Due or Die Page 11

  Finally, she felt the wood beneath her fingers. She could feel the dog pressing close to her side, and she was grateful for the contact. The relentless darkness spooked her more than she would have thought. Why hadn’t she grabbed her flashlight?

  She inched her way toward the stairs, feeling the floor with her sock-clad feet. When she felt the edge of the first step, she eased her way down the steps.

  A beam of light shot up from below, and she could just make out the rest of the steps. She moved more quickly now.

  “Nancy, is that you?”

  There was a beat of silence and Lindsey felt her heart hammer in her chest.

  “Yes, it’s me.” Nancy’s voice echoed up the hallway. “Did you hear that scream?”

  “Yes, have you seen Carrie?”

  “I’m on my way there now,” Nancy said.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Lindsey said.

  Together they arrived on the second-floor landing. Nancy knocked on the door, but there was no response.

  “Carrie, it’s us, open up,” Lindsey shouted.

  There was no answer and Heathcliff started to whimper.

  “Do you have a key?” Lindsey asked.

  “I think so,” Nancy said. “Here, hold the flashlight.”

  Lindsey trained the meager light onto Nancy’s hands. They shook with cold or agitation as she flipped through her key ring until she found what she was looking for.

  “Are you sure this is all right?”

  “We have to make sure she’s okay,” Lindsey said.

  “You’re right.” Nancy turned and banged on the door again. “Carrie, we’re coming in.”

  No answer.

  She unlocked the door and they hurried into the room. Lindsey wasn’t sure where to shine the light so she swept it across the room like a searchlight. It bounced off pictures and furniture, and as they followed it farther into the room, Lindsey felt a bitterly cold draft sweep over her. She could hear Heathcliff sniffing the floor, and he left her to follow the cold air.

  The beam of the flashlight picked out a figure framed in an open window. Gusts of wind and pelting snow swirled in around it, but the body didn’t move.

  “She’s not going to jump, is she?” Nancy asked. Her voice was filled with horror.

  Lindsey wasn’t about to wait to find out. She dashed forward and grabbed Carrie by the elbow, hauling her back into the room.

  “Shut the window,” she ordered, and Nancy hurried forward, slamming the window shut with a bang.

  Lindsey set the flashlight on its end so that its beam illuminated the part of the main room in which they stood. She snatched an afghan off the back of the couch and wrapped Carrie in it. Her flannel pajamas were icy cold and damp. The snow on her head was beginning to melt and her teeth were chattering.

  “Carrie, are you all right?” Lindsey asked. She rubbed Carrie’s arms through the blanket, hoping to get some warmth coursing through her.

  “It was him,” she said.

  The flashlight illuminated Carrie’s eyes from below. The whites circled the irises like big saucers. Her brown hair was mussed from the wind and snow. She was shivering and looked as if she was going into shock.

  “Him who?” Lindsey asked.

  “Markus.”

  “What? Where?” Nancy asked.

  “I saw his ghost,” Carrie said. “Outside the window.”

  “There are no such things as ghosts,” Lindsey said. “And even if there were, they don’t hang outside windows.”

  “I’m sure it was him,” Carrie said. “He’s haunting me. I know it. He wants me to find his killer, or maybe, maybe he wants to kill me.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  BRIAR CREEK

  PUBLIC LIBRARY

  “I think she’s in shock,” Lindsey said.

  “Let’s get her down to my place,” Nancy said. “She can spend the night there. In fact, we’ll all sleep there. This storm is officially terrifying me.”

  Lindsey understood. A nor’easter was one thing, but a storm like this without power was nothing to mess with, and the thought of staying up on the third floor during hurricane-force winds wasn’t really working for her.

  “My fireplace has a standing pilot ignition system, so it can switch on without electricity. I had it installed for just this sort of situation,” Nancy said. “We’ll light a fire and camp out in the living room.”

  “Sounds like an excellent plan,” Lindsey agreed.

