Her mother had been killed by someone instead of dying in her sleep, and Katie hadn’t been there to stop it from happening.
She was a good daughter, but she’d hurt her mother by leaving. She knew that she had. The arguments, the things that both of them had said...and then Katie had left home at an early age, following her boyfriend into a doomed relationship and a blossoming career in flipping houses.
Her career might have worked out but her mother had been right about the boyfriend, and that was one of the reasons why Katie had come home less and less over the years. She couldn’t face up to her mistake. She had basically abandoned her mother for a guy who wasn’t worth her time.
So why couldn’t she have just said so before her mother passed on and it was too late to say anything at all?
Her breath caught in her throat and she had to squeeze her eyes shut tight to keep the tears from falling again. That wouldn’t do anyone any good. If her mother had been killed, and if Riley Harris or Marlena Strohm had anything to do with it, then Katie was going to find out. She promised herself that.
“Do you hear me, Mom? I promise. I may not have been there for you when you died, and I’ll never forgive Lizzy for telling me that part about you thinking Marlena was more of a daughter than I was, but it doesn’t matter. I love you, Mom, and I’m going to find out what happened to you.”
After a moment, she opened her eyes again. The world swam into focus through a veil of watery emotion.
When it did, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
At her mother’s grave a woman was crouched down, pulling weeds from around the heavy brownish-red headstone. She was dressed all in black--black dress, black floppy sun hat, black gardening gloves. Her dark hair fell in cascades down her back. Her blue eyes sparkled with warmth and humor. When she turned to smile at Katie there was no mistaking that face.
Something tugged in Katie’s chest.
“Mom...”
It was like the years had been peeled away. Here was her mother as she had been when Katie was young and the world had been perfect. Before things went wrong. A much younger Alayna Pearson, kneeling at her own grave.
Her mother stood and reached out a hand toward Katie, who reached out a hand of her own, and their fingertips nearly touched...
The sun came out from behind a cloud and as the light slanted through the trees and fell on her mother, Katie watched the woman age. Wrinkles crawled over the lines of her pale face. The dark, lustrous color of her hair became bleached white. Her blue eyes became murky as they lost their focus.
“Katie,” she heard her mother say, “I’m so cold...”
Slowly, her mother became paler by degrees, and faded from Katie’s vision. Then she was gone, as if she’d never been there.
“No, no, no,” Katie heard herself saying. She took a step back from the grave. Then another. This couldn’t be happening. “No, dammit, no!”
She had seen ghosts before. She had stood in haunted houses and faced down spirits both friendly and malevolent. She knew ghosts were real.
This was her mother. Her own mother!
Be careful what you wish for, a voice inside told her. You wanted to see your mother’s ghost...
Turning on her heel, unable to stop the tears from falling down her face any longer, Katie raced for the gate in the cemetery fence that led her back to her car. She wanted to leave. She wanted to get out of here. Not just the cemetery, but this town. She wanted to get as far away from Fount Azure as she could get--
A hand snatched her by the arm as she came through the gate. It surprised her and she yelped as she tried to pull her arm away from an iron grip of bony fingers.
“Whoa there, hold on Katie.” The man’s voice was familiar but in her fright it still took her a moment to realize it was Everson Millsap. The frail caretaker of the Fount Azure cemetery was far stronger than he looked. “It’s just me, girl. My, you sure startle easy. Seems like you seen a ghost.”
Katie tried to wipe tears from her eyes while pretending nothing was wrong. “I’m fine. Everything is fine. I have to go. I just...I have to go.”
His eyes got wider, and slowly he turned to face into the graveyard. “You saw her,” he breathed. “You saw your mother when you went to visit her grave, didn’t you?”
“Don’t be silly,” she tried to laugh. “That’s impossible.”
Denying it wouldn’t make it true but Katie was in no mood to discuss her dead mother’s ghost with anyone. No. This was just too much. Seeing her in dreams was one thing, but seeing her in the daylight here in the graveyard--that was too much.
“I have to go,” she said again.
“Can you tell her something for me? Please?” The old man was reaching out for her again, like he was desperate to get her to listen. “Please. Tell her I miss her. Tell her that she’s missed.”
Katie waved at him, not trusting her voice. There was a lump in her throat and she had a feeling that if she tried to talk now that all the emotions she’d been successfully--more or less--holding in would flood out all at once.
Behind the wheel of her car Katie drove purely by instinct. She couldn’t be sure if she stopped at a single intersection all the way back to her mother’s house. The next thing she knew she was pulling into the driveway and when she did, she barely had the engine switched off before she was racing for the front door. Up on the porch she jammed the key in the lock and twisted the handle as hard as she could and threw the door open, and fell to her knees inside.
“Mother!” she called out. Silence answered her. “Mother! If your ghost is here then why won’t you tell me what happened to you?”
Even more silence fell on her.
The promise she’d made earlier came back to mind. She would find out what happened to her mother. Somehow.
Mechanically, she closed and locked the door. She went to the kitchen and stared at the walk-in freezer door. She walked all around the house, listening to the echoes of the past.
