House of Shadows

by Melissa R. L. Simonin

  Miles shook his head and rubbed his forehead the way he does when he’s frustrated by something.

  “Okay, thanks Grandma Polly. You enjoy your trip. Love you too. Bye.”

  Miles dropped his head in his hands and leaned forward for a minute, then sat back up.

  “I love Grandma Polly. She is a sweet lady, and if she wasn’t who she is, she never would’ve given you the job she did, and neither of us would be here. But the caretaker she hired… she didn’t ask for references, and he just showed up out of nowhere. How would he even know the estate had an opening for a caretaker? How did he find the place, it’s nowhere close to the beaten path.”

  Miles shook his head in disbelief. I kneaded his shoulders for several minutes, and finally I felt some of the tension begin to ease.

  Night Furry hopped onto the table. I picked him up, and again explained the table wasn’t a good place for him, and put him on the couch.

  “Come on,” I said, reaching for Miles’ hand, and pulling him up. “Let’s do something else for a while. This is making us crazy, I think we need a break. We can do a search on the name you got from Polly, in a little while.”

  “Good idea,” Miles said, and I pulled him into a hug.

  “It’ll be okay,” I said encouragingly. “We’ll get this figured out.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Think what we accomplished together before.”

  “That’s right. We’re just as smart now as we were then, maybe more so, and now we really have each other for support,” I said, and kissed him for good measure. “Let’s go for a drive. How about Sonic?”

  “Really, you’re hungry already? I don’t think I could eat.”

  “No, silly,” I laughed. “But I wouldn’t mind a route size, cherry vanilla coke.”

  “You know, I wouldn’t either. Let’s do that.”

  It was good to get out of the apartment for a while. A walk would have been nice, but we both would have been looking over our shoulders constantly, for the glint of a telephoto lens in the distance.

  We picked up our drinks, and drove around playing our favorite songs and talking about things other than who was stalking us, and what they would try next.

  We both felt more relaxed by the time we got back to the apartment building.

  Jenny pulled in the parking lot the same time we did, so we rode the elevator together.

  “Are we still on for this afternoon?” she asked.

  I drew a blank.

  “You forgot! I can’t believe you forgot!” Jenny laughed.

  I saw laughter in Miles’ eyes, too.

  “Alright people, what am I missing?” I demanded to know.

  “This afternoon, we have plans to look at wedding dresses at the mall.”

  “Oh my goodness, how could I have forgotten!”

  Hm, let’s see, being stalked by some weirdo… that’s probably it.

  “For someone who wants to get married so bad, I’m surprised at you,” Miles smiled.

  I rolled my eyes and bumped him with my shoulder.

  “Oh, so I’m the only one, huh?” I retorted.

  “Not even close,” Miles replied, with one of those melting looks.

  The elevator reached our floor. It was a good thing it did, it was getting a little warm in there. We went to Jenny’s and my apartment.

  “With everything that’s going on,” Miles said seriously, “I’d feel better if you’d let me and Xander go with you.”

  “What?” Jenny and I said at the same time.

  “Just to the mall,” Miles said quickly. “Not to look at dresses. I know you want to keep your choice mysterious, until the wedding. Xander and I could look at tuxes or something, I need to do that, too. And when you’re ready to leave, call us, and we’ll meet you in front of the shop.”

  Jenny and I looked at each other. I’d really feel better if Miles was there, I’d honestly worry about him if he wasn’t. I hated how this whole thing was messing with our heads, but it was.

  “Sure, Miles, that should be just fine,” said Jenny.

  “Great, I’ll let Xander know he has plans this afternoon,” Miles said, and we all laughed.

  That afternoon, the four of us arrived at the mall. The boys left us at the bridal boutique, and went a few stores down to check out the tuxes.

  Jenny and I had a blast looking at the bridal dresses. Our wedding was scheduled for mid-afternoon, so I was looking at tea length gowns. I found one I absolutely adored. It had drop cap sleeves and was fitted to the waist, with a full skirt. I felt like a ballerina pirouetting in front of the three-way mirror.

