by Blair Merrin
He smiles and gives my hand a squeeze. “Missed you, too.”
I’ve known Dash since we were in high school, when he was a sandy-haired nerd that got picked on a lot. He’s still a sandy-haired nerd, but he grew up, filled out, and gained a fashion sense. Oh, and we’ve been dating for a couple of months now.
“So tell me something new,” he says, perusing a menu (as if he doesn’t know Tank’s menu by heart). “I need to take my mind off all this work.”
“Uh… not much to tell, to be honest. Let’s see… Mom has a new obsession with selling severed animal limbs, and… oh, right! There was a skull.”
Dash stares at me blankly. “That’s… that’s quite a statement.”
I quickly run through the story of Bill, the bronze skull, and how I sold it to Bonnie.
“Huh,” he says after. “Weird. And where’d Bill get it?”
“You know, I’m not sure,” I lie.
“Come on, Cass. I know when you’re not being honest. It’s just me; I’m not going to tell anyone.”
I sigh. “Okay, but not a word.” I lean in conspiratorially. “You know the old Waverly house? Maximoff bought it, and he plans to tear it down to build a hotel.”
“Cool,” Dash says. “That old place is an eyesore. Glad to see it gone.” He takes a sip of his tea. “Do you think Penny knows?”
“No, I don’t think anyone knows yet, outside of us, Bill’s crew, and whoever approved the permits. Why?”
Dash gives me a second to work it out.
“Oh! Oh, geez, I didn’t even think of that.” Penny Harrigan, a friend of ours, is also the proprietor of the motel on the way into town—currently the only motel in town, which does most of its business from tourists. If another hotel went in, and it was nicer and newer, it would be direct competition with Penny, who’s already hurting from lack of tourism this season (on account of a couple of murders that went down).
“Hey, speak of the devil,” Dash mutters. He gestures with his head. I turn, expecting Penny, but instead a stooping old man ambles into the diner. He wears a heavy wool coat, even though it’s not really cold out. His white hair sticks up at all angles. We’re a good ten feet away, but I can smell the liquor on him like a boozy aura.
Dexter Maximoff shuffles to the counter and slowly sets himself up on a stool. He tips to the side, nearly falls, and catches himself on the Formica lip. I’ve never personally interacted with the guy, but I know that he’s in his early sixties and looks seventy-five. Excessive drinking will do that to a man.
April, the adorable blonde waitress with an enviable waistline (and also Tank’s wife) smiles at Maximoff and asks loudly, “Hey there, Mr. Maximoff! I bet you’d like a coffee!”
The old man winces. I can tell April is messing with him and enjoying herself. The old man lets out a sound—“Harrumph”—which I’m pretty sure is an affirmative.
Dexter Maximoff is kind of a local legend. He’s the last of the Maximoff family, who pretty much built modern-day Bandit Hills back in the forties and fifties. At one time they owned almost the whole town, and they were responsible for developing the motel, the gas station, the original diner (well before it was Tank’s), and most of Main Street. They’re also the ones that started the tourist boom for our little corner of the world. Little by little, they sold each piece—the motel to Penny’s parents, the gas station to the Wilkes family, the diner to Tank’s uncle, even the land that Bonnie’s ranch sits on. The Maximoffs gave everyone a fair deal; they truly cared about this town, and declined all corporate offers, no matter how much it was for.
Then, when I was just a little girl, Dexter’s parents died in a tragic boating accident while on vacation. A few years later, his younger brother was struck by a drunk driver, and only five years ago his sister succumbed to cancer, leaving Dexter the last Maximoff. Far as I or anyone else has been aware, he spends his days drinking himself stupid in his enormous house on the southern tip of town. He never married, and never had children, so when he goes, so will the Maximoff name. Sad, really.
And all of that is why the idea of him developing something new in town is kind of exciting, and at the same time kind of frightening; I imagine the old guy is probably not in full control of his faculties. For all I know he could be putting in a Hyatt, which would completely ruin everything we stand for… not to mention breaking the door open for others to follow suit.