When she found herself in the bed upstairs she didn’t question it. She just pulled the blankets up to her chin, and closed her eyes, and let sleep take her.
A noise woke her.
Darkness had fallen outside when Katie’s eyes popped open. The window told her it was night. Her digital travel clock told her that she’d slept the day away.
The noise happened again. This time it was followed by the muffled sound of someone swearing.
Bleary eyed, feeling like she had a hangover from crying herself to sleep, she rolled to the edge of the bed--and listened.
“Katie? Where in God’s name is the light switch!”
A smile crossed Katie’s lips. Mel was here.
She was still dressed from this morning. Combing her hair with her fingers, she stumbled out of the bedroom and down the stairs as fast as she could. Since she’d grown up in this house, she knew where everything was with her eyes closed. Navigating the hallways in the dark with the lights off was simple.
At the bottom of the stairs, she flipped the switch on the wall, and light flooded everywhere around them.
Mel was leaning with a hand against the wall, hopping on one foot. She did not look happy.
They were as different as two friends could be. She was several inches shorter than Katie, and heavier in all the right places. She’d started adding blonde highlights to the ends of her short brown hair. Usually there was mischief in those brown eyes. Now she just looked annoyed.
“Do you always leave heavy objects around for guests to stub their toes on?” she wanted to know. “I’m here to help you and what am I getting for it? A broken toe, that’s what!”
She managed to tug off her sneaker and pull up the leg of her jeans to rub at her foot. I swear to you, if I chipped my toenail after just getting a pedicure, I’m gonna sue somebody!”
Katie had the greatest urge to laugh. It felt good to have her friend here, in the middle of all the madness that she had come home to.
On the floor next to M
el was a big red toolbox. A metal one with latches on the front. It had been left at the bottom of the stairs by one of the workmen and laying across the top of it was--
A tan toolbelt with a bear logo on the front pocket. The one that had looked so nice slung low on Riley’s hips.
Katie gasped. Riley had been in the house. Katie hadn’t seen that toolbox on the way upstairs to bed earlier. That meant he’d been in the house after she went to sleep.
She felt herself cringing, drawing her shoulders up defensively and looking all around her, trying to see around corners and through walls. Was he still here? Was she being stalked by the man who...who may have killed her...
Her mother.
“Mel?” she asked, stepping closer to her friend because she knew the old saying about there being safety in numbers. “How did you get in here?”
Blowing out a breath as she settled her injured foot back into its sneaker, Mel waved back toward the front of the house. “The door was open.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Katie shook her head. “It was locked. I locked it before I went up to bed.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, chikiepoo. It was open when I got here. I figured you left it open for me.”
Katie tried to think back. Everything had been kind of a blur after leaving the cemetery. Was it possible that she left the door open without thinking?
No. No, she couldn’t have. That would be so unlike her. She bought and sold houses for a living. It was a longstanding habit to keep the doors locked. Leaving the doors unlocked just invited people to come in and steal or vandalize a home that she might have spent several weeks and thousands of dollars fixing up.
There was no way she left that door unlocked.
Then how did Mel get in? Obviously, someone had opened the door after Katie had closed it up. She looked down at the toolbox again.
Riley. He’d been in the house, and left his things here for her to see. He’d locked her in the freezer, and now this. He was trying to rattle her. She didn’t know how he’d gotten inside...and she didn’t know if he was gone.
Her blood suddenly went cold. What if Riley hadn’t left? What if the door was unlocked because he was still inside...
“Mel,” she whispered, “we need to go.”
“What? Katie, I just got here.”
“We need to go. Now. Right now!”
Mel had always been the best friend that Katie had. They trusted each other completely. Mel didn’t ask any more questions. She saw the look on Katie’s face and knew she was serious. With a single nod of her head, she followed close behind as Katie led them to the front door. Neither of them made a sound.
When they passed by the entrance to the kitchen, Katie saw movement from the corner of her eye. She turned to get a better look.
The heavy door to the walk-in freezer was swinging open.
Katie grabbed hold of Mel’s hand and they ran outside together, straight to Mel’s rental car. They drove down Brighton Avenue much faster than the posted speed limit.
For Katie, it wasn’t fast enough.
Chapter 8
She woke in a motel bed next to Mel. They’d checked into Fount Azure’s one and only motel and then stayed up until well after midnight talking. Crying too, at least for Katie. Mel, being the good friend that she was, just handed her some tissues from her purse and held her until the tears ran their course.
She didn’t even remember lying down on the scratchy sheets and the shapeless pillow. After sleeping the previous day away, she really hadn’t expected to be able to sleep any more, but somewhere around dawn she had drifted off for just a couple of hours.
Which was when the dream happened.
Her mother was there, in the house, sitting at the kitchen table. It was astonishing how much of herself Katie could see in her mother’s face, even in her old age. This was the mother she remembered from just before she died. Worn down by life, still able to smile even though her body gave her trouble with a dozen knew aches and pains. Her once dark hair was now trimmed to tight white curls around that face Katie remembered so well.