  They half carried, half dragged Carrie down the stairs to Nancy’s apartment. The old house ran on an oil furnace, but with the extreme cold, it was having a hard time combating the bitter wind that seemed determined to infiltrate the house through any crack or crevice. And now with the power out, the remaining warmth was going to disappear in a matter of hours.

  Nancy lit several candles around the living room, and their fragile glow seemed to force back the creepy shadows to the corners of the room. Lindsey switched on the gas fireplace while Nancy went to make some food.

  Still wrapped in her blanket, Carrie knelt beside the hearth.

  “I know I must sound like I’m crazy,” she said.

  “No, you sound like you had a very bad dream, and with all that you’ve been through and this vicious storm, it’s small wonder,” Lindsey said.

  Carrie was silent and Lindsey had the feeling she hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

  As she turned the knob higher to increase the gas flow, the fire in the fireplace leapt up, wrapping the faux ceramic logs in its hot hungry mouth.

  Carrie turned her back to the fire, letting the heat dry out her clothes. Lindsey wished she had some words of comfort for her.

  Nancy bustled in with a tray laden with crusty bread, Havarti cheese, sweet pickles and a pitcher of milk. Perfect. Lindsey was beginning to think of Nancy as always coming to the rescue with a tray of goodies.

  Nancy silently handed them each a plate. Lindsey loaded a thick slice of bread with a couple of pieces of cheese and several pickle slices. Carrie and Nancy did the same.

  After a few minutes of listening to the wind claw at the side of the house while they ate, Carrie said, “I’m sorry I woke you both.”

  “No worries,” Nancy said. “Nightmares happen.”

  “No, there was a man,” Carrie said. “I saw him standing on the ledge outside my window.”

  Nancy and Lindsey exchanged a look but said nothing. Heathcliff began to pace the room, as if on patrol, and Lindsey found it sweetly comforting.

  “It must have been a shadow,” Nancy said. She poured them each a glass of milk and took a sip of her own. In a most pragmatic voice, she added, “I mean, who would be fool enough to be out in this weather?”

  “I don’t think it was a who,” Carrie said. “I think it was a what.”

  “A ghost?” Lindsey clarified. “Really?”

  Carrie looked at her with huge eyes, and maybe it was the shadows being cast by the fire, but she noticed that the dark circles beneath Carrie’s eyes stood out against the pallor of her skin, and Lindsey surmised she hadn’t really slept in days, which was not a big surprise but would explain why she had hallucinated a man looking into her window.

  “He wants me to solve his murder,” Carrie said. Her voice was whisper soft and sent a shiver down Lindsey’s spine. “He won’t rest until I find out who shot him.”

  There was a beat of silence and then Nancy said, “Well, that does sound like Markus.”

  Her tone was wry and managed to reach out and tickle Lindsey’s funny bone. She had to muffle her chuckle in her glass of milk, but it fooled no one, and after a second, Carrie chuckled, too.

  “It does sound like him, doesn’t it?”

  Whether it was from nerves or lack of sleep, Lindsey couldn’t tell, but suddenly the three of them started to laugh.

  Heathcliff jogged over from the door as if he wanted in on the joke and jumped into Lindsey’s lap, almost sending her glass crashing to the ground. She hugged him close and
he licked her face as if delighted to be included.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  The blows against the front door to the house were unmistakable. Someone was out there. Someone who wanted in. Heathcliff barked and raced to the apartment door. He scratched at the door, eager to be let out to investigate whoever was out there.

  Nancy rose first, looking startled.

  Carrie jumped up, too, and grabbed her arm. Her hands were trembling and she looked terrified.

  “Don’t answer it,” she said. “It’s him. I know it.”

  Nancy patted her arm, but even Lindsey could see that the older lady looked frightened, and she realized that this must bring back bad memories for her, memories of another bad storm where officers came to tell her that her husband had gone down with his ship.

  “You two stay here,” she said. “Lock the door behind me. Heathcliff and I will check it out.”

  “No!” Carrie argued.

  “I don’t think…” Nancy began, but Lindsey interrupted.

