A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(64)

At least some things I’d feared came to nothing. When we turned into the driveway, the men who’d tracked us were gone. The lawn and driveway were marked with the tire tracks of several cars or trucks, and there were footprints everywhere. A dog had been all over, I could smell the scent of its markings. There was a sad air hanging about the huge house.

“My car is still here,” Eli said, wonder in his voice. “They didn’t disable it.”

“No one was around to tell them whose it was,” I pointed out. “We can take it back to town when it’s safe to go.”

I got out of the car quick, keeping my eyes on the house. But no one appeared. The windows were empty.

We approached the porch slowly. Eli’s hands were up, and so were my guns. Mary Ellen Ballard’s body was no longer there. The wooden front door was still open. I pulled the screen door handle, and it made a terrible screech as it opened.

Eli made a quick step inside and to the right. I followed him, going to the left, letting the screen door bang shut behind me. Anyone alive would know we were in the house by now.

The wide hall had a chandelier hanging down. There were shadows everywhere. There was a dark red carpet with a pattern, there were a few upholstered chairs, a small table or two. A long mirror. I’d never been in a house this big and fancy. All I felt was gloom.

Nothing stirred. After waiting a long moment, we wandered through rooms as big as my house. One was real fancy, so I guessed it was the company parlor. A bathroom, but with just a toilet and sink, no tub. There was a dining room, I could tell from the furniture. There was a smaller room I decided must be a sitting room for the family itself. There was a big kitchen, a pantry containing a refrigerator, and a locked closet.

“Should I break it open?” I whispered. Then I wondered why I hadn’t just asked out loud.

“No, it’s for the family silver,” Eli said, and I noticed that his voice was pretty low too.

Out the kitchen door on the north side of the house, there was a plain back porch where wooden chairs served for the help when they were shelling peas and so on. There may have been more, but that’s what I saw. The last room I entered was a study, or library, or office.

“I’m going outside,” Eli said from the hall, as if he’d spotted something that needed his attention. “Find the chest.” I only nodded, not even turning to look at him. I wanted to keep my eyes ahead. There was something bad in this house.

I heard his footsteps fading away, sometimes muffled on the carpets, sometimes loud on the polished floor. I took off my own boots. I hoped nothing could hear me coming now.

The doors were all open, and most of the windows, too. In the study, the only sound came from the blessed breeze. It made the curtains ripple and it flipped at the corners of the papers on the study desk. Lucky there was a paperweight to hold ’em down. At the other end of the same room, someone had lowered a wounded white man onto a couch, removed his boots, and carefully placed those boots where he could see them.

But this man would never pull on his boots again. His face was slack and empty. I bent over to look at him, saw he’d died from a knife thrust to the belly. Made by a big knife, maybe a machete. The wound wasn’t new. This wasn’t the overseer Travis had killed.

His eyes opened, giving me the shock of my life.

“Watch out,” he said. “Watch out.” And he was gone for real.

My heart was thudding so hard I had to hold on to the edge of the desk. He was the fifty-ish man who’d been on the train in our car, watching us.

I gave the study a quick search. Nothing I found made any difference to me. Eli might find the letters of interest, but I wasn’t about to take the time to read.

I spared a glance for the dead man, who was still dead, before I looked at the clock. With a dart of alarm, I realized I had not seen or heard from Eli for maybe ten minutes.

Yet something in the silence of the house made me not want to call out.

I was torn between running out to look for him and doing as he’d bid me. I reminded myself that Eli was as capable of defending himself as I was.

I went up the stairs as silently as I could.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


When I reached the landing, which looked out on the back of the house, I saw Eli through the large window. He was balanced on a ladder, and he was sawing at the rope that dangled Travis Seeley from the thick tree branch. When the rope severed, Eli lowered the body to the lawn, his magic making it float down gently… more or less. When Travis’s corpse lay on the ground, a cloud of flies flew up in agitation.

Eli scrambled down the ladder and threw up.

I eased up the remaining stairs. Behind the first closed door, there was another set of stairs going to the attic where Juanita Poe had seen the chest. That’s where I wanted to go. But before I did that, I had to make sure this floor was clear.

A guest bedroom was first. It was bright and dustless and empty. The next bedroom was for the son of the house, and there I had more luck.

A man I assumed was Holden Ballard lay in the large bed. His blood had seeped through the bandage around his chest. He was in bad shape, which pleased me. Harriet had stabbed him on the upper left, aiming for his heart. She’d almost made it. He might die yet. Ballard looked terrible, his color bad, his gray-sprinkled hair all rumpled. His sunken eyes opened just a bit when he realized someone was there. “Where is my mother?” he said. “Where is Myra? Or Juanita? Who are you? Hand me some water.”