I watch as he dumps enough sugar to kill an elephant into his coffee. He stirs it with a tremulous hand. I feel bad for him; it must be lonesome in that big house by himself. Of course, he could make an effort to be a little more sociable, but I guess if I lost my entire family I’d be a hermit too.
Dash gives my hand another squeeze. “Cass,” he says gently, “you’re staring.”
“Yeah. Sorry,” I break my gaze from Maximoff. “Hey, do you want to watch?”
“Watch what?”
“The demolition of the Waverly place. Could be fun; we’ll pack a lunch, bottle of wine, watch them destroy a building…”
“You are the strangest girl.” He grins. “Yeah, sounds like a date. I’ll bring the picnic blanket—”
There’s a scuffle behind us, and I turn in time to see a young man burst into the diner, his face white as a sheet, his lips trembling.
“Someone help!” he cries out. The entire diner falls silent, all eyes on him. “Please, help! He’s dead!”
Well, that’s never good.
CHAPTER 4
“He’s dead! Dead!”
The young guy looks around wildly—looking for a police officer, I imagine. His eyes settle on Dash; he rushes over and yanks on Dash’s arm, practically pulling him out of the booth. “Come on, please, come…”
“Whoa, whoa,” Dash grabs the kid by the shoulders. “Calm down, Rex. Tell me, what’s going on?”
“I-I-I went there, like he told me, and he was, was, was…” The poor kid shakes like a leaf. Dash guides him gently into the booth across from me. I can see fear, pure and unadulterated, in his eyes.
“Hey,” Dash instructs firmly, “I need you to calm down and tell me what you saw.”
The kid (Rex, apparently) takes a gulp of air as if he were downing a drink. “Bill told me to meet him at the Waverly place this afternoon.” The kid is trembling so badly my fork clatters on the table. “For some… for some demo work… I got there… he was on the floor… blood…”
My stomach drops. You know that feeling when you’re going down the first hill of a rollercoaster? Yeah, that’s how it feels to hear that someone you just talked to yesterday might have suffered a terrible fate.
“Okay,” Dash says. “Okay, listen to me, Rex. I’m going to go see, and you’re going to stay here, okay?” He turns toward the counter. “April, glass of water please? Cassie, call Phil. Have him meet me at the Waverly house.”
“But—”
“Cassie, please.”
Dash knows that when there’s trouble, I like to be on the front lines, but I can see by his expression that he means business. I take out my phone and call Phil, Bandit Hills’ sheriff, and give him the message.
April brings Rex a glass of water. The young guy tries to drink it, but manages instead to splash half of it down the front of his shirt. As Dash heads for the door, Maximoff ambles toward Dash, his eyes half-closed.
“Coming,” the old man says.
“Mr. Maximoff, no offense, but if something happened there, you should really let the police take a look first—”
Maximoff’s gaze hardens into a scowl, and for a moment I see some light in his eyes. “I own it. I’m coming.”
“Fine,” Dash says. He gives me a quick nod and hurries out.
I turn back to the booth. April gets Rex a straw and helps him drink some water. The guy looks like he might faint, or vomit, or both.
“Hey,” I tell him. “It’ll be alright.”
He looks me right in the eye. “No. It won’t.”
I bite my lip and stare at the table. I may b
e well-versed in all things long-dead, but when it’s fresh, when there’s grieving to be done and folks to comfort, I fall kind of short. I joke with Dash sometimes that I relate better to the dead than to the living, but there’s a lot of truth to it.
I’m unsure if I should stick around or go back to the shop. I decide to hang out until I hear something from Dash, so I call Mom and ask her to watch the store just a little bit longer. I try to sound nonchalant and I don’t mention anything about Bill. I don’t really want to offer my awkward words of solace to Rex, so I take a position at the counter. After a few minutes, April sidles up beside me.
“Hey,” I say quietly, “who’s the kid?”
