Close to Home (16 page)

Immediately the phone started ringing again. Evan's name and number flashed onto the screen. She clicked her cell off as she knew he wouldn't give up. He'd call back over and over again, leaving messages, each a little more demanding, and inevitably he would end up reminding her of all he'd done for her while she was an employee at Tolliver Construction. He'd already twisted history enough to believe that it was because of him, not her own abilities, that she'd been promoted by his father before Bill retired and made his son president.

“Evan?” Gracie asked.

“Evan,” she agreed.

“He's a dipstick.”

Though Sarah agreed, she held her tongue. “Let's not think about him right now.”

“But he's here, isn't he?”

Sarah gave her daughter a long look. “Here?” she repeated, the warning hairs on the back of her neck lifting a little. “What're you talking about?”

“Evan was at the pizza parlor when we were there.”

Sarah was slowly shaking her head. “Of course not.”

“Not inside,” her daughter clarified as Sarah told herself this was all a big mistake. “His truck was parked outside, across the street.”

“You're sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

Gracie wasn't one to make a mistake like this. “I was gonna say somethin', but we ran into that neighbor guy and I forgot.”

Sarah's mind was turning in circles. If Evan really was in Stewart's Crossing, why hadn't he said as much on the phone?

“Did Evan see us?”

“Well, he was sitting right there. I looked at him, and he looked down, like he was texting or something. He was wearing his Mariners baseball cap and sunglasses.”

“So he saw us talking to Clint? The neighbor?” She thought about the way Clint had touched her on the shoulder. Familiarly. As if they shared something, which, of course they did, a past she'd never mentioned to anyone outside of Stewart's Crossing.

“I don't know how he could've missed it.” Gracie shrugged as Sarah's heart did a nosedive. That explained the comment about her seeing someone else. “Evan's weird, Mom, I'm glad you told him to leave us alone.”

“Me too,” Sarah said with new-felt conviction. Not for the first time, she wished she hadn't ever agreed to go out with him. She should've known better. Now, though, it was too late for self-recriminations. What's done was done. She only hoped that this time he got the message.

And what if he hasn't? What if he truly was in Stewart's Crossing and saw Clint touch your shoulder the other day?
Out of the corner of her eye she glanced at the windows, where the darkness beyond was almost palpable. Even if he had been in town, and that was unlikely, what were the chances he'd stuck around?

Don't borrow trouble, He's not lurking outside, not peering through binoculars at the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of you, not plotting some bizarre revenge, He's not psychotic or some kind of sociopath, He's just a narcissist,

“Bad enough,” she said under her breath as she walked to the dining room and dimmed the lights. There were no blinds to snap shut, no curtains to pull, no drapes to close. No, for the present, the windows that existed were bare, and they would be until the place was renovated. As for the guesthouse, she decided at that moment she'd spend the money and buy cheap blinds just to ensure her family's privacy.

Don't let the seeds of paranoia grow, Nothing good will come of it,

No longer backlit, she stepped closer to the windows and peered outside again. Pale moonlight washed the landscape, flimsy clouds unable to hide the luminescence of a nearly full moon.

No one was outside.

Nothing evil skulked in the shadows.

Still, goose bumps rose on the back of her arms.

She leaned closer to the window, placing the tips of her fingers on the cold, watery glass and squinting into the darkness. Surely they were alone. Surely they were safe. Surely—

Thud!

Sarah nearly jumped from her skin.

What the devil? Instinctively, she glanced to the ceiling. One of the girls must've gone upstairs, she thought. She looked in the living room and found both Jade and Gracie huddled beneath blankets around the iPad. “Is the cable ever going to get hooked up?” Jade asked, looking up through the fringe of long bangs. “I mean real cable. So we can watch TV?”

“In a couple of days, in the guesthouse.”

“God, it's like forever!”

“You guys hear anything?” Sarah asked.

“What?” Gracie raised her eyes, lifting her gaze from the screen.

Jade ignored her.

“Nothing.” No reason to freak out the girls just because of her overactive imagination. She'd let Evan's call and the isolation of the night get to her, which was just plain stupid.

