Sleep With The Lights On

by Maggie Shayne

  She already had the phone in her hand, dialing I don’t know who. The school office or, more likely, one of the girls’ ever-present cell phones. She paused while it was ringing—I could hear it. “Mason and you?”

  I got up, not ready to pick up on that topic of conversation. “Be ready. Your flight leaves at 2:00 p.m. tomorrow. Your itinerary and links to check in for the flights are in your email. I have to go.”

  “Rachel—” She stopped there as one of the girls finally answered.

  “I’ve got to go,” I repeated. “Get your family out of here, sis. I’ll talk to you later.”

  She nodded at me, and I was outta there.

  * * *

  She hadn’t been arrested. The rat’s plan hadn’t worked. But that was only because he hadn’t known about her relationship with the cop who’d now cast himself in the role of her protector. And now he was taking her with him on a road trip. He was watching, through high-powered binoculars from a little boat out on the reservoir when the detective met her at her house, put her suitcases into his car and took her away. It didn’t take him long to figure out where. He knew everything Eric Conroy Brown had known, after all. Ironic, that this would come to a head there, of all places. It was perfect, really. Lucky. He started scratching at the brain of his host, urging him toward what needed to be done.

  The host didn’t put up much of a fight.

  To stop the itch and cure the ache, put one more body in the lake.

  18

  Even without my eyesight, I would have known the place was beautiful. First off, there was the smell, pine and wood and earth, with hints of musty scented fungus wafting in and out again like ghosts underneath the rest. The air was clean, not that it wasn’t clean where I lived, but it was somehow even cleaner here. All those pine needles, bazillions of them, filtering every single breath, I figured.

  We were in the sturdy Jeep Mason had rented for the trip. He’d left his beloved boat of a Monte Carlo behind. Thank you, rutted back roads. And my T-Bird was not meant for this kind of travel. She was unharmed after her recent violation at the hands of the BPD forensics team. Nothing incriminating had been found, and she was safe and sound in my locked garage. I hoped.

  “Are you sure Marie and the boys will be okay?” I asked, still bugged that the kids hadn’t come with us.

  “I put Rosie on them. He’ll keep ’em safe until they can join us tomorrow. Marie wants to come along, but she insisted she needed a day to work out the logistics. My mother heard about it and insisted on coming up with them, and claimed she needed a day to pack. I asked Dennison—I don’t think you’ve met him—to keep an eye on her.”

  “I guess we can’t ask for more than that.”

  “He has no reason to go after them,” he reminded me.

  “I know.”

  I missed my car. I missed being the one behind the wheel. I’d been relegated to the passenger seat on every trip for twenty years, and I really disliked being back there again.

  Myrtle didn’t mind at all. She wore her tinted goggles, smiled with her bottom teeth and relished every second of the trip, even though she was in the backseat for the first time in her life. Well, her life with me, anyhow.

  “I’ve got to ask,” Mason said as we meandered along narrow, twisting dirt roads with nothing but trees on either side and majestic, snowy mountains in the distance. “What’s up with Myrt’s goggles?”

  “Probably me projecting my issues on the poor dog.” He frowned at me, so I elaborated. “When I was blind, I never believed that my eyes weren’t doing acrobatics without my consent, even though everyone told me they were fine. I just couldn’t be around anyone without my shades on. Just in case.”

  He tilted his rearview mirror to look at Myrtle. “So you think she’s worried about her looks?”

  “Not really. But I do think her eyes are sensitive to the sun. Mine were. She squints really badly when the light hits them.”

  “Ahhh. And the scarf?”

  “Well, it matches the goggles. Which match the T-Bird. A girl’s gotta have a little style, you know.”

  He smiled, drove for a minute, then said, “You didn’t need to worry about it. Your eyes, I mean.”

  “That’s right, you saw me without my sunglasses, since you personally knocked them off of me. With a car.”

  “Am I ever going to live that down?”

  “Not in this lifetime. So my eyes weren’t doing anything weird that day?”

  “Nope. They were perfectly gorgeous eyes.”

