Second Glance Read online

  All this, in a building where there had not been electricity for twenty years.

  Ross could smell death. It lingered in the halls, cloaked in the scent of ammonia and bed linens and chalky pills. It peeked at him from around the corner. He wondered if the residents who came through the nursing home’s door ever looked back, knowing they would not be leaving.

  He had come here today, intent on throwing himself into research in the hopes that it might edge thoughts of Lia from his mind. In a week’s time he had not seen her; had not heard from her. Instead, he received an endless stream of calls from Rod van Vleet. Did Ross know that the Pike house was putting itself back together? That a cop had actually filed a report saying that all the lights had turned on inside—when there were no power lines?

  Ross was a firm believer that you could not force circumstance. You could buckle your seat belt, but still crash the car. You could throw yourself in front of an oncoming train, but somehow survive. You could wait for years to find a ghost, and then have one sneak up on you when you were too busy falling in love with a woman to pay attention. To that end, he made the conscious decision to stop waiting for Lia. When he least expected her, that was when she would show up.

  He had come to the nursing home unannounced because he didn’t know if Spencer Pike would agree to see him. And now that he sat across from the old man, Ross felt pity for him. The only animated part of Pike were his eyes, a blue that snapped smart as a flag. The rest of him was weathered, twisted like the roots of a tree forced to grow in too small a space.

  “Screw the cinnamon raisin,” Spencer Pike said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s a lousy excuse for a bagel. You ask me, not that anyone has, damn it, a bagel isn’t supposed to be sweet. It’s like a sandwich, for the love of God. Does anyone put jelly on their ham and cheese?” He leaned forward. “You work for van Vleet; you can tell him I said so.”

  “Technically I don’t work for the Redhook Group,” Ross said.

  “You in insurance?”

  “No.”

  “A lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “You own a bagel chain?”

  “Uh, no.”

  Pike shrugged. “Well, two out of three. What do you want to know?”

  “I understand that the land was originally your wife’s . . . that it transferred to you upon her death, because you didn’t have children.”

  “That’s wrong.”

  Ross looked up from his notepad. “That’s the information in her will.”

  “Well, it’s still wrong. Cissy and I had a baby, but it was stillborn.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Pike smoothed his hands over the blanket on his lap. “It was a long, long time ago.”

  “The reason I’m here, Mr. Pike, is to see if you know the history of the land before you acquired it.”

  “It was in my wife’s family. Passed down from mother to daughter for several generations.”

  “Did the land ever belong to the Abenaki?”

  Pike turned slowly. “The who?”

  “The Native Americans who’ve been protesting the development of the property.”

  “I know who they are!” Pike’s face grew red as a beet, and he began to cough. A nurse came over, gave Ross a dirty look, and spoke in low tones to Spencer Pike until his breathing had steadied. “They can’t give you any proof it’s a burial ground, can they?”

  “Certain . . . circumstances,” Ross said carefully, “have led to the opinion that the property might be haunted.”

  “Oh, it’s haunted all right. But not by any Indians. My wife died on that property,” Pike said, the words deep and ragged.

  The stillborn; the untimely death of Cissy Pike; the possibility of a restless spirit—it was coming together for Ross. “In childbirth?”

  Pike shook his head. “She was murdered. By an Abenaki.”

  During her lunch break Shelby took a five-minute walk from the library to the Gas & Grocery, where she usually picked up a sandwich. But these days, thanks to the New York Times article, the little general store was swamped by reporters trying to get their own story of the land dispute that, quite literally, would not settle. She took one look at Abe Huppinworth, nictitating at her from the porch as he swept the ever-present array of rose petals, and abruptly turned in the other direction.

  She found herself walking into the municipal building before she even realized where she was headed. Lottie, the town clerk, sat at her desk with a diet book. “I just don’t get it,” she said, glancing up. “They say eleven units, like I’m supposed to eat a condominium.”

  Lottie, who had weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds the whole time Shelby had been living in Comtosook, closed the book and picked up a celery stick. “You know who invented vegetables, Shelby? The devil.” She took a bite. “I ought to know better than to start a diet when I’m already in a bad mood.”

  “Those reporters bugging you?”

  “They’re in here sniffing around for God knows what. I finally ran off photocopies of the Pike property’s deed this morning, so I wouldn’t have to be interrupted.” She shook her head. “I imagine it’s worse for you.”

  Shelby shrugged. “We unplug the phone.”

  “I wish they would go away. I wish it would all go away. Myrt Clooney told me how Wally LaFleur’s parrot started singing Edith Piaf ballads, just like that. The coffeemaker, here at the office? We can’t get it to brew anything but lemonade.” She smiled suddenly at Shelby. “You didn’t come here to listen to a fat old lady moan. What can I do for you?”

  Ten minutes later, under the pretense of finding a fact for a library patron, Shelby was sitting in the basement of the office, surrounded by boxes of town records. They were rubber-banded by year, but not in order—stacks of yellowed cards chronicling the births and deaths of Comtosook residents from 1877 to the present.

  Ross had not asked for her help. Maybe that was why she was here—since their confrontation at the hospital he’d gone out of his way to avoid her, but with a politesse that felt like a knife being twisted: a note left on the counter saying he would be back between 4 and 5 A.M.; a gallon of milk set in the refrigerator to replace the one he had finished. The conversations they were not having had slipped under the carpeting, making it impossible to walk through the house without fear of tripping. Shelby wished she were brave enough to sit her baby brother down, to say, Can’t you see I’m only doing this out of love? She was too afraid, though, that he might say the same thing in return.

  What she wanted for him was one lucky break to turn the tide and send him swimming back to her. But since she could not find the way to tell Ross that she was sorry for doubting him, she would hand him this information, in case it might be apology enough.

  The box of deaths from 1930 had survived a flood in the late fifties, and many were so faded with watermarks that Shelby could not read the names of the deceased, much less anything else about their states of affairs. The bottom of the carton was lined with an old Town Annual Report, published along with a calendar for the year 1966. “Comtosook,” she read off the cover, “derives from the Abenaki word kôdtôzik, or ‘what is hidden,’ referring no doubt to the wealth of granite found in the depths of Angel Quarry.”

  No doubt, Shelby thought.

  She dug a little deeper and came up with the stack of deaths from 1932. These weren’t as badly stained, but the rubber band was so brittle it broke off in her hand. The cards spilled across her lap, smelling faintly of sulfur and pressed flowers. Shelby began to scan through them quickly. BERTEL-MAN, ADA. MONROE, RAWLENE. QUINCY, OLIVE.

  Two cards were stuck together; Shelby noticed this at nearly the same time she realized that they both were labeled PIKE. The first was a death certificate for an unnamed stillborn infant, 37 weeks. Approximate time of death: 11:32 A.M. Glued onto the back of this was another death certificate, for Mrs. Spencer Pike. Time of death: 11:32 A.M.

  Shelby shivered in spite of