Crimes by Moonlight Read online

Still ... one more thing to look at. I felt a hint of cold air on the back of my neck, a draft from somewhere, no doubt.

  I looked down at Peter, saw a cassette recorder at his side, and about two feet away from his left hand, one of those miniature camcorders. I picked up the cassette recorder, reversed the tape a bit, and held it close to my ear, so I could hear what was on there. I listened for a minute, and then stopped the tape, and then played with the tape controls for a moment.

  I put the cassette recorder down, picked up the camcorder, and repeated the process, looking through the narrow viewfinder, seeing what had been recorded. When I was done with that, I worked the controls one more time and then put everything back down on the floor, and then I felt that cold breeze upon the back of my neck again.

  I stood up. Upstairs a door suddenly slammed shut, like the same errant breeze against my neck had caused it to close. And after that, I went downstairs, through the living room, and outside to the porch.

  I smiled at the patient Skip. “Go take a look before the circus starts.”

  AND the circus came and stayed for a few more hours, as the medical examiner looked at the body and confirmed that yes, indeed, the poor boy was dead, which allowed the patient volunteer firefighters of Salem Falls to remove the body and take it to the Pearson Funeral Home, next town over in Montcalm, but not before two polite and large state police detectives took their own photos, performed their own measurements, and interviewed the three witnesses. Eventually the Tolands were left in the living room with my officer Harris while Josh sat on the porch.

  Then the two detectives and I huddled in the kitchen—as the morning sun started streaming through the windows—and we eventually came to the logical and only conclusion, that one Peter Grolin of Newburyport, Massachusetts, had in fact died accidentally, with no indication of foul play, and that the cassette recording and the camcorder recording showed no evidence that anything untoward had happened to the unfortunate young man.

  With that we all wished that someone knew how to work the fancy coffee machine in the corner, because a hot cup of joe would sure taste good right about now, and then the taller of the two detectives said, “So, this is the Logan place. Funny, always heard about it, but never thought I’d be inside of it ... especially looking at a dead body. Ironic, huh?”

  His partner, who was trying to decipher the controls on the coffee machine, looked up and said, “What about the Logan house?”

  The other detective said, “Read more than Sports Illustrated, maybe you’ll learn something. Chief, you’re a townie. Want to let my buddy here know about the Logan house?”

  I smiled and said, “Breck Logan built this place back in 1882. Was the wealthiest man in the county. Built mills along the Connecticut River and got even wealthier. Never married, never had any close relatives ... and died in 1903.”

  The detective by the coffee machine said, “And that’s it?”

  The other detective laughed. “Hell, no. The chief isn’t telling you the good stuff, the gory stuff. Right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, right. Story was ... though never printed anywhere, that the good Mr. Logan was a devil worshipper. That he led a coven of devil worshippers. That his devil worship and the worship of the others allowed both him and the town to thrive ... and that over the years, some French-Canadian girls who came down to work in his mills disappeared. That some of their fathers came down in 1903 ... to confront Mr. Logan about it ... and before they could get any information out of him, he went upstairs to the attic of this house and blew his head off with a shotgun. And that some of the fathers from Quebec started digging on the property ... and found bones and skulls. End of story.”

  “Right,” the detective at the table said. “End of story, but not of lesson.”

  “What lesson?” the other detective asked.

  “That these nice little villages and towns, they can have the darkest and bloodiest secrets imaginable. Even a pretty little town like Salem Falls, with a fancy-schmancy downtown, nice little computer firms in the old mill buildings, still doing fine. Right, Chief?”

  I smiled. “Right.”

  THERE came a moment, then, when the Logan house was empty, and I went back upstairs, past the blood-stained floor, and then upstairs again. I opened up the door and felt a blast of cold air on my face, and then took a set of very narrow and creaking steps up to the attic. There were boxes up there, piles of junk, and even though it was now daylight, it was still dark, with very little light streaming in from slats at either side of the attic. I rubbed my hands and looked into the darkness, and then let my eyes adjust to the lack of light. There was something off to the right. I ignored it. Kept staring into the darkness, thinking about the night, thinking about what had happened, thinking of what I had learned.

