The Club (Anna Denning Mystery Book 4) Page 4

  Tanner shrugged.

  “In any case, the January Club got its start at a New Year’s Eve party hosted by Dean and Rose—they’re the President and Vice President of the club.”

  “We were talking about our January resolutions,” Rose said. “About how we never follow through on them.”

  “Resolutions made, but life goes on in its rubbish way, year after year.” Curt became animated, his hands punctuating his words. “So we thought, what if we started a club? An encouragement club. Like a community service organization, but without the mercantile side.”

  “Nothing wrong with the mercantile,” Dean said.

  “You know what I mean,” Curt replied.

  “So tell me,” Melinda began, folding her arms across her chest, “why would my dad be so secretive about an encouragement club?” Clearly she wasn’t buying the club’s benign origin story.

  “He was secretive?” Beverly asked.

  “He got angry when I mentioned the club once. And he didn’t mention me to you at all, so yeah, he was secretive.”

  “I don’t know why,” Beverly said.

  Anna wondered whether Beverly’s I don’t know why was referring to Maxwell’s secrecy about the club or about Melinda, but she resisted the temptation to ask.

  Her enthusiasm returning, Rose edged forward on her seat. “Melinda, would you like to see your father’s things?”

  “Here?” Melinda said.

  “Yes, he was very generous to the club. Do you mind, Curt?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  Rose finished off her wine, stood, then motioned for Melinda to follow her down a hall.

  Anna waited until they were out of earshot, then turned to Curt, who seemed the most open of the club members and perhaps more willing than the others to answer brash questions from a stranger. “Mr. MacKenzie, what sort of things did Henry Maxwell donate to the club?”

  “Scottish relics mostly,” he answered. “Items of Scottish ancestry and Scottish magic. And it’s Curt, please.”

  “Scottish magic?” Anna said.

  “Soil from a fairy mound on Iona and the serpent mound at Loch Nell, small stones from cairns.” A conspiratorial grin on his face, Curt glanced from side to side before saying, “He brought us a piece of Holyrood Abbey, from a column in the nave. Pried it off.”

  Anna forced a weak smile. Great. He damaged historical sites.

  “It’s not just dirt and stones,” Tanner added. “Henry donated ancient Celtic amulets, ring money, bracelets—from anywhere the Celts were.”

  “Which was not just Scotland,” Dean added. “He found some Celtic horse figures in northern Spain.”

  “Bought,” Beverly added, emphasizing the word. “Bought, not found. Anna looks horrified.”

  “He didn’t buy Holyrood,” Curt said. “And in any case, we’re not exclusively Scottish in our focus.” He tossed his chin at Dean. “The Prices are Welsh and English, for example, and our newest member”—he swung his finger in Tanner’s direction—“has Swedish ancestry.”

  “And the man who stands at the head of our club is Norwegian,” Beverly said.

  “True, true,” Curt said.

  Tanner and Dean nodded in unison.

  Anna suppressed an urge to look behind her, so strong was the feeling that the missing Norwegian member was in the room. “He couldn’t come?” she asked.

  Beverly flashed an indulgent smile. The sort of smile that preceded a kind but necessary correction. “Come with me,” she said, crooking a finger at Anna.

  Anna got up to follow the woman.

  “This way,” Beverly said, maneuvering around a squat bookcase and a stack of brown file boxes on her way to a far wall of the living room. “Curt, for goodness’ sake, you’ve got to keep better order.” Just short of the front door, she stopped and pointed solemnly at a portrait in an ornate carved-wood frame. “Here he is.”

  Anna leaned in. The portrait, badly painted in a style mimicking the old masters, was far from Curt MacKenzie’s floor and table lamps. Oil? Acrylic? In the bad light, she couldn’t tell. “I take it he’s the inspiration for the club, not the actual head,” she said with a smile. “That white wig and his clothing look a few centuries old.”

  “No, no, he’s the head.” Beverly squinted disapprovingly, ran a finger along the frame, then held the dust-caked finger aloft. “Curt, honestly!”

  Anna heard a chuckle and turned to see Tanner behind her. “Now you know why he’s Dusty.”

  “Stop it,” Beverly said, wiping her finger on the hem of her top.

