Page 5 of In the Bones
Tim said, “Pretty much. The stuff that’s being taken is totally random, especially at the house we saw earlier this week. We called the husband to make sure he wasn’t hiding something that would explain the missing clothes, but he had no idea what I was talking about. He confirmed the summer house was the last place he’d seen them, just like his wife. We were ready to dismiss the whole thing until the second call came in. And now this.”
“All three houses are in and around Cape Vincent,” Valerie said with a head tilt. “Could it just be some local kids playing a prank?”
“That’s a possibility.” Tim had been a local kid himself once, and knew how dull things could get in the off-season. He’d seen the youth of Jefferson County do stranger things than this. “Trouble is, we’ve failed to find indisputable evidence of a break-in, at least at the first two spots. If we’re dealing with kids, how’d they get in and out without a trace?”
“Too soon to consider a ghost?” Valerie winked as she brought the takeout coffee to her lips, pursing them to clear the steam once more.
“Let’s hope it’s not,” Tim said, slipping his own to-go cup into the holder. “I never did like Scooby-Doo.”
The house was nothing like the Greene family home, or even the Craftsman on Millen Bay. It wasn’t modern, nor was it painted a stylish coastal gray or oyster white. The yellow clapboard farmhouse looked cobbled together, a crooked widow’s walk and decades of jaunty additions making it worthy of a Tim Burton movie set. What the houses had in common was that they were large, and as Tim stood in the driveway of this one, his gaze traveled up three stories to the darkened oval window that stared out over the vast property like a knowing eye.
“Thanks for coming. It’s the strangest thing,” Mrs. Palmer said when Tim and Valerie rang the bell. “I honestly thought I was losing my mind.” In her sixties, with graying hair pulled into a knobby bun, she took them through to the kitchen. “I know what was here when we left,” she insisted. “I even have a picture of it. Makes things easier when we’re preparing to come back.”
At the open door to the walk-in pantry, she stopped and took out her phone. “Before”—she handed Tim the device—“and after. You see what I mean?”
Eyes flicking from the shelves to the photo on the screen, Tim said, “I do.” He considered himself a tidy person. Clutter stressed him out, so he did what he could to keep things orderly.His pantry shelves at home were arranged by food type, but the homeowner had done him one better. Her walk-in looked like a gourmet grocery store.
“The peanut butter was this all-natural stuff I have to bring up from the city, and the wine is special-order. You can’t get wine like that around here. I didn’t touch anything,” Mrs. Palmer added, “in case you need to dust for fingerprints.”
To her credit, Valerie’s lips didn’t so much as twitch. She was getting better at keeping her gut reactions in check. Tim said, “OK for us to take a look around?”
“Of course. My husband’s in the TV room, but just do what you need to do. He won’t get in your way.”
“What does he think of all this?” Valerie asked.
“Ross?” She rolled her eyes. “He’ll tell you I ate the peanut butter in my sleep, but that’s because he knows I’m on WeightWatchers. Ross fancies himself a comedian. Let’s see what he says when he realizes the intruder could have taken his flat-screen TV.”
Suppressing a smile, Tim thanked the woman and began to explore the house, checking every exterior door and window for signs of damage. Just as with the previous two homes, there was no indication of forced entry at all. What was happening here? Another homeowner claiming to be missing random items. Three reports of theft in two days, and the people were still coming, unlocking their doors and sweeping out the cobwebs for the approaching summer. There was a pattern emerging that couldn’t be ignored.
“Ghosts, huh?” Tim whispered to his fellow investigator, his eyebrows raised to their limit.
Smiling at him, Valerie said, “Watch out for Slimer. That green stuff’s murder on your shoes.”
SIX
Nicole
From the front door that faced the water, which rippled in the May wind, Nicole raised a hand to shade her eyes and watched the Tesla hum out of the driveway.
“We’re doing a boat tour of the islands today,” Mikko had explained, while Eva, her dark hair parted clean down the middle, dug at the black pebbled driveway with the toe of her shoe. “Let me know when you’re done and I’ll come to lock up.”
Nicole promised she would, even though the house would still be empty. There was nothing to protect.
Once Mikko and Eva were gone, Nicole unloaded her supplies from the car and got to work. She took cleaning seriously. Her mother had been the same way. Nicole’s childhood home in Chippewa Bay, which had been her half-sister Maureen’s home too, was an outdated 70s bungalow built with cheap materials and even cheaper carpeting, but it had always been spotless. Her mother never said as much, but Nicole thought it might have been her way of giving her children the best life she could. Making up for the family’s shortcomings, most notably the missing dads.
Nicole did the same thing for her girls. Their house, in the town of Theresa, was showing its age, roof shedding shingles like snakeskin and the appliances rusty from decades of use. She and Woody had bought it before Blair was born, skimping on a newer build and bigger yard for the sake of the mini putt business. Now that they were older, she knew the girls were embarrassed about the state of their home, even if they were too polite to say it. Nicole’s cleaning obsession was about control. She had no dominion over her fate, couldn’t even manage her own fucking husband, but at least she could makesure her girls always came home to a house that was polished, scented, safe.
She started in the master bedroom, ready to tackle the house floor by floor. The moving truck was coming the next morning, and Nicole had promised Mikko a clean slate. It was what she had to deliver if she wanted to make sure he asked her back.
As she cleaned, Nicole opened the nearest window to let in some air. It felt fresh and faintly damp, and when she drew a breath, she tasted the herbal tang of the river. She could hear the distant drone of motorboats. The sky heaved with clouds. They were the billowy sort that oscillated between pristine white and storm-gray, the kind that made shapes if you were paying attention. Spring storms on the river could be as vicious as the autumn ones, and offered little in the way of warning.
Crossing the room to the closet, she opened the door and stepped inside to find the light had been left on, illuminating empty rods and still more built-ins. No safe, though. Good to know. She had hoped to find some luggage she could search through, or better still a briefcase, but the closet floor was bare.
Back at the window, she scrubbed tacky residue from the glass. When she shifted her weight, her toe met the side of her cleaning bucket, the clatter ringing out like a gong. In the massive empty bedroom, every sound had power, every echo heft.
It was hard not to think how much money Mikko must have spent on renovations and add-ons, what kind of investment it had taken to transform the farmhouse into this. It didn’t have the feel of a typical summer home in the Thousand Islands, lacked the Adirondack flair so common in Upstate New York. That kind of thing was happening more often lately, people modernizing old homes in a style that, in Nicole’s opinion, didn’t quite fit. She hadn’t delved too deeply into Mikko’s career, but whatever he’d accomplished on the ice, it had earned him a goddamn fortune.
She had just finished dusting the sconces that would soon flank a king-size bed when the thump of a door on the floor below gave Nicole a jolt. Had Mikko forgotten something? Or Eva? They’d left less than an hour ago, and she knew the boattour was far longer than that. The bedroom faced the back of the house, so she couldn’t see the driveway. She gave the sky another glance. It did look as though it could storm, and while the tour boats ran rain or shine, it was possible Mikko had reconsidered. Put off the outing for another day.
