Dark Corners READY FOR PRC (22 page)

Gabriel caught up with me. “Are you always like this?”

I gave him my best annoyed bordering on bored expression. “Like what?”

“Ridiculously moody.”

A slightly hysterical, barking laugh erupted from my mouth. He was absolutely right. I was being rather bipolar at the moment. Maybe I
was
overreacting. Gabriel looked at me as if this was it, I was finally having a mental break down right in the middle of the street.

“I’d say no, but that would be a lie. It's just worse with stress.”

“But you’re okay?”

“Define okay.”

“You aren’t going to start talking to the voices in your head, screaming and pulling out your hair, or sacrificing small animals, right?”

I looked at him for a moment wondering if that is how he saw me. The only person who supported me at all recognized me as a ticking bomb waiting to go off. “Not today. My head won’t spin either.” I made a joke because I couldn't afford to lose him.

“I didn't even think of that one.”

“It's best to be prepared.”

“Absolutely.” He smiled. “So, we're going back because?”

The last traces of laughter faded from me. “I can’t leave.”

“You can’t go for a walk?”

“No, well, yes, I can . . . but then I started pretending I could just keep going, never go back there again—”

“Why is that so bad?”

I shook my head furiously. Didn’t he understand anything? “There has to be an ending.”

“Says who?”

I had to think about that. Who made that rule? Why did there have to be an ending? Life was messy—why should mine come wrapped in a perfect bow?

“Me,” I answered at last. “I say it.”

“Why?”

“Because if there isn’t an ending then this is it, the rest of my life. I really will go mad if I have to live like this forever. I can’t let go without an ending. It will haunt me no matter where I go. His story feels unfinished.”

“Then we’ll find your ending.”

I wished I felt as sure as he sounded. The house was once again before us. For a split second I saw what looked like a face in the window. It reminded me of Grant in its shape and expression, but it was gone an instant later. “Did you see that?” I asked, just to be sure.

“What?”

“A face in the living room window.”

“No.” Gabriel narrowed his eyes and studied the windows with intensity. “You saw a face?”

“It was probably a combination of shadows and an over active imagination.”

“Maybe. Wait here,” he said, the police type authority back in his voice. He jogged ahead onto the porch. He looked in each window, careful to stay out of sight. Then he went to the door and turned the handle easily. He went into the house without hesitation as I stood in the street a hundred feet away watching.  It felt like he was gone for ages before he finally appeared in the door again. He began inspecting the handle for a reason why it wouldn’t have opened before.

 “I won’t say I told you so,” I called out as a thumped up the steps toward him.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he muttered.

“Welcome to Reynolds’ Raving Roost. Where sense is for sissies and down is up and black is white.”

Gabriel chuckled while twisting the handle on both sides of the door. “I didn’t see anyone inside.”

“You cannot imagine my complete and utter surprise,” I said deadpan enough to give Ben Stine a run for his money.

Gabriel shrugged and straightened back up to full height.  “It's always worth checking.” I appreciated that he thought so. “Where do you want to start?” 

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

Gabriel considered for a moment, before deciding on the basement. We trudged down the dark, narrow stairs, plowing our way through cobwebs and dust. I flipped the switch at the bottom; the light sputtered to life and cast a dim glow over most of the room, but left the corners untouched. It looked just as it had when we moved in. We had contributed a few things to the mess against the wall immediately facing the staircase when we moved in, some paint, some tools, but nothing of particular interest at first sight.

“Does anything look wrong to you?”

“Not really, I wouldn’t know. I never come down here.”

“How about you go right and I'll go left, we can meet in the middle.”

“I think we should stay together.”

“It'll take a lot longer.”

“I'd prefer it.”

“Okay,” he said with a worried smile. We headed over to the left side of the stairs. The basement was a large open space, with the exception of one small and exceptionally dank restroom built in underneath the stairs. The feeble lighting helped very little with seeing anything that was not immediately under it. There wasn’t much down, some miscellaneous tools and cans, a shelf filled with unmarked jars that contained unidentifiable liquids, and a lot of dust. One of the jars, slightly cleaner looking than the other ones, caught my eye. Its contents were darker than those of the other ones surrounding it. I walked closer to have a better look.

“What in the hell is this?” I said more to myself than to Gabriel, but he came over and picked the jar up, tilting it left, then right. A frown creased his face. He took the jar to the light and tilted it again, studying something in the bottom of it. He tapped his finger against the glass bottom, then cleared his throat uncomfortably and placed the jar at the base of the stairs, all the while conveniently avoiding eye contact with me. “What is it?”

“I'm not positive.”

“But you have a guess?”

He nodded. “Blood, I think.’

“Blood? Why would there be a jar of blood on the shelf in my basement?” The calmness of my voice sounded foreign to me because inside my mind was chaotic.

