Sinister Secrets

by Colleen Gleason

  “It’s fine.” She spun and yanked open the pantry, rummaging around in there as he pulled the bread toward him and finished swiping peanut butter over it for her.

  “Here. Can you eat it on the way? Am I driving you or is someone—”

  “Brooklyn’s picking me up. I told you that yesterday,” she said, emerging with one of those really expensive granola bars in her hand and another in her mouth. They were hardly bigger than two of his fingers and cost more than two dollars each. And with only five or so in a box, he winced every time he saw her down two or three in a row. Apples and bananas, peanut butter and jelly, were a lot less expensive. And people said teenaged boys would cost an arm and a leg to feed them…

  “Here,” he said, offering her the sandwich.

  “I’m fine. I’ve got these.” She showed him two more granola bars and he sighed inwardly.

  “All right. Well, we can talk more about this later,” he said as she snagged up her backpack, water bottle, and six dollars’ worth of dark chocolate and dried cherry granola bars—which was hardly a nutritious meal for a growing girl.

  “Whatever.” The door banged behind her, leaving Declan holding the sandwich.

  He sighed, then took a bite as he headed to the bathroom to shower. He figured he better put himself to rights before he went to have a chat with Leslie Nakano, celebrity CEO.

  Four

  Every time Leslie walked by the dismantled stair rail in the foyer, she was drawn to it. There was something about that slender, gaping channel that ran halfway up the side of the stairs that called to her. It needed to be cleaned up—all that insulation and dust lingering in that hole were releasing God knew what into the air; not to mention critters using it for nesting. Besides, she wanted to know what that mold or discoloration was from anyway.

  Not that she didn’t have a million other things to do—but thank goodness she’d found someone to help out with some of them. Stephanie Lillard had been eager, smart, and willing to jump in and help, and though Leslie had originally thought she might want to hire someone a little older, Stephanie had come highly recommended and Leslie decided to give her a shot.

  It was into the evening before Leslie decided to tackle the project of the insides of the stair railing base. Between meetings all morning with contractors, then one with her bank, the late afternoon tea at Orbra’s, and an extended appointment with an interior designer to work on new window treatments for the entire house (Leslie didn’t even want to think about that bill), she’d hardly had a moment to spare, and she’d hardly been home.

  “It’s really not that important,” she told herself as she donned heavy gloves and located the broom and vacuum cleaner. Declan Zyler was just going to put the railing back the way it was; who cared if there was dust or debris inside it?

  But something compelled her to poke around in the long, narrow hole.

  “There could be rodents nesting in there,” she muttered to herself, and shined a flashlight down into the depths. The sun had nearly set, and the light in the front hall wasn’t as bright as it would eventually be, because two of the sconces had to be rewired.

  “I wish I could figure out what that rusty discoloration is.” Oh, damn—she needed to get a mold expert out here to check it out to make sure it wasn’t something she had to treat. “I knew I was forgetting something.” She made another mental note to call tomorrow. “Maybe I’ll send a sample off to one of the universities to see if they can identify it.”

  With her gloved hands, Leslie began to pull out debris from inside the railing base and tossed it onto a large tarp she’d spread on the foyer floor. As she removed a large piece of something that looked like pink insulation, she realized with a start that it wasn’t insulation at all.

  She withdrew the piece and held it up, frowning. It looked like a wide scarf, or—no, it was a lady’s wrap. The large crystal button, the size of a half-dollar, would have held it together right in the center of her bosom, and the stole would have covered the woman’s upper arms and torso like an off-the-shoulder dress. It was lined with white satin, and the exterior had been a lush rose-pink velvet. But now it was discolored in areas with rust. Or something else.

  Weird location to put something like that. How in the world had it even gotten there in the first place? Leslie felt a shift in the air…something cool and eerie stirred, sending a chill skittering along her arms. She tossed the wrap aside—but not on the tarp—and gingerly looked back down into the hole. There was a definite lower temperature emanating from the darkness there, accompanied by the smell of age and…

  Perfume?