  Thought about the cassette recorder, and what I had heard, the shaky and frightened voice of Peter Grolin: “Something’s going on up here, I don’t know, I’m freezing Josh, I’m freezing, and oh Christ, something’s coming down the stairs ... it’s coming near me ... it’s coming after me ... it’s coming after me!”

  Then the sound of something falling, something gurgling, and then the whisper of static.

  And what I had seen on the camcorder viewing screen, filmed in night vision: the same narrow steps leading up to the attic, the door opening, and an illuminated shape, oozing down, coming closer, closer ...

  An illuminated shape.

  Like the one I could see from the corner of my eye, in the attic with me.

  I took a breath. “You didn’t have to do that. I know you were provoked. But you didn’t have to do that.”

  The shape flickered, moved. I took another breath. “I promise you, things won’t change. They won’t get a permit for the bed-and-breakfast. And there won’t be any more ghost hunters. No more trespassers. I promise. Okay?”

  The shape flickered one more time and then disappeared, but not before I saw what was there, the slightly out-of-focus image of a man wearing a turn-of-the-last-century frock coat and pants, with a head that looked like a bloody, shattered pumpkin.

  AS I went back out to the porch, I had a warm thought, that maybe the weekend could be salvaged after all. My wife and girls would be pleased. Outside, Josh was slowly loading some gear into his white van, the Toland couple was having a heated discussion at one end of the porch, and the two state police detectives were conferring over their notebooks. I came down the stairs, yawning, and then the younger state detective—the one who had finally got the coffee machine up and running—came over to me and shook my hand.

  “Nice to have met you, Chief,” he said. “And I’m sure you hope you don’t see us again, any time soon.”

  I gave his hand a firm shake, smiling, since he was right, since you only saw state police detectives in my line of work for serious matters. “If you don’t take offense, yeah, you’re absolutely right.”

  He grinned and looked around at the Logan house, at its neighboring homes, and said, “First time I’ve ever been in Salem Falls. Nice little town. Hell, a great little town. I’ve been to a lot of towns in this part of the state that are barely hanging on by their fingernails ... but you guys have been lucky.”

  “That we have,” I said.

  Then the younger detective gave a forced little laugh, like he was trying to make a joke and knew he wasn’t succeeding. “You know, somebody might say that those old devil worshippers, they’re still around, making sure the town still stays prosperous.”

  I looked at him, kept my expression slightly amused, and finally said, “You’re right. Some might say.”

  Madeeda

  By HARLEY JANE KOZAK

  The August air was hot and heavy with the scent of jasmine the morning my children toddled downstairs and told me a lady was sleeping in my bed.

  It was 9:30 a.m. I remember that prosaic detail because I was telling myself it wasn’t an hour for the heebie-jeebies. Nor the season for cold dread. Even in a remote California canyon with no neighbors with
in screaming distance, no humans but the twins tugging at my hands and the baby in my belly. And there were chickens outside, left by the previous owner, hardly the trappings of a haunted house. It was a faux-rustic house, 1970s casual chic. Very unscary. Chickens. Don’t be one, I told myself and let the children pull me toward the staircase. Our overfed dog, Tooth, lumbered behind.

  If someone were in the house, I’d have heard. That’s the beauty of old, ratty, creaky, in-need-of-renovation, soft pine floors. And an old, ratty, paranoid spaniel. I climbed thirteen steps from the landing to the second floor, each one a warning system, the boys ahead of me, Tooth’s toenails clattering alongside me.

  The bed was in disarray. The comforter, all bunched up on my husband’s side of the bed, could hide a couple of bodies. I moved closer, telling Tooth to stop whining. The twins were there already, standing on tiptoe to look under the covers.

  “She’s not here,” Charlie said, at the same moment Paco said, “Where did she go?”

  “She went back to twelvey twenty-one-y,” Charlie added.

  One down pillow still bore the imprint of a head. I tossed it aside and yanked the sheet toward the wrought-iron headboard, smoothing it down and tucking it in. A faint scent—Shalimar?—seemed to waft upward, but that had to be my imagination. Pregnant nose. “What did the lady look like?” I asked, adopting a cheery, sitcom-mom voice.

  “She has purple hair,” Charlie said. “Curly.”

  “All of her is purple,” added Paco.

