Page 12 of The Witch's Orchard
I follow the stone path to the porch and then look around as I climb the steps. The porch is clean and an old porch swing hangs on one end. There are no pots of autumnal mums, no decorations, no water bowl for a dog or cat, no welcome mat. There’s also no peeling, no splinters in the wood, no evidence of the quiet, silent damage of time. So, well-maintained but not exactly cheery. I’m about to knock when I see the door is ajar.
I give it a little push and holler, “Max! You home?”
It’s a pointless question. I’d seen his truck in the driveway.
I step over the threshold, my hand on the knob, and try again. “Max? It’s Annie. I’ve got some questions before I get started in town.”
The house is eerily quiet. I wait. Listen.
Somewhere, farther inside, a clock ticks. And then I hear water whooshing through the pipes. I assume he’s in the shower and relax a little. The front door had opened into a living room. An old couch squats against one wall, a flat-screen TV on the other. There’s a recliner in thecorner, a bookshelf next to it. Beside the door is a table with a bowl for keys and pocket lint and, beside that, a stack of mail.
“Max?” I holler one more time. Wait. Nothing.
I pick up the envelopes and give them a flip-through. The first qualification of a good PI is a lifelong habit of unmitigated snooping. Anyone who tells you different is lying through their teeth. And probably going through your stuff.
“Hmm,” I mutter, reading the envelopes. Among the regular bills and junk mail are two letters from prestigious liberal arts colleges. One of them has already been opened and I slide my thumb along the flap, reopening it just enough to peek inside at the header and solicitation.
Dear Mr. Andrews,
It is with great pleasure that I inform you of your…
The water shuts off.
“Max?” I shout again, closing the envelope and putting everything back the way it was. “You home? It’s Annie. I need to ask you a few—”
“Miss Gore?” Max says, appearing in the doorway to the side. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in, I was working on something.”
He’s wearing an ink-stained apron over an old sweatshirt and jeans with a pair of chunky headphones around his neck.
“I’d like to see the house,” I tell him.
“Oh,” he says, like the idea that I’d want to see the crime scene had not occurred to him. “Umm… I didn’t think you’d—I mean, there’s nothing here, after all this time.”
“Max,” I say. “Remember when I said I’d be going around poking at things that “might”? make people uncomfortable?”
He nods. He’s holding an old towel, twisting it in his hands.
“This is the first thing,” I say.
He twists the towel a little more.
“Max, your sister was taken from this house. I need to see it. This is why I’m here. This is why youbrought me here.”
He lets out a huge breath and his shoulders, which had just about risen to his earlobes when I’d asked to see inside the house, relax.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay. I can show you around. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I know this is tough.”
He nods and steps into the living room ahead of me, waves his arm around like a real estate agent showing the place to a potential buyer.
I look around again, this time with him in the picture for context. The house is probably more than a century old, and the architecture feels exactly right. High ceilings, a maze of narrow rooms, hardwood floors.
“Was this the living room ten years ago?” I ask. It’s the sideways method of asking if this was the room Molly was kidnapped from, the room where he last saw her, watchingSnow Whiteon the TV.
“Yes,” he says. He points to the sofa. “Everything—all the furniture, I mean—has changed since then. But, yes. This is how it was laid out.”
I look at the TV, the sofa, the recliner. They’re all only steps to the windows, the front door, the path that leads to the lane.
