Rattlesnake Hill Read online

  Rattlesnake Hill

  A Berkshire Hilltown Mystery

  Rattlesnake Hill

  A Berkshire Hilltown Mystery

  Leslie Wheeler

  Encircle Publications, LLC

  Farmington, Maine U.S.A.

  Rattlesnake Hill Copyright © 2017 Leslie Wheeler

  Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-893035-81-2

  E-book ISBN 13: 978-1-893035-83-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951090

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher, Encircle Publications, Farmington, ME.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual places or businesses, is entirely coincidental.

  Editor: Cynthia Brackett-Vincent

  Book design: Eddie Vincent

  Cover design: Devin McGuire

  Cover images: © Shutterstock.com

  Author photograph: © Focus Photography

  Published by: Encircle Publications, LLC

  PO Box 187

  Farmington, ME 04938

  Visit: http://encirclepub.com

  Printed in U.S.A.

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Wheeler, Leslie, author.

  Title: Rattlesnake hill / Leslie Wheeler.

  Series: A Berkshire Hilltown Mystery

  Description: Farmington, ME: Encircle Publications, LLC, 2018.

  Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-893035-81-2 (pbk.) | 978-1-893035-83-6 (ebook) | LCCN 2017951090

  Subjects: LCC Family--Fiction. | Murder--Fiction. | City and town life--Fiction. | Massachusetts--Fiction. | Man-woman relationships--Fiction. | Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction. | BISAC FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths | FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense

  Classification: LCC PS3623.H435 R38 2018 | DDC 813.6--dc23

  Dedication

  For Nick, a boy when I began this book, and now a man.

  Acknowledgements

  Every book has a story behind it and Rattlesnake Hill has a long one. It began more years ago than I like to admit, as a sequel to the first book in my Miranda Lewis mystery series. But about a hundred pages in, in the midst of a crucial scene, I suddenly realized it wasn’t Miranda’s story, but someone else’s. It took time to determine who this character was, even more time to figure out exactly what her story was. Meanwhile, I wrote two more Miranda Lewis mysteries and numerous short stories, but I kept coming back to Rattlesnake Hill, because the story and its setting in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts remained close to my heart.

  As always, I’m grateful to the members of my writers’ critique group, past and present—Mark Ammons, Katherine Fast, Virginia Mackey, Cheryl Marceau, and Barbara Ross—for their patience in reading many different drafts, as I struggled to find my way. I also want to thank members of the New England Chapter of Sisters in Crime, whose positive responses to parts of the book I read aloud at meetings, encouraged me to continue. I am further grateful to Ann Collette and John Helfers for their thoughtful reading of the manuscript as a whole and for their suggestions, some of which I initially resisted, that made this a better book. The master class I took from Ramona DeFelice Long helped me over various hurdles during the final, major overhaul of the manuscript. Thanks go also to the New Marlborough Land Trust for showing me places I didn’t know existed in my town, including the locale for the book’s climax; and to Toby Peltz, for his help in framing the action of that climax. Additional thanks go to Gordon Aalborg and Cynthia Brackett-Vincent for their careful editing of the manuscript.

  Last but not least, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my family: to my late husband, Robert A. Stein, and to our son, Nicholas L. Stein, for their love and support and for the wonderful times we shared in the Berkshires. For Nick, it was a place where he could enjoy a Huck Finn boyhood, filled with fun and adventure; for Bob, a refuge, where nothing bad ever happened—or so he thought. For me, the Berkshires were and continue to be a source of inspiration. Yet while I appreciate the beauty and peace of the area, as a mystery writer, I’m also drawn to its dark side. And that duality is what I’ve tried to capture in Rattlesnake Hill.

  Finally, I want thank my intrepid ancestor, Benjamin Wheeler, for leaving his home in Marlborough, Massachusetts, and pushing through miles of wilderness to found the town where I have a home.

