Interstitial

Thanksgiving 1954 Washington, D.C.

Briarwood House is getting impatient. The body has been removed from Grace’s apartment and transported to the morgue; the police have tramped around taking pictures of everything; the witnesses have been rounded up in the kitchen—when on earth are things going to get interesting? This has not been at all like Dragnet , the house thinks disapprovingly. Sergeant Joe Friday would have had a theory by now, would have said, “Just the facts” at least once. (The house has become addicted to Dragnet since Pete started tuning in on Grace’s set last year.) But this balding detective and his partner are clearly no Joe Friday and Officer Smith.

Maybe that’s all to the good , the house thinks. There’s a lot at stake tonight, after all. It’s not just about who gets hauled off in handcuffs. It’s much, much more.

“I’m betting on the ex-con,” the detective is telling his partner, still eyeing Xavier Byrne where he leans against the kitchen sink, looking around him with perfect calm. He isn’t calm, of course; the house knows this and throws a little cooling breeze through the stifling-hot kitchen in reassurance. Briarwood House hadn’t gotten much in the way of vicarious passion till Xavier came along to knock Nora out of her Cuban heels—goodness, that first night up in 4A had gotten the house so steamed up, the boiler overheated for a week. “The rest of ’em are too scared to cross him,” the detective goes on. “That’s why they’re not talking.”

The house would roll its eyes if it had any. Joe Friday wouldn’t be focusing on Nora’s ex-lover or why he’s here tonight or why he isn’t as calm as he pretends to be. No, Joe Friday would be more interested in why the crowded group settled around the kitchen still looks so tense, and not because Xavier Byrne is in the room, either. Joe Friday would be asking why so many of the women in this room have dried blood droplets on them, as if they had ringside seats to the murder upstairs... and yet, not one of these same women is shrieking or pointing fingers.

“Okay, time to split ’em up,” the detective is finally saying. “Get some answers, get ’em talking.” He moves into the kitchen, at once the object of all eyes, and just to be spiteful the house rucks the edge of the carpet so he trips. “All right now, folks—”

Grace’s ginger cat is hiding under the kitchen table, ears flattened. The house gives a noncorporeal stroke down the cat’s spine. Grace had been right when she said this place needed a pet. The padding of a cat’s paws on kitchen tile, the thump of a dog’s tail against a banister: that’s another of those things, like the smell of a good meal in the oven, that really makes a house. Makes it more than just a set of foundations and walls. The house whispers a suggestion to the cat, and cats aren’t always accommodating (not being impressed by plaster and chimney bricks, or in fact much of anything), but Grace’s Red gives a yawn and strolls out from under the table as the detective drones overhead. Winds out of the kitchen, across the hallway, pads across Reka’s cane where it had fallen in the struggle and now lay forgotten (poor Reka), and nudges open the door to the parlor...

Where a certain familiar smell immediately begins wafting.

The house sits back, pleased, as the nearest cop on duty pokes his head around the door and promptly turns white. Another set of tense glances ricochet bulletlike between the sixteen suspects in the kitchen. The detective breaks off in his lecture. “What’s in that parlor?” he snaps.

The second body , thinks Briarwood House. And braces itself.