She sat at the kitchen table in her home, sipping tea and looking out the window, as if she was waiting for someone. The house was just like it had been before her mother’s passing. Full of knick-knacks and cleaned to a spotless shine. This was a memory, but it was a memory from her mother’s past.
Katie watched the scene unfold in fascination. She knew from experience that sometimes dreams were more than what they seemed. Sometimes they let you see truths that you never would have found while you were awake.
When a bright smile eased the wrinkles around her mother’s eyes Katie knew that whoever Alayna Pearson had been waiting for was here.
An image of someone--indistinct, blurry--walked through the front door of the house and into the kitchen. Katie’s mother greeted the person with a warm hug. They sat together at the table. A cup of tea appeared for the visitor as well, as things will in a dream.
Katie didn’t know who it was. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. She never heard the person speak even though her mother chattered away in a conversation that was friendly and eerily one-sided.
All Katie knew, was this person was not her.
Who was her mother’s visitor? Who had made her mother this happy, while her own daughter was off travelling from state to state, flipping houses and hardly ever calling home to touch base with the woman who had raised her?
In the dream, a tear ran down Katie’s face. This should have been her. “I should have been here, Mom,” she said in the quiet space of the kitchen. “I should have come home and sat with you like this and talked about everything and nothing and drank tea with you and just spent time with you before it was too late.”
Her mother lifted her head up, looking around the kitchen. “Did you hear something? No? Hmm. I suppose I didn’t either.” Then she stopped, looking at the visitor sitting with her. “Well, of course I have that special coffee you like. I keep it on hand now because I do so enjoy our visits. Let me just go and get a can of it from the freezer.”
She got up from the table, and Katie’s heart lurched.
Somehow she knew this was the moment when her mother had died. If she went into that freezer, she would never come out again. This was how it had happened. This other person, this visitor that had made her mother so happy, was going to lock her in the freezer and leave her there to die.
I’m so cold. Those where her mother’s words, spoken again and again.
She froze to death.
Helplessly she watched her mother open the heavy door and hum a tune to herself as she went in the freezer. Behind her, at the table, the unknown visitor stood up and started silently across the kitchen floor.
“No!” Katie cried. She rushed forward and swatted at the person, tried to hit her or stop her or do anything she could to keep this from happening, but her hands drifted right through the shimmering blur that would not reveal itself. “Who are you? Damn it, who are you! Leave my mother alone! Leave her alone!”
The figure turned to her, smiling. Her voice was distorted, resonant, echoey... “I’m more of a daughter than you ever were.”
With that the stranger in her mother’s house reached out, and slammed the freezer door closed.
Katie recoiled in the dream, and it startled awake.
“Whoa there, chickie,” Mel said from across the room. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack and then where would you be?”
Sitting up, holding a hand to her chest to feel her heart racing against her ribs. “I’d be dead, that’s where I’d be. I’d be right there with my mom’s ghost.”
“Katie!” Mel was shocked. “Don’t talk like that. There’s something going on here, and we’ll help each other figure it out.”
Katie tried to hold onto the edges of the dream. The visitor to her mom’s house, looking right at Katie and telling her she was a better daughter, right before she shut and locked the freezer door on her.
“My mom was killed, Mel. She was murdered in her own home. The same house I’m trying to sell.” She opened her eyes to look over at her friend. “I can’t even wrap my mind around it...uh, where did you get that?”
Mel was sitting in the ugly, overstuffed orange chair across from the bed, in her t-shirt and panties, one foot up on the seat. She was eating a piece of fried bread dough with white sugar coating the top.
“Turns out the motel has a little mini-breakfast buffet. Not much there, but this fried dough is delicious!”
“You went down to breakfast...in your underwear?”
“Oh, come on.” Mel munched another bite and chewed as she snorted a laugh. “Give me some credit. I had my pants on when I went hunting for food. I just took them off when I got back to the room.”
It didn’t matter what the circumstances were that she found herself in, Mel would always be Mel.
“You want some?” she asked Katie.
“No. Um. Thanks, but no.” What Katie really wanted was a shower and a month to just process all of this. “I just keep coming back to how the house was unlocked last night when I locked it before you arrived, and how Riley’s toolbelt was left there. Like he meant for me to find it.”
“Maybe it wasn’t him,” Mel said around another bite.
Katie pushed her hair back with her hands and stared at her. “What do you mean?”
Mel held up a finger while she chewed, and chewed some more, and finally swallowed. “You know what this needs? A soda. I know, I know. First we figure out if Riley is stalking you--”
“And, if he did or didn’t kill my mother,” Katie said miserably.
“Um. Yeah. Sorry, here I am gushing about a piece of fried bread dough when your mom...yeah. Okay. Well. I was just saying, unless you gave Riley a key to your house so he could work on it then he couldn’t have unlocked the door, right?”
That made sense. Katie hadn’t thought of it, but Mel was right. Riley did not have a key to the house. The only people who had keys to the new locks were herself and--
Oh, damn.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 30
