Page 11 of Shadow Seeking

Within seconds, the door opened. Angela smiled when she saw us.

“Thank you for being so prompt,” she said, opening the screen door. “Please watch so Letty’s cat doesn’t get out. He’s an indoor only and I don’t want to let her down by losing him.”

As we entered the house, I felt a slight rush of air pass by. I couldn’t talk to spirits all that easily, but lately, I had noticed that I picked up on them easier than most people. If they wanted to communicate, I was pretty sure I could open myself to them. As I entered the house, I knew that somebody was hanging around, though whether it was Letty, I wasn’t sure.

The house itself was so clean that I wondered if Angela had hired a cleaning crew. Everything seemed to have a place, everything seemed to be in alignment with everything else. Nothing seemed out of place.

“Letty was…immaculate,” Angela said. “We could never live together because, while I’m not messy, she needed everything to be perfect. It drove me nuts,” she said softly, glancing around with a sigh. “We didn’t always get along and now I regret that. Don’t let things fester between you and your loved ones. You never know when you’re going to miss those annoying habits.”

I nodded, not knowing what to say. I wasn’t the most empathetic person, even though Ididcare. But Dante moved over to her and motioned to the sofa.

“Shall we sit down?” he asked, his voice gentle. Even though he was flamboyant as hell, he also had a charm that came across as caring.

She gave him smile. “Thank you. I think I’m a little overwhelmed.”

I looked around. “So, do you mind if we search through the house to see what we can find? Do you know if she had a diary, perhaps? And we’ll want to sort through her computer, so do you mind if we take it with us?”

Angela shrugged. “As to a diary, I’m not sure. Her computer is in her office, which is behind that door over there. Her bedroom is at the end of the hall. Take whatever you need, though if you come across a necklace of pearls and aquamarine, I’d appreciate it if you gave it to me. That was our mother’s and she got it when we lost her.”

“Of course,” I said. “We’ll inventory everything we take for evidence and return it to you as soon as we can. My company is licensed and bonded, so you can be sure that we’ll treat everything with care, and we’ll store them in a vault to protect them until we return them.”

“I’m not worried about that,” she said. “I looked up your reputation and it’s stellar. You have one of the best ratings on ReviewsIt. Now, go ahead and start looking. I’m going to go through the kitchen, box up the food that I want to keep, and clear out the refrigerator and cupboards. What I don’t keep, I’m planning on giving to the food bank.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “Let’s start in the office.” I picked up the investigation kit that we’d put together and we headed for the office that Angela pointed out.

Letty’s officewas as neat as the rest of her house. Not only did she have a desktop, but she also had a laptop. Dante ducked out to ask Angela if she knew the passwords to either, but came up empty.

“Then we’ll take both back to the office and have Carson start hacking into them,” I said. “Go ahead and secure them in the back of the Jeep.”

As Dante carried them out to the car, I sat down at the desk and began going through the drawers. Letty had a desk file holder that also held current mail. I glanced through the bills, marking down account numbers, then took what I assumed were the unpaid accounts out to Angela so she would be able to contact the utility and credit card companies. But first, I took pictures of all the credit card bills to go through later on.

Dante returned and he began looking through the bookshelves for anything that might stand out to us, while I started going through the desk drawers. Aside from some very neatly organized office supplies, I found a box at the back of the bottom right drawer. It was about eight inches wide by twelve inches long by six inches high. I pulled it out to examine it.

The box was pretty—it had a vintage look to it, with an old-world style maps design on the outside. As I opened it, the smell of cedar wafted out. The box was full of letters, three stacks with ribbons around each. I lifted them out and set them on the desk. As I untied the ribbons, I noticed the return address on them all seemed the same, though partway through, it changed to a different one though the handwriting appeared to be the same.

“Hmm,” I said, opening one at random. Much to my surprise, it was a love letter—or so it appeared—dated about a year before.

Dear Letty,

I can’t tell you how much I wish we could be together. At our age, you’d think we’d be free to express our love as we want, but I know you want to protect Angela. But don’t you think, after all this time, she’ll be okay with our relationship? I can’t imagine that she’d begrudge our love. It’s been thirty-two years since I broke off the engagement. Her heart has to have mended since then. And you know that my wife won’t care, as long as I give her a good settlement.

But, if you decide that we must keep our love secret, I’ll keep it quiet and we can meet in secret twice a year, the way we have since the day I had to leave town. I’ll never stop loving you. I’ll never stop waiting for you. As long as I know you still love me, my heart is yours. –Dave

Oh man, I thought, sitting back. I hadn’t expected to stumble over something like this and now I didn’t know what to do. Angela would find these on her own if I left them, but I wanted to go through them, to find out if there was anything that she might have written to him about that said she was in trouble. And then again—what if Angela had already found out?

Could she have engineered Letty’s death, especially if she had discovered her sister’s betrayal recently? But then, would she have left the letters for us to find? That didn’t seem likely.

With those and other questions running through my head, I tucked the letter back in the envelope and placed them back in the box, setting it into one of the bags I’d brought to collect evidence. I decided I’d hold off on asking Angela about whoDave was until we’d sorted through everything back at the office.

Dante turned around, holding a book. “She has a lot of books on the Demonkin.”

“It was one of her specialties, remember? She taught a class in it some years back.”

“Well, there’s a paper in one of them—and it has a website on it. I’ve never heard of this.” He frowned, shaking his head. “It looks shady.”

I stood and stretched, then walked over to glance at the book and the paper. “Let’s see…” I skimmed the table of contents. There were chapters on how to capture and eliminate demons of various types, which made me uncomfortable given I was half demon, chapters on how to recognize possession and how to perform exorcisms.

“Do you think Letty was a demon hunter?” he asked.

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