Fatal Family Secrets Read online

  She backed up the stairs and closed the hatch.

  “Still creeps you out, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Jack wants to finish it and light up the space. Make it a game room or something. But I’ll never feel comfortable no matter what he does.”

  “I don’t know if I would, either. A lot of women died down there.” Maya took a breath, but then nodded and said, “But we helped them find peace and cross over. We did that.”

  “And in the process, we made this place the most popular way station between heaven and hell.” Kiley rubbed her hands down the backs of her jeans as the two of them walked around front to head inside. “Yes, indeed, Maya, I really love that bottle tree,” she said, when a breeze caused the bottles to jingle and clink again, just before she closed the front door.

  “Johnny loves it, too,” Maya said.

  Kiley looked over her shoulder. “Oh, he does?” she asked. “What does Chris think of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Maya said. They were standing in the little foyer, heeling off their shoes.

  Kiley said, “I don’t know either. But I know what Jack thinks of it.”

  “What does Jack think of it?” Maya was clearly puzzled by the discussion.

  “He thinks if the wind blows too hard, the bottles will break, and it’ll be a lot of work cleaning up every little bit of glass from the lawn. But you asked the wrong question.”

  Maya blinked at her, deliberately not asking what the right question would be, but Kiley wasn’t going to let a little thing like that stop her when she was on a roll.

  “The question you should’ve asked is, why do I know what Jack thinks of it? And the answer is, for the same reason you know what Johnny thinks of it. You’re tuned in to him. And I’m just saying, he’s an amazing guy.”

  Maya blinked and averted her face. Were her eyes welling up? “Most amazing guy I know.” And then she rubbed her arms like she was cold.

  Kiley went into the living room and had the remote in her hand before she noticed the black TV screen. “The TV isn’t on. Then what did I hear before?”

  “Well, what did you think you heard?” Maya asked, pulling on a long knit sweater. It was sage green and set off her long blond hair to perfection, Kiley thought.

  “I thought…it sounded like a woman laughing.”

  Maya frowned at her, then got that focused look of someone listening hard.

  Kiley looked out the window and saw a group of middle school kids walking a dozen yards away on the opposite side of the road. Maybe not the first group to pass by. Maybe she’d just heard some kids walking home from school. Maybe when she could afford to paint more than just the porch, they wouldn’t give the place such a wide berth.

  No, they still would. The cops had been digging up bodies not that long ago, after all. Hell, if she didn’t own it, she’d probably give the place a wide berth herself.

  “You don’t think it was another…?” Maya let her voice trail off, her meaning clear.

  “A ghost? No way. I don’t hear ghosts. I’m a muggle. You, Jack and Johnny are the woo-woo crew.”

  “Woo-woo crew, huh?” Maya asked. “I like it. We should have t-shirts made. Spook Central Woo-Woo Crew.”

  Kiley rolled her eyes, glanced at the street again, and hoped to God one of those kids or their cohorts had a laugh that sounded like a middled-aged chain smoker with a whiskey chaser. But she doubted it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Chris and Ryan not only unloaded Johnny’s worldly possessions, but helped him arrange things around the place, too.

  Jack had left behind most of the furniture. The living room set was decent. The brown sofa was the softest thing he’d ever laid on. There was also a green chair and a wooden coffee table. The kitchen appliances were all black, and he liked that way better than stainless, not that he was fussy. He’d brought his own bed and dresser, which he’d bought for his grandfather’s apartment when the old man had told him he could stay. And he’d done it with his own money, not the account his parents had set up, and which they funded. He’d use it, in a pinch, but he’d been donating most of it now that he was making a modest living helping people with ghost problems.

  Everybody else in the gang had other jobs. Jack owned the Magic Shop, a tourist-favorite in the village, and Chris worked for him there. Kiley wrote for the Burnt Hills Gazette, and Maya was… well Maya. She raked it in as a celebrity witch on the internet. Books, blogs, interviews, etc. She tried to play it down, didn’t seem comfortable with her own popularity. She’d told him once she could only do it because she was mostly behind a computer screen, safely ensconced in her own space.