  *****

  The epigraph that begins this novel was adapted from the hymn, “We Cannot Think of Them as Dead,” by Frederick Lucian Hosmer, first published in The Thought of God, first series, 1885, second series, 1894. I heard a version of this hymn spoken as part of a “Day of the Dead” service at First Parish, Unitarian/Universalist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sometime in the 1990s.

  We cannot think of them as dead who walk with us no more; what they have been to us has left its seal and sign engraven deep within.

  −Frederick Lucian Hosmer

  Part I: The White Stag

  Chapter 1

  Three families lived on Rattlesnake Hill when I was a girl. At the top of the hill you had the Whittemores. They were rich folks from New York City. They built a big, brick house and spent the summers there. That mansion seemed like paradise to us Judds. We’d look up at it from our farm and pretend we were just a few rungs below the Pearly Gates. Beyond the Whittemores, you had the Barkers. They were a different sort. Backsliders, we called ’em, because everyone agreed they’d fallen from grace long ago. They lived on the wild back side of the hill, among the timber rattlesnakes. They made money off those snakes in the early days. They’d bring the tails to the town treasurer for a reward of two pennies a tail. Folks said it was the rattlesnake venom in their blood gave ’em such violent tempers.

  −Recollections of Emily Goodale

  “Whaddya think?” Brandy Russo asked, as they wrapped up the tour of the house on Rattlesnake Hill.

  “It’s nice, but . . .” Kathryn didn’t want to sound too eager, lest the realtor jack up the rent. Also, the house seemed almost too good to be true. There must be a catch somewhere.

  “Look what you’re getting,” Brandy barged on. “Charming shingle-style contemporary on eighteen secluded acres. Three bedrooms. One and one-half baths. Large, fully equipped kitchen. Separate dining room. Spacious living room. At $1000 a month this place is a steal.”

  It was a bargain all right, but Kathryn wasn’t quite ready to commit. “I’m surprised no one’s snatched it up already.”

  Brandy coughed. “A family had it for the summer and through the leaf-peeping season. But once the foliage was gone, they split. As for skiers, forget it. Gordon Farley—he’s the owner—won’t rent to them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Tenants-from-hell. Come in droves, track snow onto lovely hardwood floors like these.” Brandy tapped a pegged oak floorboard with the stubbed toe of her high heel. “Party all night and nearly set the house on fire fiddling with that.” She jabbed a bitten-down nail at the white enameled Scandinavian wood stove that stood on a slate hearth in the living room. “Leave a ton of trash behind, too. Whereas someone like you,” her voice switched to a soft purr, “is an ideal tenant. Single but mature. No kids, no pets.”

  “I . . . um . . . have a cat.”

  “One little kitty won’t bother Gordon,” Brandy
backpedaled. “Not with the menagerie he talked about having here. One week it was quail, the next, llamas, then buffalo.”

  Kathryn smiled. “Sounds like a frustrated zookeeper.”

  “More like a gentleman farmer with time on his hands and money to burn.”

  A sour note crept into Brandy’s voice. Did it reflect the attitude of a struggling local toward a wealthy outsider? Kathryn had only spent a few hours with Brandy, yet already she sensed a grittiness born of adversity.

  Brandy appeared to be several years older than Kathryn; late thirties or early forties. She might have been pretty once, but now her dirty blonde hair hung lank and lusterless, and fault-lines showed in her face despite a heavy coat of make-up. Her breath and clothes reeked of nicotine, the rank odor Kathryn associated with dirty dishes and despair.

  “What’d you say you’re gonna do while you’re here?” Brandy asked.

  “Research.”

  “This have to do with your job?”

  “Actually not. My ancestors lived in New Nottingham over a hundred years ago, and I want to find out more about them.”

  “A hundred years ago—wow!” Brandy’s glazed expression belied her enthusiasm. “But you’ve got a paying job, don’t you?”