Nevertheless, after grabbing a flashlight from the kitchen, she climbed the stairs to investigate. On the second floor, she yanked open the door to the first room, the one that had belonged to her twin brothers, and shined her flashlight over the barren interior. The room appeared the same as it had earlier: cobwebs and draped furniture, a few old basketball posters falling from the walls, twin bed frames pushed against the closet. Nothing was out of place.

The same went for the rooms across the hallway, including hers. The twin bed that she had occupied growing up, lying sleepless on hot summer nights, eyes focused on the ceiling as she dreamed of Clint Walsh, was intact, its mattress wrapped in plastic. Her unoccupied desk was pushed into a corner, and faded awards for riding gathered dust on the old bulletin board. Everything was still. Motionless.

Dee Linn's room, still painted a faded pink, was nearly empty of furniture. The oversized bathroom and walk-in storage closet felt cold and dusty from disuse.

On the second floor, everything looked untouched, just the way it had the last time she'd been up here, earlier in the day. But then, deep down, she'd known it would.

Tamping down her dread, she mounted the stairs to the third floor. Her fingers skimmed the worn banister, and she forced her feet to step quickly up the remaining steps. At the landing, she flipped the switch for the hallway, and the lightbulb in the old fixture popped, flashing bright before dying completely.

“Great.” Turning on her flashlight, she passed by the closed door to the master bedroom suite, which consisted of the bedroom, a dressing room, a private bath, and a study. The suite was one more area that had been off-limits to her as a child. The door had always been closed, and she'd heard the fights that had emanated through the solid wood, her mother's accusations and shrieks, the harsh slapping sounds of flesh meeting flesh. She suspected her parents had fought as violently as they'd made love, with a blinding, hostile passion that Sarah had yet to understand. For most of Sarah's life, Arlene had seemed angry, while Franklin, a kinder soul, had often been distant to his children.

For the moment, she ignored that closed door to her parents' fortress and trained her flashlight's beam along the hallway and on the door of the room near the attic stairs. Theresa's room. Another spot that was forbidden.

Sweeping the flashlight's beam over the floor, Sarah sensed her heartbeat quicken, a cold dread growing within.

Gritting her teeth, she walked to the room. At the doorway, she imagined she heard sobbing from within, but, of course, that was impossible. Heart beating light and fast, she twisted the knob and pushed on the panels. For once the door opened easily, swinging into the cold room.

Stomach tight, Sarah stepped carefully inside and chided herself for the overwhelming sensation that someone or something was waiting inside, ready to lunge from the darkness.

The room was still.

The moaning she'd conjured was just the whisper of the wind blowing through the crack in the window.

Nothing sinister.

Nothing unworldly.

Just the sough of a breeze.

No one was inside.

Nothing was wrong.

Everything from the cracked mirror to the half-draped vanity was just as she'd left it.

She let out her breath as the flashlight's beam swept over the floor.

Standing in front of the fireplace stood the little Madonna statue.

Sarah's heart stilled.

Impossible!

If the statue had fallen, it would not have landed on its base and would have cracked or splintered into a thousand pieces.

With icy talons of fear climbing up her spine, she stepped backward.

Suddenly a gust of wind, heavy with the smell of the Columbia, raced into the room. The curtains fluttered wildly, twirling in a gauzy, macabre dance.

Sarah bit back a scream as the door to the hallway slammed with a hard, loud
slam
.

Whirling, she shined the light over the door and walls, then stepped back, knocking the Madonna over and nearly tripping.

“Leave us alone!” she hissed through gritted teeth, addressing the ghost that she purported not to believe in, the spirit of Angelique Le Duc. “Do you hear me?” she said and heard the desperation in her words. “Leave me and my family the hell alone!”

She half expected some apparition to whip by her, a hollow, mind-numbing laugh trailing after it, just as she'd seen in Hollywood horror movies.

Instead she saw and heard nothing, not even the faintest sough of the wind any longer. Inside the room there was only an aching, nearly palpable silence.