  The boys’ consonants, like their numbers, were still works in progress, so the words came out “coolly” and “poople.” I found the description reassuring.

  “Part of her is green,” Charlie said. “She has a fancy dress. A blue dress.”

  “A ugly dress,” Paco said. “She’s a mean lady.”

  Charlie nodded. “A mean witch.”

  That night, when I told Richard, my husband, that the boys had seen a green and purple witch in our bed, he did not express concern. He did not, in fact, look up from the Dow Jones Industrials. “Hm. What’d you do?”

  “I made the bed.”

  I did not mention to him that I’d already made the bed earlier that morning.

  NOT that the boys couldn’t drag a chair across the room in order to climb onto the bed and undo the sheets. This is what I told myself the next afternoon at the farmers’ market, two freeway stops away. Except the chair had been in its usual place by the closet, and the boys, at age two plus, were not in the habit of covering their tracks. It wasn’t age-appropriate behavior. Even now Paco, in the double stroller, was brazenly throwing grapes at a sparrow while telling me he wasn’t throwing grapes at a sparrow. But I couldn’t think of another explanation, except for pregnant brain. Could I swear that I had made the bed? Not absolutely, but beyond a reasonable doubt. You made your bed and now you have to lie in it, my grandma would say, but in fact, I made my bed every morning precisely so I wouldn’t be tempted to lie in it, minutes later, for a quick two-hour nap. Sleep was a siren song these days, my drug, my crack cocaine. Sleep was more seductive than sex, food, or True Love. The only thing stronger was the biological imperative to answer the cry of “Mommy!”

  “Mommy, Charlie see Madeeda,” Paco said.

  “Who’s Madeeda?” I glanced down at my son’s upturned face. Charlie was slumped next to him, asleep, mouth open.

  “The bad witch.”

  “The one who was sleeping in Mommy and Daddy’s bed?”

  Paco nodded. A stand of irises distracted me, sending an odor my way. And something else—vanilla? Jasmine? “Where did you see her?” I asked.

  “Not me. Charlie.”

  “Where did Charlie see her?”

  “Here.”

  I stopped instantly, looking around. Another shopper bumped into me from behind. He apologized. I counter-apologized. He maneuvered past me. I moved the stroller over to a grassy area and squatted. “Paco. When did Charlie see the lady? Back near the car?”

  “Right now,” Paco said. “In the clouds. Twelvey twenty-one-y.” And before I could stop him, he was rousing his brother by squeezing his hair.

  Charlie woke up hot and cranky, and it took several ounces of apple juice and some string cheese to restore equilibrium. He had, as it turned out, seen the witch fly across the sky. And “twelvey twenty-one-y” did indeed figure into it; Charlie was very clear about that, but whether it described a particular cloud, time, or latitude was hard to say.

  That night when I told Richard that the boys could apparently eavesdrop on each other’s dreams, he was so engrossed in the Somdahl & Associates prospectus he was reading, he could only manage a “Huh.” I decided it wasn’t the time to announce we had a recurring witch in our midst.

  OVER the next few days Madeeda’s presence in our conversation was pervasive, and I found myself ascribing to her a voice, deep and foreign-accented, whispering numbers in my ear. Which was odd. I, unlike the men in my life, found numbers uninteresting. I formed a picture of Madeeda, too, a lithe creature with a concave belly. Of course, most people seemed lithe to me, as the baby in my belly grew heavier and my pregnancy shorts grew tighter. It was too hot for clothes, and I let the boys run around wearing only Pull-Ups, but my own choices were limited. I wasn’t Californian enough to be less than fully dressed, given my figure. I cranked up the AC in the house, but it produced more noise than cold air, the creaks and thuds emanating from the vents like captives in a dungeon. I needed to stay out of the sun and off my feet, Dr. Iqbal had said. So I plopped the boys at the kitchen table, pointed a desk fan at them, and brought out crayons. “Draw Madeeda for me,” I said.

  My attention was drawn to the bay window, where the afternoon light streamed through, showing the dirt on the outside, the dust inside, and a crack up in one corner. I needed a professional window washer, but even a walk through the Yellow Pages sounded exhausting, and they’d probably be prohibitively expensive, like everything else in L.A. Richard had loved the look of this imitation farmhouse, snapped up in a short sale, but we’d been unprepared for how expensive quaint can be. Maintenance had not been high on the previous owner’s agenda in his steady march toward bankruptcy.