  Kathryn nodded. “I’m the curator of prints and photographs at a small private library in Boston. I’m able to take time off, because the building’s being renovated, and the collection I oversee is in storage. So there’s not much for me to do right now. Still, I plan on keeping in touch with my boss. How’s the internet connection here?”

  “Fine,” Brandy said quickly.

  “There’s Wi-Fi?”

  “The village doesn’t have cable yet, but I’m sure it’ll happen any day now.”

  “DSL?”

  “Dial-up. There’s Wi-Fi in Great Barrington, though, and it’s only a twenty-minute drive away.”

  Hmm. Maybe this was the catch she’d worried about. “What about cell reception?”

  Brandy cleared her throat. “You won’t get a signal here, but I’ve heard there are hotspots further up the hill. Besides, convenient as it is, technology can be a huge distraction. I think you’ll find that the less of it you have, the more you’ll accomplish while you’re here. Oh, I almost forgot.” Brandy’s eyes gleamed like a gambler’s about to play her ace-in-the-hole. She swept across the room, heels clicking on the already extolled hardwood floor. With a dramatic flourish, she flung back heavy curtains revealing a panoramic sliding glass door.

  The land behind the house sloped down to a pond, fringed by tawny cattails and embedded in the rocky earth like a large shard of antique glass. Beyond the pond, stubbled fields gave way to woods. Deciduous trees, bare of leaves and dun-colored except where bittersweet had caught the branches in an orange stranglehold, formed the front line of the woods’ advance. Behind them stood tall sentinel pines. The sky glowed an iridescent red-orange, as if a distant city were on fire. Magnificent.

  A loud crack shattered the stillness. Kathryn clutched her heart. “What was that?”

  “Probably a car backfiring down the road.” Brandy waved a hand dismissively.

  The noise repeated: Boom, boom, boom! “Sounds like gunshots.”

  “Maybe. But don’t worry. It’s just some guy doing a little target practice.”

  “Does that happen a lot around here?” Much as she liked the house, she had no intention of putting herself in someone’s line of fire. This was a bigger negative than the lack of Wi-Fi and cell reception.

  “Oh, no. And never near houses. They always go way off in the woods.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Brandy looked Kathryn in the eye. “Would I lie to you?”

  Not lie outright—just not tell the whole truth.

  “So listen, there are a few more places I could show you, but why waste your time? They’re nowhere as nice as this house. How about it?” Brandy thrust her face in Kathryn’s.

  Resisting the hard sell, Kathryn took a step backward. “Okay if I take another look around by myself?”

  “Not at all.” Brandy jerked the curtain pull, and the vivid tableau vanished. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  Alone, Kathryn relaxed. She roamed the shadowy rooms with their curtained windows. The house was nothing like the Tudor mansion bordering the Beverly Hills Country Club, where she’d lived until her parents’ divorce when she was four. Nor was it like her second Eden, her great-aunt’s house on Diamond Head, where she’d spent the only happy times of her childhood. Still, she had the odd sense of being back in paradise.

  She returned to the red room upstairs Brandy told her had served as a study. She’d wanted a red room when she was young, imagining it would be like waking up in a valentine. Her grandmother had talked her out of it. “You paint your room red, you’ll end up loony like your mother.” Her great-aunt, on the other hand, would have loved this room and the entire house with its pond and flaming sunset view. A sharp pang sliced through her.

  The trip to New Nottingham in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts had been Aunt Kit’s idea. Ever since Kathryn could remember, Aunt Kit had wanted to learn the identity of their family’s Dark Lady, a beautiful, nameless woman in an old photograph an ancestor had brought with him to California. Long-distance inquiries proving fruitless, she finally decided a visit to the village was necessary and invited Kathryn to accompany her. “It will be wonderful seeing you after such a long time,” she said over the phone. “I’m so happy you’re willing to join me on a quest that’s always ranked high on my bucket list.”

