Pulling herself together, she decided to tackle the things piled against the wall beside the workbench next. An ancient Weedwacker. Could it have come with the house? Several fans on stands, wrapped in white plastic trash bags, must have been out here forever. A folded stepladder. More boxes.
Beth sighed.
Wallboard had covered the garage walls as long as she could remember, which meant it was discolored and battered. Nobody had ever taped or spackled or painted out here. She could just see wall-hung shelves on the other side of the garage. Probably that was where the oldest stuff was. Anybody would fill shelves before starting to pile junk on the floor, right?
Strange, though—the one sheet of wallboard in front of her looked a little different from the rest. Not really clean, but cleaner, except for some gross but long-dry stains at the bottom. None of the dings, either. Maybe Mom and Dad had had it replaced at some point. If so, it had to have been put up shortly before the piles grew in front of it, protecting it. Except for a big hole bashed into it six or seven feet up. Something had probably smacked it. The extension ladder lying on a sheet of plywood suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the garage, right above the tracks and motor for the automatic garage door opener? Maybe. It would have been awkward to maneuver.
She doubted her father even knew he owned a tall ladder. He certainly wouldn’t have any use for it. Once upon a time, Mom had nagged him into occasional tasks like painting. Later, if something obviously needed doing, he hired someone. Well, Beth hired someone. He’d look surprised but pay the bill without complaining.
Back to work.
Fans—thrift store. Or garage sale, if she had one. Stepladder—who didn’t need one? If Dad didn’t want it, she’d take it. The Weedwacker? It could probably be recycled, even rusty.
For some reason, the gaping hole kept drawing her gaze. Matt and Emily had moved their squabbling outside. They wouldn’t see her give in to an inexplicable compulsion. She unfolded the stepladder and climbed up on it.
A flashlight would have helped, but at least the window was close. Beth angled her head to see down inside the wall. Her heart began to drum at the sight of something...
She screamed, lurched back and tumbled off the step stool.
* * *
TONY NAVARRO ADDED gas to his lawn mower, carried the can to the garage, wiped sweat from his face, then pulled the cord to start the damn thing again. Not too far to go, which was good. July in eastern Washington was hot. He should have gotten the mowing done during an evening this week, when it was cooler. Keeping up with his own yard and his mother’s and often one or even a couple of his sisters’, though, that got time-consuming.
A vibration in the pocket of his jeans had him sighing. Please, not work. He needed the day off. Bad enough he’d already caught shit from his mother for not going to church.
He let the mower die and pulled out his phone. Unfortunately, he knew the number all too well.
“Navarro. Isn’t there anyone else who can take this?”
“I’m afraid not, Detective.” The dispatcher sounded genuinely regretful. “Detective Troyer is on vacation, and—”
“Beck isn’t back to work yet. I know.” With a broken leg, David Beck wouldn’t have to mow lawns, either. Jack Moore...no, he was caught up in a messy investigation. Tony sighed again. “What do you got?”
“This is a strange one,” she said. “Somebody noticed a hole in the wallboard in their garage and took a look in it. He says they can see a human hand. Kind of...withered. His words.”
Tony swore. “It didn’t occur to this guy it’s probably some discarded Halloween decoration?”
“I don’t know. He was pretty shaken up.”
Thus, she hadn’t sent a uniform to check it out. She’d called him. What could he do but commit the address to memory?
Glad he’d been mowing his own lawn and not another family member’s, he was able to go inside for a quick shower and change of clothes. Badge and weapon. Out the door.
The address he’d been given wasn’t half a mile from his house. Homeowner was listed as John Marshall. Caller had been a Matt Marshall.
He could get in, he calculated, look, soothe the homeowners and be home firing up his lawn mower again in forty-five minutes, tops.
To his dismay, in that half mile, he passed from the neighborhoods made up of ranch-style homes, mostly built from the 1960s to the ’70s, to those with older houses. These weren’t as fancy as the ones close to Wakefield College, a private, very expensive, liberal arts school. Those had been handsomely restored. The bungalows on this block weren’t rundown, but homeowners hadn’t done much but keep up the painting and neatly mow the lawns. Still, they were constructed differently than newer homes. A two-by-four really was two inches by four inches, for example, rather than the current, abbreviated size still called by the misleading dimensions. Walls might be even deeper than that, the supports farther apart than in modern construction, too. He’d been counting on the fact that stuffing a body in a typical wall of a house like his was next to impossible, unless it was child-size. Here...he couldn’t say impossible.
