Dew Drop Dead (3 page)

“Sorry,” David said, “I couldn't help myself. It was getting too serious in here.” Then, to make amends, he asked, “Any signs of a robbery, Sherlock?” Sebastian was playing the beam of light around the room.

“Not that I can see. It's weird, though, isn't it?”

“What?” Corrie asked.

“The way there are still pictures on the fireplace, and look, there's even a magazine lying open on the floor by that chair. It's as if the people who were living here, or staying here, or whatever, just picked up and left.”

“Maybe you were right,” said David. “Maybe someone's living here now.”

Sebastian knelt down to take a look at the magazine. “Detective stories,” he said with a laugh.

“Listen,” Corrie said, “if someone
is
living here, they could be watching us or listening. How do we know they're not going to jump out with an ax or something?”

“We don't,” said David. “Heh, heh, heh.”

“You're a riot,” Corrie said.

The light went out and Sebastian shook the flashlight to bring it back. “Special effects by David Lepinsky,” he said. “Let's see what's in that room.”

They moved through an open door into a spacious entrance hallway. “Wow,” Corrie said. To their right was a tall grandfather clock stopped at twelve-o-five. Above them was a delicate chandelier with lighting fixtures meant to look like candles. And to their left a majestic staircase wound its way to the second floor.

“Well, at least the clock isn't ticking,” David said. “And there isn't blood dripping off the chandelier.”

“David, stop it,” said Corrie, crossing to the grandfather clock and touching it gently. “It's beautiful, isn't it? I love this kind of clock, with the moon and the sun on its face. If anyone were going to commit a robbery, this is what they would take. Do you have any idea how valuable this is?”

“And so easy to get out of a window,” David said.
He could not see Corrie glare at him in the darkness that suddenly engulfed them when the light went out again.

Sebastian gave the flashlight a shake and said, “Let's go upstairs.”

“What?” David said. “Tell the truth, Sebastian. Now that you're no longer a radio celebrity, are you hoping to make news as a famous murder victim? I say, let's get out of here while we still have all our body parts.” He looked to Corrie for her support. He didn't find it.

“This place is amazing,” she said, her eyes following the path of the staircase. “I mean, it's scary and all. But it's neat, too. I'm dying to find out what's up there.”

David sighed. “I'll try not to take that literally,” he said.

“You can wait down here, chicken heart,” said Sebastian.

“No, thanks. If you and Corrie are going to get murdered, I wouldn't want to miss the fun.”

“Let's go then.”

As they made their way up the stairs, their fears grew with each step. David was so nervous he forgot to worry about giggling, although the inside of his cheek hurt from where he was biting it.

When they reached the top, they found themselves in the middle of a long hallway. Sebastian swept
his light to the left, then to the right. All the bedroom doors but one were closed. No one spoke, even when Sebastian set off in the direction of the open door.

The darkness wrapped itself around them as they followed the flickering light down the carpeted hall. Sebastian muttered, “Don't fail me, light. Come on, don't go out. That's it, just a few more steps.”

By the time they'd covered half the distance between the stairs and the open doorway, they were in the grip of a terror so real they had all begun to wonder what had possessed them to enter that open window. It was as if they had passed into another dimension, one in which time had stopped as surely as it had on the face of the grandfather clock downstairs. They were a million miles from their homes, their families, their real lives. They were in a dream.

A few feet from the door, a thought came to Sebastian. It was something he'd seen, something that hadn't registered—until now. The magazine he'd looked at in the sitting room had been dated. It was this month's issue.

There was a good chance they were not alone.

Sebastian almost turned back when he realized he was standing in the open doorway and his light was shining through. David and Corrie huddled close to him, shivering, they told themselves, because they were cold. The sight of the room, its commonplace and seemingly untouched furniture, came as such a
relief it made them laugh. David laughed so hard he got the hiccoughs, and that made them laugh all the harder. Corrie begged them to stop because she had to go to the bathroom. The beam of light bounced off the objects in the room as Sebastian's hand jiggled and shook. Then it caught something. And their laughter died.