  Johnny had still not heard back from his grandfather, but it wasn’t the first time John Redhawk, the elder, had taken off on a radio-silent retreat. He was usually back the next day, though.

  Once they had everything unloaded and boxes and things sorted into the rooms where they belonged, they all sat on the sofa, the three of them, and cracked two beers and a root beer. The kid took the root beer and said, “Full disclosure. I’m not twenty-one til June of three years from now.”

  “Yeah, I don’t see any cops,” Chris said as if the root beer were the real deal.

  “Are we gonna be in trouble with your parents or anything?” Johnny asked, no longer referring to the beverage.

  “Probably.” The kid looked around and it actually made Johnny feel nervous. He looked around, too.

  “So…now that we’ve bonded over physical labor,” Chris said, “You wanna tell us who you were running from back there?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Humiliation?” He took a long sip from his bottle. “I was with a girl, and … I guess we got caught.”

  “Got caught?”

  “Parents, you know.” He tipped the root beer up and downed most of it, then burped.

  “Parents,” Johnny said, deadpan. “How old was this girl?”

  “Not her parents.”

  “Yours?”

  Ryan nodded.

  “So, three months from eighteen, and your parents are following you around trying to keep you from having sex?” Chris looked at Johnny, frowning. “That’s rough, man.”

  Ryan set the empty bottle on the floor and said, “I gotta go,” rising up and taking three long strides toward the door.

  “Thought you needed a ride.”

  “I can walk.”

  He opened the door just as a little white EV skidded to a stop in the driveway. An angry female got out and came striding right up to the kid. “What the actual hell, Ryan?”

  “Jeeze, Breia, it’s fine. I’m fine.”

  “What is this, huh?” She pushed past him right into the living room. Johnny rose automatically and Chris did, too. God, she was furious. “You feeding beer to a teenager? You want to go to prison, or should I just kick your asses myself?” She was all of five feet even, but Johnny bet she would try anyway.

  “He said he’d be twenty-one in June,” Chris said, grinning at Ryan like it was an inside joke.

  “He had root beer,” Johnny said, shooting Chris a look. He pointed to the empty bottle on the floor near the couch.

  The angry woman was still standing in the doorway, one hand holding the screen door open because she hadn’t come all the way inside. She saw the bottle and seemed to calm down. “Sorry. I get so damn worried when I can’t find him.” She emphasized the word find with a look at the kid. They looked alike, Johnny noticed. Same smooth dark hair, same skin tone, same brown eyes.

  The screen door slammed open, ripping itself from her hand and hitting the wall behind it. She yipped and pulled her hand to her chest, palm up.

  Johnny crossed the room fast, grabbed the screen and pulled it closed. No resistance. Wind must have caught it and yanked it right out of her hand.

  He looked at her upturned palm. The finger pads were scraped and red.

  “Can I just…is there a bathroom?”

  “Yeah, through there.” Johnny pointed and she went in and closed the door while he tried to remember if he’d put a roll of TP out yet.

  Chris said, “You’re in deep shit with your mom.”

  Ryan went, “Shyeah. Mom.” He pushed his dark hair off his forehead, glancing a little nervously toward the now closed door. “Breia’s my sister.”

  She came out of the bathroom, holding her hands up in front of her like a surgeon.

  “Ah, crap, no towels are unpacked yet,” Johnny said. “I’m sorry. I’m just moving in. Let me—” He stammered more words as he searched boxes for a towel, thought he’d found one, pulled it out and offered it to her.

  The kid burst out laughing, and he could tell Breia was trying really hard not to grin. “That’s okay,” she said, and wiped her hands on her purple leggings.

  He looked down and saw he was holding a pair of his jockey shorts. Biker style. “Shit.” He shoved them into the nearest box.

