A Shiver At Twilight (4 page)

Chapter Six

JD and Carly stared from one yawning entry to another in silence, neither wanting to comment on the impossibility of what they saw. They’d heard these doors slamming just moments ago. JD moved forward, feeling her behind him as he peered into the first room, playing the light over dirt, cobwebs and more broken windows.

This room had probably been the master bedroom and it still contained a battered chest of drawers pushed against the wall. JD pulled one open and looked in. It was as empty as the house itself. He moved to the closet, pretending mild curiosity, but making sure no one hid in it.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Nothing in particular,” he said.

A few hangers dangled on a rod and on the floor in a corner sat a crumbling, mildewed box. He opened the lid and saw snapshots scattered inside.

“That’s weird,” she said, peering over his shoulder.

“What is?”

“Why would anyone take all of their possessions and leave their pictures, their memories, in the closet to rot?”

She made a good point. He thought he knew, but didn't want to tell her. It would only scare her more.

He knelt down and lifted a picture from the top of the heap. A young girl, a teenager with big eyes and shiny hair that curled in a style long out of fashion smiled back at him. She was about Carly’s size and build, but more slender than curvy. She lacked the full breasts, the lush hips that made Carly such a vision of femininity. The girl in the picture wore too much make-up—Carly didn’t wear any at all that he could see. Giant earrings brushed the padded shoulders of a shiny blouse that all but screamed Let’s Boogie. She’d tucked the iridescent fabric into a pair of high-waisted, skin-tight jeans that ended in white ankle boots. She looked like someone from an old movie the cable stations played late at night. JD lifted the photo and stared at it for a moment, remembering the first time he’d seen the girl. He’d been eight or nine and he’d thought her a movie star.

“Someone you know?” Carly asked curiously, resting a hand on his shoulder and leaning closer to see the picture. He felt the heat of her body against his back and the warmth of her breath on his ear.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “My brother went to school with her.” He looked up to find her staring at him open-mouthed.

“You know this place? You’ve been here before?” she asked.

“No, I’ve never been here. I was just a kid when she lived in this house. But I remember her. I wanted my brother to marry her just so I’d get to see her every day.”

Carly gave him a tight smile. She had dimples and a crooked tooth up front that kept her looks from seeming too perfect. But he thought her damned close to perfection, even covered in mud and scratches. Everything about her had his body sitting up and paying attention.

Down boy, he could hear his brother, Bill, saying in his head. She’s in trouble because she is trouble.

“She looks like Jillian,” Carly said, drawing his attention back to the picture he still held in his hand.

“Who?”

“My friend, from the accident.”

“Her name is Jillian?”

“Jillian Mahoney.”

JD hoped he hid his reaction from her. He was supposed to have met Bill an hour ago and be his “back up” in a sticky situation with one of his female students whose name just happened to be Jillian. Bill was afraid she’d go crazy on him when he told her he couldn’t see her anymore and he didn't want to be alone when it happened. Obviously, JD hadn’t shown up—instead he’d gone with his instincts and investigated the abandoned car on the roadside, thinking, rightly as it turned out, that someone might need help. He wondered what Bill had told the girl he’d gone to meet, wondered if she could possibly be Carly’s Jillian. For such a bright man, someone who had everything, Bill managed to get in the worst messes with women. That didn't stop him from analyzing JD’s weaknesses, though, did it?

JD dropped the picture back in the box and stepped out of the closet. Carly stared at the green-eyed girl for awhile longer before following him.

“So what do you know about this place?” she asked. “It doesn’t look like anyone lives here anymore.”

“No one does.”

“Then who let me in?”

He couldn’t decide if telling her that the old man was most likely homeless—someone who might not think twice about hurting her for the shirt on her back—would make her feel better or worse. Definitely talking about the family who used to call this home wasn’t the best idea. If Carly was on edge now, she’d be over the moon when she learned that four people had died under this roof. But avoiding either question would only make it worse.

“Maybe the old guy who let you in was a bum, Carly. Probably he wanted to scare us with all the slamming doors. When that didn't work, he took off.”

Relief and worry battled in those baby blues. He couldn’t help himself. He wanted to smooth away the anxious lines between her brows with his thumb and then he wanted to cup the silky skin of her cheeks and tilt her face up so he could kiss her. A whole slide show of what he wanted to do next played out in his head.

Down boy was right.

“As for the girl in the picture, her name was Sissy. She and her family lived here eighteen years ago, I guess it was.”

He paused, wondering if she’d let him leave it at that. Because the next line, “and now she’s dead,” wasn’t going to go over so good.

“And she knew your brother . . .” Carly prompted, moving so her back was no longer to the closet door. Talking seemed to be calming her down and he could see her gathering her wits together, drawing on the grit that he’d sensed lurking inside her. She might look like a delectable cupcake, but he suspected beneath the frosting, she had backbone. She’d come out in this storm to find her friend without thinking twice about her own safety. Even though something didn’t add up about how she knew where her friend’s car had gone over the edge and into the canyon, he still couldn’t help but admire her for her gumption.

“Yeah,” he said, answering her question. “She dated my brother, Bill for a short time. She was your typical small town goddess—pretty and smart and everyone always talked about what a good girl she was. I was just a kid, so I don’t really know everything, but I remember she was gorgeous.” He smiled. “And she smelled good. She’d come over to see my brother and I’d always try to sit next to her.”

Carly caught her lip between her teeth as her gaze searched his face. “She’s dead now, isn’t she?”

He didn't ask how she’d guessed. He just nodded.

“What happened to her?”

