Mid-Century Monster, page 7
part #3 of Solstice Properties Mystery Series
Cin pushed down the chill that ran through her. She never expected Kama to ask for help. Something major must be coming. Turning to head out of the shop, she stopped long enough to tell the round boy who looked more than a little lost that Kama would be out shortly and he should take a seat in the sunlight pouring through the crack in the curtains. She wished she had time to just sit in warm sunlight and relax, but there were another couple of interviews that had come in while she’d been busy that morning. Her day wasn’t going to slow down any time soon.
11
Cin smiled as she listened to the phone ring. Although she’d resisted Chad’s efforts to get her to agree to a receptionist, with the way the company was growing, she had to admit that they needed the extra help, and of the people she’d talked to the previous day, Michael Cantor had been the one who’d resonated with her the best. She’d gone over everyone with Chad after dinner, just to make sure he didn’t spot any problems in their basic information. He’d run a background check on Cantor and had come back with nothing more than a couple of speeding tickets, something Chad had showing on his own record.
The ringing stopped and Cantor’s voice came over the phone. “Hello.”
“Hi, Mr. Cantor, this is Cin Kilkari, with Solstice Properties, getting back to you on your interview.”
“Mrs. Kilkari, nice to hear from you.” There was a nice level of excitement in his voice.
“Well, we’ve made our decision, and I hope you can start tomorrow.” Cin smiled as she spoke. She did like making people happy, and a new job was normally a good experience for most folks.
“That’s great. What time should I be there?”
“Let’s say nine.” Cin’s grin widened. “We’ve got a bit of routine before we open, so getting in at nine normally works for us.” She wasn’t going to bother slowing down the call to explain their daily yoga class.
“Nine, I’ll be there.” The way he said it, Cin could almost see his own smile on the other side of the call.
“Good. See you tomorrow.” Cin ended the call and stared at her computer. There wasn’t much else on her schedule. She’d gotten everything ordered that Chad and RJ said they needed for the flip and a repair at one of the rentals.
Her phone rang with Chad’s howl and she picked it up. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Can you come on over here? We just found something odd.” He sounded a little concerned.
“Sure.” She clicked off her computer. “What is it?”
“Another hidden room. RJ’s exploring it now.”
“Tell him to be careful.” Cin grabbed her purse and headed out the door.
“I did.”
“Tell her I’m okay,” RJ shouted in the distance.
“Okay. I’ll be there in a few.” Cin pulled out her keys as she slipped out the office door. The wind still had the morning chill to it, although it was nearly noon. With the cold becoming more of a constant thing, it wasn’t going to be long before winter pushed fall out of the way and the real cold settled in.
“This isn’t normal.” Marzie glanced at Cin and then back to the open wall Chad and RJ had uncovered.
Cin shook her head. “Nope, this isn’t normal at all.” The space was between the bedrooms in the back of the house. It was only a little larger than the space they’d found in the front part of the house.
“Smells like the other one.” Chad stuck his head out of the hole. “But we’ve discovered a separate crawlspace.”
“A separate crawlspace?” Cin put her hands on her hips and stared at her husband. “How is that even possible? Is there some kind of support down there separating parts of the foundation?”
“No. RJ’s working his way through it now. But it’s almost like there’re two levels, totally weird.” Chad reached back into the room and grabbed one of the water bottles near the wall.
Cin again shook her head. She really didn’t want to have to get into the dirty space under the house to see what they were talking about. If she did that, she’d need to run by the house and clean up before going back to the office.
“Chad!” Rj’s distant voice help an urgency to it. “Need a little extra muscle back here. Found a partially buried door.”
“What?” Cin stuck her head in the wall and shouted.
“Oh, hey, Cin, you might want to crawl down here with us.” RJ was definitely excited. “Something, maybe some kind of root cellar or storm cellar down here.”
“Find me a way to get into it without crawling.” Cin laughed softly.
“I didn’t take you for such a girly girl.” Marzie looked into the opened wall as Chad crouched low enough to slip away from them and into the bowels under the house.
“I don’t see you down under there.” Cin wanted to know what was down there, but really didn’t want to go crawling under the house if she could help it.
A deep growl welled up from the darkness.
“Just push.” RJ’s voice was farther away than it had been moments before. “Yeah, I get it. It’s heavy. Get those muscles of yours moving.”
More growls.
Marzie looked away from the hole and to Cin. “Chad’s getting all macho down there. Is the growling normal?”
Not in the way Marzie meant. Cin could just see Chad tapping into some of his werewolf strength to open the door RJ needed moved. She spread her hands. “What can I say, he taps into his primal side when he has to get really dirty.”
“Jerry never did that.” Marzie leaned against the exposed-stud wall. “Maybe he should’ve.”
“Having a primal side in your man can have its pluses and minuses.” Cin wasn’t going to explain Chad’s extra furry side to Marzie.
A loud metallic screech came from under the house.
“Okay, I hope that doesn’t upset the neighbors.” Cin looked into the wall, wishing she could see farther through the shadows than the few feet she could.
Then the screeching ended.
The musky smell that had been so prominent when they first started working in the house rushed back around the wall.