  “I’m Breia,” she said at last. “Ryan is my brother.”

  “I’m Johnny. This is Chris.”

  Chris gave an awkward wave. “We ran into Ryan on the road,” Chris said. “Offered him a ride. He said he’d help us unload as payback.

  “Well, now he has a ride. Come on, Ryan.”

  “Stop telling me what to do.”

  “It’s my job to tell you what to do.”

  “No, it’s not. It was our parents’ job, and they’ve been dead since I was a baby. They don’t get to run my life and neither do you. I do.”

  Chris said, “Dead? But then who–”

  Johnny kicked him in the shin, because no way was he going to let him tell Ryan’s sister he’d been caught making it with a girl. Or trying to.

  She didn’t notice it, distracted by her brother, who was reaching for the beer Chris had left on the mantle like he was going to down it right in front of her. It flew off just as he made contact with the bottle, hit the floor, and didn’t break. It just spun, spilling beer. Johnny felt like he’d blinked and missed something as he put his foot on the bottle to stop its spinning.

  “I didn’t do that. That wasn’t me!“ The kid closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. When he opened them again, he said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  Johnny picked up the bottle. “It’s the ceremonial spilling of the first beer,” he said. “My new place is now official, and you got the honor, kid.”

  “I think that makes you part of the gang now,” Chris said. Johnny thought he was enjoying having someone younger than him around.

  Ryan was no longer defiant. He looked a little shaken. “How did you find me, anyway?” He asked his sister.

  “If I tell you, how will I find you next time?”

  “You tracked my phone,” he accused. “Jeeze.” He turned toward the door.

  “Wait, Ryan. Here.” Johnny pulled a twenty from the clip in his pocket and handed it to the kid. “For all the help.”

  Ryan took the bill and shoved it into his jeans’ pocket.

  His sister caught his eye and turned her glare up to high-beam, so he said, “Thanks for the ride and the root beer and everything.” Then he headed out to the waiting car.

  Johnny stood there, face to face with Breia. She smiled awkwardly. He said, “I’m sorry about your parents,” because he couldn’t think of anything else. “I should’ve made him call you as soon as we got here. Maybe we shouldn’t have offered him a ride at all. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

  “No, it’s not your fault.” She stood a few feet from him, looking him right in the eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She was really pretty. But he wanted Maya.

  But Maya had cooled toward him, maybe over My Cousin Vinny.

  Chris cleared his throat, snapping him out of his thoughts. He sent Johnny a “what the hell, you’re single” look, and said, “I’m gonna go exchange contact info with Ryan.” Then he went out the door.

  Johnny told himself to ask her out. She was looking at him like the answer would be yes if he did. But no. No, it was way too soon, and he hadn’t given up. “It was really good to meet you, Breia.”

  She reached across the space between them, and clasped his hands in hers. They were warm and soft and very small, and she had neat, pretty nails. “It was nice to meet you, too.” She let his hands go and turned toward the door.

  He walked out with her onto the porch. Chris was leaning on the car, talking to Ryan, who sat inside, mostly listening.

  “Is your brother okay, do you think?”

  She looked over at him. He had his hands in his pockets. She said, “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “I feel like I should tell you… We were driving along, and he came tearing out of the woods right into our path. I was driving. I hit him. Not hard, I mean, we weren’t moving very fast. It’s a back road, but it knocked him back a few feet. You should have him looked at.”

  “I will.”

  “And send me the bill. I’ll take care of it.”

  He looked at her. He’d been trying not to, because she was really beautiful. Big brown eyes and dark brown hair in a short, fun style. Just then, she looked pained. “But…why was he running?”

  “I don’t know, he said his parents caught him with a girl. But clearly that’s not it.

  She nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “I wouldn’t have, but I…I have a feeling he’s in trouble. Somehow.”

  “Yeah, I have the same feeling,” she said. “I’ve had it for a while, to be honest.”

