Watch for the Dead (Relatively Dead Book 4) (5 page)

Abby followed directions, which could be measured in feet, and pulled up behind a modest shingled house facing the water. The number painted on a plaque attached to the wall matched the one Ned had given her. They had arrived.

Ellie was already out of the car, eager to explore. Abby followed more slowly, rummaging in her bag for her cell phone. “Ellie? You have that piece of paper?”

“On the seat,” Ellie called back over her shoulder.

Abby retrieved the paper, then stood a moment, taking in the scene. The sun was almost directly overhead, but there was a nice breeze coming from the water, bringing with it scents of salt and seaweed and maybe some dead fish. There was no one else around. Like Ellie, she was drawn toward the water, and the other side of the house. The back didn’t look like much, but when she came around the corner of the building she realized why: the water side was the front. As Ned had said, it had a deep porch, supported by pillars, that ran across the entire front of the building, with a door in the center. The house was set a couple of feet off the ground, and there were steps leading up to the porch. There were plenty of windows across the ground floor, and above, three sets of two windows. How many bedrooms had Ned told her? Maybe he hadn’t, but she’d bet on at least four. A wood-plank walkway led from the porch steps to a breakwater or bulkhead or something like that and ended at the water. There were a couple of Adirondack chairs placed just behind the bulkhead, for those people who preferred to sit in the sun rather than under the sheltering porch.

Ellie had apparently made the circuit of the house. “Where’s the beach?” she demanded.

Abby looked around. “I, uh, don’t know. Ned said there was one nearby, back the way we came, and maybe one across the harbor there”—she pointed—“on that spit of land. Let me call the agency so we can get into the house and get settled, and then we’ll go exploring, okay?”

“Okay.” Ellie dropped into one of the chairs, and Abby wondered if maybe she should get her a hat. Otherwise she might look like a boiled lobster after a couple of days in the sun.

Abby retreated to the porch, where there were several shabby white wicker chairs, and sat before calling the number Ned had given her. Someone answered immediately, and Abby explained who she was and where she was, and was told that someone would be there in a few minutes and would meet her at the back of the house. She shut off her phone and rejoined Ellie in the sun, where she spent a few minutes basking, feeling a bit like a lizard soaking up the warmth.

Ellie broke into her reverie. “It’s pretty here. Are the people coming to let us in?”

“They said they would soon. I agree—it’s nice. Peaceful.” When she heard the sound of a car on the unpaved sandy road, she stood up and dusted the sand off her pants. “Let’s go around and meet them, okay?”

“Sure.” Ellie followed her back around the building, where Abby found a woman standing next to a battered car and holding a clipboard.

“Hi, you two,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Angela Porter from the rental management agency. You must be Abby Kimball, and this is Ellie?”

Abby nodded. “Ned Newhall set everything up, right?”

“That he did. Come on, I’ll let you in and show you around.” She dug into her bag and fished out a ring with a lot of keys on it and searched for the right one, talking all the while. “It’s been empty for a couple of days now, after that cancellation, so you might want to keep the doors and windows open to air the place out. I don’t know if you’ve spent much time at the shore, but things get damp pretty fast.” She pulled open the door and stood back while Abby and Ellie entered. The back door led straight into a smallish kitchen. Abby paused for a moment on the threshold . . . there was something . . .

But Angela kept talking relentlessly, drowning everything else out. “There’s basics in the fridge here, to get you started. The pantry is right next door, and that’s where most of the china and glassware is. There’s enough here to serve an army! Dining room’s straight ahead, then the center hall and stairs, and living room on the other side. Sunroom beyond that, but if you’ve got the porch, why would you need that?” Angela gave a tinkling laugh. “Follow me.”

Abby had little choice, and Ellie tailed after her. The living room, it turned out, ran the full depth of the house, with a fireplace in the center of the wall. “Does that work?”

“What? Oh, the fireplace. Yes, but I don’t know where you’ll find wood. Check if there’s a flue to open if you try anything. Now, upstairs!” Angela pirouetted and trotted up the stairs. “Four bedrooms, two front, two back. Nothing as fancy as en suite baths—the main one is in the back between the bedrooms. Towels and linens all laid out. There’s a third story—a couple of rooms, must have been the maid’s room once upon a time, ha. And that’s about it. Any questions?”