Things got quiet.
Cin started to pace away from the wall, but forced herself to stay in case Chad or RJ needed something from her.
She gave it a couple of minutes, before shouting down. “You guys okay?”
“Fine.” RJ’s voice was even farther away than it had been.
“How far is this crawlspace?” Marzie stared down the direction Chad had gone.
Someone opened the back door.
Cin jumped and started for the kitchen.
Chad stood there, covered in dust and cobwebs. “You might want to see what we found.”
“Well, yeah.” Cin shook her head, trying to understand his need to make comments that had such obvious answers.
“It’s easier to get to this way.” He held the door open for her.
“Marzie, the guys found a better way.” Cin shouted back toward the hall as she headed out the door.
“They’re out back now?” Marzie followed even as Chad stepped away from the door. “I guess that’s possible, the house isn’t that big.”
“Right.” Chad jumped back and got the door for her before it closed all the way.
Cin glanced around the backyard and there was a new pile of dirt a few feet out and the edge of a wooden door poked up from the center of it. “What did you do? The landscapers aren’t going to be real happy about having to make this look better.”
Chad jumped down the steps and headed across the lawn. “Might actually increase the house value. But it will take a little of tweaking to our plans back here.”
The doors opened to a series of steps heading underground. As Cin started down, RJ appeared with his flashlight. “Yeah, this place hasn’t been a root cellar in years, but something likes it down here.”
The odor was so strong that Cin gagged and pulled her blouse up over her mouth. “This is going to take some work to clean out, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Chad nodded as he descended the steps. “Something’s been living down here. Not totally sure how it’s getting in and out, other than through the crawlspace. The doors were buried under years of dust.”
“And you’re strong enough to move that?” Marzie stopped at the bottom of the steps, where the bright afternoon light ended in the underground twilight.
Chad shrugged. “Dust isn’t that heavy.”
Marzie gave him a bit of side eye as her gaze traveled from all the dirt on the other side of the doors to him.
“Hey, I was helping.” RJ put his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest, which was nearly as large as Chad’s, although over the past year, Chad was putting on a lot more muscle. Agent Blair, the werewolf in charge of the FBI’s paranormal squad, said it was his wolf becoming a bit more prominent, even in his human form. RJ still had broader shoulders than Chad, but Cin wasn’t going to complain about her husband’s growing chest.
“And two strong men are better than one.” Cin patted both of their shoulders as she went deeper into the cellar. “So, any idea what we’re dealing with here?”
“No clue.” Chad shook his head and frowned. “Not human, which is good, I guess.”
“I would almost say a coyote’s den, but it’s too big.” RJ swept his flashlight around the space.
The other door, presumably the one RJ had needed help with, stood open a dozen feet away. A series of broken wooden shelves lined the walls where the doors weren’t. They didn’t have anything other than a thick coating of dust on them. Along the bottom of the closest, what could only be described as a nest of sticks sat empty of obvious clues of what lived down there. A pile of bones was in the corner across from the far door. Most of them were smaller bones. Cin pulled out her phone and shone its flashlight there.
“Here.” RJ had his brighter beam on them before she could get a good look with her weaker phone light.
“Thanks.” Cin squatted down and looked over the bones. Most of the larger ones had been fairly well chewed on. There were small skulls, but no corresponding rodent or bird bones to go with them. “I wonder if we should be thankful there aren’t a lot of larger bones.”
“Maybe.” Chad patted her on the shoulder. “Nothing bigger than deer…I think.”
“Should we let Chief Brown know about this?” Marzie asked from the base of the steps. She stood there looking worried with her arms crossed.
Cin looked up at Chad. “What do you think? Is this tied to finding Juan in the dumpster?”
“It’s a strange animal.” Chad shrugged again. “Might be the same critter, might not be.”
Straightening, Cin took the flashlight from RJ. “Not a ton down here, beyond the bones and the nest. Yeah, let’s call him. His forensics team is better than ours.”
As he pulled out his phone, Chad chuckled softly, then he frowned at the phone. “Be right back.” He disappeared up the stairs.
“I’m going up.” Marzie pointed toward the sunlight pouring in through the door.
Cin glanced around, playing the light slowly down and across the shelves. It didn’t even look like they’d get any kind of prints in the dust, but there was a fairly well-beaten path through the dirt on the floor. Whatever lived down there made lots of tracks, but was good at hiding itself.
Using the flashlight, she looked at the space outside the door that opened onto the crawlspace. There were no obvious tracks beyond Chad and RJ’s prints. One looked more like a paw than a hand.
“RJ,” Cin kept her voice low. “How far did Chad go to get these doors open?”
“Almost all the way for the outer door.” RJ pointed back behind them.
“Is that his?” She shone the light down on the sandy floor outside the door.
RJ peered down, then shook his head. “Nope, not canine enough.”
Cin pulled back out her phone and handed the flashlight to RJ. “Let me get a picture. Maybe I can match it in some of the books at the house.”
“You’ve got bestiaries at the house?”
“Not exactly, but some do list some weird things people have run into.” She clicked a couple of shots, and yeah, it lacked some of the bumps she expected in Chad’s paw prints.