  “They say once you see his portrait, he comes to visit you,” Tanner said. “He knows you from that time on.”

  “Who is he?” Anna asked.

  “Johannes Sorg,” Beverly said.

  Anna fought to keep her expression neutral. “And who is Johannes Sorg?”

  “We call him January Man,” she said, gazing at the portrait with such reverence that it sickened Anna.

  Two murder victims, a missing finger, and now a medium nearly genuflecting in front of a portrait of Johannes Sorg. Anna wanted nothing more than to leave. Now. “Where’s Melinda?” she asked, glancing back toward the living room.

  “Looking at her dad’s donations,” Tanner said, tossing his head in the direction of the hall. “I’ll show you.”

  Much as Anna wanted to bolt for the door, she knew she couldn’t leave Melinda alone in the house, so she followed Tanner through the dark living room and down an even darker hall until they came to a large back bedroom, its walls lined with bookshelves that rose almost to the ceiling.

  “Can you believe it?” Melinda said when she saw Anna in the doorway. “A third of this is my dad’s stuff. He just gave it away.”

  The shelves were stuffed, overflowing with everything from touristy knickknacks to what eyes better trained than Anna’s might call artifacts. Scottish sporrans, Celtic bronzes, a foot-high blue Dala horse from Sweden, carved bones and antlers, animal-skin boots with curled toes and brightly embroidered collars. It was one heck of a stash, Anna thought.

  “He was generous,” Rose said.

  Melinda scowled in disbelief. “Generous? These belonged to me, not some club. My dad was going to give me that blue Dala horse. When did he donate it to you? It was at his house four days ago. I saw it.”

  Rose smiled again, her red lips stretched wide. More of a laugh than a smile, Anna thought. The woman smiled with the confidence of a woman who thought she looked good doing it. “Dear, your father gave us more than this.”

  Anna was watching Melinda’s face, her disbelief as it changed to anger, when the lights went out.

  “What the . . . ?” she heard Tanner say.

  “Out of the room, out of the room,” Rose said.

  “Hey, watch it!” Melinda cried. “Don’t push me!”

  “I’m responsible for the safekeeping of everything in here,” Rose said.

  Anna wheeled about, her hands in front of her. In the blackness, she ran into the hallway wall and felt someone push against her back. Tanner mumbled an apology and thudded down the hall, shouting out that he was going to check the breakers.

  “Do you think I’m going to steal my own stuff back?” Melinda said. Anna felt her brush past, sensed the anger in her hard footsteps. She stared into the darkness, feeling her way along the wall, following the sound of Dean’s voice as he called for calm and order.

  “Into the living room,” Rose called from the far end of the hall.

  “I’m trying,” Anna said. The dark was absolute. Either the entire neighborhood grid had gone down or all light from the outside had been swallowed in Curt MacKenzie’s heavy drapes.

  “Rose?” Dean said.

  “I’m coming, dear,” Rose replied. “Where are you?”

  “I thought I was . . . I don’t know.”

  Someone snickered—a mirthless, nasty sound.

  Where the hallway wall ended and the living room began, Anna stood in place, listening to footfalls th
at seemed to circle aimlessly, her eyes straining to see the tiniest pinprick of light. “Melinda?”

  “What?” Melinda said.

  “I just wondered where you were.”

  “Curt,” Tanner yelled from somewhere outside the living room, “where’s a flashlight? I found the breaker box but I can’t see inside it.”

  “Feel the switches,” Curt shouted impatiently. “If one of them is facing different from the others, flick it the other way.”

  “Can someone pull back the drapes?” Anna said.

  “Where’s Beverly?” Rose said. “Beverly?”

  For a few seconds everyone stopped moving. The shuffling feet, bodies running into chairs or bookcases—all ceased.

  “Where’s Beverly?” Rose said again.

  “How should I know?” Curt replied. “Lights, Tanner!”

  As if in obedience to his command, the lights came on. A moment later Curt said in a flat voice, “I found Beverly.”

  Anna strode to where Curt stood, six feet from the portrait of Johannes Sorg, gazing at the floor. Beverly Goff was in a seated position beneath the portrait, her legs jutting in front of her, her back against a bookcase, her eyes open but unfocused.

  “Is she dead?” Curt asked.

