“Yup. I believe in God, I believe in ghosts, and I believe in keeping an open mind, too. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, you know.”
“Sure, and what light through yonder window breaks,” Katie giggled, reciting the only other line of Shakespeare that she knew. “Think we should start in here, where her body was?”
“Sounds like a good idea. Unless there’s anywhere else in the house you think might have more of a connection to the afterlife? Did they have a chapel in this place?”
“No, there’s no chapel...” Then she remembered her dream. “Hold on. Come upstairs with me. I think I know where Emily’s bedroom was.”
“Oooh. Perfect.”
At the top of the first flight of stairs Katie stopped them in front of the bedroom. She held up a finger, making sure Mel was ready for it, and then pushed the door open.
The cold air rolled out at them, and their breath condensed in little clouds of vapor. “See what I mean?”
“An actual cold spot!” Mel said with glee. “That’s perfect. Isn’t that always where the ghosts are?”
“If you believe all those ghost hunter shows on TV, sure. I think this might be a matter of repairing the exterior wall to keep the wind out.”
“But Katie, it’s warm outside. I’m shivering. This is so exciting!”
They sat in the middle of the empty floor space, opposite the walk-in closet, kitty-corner to the window. The wall with its nasty black stain was right in front of them. Katie remembered seeing Emily there in her dream, and remembered the things she’d heard the teenage girl say. It had felt so real. She remembered Emily’s fear, and the bruises around her face. Was she really that scared of her boyfriend?
The boyfriend who got her pregnant, if she was to believe the gossip from the town café.
Mel put the Ouija board down, and settled the triangular heart-shaped planchette down so the open circle on its top was centered over the letter G. “Okay. You put your fingers on that side, and I’ll put my fingers on this side. Ready?”
“This is ridiculous,” Katie muttered. For some reason, she felt like she should be quiet.
“We are speaking,” Mel spoke in a very serious voice, “to the spirit of Emily Knox. Is Emily Knox in this room?”
Silence met the question. Despite herself, she waited for the planchette to move. Nothing happened.
“Emily Knox,” Mel continued, adjusting her legs so she was kneeling with her rump resting on her heels. “Are you here with us? Does your spirit inhabit this house?”
They waited, and Katie counted off seconds until she got to thirty. “Mel, nothing’s happening. You sure you read the directions on the box correctly?”
“This isn’t a toy.” Mel was offended. “I got this from my mother, and she got it from her mother, and then I think it came from her mother too... The point is, that it’s old. It’s the real thing. This ain’t from Hasbro!”
“I’m sorry, Mel, I just don’t believe this sort of thing really works.”
“One more try, okay? Maybe there isn’t a ghost in the house. Maybe that’s what the problem is. Or maybe we should just ask Emily some questions. Spirit of this house,” she tried again, not asking specifically for Emily this time, “we call upon you to show yourself! We call upon the spirit of the Knox Estate to come forth and answer our questions.”
Katie sighed. This was pointless.
“We call upon you...”
They should just give up and go.
“Come out and talk to us. Come out and answer our questions.”
There was no ghost here. Just bad memories soaked into the wood and bricks like mold.
She flicked her eyes over at the wall with its stain, and wondered again what had caused it. Somehow she doubted she would find the answer here, with Mel and her Ouija board.
With a deep breath, Mel tried once more. “We call upon the spirit trapped in this house to come forth and speak to us!”
Behind them, the door to the bedroom slammed shut.
Both of them startled, taking their hands off the Ouija board. Katie fell backward onto her ass. Her breath hitched. Her heart hammered.
Looking up, she saw Bill standing there, in his t-shirt and jeans again, pretty in that way that no man had a right to be, smiling that smile that always undid her.
“Thought I heard someone,” he said. “What are you guys doing?”
Katie hadn’t heard him coming. Now that he’d snuck up on them Mel recovered first. Pushing herself up off the floor, she stuck her hand out to him with a little mischievous look in her eyes. “You must be Bill. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“All good things I hope?” he asked, taking her hand and shaking it firmly.
