Traces (21 page)

“Yes, I’ve been compelled to be out here before as well.” She chuckled, releasing nervous energy. “I don’t understand why, though.”

Paulette sprang to her feet. “Me, either. Maybe it’s these giant columns calling to us. Trying to lend us some of their solid strength.”

Meredith shook her head. “They’re hollow, so no luck with that hope.”

Paulette peered up the height of the columns, three on each side of the porch steps. “They look so wide; they must be.”

“When I built my replica of Twin Oaks, Dad told me about how they made them. They were built in pieces and shipped here from up north. The cost of creating and shipping solid columns would have been prohibitive. That’s the only thing I was required to compromise on in my dollhouse. I had to make them from dowel rods because Dad said it would be easier even though not accurate.”

Paulette approached a center column and examined it. Then she used her open palm to smack it once, and then again. “This one sounds solid.”

Meredith sighed. “You don’t believe me?”

In response, Paulette moved to the next column and smacked it as well. “Solid, definitely.”

Meredith shook her head as she rose to her feet. “Nope. Sorry, but Dad said so. He should know, what with being in construction and reconstruction.”

“Even Dad’s not right all the time.” Paulette smacked the next and the next, with the same result.

Meredith moved to the last one. “Here, I’ll prove it to you.” She raised her hand and smacked the sixth column. But instead of the same sound, Meredith’s hit didn’t echo like the others had.

“What did you do different? Here, let me.” Paulette sashayed to where Meredith stood. She raised her hand and smacked the column.

“Why does it sound deeper?” Meredith searched her brain for a plausible reason but came up empty. No way would they have built only one solid column. She eyed the structure standing twenty feet tall and three feet in diameter. The concept of trying to move such a heavy and cumbersome object over land via wagon or even train was mind-boggling.

The crunch of tires on gravel had them both turning to scan the yard to the mouth of the driveway. A steel-gray SUV pulled slowly up the stone road.

“They’re here.” Paulette skipped down the steps and hurried to meet the car.

Meredith glanced at the odd column, the chill inside her spreading, before she tore herself away and went to greet her parents.

“What happened here?” Tall and broad, the gray-haired man assessed the exterior of the house, fists propped on his hips as his head swiveled up, down, left, and right.

“Nothing, Dad.” Meredith strode up beside Brock O’Connell. “Yet, anyway.”

“Darling, you know how he gets,” Dina O’Connell said, emerging from the gray SUV.

“Hi, Mom. You look great. Traveling the world suits you.” Meredith hugged her mom, her robust frame comforting.

“I do love being free to come and go,” Dina said.

“What are you going to do about this?” Brock said, brows drawn together, accusing finger pointed at the sill board resting on the stone foundation.

“What are you talking about?” Paulette asked, peering at the building. “I don’t see anything wrong.”

“He’s talking about the fact that the lower boards are beginning to rot and should be replaced.” Meredith walked to the foundation on the side of the house and pointed to the evidence. “See here. The wood is warped, probably from a leak somewhere along the joint between the rock foundation and the siding.”

“I have my tools in the truck.” Brock marched up beside her. “Do you have the boards, or should I go into the lumber yard and pick some up?”

“You just got here. Don’t worry about it, Dad,” Meredith said. “It won’t matter in the long run.”

He turned puzzled eyes to look at her. “Why on Earth would you not want to fix it? If we do it quickly, the damage will be minimized.”

“Take off your construction hat, Dad,” Paulette said, bitterness in her voice. “She’s planning to raze the place.”

Meredith shot her sister a look she hoped would shut her up. She hadn’t wanted to reveal her intentions quite so soon after her parents arrived. Rather, she’d wait until they’d had a chance to catch up on what was happening with each of them. A chance for Meredith to help them follow her precisely ordered, logical plan.

“Raise it up? It’s already built.” His frown deepened. “I’m confused.”

“Not raise up,” Meredith said, her words measured. “Raze flat.”

“The hell you say.” Her dad’s brows rose so high, she was surprised they stayed attached to his face.

Her mother gasped and stared at her as though Meredith had lost her mind. How could she make them understand? She hadn’t seen them in person for years, and now that they were here, they learn that their architect daughter intended to destroy their family home. They hadn’t been here for five minutes and already the tension shimmered in the spring air.