“Send me a copy and I’ll look through some of AJ’s books. He might have a few clues.” RJ handed her back the flashlight.
“Thanks.” Cin knew a single paw print wasn’t a whole lot to go on, but it was the best start they had. Sometimes a few prints could go a long way into figuring out what they were dealing with.
12
Cin wrinkled her nose as she walked into the house. “Okay, is it just me, or is the odd smell stronger in here than it was?”
Chad took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. Almost like whatever it is came through and peed around to mark its territory.”
“That’s not good.” Cin glanced around. The place looked the same as it had the previous day when they left. There wasn’t any obvious sign of whatever was crashing in the house.
Cars pulled up out front. Marzie got out of her sedan as RJ slipped from his blue Dodge Ram.
“We might end up coming in some evening when Marzie isn’t around to do some magical poking around.” Cin wished it was possible to be more open with her friend about all the aspects of their life, especially if she was going to be hanging around flips while she learned the business. Over the past year, it had gotten nice not having to hide things when it was just them and RJ.
“I was going to suggest that, but we’ve been busy lately.” Chad agreed. “I know the girls would jump at the chance. I caught Char mumbling about not having anything cool to do in a few months.”
“Totally understand.” Cin started out the door to give Marzie a hand as she set a cup carrier on top of her sedan. For a while she and the girls were getting lots of magic time in, then as the business expanded and life got busy with Char going to college visits, and EEEK’s school work seemed to get more intense, time slipped away. Although she saw them every day, she was missing her daughters and their special times together. Was this what it was going to be like in the years going forward as her children left the house and started lives of their own?
“Why so glum?” Marzie set a box of donuts on the roof next to the coffees.
Cin shrugged and held out her hands for the coffee holder. “Just got to thinking about the girls going off to college and my soon-to-be empty nest.”
“I know the feeling.” Marzie offered her a sad smile as she passed over the coffee. “My nest will be empty about the same time as yours.”
A beat-up truck rumbled to a stop behind Marzie’s car, blocking the driveway with Chad and Cin’s cars.
Cin stared at the truck, recognizing Phillip even as he got out and walked toward her. His shoulders were slumped and he didn’t really look up as he came toward her.
“Phillip, I wasn’t expecting you, I thought the house was scaring off the crew.” Cin turned her attention to the demo guy, hoping to see more people coming back to work.
“I’m really sorry, Mrs. Cin, really I am.” He stared at the ground. “I wanted to come by and tell you how great you and Mr. Chad are to us when we’re working, but none of us feel safe in this house. I’m about to head to Albuquerque to go to Juan’s funeral. I just wanted to stop and tell you that I’ll be happy to get you another crew together for a different house. We just—” he shoved his hands in his pockets “—just don’t feel safe here. The house is cursed. I hope no one else dies here. Maybe the remodel will remove the curse. I hope so.”
Balancing the coffee holder in one hand, Cin touched Phillip’s shoulder. “I understand. If things don’t improve, I promise to call in a priest before we sell the house.”
A weak smile slipped across Phillip’s face. “Thanks. You’re a good person, Mrs. Cin. I can help you find a good priest if you decide to do that. I should get on the road.”
“Please tell Juan’s family that we’re sorry for his loss. He was a good guy.” Cin patted his shoulder.
“I will.” Phillip turned and headed back to his truck.
“I guess this isn’t a common thing, is it?” Marzie stood a couple of feet away holding the box of donuts.
Cin took a couple of steps back to stand next to her as Phillip started the truck. “Nope. I can say this is the first time we’ve lost one of our workers.” It wasn’t something that she’d ever expected to do either. “Hopefully it won’t become a common thing.”
“Not sure I want to go into flipping if that’s the case.” Marzie turned and started up the steps. “So, what do we have on the schedule today?”
“I want to start cleaning out that root cellar while the guys get started on breaking out those walls so we can make a solid floor where the holes are. Once that’s done we can start on new walls.” Cin followed her up the steps.
“But I think first we need to finish off this coffee.” RJ reached for his cup in the carrier. “Got my fingers crossed that we don’t get any major repair calls while we’re working on this one. Oh, I brought a few game cameras we can put around the place to see what’s going on.” He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Not as bad as a skunk but something came through here last night.”
“Yeah,” Chad agreed as he accepted a coffee. “Once we’re done, I’ll help with those cameras. As soon as we know what we’re dealing with, we can come up with a plan to get rid of it.”
“And maybe we can get more help on this house.” Cin balanced the cup carrier as Marzie grabbed her coffee, leaving one for Cin.
“If not, it’s going to take us longer.” RJ leaned up on the front door jamb.
“Right, and we don’t want to take any longer than we have to.” Chad downed his coffee as Cin’s mother appeared in the middle of the living room.
The spectral visage glanced around. “You know, this place is starting to really open up.”
Cin wished they could chat, but with Marzie there, she couldn’t even acknowledge her presence.
Marzie paused in eating her donut and stared at the space where Cin’s mother stood. A confused look crossed Marzie’s face, almost like she could see, or sense Charity.