  “That’s the one, Anika,” Jenny approved. “That is beautiful. Miles will absolutely love it.”

  I smiled in satisfaction. It fit perfect, no alterations required. We had the rings, now we had the dress, we were set. Miles probably had tuxes ordered by now, too.

  I paid for my dress, and Jenny and I looked at bridesmaid dresses while they wrapped it, or whatever it was they did to wedding gowns when people bought them. Jenny found a dress she was pleased with in a soft green, and we ordered one like it in lilac, as Annette requested. Then I picked out a pink dress for my sister, a peach one for Sandra, and texted Miriam to get her color choice.

  I glanced toward the front of the store to see if the guys were waiting for us, and forgot everything else. I grabbed Jenny’s arm.

  “Come on!” I said, dragging her from the store.

  “Wait, what?” Jenny exclaimed in surprise.

  “We’ll be right back!” I said to the saleslady, who was still boxing up our purchases.

  “What on earth, Anika?” Jenny gasped, as I dragged her through the mall.

  “There! Look!” I pointed violently towards the ladies room. A girl opened the door, and went inside.

  Jenny got a fierce look on her own face.

  “Come on!”

  We burst through the bathroom door, startling the only other occupant. She looked at us with wide eyes, and suddenly those eyes grew even wider.

  “Well!” I said, my own eyes snapping fire. I crossed my arms, and stalked over to her.

  Jenny latched the deadbolt on the bathroom door, then stood in front of it, her hands on her hips.

  I silently stared down the girl who accused Miles of going out with her friend. She stood pressed against the bathroom wall, her mouth hanging open.

  “You know as well as I do that my fiancé is innocent,” I said in a low, threatening voice. “You have one chance—one—to tell me who’s involved in this effort to undermine my trust in him, and what your purpose is in attempting to do so.”

  The girl gulped.

  “Believe me, honey,” said Jenny, with a straight face. “You do not want us getting Daddy and Uncle Mark involved. They handle body disposal and crime scene cleanup for our little organization.”

  I frowned fiercely to counteract the spasm of involuntary humor that tried to impede on our interrogation.

  The girl slid down the wall, she was starting to shake.

  “Spit it out!” I yelled, hitting the wall next to her.

  “I just did what I was paid to. I don’t know your fiancé, my friend don’t know him, this lady she says if I go tell you this, she’ll pay me a hundred bucks, so I did it. I’m real sorry, I won’t do that no more!”

  “What did this woman look like?” asked Jenny. “I want details.”

  “She’s got this real blond hair, can’t be her real color, maybe not her real hair, even. Thirties or forties, about my weight, taller than you,” she pointed to me, “but not as tall as her.” She pointed at Jenny.

  “How about eyes?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember, only she had an awful lot of mascara.”

  I thought about that.

  “Where did you meet this woman?”

  “Here, at the mall,” the girl said. “I was shopping, and she come up to me and asked wouldn’t I like a hundred more to spend. I never meant to hurt nobody, honest, I wasn’t thinking.
”

  I gave her a narrow-eyed look, and decided there wasn’t anything more to learn from her.

  “All right. You’ve been helpful, so you’re free to go,” I said, reaching out a hand to help her up off the floor.

  Jenny pointed at her.

  “But you stay on the straight and narrow from now on, missy, or next time you’ll have Daddy and Uncle Mark breathing down your neck.”

  We turned and stalked out of the bathroom, leaving the girl standing there, her mouth still gaping.

  As we ran back towards the bridal shop, we started giggling so hard, we could barely stay upright.

  “Who knew you would make such an excellent bad cop!” I gasped.

  “I know! I surprised myself, even!” Jenny laughed. “She’ll think twice though, before she decides to try and ruin someone else’s relationship for money, again.”