  She pulled back and sniffed the air. Yes, all at once there was the faint scent of something floral and musky in the air.

  Leslie shivered a little and looked around. The windows were black, for the sun had set and she was still waiting for the curtains to be installed. The nearly leafless trees, pines, and thick bushes that in the daytime provided charming seclusion for the house now rose in dark shadows to ban more than a hint of streetlight and other illumination from the town below. The flashlight in her hand and the lamp that burned in the foyer reflected in the dark windows, and all at once she felt very alone. Very alone.

  Silly.

  This was the same house she’d slept in for weeks now, the same lovely, charming building she’d adored for decades, the same home that looked cheerful and welcoming during the day. The simple matter of the sun setting didn’t change a thing.

  But the opening of the stair rail did.

  Leslie caught her breath. Again with the creepy thoughts from nowhere! But the hair on the backs of her arms was taut and raised, and she rubbed herself briskly through the sleeves of her shirt.

  The house had sighed when they pulled away the railing, hadn’t it? The entire place had sort of…exhaled. Shuddered. She hadn’t imagined it, had she?

  But how could a house exhale? It was silly.

  She looked at the exposed opening, slender and unassuming as it appeared.

  What else could be down in there?

  At least it’s too small for a body.

  Leslie felt a wave of relief when she realized that and gave a short burst of nervous laughter. After all, Fiona had found a skeleton in the closet of her antiques shop back in Philadelphia. But Leslie was being ridiculous—how often did that sort of thing happen in real life? Never. Hardly ever. This house had been lived in for decades. Surely if there was anything to find, it would have been discovered long ago.

  And about the cold chill…probably the base of the stairway butted up to the cellar below, and that was likely the source of the draft, coming up from down there.

  Nevertheless, she felt slightly off balance as she beamed her light down into the narrow opening and began to use the broomstick to poke around in there because it was too deep for her arm to reach any further. Besides…she didn’t know what she was going to find, did she?

  Leslie dragged the handle along the bottom of the hole and felt it catch against something. Carefully, she slid it up along the side until she could remove the object. An evening glove, dirty and dingy, with three round gold buttons on it about the size of peas. It was stained with the familiar rusty discoloration that she wasn’t certain was actually rust.

  Well, at least it’s consistent.

  That chilly draft seemed to be a little stronger now, and Leslie just felt…strange. Like there was something in the air.

  Maybe if I had a cat, it would sense the supernatural. Or better yet, it wouldn’t sense anything and I’d know for sure.

  Once again, she looked around, half expecting to see something…and at the same time, berating herself for being silly. Forcing her attention back to the project at hand, though part of her was actually considering aborting it, Leslie dragged the broomstick through the bottom again. This time, she heard a soft metallic sound as it brushed something against the wall.

  Shining the light inside the hole once more, she peered down, one eye closed, and saw the way the light
glinted off something shiny in the depths. Not silvery—so not a nail. But goldish.

  She tried for several minutes to use the broom handle to fish out the object, but it was too stubborn and kept sliding off. A wire hanger, she decided, suddenly determined to discover what else was down inside there along with a glove and a wrap.

  Leslie hadn’t forgotten the legend about Red Eye Sal’s supposedly hidden jewel cache, and though she didn’t put much stock in rumors like that, she was curious. What if?

  Suddenly a little more enthusiastic, she hurried off to find a hanger. She was halfway to the kitchen when there was a loud crash from the foyer. The sound made her heart catapult into her throat and her head go light before she realized it was probably the broomstick she’d hastily shoved against the wall, falling over.

  Jumpy much, Les?

  Nevertheless, her knees were still a little weak and her insides a bit tumultuous as she continued into the kitchen—which was probably why, when she saw the face at the door, she shrieked.

