Are You Haunted (part four)

Are You Haunted

(part four)

He saw daylight through shutters stripe the floors, each stripe sparkle with dust.

The Drybrook place was vacant, but its owners knew the worth of it. The trust must pay for a cleaning now and then. And Guy only policed the grounds…someone else stopped by to run a mower over the grass. All of that needed taking into account.

The downstairs rooms were alike for character, having not a stick of furniture, old floorboards nail-holed where carpets had been tacked down. The walls were moiré-papered, with lighter shapes of pictures, maybe mirrors, an S-curved sofa back, a tall cabinet…

Powell heard a floorboard knock against the beam it rested on. A beat after, pop into place. Ba-bump. Maybe for pleasure, Guy trod this a second time, while hinges made a grinding, and a knob hit plaster.

Again the hinges.

Again the bump.

Guy trotted downstairs. “What’d you get yourself into?”

“All I’ve done is stand right here, sir. Do they keep the place heated?”

“In the wintertime.”

“Can I look at the kitchen?”

“Jesus lord! I don’t know why you ain’t gone ahead.”

But Guy led the way, back through the parlor and around the staircase. A short hallway, three narrow steps down, centers worn slick. A green range, an old one that ran on cannisters, against a yellow wall. Green and yellow linoleum.

Powell yielded to the universal impulse, and opened the icebox. The electric was off, the shelves empty.

“There you go, Kenzie. Ready to move in? Got an offer for Mrs. Drybrook?”

He quit looking at bare racks, and looked at Guy. He would give himself away, with no smart answer to deflect this shrewdness. And yet he felt he’d seen something frank in the Chief’s blue-eyed gaze.

He had meant to have this conversation anyway. “What’s that little shed out near the front?”

Cadenced for a stupid auditor, Guy told him: “Seem like that’d be a shed.”

“Sorry. I’m asking, what do they keep in there?”

He guessed she was gone, but could picture how, when he’d waved his warning, her smile had broadened. And in just the same way, she had shooed him back, mocking him.

“Better come on and see for yourself.”

Powell lagged at overgrown lilacs, their tips cracking caulk, jimmying panes of glass. Peonies then, half-a-dozen to prettify a random demarcation. Their buds might billow out blowsy pink, but were white this moment, edged blood-red.

“You damn lazy, or what? How long’s it take you to mosey over here?”

“I’m sorry.” He made sure of saying it.

4

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part five)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)