  “Were?”

  He shrugged. “Still are. Though a little more haunted now.”

  “Yeah, that part’s your brother’s fault.”

  He nodded, sighed, then said, “I’m honestly sorry about that, Rachel. Giving you his corneas, giving anyone his organs now that I...know.”

  “Why did you?” I asked.

  He took his time about answering, really seemed to be searching for the right words. “I think I did it to assuage my own guilt. For covering up his crimes. I suppose I thought helping other people would...not make up for it, but maybe balance the scales a little bit.”

  I nodded slowly. “I guess I can see that. I appreciate the honesty.”

  “Thanks.” Then he turned his attention to something up ahead. “We’re almost there. Right around this next big bend in the road, you’ll be able to see it.”

  And I did. It was a gorgeous chalet-style house, with a steep roof and scalloped shingles, all oak brown with darker wood trim. It looked like a gingerbread house, only bigger.

  “It’s stunning. This is yours?”

  “My parents own it. Just my mother now. She always said she’d leave it to Eric and me in her will.”

  “Just you now?”

  “Unless Marie wants Eric’s half. If she does, I won’t argue against it.”

  He steered the Jeep over the rutted, curving driveway right up to the front of the house. There was a garage dead ahead, below ground on two sides, and beside it a steep incline up to the main level of the house, with beautiful stone steps curving right up to the front door.

  He stopped the car, and I got out eagerly and quickly let Myrt out so she could check the place over, as well. I took off her goggles and scarf, then stood close so she wouldn’t be nervous as she sniffed the air and then the ground. Then she peed.

  “It’s a nice place, huh, Myrt? Frankly, I don’t know if we’re ever going to want to leave.” There were birds singing, way more than I was used to hearing. Just a raucous pile of them. It was like the inner city of nature up here. Myrt sniffed and moved carefully forward, and I stayed close, talking to her as we made our way to the steps and up to the door.

  Mason was already unloading our bags. I’d brought three. One for my laptop and the work in progress, a follow-up to my holiday title, which had been so sadly neglected lately that I might have to ask for an extension on my deadline. One for my clothing and toiletries, and one for Myrtle’s things. Her bed, leash, dog food, treats, toys, dishes and baby wipes. Don’t ask.

  He’d brought just one backpack, and somehow he managed to carry all our gear at once up the stone stairway to the front door, which was made from several wide knotty pine planks with a full-length oval glass mosaic of a heavily antlered buck posing in front of a sunset. Stunning.

  He paused. “Um, yeah, keys.”

  “I’ll get them. Where are they?”

  “In my jeans pocket.”

  “Right. Sure they are.”

  “I’m not kidding. Front, right.”

  I shrugged. “Well, hell, I’m not shy.” I dipped into his front pocket and got the keys, tickling his thigh with my fingers on the way out.

  He jumped.

  “Serves you right,” I told him, and then I unlocked the door and pushed it open while he stood aside to let Myrt and me pass.

  “Wow.” The place was huge, with an open floor plan, cathedral ceilings, windows everywhere, although I couldn’t see much through them at this point, because da
rkness was falling fast as the sun fell behind the mountains. We’d packed my stuff, stopped for a late lunch and driven the four hours up here, with one extended bathroom, snack and gasoline break, so the sun had been well on its way down when we arrived. Some of the tall trees stood in silhouette against the deep purple sky, and I could see a vast and slightly darker expanse with no trees or hills at all. The lake, I presumed.

  A huge fireplace, giant multitiered chandelier made of fake—I hoped—antlers, big brown teddy bear furniture that would hug you when you sat in it. What more could a person want in a lakeside mountain retreat?

  Once the door closed behind us, Myrt’s confidence rose a little and she wandered a few feet farther from my side to explore a bit on her own.

  “There are four bedrooms, two upstairs in the loft and two down below, right underneath our feet. One bathroom on each floor. Mom keeps the place pretty well stocked. Perishables are in the freezer.”

