Chapter 4
ALEX AND RICK stepped into Uncle Henry’s bedchamber. Alex shaded her eyes from the sunlight’s glare that shone through the window directly across the room from them and looked right to Uncle Henry’s wide, canopied bed. It was positioned in the middle of the fifteen-foot wall between two Thomas Birch paintings of ships tumbling through a frantic sea. Alex shivered. Had Uncle Henry died in that bed?
“It’s good to see you, Alex.”
Alex dragged her gaze to the bed, to the voice. Her mouth dropped open. A white-haired man, his face creased with more wrinkles than she remembered, lay upright in the bed with his head propped against a stack of pillows. “Uncle Henry! You’re alive.”
“Obviously.”
“But I thought—Mr. Talbot’s telegram said you were dead!”
“As you see, I am not. I told Talbot to send that message.”
Alex’s muscles quivered—in anger or relief, she didn’t know—but she balled her hands into fists and folded her arms in front of her chest. “I don’t understand.”
“Isn’t it obvious? I needed to get you here, and this seemed the simplest solution.”
Alex, forcing herself to breathe, shook her head and stepped backward until she bumped into the bureau behind her. “How could you manipulate me like that? I’ve been grieving ever since I received the telegram. I thought I’d never see you again.”
Uncle Henry pressed his lips into a slight frown. “Perhaps this isn’t one of my prouder moments, but I’m satisfied with the result. I knew you’d be too focused on your work in the West to come for a less imperative reason.”
“You were wrong! I’d do anything I could for you.”
“Would you?” He smiled placidly, as though nothing had happened, and nodded to Rick. Rick, in turn, glanced at Alex and walked toward the window.
“Wait a minute!” Alex’s gripped the gold handle of one of the bureau drawers with her free hand. “You knew he was alive?”
Rick turned back to her. “Yes.”
“Now, now,” Edna said, “let’s not quibble.”
Alex lifted her chin. “I can’t afford the time to just up and leave my work back in Idaho for no reason the way some people can.”
Rick’s gaze wavered, and a sudden emptiness filled her heart. Why hadn’t she shot the barb at Uncle Henry, the real culprit, instead of Rick? Especially that one. She’d promised herself she would never throw it if she ever saw Rick again. It was mean, and she didn’t want to be mean. Yet there she was, throwing it at him anyway. Because he had known about her uncle and she hadn’t. Because she’d mourned for no reason. Because she felt foolish. Because—because there was none of the hurt in Rick’s expression that she felt roiling inside of her, and he should feel hurt. Their daughter had been murdered because of his irresponsible, reckless, ever-distracted ways, and he had left Alex to deal with her broken heart alone. He knew her well enough to know she hadn’t really wanted him to leave, that she’d said those things only because she needed to get them out of her system. But he’d left anyway, which meant he’d wanted to leave—to run away from her and their life together.
Uncle Henry lifted his hand toward Alex. “Hold on there, girl. I deserve your ire, but Rick and Edna were only following my instructions.”
Alex glared from Edna to Rick to her uncle. Even if she did feel a bit lighter inside because her uncle was alive, she didn’t have to let him know that. Not yet. “Why am I here?”
Uncle Henry ran his hand over his mouth, but said nothing.
All at once, worry niggled at the back of her mind. She strode to the bed, stopped next to his side, and glared down at him. “And why are you in bed so late in the afternoon? Surely your scheme didn’t require this.”
Uncle Henry shifted taller. He held her gaze. “I’m not dead, but I am dying.”
Alex gaped at him for a long moment. His loose wrinkles were paler than she’d first noticed, blue rimmed his eye sockets, and though his lips turned upward in a slight smile, she saw no joy, only resignation. “Please don’t, Uncle. If it’s not the truth—please don’t.”
“It is the truth.”
Alex felt the blood drain from her face. From dead to alive to dying? She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
A firm though gentle hand settled on Alex’s right shoulder, and calm flashed through her. Rick.
She stiffened, stepped away from him, and set Ivy on the floor. How dare he use his touch to settle her nerves now? He’d backed away from her when the sheriff had told them they’d found Mary’s body. He should have held her then. Cried with her. Not left.
“He only has a few weeks,” Rick said. “I checked with his doctor soon after I arrived yesterday, and he confirmed it.”
Uncle Henry frowned. “That will be all, Edna.”
“Very good, sir. Ring if you need anything.”
Alex watched Edna leave. Watched the door click softly closed behind her.
“Time to get down to business,” Uncle Henry said. “Sit next to me, both of you.”
Alex sat on the edge of the bed near her uncle’s knees, but Rick stood beside her. His gaze—his long eyelashes framing his eyes—looked only at her uncle.
