Are You Haunted (part thirty)

Are You Haunted

(part thirty)

The kitchen door stood back on its hinges. He had not really doubted it.

“I’m Powell Kenzie,” he told his uninvited guest.

“Sure you are. Alfin Tovey.”

A handshake, and Alfin preceded him into his house. “What you need is some furniture. But set that radio down where the kitchen table ought to be.”

“Mrs. Lessing has gone soft on Powell, Alfin. You wouldn’t know it to look at her.” Isobel turned from emptying the cooler, and peeled tinfoil from a glass pan.

As though its weight had been vast, Alfin let the cot fall and leaned a hand on Powell’s shoulder. “A cake! Bless the old hag. Good then, Bel, we’ll have that tonight. What’d she send along for drinks?”

“Not enough for you.”

Someone was walking, footfalls not as pronounced as Guy’s, and not from overhead.

“Is Dennis in the cellar?” Powell asked.

“What do you think she answers to?” Alfin slipped up the passage and knocked out Morse code on the cellar door. Rap…rap…rap, rap.

She… Lettie. The ghost. And that was the joke.

Enough. It would rain, and Powell, a man on the job, ought to finish unloading the car. Toveys could fool on as they pleased.

“Alfin,” Isobel said. “Stop your nonsense, and give a hand to Powell.”

Powell trudged with eyes ahead. Noise filtered down, of a reckless jogging progress, a foot skidding on loose stones, Alfin’s laugh to himself. He slapped Powell on the arm and trotted on.

A thing more than the narrowing of the footpath, the impeding rock, slowed Powell at the dogleg. He peered; he listened and listened. Nature had laid the hill’s features long before the Drybrooks built their house. To face on an angle both Mill Road and route seven, to catch all possible sunlight, to dispel the dreariness of a snowed-in winter…

He found Alfin smoking a cigarette, his rump on the car’s hood.

“Can you fix the radio?” Powell asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen the inside of it.”

“But you do fix things like that? I don’t know anything about gadgets and all.”

“Well, as I see it, long as a thing’s broken, does no harm poking about its innards. Can’t get worse, might get better. Now let me ask you, Powell, did Connolly advance anything for the tiding through to payday?”

“Ten dollars.”

“I’ll take the car, then, and get what we need for our housewarming party. You’ll have to give me that money.”

Alfin slid down, clambered in, pushed the starter and sat smiling.

One of the helpful townsfolk would tell the Big Chief that Alfin Tovey had been witnessed behind the wheel of Mrs. Drybrook’s car.

Powell could see (he had seen little else) the mix of incredulity and disdain on Guy’s face.

He dug the ten out of his pocket.

30

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part thirty-one)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)