  “This place is fantastic.” I crossed to the rear of the giant living room and saw there was a huge deck off the back of the house. Because the house had been built into the mountainside, the living room was ground level in the front and second story in the rear. There were French doors, and in spite of myself, I opened them and stepped out onto the deck. I still had my coat on. No hat though. The breeze was chilly on my ears, but I could hear the water lapping softly against the dock down there below, and I could taste it in the air, too.

  I turned, my back to the railing, when I heard Mason’s footsteps as he came out to join me.

  “This is my favorite place in the world,” he said. “There’s nowhere else this peaceful.”

  “I’d be hard-pressed to think of anywhere.”

  He looked at me for a longish minute. I looked back. It went awkward pretty fast, so we both looked away.

  “So...” he said.

  “So. I suppose we should unpack, get some dinner and get to work.”

  “And start a fire,” he said. “Since I don’t have much to unpack, I’ll handle the fire and the dinner, while you and Myrt pick a room and get settled in. Upstairs or down?”

  “Which stairs are going to be easier on Myrtle’s joints?”

  “Up,” he said. “They’re wide, carpeted and less steep.” He pointed at them as he spoke.

  “Perfect.” I moved past him back inside. Myrtle was standing in the open doorway but hadn’t come out yet. “It’s okay, Myrt. Come on, I’ll get your bed and put it by the fire for you. That’s your favorite thing, right?”

  I crossed to where Mason had dropped the bags and unzipped hers. I heard him come in, too. He closed the French doors and started messing around with the fireplace, while I unpacked Myrt’s things. I took her dog dishes to the kitchen, and she followed. I poured her favorite food into one, then filled her water dish, set both down on the floor and watched her dig in.

  By the time she’d finished and we returned to the living room, Mason had lit the kindling and paper in the hearth, and laid Myrt’s bed right in front of it. She found it fast, and within a minute she was snoring softly and soaking up the heat.

  “She’ll have to go outside again before bed, but she’ll hold it until she can’t anymore. And meanwhile, nice kitchen.”

  “Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” He set a larger log on the already blazing small stuff and, crouching, watched the fire.

  “So I should just go up and put my stuff in one of the bedrooms?”

  “Yeah. Um, you can use mine. It’s on the right.”

  I had picked up my bags and was starting for the stairs, but I paused at the bottom. “And whose is on the left?”

  I turned toward him and knew the answer before he said it. “That was Eric’s. Mom and Dad always preferred the big suite down below.”

  I blinked and looked up the stairs.

  “Seriously, take my room. I’ll take Eric’s.”

  I took a breath, thought it over, lifted my chin. “No, you know what? I’ll take his room. I told you a long time ago that I wanted to know more about him, and I meant it.”

  “He hasn’t used it since he was a kid. Marie and the kids would come up on their own sometimes, but the boys liked the basement room so they could walk straight outside and down to the lake, and Marie would usually use Mom’s. Eric hasn’t been here in years.”

  “I wonder why?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Well, all the same, I’ll take the room on the left.” I started up the stairs, reached the top and looked at the hallway that stretched in both directions. One wood-stained door to the left, one to the right, and one dead center, straight head of me. That one was open, and I could see the fixtures of a gorgeous bathroom that I was dying to check out. But later. I glanced back downstairs briefly, thinking about changing my mind. Mason was on the floor, rubbing Myrtle’s head and watching the flames dance in the fireplace.

  No. I wasn’t going to chicken out.

  I mustered my nerve and marched straight to the bedroom on the left, told myself it was completely idiotic that my hand was shaking and opened the door. I found the light switch and flipped it on.

  I don’t what the hell I’d expected. Some big hairy monster to duck quickly back into the closet as light flooded the room? Wall-to-wall B-movie posters of slasher flicks? A clichéd collection of newspaper clippings about missing young men, even?

  I almost laughed at myself when the terror behind Door Number One turned out to be a neatly made full-size bed with a wagon wheel headboard, a tall dresser with six drawers, a few wildlife prints on the walls, and a set of blue-and-brown plaid curtains that matched the bedspread. That was it. There was a shelf on one wall, with books and some board games, and a clock radio on the nightstand. The floor was covered in the same brown shag carpeting as the hallway and the staircase, outdated but immaculate. One door was on the same side as the bathroom and presumably led straight into it, and the other was no doubt the closet.

