“If I can find a room.” She pointed to the back lot. “My car’s over there.”
He nodded. Then, changing his mind, he U-turned and pulled out of the lot. “We’ll get your car later. There’s someone I want you to meet first.”
Rafferty drove them away from the police station and across town to Salem Common, passing the elegant old Hawthorne Hotel and pulling instead into the long driveway of a massive brick house.
Callie read a sign posted on the side door: EVA’S LACE READER TEAROOM.
“That’s the place,” said Rafferty.
At the end of the driveway, they stopped in front of a smaller coach house. A lean woman with strawberry blond hair stood on a stepladder next to a huge oak tree at the entrance to the courtyard, scrubbing at graffiti that had been spray-painted on its bark.
“Damn it,” Rafferty muttered.
It took Callie a minute to realize that the defaced area looked like a rose. Not like the stylized, five-petaled rose on her palm, but a more realistic one, complete with thorns and an inscription: Kill the banshee!
“Don’t worry. I’ll try painting over it if I can find a color that matches the bark,” the woman said to Rafferty as he got out of the car. She climbed down from the ladder, handing Rafferty the bucket. She kissed him hello, then turned to look at Callie.
“Callie, this is my wife, Towner Whitney. Towner, this is Callie.” Seeing some girls from the tearoom, he stopped short of saying her last name. Towner saw his look and picked up the cue.
Towner extended her hand. “How nice to meet you, Callie. I only wish the circumstances were better.”
“Me, too,” said Callie.
“I thought I’d help Callie book a hotel room,” Rafferty said.
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Towner said. “You don’t have to pay for a hotel. You can use Rose’s room.”
“I thought you might say that.” Rafferty smiled.
“Rose lives here?” Callie asked, pressing her palms together as she spoke. “On the news they said she was homeless.”
“Well…usually, she sleeps in our courtyard under her tree.” Towner pointed to the huge oak. “That oak actually belongs to Rose. But that’s a story for another day.” She smiled, gesturing to the door. “We set aside a room for her in the house. She sleeps there sometimes. When I can convince her to. Please, come on inside.”
Rafferty and Callie followed Towner up the front steps and into the foyer, where a spiral staircase wound three flights upward, seemingly suspended in the air surrounding it. On either side of the foyer were two matching parlors the size of ballrooms with a black marble fireplace at each end.
“I’ve been here before,” Callie murmured.
“You have, actually.” Towner nodded. “My grandmother once told me that you and your mother stayed in this house for a little while, before you moved in with Rose.”
“I don’t remember that,” Callie said. “But I know I’ve seen that staircase.”
“Rose’s room is two flights up.”
“I’ll leave you two ladies to it,” said Rafferty, excusing himself.
The women took the stairs to a large room with a comfortable-looking bed and a sink in the corner. Lining the walls were framed black-and-white photos of oak trees.
“Did Rose take these?”
Towner shook her head. “I took them. I was trying to lure Rose indoors. It didn’t do much good, I’m afraid. She only comes up here when it’s raining so hard it floods the parks.”
“Strange,” Callie said, unaware she had said the word aloud until she heard her voice echo in the huge room.
“Rose has a mission.”
“What kind of mission?”
“She believes she can find the remains of the hanging tree that was used to execute the victims of the witch trials in 1692. The one that either died or was chopped down—back in, well, no one knows when. She had a vision that the tree was intentionally moved, and she’s set her heart on finding it. She thinks it will lead her to the missing remains of those executed in 1692.”
Callie looked surprised. “How would that work?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Rose believes the oak trees of Salem hold some clue.” Towner looked at Callie before continuing. “She says the trees speak to her.”
“Oh,” Callie said.
“She’s had a tough time of it in the last few years.”
“So I’ve heard.” Callie’s trembling voice belied her calm words. “Still, talking trees…”
“I know,” Towner said. “Sometimes I almost believe her. I think my grandmother Eva did.”
“Really?” Callie said.
“Eva and Rose had a special connection.”
Callie waited for Towner to explain, but she didn’t.
“Rose considers finding the hanging tree her life’s work. The way she once felt about proving the real site of the executions, something she actually managed to do. I can’t figure out how finding the remains of missing victims of the Salem witch trials relates to modern-day oak trees. Or to banshees, for that matter, but I know it must. Or at least it does in Rose’s mind. Maybe you’ll have better luck finding a connection. If you can get her to start talking again.”
There was a long silence as Callie remembered how different Rose had been the last time they’d seen each other, before today. She had taught Callie and her mother so much, telling them stories, and Rose had instructed them all in the history of their ancestors, a history that, even now, Callie could recite the same way she could recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Or the Lord’s Prayer. Rose, not the nuns who ended up raising her, had taught her that prayer. To think of Rose as she’d seen her today made Callie almost unbearably sad.
“I recognize that,” Callie said, fighting tears and gesturing to the opposite side of the room. Framed on the wall was a map depicting Salem as it was in the 1600s, before landfill wiped out most of the North River. “I was raised on that map. Rose used it when she taught us lessons about our ancestors.”
“Sidney Perley’s map? Rose gave it to me,” Towner said. “She said she knew every inch of it by heart.”
“I wouldn’t doubt that at all,” Callie said, looking at the spot Rose had circled in red and labeled “Proctor’s Ledge,” the same location they had gone to the night of the murders, near where the map depicted Town Bridge. A snippet of poetry came back to her. Something written by Sidney Perley. Poetry! the gem that gilds The world of letters, and gives Expression to soul beauty. It was one of the first poems Rose had ever made her memorize. She could see the book in her memory, its fraying leather cover and broken spine: The Poets of Essex County.