by Sarah Fox
Were they just Jamal’s and Dennis’s footprints or had other people been in here recently as well? It could easily be the latter, I figured, considering the lights that I and others had seen over the past few days. I hadn’t thought to ask Jamal if he was responsible for some of the flickers of light.
Tommy shut the door as much as was possible and followed me as I wandered through to the formal dining room. It had no furniture, but the low-hanging chandelier—covered in cobwebs and missing many of its crystals—revealed the room’s original purpose. From the dining room, we passed into a living room. A sagging couch—stained and faded—sat in the middle of the room and a chipped wooden end table lay on its side in one corner. The front windows—unlike the back ones—had been boarded up, and dust motes drifted in a narrow beam of daylight sneaking in through a hole in the wood. Empty food wrappers lay scattered about, along with some crushed beer cans and an empty vodka bottle.
“Party central?” Tommy said as he kicked aside a beer can with a clatter.
“Looks like it.”
A floorboard creaked overhead and I froze. After two more creaks, the noises stopped. My eyes wide, I looked over at Tommy, who stood as still as I did.
“See?” he whispered. “Haunted.”
“Wouldn’t ghosts be weightless?” I whispered back.
“Hearing footsteps when no one’s there is a classic sign of paranormal activity.”
“We don’t know that no one’s there.”
I strode into the foyer, where I noticed that the front door had a sheet of plywood secured over it. Across from the door, a staircase led up to the second floor.
“Hello?” I called.
“What are you doing?” Tommy said, still whispering.
“Somebody’s up there.”
“If it’s a ghost, you might have scared it off.”
I grabbed the banister with one hand, giving it a shake to test its sturdiness. It held firm, so I kept hold of it and started up the stairs, taking each step slowly in case they weren’t as solid as the banister. I didn’t look back, but I heard Tommy coming up the stairs behind me. When I reached the second floor, I paused and called out again.
“Hello? Anybody here?”
Tommy stood still at my side and the house rang with silence.
“Let’s check all the rooms.” Although I spoke in a normal voice, it sounded unnaturally loud.
After hesitating for only half a second, I headed for one of the back bedrooms.
“Careful,” Tommy cautioned, grabbing my arm to stop me.
He pointed at the floor and I saw that the boards were rotten and sagging. Overhead, a large water stain surrounded a gaping hole in the ceiling.
Edging around the rotten floorboards, I resumed my progress along the hallway. When I pushed open the bedroom door, it creaked and groaned but revealed nothing more than dusty floorboards and peeling, green-and-gold wallpaper.
Tommy cast a dubious look at the walls. “Was that ever in style?”
“Maybe in the sixties,” I said.
I surveyed the floor, but it didn’t look as though the dust had been disturbed anytime recently. Still, I hung around as Tommy opened the closet. Aside from two metal hangers, it was empty.
We moved on to the bedroom across the hall but found nothing there. Next, we headed for the other back bedroom, careful to avoid the rotten patch in the hallway. As soon as I stepped over the room’s threshold, I put out an arm to stop Tommy from going ahead of me. When I had his attention, I pointed at the floor. The dust in this room had clearly been disturbed, and by more than just a few footsteps. Plenty of dust and cobwebs clogged the corners of the room, but there were large clear patches elsewhere. At least one person had been in the room recently and by the look of things, hadn’t simply walked in and out.
Tommy stepped around me and crossed the room in three quick strides, grabbing the closet door and yanking it open.
A dark shape moved within the closet and somebody hollered. I gasped and grabbed Tommy’s arm, hauling him out into the hallway. We ran for the stairs, my heart pounding, but when we were halfway down, I came to a sudden stop. My hand still gripping his arm, Tommy halted, too.
“That was no ghost,” he said, trying to catch his breath.
“No, it definitely wasn’t.”
It was a living, breathing person, and now that I’d had time to get over my initial fright, I realized that I’d recognized the closet’s occupant.
“Come on.” I led the way up the stairs and back to the bedroom.
Logan Teeves stood half in and half out of the closet. He may not have been a ghost, but he was almost as pale as one. With the closet door standing open, I could see an unrolled sleeping bag and a backpack crammed in behind the sandy-haired teenager.
“Logan,” I said, “how long have you been staying here?”
His face went from pale to flushed in a matter of seconds. “A few days,” he mumbled.
“You’re the guy who went missing in Portland?” Tommy asked.
I confirmed that when Logan did nothing but look down at his sneakers.
“You’ve got a lot of people worried,” I said to the teen. “Including Sienna.”
He raised his head at the mention of his ex-girlfriend’s name. “Really?” He sounded surprised.
“How did you get here from Portland?”
“Buses. Hitchhiking.”
I nearly shuddered at his last word, not wanting to think about the danger he could have found himself in by accepting rides from strangers.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
He nodded, his eyes on his sneakers again.
I glanced Tommy’s way, and he shrugged. I reached into my tote bag for my phone. “I’ll call the sheriff.”