  Anna didn’t need to feel for a pulse. “Yes,” she replied.

  “My God,” Rose said. “She was our only contact.”

  The club members gathered to the left and right of Beverly, hands to their mouths or flat on their chests in shock.

  “A heart attack?” Dean asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Anna said. She couldn’t explain why. There were no visible marks on her and no signs of a struggle.

  “That’s him,” Melinda whispered hoarsely.

  Anna turned. “Who?”

  Melinda’s eyes were fixed on the portrait. “The man in my nightmare last night,” she said. “The man in my bedroom.”

  5

  From the outside, Henry Maxwell’s house looked like the other brick ranches on his street, but inside it reminded Anna of Curt MacKenzie’s home. It had the same staleness, an odor that came from too many belongings and too little fresh air.

  “The kitchen’s back here,” Melinda said, crossing the living room.

  Anna followed, detouring around a large canvas suitcase in the middle of the floor.

  “It’s one of these old houses with lots of little rooms,” Melinda said as she switched on the kitchen light. “Nothing like my house in Iowa. They call this an eat-in kitchen. When I was a kid, I thought it was huge.”

  Anna dropped her purse on a small table at one end of the narrow galley kitchen and slung her jacket over a chair back. The open eating area at her end and the open entryway to a laundry room at the other end gave the illusion of a larger and airier room. “It’s a sweet kitchen, Melinda.”

  “That’s not the word I’d use.” Melinda pulled a coffee maker from its place under a cabinet. “Thank you,” she said, dropping her hands and turning back to Anna. “I couldn’t stand being here alone. Not after last night. And now, with what happened to that woman—and that painting.”

  “And you don’t mind Liz coming over? She wanted to meet me at my house later, so I thought—”

  “I wouldn’t mind five or six people in this house right now. What about your fiancé?” Her eyes fell to Anna’s ring. “I’m assuming that’s who you called. He doesn’t mind you staying overnight?”

  “Yes, that was my fiancé, and it’s not a problem. We don’t live together.” She had called Gene before leaving the January Club, explained the situation, and asked him to pick up Jackson for the night. “Another murder?” he’d said, sounding very much like Detective Schaeffer when he saw her in Curt’s living room: Why do dead bodies follow you? Sure, Schaeffer hadn’t put his thoughts in those words exactly, but that’s how Anna had read the expression on his face.

  And Beverly Goff had been murdered, a fact quickly discovered by the medical team sent to the house. Anna had watched as they laid her body on its side and found a small puncture wound at the base of her skull. Just like Jordan Hetrick. Not a lot of blood, but the location of the injury was deadly. The police had searched Anna, Melinda, the club members, and Curt’s house for a weapon matching the wound, but they found nothing.

  They had searched the grounds, too, and found footsteps in the snow by the front and side doors and on the driveway, but fresh-fallen snow had obscured them, and in any case, Curt told them he’d been outside earlier in the day, throwing out trash, shoveling the drive, and twice walking to the mailbox near the sidewalk.

  “I shouldn’t be making coffee this late, but I’m not planning on sleeping tonight,” Melinda said, prying the lid from a coffee tin and spooning grounds into a filter. “Want some?”

  “No thanks, but Liz might.” On hearing about Goff’s death, Liz Halvorsen had gone into full investigative reporter mode. First she would head to Curt’s house, she had told Anna on the phone, then to Melinda’s. “I doubt the police will let her question anyone, though she can be very persuasive. She’ll probably be here in thirty minutes.”

  As the coffee maker sputtered, a sound Anna always associated with comfort, Melinda took a seat at the table. “Do you know the detective who was at MacKenzie’s house?”

  “Schaeffer?”

  “He talked to you a lot longer than anyone else.”

  “Oh, that. I forgot to tell you. I’m pretty sure I found the person I was looking for. You know, that job I was doing for the police.”

  “That was fast.”

  “It happens that way sometimes.”

  Melinda perked up. “Does that mean you can research my family now?”

  “Unless I find out I was wrong, which I might tomorrow. That’s what I was talking to Schaeffer about. I gave him a name and address.” And told him about the Johannes Sorg portrait, she added silently. She still wasn’t at liberty to mention that name in connection with Jordan Hetrick’s murder, but she hoped to coax Melinda into talking about her nightmare vision of Sorg once Liz arrived.

