The Family Plot (15 page)

Her throat hurt from the bite she'd gagged on, and her voice was thick when she answered, “Hey, Brad.”

“Hey, yourself. Got your note. Any chance you could grab me some coffee?”

“I was already planning on it. Are Bobby and Gabe up and around yet?”

“Gabe's up. He's still in the bathroom. Don't know about Bobby.”

“You have my full permission to find him and kick him awake. I'd love to see everyone up and dressed by the time I get back. We've got a lot of work to do, and the sooner we get started, the sooner we can knock off for lunch.”

“How far away are you?” he asked.

“Just down the hill. I'm almost finished here, so I'll head back in a few minutes.” She asked if he needed any food, sorted out a few particulars, and closed out the call—then gathered up the photo album and stuffed it back into her bag. Since the line had cleared out and no one else was waiting, she went directly to the register to grab something for Brad, as promised.

She put in her order, and pulled out her wallet.

The cashier with the nose ring looked down at Dahlia's chest. “Music City Salvage,” she read.

Dahlia looked down and realized the company T-shirt was peeking out from the top of her flannel. “Yup, that's us.”

“You're here about the Withrow place, right?”

“Uh-huh.” The register chimed and offered up a price. Dahlia picked out a few bills and handed them over. “You ever been there?”

“Not … officially,” she said conspicuously. “Not by invitation, or anything.”

“You like poking around in old places?”

Nose ring girl nodded. “Hell yeah. I don't bother anything,” she added quickly. “Or steal anything. But I like to look around, take pictures. You know.”

“Actually, I
do
know.”

The barista pulled out a to-go cup with a recycled cardboard sleeve around it. “I got some really weird shots out there a couple of years ago. Me and some friends had the bright idea of checking it out on Halloween. A place that old, it's got to be haunted, right?”

Dahlia didn't answer that one. She just handed over the money in trade for the cup, then dropped her change into the tip jar. “Where are the…? Oh, I see them.” The airpots were on the other end of the counter.

“We got some recordings, too. Voices, that kind of thing. My boyfriend caught this sound on his phone—it sounds like a baby crying.
So
creepy.”

“Well, me and my crew are staying in the house for now, so don't scare me too bad. We've got to sleep in that place.”

The girl shuddered. “How long will you be there?”

“A few days. My dad's bringing a trailer on Friday, so we'll head back to Nashville when everything's wrapped up. The real demo starts after we leave. We're just taking out the good stuff—the things people want, if they've got an old house of their own.”

“Like the tubs, windows, that kind of thing?”

“Yeah. That kind of thing. Anyway, thanks for the coffee, and stuff.”

Even the secondhand rain had quit altogether, and a thin vein of blue sky showed through the clouds. Dahlia hiked back through the neighborhood and up the hill again, balancing the coffee and her messenger bag, watching her step over fallen logs and along damp-slicked roads that weren't half so well paved as they ought to be.

She made it back in twenty minutes.

Brad greeted her at the door. He was wearing a bathrobe over his clothes. She handed him the coffee and didn't say anything about the bathrobe, but her stare made him defensive. “It's cold in here.”

“It's not
that
cold. And it'll be warmer in an hour—or whenever we get started.”

“I'll swap this out for a sweater before we get to work. I packed a hoodie. And see?” He did a little two-step, showing off a pair of jeans. “Work pants.”

“I'm very proud of you,” she said, strolling past him into the kitchen—where Gabe was assembling breakfast from the bags they'd left out or stashed in the fridge. No one really wanted to open the fridge, which smelled like ass. But that's where the sodas were, so he braved it anyway, fishing around until he found the right color and flavor of energy drink to kick-start the day. He pulled out two, and left one on the counter.

“Welcome back, Dahl. Dad's up, too,” he said before she could ask. “He's in the shower, and he'll be down soon. He said he'd be ready to get to work before you got back, but you know him.”

Brad took a manly swig from the mostly-still-hot coffee. “So, what's the plan for today?”