“What do you mean, raze it?” Dina asked slowly. “You cannot possibly be serious.”

“Sadly, she is.” Paulette opened her palms to the spring sky. “She feels that returning the property to nature will help her move on, to overcome the grief and pain of losing Willy.” Paulette crossed her arms, a familiar gesture by now. “Not that I agree with her, but there it is.”

Paulette, of all people, had come to her rescue. Sort of.

Her father recovered first, snapping his mouth closed into a flat line. “You’ve obviously lost your mind, young lady. I don’t care what you think you’re going to do. I’ll not allow you to destroy our family’s heritage.”

“Unfortunately, Dad, it’s hers to do with as she wishes,” Paulette said, frowning. “The lawyer dude, Max, said so. The will didn’t specify any limitations for what she could do with it. Not that he agrees with her ideas, either.”

“Max?” Dina asked, focusing on Paulette. “He’s the lawyer? Good.”

“You know him?” Meredith shouldn’t be surprised, but somehow she’d thought they wouldn’t stay in touch with who was who in the small town of Roseville.

“Of course. Mother spoke very highly of him.” Dina shook her head, tears loitering in the corners of her eyes. She swiped them away and drew in a ragged breath. “Mother is probably rolling over in her grave at the very idea that you’d even consider—I can’t even say it. How could you even contemplate such a thing? Do you realize what you’d do to this family with your selfish actions?”

“I’ll contest the will, that’s what I’ll do,” Brock fumed. “This can’t happen. I should be the rightful heir, and no court in the land would deny me.”

Looking at it from her family’s viewpoint, Meredith would feel the same way. But from inside, where the black hole of pain and loss waited to be filled in, like the rock foundation of this house, she couldn’t see any other way to end the journey through grief and move on.

“Speaking of Max, he’s invited us to the high school concert tomorrow night.” Maybe changing the subject would help. She hoped. Three pair of eyes blinked at her. “He’s playing the piano.” As if that explained her reasoning perfectly. She sighed at the unbelieving stares aimed in her direction.

“Changing the subject doesn’t make it go away.” Paulette glared at her. “You’ll have to face the fact nobody agrees with your atrocious plan.”

“Nobody has offered another way to handle the grief I carry inside like a cancer, either.” Meredith shrugged. “I’ve delayed my plans because I want to solve the mystery of great-great-great-auntie Grace’s disappearance. But it’s only a delay, not a cancellation.”

“Who’s Grace?” Brock asked, pacing. “Who the hell cares about her?”

Meredith summarized what she had discovered in the journals and letters thus far. “I don’t believe she left willingly, but that’s a gut feeling more than anything else.”

Could there be a connection between the occasions of the honeysuckle scent floating on the air and the fact Grace used to wear a similar perfume? After all this time, how was it even a possibility? She kept mum on her speculations. Her family already thought she’d become daft. Why give them more ammunition?

“Why don’t we go inside?” Paulette suggested. “Meg should have your room ready. We can gather in the double parlor after you settle in and have some lemonade and discuss all this.”

“Okay with me, but don’t think we’re letting little Miss Demolition Expert off the hook regarding her intentions. Delayed or not.” Brock stomped over to the back doors of the truck, pulled them open, and withdrew two large suitcases and two matching smaller ones.

Looks like they plan to stay awhile.
Meredith sighed and shook her head. “Fine. I’ll meet you inside in a few minutes. First, I have a little mystery I’d like to solve.”

“Another one?” Brock asked. “What this time?”

“Before you arrived, we discovered one of the columns sounds different when we bang on it. Any idea, Oh Construction Guru, why?” Meredith cocked her head to one side as she puzzled in her mind over possible reasons for the column to not sound as hollow as the others.

“While you two work on that,” Dina said, snagging her bags from Brock’s lax grip, “I’m going in. I haven’t seen Meg in ages.”

“Let me carry one for you.” Paulette took the heavier suitcase and led the way inside.

Meredith started toward the front of the house, Brock trailing behind her, still carrying the two remaining suitcases. When they reached the porch, he dropped them with a
thud
onto the floorboards. “Show me what you mean.”