“No, I don’t know why I’m here,” Rick said lowly.
Ivy skirted round Alex’s ankles.
“How did you know that’s what I was going to ask you?” Alex said.
“I lived with you for five years.” Finally, he turned to her. “I know your expressions.”
And still you left.
Uncle Henry’s eyes brightened. “Just as I thought the moment I introduced the two of you: you’re quite suited for each other.”
Alex clenched her teeth even though her cheeks burned. Look at Uncle Henry. Only at Uncle Henry.
Rick cleared his throat. “Tell us why you’ve brought us here.”
“Very well.” Uncle Henry looked straight into Alex’s eyes. “Before I die, I want the two of you to find out who killed my Pauline.”
Cold settled in the base of Alex’s stomach. She blinked. “You still believe she was murdered? I thought you gave up on that notion years ago.”
Ivy jumped into Alex’s lap and stared at Rick.
“Then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did,” Uncle Henry said. “The Night Hag is a legend, not a murderer.”
Alex set her hand over top of his where it rested on the brown comforter covering him. “You could have asked me for my help years ago, as you did with some of your other cases.”
Uncle Henry lifted an eyebrow.
She frowned. “I mean puzzles.” Uncle Henry was a businessman, not a detective, but he loved analyzing facts and rearranging them into something that made sense. His policeman friend, Captain Sutter, knew that about him and had allowed him to look into their unsolved cases. It wasn’t legal, but since the police caught several criminals because of Uncle Henry’s “puzzling,” the judicial system turned a blind eye. “You said I was good at solving cases,” Alex added.
“You are. And we did unravel several perplexing puzzles. But your aunt’s death was too upsetting for you—for all of us. I felt it best to keep you and your cousin from it. I still would if things were different.”
If you weren’t dying. Alex bit the inside of her cheeks. She would not lose control of her emotions. Not in front of her Uncle, and especially not in front of Rick.
“Until a few weeks ago, I thought I knew how and by whom Pauline had been killed,” Uncle Henry continued, “but I couldn’t prove it to the police’s satisfaction. Without proof, as you well know, the police could do nothing to the man. I kept track of him, though, so I’d know where to send the police once I found the necessary evidence.”
“Apparently something changed your mind about him,” Rick said.
Uncle Henry took the half-filled water glass from the end table next to his bed and drank two small sips. “The man died last year of natural causes. I thought he’d gotten away with murder. But a fe
w weeks ago, one of my bank clerks, Jeremiah Godfrey, died under circumstances similar to Pauline’s death, and once again, the authorities officially listed his death as unexplained.”
“But unofficially?” Rick said.
Uncle Henry narrowed his eyes. “The Night Hag.”
Alex drew her eyebrows together and slowly ran her hand across the length of Ivy’s back. When it had first been noised about the community that the Night Hag had killed her aunt, Uncle Henry had explained the legend to her and Fay. The Night Hag was the ghost of a dead witch who came upon her victims while they were in the middle of a nightmare. She sat on their chests until they either smothered to death or died of fright. Alex hadn’t heard anything of the Night Hag since then. “More superstitious neighbors?”
“Yes. But also Godfrey’s young son.”
“What other similarities were there? I assume you pointed them out to Captain Sutter?”
Uncle Henry grinned.
“What?” she said.
“You haven’t changed much, Alexandra Blake.”
Alex smiled at his use of her full name. It was paramount to a compliment. “What were the similarities?” she pressed. “The deaths were what—eleven years apart?”
“Both felt sick earlier in the day and both cried out in the night before they died.”
Alex frowned. She glanced up at Rick. Was Uncle Henry serious? “That’s not much. No wonder the police think a connection between them is a stretch.”
“Yes.”
Ivy jumped from Alex’s lap and walked across the room to the fireplace.
Rick cleared his throat. “You’re not asking us to hunt a demon, are you, sir?”
“I have never believed and never will believe a supernatural being intruded on my wife’s sleep in the middle of the night and squeezed the life out of her.”
“I don’t believe that either,” Alex said. “But I did think she was sick, and I don’t recall illness being related to the Night Hag legend.”
“It isn’t. Which, as I said, is one of the similarities between the two cases.”
Alex stood. She clenched and unclenched her fingers and paced to the heavy, decorative wood door. Though very few sounds slipped through it, there had been a few nights she and Fay had locked themselves in one of their rooms so they wouldn’t hear Uncle Henry and Aunt Pauline arguing. “You’d be better off hiring professional investigators.”
“I already have, several times, but each found nothing more than what I already knew.”