  “It could be someone in trouble. We have to answer it.”

  Before they could argue, Lindsey picked up one of the candles and strode across the room. With a bracing breath, she stepped through the door with the dog at her side.

  The candle had been a poor choice she realized as soon as she stepped into the foyer. It didn’t cast enough light and it just made all of the shadows in her peripheral vision dance, making her more skittish than she already was, which was saying something since she felt as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

  A growl sounded from beside her, and she glanced down to see the fur on Heathcliff’s shoulder bristling. His already low brow seemed to lower, and the gleam of his puppy teeth showed that he had curled his lip back in a ferocious sneer. If she didn’t already know he was a complete goofball, she would have been afraid. His bravery in facing the unknown made her stiffen her spine and approach the front door.

  The glass pane in the door was frosted, making it impossible to see outside. Lindsey had no choice but to open the door if she wanted to see who or what had made the banging noise.

  She unlatched the shiny new dead bolt and pulled the door open. A gust of freezing cold air blasted her and snuffed her candle, but before the light went out she saw a gloved hand reaching out of the darkness for her, and despite her best intentions to be brave, she screamed like a little girl.

  With a roar, Heathcliff launched himself at the figure in the darkness. The door to Nancy’s apartment banged open, and the body on the porch, unprepared for a flying dog, went down in a heap with a thump and a yelp.

  Nancy came out of her apartment with her flashlight in one hand and a cast iron frying pan in the other.

  “Who is it? What is it?” she demanded. She shone a beam of light on a puffy blue coat lying under a sitting dog that looked intent on licking every snowflake off the newcomer.

  A young male voice said, “Call him off, Naners, before he licks me to death.”

  “Charlie, is that you?” Nancy asked.

  “Heck, yeah,” he said.

  “You know this man?” Carrie asked.

  “He’s my nephew,” Nancy said.

  “Heathcliff, come,” Lindsey ordered, and the dog leapt off Charlie, looking quite pleased with himself.

  Lindsey reached out and grabbed Charlie’s gloved hand and pulled him to his feet.

  “What the heck are you doing out here in weather like this?” Nancy demanded. “Did you drive in this? Are you crazy?”

  “I didn’t know what I was in for until I was halfway here,” Charlie said. “Then it was too late to turn around.”

  Nancy hustled him into the house, pushing him into the apartment. “You could have been killed in an accident or frozen to death. You idiot!”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Naners,” he said with a grin as he unwrapped his scarf and unzipped his coat. “And you might have mentioned that you added a dead bolt to the front door. I couldn’t get in, so I tried to get into my apartment from the porch roof, but the window I usually leave unlatched for those times when I lock myself out was locked.”

  “It was you!” Carrie said as she made him a sandwich from the bread and cheese. “You’re the man I saw peering in my window.”

  “Charlie, that was twenty minutes ago,” Lindsey interrupted. “Why didn’t you knock on the door earlier?”

  Charlie gave her a sheepish look. “Well, when I slid off the roof, I clipped my head on the porch and sort of knocked myself out. The snow woke me up, good thing, or I might have frozen out there.”

  “Let me see your head,” Nancy ordered. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

  She tugged off his hat and pushed back his hair, and sure enough, a knot the size of a chicken egg had formed above his temple.

  “I’ll go get some ice,” she said.

  Carrie handed him the plate and he looked blissful as he sat by the fire and let the warmth wrap around him. Charlie was a tall, skinny kid with stringy black musician hair, which, without his hat, stood on end, fully charged with static.

  “I’m sorry,” Carrie said. “I locked the window. It didn’t occur to me…”

  “Of course it didn’t occur to you,” Nancy said, returning with a cloth full of ice that she held to Charlie’s head. “Normal people don’t have to access their apartments from the porch because they’ve locked themselves out—again. As for you,” she said to Charlie, “I was planning to tell you when you came home from your tour next week. Why are you back early anyway?”

