P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

Phillip was hanging up his coat in the hall closet and looked up.

“You coming or going?” Phillip asked.

“Going,” Louis said. “I’ll be back later.”

Phillip shut the closet door. He wanted to say something. Louis could see it in the way Phillip’s hand lingered on the closet knob, blocking Louis’s path to the front door. Louis felt a stab of guilt for the way he had left things the last time they had spoken. But he knew he was in no frame of mind to fix it right now.

“You look terrible, Louis,” Phillip said.

For a second, Louis thought about telling him about the tunnels. “I’m all right,” he said.

The wounded look on Phillip’s face made Louis suddenly feel as if he were ten years old again. “Phillip, don’t worry about me,” Louis said.

“I’m thinking you should go home,” Phillip said.

“What?”

“I want you to let this go, forget about it.”

Louis shifted the folder to under his arm. “Can you?”

Phillip hesitated, then nodded slowly.

Louis looked off toward the dark kitchen, then back. “I don’t want to leave you here alone, Phillip. What about Frances?”

“That’s between us. You can’t fix that, Louis.”

The sadness was etched in Phillip’s face, and Louis knew it wasn’t about Claudia. It was about Frances and what Phillip might have destroyed.

“I have to go somewhere,” Louis said.

Phillip’s eyes held his for a moment, and then he stepped aside.

It was dark by the time Louis pulled into the drive at the mansion on Provencal Road. There were no cars in the circular drive, but the old leaded windows glowed gold in the cold night.

A maid answered. She told Louis that Rodney wasn’t in but was expected back shortly. Louis told her he’d wait and pushed his way into the foyer before she could stop him.

The maid led him to the same library where he had first met Rodney. There was no welcoming fire burning, and the room was illuminated by only one table lamp. Louis sat in a wing chair by the dead hearth. A good twenty minutes, maybe a half hour passed. Finally, he got up and switched on two other lamps. The old house seemed to breathe around him, exhaling a cold vapor into the still air.

“Can I help you?”

Louis leaned forward to peer around the wing chair. It was Eloise DeFoe. She was wearing a fur coat, holding it around her like a blanket against the cold. Her mouth was a slash of red in her small white face.

Louis rose. Her expression shifted. “You’re that police person,” she said.

“Investigator,” Louis said. “I’m waiting for your son.”

She pulled off her black leather gloves, then shrugged out of her coat, leaving it on a chair. “I can’t tell you when Rodney might be home,” she said. “He’s very unreliable.”

“I’ll wait,” Louis said. He sat back down in the wing chair.

“I can’t imagine why you need to talk to him,” she said. “Perhaps I can save you some time? What is it you need?”

There was something about her stance, her ramrod posture, that told Louis she wanted him out of here.

Louis stood up. “I need to know more about your daughter Claudia.”

Eloise Defoe just stared at him.

“Why didn’t you ever visit her at Hidden Lake, Mrs. DeFoe?”

“My daughter was ill,” Eloise said. “The doctors advised me that it was best to leave her alone so she could heal.”

Before Louis could reply, there was a sound out in the foyer. A man’s voice and then, a few seconds later, Rodney DeFoe was standing in the doorway. He was wearing a handsome camel cashmere overcoat and a bright red scarf hanging loosely around his neck. He looked harried and, Louis noted, disoriented.

Rodney’s eyes found Louis’s face. “Well, look who’s here, Columbo.”

Eloise DeFoe’s eyes swept over her son as he came into the room, and Louis picked up the scent of her disdain-and, from Rodney, the smell of alcohol. Rodney ignored them both, heading toward the table of glasses and bottles. The room was quiet as he poured himself a drink.

“Rodney, we need to talk,” Louis said.

Rodney didn’t turn around, but Louis could see him raise the glass and take a big drink.

“I said we need to talk,” Louis said.

Rodney turned. “Really? And what other filth have you come to tell me? Telling me she was raped wasn’t enough? You want to see me lose it again?”

Eloise came forward. “Raped? Who was raped?”

Rodney’s eyes drifted to his mother, then to Louis. “Go ahead, tell her.”

Louis was silent.

“Tell her, damn it,” Rodney said.

“Who was raped?” Eloise demanded.

“Claudia!” Rodney shouted. “Claudia was raped. Your daughter Claudia was raped! In that place!”

Rodney turned away, slamming the drink down.

Eloise stared at his back. “That’s impossible,” she said finally. “I would have been informed.”

Rodney spun around. “Informed? You think they would have told us something like that?” His face crumbled. “Jesus, if I had known. . I could have. .”

Louis took a step toward him. “Rodney, I have questions-”

Rodney closed his eyes and shook his head.

“You visited Claudia-” Louis said.

“You visited her?” Eloise interrupted.

Louis ignored her. “Rodney-”

Eloise pushed her way to Rodney, grabbing his arm. “You went there?”

“Yes, I went there,” Rodney said. “I went there to see her.”

“But I told you-”

“I don’t care, Mother. Go ahead, cut me off, throw me out. I just don’t care anymore.”

Louis pulled the picture of Claudia from the patient file and walked to Rodney, holding it under his nose. “You don’t care?”

For a long time, Rodney didn’t move. Then his hand came out and he took the picture. It shook slightly as he stared at it.

When he looked at Louis, there were tears in his eyes. “She was beautiful,” he said. “Not like this.”

“Rodney, listen to me,” Louis said. “In all the times you saw Claudia, did you ever notice if she was pregnant? Did she ever say anything about it?”

“Pregnant?” Eloise said.

Rodney just stared at Louis, the picture of Claudia still in his hand.

“Think, try to remember,” Louis said. “Did she ever talk about being pregnant? Did she ever mention a baby?”

Eloise was at Louis’s side. “I won’t listen to this anymore. I won’t listen to you talk about my daughter like this anymore,” she said. “Get out of my house before I call-”

“Shut up!” Rodney shouted.

Eloise drew back. “How dare you raise your voice to me,” she said.

“Shut up! Shut up!” Rodney shouted again.

“Rodney, don’t-”

“Don’t what? Don’t tell, Mother? Well, fuck that. Fuck you! I’ve had it! I can’t do this anymore!”

Rodney’s face was red, sweat beading on his forehead. When his eyes came back to Louis they glistened with rage, and for a moment Louis thought of the way Charlie’s eyes had looked when they locked him in the cell.

“Claudia was pregnant,” Rodney said. “She was pregnant when she went into Hidden Lake.”

Louis was stunned into silence as his mind struggled to accept what he had just heard-and what it meant. He looked from Rodney to Eloise, but neither was going to say anything.

“Phillip?” he asked.

Rodney nodded.

It was so quiet Louis could hear the soft tick of the sleet on the windows. He had a vague sense of Eloise DeFoe moving away. Rodney’s eyes shifted as he watched his mother go to the sofa and sit down.

Louis turned toward her. “Did you know? Is that why you sent Claudia away?”

“No,” Eloise said firmly. “I didn’t know until the hospital called me months later. I sent her away because it was the only way I could control her.”