Back Against the Wall

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Beth, Matt and Emily had refused to believe she would do that. Leave Dad, sure. She’d taken to yelling at him a lot. But she wouldn’t have abandoned her children. She, of all people, had known how inadequate he was as a parent. For a long time Beth, at least, had held on to the belief that Mom would fight for custody once she had a new job and someplace to live.

  “She loved this blouse.” Beth could hardly take her eyes off it. “Why didn’t she take more of her clothes?”

  “Because she left in a hurry?” Matt suggested, old anger roughening his voice. “Maybe she thought she’d try a new style for a new man.”

  “Maybe.” Seeing her sister’s distress, she shook herself. “Well. This is sort of creepy, but I can see why Dad didn’t want to get rid of everything.”

  “I’ll bet I’m the same size she was.” Emily stepped forward. “There might be clothes I’d like.”

  Not even thinking it through, Beth dropped the blouse back into the box and slapped the flaps closed. “No.”

  Looking indignant, her sister said, “What do you mean, no?”

  Matt turned on her. “Don’t you speak English? She means no. N.O.”

  “Don’t talk to me that way.”

  Beth shut her eyes and sought her equilibrium. A couple deep breaths, and she was back. “Emily, I hate the idea of seeing you in some shirt I associate with her, and obviously Matt feels the same.”

  “Dumpster,” he said, sounding hard.

  Beth shook her head. “Can we just set this aside? Keep it for now?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just...don’t want to make that decision yet. Anyway...” She hesitated. “Her clothes were nice. When we do get rid of them, they should go to a thrift store or maybe a women’s shelter.” She didn’t include garage sale. What if she breathed in the faint scent of her mother while she was handling her mother’s clothes. Attaching little price tags. The idea made her shiver.

  He frowned at her but gave an abrupt nod. “Up to you.” Matt went back to the box of books he’d been looking at one by one.

  Logically enough—if anything about this was logical—Beth found half a dozen more boxes filled with her mother’s stuff in the same vicinity. Shoes, too, of course, but mostly clothes, including one that had lingerie on top. She closed that box really fast. Even the thrift store wouldn’t want old, used panties and bras. She was tempted to write Toss in big black letters on the side but knew she ought to dig deeper in the box before she did that.

  Matt and even Emily stayed away from the section of the garage where Beth was working. Emily kept stealing wary glances at her, and no wonder. She was used to a calm, competent, I-can-solve-all-problems sister, not one who freaked at the sight of a pink blouse.

  Beth uncovered Mom’s jewelry box and couldn’t resist peeking inside. Tangled chains were jumbled with earrings and bracelets. Mom had obviously taken some of her nicer pieces, except...was that a real diamond in a stud earring? Beth didn’t remember her mother wearing those. After a moment, she put the box back, setting it on top. She’d want to go through this later. Eventually. There might be something in here that Emily would like as a keepsake. The rest...well, anything that wasn’t too familiar or particularly valuable could go to the thrift store.

  A wave of exhaustion and discouragement hit her. After a full day yesterday, her muscles ached, too. Her back to Matt and Emily, Beth leaned against the workbench. What happened to her plan to go through everything, make brisk decisions, be done with it?

  Speed bump, she told herself. They’d been moving along pretty well. She’d been right that most of what they’d found would be useful to someone. Matt had agreed to ask his wife if she’d like to go through the boxes of children’s clothes before they passed them on. She was pregnant with their first baby.

  The next box held things Beth didn’t really recognize but guessed to have been from Mom and Dad’s bedroom. She opened a stiff portfolio to find unframed art prints. Worth looking at later.

  Finally, she shoved all the remaining boxes associated with Mom back under and on top of the built-in workbench, which her father would never use. Home repair was not on his list of skills. She’d left the window above the workbench unblocked, making a mental note to come back with some glass cleaner. Even so, the light falling through the window helped.

  Pulling herself together, she decided to tackle the things piled against the wall beside the workbench next. An ancient Weedwacker. Could it have come with the house? Several fans on stands, wrapped in white plastic trash bags, must have been out here forever. A folded stepladder. More boxes.