  “That’s fantastic! I’m so glad.” Embarrassed by her own exuberance, Melinda winced. “I don’t mean to sound so chirpy. First my dad dies, then this woman.”

  “You didn’t know Beverly, did you?”

  “I didn’t know either of them, Anna. But I got the feeling Beverly knew my dad.”

  That had been Anna’s impression as well, but tonight she was determined to focus elsewhere. Skirting the subject, she asked, “Do you have a computer?”

  “In my dad’s bedroom.”

  Melinda led Anna down a picture-lined hall, stopping at the first door on their left. “Here it is. The next door down,” she said, pointing a little farther along the hall, “is the guest bedroom, where I’m staying.”

  “Thanks.” Standing in Maxwell’s doorway, Anna saw his laptop on a table under the room’s only window. Her eyes fell to the bed, to the old attaché case on the bedspread.

  “That attaché,” Melinda said. “Let’s take a look at the finger tomorrow morning, okay? I can’t deal with it tonight.”

  “Agreed.” And what would they do if they found a bone in that finger? Anna wondered. Call Schaeffer again? She couldn’t deal with it either. Not tonight.

  “Good.” Melinda pulled her eyes away from the attaché. “Do you want some herbal tea?”

  “I’d love some.”

  “I’ll get the electric kettle going.”

  Melinda headed for the kitchen and Anna turned on the laptop. Waiting for it to boot up, she cast her eyes around the room. What should the bedroom of a “monster,” as Melinda had called him, look like? Like this? Two bookshelves, a nightstand with a digital clock, a painting of buffalo on the plains hanging over the bed? It was so ordinary, and so sparse compared to the living room and kitchen, that it hardly fit the bill.

  Anna sat in front of the laptop, navigated to a search engine, and typed in “Johannes Sorg.” She scrolled through the results, almost all of them
referencing modern-day people, Germans for the most part. Of the few older names that popped up, most again were German and a couple were Danish. But none were Norwegian. Had Beverly steered her wrong? “Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” she mumbled. “Let’s try another approach.” She keyed in the name “Sorg” and the word “Norway,” then hit enter.

  Here the results were different—loads of Norwegian travel guides, song lyrics, and companies—but the very first entry was a page from a Norwegian-English translation site. Anna clicked on it. “Sorrow,” she read aloud. “Sorg” meant “sorrow.” It was the same in Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic.

  “Here you go,” Melinda said, entering the room and setting a steaming cup of tea on the table. “Sorg,” she said, looking over Anna’s shoulder.

  Anna swiveled in her seat. “You were in the back room of Curt’s house when Beverly told me about that painting. She said it was a portrait of a man named Johannes Sorg.”

  Melinda backed up and dropped to the bed. “Then he’s real? The man I saw is real?”

  “I don’t know if Sorg was a real, historical figure, but if he was, judging by his clothes and the wig on his head, he’s been dead three centuries.”

  Melinda sucked in her breath.

  “Look at this rationally.” Anna switched off the computer and sat next to Melinda on the bed. “It’s possible Johannes Sorg never existed. That’s my guess. But if he did exist and he’s dead, how could he enter your bedroom last night?”

  “Anna, my dream wasn’t ordinary.” Melinda raised a hand and pointed in the direction of her bedroom. “I ran into the hall, screaming. I’ve never done that in my life. I’m not some hysterical idiot.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t know how to tell you how real it was. And I felt his evil. He bent over me while I was in bed—this close.” She held her palm inches from her face.

  “Nightmares can seem so real.”

  “But we know they’re not. Even while we’re dreaming, we know what’s real and what’s not. And even if we don’t, we do as soon as we wake up. Am I right?”

  Melinda had a point, Anna thought. Dreams may seem real, but they don’t send you screaming, fully awake, from your bed. Not normal ones. And if this Johannes Sorg was a modern-day man still very much alive, or someone in the January Club was deeply involved in the occult, as Beverly obviously was, then she couldn’t honestly explain what had happened in Melinda’s bedroom last night. Someone in that club was a murderer, after all, and it wasn’t a reach to think that a murderer might be involved in trying to terrify Melinda Maxwell.