by Terry Odell
“I’ll bring in some boxes, then scope out the downstairs. I can have a rough idea in twenty minutes, I’d say.”
Morgan stared at her purse for a moment, then the ceiling, as if trying to decide if she could put off her tasks for twenty minutes. “Okay.”
He wondered if she’d trust him with a spare key. He could come back, do more rigorous measurements, get materials listed. He’d let her be the one to bring it up, if and when she was ready.
He strode down to the basement and grabbed the nearest carton. It was lighter than he’d expected. He brought it into the living room and set it near the couch. He went back for two more.
Morgan stared at them, not moving. She wasn’t afraid of boxes, was she? No, she’d had no qualms about dealing with the ones from the Villas. The cartons were all taped shut, so Cole slit them open with his Leatherman. He left her to wherever her thoughts had transported her, and to give her space, started with the kitchen.
He made rudimentary sketches. Today was about an initial assessment. Then, he could discuss how far Morgan wanted to take things. Go minimal, replacing what wasn’t functioning, or do some make the house more than bare bones livable renovations. He had no idea whether there were any rules dictating how much money she could spend.
The puke green refrigerator hummed, and when Cole opened the door, the cold air told him it was working. The stove emitted proper blue flames, although she’d need a replacement cover for one of the burners. Did they still make them for this model? He made a note to let Morgan know appliances could be on a not critical list if she wanted to put off updating the kitchen. Likewise, the Formica countertops were scratched and stained, but they served their purpose.
He’d learned while working with his father that homeowners often started out wanting to do the bare minimum, but once they saw one new bright and shiny, they wanted to upgrade the entire space.
“Don’t complain. Changing minds keeps the food on our table, the roof over our heads,” his father would say as jobs stretched out.
Cole should have checked all the plumbing before going to the Tool Shed, but he’d wanted to score points by giving Morgan a toilet that didn’t leak.
When had it become about scoring points? Was it when he’d been grilled about her in the locker room? Was he afraid one of the gang would try to make a move on her? After all, he’d insisted there was nothing between himself and Morgan.
Dawdling over his task wasn’t the way to score points, whether he was trying to or not. He moved on through the dining area. No holes in the walls that vandals heisting copper pipes would have made. Some missing, some loose baseboards. A few of the electrical outlets lacked covers. He added them to his list.
He glanced over his shoulder. Morgan hadn’t opened any of the boxes. Instead, she was working her cell phone. Maybe she couldn’t wait for a Wi-Fi connection.
He moved into the powder room, checking the sink, which he hadn’t bothered with while he was fixing the toilet. A slow drip from the faucet spoke to needing a new seat washer. He added that to his list. The sink bowl was rust-stained. Another non-critical issue to let Morgan know about. The cracked tiles on the floor fell into the same category.
A high-pitched shriek from the living room sent him running.
Chapter 12
MORGAN CLAPPED A HAND over her mouth. Had she just screamed like a ... girl? Heat flamed her face as Cole rushed to her side. Carrying a gun?
She struggled for composure as she pointed to the open carton. “I don’t think that will be necessary. It’s too late for them.”
Cole slipped the gun behind his back. Why hadn’t she noticed he had one?
“You always travel armed?” she asked.
“Yep. Technically, I’m never off duty, although this is my personal backup weapon, not my official one.”
Morgan mulled that over for a moment. When Cole had been in uniform, his weapon had been conspicuously holstered at his hip. When she’d met him at The Wagon Wheel, or when they’d gone to the cantina and to the Villas, she’d never noticed. Never even considered she was out with someone ... armed.
“Sorry I screamed,” she said. “I was surprised more than scared. I should have expected there would be ... creatures ... taking up residence in the basement and the boxes. I wasn’t expecting to find a bunch of dead rats when I opened this one.”
Cole leaned closer. “They must have been dead when they were put in here. Otherwise, they would have chewed their way out.”
Morgan grimaced. “Gross. What am I supposed to do with these? Could they be carrying the plague?”
“I don’t think fleas—which is how the plague is transmitted—can live on a long-dead rat.”
She’d had enough of the house for one day. “Are you done with your analysis?”
“I have enough for starters,” he said.
“Then could you do me a favor and take those boxes back to the basement? I’m not ready to deal with whatever else might be in them.”
“I’ll get rid of the rats, too.” Cole stacked the boxes and carried them out.
Tempted to call a trash disposal company and have all the boxes hauled away, contents unseen, Morgan decided she’d ask Mr. Hathaway. According to the trust, she’d inherited the house and all its contents. What if the contents of those boxes had been put in the basement after Uncle Bob had left, and they weren’t his? Would they still belong to her?
As they drove, Morgan couldn’t stop thinking about Cole and his gun. On the one hand, it was nice to know someone would rush in, ready to protect her from an unknown source of danger. On the other, she didn’t feel comfortable needing protection. Guns were dangerous. True, Cole was a trained law enforcement officer, but accidents could happen. What if he’d come running because there was an armed attacker threatening her, not because of her over-the-top reaction to dead rats? An attacker who saw Cole had a gun and reacted by shooting?