“Today.” She took a deep breath. “We finish the second floor of the carriage house, and move on to the barn. There's not much in there, I don't think; we're mostly parting it out. We'll stash that stuff in my truck—all the surplus building parts, the wood and windows and whatnot. We'll save Bobby's truck for the antiques and fixtures, unless the balance tips too hard in one direction or another.” She leaned on the counter, recoiling when her elbow landed in something sticky. “After all that, if we still have daylight to burn, we'll start on the inside of the house. It'll take us forever to pull these fireplace mantels. It'd be nice to get a lead on them.”

Heavy, uneven footsteps on the stairs heralded Bobby, freshly showered. His hair was wet and his eyes were red. What bits of him weren't blotchy from the hot water were pale as a fish. “I'm up,” he announced, like he didn't quite believe it himself.

“What do you want, a cookie?” Dahlia asked.

Gabe grabbed a spare energy drink, and chucked it his way.

Bobby caught it with one hand. He popped the tab, and tossed his son a nod that was supposed to stand in for a thank-you. “I don't know if we brought any cookies or not, but I'll settle for this. So what's the plan today?”

Gabe threw himself on that grenade before Dahl could snipe about him being late to the party. “I'll fill you in over breakfast.” He frowned at his dad, not for being slow and wet, but out of concern. He asked, “Hey, Dad, are you okay?”

“Me? What? Okay? Yes, okay. Very okay.”

“You don't
look
okay. You've still got some soap on you…” Gabe gestured at his neck.

“It's just soap. It's still okay. I just took a fast bath, because I didn't want to hear about it from the boss-lady over there.”

Dahlia didn't quite believe him. She knew that weird, frozen look on his face. It meant he was lying, and he was upset. “Bobby,” she asked, “did you use the shower down the hall?”

“Yeah, of course I did. The Pepto-Bismol suite, with all the ugly tile. By the way, it's wet in there. We forgot to bring a shower curtain.”

“I know. I've put it on my list. But you didn't … you didn't go through my room? You didn't use
my
bathroom?”

“Jesus, Dahl. We're not twelve years old. I'm not trying to sneak around and read your diary.
No,
I didn't use your bathroom.”

“I didn't mean it like that,” she protested. Then she wasn't sure how far she should push, so she backtracked, and picked another path. “I was only thinking, I might hike down to the Walgreens over lunch and get a curtain for myself. I'll get one for your bathroom, too, while I'm at it.”

Bobby belched. “Or you could drive. I know you're a puss about the trucks, but it's not a big deal. They get in and out of here just fine.”

“The weather's nice. It's not raining anymore, and it's not very far. I could be there and back in less than an hour.”

“Or
I
could drive, and pick up whatever else we forgot to grab before we came. The whole trip would take fifteen minutes.”

She waved her hand, shooing the offer away for now. “Forget it. We can talk about it later. Me and Brad are going to gear up and hit that carriage house again. Let Gabe bring you up to speed, grab some food if you want, and come join us. Sooner rather than later, please.”

Before heading out, she left her bag with the photo album back in her room, and poked her head into the hallway bath. It was a sauna in there, but it wasn't weird or dark. She didn't see anything in the mirror, not even her own reflection.

“Come on, Brad. You ready for day two?”

“I took a fistful of ibuprofen. Once it kicks in, I'll loosen up just fine.”

Most of the gear was still in the carriage house, piled on the first floor behind those oversized doors that neither opened nor shut correctly. “We probably shouldn't leave the place unsecured,” Dahlia observed feebly, remembering yesterday's promise to Gabe. She dragged the nearest door all the way open to let in the light.

Brad shrugged stiffly. “Why not? Who would come after any of this stuff? I haven't seen another soul since we got here.”

She grunted, and set the door down hard—narrowly missing her foot. “Gabe saw someone, or he
thought
he did. He brought it up yesterday, and I told him…” She went to the pile of useful work things, and retrieved her gloves. She slipped them on, using her teeth to drag the right one into place. She wiggled her fingers to settle them in. “I told him he was right, and we should lock the place up better when we're not around. I've been lazy about it, though. I guess I feel a little bad about slacking off on the security issue, because it seemed real important to him. He was a bit shaken up; wanted to search the premises and everything, but…”

“But you think he's being overly cautious?”