  Five

  Declan didn’t leave his house until after seven, which made it almost dark. He’d showered and shaved, then he had a few voicemails to return (one was a weekly call from Cara, checking in on how things were going—he had to give her credit and gratitude: she’d turned out to be a great mother), and an order for fifty more iron rods to post online so he could make the cutoff for delivery this week.

  He was just finishing when he received a text, this one from Steph.

  U should come by and watch pom practice tonight.

  Curious, and more than a little relieved she didn’t seem to be mad at him anymore, he replied: Any particular reason?

  Her reply, almost immediately: Mrs. Delton is here. Followed by three winky smileys and one with its tongue sticking out.

  Declan laughed, and felt his cheeks flush a little even though no one was around. Emily Delton, the mother—the divorced mother—of one of the other girls on the pom team had managed to sit next to him during the last two football games, and she’d also invited herself in on the night she drove Steph home from practice. He’d ended up having a beer with her at the kitchen table while their daughters did something on the computer.

  She thinks ur hawt.

  Speaking of hot, his cheeks—really?—were getting there. Thank goodness no one was around. Honestly, it was too weird and creepy that his daughter—whom he really hardly knew—was trying to set him up. Wasn’t that supposed to be weird for kids, to think of their parents hooking up with someone?

  Not that Emily Delton was someone who’d send him running in the other direction. She might be a few years older than he—after all, he’d only been eighteen when Cara got pregnant—but she looked good. Though she was always well dressed and neat, she didn’t have that brittle, try-too-hard aura that divorcees sometimes got once they became single again and began to focus on dating. From what he understood, she co-owned a spa and salon on the edge of town that offered everything from hair styling to massages to nails—and something called mud wraps. Not something that sounded appealing to him.

  But the massages…most definitely. He wondered idly whether Emily Delton was a massage therapist, and the thought settled in his mind. That would be…interesting.

  Well? Stephanie texted back.

  Aren’t you supposed to be practicing? How can you be climbing onto the top of a human pyramid if you’re texting me?

  The response was an angry smiley followed by three exclamation points, and Declan laughed again. It was an ongoing joke between them—for apparently, only cheerleaders climbed into human pyramids and did flips in the air; the pom squad danced and shimmied. Heaven forbid a dad should mistake one for the other.

  See you when you get home, he replied, and tucked the phone into his pocket. He’d see Emily Delton soon enough—probably at the Homecoming game Friday night. Although if it rained like it was supposed to, he wondered if she’d even come and risk having her hair and makeup ruined.

  Declan left the house, locking it behind him and wishing—not for the first time—they had a dog. He hadn’t had a dog since he was a kid, and something about living back here in Wicks Hollow made him want to have a soft-eyed canine that would always be happy to see him.

  He’d been lucky getting this particular bungalow on one of the main streets just outside the touristy area of the town. It had a second, detached garage, which the previous owners had used to store their two boats: a sailboat and a speedboat, both of which could be taken to Lake Michigan (two miles west) or the smaller, windier, and warmer Wicks Lake (three miles east).

  This meant the outbuilding was perfectly suited for him to set up his forge. The exterior of both buildings had dark red wood shingles, big black shutters, and a white picket fence that surrounded the tree-studded lot. Stephanie had loved it—called it a doll house, to his dismay—and wanted to replace the shutters with white ones that had cutout hearts on them to match the cutout one on the swinging gate.

  Declan had firmly declined. But he had allowed her to choose the color for the living room walls (thankfully, a reasonably easy to live with light blue) and the curtains for the kitchen (not quite as easy, due to the colorful owls splashed all over them). Their only real battle had been over the shared bathroom, which she’d wanted to do in Mickey Mouse (black, white, and red—with Mouse accents) and he’d been happy with just the black and white. They’d compromised—no Mickey tissue holder, shower curtain, or toilet cover, but a Mickey toothbrush stand. And one picture of the Mouse.

  “Be thankful I didn’t want the Little Mermaid,” she’d told him cheekily.