He stopped at the curb in front of the inn, and she said, “Thanks for everything.” She opened her door and climbed out of his car, rushing up the walkway before he had a chance to escort her. It wasn’t the gun as much as not knowing he carried one off duty. And hadn’t mentioned it.
Why would he? She didn’t tell him everything she carried in her purse.
Inside, she nodded at Mrs. More Cheerful and detoured to the coffee station before heading to her room. There, she set up her laptop and plunged into following through with what she’d told Cole she had to do.
After twenty minutes of browsing couches, end tables and the like, she decided sight unseen wasn’t going to work. She’d need to make a trip to a real furniture store, but she could order a bed. If she didn’t like it, it could go into one of the other bedrooms.
The boxes in the basement—assuming they weren’t housing little animal corpses—could work as end tables or coffee tables for the time being. She was determined to go through them. Having Cole move them from the basement avoided her having to deal with going into that space. She’d gotten over the full-blown panic attacks years ago, but it had been a struggle to walk through the basement.
Had Cole noticed her fear?
She could do it. She would do it.
Morgan checked her phone for a reply from Austin. She tried to stay in I’m keeping in touch mode rather than I’m checking up on you. A typical twelve-year-old, he resented adults interfering in his life, although the two of them had a strong relationship. Stronger than the one Austin had with his parents.
Would this be a good time to broach her plan with them? No. Too soon. First, the house.
If she was serious about fixing the house, would Cole be the best choice? He worked four days a week, and once she got things going, she’d want the workers to show up five days a week, not three. That would assume Cole would be willing to spend all of his days off working on the house. He had a life of his own and might not be able to give that much time and attention to her project.
Would he be slighted if she used a local contractor?
Even if he was, he’d understand she wanted the job done as soon as possible. Personal feelings—assuming there were personal feelings—couldn’t get in the way.
The woman who lived behind Uncle Bob’s house said her husband was a firefighter who had colleagues who did construction. Didn’t cops and firefighters run in the same circles? Cole might know them. Could she figure out a way to get them working together? Maybe they had different days off and could be here more often.
Project New Life on Elm Street was underway. She called Mr. Hathaway.
COLE WATCHED MORGAN’S purposeful stride as she marched to the Castle’s entrance. A woman with a mission.
He drove home. While his laundry cycled, he went to his desk. Armed with paper, pencil, and a ruler, he made better diagrams of the rooms in Morgan’s house, then began a more comprehensive list of supplies, breaking things down into must have and wish list categories. He’d deliver it to Morgan, then see what she said about getting the work underway. He hadn’t been joking when he’d said he’d work for food, although that was for minor repairs, not a full-blown construction project. Maybe Dad would be willing to ballpark an estimate. For all its shortcomings, the house did have what his father called a sturdy skeleton.
Cole smiled when he thought of what Morgan had named the project. New Life on Elm Street. It showed she was serious about staying.
Should he suggest that she come over to review his lists? Was it too soon to have Morgan see his place?
He glanced around, considered the condition of the bathroom, the dust on the shelves. The unmade bed.
He’d let her know when he finished his lists, let her decide when she wanted to see them. He needed to clean anyway and went to the kitchen closet for his cleaning supplies.
Just in case.
The apartment cleaner, Cole finished his lists and looked at his sketches. Without measurements, his lists were things she’d need, not how much of them. Would she be willing to go back to the house so he could finish his task? She’d said she needed an internet connection, which tied her to the Castle.
Worth a shot. He called Morgan but got her voicemail. Most likely, she was still busy calling people and making arrangements. He left a brief, noncommittal, have partial materials list suggesting they get together to discuss them and tried to pretend he didn’t care whether she called back.
Her response came fifteen minutes later in the form of a text.
Good. At the house tomorrow 9 AM?
He sent back a thumbs up emoji. Somehow, even the basic happy face seemed too ... intimate.
He checked the time. Almost end of shift. He could head over to The Wagon Wheel, see if anyone from the gang was unwinding, have a beer.
And, given the dearth of dining choices in Pine Hills, maybe he’d run into Morgan.
While he waited for the dryer to finish so he could move the next load from the washer, Cole went back to his searches on Robert Tate. Following links from the hits gave him no new information. Everything pointed to Uncle Bob being a model citizen.
Even model citizens had secrets.
As Morgan had pointed out, something had triggered the housekeeper’s reaction. If he knew her name, he could plug them both into the search engine, see if that narrowed his results and provided a lead.
The dryer dinged. Cole dumped the dry clothes into a laundry basket—folding could wait—and shifted the wet ones into the dryer. He grabbed a jacket and headed out.
At The Wagon Wheel, Cole spotted Brody, Whelan, and Connor at their usual table. A quick glance through the dining room confirmed Morgan wasn’t there. He nodded to Dina at the hostess station as he strolled over to join his colleagues.
A pitcher of beer and spare glasses sat in the center of the table, along with plates, half a pizza, and a platter of wings. Cole grabbed a glass, poured himself a drink, and waited to see who’d be the first to rag on him about Morgan.
“Riding solo tonight, Patton?”
Brody took the prize.
Cole scowled. “Told you, she just needed advice about fixing the house she inherited. It’s going to take a lot of work. There’s nothing else between us.”
