The Family Plot (8 page)

*   *   *

T
ogether Dahlia and the guys passed the next few hours in the carriage house, dragging piece after piece of promising loot and outright junk into the relative brightness of the lawn. Once there, it was easier to check the condition and potential of everything, unencumbered by the lamps and lanterns and masks—though they needed the extra lights less and less, as the first floor grew emptier and the light from the windows had more room to sprawl.

At some point, Bobby went back to his truck and pulled out a dolly, then a jack and a wheeled platform, which was more useful to their cause than Dahlia cared to admit. With the extra tools and a little group effort, they removed the rowboat, the front half of the truck (the rear had rusted into a lump, and could stay where it was), two armoires, one desk, several cabinets, the skeletal remains of an Indian motorcycle, a couple of tables, half a dozen wooden wheels, a proper old sleigh with some of its decorative paint intact, some children's sleds, and one stove that wasn't original, but was close enough to make Dahlia happy.

By noon, the crew members had stripped off sweaters and flannels, and were down to T-shirts and gloves. Bobby wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and announced, “I'm starving. Let's see about lunch.”

Gabe looked at Dahlia like he was half afraid she'd argue, just because his dad had been the one who proposed it.

But she didn't. “I'm getting there, myself. All right, let's wrap it up here and drive into town—or walk into town, whatever.”

“I'm driving,” her cousin declared. “Out past the railroad overpass, they've got a whole string of fast food places. I hear the Taco Bell calling my name.”

Dahlia mumbled something about Taco Bell being gross, and Gabe halfheartedly agreed. She knew that he loved Taco Bell, but he was tired of taking his dad's jabs about how he was getting big and soft, instead of just big. He suggested Subway instead.

Dahlia liked that idea better. “No reason you can't do both. Pick me up a sandwich, would you? I'll write down what I want, and while you're out making a food run, I can start unloading our camping gear.”

“I could give you a hand,” Gabe suggested. “I'll write down my order, too.”

Brad considered his options. Apparently he'd rather ride with Bobby than unload gear. “All right,” he said. “It's me and you, man—and tacos are fine with me.”

“See? Even the bookworm likes tacos, Gabe. Nothing wrong with tacos.”

“I know. I just don't want any right now,” the kid protested. Dahlia suspected that he'd jump in front of a bus for a taco, so it was either sweet or sad how he chose to stick with her instead. Avoiding even the appearance of evil. Or temptation. Whichever.

“Bookworm?”

Bobby smacked Brad on the back, a little harder than he needed to. “Don't take it the wrong way.”

“It's not much of an insult.”

“Then I'll have to come up with something better on the way.”

Brad shrugged, and Dahlia realized that a lazy shrug was his submissive response to almost everything. “Whatever makes you happy, man.”

“Tacos make me happy.”

They wandered back to Bobby's truck together, while Gabe and Dahlia went to hers. “Thanks for staying,” she told him. “These coolers are heavy.”

“I've spent enough time in a truck with Dad today.” He whipped the vehicle's back door open with a jerk of his elbow. “I like Brad all right, and I wasn't trying to throw him under the bus … but it's someone else's turn to hear Dad rattle on about Marlene.”

“Brad made his own damn choice. And who's Marlene?”

“Some girl he met on the Internet. She's not, like, a kid, I mean. She's your age, or something. He found her on a dating site.”

Dahlia looked away to hide a smirk. “I'm sure she's lovely.”

“That's what you always say about people when you think they're probably awful.”

“Well, all I said out loud is, ‘I'm sure she's lovely.' You can't prove anything else.” She drew one of the coolers out from the truck, and only barely kept its back end from crashing to the ground. She caught it with her foot, and a grunt. “Besides, you shouldn't listen too hard to anything I say. That's what your dad would tell you.”

“He ain't never said that.” Gabe picked up the end of the cooler on Dahlia's foot, then got a grip on the other side, too. “Not out loud.”