“As I remember, she got pregnant—still in high school. She said she’d been raped.”

“She said? Was it true?”

“No—at least I don’t think so. Her dad was some religious fanatic and Bill thought she’d made up the rape because she was scared to tell the truth. Bill said she slept around. A lot. Any number of boys could have gotten her pregnant.”

“Sounds like a nice guy, your brother, talking trash about his own girlfriend. Could the baby have been his?”

The question caught JD off guard. “No.”

“Why not?”

He didn't have an answer. In truth, it had never even occurred to him that Bill might have been the father. At the time it all happened, he’d been nine years old and thought Bill was the next best thing to their dad, who’d died the year before.

“Bill was crazy about Sissy. If the baby was his, he’d have married her.” Before Carly could question that, he went on. “Anyway, she said it was a kid from school who’d raped her—Mike Maze. His family hadn’t lived in the area long. At the time, they were one of the only black families in Canyon Veil. There was still a lot of prejudice around back then—especially in a little town like ours. A lot of it. I remember someone broke into the grocery store not long after they’d moved in and everybody pointed fingers at them as soon as they heard.”

“Nice place to live,” she said.

“Yeah. It’s not so bad anymore. Even Canyon Veil has some diversity now. I guess that puts us twenty years behind the times instead of fifty.”

“So was he arrested? This boy she accused?”

“Yeah. Mike was also an honor student and a star football player and for all appearances, a really good guy. He said he’d never touched her and there were teachers who vouched for him, the coach—everyone who knew him said there had to be a mistake. But it was his word against Sissy’s, and Sissy was this model of virtue. This symbol of good in our town.”

He moved to the next room with Carly right behind him. He felt her fingers at the small of his back and realized she’d taken a handful of his jacket to hold onto.

A shade of nondescript beige that had aged to a grimy gray covered the walls in this bedroom. He played his flashlight over all four corners and the empty closet before moving to the last room. This one had dingy pink wallpaper and the shredded remains of lacy curtains.

“This must have been her room,” Carly said softly.

He figured she was right. Silently, he let his flashlight beam roam the bare walls, the broken window, the dirty floor. The light picked out a brown quilt spread out over a pallet of some kind. Frowning, he moved closer and squatted down beside it. A hissing sound came from beneath the quilt and JD lifted the edge to see an inflatable mattress with an open valve beneath the cover. He tested the fullness as he replaced the plug and found it hadn’t lost much air yet.

Two plastic cups with a red residue at the bottom sat beside the makeshift bed. An empty bottle of cheap wine lay on its side not far away. Someone had been here recently. Very recently.

The closet door stood open and JD moved to it, poked his light inside, and then closed it. So far, no sign of the old man. JD hoped that meant he’d left. As for the mattress and the wine bottle—well, an empty house like this had to be known by all the teenagers in town. Any number of them could be making use of its facilities. But who had opened the air valve and why?

“Teenagers,” Carly said, as if reading his mind. “The old man who let me in asked if teenagers had run me off the road. He said they’d killed his dog.”

He turned to find her right behind him, her soft curves so close that a deep breath would bring his chest against hers. She looked pale and terrified and this time he didn’t question his motives or actions. He leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers, kissing her until he felt her lips move beneath his in an unguarded response. His body shouted for him to pull her closer, though his intention had been only to distract her from her fear.

Yeah, right.

It took all his will to end the kiss and step back. She stared at him with dazed eyes and he felt a surge of masculine pride at the knowledge that she had been as aroused by the kiss as he. Even now his heartbeat raced and his body yearned to draw her back into his embrace. His need to have her felt consuming. Never before had a mere kiss affected him so deeply.

The haunted look had left her face and now an awareness that shot through his veins like a drug hummed between them.

Chapter Seven

JD forced himself to turn away and continue to next the room. She followed him quietly through the last open door. A bathroom with ugly tile, a cracked tub and a lacerated mirror.

“How’d she die?” Carly asked, meeting his eyes in the splintered reflection.

She meant Sissy, but the flush in her face and the way her gaze clung to him told JD that she asked about the other girl to distract herself from thinking about that kiss. He knew, because he was trying to do the same thing. Even now he wanted to back her against the wall and taste every inch of her. She’d gotten under his skin so quickly he still felt stunned by his own desire. But he was coming to see that everything about lovely Carly Ryan was new and intriguing.

“Sissy was shot,” he said, his husky tone betraying his real thoughts. He cleared his throat and tried again. “The day of the trial. Mike got thirty years in prison without parole. After they read his sentence, his father took a shotgun and killed everyone in Sissy’s family before blowing his own head off.”

“Jesus,” she breathed. “Her whole family?”

“Yeah. Then a few years later Mike got another trial and his sentence was overturned. He still served five years, lost his dad, a scholarship, his future.” He shook his head. “I can’t even imagine what his family went through. All because Sissy was afraid to tell her parents she’d had sex.”

Talk of murder and tragedy had finally cooled his hot blood. Not sure if he felt relieved or disappointed, he headed for the hall again.

A sound came from downstairs. He stilled, trying to place what he’d heard before finally it registered. The front door had opened again, slowly this time. And then it closed with a small click.

Carly gave a tiny yelp, jumped forward and clutched his jacket again. He looked over his shoulder at her and then reached back and took her hand. Her fingers felt like ice.

JD didn’t have to tell her to be quiet as they crept to the stairs. She might have been his shadow, so close did she stay and so silent were her steps. At the top of the stairs, they looked down at the closed front door. The light from his flashlight cut a swath through the inky blackness, but a peculiar glow flickered from the room to the right.