“M
om?” Gracie's voice accompanied the creak of the opening door to the third-floor room. “Are you okay?” Her daughter stood in the dark hallway. “I heard you talking to someone.”

“Just myself,” Sarah said quickly, mentally kicking herself for letting her case of nerves get to her. She must've sounded like a lunatic, railing at imaginary ghosts. Quickly she scooped up the tiny statue and set it back on the mantel, where it had stood for years. Luckily it was still intact.
Stay,
she mentally ordered it, staring into the Madonna's beatific face.

“What're you doing in here?”

“I thought I heard something. Turns out, the little Madonna statue fell off the mantel, probably from a gust of wind from this damned window.” She walked to the faulty jamb and tried to force the panes downward, but the glass was stuck and wouldn't budge. “Something we'll have to put up with until the windows are replaced,” she said. “Come on, let's go downstairs. I could use a cup of hot chocolate.”
With a significant amount of liquor tossed into it,

“Did you know that there's a cemetery on this property?” Gracie asked once they were in the kitchen again and the ghosts of the past remained upstairs.

“Of course.” How often had she and Clint gone riding on the pastureland abutting the small fenced plot? As a child, she too had been fascinated with the family graves and had wandered through the graying headstones, as she'd marveled at the names and dates carved into each marker. Children younger than herself had been laid to rest there, along with her ancestors, some of whom had lived to be over a hundred.

“And a lot of people died here?”

“A lot of people who lived here were buried there.”

“No, I mean they died
here!”
Gracie pointed emphatically at the floor. “Not in the kitchen, but in the house or on the property. I looked it up. Not just Angelique and maybe her husband.”

“Maxim.”

“One of the ranch hands hung himself out in the bunkhouse,” Gracie said.

“That was just a rumor.”

“What about Grandpa?”

“My dad was sick a long while, and he wasn't young. It happens, honey. People die.” Where was this going?

“It seems like there have been lots of 'em.” She angled her face up to stare at Sarah. “You probably know Angelique Le Duc has her own tomb too?”

Nodding, Sarah found a box of cocoa mix and pulled out a packet. She dumped the powdery contents into a cup she'd brought from Vancouver and heated the concoction in the ancient microwave, the only kitchen appliance that still worked.

“You never told me about the cemetery and the tomb,” Gracie said.

“I never really thought about it.”

“So have you been inside?” she pressed. “I mean, is it locked or open? There's nothing in there, right? Since Angelique was never found. No other dead bodies?”

“None that I know of.”

“Has anyone checked?”

As the microwave dinged, Sarah shook her head. “Maybe.” She opened the microwave to pull out the mug, but one touch and she realized the ceramic cup was too hot. “I think my brothers talked about it once, but that's all it was—just talk. You know how boys are,” Sarah said, though as a child she'd wondered if maybe there was something in the tomb. If not the bones of Angelique Le Duc, maybe the skeletons of others who had gone missing over the years. She'd even thought about her older sister, Theresa, but had never breathed a word of it as the subject of Theresa possibly being dead was taboo. No one ever mentioned it. Ever.

Using a dish towel as an oven mitt, she carried the mug to the table, where it steamed, giving off a warm, chocolate scent. “It's hot. Let it cool.”

Gracie ignored the cocoa as she climbed onto a battered stool near the counter. “Is it sealed?”

“I . . . don't know.” Sarah shrugged, feigning disinterest when really the crypt, with its intricate biblical carvings, had always fascinated and frightened her. Angels and scriptures had decorated the tomb—winged, spiritual creatures and banners, with short passages from the New Testament, carved into marble that had chipped and darkened over time. She'd touched those cool walls, traced the chiseled words of scripture with her fingertips and yes, often wondered who, if anyone, lay within.

“Can we get inside?” Gracie asked.

The thought was petrifying, if a little inviting. Yes, she was curious, but if a dead body were inside, wouldn't it be best to let it rest in peace?
Not if it would solve a family mystery
. “Why would you want to?”

“Maybe there's some clue to what happened to Angelique.”