  Beth sighed.

  Wallboard had covered the garage walls as long as she could remember, which meant it was discolored and battered. Nobody had ever taped or spackled or painted out here. She could just see wall-hung shelves on the other side of the garage. Probably that was where the oldest stuff was. Anybody would fill shelves before starting to pile junk on the floor, right?

  Strange, though—the one sheet of wallboard in front of her looked a little different from the rest. Not really clean, but cleaner, except for some gross but long-dry stains at the bottom. None of the dings, either. Maybe Mom and Dad had had it replaced at some point. If so, it had to have been put up shortly before the piles grew in front of it, protecting it. Except for a big hole bashed into it six or seven feet up. Something had probably smacked it. The extension ladder lying on a sheet of plywood suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the garage, right above the tracks and motor for the automatic garage door opener? Maybe. It would have been awkward to maneuver.

  She doubted her father even knew he owned a tall ladder. He certainly wouldn’t have any use for it. Once upon a time, Mom had nagged him into occasional tasks like painting. Later, if something obviously needed doing, he hired someone. Well, Beth hired someone. He’d look surprised but pay the bill without complaining.

  Back to work.

  Fans—thrift store. Or garage sale, if she had one. Stepladder—who didn’t need one? If Dad didn’t want it, she’d take it. The Weedwacker? It could probably be recycled, even rusty.

  For some reason, the gaping hole kept drawing her gaze. Matt and Emily had moved their squabbling outside. They wouldn’t see her give in to an inexplicable compulsion. She unfolded the stepladder and climbed up on it.

  A flashlight would have helped, but at least the window was close. Beth angled her head to see down inside the wall. Her heart began to drum at the sight of something...

  She screamed, lurched back and tumbled off the step stool.

  * * *

  TONY NAVARRO ADDED gas to his lawn mower, carried the can to the garage, wiped sweat from his face, then pulled the cord to start the damn thing again. Not too far to go, which was good. July in eastern Washington was hot. He should have gotten the mowing done during an evening this week, when it was cooler. Keeping up with his own yard and his mother’s and often one or even a couple of his sisters’, though, that got time-consuming.

  A vibration in the pocket of his jeans had him sighing. Please, not work. He needed the day off. Bad enough he’d already caught shit from his mother for not going to church.

  He let the mower die and pulled out his phone. Unfortunately, he knew the number all too well.

  “Navarro. Isn’t there anyone else who can take this?”

  “I’m afraid not, Detective.” The dispatcher sounded genuinely regretful. “Detective Troyer is on vacation, and—”

  “Beck isn’t back to work yet. I know.” With a broken leg, David Beck wouldn’t have to mow lawns, either. Jack Moore...no, he was caught up in a messy investigation. Tony sighed again. “What do you got?”

  “This is a strange one,” she said. “Somebody noticed a hole in the wallboard in their garage and took a look in it. He says they can see a human hand. Kind of...withered. His words.”

  Tony sw
ore. “It didn’t occur to this guy it’s probably some discarded Halloween decoration?”

  “I don’t know. He was pretty shaken up.”

  Thus, she hadn’t sent a uniform to check it out. She’d called him. What could he do but commit the address to memory?

  Glad he’d been mowing his own lawn and not another family member’s, he was able to go inside for a quick shower and change of clothes. Badge and weapon. Out the door.

  The address he’d been given wasn’t half a mile from his house. Homeowner was listed as John Marshall. Caller had been a Matt Marshall.

  He could get in, he calculated, look, soothe the homeowners and be home firing up his lawn mower again in forty-five minutes, tops.