  I stepped farther inside and dropped my bag on the bed. “You’re an idiot, Rachel,” I said.

  There’s still that closet, though. Don’t even pretend you didn’t notice that.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Might as well open it now, right? It’s only gonna be worse if you try to sleep tonight without knowing what’s in there.

  “Shut the fuck up, voice of reason.” I moved closer, reached out, stiffened my spine and made myself just yank the door open. Just like jumping into a pool when the water was a little too cold for comfort. Just like pulling off a Band-Aid. You did it fast, you got it done, and it was never as bad as you thought it would be.

  The closet was dark, but there was a dangling pull-chain. I pulled it, and the light came on. There were clothes hanging there, a few shirts, but mostly hoodies and jackets, a big parka, and a pair of snow pants, all big enough for me, I imagined, but sized for a kid about Joshua’s age, maybe a little older.

  “See? All good. No boogie man.” I looked up at the shelf above the clothing rod. Snowmobile helmet with a thick layer of dust on it, some cassette tapes piled up in their cases. Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf. That made me shiver. I backed out, pulled the cord and closed the closet door.

  And in spite of myself I got down on all fours and looked under the bed. But it was clean, as clean and spotless as the rest of the house. Which made me wonder why the stuff in the closet was all dusty. Why hadn’t Mason’s mom cleaned in there?

  I was still down there when the door creaked, and I twisted my head around, dropping the ugly plaid bedspread as I did. Mason towered over me from this angle.

  “Everything okay?”

  I nodded and got up onto my feet. “Yeah. Just checking for monsters under the bed.”

  “What about in the closet?”

  “Already done. It’s all clear, by the way.”

  “Good to know.” I hadn’t noticed, but he was holding a sturdy little tumbler in his free hand. “Vodka and Coke. I didn’t make it very strong, but I figured—”
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br />   “You figured right.” I took it, drank and said, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He looked at my face for a long second, then said, “Have you seen the bathroom yet?”

  I shook my head, sipped my drink. “Only in passing. It was next on my itinerary.”

  “Well, be my guest.” He crossed the room and opened the third door, which, as I’d guessed, led into the bathroom, then stood there, waiting for me to enter first.

  I walked in, and my jaw dropped. All thoughts of boogie men or closet monsters fled my mind when I got a load of it. “This is fucking awesome.” Fully as large as the bedroom, which was very roomy, the bathroom was straight out of a high-end spa. Cedar boards lined the walls. I could tell by their delicious scent. An elevated Jacuzzi occupied one corner, and a double shower stall with frosted glass doors stood in another. Double sinks set in a long countertop took up one entire wall. Everything, including the ceramic tiles, was done in ivory shot through with amber and gold. A stand-up ornamental fountain took up a third corner. It was turned off now, but ready with a crooked tower of smooth round stones and a shallow basin at the bottom to catch and recirculate the water. A little marble stand held a dish of sand and had a porcupine’s back worth of incense sticks stuck in it, with a lighter standing nearby.

  “Wow, this is something. Is that a heated towel rack?”

  “It is when it’s turned on.”

  “I am seriously lusting after your bathroom, Mason.”

  “I think that’s the first time a woman has ever said that to me.”

  “Any woman who saw it would say it, and if she didn’t say it, believe me, she was thinking it.”

  “Well, the only women who’ve been up here with me are Angela and Marie.”

  “Who the hell is Angela?” I closed my eyes. “That was not, by the way, jealousy in my voice just now.”

  “Jealousy over the bathroom, maybe,” he said. “Angela’s my mother.”

  I shrugged and decided not to wonder why he hadn’t brought any of the women he dated up here with him. He undoubtedly got around enough. And this place would charm the panties off most of the women I knew. But it was none of my business, and I wasn’t going to ask. “So will anyone care if I make very thorough use of this room after dinner?”