Logan’s head jerked up. “No!” He looked panicked as I withdrew my phone. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“You’re a missing person,” I said, trying my best to remain patient. “The police are probably looking for you in Portland when they could be focused on other things. Not to mention your parents must be worried sick.”
He frowned. “I doubt it.”
I watched him for a moment, noting how miserable he was. “Logan, whatever’s going on between you and your parents, hiding out here isn’t going to make it better.”
“She’s right,” Tommy said when Logan didn’t respond.
“I guess.” Logan grabbed his sleeping bag. “But please don’t call the sheriff.”
“If you’ll agree to go home to your dad, I can leave that up to him.”
It took a moment, but he eventually nodded his agreement and started rolling up his sleeping bag.
“Can you stay with Logan for a minute, Tommy?” I asked. “I want to look for the stolen props.”
“They’re in the closet in the room across the hall,” Logan said as he knelt down to work on his sleeping bag.
I stopped on my way out the door, surprised. “You know about the props?”
“I’m the one who left the fake head on your porch.”
My surprise doubled. “That was you?”
“Seriously?” Tommy jumped in, sounding annoyed on my behalf. “What did you do that for? You really freaked Marley out.”
Logan’s face turned red again as his eyes went from Tommy to me. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted you to know where to find the stolen props.”
“How was she supposed to figure that out from finding a severed head on her porch?” Tommy asked, a good dose of incredulity joining his annoyance.
Logan’s gaze skittered between us again. “I…I left a note with it. Unsigned.”
“I didn’t find a note,” I said.
“I tucked it underneath the head so it wouldn’t blow away, but I guess it did anyway.”
“It must have,” I said, thinking how much the note would have calmed my nerves. I still would have had a terrible fright when I first opened the door, but at least I wouldn’t have worried that it was a thre
at from the murderer.
I pressed a hand to my forehead as I tried to get all my thoughts in order. “You knew about the props because you were staying here when Dennis came and stashed them in the other room. Is that right?”
“I didn’t know the guy’s name, but yeah. I hid when I heard him come in the house, but once he was gone I checked to see what he was doing in the other room. When I opened the closet and saw the heads, I nearly—” He glanced my way and seemed to revise what he was about to say. “I nearly had a heart attack. But then I realized they weren’t real. I still thought the guy must be crazy, though. Who hides fake heads in a closet in an abandoned house? I mean, I’d heard there was a movie being filmed in town, but I didn’t put two and two together right away.”
“Okay,” I said, still trying to untangle my thoughts. “But why leave the prop and note on my porch of all places?”
“I’ve been sneaking into my dad’s house every day or two for food and sometimes a shower. He’s hardly ever home, and I figured he wouldn’t notice that I’d been there if I was careful. But one time he came home as I was leaving. I hid in the trees right next to the fence until he was in the house. While I was hiding, I overheard you talking about props that were stolen from the movie set. That’s when I put everything together. I felt bad about what I did to The Flip Side’s website last spring, so I wanted to do something to help you out.”
“What else do you know?” Tommy asked.
His sleeping bag now rolled, Logan tied it up. “About what? The guy who stashed the props here?”
Tommy shrugged. “About anything.”
“Nothing, really. As far as I know, the guy only came here the one time. Another guy was here a couple of times, though. He came upstairs right after the other guy left, but he didn’t come into this room. The other time he stayed downstairs. I figured he was talking on the phone that time because I only ever heard one voice.”
“Did you hear anything he said?” I asked, in case there was something important Jamal hadn’t shared with me.
“No. I stayed hidden up here. I could hear his voice, but no words.”
Silence fell around us, and I realized that both Tommy and Logan were looking at me.
“All right,” I said. “Wait here a moment.”
Leaving Tommy with Logan—to make sure the teenager didn’t run off before we could get him home—I crossed the hall to the front bedroom. There were no boards on the second-story windows and I could see that Jamal had been right about the purple wallpaper—it was hideous. The large purple swirls had streaks of brown and Pepto-Bismol pink running through them, and with all four walls papered, the effect was smothering and almost nauseating.
Doing my best to ignore the decor, I went straight to the closet. Inside, stashed in a black garbage bag, were the remaining two heads that had been stolen from the trailer. I considered picking them up, but I stopped myself. I figured it would be a better idea to get in touch with Ray and let him know where to find them.
Not that I was eager to phone the sheriff. I liked Ray, but he didn’t appreciate me conducting my own investigations and I didn’t want him getting exasperated or annoyed with me. Still, I knew I needed to let him know about the heads. I’d let that wait a short while, though. I didn’t want to scare Logan off by calling the sheriff in his presence in case he thought I was going back on our deal.
I met Tommy and Logan out in the hall, Logan with his backpack strapped on and his sleeping bag under one arm. I told them about my decision to leave the props where they were for the time being, and together we left the abandoned house.
“Are you okay from here?” Tommy asked once we’d reached the sidewalk.
I assured him that I was. “Sorry you didn’t find any ghosts.”
“There’s always next time,” he said with a grin.
He set off toward the center of town while Logan and I followed Wildwood Road in the opposite direction. We walked in silence for the first several minutes, but as we neared our homes, Logan spoke up.