  As I watched, the crack in the window seemed to grow. Which was impossible, of course, but—

  “Mommy. Look.” Charlie tugged at my sleeve to show me his Madeeda, a stick figure without arms, which is to say, an inverted V. Paco’s was a close-up, a large, torsoless head with vacant eyes.

  “Very nice, guys,” I said, and turned back to the window. The crack was halfway down now. Surely that wasn’t normal window behavior. A windshield hit with a flying pebble might do that, but could a regular window just fracture for no reason? I was scaring myself. I forced my attention back to the table and picked up a crayon. I would sketch. I liked sketching.

  “That’s Madeeda,” Charlie said, after a moment.

  “This?” I’d drawn a gaunt woman with a green face and long purple hair flowing in cascades around her head. She had a flat chest and ballerina-skinny arms. Because I can’t do credible feet, hers appeared to be en pointe, a few inches above the ground, giving her a floaty, untethered quality. “This is what Madeeda looks like?” I asked.

  Charlie nodded. Paco nodded.

  “Twelvy twenty-one-y,” Charlie said. “Madeeda.”

  “And Madeeda says if we don’t listen we are going to hell,” Paco added.

  THAT night while chopping vegetables, I phoned Karen, my cousin in Denver. “Is it normal for twins to share an imaginary playmate?”

  Karen snorted. “I can’t even get my twins to share breakfast cereal. I need two of everything, on separate shelves. It’s like keeping kosher. What’s that noise?”

  “I’m chopping carrots.”

  “You’re cooking at—what, ten p.m.?”

  “Only nine here. It’s for tomorrow. Crock-Pot beef bourguignon. I’m doing a lot of night cooking now. It’s the weirdest thing; I can’t sleep. I can always sleep.” I glanced at the win
dow, illuminated by the back porch light. It now sported two full-length vertical cracks.

  “How’s Richard’s new job?”

  “Like his old job, but without the friends. Long hours. Lots of stress.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “The boys are seeing a witch.”

  There was a pause. The chop chop of my carrots sounded preternaturally loud. Would it be more shocking, or less, if I’d said, “the boys are seeing a psychiatrist”?

  “A nice witch?” Karen asked finally.

  “Well, they say she’s a mean witch. But I’m a mean mommy half the time, so take that with a grain of salt. I don’t get a bad feeling from her so much as a sad one.”

  “So, wait. You see her, too?”

  “No, not at all. Ouch.” The serrated knife edge sliced across my finger, leaving in its wake drops of blood. They dripped onto the carrot rounds.

  “Aunt Pauline saw ghosts, you know,” Karen said.

  “Madeeda’s a witch, not a ghost.”

  “The witch has a name?”

  “Mmm.” I found a SpongeBob Band-Aid in the junk drawer and ripped it open with my teeth. “What kind of ghosts did Aunt Pauline see?”

  “Apparently Grandpa stopped by the night he died. Stood at the foot of her bed in his uniform, told her to take care of Grandma. She saw a few other people on their way out, too. It was sort of her specialty.”

  “I didn’t know it worked like that. What about the tunnel and the white light and all the relatives waiting on the other side?” Tooth, crabby about something, started to whine. I pointed with my toe to his dog food bowl, indicating untouched kibble.

  “Some people,” Karen said, “apparently need to make a pit stop before hitting the road.”

  THE plants were dying. I noticed this the next afternoon as the sun reached the picture window in the living room. My African violets, survivors of a five-day cross-country move, were all failing at the same rate, velvety leaves turning dry and brittle, pink and purple blossoms curling inward at the edges, like the stocking feet of the Wicked Witch of the East. I touched the rock-hard soil. It wasn’t possible. I’d watered them yesterday. I had. I knew I had. And they’d been okay. My mother had given them to me, for luck. “Bloom where you’re planted,” she’d said. I leaned over and whispered encouragement and apology to each of them in turn, my voice cracking. It seemed to me that a faint scent of Shalimar arose from them.