There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Fifty-seven


Evie had caught up on sleep and managed to slip back into what already felt like a routine—morning at work in Manhattan, a late lunch with Ginger in the hospital café, and afternoon at her mother’s bedside. Now, once again, she was on the bus back to Higgs Point.

Just like the all too familiar landmarks that flew by, one day was blurring into the next. Her mother hung in limbo, her hands growing clawed and so cold that no amount of holding warmed them. Evie had pictured her mother’s death. She and Ginger had certainly had plenty of rehearsals. But she never dreamed it would be this soon or happen this fast.

It seemed much longer than a week since Evie had slept in her own apartment, since she’d spent time with her friends, since she’d had a life. She was sick to death of chicken potpies. As she walked from the bus back to the house, she found herself looking forward to dinner at Finn’s. He’d texted her that afternoon. Dinner tonight? Basement tour? See you at 8. The basement alone, packed with material from an old amusement park, would have gotten her there.

The weather had turned unseasonably warm, up over eighty degrees, and a stiff breeze gusted off the water. The black plastic garbage bags she’d finally dragged out to the street were gone. Even the soiled mattress had been collected.

She paused outside for a moment, taking in Mrs. Yetner’s house. The Mercedes was still parked out front. Maybe Brian had decided to move in. The pile of building debris between Mrs. Yetner’s and her neighbor’s on the other side—the house that Evie now knew belonged to Soundview Management—had grown. Bundles of newspaper had been added to the lumber and construction materials.

The wind kicked up, and pieces of newspaper blew into the grass. Sheets stuck to the side of Mrs. Yetner’s house and more blew toward the water. Evie ran after them. She snatched up a few. More that she couldn’t reach blew into the marsh.

Returning to Mrs. Yetner’s, Evie stuck the loose papers under a piece of wood with lath still nailed to it. She was still carrying around Mrs. Yetner’s invitation to the gala, but she didn’t have the energy to try talking her way past Brian again. So she just slid the invitation through Mrs. Yetner’s mail slot and went home. She rested for a while, then took a shower.

At eight, she walked the three blocks over to Sparkles. Finn met her at the door, a big grin on his face. “Smell that?” he said.

What Evie smelled was aftershave, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t what he meant.

“That’s my all-day chili. It’s been cooking—”

“Let me guess. All day,” Evie said.

Finn squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you’re here. And not just because it gave me an excuse to cook.”

“I’m glad, too. It’s been a long week.”

“So how about we start off with a tour of all the crap that I’ve got stored in the basement of the store. Somehow I think you’ll enjoy that more than a pile of guacamole.”

“You made guacamole, too?”

“Later.” Finn led her around to the back of the store and unlocked a metal bulkhead door. With a grimace he pulled the door open, then started down a flight of wide stairs. He turned and gave her his hand as she stepped over the threshold. “Watch your step. Hope you don’t mind a few spiders.” At the foot of the stairs he pulled the cord from a dangling overhead bulb and waved his arms to clear away cobwebs. “They’re fascinating creatures, really. And the web builders are safe to be around. It’s the jumping spiders you’ve got to watch out for.”

“Oh, great. That’s a useful—” Evie’s voice caught in her throat at the sight of a giant face, at least eight feet tall, leering at her from the shadows. The wild, bugged-out eyes, flat cheeks, and forehead still had the remnants of war paint. The mouth, which took up most of the face, gaped open. Despite the rust and faded colors, it looked ferocious.

“Wow,” Evie said. It was the only word that quite did it justice.

“This was the main gate to Snakapins Park. They weren’t too politically correct in those days. They had a guy who sat behind a screen beating a war drum where you got your ticket, and then you could step through the mouth to enter the park. Would have scared the daylights out of me, especially at night when they had it lit up.”

Evie noticed the metal feathers of the Indian headdress were studded light sockets. Her heart was practically dancing in her chest with excitement. She took out her cell phone. “Okay if I take pictures?”

“Be my guest.”

Evie took one shot. Then another. She could almost hear the drumbeat now as she bent over and stepped through the mouth. On the other side she came face-to-face with a glass case containing the upper half of a bead-laden woman dressed in red brocade—a fortune-telling machine. Evie took a picture of it, too, and of the old wooden roulette wheel leaned up against it.

Nearby, leaning against a post, was a mustard-colored merry-go-round horse with a black saddle. Big teeth, bulging eyes, a real horsehair tail—Evie had seen the same style on carousel horses from Coney Island. Gingerly she touched one of the carved cabbage roses that adorned its side. It was clearly the work of a master craftsman. She took more photos.