“What’s the weather forecast?” Abby asked.

“That storm they were talking about? Don’t worry—they think it’s going to head out to sea before it gets anywhere near here.”

“Is there Wi-Fi?” Ellie piped up.

“Satellite, honey. No television, though. Here”—Angela held out a folder—“this has got all the stuff you need to know—nearest grocery store, pharmacy, gas station, good restaurants, fun things to do. And if anything goes wrong, you can always call us. Our office is right down the street, and someone is there twenty-four-seven. Oh, and here are your keys!” Angela handed Abby a key ring with a handful of keys—must be for the front and back doors.

Abby was feeling a bit overwhelmed by this relentlessly cheery person, although that was unreasonable since she was only trying to do her job. “Thank you, I think we’ve got all the information we need. We’ll give you a call if we need help.”

“That’s what I’m here for. Have a wonderful stay! I’ll see myself out—I know the way.” Angela disappeared quickly, and Abby almost expected a cloud of dust to follow in her wake.

Once Angela was gone, Abby was surprised that her anxiety didn’t seem to go away. Ellie was staring at her with an odd expression. “What is it, sweetie?”

“There’s something funny here,” she said, then stopped.

Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha,
Abby assumed. She stared back at Ellie. “I think you’re right.”

Chapter 5

If she had thought that a change of scene would eliminate this “seeing” issue, Abby realized she was wrong. Or maybe they were both just on edge? Uncomfortable in an unfamiliar place? Worried about George? Maybe they simply had overactive imaginations.

“Can you tell me what feels wrong, Ellie?” she asked carefully.

“This house is sad,” Ellie said.

Abby thought about that for a moment. To the best of her knowledge, a place didn’t have emotions and couldn’t communicate them. But it was altogether possible that a place—or at least parts of it, like walls, floors, doors, whatever—could hold the residue of past human experience. She’d discovered that herself, with a chair that her great-grandmother had owned and in which she’d suffered a major loss. One touch and Abby had all but fallen over. But where and how would a house hold past emotions? And why would she and Ellie be sensing them here?

She shook herself. They were on vacation, and it was a beautiful day. She didn’t want to go delving into the sadness of old memories and long-dead people. But neither did she want to blow off Ellie’s concerns, especially since she shared them. “Ellie, I agree with you that there’s something here. Does it bother you? Make you too uncomfortable to stay?”

“No. It’s old. Somebody was really sad here, that’s all. Maybe for a while. But we can stay. It’s okay.”

Abby sighed internally; she really didn’t want to have to go somewhere else, even home. “Good. Listen, why don’t we do this: right now we can settle in and unpack a little, and then we can go exploring. We should see what’s in the refrigerator and the kitchen, and maybe find some more food, and look for that beach you want. Then later tonight, we can sit down and see what’s happening with the house. Does that sound good to you?”

“Yeah, that’s okay. I’m hungry.”

“So am I, now that I think about it. I think I remember a seafood place on the main road toward Falmouth. Want to try that?”

“Will they have fries?”

“I’m pretty sure they do. And if I remember it right, there’s a place in Falmouth that has lobster ice cream.”

Ellie made an entirely childlike face. “Ewwww!”

“It’s better than you think. But they’ve got other flavors too. Let me call Ned and let him know we’ve arrived, and then we can head out.”

“I’ll take my stuff upstairs to the bedroom.”

“Which one do you want?”

“The one in the front, on the right.”

“Sounds good—I’ll take the one on the left, then.”

When Ellie went up the stairs, lugging both her bag and her backpack, Abby hit Ned’s speed-dial number. He answered quickly. “Abby? Everything okay?”

“Fine and dandy. We’re here, and we’re in the house. We’re going to go out and look for food and see what’s what in the neighborhood.” She hesitated a moment, wondering if she should mention the vague sensation that both she and Ellie had felt, and decided there was no point—there was really nothing to tell. “How long since you’ve been here?”

“A couple of years, I guess. Maybe three. Why?”

Which would make it before Ned had acknowledged his own ability to sense the dead. He wouldn’t have been looking for anything out of the ordinary here. “I just wondered if things had changed much since you were here. Well, Ellie’s ready to go, so I’ll let you get back to work. I’ll call you later tonight, or you can call me.”

“Deal. Have fun, you two.”

