then made a nerve-wracking tour of the rest of the house.
6.3.2
Jonathan wasn’t next to her when Willow woke up the next morning. He couldn’t still be at the hospital, could he? She threw off the blankets and padded to the dressing table where she’d plugged in her phone before going to sleep. She turned it on, then wandered to the window as she waited for it to power up. Not much was visible through the morning fog. She’d seen June gloom plenty of times. Her hometown of Laguna Niguel wasn’t far from the beach, but it was far enough that she hadn’t been immersed in the relentlessly overcast months the coastal towns often experienced. Day after day of gray depressed her.
When her phone came alive, she checked her missed calls and found there were none. Jonathan must not have come home—a bad sign. She marched to the closet. She wasn’t going to let him suffer through this alone, no matter what Chloe said. Petri dish or not, she would go to the hospital and be by her husband’s side.
When she reached the downstairs hall, she heard voices. They floated from the kitchen on coffee-scented air. It smelled wonderful. It might be small-minded of her with Gerry’s illness overshadowing things, but she had a sudden longing for coffee. Maybe Cookie would make her a cup of decaf.
She pushed open the kitchen door and heard her husband say, “I’m gonna get going. I’ll keep you posted.”
