Lisa Miscione - Twice

Lydia approached the woman and reached out her hand. In a heartbeat, the dogs were on their feet, teeth bared, emitting low growls of warning.

“Easy, boys,” said Maura lightly, and the three resumed their reclined positions, reluctantly. Lydia began to breathe again. “Now call your dog off,” said Maura. Lydia turned to see that Dax had managed to draw his gun. How he’d done it so quickly, she couldn’t imagine. Jeff hadn’t even managed to get out of the car yet. Jeff and Dax looked more scared than she was.

“Easy, tiger,” said Lydia to Dax.

“I hate fucking dogs,” said Dax, lowering his weapon, staring at the beasts with suspicion.

“I’m sure they feel the same way about you,” said Maura. She turned and walked into the old house, her dogs at her heels. The three visitors stood for a second. Jeffrey looked to Lydia and she shrugged. The air was growing colder and Lydia could feel her cheeks and the tip of her nose going pink from the chill.

“I’ll stay with the car,” said Dax, getting into the driver’s seat and starting the engine as though he thought they might need to make a quick getaway. Lydia thought he was just afraid of the dogs.

“He just doesn’t like things he can’t intimidate,” Lydia whispered to Jeff.

“Who does?” answered Jeff with a shrug.

There was something rotten about the inside of Maura Hodge’s home. There was an air of neglect, visible in the dingy walls and dusty surfaces. Bits of grit crackled beneath Lydia’s feet as they stepped onto the creaking floorboards of the foyer. A chandelier looked a bit less stable than it should. The gilt frame on a mirror across the entranceway was chipped, the glass foggy. And there was an odor. Or maybe a mingling of odors… mold, dirt, moisture trapped in wood. Lydia couldn’t place the smell exactly, but her sinuses began to swell and a headache debuted behind her eyes. By the time they’d followed Maura in through the front door, she was nowhere in sight. They followed the sounds of the dogs’ collars and their nails scratching on the floor through a dim hallway. Lydia looked around for a light switch but saw that the fixtures were bare of bulbs. Above their heads they briefly heard what could have been footsteps, but the sound was gone as quickly as it came. Lydia wasn’t positive it wasn’t just the house settling.

“Does someone else live here with you, Ms. Hodge?” asked Lydia as they entered a large sitting room where a fire burned in the hearth and Maura sat on a high-backed dark wood chair, her gun across her lap.

“I thought you wanted to talk about the Rosses,” she said, looking at Lydia with a kind of sneer that may have been her natural expression.

Lydia sat on the couch across from the woman, though she hadn’t been invited to, and Jeffrey stood beside her. “Police Chief Clay claims that there’s bad blood between you and Eleanor Ross. Is that right, Ms. Hodge?”

The woman laughed a little. It was kind of a verbalization of her permanent sneer, accompanied by a shake of her head. “I sincerely hope you have not come here to talk about that stupid curse,” she said.

“In fact-”

“Because I’ll tell you right now that it’s pure bullshit.”

Lydia felt like they were sitting in Dracula’s parlor, as Gothic manor was the general decorating theme of the room. A dark red wall-to-wall carpet was badly in need of a vacuuming and steam clean. The gigantic fireplace was topped by an elaborately carved maple mantel where a wrought-iron candelabra sat, its many white candles nothing but melted wax that had been allowed to drip carelessly on the wood and on the hearth below like stalactites. The feet on the overstuffed red and gold brocade sofa and chairs, antiques that Lydia couldn’t name, were lions’ paws. A beautiful rolltop desk made of a highly varnished wood nestled in a dark corner and was covered in ledger books, letters, all manner of papers. Lydia’s fingers practically itched to rifle through the piles of documents.

“Marilyn didn’t seem to think so,” said Lydia.

“It’s a ghost story, Ms. Strong. An urban-or maybe in this case a small town-legend.”

“Most legends have some element of truth to them,” said Jeffrey.

“I’m not saying the history is false,” said Maura, reaching to a standing ashtray to her right and retrieving a pipe that rested there. She tapped out some stale tobacco from the bowl. “I’m saying that the matter of the curse is merely town gossip.”

She removed a velvet pouch from the pocket of her skirt and pinched out some tobacco. She put the pipe to her lips and lit it with a small gold lighter. Lydia could see that her fingers were yellowed and the nails short and cracked.

“And yet the men that marry the Ross women do seem to fall on some bad luck, don’t they?” said Lydia flatly.

For the first time, Maura Hodge smiled. “I’m afraid I can’t explain that.”

“But it amuses you?”

“They reap what they sow,” she said, leaning back in her chair. Lydia could see that Maura Hodge was not a kind woman, that the heavy burden of hatred she carried had made her cold. The tobacco was a pungent cherrywood and the smell was making Lydia nauseous. Or maybe it was the company.

“So there’s no curse. But you do hate the Ross family? Why?”

Again there was a noise from upstairs. She saw Jeffrey look up at the ceiling from the corner of her eye. Even one of the Dobermans, who had settled themselves at Maura’s feet, pricked up his ears and then emitted a small whine.

“It might be hard for someone like you to understand,” Maura said to Lydia in a mildly condescending tone, smoke filling the air around her, dancing like thin ghosts in the light shining from a lamp beside her. “But when you come from a family of slaves, generally you don’t find yourself overly fond of people who descend from a family of slave owners.”

“But, according to Marilyn, you descend from both.”

A look of annoyance flashed across Maura’s face, as if she resented someone trying to talk her out of her hatred. “My father and mother loved each other, Ms. Strong. But any white blood in my mother’s veins got there through rape, slave owners raping their female slaves. That kind of crime, that kind of injustice… let’s say you don’t just forget it.”

“So that’s why you disliked Eleanor Ross?”

“That and the fact that she’s a bitch and a liar and a damn jezebel,” she said, but without the heat of anger. There was no passion in her voice, just an old hatred, long hardened. Lydia thought of what Ford had said about the overkill, about how the murder was a rage killing. Maura Hodge was a big, strong woman, but there was a lethargy to her, like she might be as hard to move as a piece of the heavy old oak furniture. Time to see what her temper looked like.

“You grew up together in this town,” said Lydia, more a statement than a question. Jeffrey heard a little flame of mischief light up in her voice.

“That’s right.”

“So what was it then, really? She stole your date to the prom? She took your clothes while you were skinny-dipping in the creek with your boyfriend? She wrote your telephone number on a bathroom wall? Or is it just that she was beautiful and rich and you were not-just jealousy, plain and simple? Why do you hate Eleanor Ross?”

There was a flash in the woman’s eyes, her jaw tightened. But Lydia didn’t get the reaction she was hoping for.

“It’s an inherited hatred,” Maura said easily, taking a long puff on her pipe. “Woven and handed down by Annabelle Taylor.”

“Is it a powerful enough hatred that it would drive you to murder?” Obviously, she wasn’t expecting a confession, just a reaction she could read, something to move the investigation forward.