“In the vault?” Jade asked, walking in on the end of the conversation. “How morbid.” She too pulled up a stool near the counter and pushed aside a box of old cookware Sarah hadn't yet sorted through. “You're obsessed.”

Gracie threw her a “who needs you?” look. “At least it's a better obsession than yours.”

Jade looked at her sister as if she'd gone mad. “I'm not obsessed with any—”

“Cody Russell?”

“That's not obsession. It's . . .”

“What?” Gracie cut her off. “Love?”

“Oh, get over yourself,” Jade tossed back. “What do you know about it?”

“Enough!” Sarah declared. She was sick of the bickering, and her case of nerves hadn't completely abated. “Jade, do you want some cocoa?”

Jade glanced at Gracie's cup. “Sure, why not? Got marshmallows?”

“I really doubt it.” Sarah started the instant hot chocolate process all over again, using the last packet. “Oh, wait . . .” She found an unopened bag of miniature marshmallows that she'd put in one of the few food boxes they'd hauled from Vancouver. “Your lucky day,” she told her older daughter and was rewarded with an eye roll.

“I'll take some,” Gracie said, and Sarah dropped a few of the not-so-soft white bits into her younger daughter's cup.

As she heated Jade's cocoa, Sarah relaxed a little and told herself she'd overreacted earlier. So the statue had fallen off the mantel and landed upright. So what? It
could
happen. And if Evan were really in Stewart's Crossing, yeah, okay, it was odd that he hadn't mentioned it, but not a big deal, right?

But what about the missing teenaged girl? That
is
something to worry about,

“You know,” she said over the quiet hum of the microwave's slowly rotating turntable, “I've been thinking that Gracie's right.”

“About what?” Jade asked, looking faintly horrified.

“About a dog. Maybe we do need one.”
A big dog,
she silently added,
a guard dog,

“Mom, are you serious?” Gracie jumped off her stool, she was so excited.

“Um-hm. And the sooner the better, I think. Let's go to the shelter tomorrow after school and pick one out.”

A wide smile stretched across Gracie's face. “A puppy?”

“Let's start with a mature dog,” Sarah suggested. “One that's at least house-trained.”

“Okay.” Gracie was beaming as Sarah found the pot of this morning's coffee and poured herself a cup. She retrieved Jade's cup of hot chocolate, then put the mug of coffee on the turntable in its stead and, with a push of a button, once again started the microwave.

“You're giving in?” Jade asked, lifting her brows.

“Uh-huh.” Sarah added a handful of marshmallows and placed the warm cup on the counter in front of her eldest. “Gracie's right, ‘a promise is a promise.' ”

Jade thought that over. “Can I ditch school so we can go earlier to get the dog?”

“I said, ‘after . . .' Oh.”

Sarah shot her a look but saw that Jade was teasing, which was nice. Glimpses of the younger daughter she remembered, hidden behind makeup and attitude, were rare but gave Sarah hope that, after these trying teenage years, Jade would come around again, show an interest in school, and realize that she was smart and pretty and could do anything she wanted.

As Jade blew across her cup, she said, “Seriously, Mom, I think public school would be a better fit for me.”

“You've only been to Our Lady a few days.”

“I can already tell it's not going to work.”

“Can we give it the rest of this year, which, by the way, is already paid for? Our Lady is a great school. If you still feel this way after the end of the school year, then we'll discuss.”

“But I hate it,” Jade grumbled.

“Just give it a shot, okay?”

“You don't know what it's like.”

“I didn't want to go there either when my folks sent me,” Sarah said. The microwave dinged loudly, and she grabbed her cup carefully, using the dish towel again. “I hated leaving my friends from junior high. Thought I'd die. In fact, I think I even told my parents that I would. Dad would have let me pull out and go to the public school. He was kind of a softie where we girls were concerned. We could get away with murder with him. But let me tell you, there was no way my mother would hear of it.” She took a tentative drink of her coffee. “You know, I really hate to admit it, even to this day, but Mom was right. I ended up with tons of new friends as well as keeping the old ones that I made in elementary and junior high school.”

“My ‘old ones' are in Vancouver,” Jade pointed out.

