“Do you believe in ghosts?” I hadn’t known what I was going to say until the words were already out of my mouth. It had been a question I’d been dying to ask someone since moving to Westlake, but until now, I did not think I’d found the person who’d be able to answer it.
“Ghosts?” Althea said, as if she’d misheard me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know it sounds crazy.”
“You’re not a police officer, are you?”
“No,” I said, thinking, You a cop? Strohman send you here? “I’m a writer.”
“A writer who wants to ask an old woman about ghosts?”
I smiled warmly and rubbed my hands together between my knees. “Do you know about what happened to Elijah Dentman? That he drowned in the lake behind their house last summer?”
“Read about it in the papers.” She stared at her twisted fingers atop the bedclothes. Her knuckles were like knots in a hangman’s noose.
“I’m bothered by that,” I told her. “I’m bothered by the fact that he died and they never found his body. I’m bothered by what I think was a slipshod investigation by Westlake’s finest. I think something happened to that little boy, and it was not an accident. But I’ve got no way of proving that, so I’ve come here to talk to you.”
“And what is it you think I can tell you?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But maybe you know something that you don’t realize is important, something that when added to everything else I’ve uncovered will help complete the puzzle.”
Althea merely looked at me without a change of emotion. If she felt anything—anything at all—on the heels of what I’d just said her face did not betray such emotion. “Be a dear and open those blinds, please,” she said finally, her voice still sedate.
I stood and crossed to the window. There was a plastic length of tubing the width of a pencil hanging vertically from one side. I turned it until the blinds separated, then pushed them all to one side. Outside, there was no bright sunshine, no dazzling blue sky, only a lazy drift of cumulous clouds. Everything looked hollowed out and the color of old monochromatic filmstrips. I could see my car in the parking lot. Above it, the two falcons I’d witnessed nesting in the mezzanine earlier were circling in the air, waiting like buzzards for my Honda to die.
When I turned back around, Althea was looking once again at her son’s photograph on the nightstand. “What do you write?”
“Novels.”
“What sort of novels?”
“Dark ones. Horror novels. Mysteries. People chasing old ghosts, both figurative and literal.”
Disinterestedly, she managed to lean to one side and adjust herself on her pillows. I could tell the act was not without pain. “Personally,” she said, “I’ve always preferred romances. Do you ever write anything romantic? A love story?”
“They all start out that way,” I answered, meaning it.
Althea glanced out the window. I could not tell if she was disappointed at the weather or if it was exactly what she’d expected. With Althea Coulter, I found I could assess very little.
“I don’t know what it is you’re hoping I can tell you,” she said after a time.
“How long did you tutor Elijah?”
“For just over a month. I was sent there through a service with the county. I guess someone found out there was a little boy there who’d not been going to school. The county got after his mother.”
“Veronica.”
“Yes. Veronica.”
“Did you know Veronica’s father, Bernard Dentman? It’s my understanding Veronica and her brother, David, came back to Westlake to take care of him before he died.”
“That’s my understanding as well, though I didn’t know the elder Dentman. He had passed before I got there.”
“Why’d you stay only a month?”
“Because my illness was beginning to get the better of me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Also, there was very little I could do for that child.”
“How’s that?”
“He was different.”
My mind returned to Adam’s description of the boy on the night of the Christmas party: Veronica had a son about Jacob’s age. Elijah was slow and homeschooled . . .
“I doubt he was ever officially diagnosed,” Althea continued, “but my guess is he was autistic.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I could just tell. He had trouble communicating, trouble expressing himself, and his overall skills were way below the average ten-year-old. He spoke in fits and starts, like a tractor engine trying to turn over in cold weather. We’d go over simple math problems, and he’d become frustrated and hide under the kitchen table. Sometimes he could be lured out with cookies, but other times he would stay under there until after I’d left for the day. In fact, that’s sort of how we got our relationship going, the boy and me, and I would bring him candies and dole them out to him at the beginning of each session.”
“How was his relationship with his mother?”
“She loved him very much. But she was a shattered person herself—I’d always thought something traumatic had happened to her at some point, perhaps when she was a child—and she had difficulty rearing Elijah.”
“What about David Dentman, Elijah’s uncle? How was his relationship with the boy?”
“I hardly saw the man,” she said. “I came by weekday afternoons, mostly when Mr. Dentman was out at work.”
“But you’d met him before?” I said.
“Yes.” There was a timorous hitch in Althea’s voice. “Two days in a row, toward the end of my month at the Dentmans’ house, David Dentman answered the door after I’d knocked. I knew who he was of course—little Elijah had spoken of his uncle to me on a number of occasions—but this was the first time I’d seen the man.”
She expelled a bout of air, the sound like someone squeezing an old accordion. Then she frowned, wrinkles like estuaries running from every direction down her face. “He was very cold to me. He just opened the door and said, ‘Elijah’s not feeling well today.’ I had my mouth half-opened to ask whether or not the boy’s illness was a serious one that required his uncle to stay home from work, but he shut the door in my face before I had a chance to ask the question.”
“That sounds about right,” I agreed. “You said it happened twice?”
“The next day I returned to the house and knocked on the door. Once again, Mr. Dentman answered and spoke the same exact words to me through the crack in the door—that Elijah was not feeling well. He said it like he was reciting dictation from memory. But this time I was ready for him, and I was able to speak before he closed the door on me. ‘I’m sure you’re aware the county only allows for a minimal number of days for a child to be ill if he’s going to receive a home tutor,’ I said. This was only half true—the kid could have his sick days just like anyone else—but something in that man’s presence alarmed me. After that first day, I’d spent the whole night thinking about the boy. When Mr. Dentman said the same thing on that second day, I knew something was wrong, and I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easy.”
“What’d he say?”
“He looked me over from that crack in the door. And not until he opened the door wider did I realize just how big he was. Broad shoulders and thick arms. I realized, too, that he had almost a baby’s face, tender and soft in places, which didn’t seem to fit with the rest of his body. Something about his face made me feel sorry for him, I remember.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve met him.” Although unlike Althea, I’d recognized nothing in David’s face that had made me feel sorry for him.