Alex returned to his bedside, and Uncle Henry took hold of their hands. “This is the last request I’ll ever make of either of you. Please find my wife’s murderer.”
Alex and Rick looked at each other.
“You still can’t see what a force the two of you are together, can you?”
Alex groaned, kept her face fully averted from Rick’s, and pulled back from her uncle, but he held her fast.
“Is that what this is really about?” she said. “Getting us back together?”
“In part,” Uncle Henry said, “because, whether or not you realize it, you’re still in love with each other.”
“We never were in love,” Alex said. “We were only friends. Tell him, Rick.”
Rick said nothing. Couldn’t he even support her in that?
Uncle Henry released them and briefly lifted his right hand. “I meant what I said. You have adventurous hearts, are internally driven, and see facts in nonstandard ways. Rick also has the means, intelligence, and”—He looked at Rick, who shook his head slightly—“and physical prowess to accomplish whatever has to be done. You, Alex, have an uncanny intuition and an ultra-sensitivity to preternatural elements that I’ve come to rely on. Apart, you’re magnificent. Together, you’re unstoppable.”
Alex crossed her right arm in front of her waist and pressed her left fingertips to her temple. It had been ages since she’d eaten a fresh lemon, but right then, the memory of its sour, stinging taste puckered the inside of her mouth. “You want me to work with Rick?”
“I do.”
“You’ve studied this case for years and come up empty. What if we do too?”
“I wouldn’t ask you if I thought that could happen.”
She pursed her lips and walked to the window. Though its square glass panes divided the yard into sections of full-leafed trees, red bushes, and multi-shaped flowers, they also revealed a unified picture. Would her life always be like that? Broken until someone else told her how the pieces fit together?
Not if I connect them my way first. She rubbed the back of her neck and once again faced her uncle. “I will look into it for a few days, but after that, I’ve got to get back home.” And figure out who killed Mary. And why.
Rick glanced at Alex’s fingers, the ribbon on her wrist, her eyes. His gaze softened. “Don’t you want to stay until—the end?”
The emotion she’d held back welled in her eyes. Why did he say that? Couldn’t he see how hard she was trying to keep her feelings in check? But then, maybe he was too obsessed with who knew what to notice anything except what was going on inside his own head.
Alex looked back to her uncle. “You said Aunt Pauline and this Jeremiah Godfrey were sick the days they died. Did anyone discover from what?”
“No one knew. I didn’t even know Pauline was anything more than out of sorts until Edna mentioned it.”
Alex held her uncle’s gaze. All the days she’d known him, his blue eyes had appeared clear, composed, and more determined than she’d sometimes liked, but now they held vulnerability, too.
“You’ll find a file labeled ‘Pauline’ in the top right drawer of my office desk,” he added.
Rick sauntered to Alex’s side. To his credit, when his elbow bumped her upper arm, he sidestepped another foot away. It was a much more respectable distance for a not-quite husband to stand. Of course it was.
“Do you have a file for Mr. Godfrey as well?” Rick said.
“A small one,” Uncle Henry replied. “I’ll contact Captain Sutter. He may have more information.”
“It’s too late in the day to reach him now,” Alex said.
“Tomorrow then.” Uncle Henry sighed, leaned his head against his pillow, and closed his eyes. “The one thing we have that the police don’t is Mr. Godfrey’s ten-year-old son. I’d already noted the similarities in Jeremiah’s and Pauline’s cases and wanted to speak with the boy anyway, so I made the necessary arrangements for him to stay here until the authorities could find his relatives. His name is Louis. Edna’s set him up in the children’s room. I have questioned him, and he’s most affable, but all I’ve ascertained, as I said before, is he believes the Night Hag killed his father. Perhaps the two of you will have better luck.”
Alex ran her hand over her hair above her ear. Her uncle had behaved most generously when he and Pauline had taken her into their home, but after Aunt Pauline had died, leaving him alone with two girls to care for, Alex had assumed he would come to regret his decision. Not that he’d ever shown any such remorse—he was too much of a gentleman for that—but she’d seen enough of her own father’s outbursts to know that for a grown man to be saddled with two dependent girls was more than most could bear, even with the help of a very capable and kind nanny. Yet he hadn’t sent Alex away. He’d raised her as his own daughter—loved her even. She had no other choice but to help him with his last request.
Alex kissed her uncle on the forehead. “Thank you for everything.”
“You’ll help me?”
“I will.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rick smile. Maybe he thought they were heading into some grand adventure. If so, he’d likely be disappointed. Investigating crimes was often quite sedentary.
But then, she’d never investigated a Night Hag murder before.
***