  He could tell by looking at her that something was weighing her down, and kind of dimming her light. She looked tired.

  “If he needs friends, we’re here for that. Chris is only a few years older and they hit it off big time. Spent twenty minutes talking about computer games in what sounded like their own language.”

  “Thanks. That’s sweet.”

  “That goes for you, too, okay? If there’s anything we can do, let us know.”

  “I will,” she said, and she spent an extra few seconds gazing at his face, maybe waiting for him to say more, or maybe thinking about saying something more herself. But in the end, she did neither, just smiled her sweet smile, and turned away. He didn’t walk her to the car.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kiley held up a hand for silence, because the doorbell, just installed that morning, had just chimed the familiar pipe organ chords of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

  It was the programmable electronic bell’s maiden voyage with an actual visitor, and it was kind of cool that everyone was still there for it, gathered around pizza in the living room, chatting about the raft of clients they’d had in the new year.

  The cops had held a presser just before Christmas to announce they’d solved the fifteen-year-old murder of Gabriel York. On an anonymous tip—from Kiley—a reporter–a friend of Kiley’s—had asked, on-camera, about the rumor that local ghost-busting company, Spook Central, had been instrumental in solving the cold case.

  It didn’t matter that Lieutenant Mendosa had skillfully dodged the question by talking about the many officers and resources, including community members, who had contributed to bringing justice to bear, yada, yada, yada.

  Spook Central was a catchy name and it had caught. They were about as busy as they could comfortably be, with Jack still running his new age shop in the touristy part of the village, and Kiley still writing pieces for the Burnt Hills Gazette. Maya was doing all her influencer stuff–which was a lot. Kiley had started following her. There were blog posts and video messages and books. Maya, it turned out, was kind of a big deal. Chris had his job with Jack, and she didn’t know what the hell Johnny did.

  The doorbell played its horror movie riff again.

  Kiley tipped her head sideways and wrinkled her nose at Jack. “I still think that song’s awfully dire. Wasn’t that in Phantom of the Opera or something?”

  “Dracula, maybe?” Jack asked.

  “Not, Dracula, but lots of others, starting with Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde in 1932,” Chris said. The song had been his suggestion. “Even before that, orchestras performed it live for silent films in the genre so frequently some complained it was over-used.”

  “Wow,” she replied. “That’s a long and noble history.”

  Missing her sarcasm entirely, Chris replied, “That’s why it’s the perfect doorbell chime for Spook Central.” He looked at the others “What’s everyone else think?”

  “I wanted the wind chime effect instead of music,” Maya said.

  “Yeah, but that’s too–” Kiley wiggled her fingers in the air trying to think of a term that wouldn’t offend her. “–too the opposite of dire.”

  “You were going to say airy fairy,” Maya accused. “I heard you thinking it.”

  “You heard yourself thinking I thought it.” Kiley had totally been thinking it.

  “That was brilliant. You are brilliant,” Jack praised, then nodded at Maya as if daring her to out logic his girlfriend.

  “I still say the rif from Enter Sandman. Dun duh DA DA dun.” Johnny strummed an air-guitar. Maya laughed, and he looked her way, and then they both stopped smiling and looked away from each other.

  Kiley filed the exchange away in her mind. Maya claimed nothing had ever happened between them. Then why did her eyes look so full of longing when she looked his way?

  The doorbell chimed again.

  Kiley nodded. “Yeah, way too dire.”

  “Guys,” Chris said, “I think we have an actual visitor.”

  Kiley realized there was someone at the door, and then said, “It better be. Actual, that is.” She headed across the huge living room toward the mini-foyer and oversized front door. The doorbell system had been a contribution from Maya. Its speaker was hidden behind the original doorbell chime cover. You could program in pretty much any sound you wanted, including a werewolf howl, which had already been tried and ruled out, thank you Jack.

  She loved the thing.

  She heard a voice saying, “I knew this was a mistake,” and opened the door just as a woman was starting to turn away. She turned back.