“Rex is Bill’s assistant, from Arborton. They updated my bathroom a few months ago.” She looks away, and I can tell she’s thinking the same thing; that hopefully Rex is wrong, and he didn’t see what he claims to have seen. She shakes her head. “I remember a time when we made friends with spirits, and not spirits out of friends.”
I know exactly what she means. I’ve recently been haunted by two people that I knew in life, Bandit Hills residents both, and a third formerly-deceased from our neighboring town of Arborton.
“I’ve got a handle on this,” April tells me softly, “if you want to get back to the shop.”
“It’s okay. I’ll hang out until we hear from Dash—”
My cell phone rings. Lo and behold, it’s him. “Hey.”
“Cassie, can you meet us down here?”
“What’s going on? Is it Bill?”
“We just need you to come down here quick, okay?” There’s something terse in his voice that I don’t like one bit.
“Two seconds.” I hang up, run out to my SUV, and drive faster than I should through town. Bandit Hills is not large; you can get pretty much anywhere from anywhere in ten minutes or less, and with the diner being somewhat central, it only takes me three minutes to get to the old Waverly house. (I might have run a red light.)
If you’re the kind of person that gets freaked out by big, old, dilapidated houses, the Waverly place would be the stuff of nightmares. It’s a three-story victorian-style home that was painted dark gray with black shutters, even though the paint is peeling and the shutters hang on odd angles, if at all. The wraparound front porch has gaping holes in the rotting wood. The weeds in the front yard grow past my knees. Every window in the place is boarded up, since tourists like to dare each other to break inside—though, to my knowledge, the place isn’t even haunted. No murders ever took place here.
It’s called the Waverly house because way back when Bandit Hills was still forming, the Waverly family from New York built it. They owned all the land around it too, planning on starting their own plantation. As the story goes, they were itching to get out of the city and enjoy a peaceful country life, but after a few years they realized they hated it. So they packed up and left; apparently they had enough money that they could just abandon the manor house. Other folks eventually moved in, but no one could afford maintenance on the place, so it fell into disarray. The property changed hands plenty of times; the land around it was subdivided and sold off, but no one did anything with the old house… until now, I guess.
When I arrive, I see Dash’s midnight blue Caddy parked outside, along with a black Lincoln (presumably Maximoff’s), two police cruisers, and a paramedics van. None of the emergency vehicles’ lights are flashing, and I know enough to know that’s not a good sign.
Dash waits for me by the front door, stone-faced, as I gingerly make my way up the creaking, rotting front steps.
“Bill?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Is he…?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” I stare at the porch, with its broken boards and weeds pushing out between them. “How?”
“That’s why I called you. Listen, his body is covered while we’re waiting for the county coroner, but I need you to take a look at something else. Would you do that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay.” He takes my hand. “Come with me.” He leads me into what was once a grand foyer, down a hall into a living room bigger than my entire apartment. The size of the cavernous room is all the more noticeable since it’s devoid of any furniture, and it smells like mold and mildew.
I try not to look at the white sheet on the floor, with two brown work boots noticeably sticking out from the bottom. I look up at the vaulted ceilings to avoid seeing the large puddle of blood.
I hear Maximoff and Phil talking quietly from another room. The conversation ceases when they notice I’ve arrived, and the footfalls tell me they’ve joined us in the living room.
“I’m sorry, Cassie, but I need you to look,” Dash says. “Right there.” He points. “Is that the bronze skull that was in your shop yesterday?”
I look down. About three feet from Bill’s head, mercifully covered by the sheet, is indeed the bronze skull, lying on its side, smeared with blood.
CHAPTER 5
“Are you sure you’re up for this right now?” Phil asks me. “We can do this at the station, if you prefer.”
I shake my head. “Now is fine.” After I positively identified the bronze skull as the one that had been in my shop, Sheriff Phil informed me that it was undoubtedly the murder weapon—which made my blood run cold. There’s a big difference between finding out someone died, and finding out someone was murdered. Phil asked if I’d give him a statement, so we went into what used to be the Waverly dining room to talk while Deputy Sharon and Dash wait for the coroner.
