Page 27 of Dying to Meet You
Zoya marches past the lovely empty walls and opens a closet door. “I found more of the beige paint in here, and I wondered why they needed it.”
“Inside the closet?”
Her nod is grim. “I did some patch tests with my solvents. Look.” She points indignantly down at the interior wall near the floor. “It’s a cry for help.”
I wave her out of the closet so I can get a look. And what I find there sends a shudder down my spine. Scrawled on the wall in a shaky hand are the words:Help me. I want out.
“That’s awful,” I mutter.
“Right?”
“Can you tell when this was written?”
“Well, it’s pigment based, probably with xylene and toluene as binding agents.”
I straighten up. “In English?”
“Sharpie marker,” she says. “They were introduced in the mid-sixties.”
“Oh.” I glance down at the desperate scrawl again. At that time, the house was being used as a girls’ home. I can appreciate the sentiment of the message, because this week has shaken me to the core. But the message could be decades old, and it’s not a problem I’m meant to solve. “That’s dark.”
“Someone painted over it,” Zoya sniffs, “to shut her up.”
“I realize that,” I say softly. “But we don’t know who wrote it. Is there more marker under there?”
“Not sure,” she says. “I’m going to spot-check a few more areas, though.”
“Okay,” I say heavily.
“I also took some photos. I’ll send them to you.”
“Okay,” I repeat. “Thank you for showing me.”
She shuts the closet door carefully and pauses. “You know, when people are trying to figure out why an old house feels creepy, they ask if anyone died there. But that’s the wrong question. What they should really be asking is did anyonesufferthere. It leaves a darker mark.”
Once again, I don’t have the vocabulary to respond to that.
“You should let Hank Wincott know,” she presses.
“That’s a good idea,” I lie. It’s one thing to be fascinated by an oldfamily Bible pulled from the floorboards, but Hank won’t give a damn about some graffiti in the closet. “Thank you for showing me. Let me know if you find anything else.”
“Oh, I definitely will.”
We head back to the room where she and Bert are working, and she climbs back onto her platform. “Can I put some music on the speaker?” she asks Bert. “Not too keen on leaving my headphones on today.”
“Sure, honey,” he says. “But you don’t have to worry, ZeeZee. I’d fight the killer off with my palette knife.”
She gives him a tender smile, and I leave the room just as one of Bach’s cello suites begins. I close the door and go back to the Blue Room to take another photo of the wall section I’m thinking of moving.
But then a glance out the window makes me do a double take. Hank’s car is out there.Hell. Did I forget a meeting? I’m not sure he can get inside, unless Beatrice already texted him the new passcode.
I leave the room again and pull up short in the gallery. Hank’s voice echoes from downstairs, and it’s angry.
“You realize this fuckseverythingup. I can’t make an announcement while there are police cars outside.”
What announcement?I pause beside a painter’s ladder to listen.
Beatrice replies, but her words are harder to make out. “... get past this. When the news cycle changes, people will stop hearing your name in the same breath as a murder. It’s going to be okay.”