She let it slide. “Honey, you don't have to carry the whole thing.”

“Yeah, but I
can.
You get the bags. Those are easier. Let me get these.”

“You're a sweet one.”

He nodded, and set off for the house. “That's what they tell me.”

She watched him leave, and looked over her shoulder toward the graveyard. It wasn't much of a yard. It was barely a field anymore—if you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd assume it was another derelict corner of the property, with nothing of note worth mentioning. But she'd seen something there, hadn't she? Something had called her attention to the irregular square, this patch of grass that was left to go wild like the rest of the place.

A yellow dress. Flowers.

The sense of something billowing in the early October breeze. That didn't make sense though, not really. Yellow cotton and flowers are for April, or maybe May. Yellow flowers were for months with a girl's name, not for Halloween.

She stared hard. Whatever she'd seen, it didn't reappear.

The bags in the back of the truck held canned groceries and sodas, batteries, toiletries, towels, soap, and all manner of things you'd either bring camping or expect to find in a hotel. Everyone had at least an individual duffel bag and a sleeping bag, but the rest was expected to be communal. She decided that the boys could drag their own personal items inside, and she'd go ahead and get set up the rest.

Back in the house, she found Gabe standing in the great common area, or living room, or whatever you'd call it—the open place just past the foyer. He was staring up at the grand staircase, specifically at the platform where the staircase turned. A cooler sat in the dust by his feet.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

He looked startled, like he hadn't heard her clomp up the porch stairs lugging duffels and grocery bags. He pulled off his old brown trucker hat and tweaked the visor in a weak, nervous gesture, then put it back on. “It's all good,” he drawled. “I was just wondering … I don't know. Dahl, you didn't see Brad or my dad leave the carriage house, did you? Before they left for lunch, you know.”

“Except for hauling things outside, no.”

“Then it's … I mean, look at them footprints.”

“Gabe, we've gone over this already. Those are
my
footprints, from when I first came inside to look around.”

He shook his head. “Yeah, you said that about the ones in the floor, in that weird figure eight. But you didn't bring high heels, I bet.”

“Sure I did. I need the added height for pulling down corner blocks.”

“Don't bullshit me, Dahl. See over there, and tell me it don't look like someone's been running around in high heels.”

“Fine.” She set the bags down on the floor beside Gabe's cooler, and followed his gaze to the stairs. It did indeed look like a small army had marched up and down them, but four people's footprints could do that. It wasn't a mystery. “I don't see anything weird.”

“Look closer. Look
higher
, up at the landing. I can see it from here.”

“You and your tall-ass self,” she mumbled. “All right, I'll go see.”

She climbed to the landing and stopped, looking down at the dusty, dark wood.

“You see them, don't you?”

Dahlia didn't like the soft urgency in his voice. He was unhappy about something, and he wasn't really saying what. “I see … all right, it looks like footprints up here. But it's just some of ours, making a funny pattern. There's a couple of smudges, but…” Like a person had been standing there, looking over the rail. A person wearing chunky high heels, maybe the old-fashioned kind. That must've been what he was talking about. “One of us must've dropped something, or tripped. All kinds of things could leave a mark like that.”

She didn't mention that she saw other prints, too—the ones on the rail. Not the marks of shoes, but hands. Squeezed right into the filth. They were so clear she might've lifted fingerprints from them, if she knew how.

So maybe when she'd agreed not to bullshit him, that was bullshit, too.

She cocked her head down at Gabe, who was big and soft, but not so big that he could've possibly seen the footprints (or the handprints) on the landing above him. He wasn't a goddamn giraffe.

Slowly, she asked, “Do you think … are you trying to tell me you think someone else has been in here?”

“I don't know, but it could be. We just got here.” He fiddled with his hat, put it back on again, and put his hands up. “We haven't even seen half the estate. Maybe we should search the place, and make sure we're alone. There could be squatters, or meth heads looking for scrap.”