I look over Phil’s shoulder; Maximoff stands in the doorway to the dining room, leaning against the cracked doorjamb. Now that he’s sober, or in the process of sobering up, I can see that his eyes are gray and penetrating.
Phil notices me staring. “Do you want me to ask him to leave?” Phil says, loud enough for Maximoff to hear.
“No, it’s okay. Go ahead.”
Phil clears his throat. We go way back, all the way to high school, except back then we didn’t like each other. Phil was a jock, one of the “cool kids,” which translates to “epic jerk.” Then he went to the police academy and straightened out. These days he’s a real nice guy, and it seems that the history between him and Dash—he wasn’t very nice to young Dashiell—is all but forgotten.
“Tell me how the skull came into your possession.”
I tell him, starting from Bill coming in with his giant box of old stuff, to him refusing the consignment deal, to Mom wanting to sell it online… and then I trail off, because I know what comes next and I really, really don’t want to have to say it.
“Cassie,” Phil says gently, “I need the whole story. From you.” I get the feeling that Dash might have already given him the scoop.
“I sold it to Bonnie for twenty dollars.”
Phil nods. “Thank you. That’s very helpful.” He flips his notepad closed and touches my shoulder gently. “When the coroner establishes time of death, I’ll need an alibi from you.”
“I know the drill.” I’m not proud of it, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been questioned by the cops.
“I’m going to check in with Sharon,” Phil says. “You can leave whenever you’d like.” He exits the room, leaving just me and Maximoff.
After a moment, the old man speaks. “You knew him well?”
“I knew him.”
“Just met him myself, before this job started.” He reaches into an inner pocket of his wool coat and takes out a flask. He unscrews the top, takes a long swig, and then holds it out to me.
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” He takes another drink and replaces it, and suddenly I realize why the oversized wool coat—big pockets. I wonder how many of those flasks he’s hiding in there.
“Can I ask you a question?” Before he can agree, I continue. “What were you planning on building here?”
“You mean what am I planning on building here. Not to sound callous, but the project is still happening. I’ve pu
t too much into this already.”
“Okay. Then what are you planning on building here?”
“Hotel. Nothing too fancy; a dozen rooms, a bar, a small restaurant. I want to give it a haunted house kind of vibe.”
“You want to tear down the spooky old mansion to build a haunted hotel?”
“I would’ve just redone it, but Bill said…” He trails off for a moment and clears his throat. “Bill said that it would’ve taken too much to remodel and bring this old place up to code. Said it’d be easier to just start over.”
“Why now?”
He shrugs. “Why not?”
“I mean, I know what your family did for this town, but you haven’t been active in the community for… pretty much as long as I can remember. So why the sudden interest in this?”
He sighs. “I’m getting on in years. Never had kids. Everything in this town has a Maximoff mark on it, in some way… but that was mostly my parents. I guess I just wanted to leave my own mark on something.”
I can understand that. I have a lot of pride in my store, and it’s not really a landmark or anything, not in the same way that the motel or Tank’s is. I’m about to tell him so when Dash sticks his head in the doorway.
“Hey, Cassie, can I borrow you?”
Out in the hall, Dash speaks in nearly a whisper. “Phil’s putting me on this thing right away, while it’s still within the first forty-eight hours. He’s going back to Tank’s to pick up Rex and ask him a few questions. Guess where he wants me to go.”
“I’m coming with you,” I tell him immediately.
He smiles a little. “I know, that’s why I’m telling you. But you can’t play favorites here. We don’t know what happened, and we can’t make assumptions.”
“Got it. You ask the questions; I’ll sit there looking stern.”
“Good. The coroner is estimating the time of death at around six hours ago, so between seven and eight this morning.”
“Great!” I say, and then regret it. “I didn’t mean great; I meant that I was in the shop, and Mom was there too, doing her photo thing. I have an alibi.”