There was a body on the bed.

THE SOUND
of the flashlight hitting the hardwood floor was lost in their screams. They wanted to run, but held themselves in place for the eternity it took Sebastian to kneel down and grope in the darkness. He felt something and jumped. When he realized that what he'd touched wasn't flesh but metal, he grabbed it. The light flickered. It worked.

Sebastian raised the beam for the briefest moment. The body on the bed hadn't moved.

David hiccoughed loudly.

The sound was like a starter's gun. They scrambled away, tripping and clutching clumsily at each other as if they were running a sack race. The whole way down the stairs, through the entrance hallway, the sitting room, the dining room, and out the window, the only thing they heard was David's hiccoughing and occasional fits of giggling. Their hearts beat a wild tom-tom: Let me out, let me out, let me out.

Once they were out, they didn't stop to notice that it was almost dark. They didn't even stop to catch their breaths until they'd reached the end of Sunflower
Road and Dead Man's Hill rose up before them like a wall.

“What do we do now?” David asked, his heavy breathing only aggravating the hiccoughs that shook his thin body.

“Go home,” Corrie said.

“Go to the police,” said Sebastian.

“Let's go home first,” Corrie said.
“Please.”

“Oh, right. You needed to go to the bathroom.”

Corrie felt her cheeks burn. “Too late for that,” she said.

“You peed in your pants?” David cried, sounding younger than twelve. “Corrie peed in her pants. Corrie peed in her pants.”

“Oh, shut up, David,” said Corrie. “I wouldn't talk if I were you. You giggle like a monkey.”

“Would you two cut it out?” Sebastian said. “We've got more important things to deal with than who peed in their pants and who giggles like a monkey. Like a dead body. We've got to tell the police right away.”

“I don't think whoever is in that bed is going anywhere in a hurry,” David pointed out. “And maybe we shouldn't tell the police. Let's not forget we were breaking the law ourselves. Maybe we should call them. You know, an anonymous tip.”

“Murder and going through an open window aren't exactly in the same league as far as breaking the law. Besides, Alex is our friend.”

David nodded. He knew that Police Chief Alex Theopoulos might not be pleased about what they'd done, but David also knew he'd probably let them off with a wag of his finger and a wink of his eye. Especially in light of what they'd discovered.

“Don't you think we should get going?” said Corrie. “It's a long way up, and it's getting dark.”

As they made their slow and painful journey up Dead Man's Hill, their breathlessness made it impossible to speak. But their minds were filled with the one thought they would have spoken if they could:

We have seen death.

“WHOA, SLOW DOWN
. I'm not understanding a word you're telling me.” Police Chief Alex Theopoulos wore a bemused grin beneath his recently acquired mustache.

“At the ... at the inn,” David sputtered.

“There was this open door and he was there,” said Sebastian.

“There. On the bed.”

“Who was on the bed?” Alex asked.

“This guy,” said Sebastian. “He was—”

“It was gross.” David's face made Alex laugh.

“Gross,” Alex repeated. “You say Corrie was with you?”

The boys nodded.

“Where is she? Maybe I can get some sense out of her.”

“She went home first,” said Sebastian. “She's meeting us here. I can explain.”

“But—”

“David, let me tell. You'll just get the hiccoughs again.”

Alex glanced across the room to see if his deputy
was listening. Rebecca Quinn raised her eyes to meet Alex's and stifled a laugh. Distracted, Alex asked, “Have you boys met my new deputy? Rebecca, say hello to Sebastian Barth and David Lepinsky, two fine young citizens and outstanding detectives to boot.”

Rebecca Quinn smiled. Sebastian couldn't help noticing how beautiful she was. She seemed too refined, too delicate, to be even a television cop; in real life, the combination of her looks and her profession was almost shocking.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Sebastian.