Mel’s expression evened out. “No. Not all good.”
Katie could have strangled her friend for saying anything. She’d told Mel about Bill’s shouting at her in confidence. “Don’t worry about that,” she said quickly, hoping her face wasn’t burning as red as it felt like it was. “Uh, we need to talk.”
“Yes, we do.” He looked embarrassed, and even more attractive because of it. “Listen, I’m sorry about being so angry yesterday. I didn’t have any right to talk to you like that. I mean, if we’re going to be working together under the same roof we need to get along, right?”
Mel cleared her throat. “The way I hear it, you’ve been doing more than working under this roof.”
Bill’s eyes flashed in her direction. “I know that. Katie, I’m sorry. Is there any way I can make it up to you?”
Actually, Katie thought, there might be. “You’ve lived in this town all your life, haven’t you Bill?”
“Most of it, anyway. Why do you ask?”
“You must know the gossip about this house. The police aren’t saying so but I’m sure the body they found downstairs was Emily Knox.”
His smile slipped further. Obviously this wasn’t what he’d been thinking of to ‘make it up to her.’
“Have you heard any stories about how Emily died?”
“There’s always stories about a death in a small town.” He shrugged, leaning his shoulder against the wall. “The story around town was that she had gone off to college. There was never any talk of her killing herself. Just that she left without any word, and it eventually was too much for her father.”
“Frank Knox killed himself. Right, we know that part.” There was a part they didn’t know, however. “Did you ever hear if Emily got pregnant? There was a boyfriend. A Miguel Sanchez. I heard today she was pregnant when she left town. Could that be true?”
Bill stared at her for the longest time. Then he turned and opened the door to leave. When he did, the cold air rushed around Katie again.
“I never gave a lot of thought to rumors,” Bill said. “I’m going to do some work downstairs. That hole in the living room won’t fix itself. You should have left it for me to do, Katie.”
Then he was gone.
Mel looked over at Katie. “Weren’t you going to fire him?”
Right, Katie remembered. That had been the plan. Why hadn’t she followed through? She knew the reason, of course. Seeing him in that t-shirt, and watching him flirt with her with just a smile...how could any woman deny him? “I can fire him tomorrow, I guess. Come on. Let’s pack up your great-grandmother’s Ouija board and go find Miguel Sanchez. If we’re lucky he won’t mind talking about the fact that his ex-girlfriend just turned up dead--”
She stopped midsentence, staring down at the board. Mel followed her line of sight, and gasped.
The planchette was now covering the word YES.
“Is that an answer?” Mel wondered out loud. “Did one of us knock that thing sideways when Bill came in here or is that an answer to our last question? Oh, man, what was our last question?”
Katie swallowed back against a lump in her throat. She remembered the last question. It was the one she’d asked Bill.
Was Emily Knox pregnant?
Yes.
<
br /> Chapter 9
It turned out that Sanchez was a very common name in Port Cable. There were ten different people named Sanchez in town. Only one Miguel.
In a little house near the edge of town Katie parked in the dirt driveway and she and Mel got out of the car. The house was small and the siding had fallen off near the far corner. It was obvious that the person living here didn’t spend a lot of time keeping the place up. A little two-door green car with rust spots around the fenders sat half in and half out of the unattached garage.
“Well.” Mel smacked her gum. “Looks like Miguel is still single after all these years.”
“How do you know?”
“Because this place seriously needs a woman’s touch!”
Before they could get close to the porch a large Hispanic man came out of the house, pushing open the screen door with a horrendous squeal of metal springs. He was out of shape, and the white undershirt he was wearing was stained with brown blotches of coffee or something more foul. The hairline of his curly brown hair was badly receding. In his hand he clutched an open bottle of beer.
Katie estimated he was in his late sixties or early seventies, just the right age to have been Emily Knox’s boyfriend.
