Cars kept passing by.
In the crawl space, the air-conditioning kicked on, filling the air with the hum of the electric motor and the waterfall sounds of the air rushing through the ducts buried behind the knee walls. A bead of sweat dripped down Margot’s back.
Out the bathroom window, the view was entirely trees and the shadow of the house next door. The sash opened without a fight. Several cigarette butts sat piled in the windowsill, and a smattering of ashes blew into her face along with a blast of fresh air. Margot recoiled, spitting and wiping her face. “Max! You son of a bitch!”
Once she’d cleared the ashes from her face and mouth, she pressed her forehead to the sash and yelled, “Hello? Anybody? Help! I need help up here! Hello?”
The only answer was the rush of the cars and the screech of brakes from a commuter bus. The house next door sat quiet. The Spielmans had never invited the neighbors over, never said hello or called them. The people next door worked late and traveled a lot. The only sign of life from the other house was the team of gardeners who came to groom the lawn every week.
“Hello? Anybody? Help! Ple—” Her voice cut off as she caught sight of a strange man walking along the sliver of sidewalk between the trees. She stiffened and glanced down at herself standing there. Nude.
“Shit.” She stepped away from the window and sank down on the toilet seat. The dark stain in the grout lines spread out before her in a dried puddle. Mold? Raw sewage? A wisp of cool air blew in through the window.
“What the hell am I going to do?” she whimpered, stepping over the stain and onto the wood floor outside the bathroom.
The ceiling rafters above her creaked as they stretched in the heat of the August sun. Margot lurched at the sound and spun around as though expecting to find someone standing there. Hunter brandishing a knife. Myron with her phone, pointing to some private message he wasn’t supposed to see. “Kevin” holding the roses.
There was no one there.
Her bare skin prickled with the feeling of being watched. She turned another slow circle, debating her options. No phone. No neighbors. No key. No Hunter. Louisa wasn’t due to come for another day. Alone. Alone. Alone. Her only hope was to pick the lock or break down the door.
She stormed into Ella’s old room, searching for a tool of some kind. The only item in the room was a bare curtain rod. Margot pulled the rod off the wall and searched it for springs, screws, anything. It was just a steel rod, but as she weighed it in her hands, she realized it might be enough to break the door or pry off the jamb. She set it against the wall as a last resort and continued her search into the other room.
The box that had toppled over with a loud thump lay on its side, waiting for her to right it. She tiptoed across the dusty floor and crouched down. Loose twine sat in a puddle around the flaking cardboard.
She scanned the other six identical file boxes stacked up in the corner. None were labeled. There was nothing else in the room besides an ashtray with six cigarette butts that looked recently smoked. Margot narrowed her eyes and added them to her inventory of complaints to the contractor. On the wall above her, a round hole the size of a salad plate punctured the plaster. She stood up and peered into the darkness behind it to find unfinished attic space and the shadow of a brick chimney. She picked at the torn wallpaper around the edges, wondering. It was too neatly cut to be an accident. Soot darkened the edges of the hole. Woodstove?
She gave up on the mystery and tipped the fallen box back upright. Yellowed newspapers spilled out the top. Margot let them go, lifting several more out of the box, searching for a screwdriver, an awl, a skeleton key. Evening editions of the Cleveland Press and the Plain Dealer fell to the floor. They were all dated from the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Under the papers, she found a large brochure for the Van Sweringen Company. She opened it to find hand-printed etchings and calligraphy promising a life of tranquility away from the bustle and grime of the city.
To Where, Beyond the City, There Is Peace.
Margot gazed forlornly at the 1920s notions of grandeur and wealth. White servants. White gloves. White pillars. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. What would they think of a lapsed Catholic and nonpracticing Jew living here now? she wondered with a smirk.
Still, the land-company brochure was a sort of quaint notion to Margot—the idea of a utopia just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, of all places. Her friends back in Boston would get a kick out of it, she decided and set the brochure aside.
The bottom of the box contained a slew of unopened mail all postmarked between 1929 and 1932. Most envelopes were addressed to Walter Rawlings. A few letters were addressed in a beautiful hand to Georgina Rawlings. Unpaid bills. Christmas cards. Birthday cards. With guilty hesitation, Margot opened one postmarked January 5, 1930. It was a handmade card with a praying angel in cream and gold. Inside it read,
Dearest Georgina,
We were heartbroken to hear the news. May the new year find you well and keep you better. May God have mercy on us all through this terrible winter.
Much love to you and little Walter,
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Cline
Margot tossed the card back into the bin and shoved a few more aside. Amid the cards and bills, she found an old wooden cigar box. It felt unusually heavy in her hands as she pulled it out and set it in her lap. She flipped it open and drew in a sharp breath.
A gun. Four bullets rolled loose next to it.
Horrified, she slapped the lid closed and shoved it back under the bills as though the box contained a live snake. A gun. In the house. Not acceptable. Shaking her head, she gathered the old newspapers into a pile, having mental arguments with Myron as to when and how they’d get rid of the thing. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you donated to charity. They didn’t have a permit or a license or whatever it was one needed to even transport the thing.
Her nervous hands stopped moving as her mind took a moment to catch up to her eyes. The headline on the paper in her hand read:
WIDOW KILLS SON AND SLASHES SELF
Sickness and Money Troubles Blamed for Rawlings Suicide Attempt
She read the name again. Rawlings. Margot picked up the paper and continued to read:
The attempted suicide of Mrs. Georgina Rawlings and the body of her murdered son, Walter Rawlings Jr., 6, were discovered last night at 14895 Lee Road, Shaker Heights. That the child made a struggle against his mother’s insane attack was indicated by numerous deep cuts on the boy’s hands and fingers, according to Coroner Pearse.
“No one but a maniac could have inflicted such wounds as I found on the boy,” the coroner said . . .
“My God,” Margot whispered, reading the story for a second time under her breath. “The boy was found lying facedown on the floor of the servants’ washroom.”
Murder House!
Her gaze shifted toward the bathroom and the dark stain on the bathroom floor behind her. Breathing shallow sips of air, her heart drummed in her ears as she realized what caused it. My God. It’s blood.
A muffled voice wormed its way through the seams in the floorboards from down below. Margot stopped breathing to listen. It was singing.
. . . where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
’Twill be in the valley of love and delight . . .
The voice drifted away with the almost imperceptible shifts in the wood framing as footsteps moved along the second floor hallway. The paper in her hand dropped. Someone was in the house, and it wasn’t Hunter.