“Has Sienna really been worried about me?”
I didn’t miss the undertone of hope in his words. “Of course.” I glanced his way. “You still like her?”
He nodded, color in his cheeks again. “I never wanted to break up, but…”
He didn’t need to finish. I knew that Sienna had broken up with him after she’d found out that Logan had hacked into The Flip Side’s web page and posted a false notice saying the restaurant had been shut down for health and safety violations. He’d done so at his father’s behest, and fortunately his actions hadn’t damaged my business, but Sienna disapproved of what he’d done and that had been the end of their relationship.
I didn’t say anything further, not wanting to give him false hope or to bring him down unnecessarily. I knew it was true that Sienna had worried since he’d gone missing, but I really had no idea if she had any interest in dating him again. That was up to Logan to find out, if he could work up the nerve.
We passed by the entrance to my driveway and continued on to the next one. As we turned onto the Teeves property, I was relieved to see a silver BMW parked in front of the large glass-and-steel house. It looked like we were lucky enough to find Gerald Teeves at home, not that Logan would necessarily think of it as lucky.
He dragged his feet as we got closer to the house, and he came to a full stop at the base of the front steps.
“Best to get it over with,” I told him, climbing the steps and ringing the doorbell.
Reluctantly, Logan joined me at the door.
At first I thought Mr. Teeves wasn’t going to appear, but after several seconds of silence, I heard footsteps within the house and the door opened. Gerald’s eyes fell first on me, but they widened when he noticed his son standing next to me.
“Logan?”
“Hey, Dad.” Logan kept his eyes on his dad’s feet rather than his face.
I expected Gerald to start interrogating or berating his son, but he surprised me by stepping forward and pulling Logan into a hug. Judging by the look on Logan’s face, he was as surprised as I was.
Gerald squeezed his son before holding him at arm’s length. “You’re okay?”
Logan nodded, his expression one of bewilderment.
“I’ll leave you to it,” I said, not wanting to intrude any longer.
Gerald cleared his throat and called after me as I descended the stairs. “Thank you, Ms. McKinney.”
I nodded at him over my shoulder and set off along the driveway, comforted by the knowledge that Logan was safe and sound.
Chapter 20
When I arrived home, I found Brett and Bentley waiting for me on the front porch. The goldendoodle bounded down the steps and ran to greet me, giving me enthusiastic licks on the cheek when I crouched down to give him a hug. I stood up again, and Bentley led the way to Brett, his tail wagging happily.
I met Brett with a kiss, Bentley bouncing around us, and I took his hand as we headed for the front door.
“Ingredients for dinner?” I guessed when Brett grabbed a paper grocery bag from the porch.
“Yep. How does shrimp and mushroom linguine sound?”
“Delicious,” I said, my stomach growling in agreement.
I set some food out for Flapjack—in the laundry room where Bentley couldn’t steal it—while Brett unpacked his groceries in the kitchen. The tabby purred happily and dug into his meal as soon as I put his dish on the floor.
“What can I do to help?” I asked as I shut the door to the laundry room.
“Just keep me company.”
“I can’t sit around watching you do all the work,” I protested.
“Why not? I want to do this for you.”
“That’s sweet,” I said, giving him another kiss as I took the package of shrimp out of his hands. “But I’m still going to help.”
Brett relented, and I set about shelling and deveining the shrimp while he sliced mushrooms and chopped up some garlic. Bentley settled on the k
itchen floor, watching our every move. No doubt he was hoping we’d drop a few morsels during our dinner prep.
“How was your day?” I asked as we worked.
“Ordinary but good, especially since I had time with you to look forward to.”
I smiled at that.
“How about yours?”
“The afternoon was eventful.” I deveined the last few shrimp and washed my hands as I filled Brett in on everything that had happened.
“Logan Teeves left the head on the porch?” he cut in when I reached that part of the tale.
“Yep.” I explained the reasoning behind Logan’s actions. “I took him home to his dad, who hopefully has spread the word by now that Logan is safe.”
“And Dennis was trying to make his girlfriend happy.”
“Yes, though I suspect she was using him, like she tried to do with Jamal.” I filled a pot with water for the pasta. “Ray needs to know everything’s that happened, but I don’t want to get lectured about keeping my nose out of the investigation.”
Brett added the garlic to a pan of sizzling olive oil. “He has good intentions when he does that.”
“I know, but I’ve heard it before and I don’t want him getting annoyed with me again.”
“I’ll talk to him in the morning and fill him in.”
“Thanks.” I watched as Brett added the mushrooms to the hot pan. I knew what he was thinking, but I also knew he wouldn’t voice his thoughts, so I did it for him. “If Jamal provides a sworn statement and hands over his photos, Alyssa should be in the clear.”
Brett cast a glance my way as he stirred the concoction cooking on the stove. “I wasn’t going to bring that up.”
“I know, but it’s okay. She’ll never be my favorite person, but I’m confident enough in our relationship now that she doesn’t worry me.”