“Help you?” he grunted. “If not, go away.”
Friendly greeting, Katie thought to herself. “Mister Sanchez, we don’t mean to intrude. We were wondering if we could ask you about Emily.”
He blinked at them.
“You know?” Mel put in. “Emily Knox. Your girlfriend.”
The man’s eyes glazed over. Katie had the impression he was looking back through the years. “Emily. She left town. College. That’s what they said.”
“We know.” Katie had the feeling of walking on thin ice. What did Miguel actually know? He was obviously a mental wreck already. If she said the wrong thing, would he break? “They said she went away to college, but she didn’t. She ran away, didn’t she?”
He shook his head very, very hard, and then drank some more of his beer. “Never heard from her again. All those years.”
Katie looked at Mel. This was supposed to be a rational conversation with a sober--if grieving--ex-boyfriend. What were they supposed to do with a grown man sobbing in his beer?
She took a breath and tried a different approach. “Mister Sanchez, my name is Katie Pearson. I’m the new owner of the Knox Estate.”
His body stiffened. The hand around the beer bottle flexed.
“I don’t know how to tell you this...”
His knuckles were white.
“But they found Emily’s body inside the house. Today.”
The muscles in his jaw clenched.
“She’s dead, Mister Sanchez. I’m so sorry--”
The bottle shattered. It was sudden and violent and sprayed dark brown liquid across Miguel’s dirty jeans and his socks and added more stains to his shirt. Glass fragments clinked against the porch. Cuts opened up in his palm as the shards sliced his flesh and tiny drops of blood fell and mixed with the wasted beer.
Miguel didn’t seem to notice. He kept staring past Katie, reliving whatever moment from the past he was stuck in.
“Oh my sweet Lord in Heaven,” Mel said. “Did he just...?”
“Yes,” Katie said, “he did.”
“Okay, then. I think I’m going to call for an ambulance.”
“She was mine,” Miguel said to no one in particular. “Emily and I belonged together. We loved each other.”
Katie dared to take a couple of steps closer. She didn’t know if she should say anything else, but she had to know. If she was going to make a profit on the house she had to know the circumstances surrounding Emily’s death. She wasn’t trying to solve a decades old mystery, that was for sure. Right now she was just trying to protect her investment. Let the police handle the rest of it. “Sir, do you know who hurt Emily?”
His face darkened, and his eyes focused on Katie at last. “She was being hurt. That’s why she ran away.”
The bruises on Emily’s face. From the dream. “Yes, she was being hurt. Who hurt her, Miguel? Who did that to Emily? Was it you?”
With a snarl he exploded off the porch at her. Katie was younger by far--and sober--and very motivated to stay out of his reach. She backpedaled away from him easily until he gave up chasing her in circles and fell to his knees there on the front lawn. He turned his palms up and looked at them as though he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten pieces of brown glass embedded in the one.
Mel put a hand on Katie’s shoulder. “I called for an ambulance. They’re sending a police car, too. I think it might be a good idea, don’t you?”
“Maybe.” Katie was at a loss. This was the history of her new house. A murder. An ex-boyfriend who had taken leave of his senses and may have been beating up the girl who had been killed. And then there was that other thing. “Miguel, hey. Can you hear me?”
He sobbed, but nodded his head.
“I need to ask you one more thing, okay? Just one more thing and I’ll leave you alone.”
In the distance Katie could hear sirens, getting louder as they got closer. She wouldn’t have much time before Miguel was carted off to the hospital and questioned officially by the police.
“Miquel. Tell me if it’s true. Was Emily pregnant?”
His head whipped up, and he stared at her. “She was going to run away.”
“I know, but did she ever tell you--”
“She was going to leave town and never come back. She told me so.”
The ambulance was at the end of the street. “What did she tell you, Miguel? Did she tell you about the baby?”