  We skidded to a stop in front of the bridal shop. Miles and Xander were already there waiting. They looked surprised to see us, probably because we weren’t supposed to leave without them to escort.

  “Where on earth have you been, and what is so funny?” Miles wondered.

  “Wait ‘til we get back to the apartment,” said Jenny. “I recorded it on my cell phone.”

  “You didn’t!” I said.

  “I did!” Jenny replied.

  We both shrieked with laughter, and the guys held their ears.

  “I do not understand women,” said Xander, shaking his head.

  Miles just laughed and shook his head, too.

  The guys helped us carry our very large bundles into the apartment, and I stowed them in the closet.

  Jenny got out her phone, and played the recording for the guys.

  “Remind me to never get on the wrong side of you two,” said Xander.

  Laughter is good medicine. Jenny and I fixed nachos for an afternoon snack, and the four of us sat listening to music in the living room and chatting about nothing, as the kittens played, and the dogs chewed their Nylabones.

  “Let’s do an internet search on this, now,” Miles said, picking up the notepad on which he wrote the caretaker’s name.

  We all watched as Miles scrolled through the list of search entries.

  “None of these match the description Grandma Polly gave me,” Miles said, taking out his phone. “Hi, Tony. It’s Miles. Get anything on those prints yet?”

  We sat silent, as Tony talked.

  “Okay. Let me know the minute you hear,” Miles said. He ended the call, and looked up. “They rushed it through, so we should have an answer soon.”

  Results can be bought.

  Miles’ phone rang.

  “Hi, Tony.” Miles grabbed a pen and started writing. “Okay, thanks. Yes, email it to me. That’d be great. Thanks again.”

  Miles turned to the computer.

  “George Frank,” he said.

  I was tense, waiting to see what he’d find.

  Miles pointed at a photo on the screen.

  “And there he is.”

  We didn’t recognize him.

  Miles looked the man up on the genealogy site next, and began to work backwards.

  “Bingo,” he said. “He has a connection to Alfred.”

  “His nephew, George Frank,” I said. “I would bet Bea Hodges, Blondie, is his girlfriend. She’s probably using an alias too, though.”

  We all stared at the screen. George Frank, thirty-five. Black hair and a very distinct five o’ clock shadow, in the photo we were looking at. There was something not right about his eyes. I would be perfectly happy if we never met him.

  Miles opened another tab and did a search on George Frank.

  “He has a criminal record.”

  “What was he convicted of?” asked Jenny.

  “Robbery… assault… drug possession,” read Miles.

  “You need to let the DA know, man,” said Xander.

  Miles took out his phone, but before he dialed, he discovered a missed call notification.

  “It’s the PI,” Miles said, as he listened to the message. “The car you girls saw on Friday, was a rental. I wondered what was taking him so long to run the plates, but he had to pull some strings to get the info on who rented it. It was Bea, and she listed her address as the guest house at the estate.”

  So they’re definitely together.

  Miles called the DA and began to explain the reason for his call. He walked to the kitchen so he could talk where it was quieter, as I turned down the music.

  “So that’s it then, that must be it,” I said. “They’re trying to somehow keep Miles from testifying. But I don’t see how wrecking our relationship would do that.”

  “Could they be trying to ruin his credibility as a witness? Paint him as being dishonest, and untrustworthy?” Xander wondered.

  “Maybe…” I said. “Seems like a lot of work to go to, and so little guarantee it would work.”

  “And what about scaring Polly? And the previous caretaker?” reminded Jenny.

  The intercom sounded, and Jenny went to answer. It was John and Annette, so Jenny pressed the button to let them in the elevator. A few minutes later, there was a tap on the door.

  “John, you look exhausted,” I said. He also had a gleam of satisfaction in his tired eyes.

  “He is exhausted, that’s why I drove,” said Annette.

  “I cracked it, though,” he said, holding up the laptop triumphantly.

  “Oh, good for you!” I clapped my hands together. “What did you find?”

  Miles joined us.

