The Dead Room. Heather Graham
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like eyes, the door like a mouth.
Unease filled him. Eileen Brideswell was right, he thought. Her niece had been the victim of foul play. Just as the prostitutes had been.
Someone was getting away with murder.
Just like at Hastings House.
At first Leslie slept deeply. Then, suddenly, she discovered that she was wide awake.
She glanced at her travel alarm on the Duncan Fife reproduction by her bed. Four in the morning. Much too early to get out of bed.
She plumped her pillow, but sleep wouldn’t come. After half an hour she sighed and gave up. She slipped on a robe and went quietly downstairs.
So far, she hadn’t gone into the room where the explosion had taken place. Was she ready for that?
Did she want to reach Matt?
In the entryway, she hesitated, then went into the first room off the entryway, now set up as a Colonial parlor. There was a love seat beneath the window, a table in the center of the room, a pianoforte to one side, and various chairs, along with a tea table. She stood there in the shadows and the diffuse glow cast by the the security lights. “Hello?” she said softly.
But the room was just a room, an image of a past that might or might not have been exactly as it was represented now.
She walked through the connecting door to the dining room, thinking that last night was now just a moment in history, like everything else.
Then she walked through the kitchen and back to the servants’ pantry.
The hearth had been rebuilt. She could almost imagine Matt standing by it the way he had that night. She could almost see herself nearby, held captive in a different conversation. In her mind’s eye, she could almost see…
But the room was silent. Just a room.
“Not even a Colonial gentleman here, huh? The lady of the house?” she said aloud.
Just an empty room.
She walked back into the kitchen, found the coffeepot and the coffee, and thought that if the supplies belonged to Melissa, the ticket-seller, she would make a point of replacing them. She set a pot of coffee on to brew. Upstairs, in her room, which wasn’t part of any tour, she had a television. She could sip coffee and watch an early-morning news show soon.
That settled, she hummed while she made coffee, thinking that she might turn and see a ghost at any time. But the coffee brewed, and she saw nothing. She found a large cup, filled it, added cream that she found in the artfully disguised refrigerator and headed back up the stairs.
She set her coffee down and turned on the television, then walked to the window and looked idly down at the street. Her heart stopped.
There was a man on the sidewalk, standing under the streetlight.
Matt.
She blinked. He was still there. As tall as Matt, standing the exact way that Matt stood. It had to be Matt.
The man looked up.
Good God, it was Matt!
She forgot that she was wearing nothing but a robe over a short nightgown. She almost forgot about the alarm as she raced downstairs toward the front door, but at the last minute she suddenly realized that a siren would go off and the police would be alerted if she didn’t punch in the code. She hit the numbers hastily, then threw open the door and ran down the walk.
At the picket fence, she slowed and swore softly. The man was gone.
She wrapped her robe more tightly around her body. The street was so quiet now.
Dead, actually.
She opened the gate and looked anxiously down the street. Nothing in either direction. The man under the streetlight must have been a trick of her imagination.
But if it had been Matt…. A ghost didn’t have to run off down the street, so foolishly running around barefoot wouldn’t do any good. But it probably hadn’t been Matt; she had just wanted so badly to see him….
She let out a soft sigh. “Hello? Is anybody there?”
She felt a soft breeze touch her face, heard the sound of a distant horn and someone shouting “Taxi!”
The city never really slept. Not even down here, in the financial district.
“Hello?” she murmured again.
“Hi, yourself, lady.”
She spun around. A filthy, toothless, long-haired bum was grinning as he stood behind her. “I mean, hello, honey,” he added.
She looked him up and down, trying not to wrinkle her nose in distaste or scream in shock.
“Uh, hi,” she said. “Bye.”
With a wave, she fled back through the gate, taking a minute to latch it behind herself, and up the steps. Inside the house, she locked the door and keyed in the alarm, making a mental note to herself to start being really careful or people really would start thinking she was crazy.
At nine o’clock on the nose, Joe Connolly was in the office of social services, speaking with the man who had been Genevieve’s boss, a harried, irritable curmudgeon named Manny Yarborough who didn’t seem inclined to be helpful.
“I’ve already had an officer in here, and I can’t tell you anything else. The girl quit. Cleared out her desk and quit. That’s it.”
“No, that’s not it. Did she say where she was going? Did she leave an address for her last check? Did she say that she’d be in to get it? May I see her desk, her work area, please?”
“You know what, mister? I’m a really busy man. We’re always shorthanded around here, and Genevieve left us shorter. She didn’t say anything. When I asked her not to leave that way, told her she had to work with the system and give notice, that she couldn’t just quit, she just said, ‘Watch me.’ Then she grabbed her stuff and she walked. And you’re crazy if you think I didn’t put that desk right back to work the second she was out of this place. We need space, and we need help. This is New York!”
“I’ll need whatever address you have on file, and I’d like to look at the desk anyway,” Joe said firmly.
“You got a search warrant?”
“Why—do you think this is going to turn into a homicide investigation? I told you. I’m not a cop, I’m working for the family, a family that helps support the city charities, and I’m sure you know that. How about you give me a hand, please?”
The man looked at him in exasperation. “I’ll get you what I had for a phone and an address, and you can ask Alice over there if she minds if you look at her desk.”
Alice was young and looked uneasy. She seemed exceptionally kind, though, the type of person who was meant for her line of work. She was still idealistic. Her eyes were big and blue, and she must have heard the conversation, because she jumped out of her chair when Joe approached, eager to be of assistance. “I can go get some coffee or something if you want. I mean, I can get out of your way.” She was thin, and a little like a nervous terrier.
“I’d really appreciate it if you could stay and tell me what I’m looking at,” he told her, offering what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Sure.”
Manny walked away, as if disgusted with the whole thing.
Joe sat at the desk.
“The bottom drawer is files,” Alice offered. “I’ll go through them with you.”
He quickly discovered that Genevieve’s work with the prostitutes seemed to have consumed her caseload, though, interestingly, she hadn’t labeled them as prostitutes. She had listed the women as “Working temporary