Page 46 of Night Falls on Predicament Avenue
The house at 322 Predicament Avenue held secrets, and they were screaming out to be revealed.
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THEYSTOPPEDFORCOFFEE. Well, Sebastian and Harper did. Harper had sent Norah a covert text assuring her she’d get decaf. Norah sat in the car and waited. She wasn’t a fan of coffee shops. They were always small and meant to feel cozy, but Norah felt claustrophobic, and the places were often packed. They were an extrovert’s paradise and an introvert’s duck-and-run hideaway. Yet for someone with as much social anxiety as Norah, they were the opening to the pit of hell.
Okay. That was an exaggeration.
Norah thumbed through her social media on her phone to distract herself. Ever since leaving Ron and Betty Daily’s place, she’d been edgy again. She felt an oppressive weight on her chest, the kind that predicted a confrontation with everything Norah didn’t want to confront.
Namely, Naomi’s cold case.
She couldn’t shake the significance of the name Anderson. Coincidence or not, now both murders were linked by name and by place. For different reasons, but still. Sometimes Norah wondered if God got frustrated by her avoidance of the truth and the grief and was now just going to thrust her into it without any room for her to argue.
“Youneed to learn to live again,”her mother had kept telling her. Her mother! The woman who should be as immobilized as Norah by the murder of her own daughter! And yet maybe Norah had been her distraction. Norah who had collapsed after Naomi’s body had been found. Norah who hadn’t fared well during the ensuing investigation. Norah who had all but blocked out the events of those months before the case was shelved asCOLD. Yes, she had been her mother’s distraction, but now? How could Mom and Dad go tour Europe as though Naomi’s killer didn’t still lurk in dark corners, laughing at their pain?
A hand came down to knock hard against Norah’s window.
She screamed.
“Whoa!” the voice shouted from outside.
Norah dared to look out the window. Detective Dover. Way to make a fool of herself. She opened the door.
“Sorry to frighten you,” Dover said with a grimace. He was dressed in a black suit and tie, his hair neatly combed back. Handsome. Older. “I saw you sitting there and thought I’d check on you.”
“Thanks.” Norah fiddled with the side button on her phone to shut it off.
“Have you heard anything from Mrs. Miller?”
“No.” Norah shook her head. “My lawyer and I are preparing just in case, though.”
“That’s good.” Dover crossed his arms and looked around before lowering his voice. “Just FYI, Mrs. Miller’s son arrived in town. I hear he’s an attorney.”
“Great,” Norah muttered.
“Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. She probably doesn’t want to travel home alone. Not to mention there’s the arrangements that need to be made with Mr. Nielson to get Mr. Miller’s remains home. But I thought you should know. I was hoping you’d connected with Rebecca.”
He knew who her lawyer was? Small-town problems.
“Yes. I have. Sebastian Blaine is helping me put together what really happened with Isabelle Addington so we can have the full story and not have to deal with lawsuits against ghosts.”
Dover laughed. “Yeah, that sounds so dumb, but you know how people can be these days. And I can hardly blame Mrs. Miller. I mean, if she saw what she thinks she saw—”
“She didn’t,” Norah interrupted, irritated by the detective’s insinuation that maybe Mrs. Millerhadseen a ghost after all.
“I’m not saying she did. I’m just ... heck, sometimes I see things at night when I’m half awake. Pitfalls of being a hard sleeper.”
“Have you ever seen a ghost?” Norah ventured, though she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer.
“Me? Nah. My mom said she did once. But it was probably nothing, a reflection or something. One night, though, I woke up and swore my mom was standing over my bed with a towel wrapped around her head. You know, like a woman does when she gets out of the shower?”
Norah nodded.
Detective Dover continued, “Then I blinked and she was gone. But my mom was very much alive, so I knew it wasn’t a ghost. Just my mind playing tricks on me.”
Norah shivered.
Dover noticed. “Yeah, it was still freaky.”