  To his dismay, in that half mile, he passed from the neighborhoods made up of ranch-style homes, mostly built from the 1960s to the ’70s, to those with older houses. These weren’t as fancy as the ones close to Wakefield College, a private, very expensive, liberal arts school. Those had been handsomely restored. The bungalows on this block weren’t rundown, but homeowners hadn’t done much but keep up the painting and neatly mow the lawns. Still, they were constructed differently than newer homes. A two-by-four really was two inches by four inches, for example, rather than the current, abbreviated size still called by the misleading dimensions. Walls might be even deeper than that, the supports farther apart than in modern construction, too. He’d been counting on the fact that stuffing a body in a typical wall of a house like his was next to impossible, unless it was child-size. Here...he couldn’t say impossible.

  He spotted the right number on a white house accented with a bland beige. 1940s, at a guess. The lawn in front was brown—no one here had bothered watering. The detached garage was set back a little farther from the street than the house. Tony had expected the garage door to be open, but it wasn’t. Two vehicles filled the driveway, and two more were parked at the curb in front of the house. A six-foot fence and gate blocked his view into the backyard.

  Tony parked in front of a neighbor’s home, grabbed his flashlight and walked up the driveway. Before he could veer toward the front door, the gate swung open and a young woman appeared from between the house and garage. Brown hair was starting to straggle out of a ponytail. Dirt streaked one of her gently rounded cheeks. Her nose, too—no, those were freckles. Maybe her hair was more chestnut, with a hint of red?

  “Oh! You’re not...” She spotted the badge and holstered gun at his hip and faltered, “Are you?” She blushed. “I mean, are you a police officer?”

  “I’m Detective Tony Navarro, Frenchman Lake P.D. And you are?”

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m rattled, and—” Breaking off again, she shook her head. “I’m Bethany Marshall. Beth. This is my dad’s house. He teaches at the community college.”

  Tony nodded, still at sea but figuring she’d get to the point soon.

  “Dad...well, he’s a typical absent-minded professor. It had gotten so the garage was so crammed full of stuff, you could hardly set foot in it. So my brother and sister and I are spending the weekend sorting and getting rid of things. You know.”

  It had to have been the brother who’d called, then. “Where’s your father?”

  She looked surprised. “He’s in the house. He’s not much good at this kind of thing.”

  Okay.

  “You see, we found...” She visibly stumbled over what they’d found. “Well, I guess I should just show you.”

  Now, there was an idea.

  “Let’s do that, Ms. Marshall,” he agreed and followed her lead through the gate and alongside the house, past a garbage can and a recycling container.

  He let himself get a little distracted by Beth Marshall, who had a truly womanly body. No matchstick arms here. He wouldn’t describe her as plump, though, just curvy. He happened to like his women curvaceous instead of the currently fashionable stick-thin, so he savored the sight of her while he could.

  Two people waited anxiously in the backyard, along with mountains of packed boxes that had been labeled Thrift, Keep and the like. The man said, “Beth?” and then saw Tony behind her. “Somebody came.” He sounded stressed. Tall, lean and handsome in a way that might be polished if he weren’t also sweaty, dirty and disheveled, this had to be the brother. His arm sheltered a young woman, a cute blonde with blue eyes that were puffy and a scattering of freckles across her nose. The youngest of the three, Tony guessed, and probably considered prettier than Beth by most people.

  He introduced himself again and got their names. Matt Marshall and Emily Marshall. Were neither of the sisters married? He let his gaze slide to Beth’s left hand. No ring. Did any of them still live at home?

  “Okay, let me take a look,” he said.

  Matt started to move, but Beth shook her head. “I’ll show him.”

  “You should sit down.”

  “I’m okay.” She gave an unconvincing smile. “Just bruises. Really.”

  “Bruises?” Tony asked, once again following her, this time through a side door into the shadowy confines of the garage.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she wrinkled her nose. “I fell off the stepladder.”

  “Ah.” He hated to envision her creamy skin blotched with the ugly colors of bruises.

  Concentrate. He looked around. The siblings had cleared close to two-thirds of the garage, assuming it had been completely full to start with. Boxes and what looked like a lot of crap were still packed against the far wall. Tony mentally transferred the piles out in the backyard into here and thought, Holy shit. Beth had been understating the problem. Which made him wonder what the interior of the house was like.

