Chapter 12

1:50 PM Saturday: I turned onto the driveway of the little house in the woods where Mary Cole had lived. When I thought she owned it, I had wanted to put off a visit until I "knew" her better, and so better understand the way she decorated or something. Now the place was only the scene of the crime to me.

I didn’t waste much time on the spot where her body was found: curiosity seekers would have destroyed anything worth looking at by now. I just walked down the dirt path behind the path until the bushes beside it were untrampled, then came straight back. The spot completely out of sight of both the road and the house.

I walked around the building. It had been built on a fieldstone foundation that raised it five feet higher than it would have been on the ground, putting all of the windows were out of reach. All the windows had curtains, and a call to Cheri before I came had revealed that wasn’t yet a new tenant, so I had some hope that the contents hadn't already been discarded.

There was a clear view of the front door from the road, so I circled back around to the back door before getting out the card you shouldn’t leave home without. With one quick push, the cheap lock gave way, and I entered.

My hopes were shattered: the house had been cleaned out. Linens, dishes, pans, appliances, were all gone. The furniture was still there, but the place could have been furnished when she rented it. The curtains must have been an oversight. They were pink, lacy things that could never be part of an ordinary furnished house.

Ordinarily, I’d have given up right them, but, having already broken the law with my illegal entry, I wanted to make the best of it. I began to go over every inch. Starting in the front and working back, I tapped walls, ran my fingers through wall-to-wall carpeting and probed closets. I wasn’t looking for something, I was looking for anything, but from what I found, this girl could have earned more money being a maid instead of being laid.

I was clear back to the kitchen when I found it. I was tapping around inside a closet, wondering what the hell one so big was doing there near the back of the house, when I pushed on the ceiling and it gave. It was almost too high for me, but I jumped and pushed, and a trap door opened up. I was so desperate to find anything in that house that I didn’t even stop to think it over, just jumped again and caught the edge, and hauled myself up.

It wasn’t easy, but eventually I found myself lying face down in inch-thick dust, fighting the urge to breath. I got up, brushed myself off and looked around. There wasn’t a window in the place, so I didn’t see much. I started to grope around while fumbling in my jacket pocket for my keychain, and naturally barked my shin before I found it. Hanging on it was a penlight for finding keyholes in the dark. I pushed it on. I had run into a paper box, taped along the top, with the word "Mary" scrawled on the side. I ripped it open, and dumped the contents on the floor. I then went carefully through them. After that was another box, then another, and so on. It must have been an hour before I finished with all the boxes piled there, and turned the fading light in other directions.

If I expected the rest of the attic to be empty, I was in for a surprise. Stacked in other parts of the room were two other piles, one marked "Beverly", the other marked "Wendy". My light was growing more yellow every passing second, so I tore open the boxes quickly and made very quick surveys. Beverly and Wendy were girls from very different time. Beverly’s box held, among other things, maxi-skirts, records by Elton John and The Bee Gees, and a stack of mystery paperbacks. Mid-seventies, I’d say. Wendy’s box held miniskirts, records by Pete Seeger, Eric Burdon, Peter, Paul and Mary, and two Kurt Vonnegut books, a set of pamphlets on Viet Nam and Catcher in the Rye. The late sixties?

I let the light go out. Three very different girls. But it wasn’t their differences so much that interested me. It was a similarity. In each girl’s box was a flimsy red nightgown, sheer to the point of transparency. Rather, not in each girl’s box; Mary had been wearing hers when she died.

I left everything where I had strewn it. I doubted anyone would be up here again for some time. I left with more questions than I’d come with. I also left with one other thing - something that I hoped would answer some questions.