  They planned the trip for last summer, but that spring Aunt Kit died suddenly of a heart attack. She bequeathed the photograph, along with relevant correspondence, and the sum of fifty thousand dollars to Kathryn. The photograph sat on Kathryn’s dresser, while she debated whether to pursue the quest alone. At first, it seemed quixotic; she’d only accepted the invitation out of a desire to please her beloved aunt. But the more she looked at the photograph, the more she understood Aunt Kit’s fascination with it. “There’s a story here,” her aunt had often said. “A story that’s waiting to be told.”

  She might have added, “A story with special meaning for you,” because that’s what Kathryn had come to believe. At some point, her aunt’s pet project had become hers. Now, standing in the valentine room of this house in the village where her ancestors once lived, she seemed to hover on the brink of discovery. As if she were poised at the tip of a high diving board, waiting to take the plunge, giddy with a mixture of excitement and fear.

  Chapter 2

  Someone had been here recently.

  He—Kathryn guessed it was a man—had sat in the very lounge chair that, tired from the drive and unpacking, she was about to settle into. Sat and popped aluminum rings off drink cans, tossing them onto the patio where they formed an untidy pile. Resisting the urge to scoop up and toss them in the trash inside, she lowered herself into the chair. Might as well enjoy the balmy Indian summer weather while it lasted. She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, imagining herself on the lanai of her great-aunt’s house on Diamond Head, listening to her speculate about the woman in the photograph. “Who was she, and why did he carry her picture all the way across the continent without ever revealing her name?” Aunt Kit would murmur dreamily.

  Who indeed? Opening her eyes, Kathryn reached for her tote. She slipped on the white gloves she wore when handling old prints and photographs. Then she removed the small, rectangular, leather-bound case from a plastic baggie. She opened the case and studied the photograph in its gilded frame. Her curator’s eye told her the image was a daguerreotype, a type of early photograph made on a light-sensitive, silver-coated plate. Brown spots marched across the portrait like spreading blight on plant leaves. Still, the young woman was lovely, with large, expressive eyes and a sensuous mouth curved into a wistful smile. Her dark hair
was parted in the middle and massed in a loose, old-fashioned coil around her heart-shaped face. She stared back at Kathryn, as beguiling and elusive as ever. Kathryn imagined the young woman slowly changing. Her hair uncoiled, falling upon her shoulders. She sprouted limbs and a torso, and stepped out of the frame, dressed in a loose white gown like those worn by young girls gathered for a May Day dance in a photograph in the Lyceum’s collection. The long, red sash tied around her waist trailed after her as she ran down the grassy slope from the patio. At the edge of the woods, the young woman turned and beckoned to her. The vision was so real that Kathryn actually rose to follow her with the same mix of excitement and fear she’d experienced in the valentine room.

  She blinked and the apparition vanished. She stared hard at the place where it had been. Nothing like this had ever happened to her. She wasn’t one to let her fancy run wild. She shook her head, as if to dislodge any remaining nonsense. She was alone with an old photograph; that was all.

  Then not alone. The rumble of a vehicle on the driveway signaled someone’s approach. Brandy with an extra set of keys or some other item related to the house? Instead of Brandy’s Honda, a pickup came into view. It was a faded red like the walls of the valentine room. There was some lettering on the body, but it was too far away for her to make out.

  Wait a minute. The driver must be crazy—he was headed straight for her parked car! She opened her mouth but the cry caught in her throat. The driver swung the vehicle sharply around and headed back down the driveway. That was a close call. The fool ought to pay attention to where he was going. It was probably a local who’d realized belatedly he’d come to the wrong place. Or the right place at the wrong time? Unease rippled through her.

  *****

  Earl Barker turned the pickup into the Farley driveway. He’d left work early so he could sit on the patio, gaze at the pond, and feel close to her. He visited as often as he could, but this afternoon’s visit was special. It was All Souls’ Day, the time when the line between the quick and the dead was the thinnest. While other people went to cemeteries, he came here. Her ashes had been scattered on the shimmering green waters he caught sight of as his truck rounded the bend in the driveway.