The ladder was right where they'd left it, with the top step barely a foot below the entrance to the loft. Dahlia put one foot on the bottom rung, and gripped the sides. “Not exactly.”

“Then … what? You think he saw a ghost?”

She stopped, half on the ladder, and half off it, ready to climb. “Why would you say that?”

“I saw Bobby's face when he came down the stairs. You know how people say, ‘You look like you've seen a ghost'?”

“Yeah.”

“He looked like that. I'm just curious, since you guys do these teardowns all the time, and demo is supposed to stir up the spirits. Or that's what I've heard.”

“Have you seen anything creeping around?”

He took a breath, looked behind him at the open doors, and let it out, all in one sentence. “Okay, this might sound nuts but I thought I saw a guy over by the graveyard you found yesterday.”

She pulled her foot down off the rung and turned to face him. “A guy? Are you sure?”

Brad fidgeted under her stare. He shook his head, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “If I was sure, I would've said something sooner.”

“What did this mystery guy look like?”

“Young. Clean-cut. He was wearing a uniform.”

“A uniform? Like an army uniform?”

He nodded. “How'd you guess? Oh, wait, never mind. The tombstones, they were from World War I.”

“Right. So … you think the ghost is a soldier, maybe?”

He pulled his hands out of his pockets and tugged his sleeves down until he could ball them up in his fists. “You know what? Forget I said anything. It was just my imagination. I was looking outside, from that window in the parlor—I was thinking about the fireplace mantel in there, and wondering if you'd want to save the tiles on the floor around it, even though half of them are broken. I was staring off into space, you know … but staring toward the cemetery. The whole thing was daydreamy bullshit; let's write it off to that.”

“If you'd rather.”

“Yeah, I'd rather.”

Dahlia took the lead up the ladder. “All right. But for what it's worth, and in case it makes you feel better…,” she said over her shoulder as she climbed.

“If
what
makes me feel better?” He started up behind her.

“I
do
think Gabe saw a ghost. I think he's seen a couple, since he's been here: a woman, and a little boy.” She stepped off the ladder carefully, across the water-softened wood and onto a steadier patch of boards. “That's why I think it's pointless to lock up: Even if we searched the property, we wouldn't find any flesh-and-blood intruders.”

Brad started climbing behind her. “Seriously? You're not making fun?”

“Seriously. It's like you said, I've done a lot of old houses. I've seen stuff, and heard stuff that made me wonder if my eyes and ears were playing tricks. Once or twice, I've even seen people—or leftovers of people, who couldn't have possibly been there, you know? Shadows, and shapes. Voices. Whatever stays behind. I had an old house once, myself … it might've been a little haunted, I don't know.”

“You did?”

“The one I lost,” she said. She waited a moment for the usual lump to rise in her throat, but it didn't, so she kept talking, daring it to make an appearance. “In the divorce. Andy basically forced me to sell it. Watch your step there, sweetheart—rain's been coming in, and the floor's not safe until you get over to this section.”

Brad stretched his leg over the rotted patch and joined her on the safe side. “Oh, right. The divorce.”

“Most days, I'm more mad about losing the house than losing Andy. The house was a lot of work, but it was never an asshole. It's funny, though,” she said. “As soon as I bought the place, everyone in the family wanted to know about the ghosts. That was the first thing—not how much it cost, or where it was, or how big it was. They heard it was built in the 1890s, so somebody must be haunting it. Then they'd sit around and share stories about their own ghosts through the years. They all took it all for granted that someone was hanging around.”

“You think they were right?”

She dusted her hands on her jeans and looked for the trunk Gabe had opened last night. “Probably. I never saw much of anything, but sometimes I felt like I wasn't alone, and somebody was watching me. Sometimes I'd lose things, little things—never anything big—and they'd turn up in strange places. Eventually, I got used to it. So if I
did
have a ghost, it wasn't a very interesting one. It never scared me, or anyone else.”