  Charlie heaved a sigh and stared gloomily at his plate. “The band broke up. Our keyboard player dumped our bass player for our drummer, and the two of them got into a fist fight on stage in Panama City. I’ve been driving for three days in a van full of people who are not speaking to each other. This is why some bands don’t allow girls.”

  As if sensing his utter defeat, Heathcliff sidled up to Charlie and licked his face.

  Charlie grinned. “So, who’s the new addition?”

  “Lindsey’s dog,” Carrie and Nancy said together.

  “No, he isn’t,” Lindsey said, feeling a sharp stab of guilt when Heathcliff looked at her. “I’m simply fostering him until I can find him a good home.”

  “We call him Heathcliff,” Nancy said.

  “Good name,” Charlie said, demolishing his sandwich in three bites.

  “Oh, and this is Carrie Rushton,” Nancy said, obviously just remembering that Charlie and Carrie had not been introduced. “Carrie has been staying in your apartment while you’ve been gone.”

  “That’s cool,” Charlie said with a shrug. He looked longingly at the tray, so Lindsey slapped together another sandwich for him.

  “See? I told you he wouldn’t mind,” Nancy said to Carrie.

  “Thanks for letting me stay there,” she said to Charlie.

  “Sure, what happened? Did you lose your crib?”

  They all stared at him until his meaning finally registered.

  “Not exactly,” Carrie said. “My husband was murdered.”

  She caught Charlie on an inhale and he started to choke. Lindsey thumped his back a few times and Nancy handed him a glass of milk.

  “Wow, not what I expected,” he said.

  “For me either,” Carrie agreed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You can stay in my place. I can bunk with Naners.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to be a bother,” Carrie said. “I should probably move back to my own house now anyway.”

  “No, really, you can stay in my apartment,” he insisted.

  “You’re a good boy,” Nancy said to him. “But I never really could get the man stink out of your place. Carrie will stay with me. That’s final.”

  Lindsey turned to Carrie and said, “I hope you didn’t really think you had a say in the matter.”

  Carrie gave a small smile and said, “Thank you. Thank you all.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Nancy said. “We’re your friends and this is what fr
iends do.”

  Lindsey fell asleep in one recliner of Nancy’s while Charlie crashed in the other. She didn’t think she’d actually sleep, but the warmth of the fire soon lulled her into a lethargic state, and the thought of climbing two flights of stairs to her cold apartment above did not appeal. Somehow Heathcliff managed to wedge himself against her in the chair, and she was grateful for his furry warmth.

  At some point in the late hours, Nancy draped a heavy comforter on top of her and another on Charlie. She and Carrie took to their beds. When they awoke in the morning, they found that the power was still out, the fire had been turned low so it was just a flicker of blue flame and it was still snowing.

  Lindsey brought a portable radio down from her apartment and put fresh batteries in it. She dialed into the local New Haven news station to get the weather. It had been snowing for twenty hours with no sign of stopping. The gale-force winds had diminished, but it was still blustery outside. Along the shoreline, over twenty thousand people were without power.

  Knowing that they may not get power back anytime soon, Charlie went up to his apartment and dug out his propane cookstove from his camping gear. They set it on the kitchen counter, opening the window behind it to let out any fumes it gave off.

  Charlie then whipped up some coffee and scrambled eggs. Lindsey didn’t know if it was the bone-chilling cold or the fact that a hot meal had seemed impossible, but she was sure these were the best eggs she’d ever eaten.

  Feeling better with some food in her belly, she ran up to her apartment to change her clothes and get her cell phone. She had left it charging last night before the power went out. She had enough of a charge to check in with all of her staff today. She called each one, letting them know that they would not be opening the library.

  The only one who didn’t answer was Beth. Lindsey tried not to get anxious, but Beth lived alone in a small beach house close to the shore. If the waves had gotten high, she could be in trouble.

  She paced Nancy’s living room, debating what to do.

  “Well, how about I teach you how to crochet, Carrie?” Nancy offered. “You’re not going to be able to go home for a while, so you may as well keep your mind and your fingers busy.”