“I don’t know.”

“
Whose
blood?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I'm going to take it to the lab and have it analyzed.”

“What’s in it?”

“I told you, blood.”

“No, the thing you were looking at in the bottom.”

“I don’t know.  It looked like a metal of some sort.”

I studied his countenance. “You don’t think I put it there, do you?”

He stared at me, as if he could extract the answers from my eyes. “Why would I think that?”

“Because I found it.”

“Did you put it there?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Then why aren’t you talking to me. I could get information out of a goldfish faster than I am getting anything from you.”

He sighed. “I don’t want to upset you.”

I accepted this, because what other choice did I have? He was absolutely right to worry.  I'd been acting crazy less than an hour ago. . . . What would make him think I could handle this? Right now, he was my only friend, the only person I could trust though he felt a million miles away. I turned back to the shelf I’d been inspecting, but couldn’t focus. His hand on my shoulder made me jump.

“Are you okay?”

“No.” I looked back at him, knowing exactly what he thought would upset me. “You think it’s Danny’s blood, don’t you?”

“It’s too early to know,” he said, avoiding my eyes again. I waited for him to go on, still looking directly into his face—this time it was me searching for the truth. "It could be his or someone else's. There's no reason to jump to conclusions."

I nodded trying to wrap my mind around the perverseness of this.

“Do you want to take a break?” I stood there for a moment not fully comprehending that he was talking to me.

“Honestly, I would rather just finish.”

“Okay.” He squeezed my shoulder gently then went back to the pile of boxes he was sifting through. I walked past the shelf not wanting to look at it ever again. Beyond the shelf was a cluttered tool bench. It was covered with old rusty tools and boxes and an inch or two of dust. Nothing seemed especially out of the ordinary and I’d almost moved past it when something caught my eye. I can’t say what exactly.  It could have been nothing more than a cobweb fluttering in a draft, but I noticed a faint line on the old dusty wall. I reached out and traced it. “Hey, look at this.”

Gabriel came over to peer at the wall with me. “It looks like a door. . . . but where’s the handle?”

We moved the boxes that partially obscured the door, but found no handle or latch of any kind. Gabriel ran his fingers softly over the outline of the door, still finding no way to open it. He knocked, pushed, pulled, and cussed—all to no avail. His thumps in the center of the outline sounded no different than those to either side of it. 

“Maybe it’s not a door. It sounds solid. I don’t know.”

The rest of the basement search went without surprise, only dust and bugs. The main floor search was faster and more frustrating. However, it was like looking at the house through a new pair of eyes. The kitchen was our reintroduction to the land of windows. My eyes had grown adjusted to the windowless basement, so I was surprised to find just how bright the kitchen really was. There were no fewer than six windows in the large eat-in kitchen. The cabinets were beautifully carved custom made wonders that moved me in no way whatsoever. Gabriel commented on their craftsmanship, but all I saw when I looked at them were the doors that opened by themselves and ejected their contents at will. The smooth, butcher block top of the center island, while practical, held the knives that had rammed into my husband with such force several of his bones splintered. The wonderfully preserved 19
^th
century kitchen table was no more than a reminder of happier times that I would never again have. The pantry was a large room and probably, at one time, stored the dishes as well as all the food, but now it was sparse and unused. Directly opposite of the door to the basement was the door to the wine cellar, true to the odd symmetry found throughout the house. The wine cellar contained just that. Wine. No mysteries or evidence to find.

There was nothing to see in the formal dining room if you didn’t count the mahogany table that could comfortably hold twenty people, the fading silk wall paper above the glossy white wainscoting, or the elaborate moldings. The study had book shelves from floor to ceiling jammed with a variety of books. A large desk sat in front of the picture window with stained glass across the top and small groupings of wingback chairs filled the corners. However, there was absolutely nothing of use to be found.

Across the foyer in the formal living room, old paintings of Victorian landscapes hung from cords attached underneath the molding. The furniture was frail and brittle seeming, slightly lower than what would be comfortable and beginning to show its age. We had intended to redecorate this room too, but ran out of time. There wasn’t enough time for a lot of things. The thought made me sigh, but I continued inspecting the room for something I had been overlooking all this time. There was a fireplace on either end of the room, an out of tune grand piano in one corner and a dusty harp in the other. A sitting area was arranged in the center of the room around an intricate oriental rug. The grandfather clock in the foyer chimed the time that was passing and reminded us of our lack of progress.

We moved in to what Danny and I had set up as our family room. It was my favorite room, because it was the only one that felt even a little like home. It had the furniture from our apartment and the television and my computer. It also had a bar which sounded more and more tempting as the investigation rolled ahead. I watched Gabriel rifle through my desk and tried to bristle. I felt no attachment to anything in the rest of the house, but this was mine. He's just doing his job, I reminded myself
.