“Which is less than a hundred miles away. You won't lose them. Not the real ones.”

“You don't know that,” Jade charged.

“Let's not argue,” Gracie cut in as she retrieved her spot on the scarred stool. “We're getting a dog! And that's like the coolest!”

“It is,” Sarah agreed and said, “Let's have a toast,” then clinked her cup to both her daughters'. “To Rover.”

Jade groaned loudly. “
Not
Rover. Geez, Mom, you're ridiculous!”

“Then Fifi. Or maybe Spot or Fido,” Sarah teased.

“God, Mom, you're the lamest.” But Jade actually chuckled.

Sarah smiled. “Okay, we'll wait until we meet him.”

“Or her,” Gracie said.

“Right, or her,” Sarah agreed. “Now, everyone who has homework better get at it.”

This time Jade's groan was sincere, though Gracie, anxious to please lest Sarah change her mind about the dog, scrambled off her stool and headed for the dining room, where she'd tossed her backpack earlier. Jade's phone vibrated loudly enough that Sarah heard it. Climbing off her stool, Jade began texting like mad as she too left the room.

Alone again, Sarah sipped her coffee in the kitchen and told herself she'd been irrational earlier.

There were no ghosts haunting this old house.

Nor had there ever been.

But as she carried her girls' cups to the sink, she caught a glimpse of the marshmallows melting in Jade's remaining cocoa—streaming, white, phantom-like strands of sugar—and Sarah knew she was kidding herself.

The ghost of Blue Peacock Manor had roamed these hallways for nearly a century and wasn't about to stop anytime soon. Sarah had always known it at some level. The question was: what could she do about it?

 

Lying on his stomach in the brush, his elbows propped on a fallen log, he stared at the old house through night-vision goggles. He hadn't been here in a long while, and even in the darkness it was obvious the house was in sad repair, not that he cared. He was just surprised that anyone would want to live in it. Especially because he'd been told that the place was haunted with restless spirits, that unthinkable acts had occurred within the walls of Blue Peacock Manor.

All the better, though.

For his work.

Ever since he'd spied Jade on the steps of Our Lady of the River, he'd decided to place her on his list of candidates. He only hoped she was more malleable than Rosalie, who had turned into an A-one bitch. He had the war wounds to prove it after her attempted escape. Shit, she'd almost gotten away, and that really pissed him off! But, he reminded himself, he needed a couple of girls with fire. A meek one would be necessary, of course, and he'd already chosen her, but Jade, with her sultry attitude and haunted eyes, would be a nice addition.

Adjusting the vision, he froze as he saw movement in his field of vision, then relaxed when he realized it was only a coyote wandering across what had once been the front lawn. The animal looked directly at him before skulking away. Once again he concentrated on the windows of the house, where lights from inside backlit anyone moving within. But he saw nothing, and even when he slid the night-vision lenses off and used his binoculars, training them on the glowing patches of light, no one appeared.

They were there, though; the Explorer was parked near the garage.

“Come on,” he whispered, wanting just one more glimpse, a little peek, and then he lucked out. As if someone inside had heard him and heeded his calling, a shadow appeared in the window. Not Jade, with her pouty mouth, big eyes, and pointy little chin, but the other one, the younger girl, who was not quite a woman, maybe twelve or thirteen, an innocent . . . a virgin?

Probably.

Oh,
that
would be good. Very good. He almost peed himself with delight at the prospect. Yes, yes!

The wheels in his mind began to whir as he considered, once more, the prospect of taking both girls. It would be tricky, probably not accomplished at the same time . . . no! One would become bait for the other. Oh, yeah, that would be it.

The scenario played out in his mind, and he smiled to himself. He would have to work fast; capturing this pair would become his ultimate goal, and then he'd move on. But if he found a way to lure the little one, certainly big sis would follow.

The light snapped off, and the girl in the window was no longer there. He took his time getting the lay of the land, making note of the outbuildings and lane, the cliffs, forest, and property lines, the river on one side, the Walsh property on the other, the county road bisecting the parcel, and government land backing up to the rest.