“Yeah,” David said in an offhand way. “See, that's the point. About us being detectives.”

“Right,” Sebastian said. “We found a body. That's what we've been trying to tell you.”

“You found a body.” Alex drew the words out, using them to build a bridge from his personal to his official self. “You're not kidding around, are you?”

“Thanks a lot,” said Sebastian. “In ten seconds, we've gone from being fine young citizens to liars.”

“Sorry,” Alex said, shaking his head. “Of course you're telling the truth. It's just, I get kids playing pranks sometimes, so I . . . but not you two, I should know better. Tell me again, from the beginning. Sit down, take a breath, and tell me what happened.”

By the time Corrie arrived, Alex and his deputy had heard the story twice. After the first telling, Alex had reprimanded the boys for trespassing. Then he
admitted that he'd always been the curious sort himself and would probably have been as incapable of staying away from that open window as they had been.

“Corrie,” Alex said, after hello, “I've already asked Sebastian and David this. Now it's your turn. Are you sure the person you saw was dead? Let me rephrase that. Are you sure there was a person on the bed?”

“Oh, yes,” said Corrie without hesitating.

“Did you see his face?”

Corrie nodded.

“Describe it,” Alex said.

“It was a face. I don't know.... It was dark in the room and—did they describe it?” She indicated Sebastian and David.

Alex smiled. “Uh-uh,” he said. “No fair. You describe it; never mind what they said.”

“I—I don't know if I can. Like I said, it was dark and the light was on for just a few seconds. But there
was
someone there. I know what you're thinking. It was something else on the bed and we imagined it was a person. But I saw the face, a man's face. . . .” Corrie spoke slowly now, taking time to re-create the scene in her mind's eye. “He didn't have a beard, but he was kind of stubbly, whiskers, you know. His hand was hanging over the side of the bed.”

“What did his hand look like?” asked Alex. “Was it big? Did he have long, thin fingers or short, stubby ones? Was he wearing any jewelry?”

Corrie thought for a moment. “I don't know. I don't remember anything about his hand except the way it was hanging there.” She shuddered to think of it.

“Was there a blanket over him?” Corrie looked up at the sound of Rebecca Quinn's voice, and Alex made a quick introduction.

“A blanket? I don't think so.”

“What was he wearing?”

“I don't know. A jacket, maybe, or a shirt.”

“It was a shirt,” Sebastian said suddenly. “I remember. A red-and-black one, the kind you wear hunting.”

“All right,” Alex said. “Now I'll ask the other part of my question. How do you
know
he was dead?”

“Either he was dead or a
very
sound sleeper,” said Sebastian. “After we saw him, we all started shouting and I dropped the flashlight on the floor. When I found it and turned the light on again, he hadn't moved.”

“You're sure?”

Sebastian nodded vigorously.

“Without a doubt?”

“Without a doubt.”

Alex and Rebecca exchanged a look. “All right,” the police chief said, “let's go.”

“With pleasure,” said Rebecca. “It's so hot in here I can hardly breathe. Isn't there any way to regulate this heat?”

Alex just laughed.

“Are we going back to the inn?” David asked.

“
We
are,” said Alex, emphasizing the pronoun and indicating his deputy with a nod.

“Shouldn't we come with you?” Sebastian asked.

Alex told him he didn't think that would be such a good idea. “You were lucky the first time,” he said. “There could be someone else lurking around the place. And if this is a case of foul play, that someone might not be very nice.”

“But don't you need us as witnesses? What if someone has been there since we left? We could tell you if anything has been moved or messed with.”

“He may be right,” said Rebecca Quinn. “Why don't they stay in the car while we go inside and search? If we need them, it'll be a lot easier having them nearby.”

Alex frowned. It was clear he didn't love the thought of having three kids along, but he also recognized Rebecca's point as valid. “All right,” he said. “On two conditions. One, we call your parents and make sure it's all right with them. And two, you stay in the car with the doors locked.”

“Agreed,” said Sebastian.