  She was a great kid. She really was. How the hell more lucky could he be?

  He frowned as he began to walk briskly down the street. He still had to deal with this Leslie Nakano hiring Stephanie problem. The thing that burned his ass the most was the fact that she’d done so without even mentioning it to him yesterday.

  She was a seasoned businesswoman. She should know better. Hell, she’d even been on the cover of Fortune magazine (yes, Declan had looked her up after Stephanie mentioned it).

  In fact, there was a lot of information about Leslie Nakano on the Internet, including several articles about the initial public offering for her company InterWorks, press releases about the company’s successes, and even a few photographs of her at various Philadelphia events. In some she was with a stiff-looking man named G. Elliott Yarborough—an attorney who seemed to be a personal friend, not a business associate.

  In those pictures, the sleek, perfect Leslie Nakano sure as hell didn’t look much like the disheveled, dust-covered woman he’d met yesterday, wearing a ball cap and baggy clothes. In the newspaper photos, her gaze was cool and steady, and her hair was pulled back in smooth, dark, businesslike coils. Her obvious Japanese heritage was apparent in her facial features, as well as the almond shape of her eyes and the delicateness of her figure.

  True, he’d seen the businesslike determination in her eyes under the casual jokes and conversation yesterday, and he hadn’t been lying when he mentioned she didn’t look like she scared easily, but the woman he’d met was a far cry from the hotshot exec (“Twenty-five Women Ready to Shake Up Their Fields” was the name of one Fortune article in which she’d been featured) he’d seen online.

  But unkempt as she’d been, Nakano sure as hell knew what she was doing, hiring people. And that made him even more irritated with the situation. Why did she think she needed a fifteen-year-old girl to work for her? And why would she be hiring her without talking to her parents?

  He had a bad feeling about it. A very bad feeling. He didn’t want Stephanie to be taken advantage of. He had visions of her slaving away doing all sorts of menial labor—clearing out moldy debris (without a face mask), climbing on a tall, rickety ladder to reach the ceiling in the foyer in order to scrub the plaster design around the chandelier, carting asbestos-ridden insulation to the Dumpster out front—while Ms. Nakano sat in her office and filed her nails and did press intervi
ews via Skype or those fancy star-shaped conference-call phones.

  The more he thought about it, the more irritated he became. He’d just spent the better part of his day working on iron spindles for her main staircase, trying to do it as quickly and inexpensively as possible (that was before he realized he was dealing with a woman who’d made a couple million in a public offering). And now she wanted to take advantage of his daughter as well?

  These thoughts fueled his stride as he made his way down three blocks past the main drag—by Orbra’s Tea House, The Balanced Chakra Yoga Studio, and numerous clothing stores, jewelry shops, and restaurants. He sniffed longingly when he passed Trib’s, the trendiest restaurant in town, with killer pizza and a beer list that went on for five pages.

  The brisk air and energetic stride eased some of his annoyance with Leslie Nakano’s high-handed employment move. By the time Dec had walked past all the shops and up the hill of Shenstone House’s residential street, the sun was down and the only light, though generous enough, was an occasional passing car and the streetlights along the way. But the drive leading up the hill to the house was dark, and as it was shrouded by thick trees and bushes—almost a forest there, really—he was walking more by faith than by sight, guided only by the faint glow through the windows ahead of him.

  He knew better than to go to the front door; by the time he’d finished with their meeting yesterday, he’d realized Leslie lived in the back of the house by the large, sunny kitchen while the rest of it was being worked on—so that was where he headed.

  It occurred to him at that point that, first, he probably should have called (who knew if she was even home), and then, as he came up and around the bend that opened into a large, flat parking area, that there was the same dark blue Mercedes that’d been there yesterday. So she was probably at home.

  A figure moved inside the kitchen—Leslie—and he went directly to the door. He was just about to raise his hand to knock when she screamed.