Meredith walked to the farthest column and banged on it. “This one has a nice ringing sound.” She moved to the next column. “As does this one and the next.” She demonstrated to him as she spoke. “But this one on the end is different. It doesn’t echo as much.”

She pounded on the last column, and the sound died away like a muted note on a piano. He pursed his lips in thought as he repeated her experiment with each column, finding the same result.

“Interesting. I wonder if there’s something in there. Maybe an animal crawled inside?”

“How would an animal find its way in?” Meredith examined the exterior of the column from bottom to top. “It’s sealed at the bottom, and there’s a cornice at the top to seal it off up there as well.”

“But maybe the top of the cornice wasn’t always sealed.”

She gazed at the ornately decorated top of the column. “What if the cornice is hollow as well? Could something fall through it and into the base, do you think?”

Brock shrugged. “It’s possible, I suppose. Does it really matter?”

Meredith hugged herself, trying to fend off the chill sweeping through her. This odd column held a clue to the mystery of Grace’s whereabouts. The thought entered her mind as a fact. How did she know? Cold air brushed her legs, raising goose bumps on her skin. “Do you have your jigsaw with you?”

“You want to cut it open?” Brock stared at her, eyes wide yet again. “You really have lost your mind.”

“A little hole.” Meredith unwound her arms from her waist. She approached the column and with one finger drew an imaginary rectangle. “Merely twelve by six inches. Not big enough to compromise its integrity, but enough to see if there is anything inside.”

* * * *

Max had returned to his office after depositing his few groceries at home. His need to know all he could about the mysterious Meredith compelled him to close his office door and open his laptop. His search yielded an array of links that had taken a while to sort through. He reread the
Architecture Chronicle
article slowly, understanding dawning. Meredith’s husband, William “Willy” Reed, had been killed by some guy over the astronomical amount of twenty bucks in his wallet. The shot that killed the renowned landscape architect preceded one that struck Meredith in the stomach. She’d been rushed to the hospital, her life at risk due to the amount of blood she’d lost. Willy died at the scene.

He lowered the lid of his laptop computer and sank against the cushions of the leather sofa in his office. She really did want to bury the past, but demolishing Twin Oaks wouldn’t help her move on. Closing a door on painful events instead of burying them allowed one to live without ever truly forgetting.

He’d unearthed a plethora of articles in various professional journals and national newspapers touting her fresh and innovative designs. She’d blueprinted everything from bungalows to mansions for billionaires. She’d been the belle of the building industry. Until her husband of three years, at the prime of his life, was killed in cold blood by some punk who was never brought to justice.

Max clenched his hand into a fist and beat it rhythmically on the lid of his laptop. One and two and three. He’d like to find the bastard and bring him before a judge for the pain and grief he’d caused Meredith. She did not deserve to have her life’s dreams and plans uprooted in such a horrific way. Damn lowlife. Because of delinquents like the creep, Max focused on noncriminal cases. He lost his temper each time he contemplated the damage caused by unthinking, uncaring people.

Every crime came back to one point. People hurt each other, and the injured party demanded recompense. Maybe monetary penalties. Maybe revenge. Maybe, like Meredith, to lash out against expectations to create a new path for her own life.

That being the case, he could help her find a path. Help her walk away from the pain and focus on tomorrow without destroying yesterday. She possessed too much talent, spunk, and integrity to turn her back on her creative endeavors in order to destroy others’ works. Helping her would also provide him an excuse to spend more time with her. To know her as an architect instead of a demolition expert. As a beautiful, evocative woman instead of an angry, prickly widow. He’d relish the opportunity to be with her more often, speak with her about ways to deal with the grieving process. She’d occupied his thoughts long enough. In fact, he’d follow up on her suggestion.

He set aside his laptop and strode to the calendar blotter on his desk. His scribbled notes bespoke of the many irons he had poked into various fires. He grabbed his pen and added “start dating Meredith” on the first night of the high school concert. He’d begin with asking her out to a private place. He tapped the pen against his chin. Assuming she’d agree to go with him, of course. He laid the pen down and picked up the desk phone, dialing her number from memory.