Page 10 of Ghostridden
So I went back upstairs and checked every freaking window, including the ones in the turret that had surrounded me all night. I’d opened a couple of them to enjoy the breeze, but their screens hadn’t been touched, at least not as far as I could tell. Nothing in any of the bedrooms had been disturbed, nor was anybody hiding in the closets.
I paused at the stairs leading to the attic.
If somebody was lurking up there, they could take me out before I knew what—literally—hit me. But they could have done the same thing while I was asleep, too. I took a deep breath, along with a tighter grip on my trusty poker, and stomped upstairs.
“I’m coming up now,” I called. “If anyone’s there, I just want to talk. Assuming you don’t want to kill me. Because if that’s the case, I’m not hanging around for the convo.”
Nothing. No sound except the cheep of birdsong filtering in from the open windows in the main suite. Gil scampered up ahead of me, tail up, apparently perfectly content to check out the accommodations. I stopped when my head topped thefloor and peered around. The attic was dimmer than downstairs because the only windows were in the dormers and they were smaller than the ones on the first two floors. I didn’tseeanything moving, and Gil wasmrrping happily, pawing at a stray sunbeam that shone through the window that overlooked the backyard.
I sighed and trudged up the last few steps to check inside the only door—full bathroom, containing nothing but gleaming tile and porcelain—before joining Gil. He’d parked his furry butt in his sunbeam and was staring fixedly at the secretary.
“Not that I doubt your feline superpowers, Gil, but not even you could bat that typewriter off the table. Those things were made to…”
Spiders—the phantom kind—staged a kick line up my spine.
Yesterday, the Smith-Corona’s platen had been empty, but now? A piece of onionskin paper was rolled onto it, as though awaiting a missing typist. I crept forward. The machine held no ribbon, but since the keys on this model struck with some force, that didn’t mean the totally blank paper held no message.
With other tips from my retired detective client skittering around in my brain, I covered my hand with my T-shirt and rolled the page free. Then I high-tailed it downstairs again, Gil bounding at my heels.
“Pencil, pencil, pencil,” I muttered as I yanked open drawers in the kitchen. “Oh, come on. Who doesn’t keep a pencil or two in their kitchen?”
There was probably one in the library desk, but I didn’t want to go back in there until the police had been here—and, yes, I was definitely calling the police, even though my client had told me that cold burglaries had a very low clearance rate. In hindsight, I should probably have called them before I went slinking around the house with a freaking fireplace poker like some TSTL teenager in a slasher movie.
“Aha!” In the corner drawer by a telephone niche, I found one of those big, rectangular carpenter’s pencils, apparently sharpened with a knife. I set the paper on the counter and, holding it down with one hand, carefully ran the pencil over its surface.
The phantom spiders staged an encore, because sure enough, the impression of the keys was there, embedded in the paper:
no no no no no no no no no
Leaving Gil with his morning kibble, I grabbed my recharged phone and sprinted out the front door and down the porch steps. Someone had been inmy house. Someone had been in my house long enough to trash my library and leave threatening messages on a typewriter with no ribbon.
I wasn’t happy about my list of possible suspects. For one thing, it included an unknowable number of cleaners. For another, it included the cute guy who’d appealed to me more than anyone in years—including Greg—as well as the only living relative of the previous owner, and the probate attorney. I mean, seriously? Could the universe have thumbed its nose at me any more clearly?
Here, Maz, have a house. Oh, by the way, somebody clearly doesn’t want you in it.
I glanced up and down the street, although what I expected to see, I couldn’t say. It’s not like the burglar would have hung around, waiting for me to threaten him with my poker. Which Ihad left inside, anyway. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. That same pale, bespectacled face, like a studious owl, peered out at me from the window of the Craftsman house next door. When they saw me looking, they twitched the curtains across the window.
Okay, maybe there was another suspect: Creepy neighbor who wasn’t keen on having an ethnic kid next door. I refused to suspect Tia Sofia. For one thing, she wouldn’t have been able to reach the top library shelves. For another, Gil liked her. Although that may be more related to her giving him a metric ton of kitty treats.
I sighed. First thing, call Ricky and somehow nonchalantly inquire whether he’d come back during hisflexiblehours and vandalized my house. Yeah, not exactly a meet-cute, by any stretch of the imagination. I had Carson’s number on his business card. As Avi’s cousin, somebody who’d grown up around this house, he’d be the most likely candidate to know who else might have a key to the place. And no matter what he’d said, I didn’t believe any kid worth his Playstation wouldn’t know the best secret ways in and out of a house. Then there were Taryn and the mysterious cleaners.
But as I was scrolling through my contacts to find Ricky’s number, a silver Prius drew up to the curb in front of me and a woman in a burgundy pantsuit climbed out of the car. She was maybe six inches shorter than me, but her elaborate crown of braided locs made her a little taller. Her warm brown skin practically glowed with health, and when she smiled at me, dimples popped in her round cheeks. “Hi. You must be Maz. I’m Taryn.”
I tucked my phone away and raised one hand in a half-hearted excuse for a wave. “Yeah, that’s me.”
She strode around the front of her car and I was interested to note that she wore black Doc Martens with her raw silk suit. “I’msorry I wasn’t here to welcome you. I tried to call and get an ETA, but it went to voicemail.”
“Yeah, my phone died about an hour and a half out of town.”
“Ricky let me know you’d arrived, though, and that he’d given you the tour.” She grinned, and despite myself, I smiled back. “Well? What do you think?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not surewhatto think.”
Her wide brow pleated. “What do you mean?”
I held up both hands. “Don’t get me wrong. The house is amazing, and I’m still pinching myself that it somehow belongs to me. But…” I huffed out a breath. “Come in?”
She nodded, although she didn’t completely lose the frown. When we stepped inside, Gil immediately galloped over and stood at her feet, looking up at her. “Oh, my. Look at you.” She crouched down, seemingly unconcerned about the amount of ginger fur wafting onto her burgundy pants. “Aren’t you the handsome boy?” She glanced up at me. “His name?”