After she had hung up, Abby looked at Ellie. “Let’s go!” Abby added the house keys to her key ring with her car keys, and they retraced their route to the main road and turned right toward the town of Falmouth.

“What are we going to do?” Ellie asked.

“I don’t really know. We’re going to play tourist, I guess.”

“What does that mean?” Ellie persisted.

“Uh . . . we go window-shopping, and we look at historic things if there are any, and we eat a lot, and we buy tee shirts and souvenirs that we don’t need. Haven’t you ever been on a vacation like that?”

Ellie shrugged. “Not really. Mommy and Daddy are always busy, and Petey’s been kind of little. And Mommy doesn’t like to waste money on useless junk.”

Abby could hear Leslie saying that in her head. That was so Leslie: no patience with sentimental stuff. Abby admitted a fondness for souvenirs, some tackier than others, although she tried to keep them small, to save space. “Well, we’re going to try being tourists. If you don’t like it, we won’t do it again.”

“Deal,” Ellie told her.

Their afternoon was lovely, untouched by any lingering spirits. They had lunch at Seafood Sam’s down the road, where Ellie pronounced battered cod as good as fish sticks. Then they went into Falmouth and parked at the far end near the library. Before they left the parking lot, Abby pointed at a statue that she thought she remembered from her sole excursion to the Cape. “Let’s go look at that—it’s a historic statue, and you can tell your mother all about it.”

“Who is it?” Ellie said, less than enthusiastically.

“Katherine Lee Bates. Since I doubt you know of her, let me tell you that she was the author of the song ‘America the Beautiful.’ I hope you know what that is.”

“Yeah, we sing that at school. So a lady wrote it? And we still sing it?”

“Exactly.”

“Why is it here?”

“Because if you look at the inscription, she grew up here, at least for a while.”

“Are we related to her?” Ellie asked.

“I don’t know. We can’t be related to everybody. Why?”

“Just wondered. What now?”

They walked slowly through the town and peered in shop windows. Ellie seemed to be having a great time, and Abby wondered if she ever had much opportunity just to hang out, whether with friends of her own age or even grown-ups. As she had said, both her parents worked. Ellie had been shuttled off to camp as soon as her school year had ended. While no doubt it was fun, and she got to play with other kids, it was still structured and scheduled. When did kids get to play anymore? Just lay on the grass and watch the clouds go by? Or make things from their own imagination out of pieces of junk and string and tape? She felt lucky that she could offer that, at least for a short while.

They bought a Cape Cod sweatshirt for Ellie, since her mother had been too stressed to think of including something warm with her clothes. They looked at a toy store, which Ellie declared was for “babies.” They admired weird crafts on display in store windows, made out of driftwood and shells. They walked as far as the triangular town green, surrounded by elegant captain’s houses. Abby pointed toward the far corner. “Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is down that way a couple of miles. Would you be interested in seeing it?”

Ellie shrugged. “Maybe.”

“We can look up their website on the computer, and you can decide later.”

“Okay.” That seemed to cheer Ellie up. “Look, there’s a bookstore!”

They spent an enjoyable half hour at the bookstore—Abby strongly believed that it was impossible to have too many books—and emerged with their purchases. “There’s the place with the lobster ice cream down the block. I’m going to have some, and you can try it. You can get whatever you want, otherwise.”

“Okay,” Ellie said dubiously. She ended up choosing something called “salted turtle,” while, as she had promised, Abby chose the lobster. Outside on the street, Abby offered Ellie a taste of her cone. Ellie took a cautious lick and said, “It’s okay, but I like mine better.”

“Do you like real lobster? To eat, I mean?”

Ellie shook her head. “They look like big bugs to me.”

Abby laughed. “You may have a point. But I grew up eating them, so I don’t think about it.”

“Uh-huh,” Ellie said darkly. “We can eat other things while we’re here, can’t we?”

“Of course we can. And we’d better get to the market or we won’t eat at all.”

The only market she had seen was close to the library where they were parked, so they stopped in there to stock up. Abby had barely glanced in the refrigerator, but she assumed they’d need something to make real meals. Ellie proved to be a helpful companion and didn’t complain about most of Abby’s choices. It looked like they’d be eating a lot of chicken and hamburgers over the next few days, since Ellie more or less vetoed seafood.