  Not his problem.

  He saw the stepladder right away, and took in the single sheet of wallboard that subtly didn’t match the rest. Stains at the bottom, where bodily fluids would have pooled. Instantly snapping into cop mode, he had a bad feeling he wasn’t wasting his time after all. Didn’t look like he’d finish mowing his lawn today.

  Beth hovered behind him as he mounted the ladder. He was careful not to touch the wallboard and snapped on the military-grade flashlight he carried in his left hand. It lit a slice of the interior between two-by-fours.

  Despite what he’d seen in his years as a cop, the mummified human hand made his skin crawl. He could see some of the wrist—and the top of a head, the hair blond, stringy, dull but still attached. The size of the hand and arm bone and the length of hair made him believe he was looking at a woman.

  How long had she been walled up in the garage of this house? And who was she?

  Chapter Two

  BETH SAW THE detective go utterly still. When he finally stepped down and faced her, his expression had been wiped clean, but she could feel his tension.

  “I need to make a call or two,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d wait outside, Ms. Marshall.”

  However pleasantly phrased, it was an order. She nodded and hurried out into the sunlight.

  “What?” her brother demanded.

  “I don’t know. He looked, said he has to make calls and asked that we wait out here.”

  “Damn, it’s hot,” Matt muttered.

  Beth saw how pink Emily’s face was. Her own face felt too warm. They should have long since renewed their sunscreen. After putting it on first thing this morning, she’d dropped it in her tote bag, currently sitting on the workbench. “We could go inside, get something to drink,” she suggested.

  “Make conversation with Dad?”

  “Would that be the worst thing in the world?”

  His mouth tightened. “Let’s just sit in the shade.”

  “I’ll get the cooler. We can at least have drinks.”

  While a police detective decided what to do about the dead woman encased in the wall of the house, she thought, semi-hysterically. Whoever she was, she might have been there th
e whole time Beth and the others had lived here. As a kid, she’d never have noticed that the wallboard looked a little different. Although...didn’t she used to leave her bike there? Often letting it tip over and bash the wall?

  When she went into the garage, she saw the detective’s broad back and his phone at his ear. Somehow he heard her, though, because he swung around, his dark eyes locking onto her.

  Until now, she hadn’t fully let herself notice how handsome he was. Coppery-brown skin stretched over some impressive cheekbones and a strong jaw. A lot of the Hispanic farmworkers she saw in town were stocky and on the short side. The detective had to be close to six feet tall and athletic in a broad-shouldered, lean way. As his name suggested, he had black hair and the darkest eyes she’d ever seen.

  He also carried an alarmingly large gun at his hip.

  Trying to hide her shiver, she scurried to the small cooler, lifted it for his inspection, and waited for his nod before retreating outside with it. Matt and Emily had pulled folding lawn chairs against the back wall of the house, where the sun, high in the sky, granted them a meager two feet of shade. Since there wasn’t a third chair—they’d come across these in the garage yesterday—Beth sank cross-legged onto the stiff, brown grass and opened the cooler.

  “Who wants what?”

  Emily peered over her shoulder. “Diet cola.”

  Matt took an energy drink, Beth water. Her body sighed in relief to be sitting, but she became more aware of the painful spot on her butt where she’d landed on the concrete floor, and one almost as bad on her shoulder. Plus, her nerves felt as if they were being stretched on a medieval rack. What was the detective saying? When would he come out to talk to them? Meantime, she prayed her father hadn’t noticed the new arrival, wouldn’t emerge to see what was going on. It was bad enough to imagine Detective Navarro interviewing Dad, but Beth didn’t need the stress of dealing with him right now.

  Matt stared straight ahead. Beyond him, Emily curled forward, clutching her drink and seemingly studying the grass, or maybe her feet. Beth’s gaze darted from her sister and brother to the corner of the house that hid the side door into the garage, to the brick patio, then back to start all over again. What probably wasn’t more than a couple minutes felt like an eternity.