Home for the Haunting(18)

Another long moment of quiet passed. I imagined we were both pondering the sort of thing that could have driven a man to do such a horrific thing, to destroy his own family in a few moments of rage and betrayal and madness. Ray was right: It would be easier to believe—almost comforting that a demon had possessed your best friend than to accept that he could knowingly and willingly inflict such pain.

I felt my father’s eyes on me and looked up to see him giving me the “What, are you gonna sit around on your fanny all day rather than help me get this job done?” look. He had no clue what Ray and I were talking about, which was best. Looking at my dear, cantankerous father, I tried to conceive of him turning on me. Inflicting mortal wounds. Impossible. I couldn’t imagine the sense of betrayal, the disbelief Sidney’s doomed daughter must have felt.

Relief washed over me when I spotted a beige sedan pull up in front of Monty’s house: an unmarked police car. Inspector Crawford climbed out and crossed the street to join us. She was going to take Ray’s statement and see whether he could provide a positive ID of the body.

After a brief greeting, Ray went with the inspector, and a few of us went back down into Etta’s crawl space to finish up the foundation work.

After all, when all was said and done . . . there was no use in going over the family tragedy again and again. It was in the past, thirty years ago. Water under the bridge and all that. It had nothing to do with the body we had found.

Unless, of course, the walls of the Murder House had absorbed the spirits of those souls so unfairly slaughtered on that night—as well as the father who had done the evil deed. Unless those spirits were still there, searching for meaning, for understanding . . . or for victims.

• • •



After a day working with my dad and explaining to Monty why we couldn’t continue construction on his place at the moment, I was about plumb worn out. So, after we had packed up the tools and dumped the last of the trash into the happily named Dumpster, Etta thanked the volunteers and took a picture with everyone lined up on her cement stoop. Everyone went off weary and slightly sunburned but proud of themselves.

It was a good project, successfully completed. Etta would now be able to live without worrying about falling through her rotting kitchen floor, the building was newly strong, and the paint was not only pretty but would protect the building from the elements. She even had a new vegetable garden planted. And the charity could not have been bestowed on a more grateful recipient.

Monty, however, was unhappy.

“Hey, Mel? How come you finished up old lady Lee’s house, but not mine?” he demanded for the third time, wheeling his chair out onto his sagging wooden porch.

“I told you,” I said. “We have to wait for the police to clear this place, and we’ll come back and finish up. I promise. It’s not like we’ll leave it half done.” I was such a stickler for finishing the jobs I started—that early-childhood training stuck with me—that I was always a bit shocked when people didn’t trust me to fulfill my commitments.

“Hmmph,” he said.

“Monty, could I ask you something . . . a little odd?”

“Shoot.”

“You said earlier that the house next door was ‘kind of’ vacant. What did you mean by that?”

“I don’t know exactly, but lights go on and off, even though supposedly no one lives there. I guess you’ve heard the stories by now, about what happened.”

“I did, yes.”

“Some people say it’s haunted.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you?”

“Um . . . maybe. I might have noticed something in the window. . . .” We stared at each other for a moment. “Anyway, I was just going to check something down in the yard real quick.”

I knew it was stupid to snoop. But if the body really was Linda Lawrence, would that mean it was somehow related to the ghosts I had seen in the windows of the house? It seemed so tragic that she should survive that long-ago night only to die like she had.

I could hear Dog barking in my car.

Would her ghost be here, somewhere? Could she have been one of the faces I’d seen in the windows of the house next door? Was she now back with her family, and was it indeed just a sad suicide by pills?

I felt compelled to investigate, just a little, on the off chance any lingering spirits would talk to me or give me some clue. I wasn’t committed enough to break into the main house—not to mention not brave enough—but the least I could do was look through the shed.

Bright yellow crime scene tape covered up the door of the shed. I thought about it for a moment, but I wasn’t anti-establishment enough to just break through it. However . . . there was another entrance from the other side. On the lot of the Murder House.