“If she wants someone more experienced—” Brody waggled his eyebrows— “you can send her my way.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Cole turned his attention to Connor, the department’s lab wizard. “Do you have magic spells for judging the age of paint?”
“Depends,” Connor said. “You’re talking about the graffiti at the Elm Street house, right?”
Cole snagged a plate and a couple of wings. “Yeah.”
“You have a window of opportunity?” Connor asked.
“Best guess, sometime between when the last renters moved out five years ago and a few days ago,” Cole said.
“Then I’d say it was painted sometime in the last five years.” Connor worked on his pizza slice.
“Big help,” Cole muttered.
“Hey, I’m a lab tech, not a psychic,” Connor said.
Cole gnawed on a wing. “What I don’t get is why the neighbors didn’t notice if people were squatting at the house.”
“You talk to them?” Brody asked.
“I didn’t, but Morgan did. Said nobody saw anything, knew anything. At least the ones who were home when she did her impromptu canvass.”
“What do you think, Whelan?” Cole asked. “You were a big city homicide detective. How would you go about investigating this?”
“This what?” Whelan said. “Graffiti inside a vacant house?”
“Not the painting as much as what the message said.” Cole recited the words on the wall.
Whelan put down his beer. “An interesting puzzle, but until you connect it to a crime, it’s just words on a wall.”
“That’s what Detweiler said.” Cole worked the last shred of meat off his wing. “We couldn’t come up with anything. If I was going to live in a house and found that, I don’t think a fresh coat of paint would satisfy my curiosity or let me be comfortable living there. I’d need to know what it meant.”
Brody glanced toward the door. “Don’t look now, Patton. The new owner just walked in.”
Chapter 13
WAITING FOR HER TAKEOUT order, Morgan swept her gaze around The Wagon Wheel’s dining room, letting it slide over the table where Cole sat with his friends. She didn’t want to interrupt and deal with awkward introductions, so she pretended to study the takeout menu. When the hostess returned with Morgan’s meal, she grabbed the bag and hurried to her car.
Before she lost her nerve, she pointed the car away from the inn and toward Elm Street. She could do this. She would do this.
Morgan parked by the porch, then grabbed the two lamps she’d bought at the thrift shop in town from the backseat. Inside, she plugged one into a living room outlet and turned it on, clicking the three-way bulb to its highest setting. She went back to her car for the bolt cutters she’d bought at the Tool Shed and carried them and the second lamp upstairs.
She could do this. She would do this.
Once she got the trunk open, she’d go back for her dinner.
Using her phone’s flashlight app, she went to the attic and found an outlet. She plugged in the lamp, setting it as close to the padlocked trunk as she could, then shoved the trunk toward the light, which seemed far too feeble in the gloomy attic. Her plans to eat her sandwich while going through the trunk’s contents needed revising.
If anything in this house had belonged to Uncle Bob, she suspected she’d find it in the trunk. Why would renters bring a trunk of their belongings and leave it behind?
She positioned the trunk. It wasn’t as heavy as she’d expected.
Not heavy enough for a body.
Stop that. Be glad it’s not in the basement.
She picked up the bolt cutters.
“If you try to cut through the padlock, you might damage the cutters. Locks are usually case-hardened steel, and most bolt cutters aren’t designed to handle them,” t
he clerk at the Tool Shed had said. “Try them on the hasp first.”
Bolt cutters. Tatiana Morgan would never break into a steamer trunk. Hell, Tatiana Morgan would never have been allowed to venture into a hardware store. Didn’t matter. Tatiana Morgan had ceased to exist when she was seventeen, and Morgan Tate could do whatever she wanted to.
She positioned the blade of the cutters on the hasp behind the padlock and squeezed. With a clunk, the latch on the old trunk gave way and flopped forward, secured padlock and all. Morgan cut the other side of the hasp and set the locking mechanism onto the floor. Sucking in a deep breath, she pried the lid open.
Interrupted by a pounding on the front door, she dropped the lid. Who could be here? She hadn’t locked the door behind her. She heard it creak open.
“Anyone here? This is the Pine Hills Police. Please show yourself, hands where I can see them.”
“I’m coming,” Morgan called down the stairs. “I live here. This is my house.”
She left the attic, hit the darkness at the top of the stairs and backtracked for her phone. “I’ll be right down,” she called again.
The light from her phone bounced in her trembling hands as she made her way down the two flights of stairs. Why was there a cop in the house? She had every right to be here. With no way to prove it.
She paused at the bottom step. A woman in a Pine Hills Police uniform stood in the middle of the living room, eyeing her with a scrutinizing stare.
“Hello, officer. I’m Morgan Tate. This is my house.”
“Good evening, ma’am. I’m Officer Nolan, Pine Hills Police. Do you have identification?”
“In my purse.” Morgan chinned toward the couch where she’d left her bag, then stepped across the room. “It’s not going to show this address. I inherited the house from my uncle, and I’m trying to make it habitable.”
“You don’t have anything in the purse I need to worry about, do you?” Officer Nolan said.
“Like a gun? Absolutely not.” Morgan fished out her wallet.