He spotted the right number on a white house accented with a bland beige. 1940s, at a guess. The lawn in front was brown—no one here had bothered watering. The detached garage was set back a little farther from the street than the house. Tony had expected the garage door to be open, but it wasn’t. Two vehicles filled the driveway, and two more were parked at the curb in front of the house. A six-foot fence and gate blocked his view into the backyard.
Tony parked in front of a neighbor’s home, grabbed his flashlight and walked up the driveway. Before he could veer toward the front door, the gate swung open and a young woman appeared from between the house and garage. Brown hair was starting to straggle out of a ponytail. Dirt streaked one of her gently rounded cheeks. Her nose, too—no, those were freckles. Maybe her hair was more chestnut, with a hint of red?
“Oh! You’re not...” She spotted the badge and holstered gun at his hip and faltered, “Are you?” She blushed. “I mean, are you a police officer?”
“I’m Detective Tony Navarro, Frenchman Lake P.D. And you are?”
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m rattled, and—” Breaking off again, she shook her head. “I’m Bethany Marshall. Beth. This is my dad’s house. He teaches at the community college.”
Tony nodded, still at sea but figuring she’d get to the point soon.
“Dad...well, he’s a typical absent-minded professor. It had gotten so the garage was so crammed full of stuff, you could hardly set foot in it. So my brother and sister and I are spending the weekend sorting and getting rid of things. You know.”
It had to have been the brother who’d called, then. “Where’s your father?”
She looked surprised. “He’s in the house. He’s not much good at this kind of thing.”
Okay.
“You see, we found...” She visibly stumbled over what they’d found. “Well, I guess I should just show you.”
Now, there was an idea.
“Let’s do that, Ms. Marshall,” he agreed and followed her lead through the gate and alongside the house, past a garbage can and a recycling container.
He let himself get a little distracted by Beth Marshall, who had a truly womanly body. No matchstick arms here. He wouldn’t describe her as plump, though, just curvy. He happened to like his women curvaceous instead of the currently fashionable stick-thin, so he savored the sight of her while he could.
Two people waited anxiously in the backyard, along with mountains of packed boxes that had been labeled Thrift, Keep and the like. The man said, “Beth?” and then saw Tony behind her. “Somebody came.” He sounded stressed. Tall, lean and handsome in a way that might be polished if he weren’t also sweaty, dirty and disheveled, this had to be the brother. His arm sheltered a young woman, a cute blonde w
ith blue eyes that were puffy and a scattering of freckles across her nose. The youngest of the three, Tony guessed, and probably considered prettier than Beth by most people.
He introduced himself again and got their names. Matt Marshall and Emily Marshall. Were neither of the sisters married? He let his gaze slide to Beth’s left hand. No ring. Did any of them still live at home?
“Okay, let me take a look,” he said.
Matt started to move, but Beth shook her head. “I’ll show him.”
“You should sit down.”
“I’m okay.” She gave an unconvincing smile. “Just bruises. Really.”
“Bruises?” Tony asked, once again following her, this time through a side door into the shadowy confines of the garage.
Glancing over her shoulder, she wrinkled her nose. “I fell off the stepladder.”
“Ah.” He hated to envision her creamy skin blotched with the ugly colors of bruises.
Concentrate. He looked around. The siblings had cleared close to two-thirds of the garage, assuming it had been completely full to start with. Boxes and what looked like a lot of crap were still packed against the far wall. Tony mentally transferred the piles out in the backyard into here and thought, Holy shit. Beth had been understating the problem. Which made him wonder what the interior of the house was like.
Not his problem.
He saw the stepladder right away, and took in the single sheet of wallboard that subtly didn’t match the rest. Stains at the bottom, where bodily fluids would have pooled. Instantly snapping into cop mode, he had a bad feeling he wasn’t wasting his time after all. Didn’t look like he’d finish mowing his lawn today.
Beth hovered behind him as he mounted the ladder. He was careful not to touch the wallboard and snapped on the military-grade flashlight he carried in his left hand. It lit a slice of the interior between two-by-fours.
Despite what he’d seen in his years as a cop, the mummified human hand made his skin crawl. He could see some of the wrist—and the top of a head, the hair blond, stringy, dull but still attached. The size of the hand and arm bone and the length of hair made him believe he was looking at a woman.
How long had she been walled up in the garage of this house? And who was she?
Copyright © 2018 by Janice Kay Johnson
ISBN-13: 9781488085512
Moonlight Over Seattle
Copyright © 2018 by Callie Endicott
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