  “Oh, hi, John and Annette,” he said, then turned to me. “Now the DA knows, and the Sheriff office. They’re looking for them, apparently they were looking for them already, for some other undisclosed reason. They’ll keep us updated.”

  “Wait, what’re you talking about?” asked John, and we updated him and Annette.

  “Okay, so now. What did you find?” I asked, eyeing the laptop.

  John held up the laptop again, as he moved to the desk and opened it, then switched it on.

  “I found photos,” he said. “Of you two. And, I found photo editing software. Your caretaker was in the process of editing photos to make it look like you were with other people. The editing that’s been done so far is meticulous. If it was completed, it would fool anyone but an expert, or someone who had the original photos.”

  “Okay, thanks John,” Miles said, rubbing his forehead. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. The email lists for several of your classes. It’s easy to assume the intent was to email these photos to your classmates.”

  “Okay, wait,” I exclaimed. “So now George and Bea not only want us to doubt each other—they want our classmates to doubt our commitment too?”

  We pondered the information John uncovered. Miles looked over John’s shoulder at the images on the screen.

  “That wouldn’t fool me at all. I remember this,” Miles said, pointing to a photo that was originally of Miles and I. “I’d know that was a fake, no matter how well it was altered.”

  I stood and looked over John’s other shoulder.

  “Same here,” I said. “I didn’t know we were being photographed, but I know when each of these must have been taken. I remember. Miles was with me, not—whoever that is.”

  Miles ran his hands through his hair and paced, his eyebrows knit in concentration.

  “These people… George and Bea…” he said under his breath, then stopped suddenly and looked at me. “They aren’t trying to make us doubt each other.”

  “What?” me, John, Annette, Jenny, and Xander, all said in response.

  “They aren’t. Think about it! Every accusation of me being with someone else, has been made about a time when I was with you. I’m not always with you. I run errands, go to the gym, take the dogs running… if someone was trying to set me up to look guilty, how did they manage to miss those opportunities? Even if they had terrible surveillance, the odds that they would always miss those times we weren’t together,
are very poor. No, every time I’ve been accused, it’s when there’s no way you could doubt me, because I was with you. Supposedly I’m out with a girl when I’m playing basketball with you, I’m with another girl when I’m sound asleep on your couch...”

  “Okay, so what does that mean, then?” I was trying hard to find an explanation.

  “We’ve had things happen… like the pink note Bea dropped off, and the texts you were getting. Bea lied to Steve, and said she and I were in a relationship, and the person texting you also texted John and Xander, claiming you were with another guy. It’s all about making other people doubt our commitment.”

  Miles and I stood looking at each other, struggling to put it all together.

  “They were going to send this out to our classmates,” I said, “who would almost certainly believe it.”

  “So then,” said Jenny, “they want other people to doubt you, but they want to make sure you don’t doubt each other?”

  “This is so messed up,” said Xander.

  “Why would it benefit them for other people to doubt you?” Annette asked. “What on earth could they get out of that?”

  “Uh oh,” said John. “Where’s your laptop, Anika?”

  I looked at him, wondering at the insistent tone in his voice.

  “It’s inside the desk drawer,” I pointed.

  John took it out and turned it on, then started going through screens I didn’t even know the computer had. We all watched in silence, wondering.

  John scrunched up his hair with his hands.

  “You guys—Anika, there’s a virus on your machine.”

  He grabbed a post-it and stuck it across the top of the screen, then continued to work feverishly, as we all remained silent and extremely perplexed.

  Finally he turned, and took a deep breath. Pushing my laptop aside, he pulled George’s forward.

  “I didn’t see this earlier. I didn’t go through every single photo. But look.”

  There were images of us in our apartment.

  “What!” Jenny and I both jumped up. “How?”

  “Your laptop has a virus,” John said. “Miles, you might want to get your laptop so we can check it. You too, Jenny, and Xander.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Xander, taking off for his and Miles’ apartment, as Jenny hurried to her room for her own laptop.