“That's not the worst idea I've ever heard.” After all, she'd seen that dress. Someone must've been wearing it.

Except that wasn't true, and she knew it as soon as the thought bubbled up in her head.

“Sometimes I have a good one.”

She was willing to play along if it made him feel better. “We might also be infested with kids who like to take pictures in old houses.” She tried not to look at the handprints on the rail right in front of her. They could be hers. They could be Brad's, maybe. “All right, I'm on board. Let's get the trucks unloaded, then me and you can make a sweep of the place. Let's see how much space we can cover before the guys get back with lunch.”

Maybe it'd make him feel better. Maybe it'd make
her
feel better, except she wasn't worried. Not exactly. She wasn't even afraid. She
was
curious as all hell, but she wasn't quite ready to talk about seeing ghosts.

*   *   *

With another two trips, the pair of them had unloaded all the daily necessities. Together they wore yet another smudged path in the floorboard dust, this one from the porch to the kitchen.

Dahlia opened the butt-ugly harvest gold fridge and stacked the energy drinks inside. It smelled like an old man's closet in there, but it was running, and it was cooler than the rest of the house.

Gabe stopped her before she made it to the bottled water. “Don't worry about the food yet. We were going to look around, remember?”

The more she thought about it, the less she saw the point. She didn't honestly believe they'd find anyone—much less anyone in a yellow dress and high heels, or anyone who left perfectly clear handprints on the rail at the staircase landing. But he was giving her the puppy-dog eyes, so what if they found nothing?

For that matter, so what if they found ghosts? If he stuck with this job long enough, he was bound to see one eventually.

She said, “Right. The rest of this will be fine without the fridge. You want to take the first floor, or the second one? I already looked around a little, but it won't kill us to look again.”

“No, let's stick together. This ain't
Scooby-Doo.
”

“All right, but I've got a great Daphne costume.”

“Really?”

She laughed. “Naw. I was always more of the Velma type.”

“Brown hair, yeah. But no glasses. No orange turtleneck dress. You're
way
more Daphne. And Andy…” He balked, then went ahead and finished the thought, since he'd already started it, and now they were both thinking it. “Looks a lot like Fred.”

It was just a habit, talking about Andy. He'd been part of everyone's life for as long as Gabe had been alive. It'd take more time, more life without Andy in it … maybe a
long
time … before Dahlia and her family could talk about anything on earth without bringing him up.

She tried to be okay with that. She tried not to flush, and she tried to sweep it away fast, before Gabe started apologizing. “Andy's a towheaded blockhead—you've got him there. So where do we begin?”

Relieved, and still tense, Gabe decided. “We'll start here. We can do it fast, and cover most of the place before Dad gets back. You know him—he'll drag his feet. He's never ordered off a menu in his life.”

“Or we could wait for him and Brad, if you'd rather take the place inch by inch.”

He shuffled his shoulders and opened the pantry door—poking his head inside, and withdrawing again. “Let's do it without them. Dad'll give me shit. He says I'm paranoid.”

“You're cautious, and there's nothing wrong with that—or, if there is, I'm screwed up, too. Just ask your Uncle Chuck.” For show, she opened the nearest, largest cabinets, confirming that they were empty. “He gripes about it all the time, about how I'm too slow at salvaging.”

“You
are
a little slow.”

“Hey now, I thought we were on the same side.” She spied no one inside the dumbwaiter, but she'd check it out more carefully later on. Once those things stopped working, they sometimes turned into trash pits—and one man's trash was another woman's payday.

Gabe smiled, and nudged her gently as he passed. “Come on, slowpoke easy. We can do a little dash.”

But they'd taken too long unloading her truck, and now they both heard the second truck scraping under the dogwood branches at the front gate. “Sorry, toots. The dining car has arrived after all. I'll call for a search once we're settled in for the night. That way your dad won't give you any shit. He can just add an extra measure to the shit he's giving me.”

“He hasn't been real bad. Not so far.”