“Come on back here,” Finn said, his voice coming from deep in the recesses of the basement. Evie’s mind raced as she followed along a narrow track between piles. Finn pulled one light switch, then another and another as they zigzagged past a decaying life-size papier-mâché clown and a pair of pedal boats, between crates and piles of cardboard boxes and tarp-covered mounds of heaven only knew what. Through one of the high narrow windows just above ground level, the beam from a headlight filled the darkness farther in and then vanished.

It was tantalizing, overwhelming, and Evie wondered if this was anything like what Howard Carter felt when he discovered Tutankhamun’s treasures hidden under the ancient remains of workmen’s huts in the Valley of the Kings. Lost Amusement Parks—she could envision an exhibit featuring these forgotten treasures that had somehow managed to survive. The final piece in the installation would be the Indian gate, its paint loss stabilized, all lit up. The ironwork was far too fragile to allow people to step through it, but she’d find appropriate sound effects, and some old photographs showing the entrance in its glory days. Some of those boxes might even contain photographs and advertising materials.

Finn pulled another switch, lighting the back corner. There lay what looked like a mass of twisted scrap metal about the size of a VW bug. It took Evie a moment to sort out what she was looking at: an upside-down passenger car from a Ferris wheel. Benign neglect could account for the paint that had long since rusted away, but the twisting and wrenching had taken a much more violent and powerful force. The bar that held passengers in was nearly bent double. Just looking at it made Evie smell hot metal. “What happened?” she asked.

“A freak wind squall. Might even have been a tornado. Blew over the entire Ferris wheel in 1916. Killed twenty-four people.”

The smell grew stronger as Evie ran her hand lightly across a once flat piece of metal with a scalloped edge that had been the floor of the car.

“Kind of beautiful, isn’t it, in an eerie way?” Finn said.

It was, almost like a piece of sculpture. It reminded Evie of one of the enduring images from the Triangle Shirtwaist fire: the horrifying beauty of a fire escape, pulled and twisted like strings of taffy from the fire’s heat. It wouldn’t be hard to research the accident that had taken down this Ferris wheel, to get a blow-up facsimile of the headline and article that would have run at the time.

“The park closed just a few years later,” Finn said.

“Prohibition,” Evie said. “That’s what did in so many parks and casinos.”

“Maybe so. But that wasn’t what did in my great-grandfather. He was swindled by a smooth-talking businessman, a guy who had all the makings of a two-bit robber baron.”

“Thomas Higgs,” Evie said, remembering her research.

“He and my great-grandfather were friends. Then business partners.” Evie jumped, startled when Finn stamped his foot hard on the floor. “Sorry. Water bug.”

“Higgs was a swindler?”

Finn looked toward the open bulkhead door and back at Evie. “You really want to hear about it?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I do.”

“It was pretty simple, really. Thomas Higgs forged my great-grandfather’s signature, transferring all the property except this building to himself. Then he subdivided, built the houses on the lots, and you know the rest.”

“How could he have done that without your great-grandfather’s permission? I mean, what’s the difference between that and stealing?”

“That’s what it was. Robbery, pure and simple. But that makes no difference when you have political connections and justice can be bought. That’s one of the reasons I went to law school. To see if there was a way that we could get the property back.”

“We?”

“Me and my cousin. We’re the only ones left. We’d own it all if it hadn’t been stolen.”

Evie just stood there, trying to absorb what he’d just said. Finn and his cousin were still trying to reclaim their great-grandfather’s estate—all of Higgs Point. At least that explained what a guy with a degree from Columbia Law School was doing in this remote corner of the Bronx. She wondered if it didn’t explain much more than that. What if . . . ? But before she could connect the dots, she realized that the hot metal smell she thought she had conjured up with the twisted Ferris wheel car had grown so strong that her eyes watered.

“You okay?” Finn asked.

“What’s that smell?” Evie started for the bulkhead. Walking, then running.

“Evie?” Finn called after her, but she was already halfway out, past the leering clown, the carousel horse, the fortune-teller, the smell growing with every step.

She ran up the stairs and out. Her eyes stung, blurring her vision, but she could see smoke was blowing in from the direction of the water. From the direction of her mother’s house. It couldn’t be happening. Not again.

Evie broke into a run and kept on running, pounding forward. One block. Another. Now she could see an orange glow. Hear the snap of sparks. Smell the acrid scent she remembered from when she was six.

She fully expected to find her mother’s house ablaze. But it wasn’t. The pile of lumber in the driveway between Mrs. Yetner’s house and the house on the other side from Evie’s mother had caught fire. Flames licked up the sides of both houses.