Tears filled his voice as Miguel said something that got drowned out by the wail of the ambulance as rolled up and parked at the curb in front of the house. Two men in blue jumpsuits carrying red duffle bags got out and rushed past Katie. Slowly, cautiously, they convinced Miguel to let them see his hand, and then in a flurry of movement they took out gloves and white gauze and several other items from their bag.
It was now or never, Katie realized.
“Miguel, please. Tell if Emily was pregnant. Did you know? Was she pregnant!”
“Miss,” one of the ambulance workers said, “you’re going to have to step back now. He needs our help.”
Katie didn’t care. They could work around her. All she needed was an answer to this one question. “Please Miguel. Was Emily pregnant?”
“Yes!” he screamed, so loudly that it made the ambulance guys flinch and hesitate to touch him again. “Yes she was and she was going to take the baby away with her and I was never going to see them again! Never! NEVER!”
Mel took hold of Katie’s arm and pulled her away as a third man from the ambulance joined the other two in trying to calm Miguel down. A police car was pulling up at that moment, too, and the whole scene became barely controlled chaos.
She and Mel went back to their car and waited there in case anyone needed to talk to them. Katie chewed over what she’d just heard. Yes, Emily was pregnant. She was carrying a baby inside of her when she ran away from home.
What happened to the child?
Did Emily leave in order to give up the baby to adoption, or did she come back into town with her child? It mattered either way because if the baby was given up for adoption and ever looked into who the birth mother was, they might have a claim on the ancestral home. That could set Katie back hundreds of thousands of dollars in a lawsuit. Maybe millions.
That was a slim chance, of course, but it would be one more thing she had to declare in a legal notice to whoever bought the property from her.
On the other hand, if Emily brought the baby back with her...
Katie continued that line of thought, adding to her theory that Emily had come back into town after her parents had divorced, coming back to the family home and meeting with foul play either by the hand of a drifter or maybe even an abusive boyfriend like Miguel. If that was the case, and if Emily had her child with her when she returned,
then where was that child now?
“We need to get back to the house,” she said to Mel. “Oh, I just had a terrible thought. The stain in the second story bedroom. I think I might know what’s causing it. I need to find out, and then I need to get out of that place. For good.”
She hated the images that were crowding into her head but she had to know. What sort of house of horrors had she bought her way into?
Mel didn’t argue. She worked in the world of house sales too. She knew what Katie was up against. “I’ll help you get your things together, Katie. I’m so sorry, chickie.”
“Win some, lose some.” Katie watched as Miguel was put in the back of the ambulance. The police officer was heading their way, no doubt with a dozen and more questions. “I just feel bad for Emily Knox.”
“Well. Wherever she is now, she’s past all that.”
“Yeah,” Katie had to agree. “I suppose she is.”
“I’m hungry,” Mel said on the way back.
“Can we eat afterward?” Katie didn’t have much of an appetite for anything except maybe a good stiff drink. Wine. Lots of wine. Was there anyplace in Port Cable that sold wine?
“It’s lunchtime, Katie. Whatever’s in that house will still be there when we get back. Maybe we’ll even find Bill when we get there,” she added with a sly wink.
Bill. Yeah, that was a problem of a different sort, now wasn’t it? He turned her inside out. There was such an obvious attraction between them but then he could turn in an instant and be so mean to her. Did she really want a man like that in her life?
She remembered what Justina had said about her husband, Mister W. Frank Knox, and his heavy-handed way of disciplining his wife and daughter. Surely that had led to Emily running away in the first place even if Justina wasn’t ready to admit that to herself. From things she had read, Katie knew that abused children often grew up to have abusive boyfriends. Katie had been dating Miguel, and Miguel certainly seemed the type to be abusive.
The bruises on Emily from her dream, the fear in the girl’s eyes... Katie couldn’t shake the image.
Which brought her back to Bill. Did Katie want that sort of relationship in her life? Certainly not. She would never let a man who was physically or mentally abusive to get within a hundred feet of her.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 18