Evie stopped, frozen in horror. Was Mrs. Yetner inside?

With a loud crack, sparks exploded. Burning cinders rose on an updraft and landed on the roof of the house next door to Mrs. Yetner’s.

“Evie!” Finn ran up behind her.

“Call 911!” she yelled to him as she ran up the front steps of Mrs. Yetner’s house and banged on the door with her fists. “Fire! Fire! Mrs. Yetner! Brian! You’ve got to get out of there.” She tried the knob. Kicked at the door.

“Wait!” Finn grabbed her arm and tried to pull her away. “Listen—fire trucks are on the way.”

Not soon enough. Evie remembered how quickly fire had engulfed her parents’ house. There’d been a stiff wind that day, just as there was one now. “There’s no time,” Evie said. “Go! Make sure there isn’t anyone in that house.” She pointed to the house next door.

“But—”

Without a backward glance, Evie ran around to the back, praying that Mrs. Yetner’s keys were still under the whitewashed rock where she’d left them. They were. In a few moments, she had the back door open.

Smoke was starting to fill the house. Evie found the light switch and flipped it, but nothing happened. She felt her way through the dark to the couch, grabbed Mrs. Yetner’s crocheted comforter, and held it over her face as she ran through the living room. She was almost at the downstairs bedroom when she tripped and fell heavily to the floor. As she pushed herself up she got a good look at what had gotten in her way. A broken lawn chair, just like the broken lawn chair that had been in her mother’s house.

Evie looked at the chair more closely, then around at Mrs. Yetner’s living room. The entire room was filled with the same kind of debris she’d had to clear from her mother’s house. Not the same kind of debris, she realized, catching sight of a mattress that stood propped against the wing chair. This was the same debris exactly. It hadn’t been picked up at the curb by a garbage truck. It had been dumped in Mrs. Yetner’s house.

Evie threaded her way to the downstairs bedroom. The walls of the tiny room glowed orange. Burning lumber was right outside the window. The bed had been left rumpled and unmade, like Mrs. Yetner had just gotten out of it.

The door to the closet was closed. As Evie smelled the smoke and heard the fire roar, in her mind’s eye she saw the closet door opening. Only instead of Blackie and her puppies, she was the one inside the closet, under her parents’ hanging clothes, watching the closet door pull open. The memory was so vivid, it made Evie gasp.

In three steps, Evie was there. Opening the closet door. But this closet was empty. Completely empty. Not a single item of clothing, not even a shoe. Just a few empty clothes hangers.

Mrs. Yetner had probably been moved upstairs. Evie started for the hall when the bedroom window exploded, showering the bed with glass. Evie ducked as she ran out, slamming the door, hoping to contain the fire. She had to squeeze past piles of newspaper stacked outside the bathroom. She flew up the stairs and into the bedroom. And just stood, staring, not believing what she saw.

The beds and bureaus, white curtains, and hooked rugs were gone. Not only was there no new bathroom in the room that stretched from the front of the house to the back of the house, the interior had been completely gutted. The baseboards were gone. The sumptuous Eastlake-style window trim had been ripped from around the doors and windows. Even the doors had been removed. No map hung on the wall.

A single item was left on the floor of the room, and it was the one thing Evie knew Mrs. Yetner would have taken with her. Her cane.

Evie heard sirens outside, each second growing louder. She returned to the doorway to the stairs. The stairwell had filled with dense smoke. It was too dangerous to try to go back down. She ran to the window. A hook and ladder was parked outside. An ambulance with its siren wailing pulled up behind it, and behind the ambulance, a police cruiser.

Firefighters were already hooking up a hose. People were gathering from up and down the street to see what was happening. Two police officers pushed spectators back. “Stay back!” one of them yelled through a bullhorn.

In the crowd, she spotted Finn. He waved at her. Shouted something she couldn’t hear. Then he ran over and grabbed one of the police officers. Pointed to Evie.

Moments later, firefighters had a ladder off the truck. Evie tried to open the window, but it was stuck. She swung Mrs. Yetner’s cane, using the handle like the business end of a bat, and broke the glass. Immediately she felt heat build behind her from the updraft she’d created. The smoke in the room thickened.

With a thud, the ladder hit the side of the house. Ratcheted up to the window.

Evie was about to climb out when she looked across the street. There, in the second-floor window of Mr. Cutler’s house, stood a pale figure. At first Evie thought it was a child, standing there staring out, her hands up against the glass, pale hair haloed around her face.

Then she realized. It was no child. It was Mrs. Yetner.