Greywalker - Kat Richardson [58]
She mumbled past the napkin, “I’m afraid I’m making a spectacle of myself. I’m just overwhelmed. . . . At suppertime I keep expecting to hear them coming up the back stairs and into the kitchen, stealing a taste out of the pots, their clothes smelling like bilgewater and diesel oil, laughing and teasing me for complaining about them. And do you know what’s worst?” she asked, turning toward me.
Her eyes seemed to look into someplace I’d been too recently. I was startled and stammered, “No, what?”
“I’m afraid they will! It’s not that I don’t believe they’re gone—I can never, for a moment, forget—it’s that the house can’t seem to forget them . . . like the shape of them is worn into it, the same way walking up and down wears away the front step.”
She leaned forward, glancing about as if she thought someone watched us, and whispered, “I’m almost glad I’ll be selling the house. What would I need it for, except to plague me with these awful ideas?”
She sat back. “There. Now you think I’m a crazy old woman.”
I remembered the shape of the cat upstairs, and shook my head. “No, I don’t. Is it safe to guess that Tommy and your husband were both born in this house?”
She nodded and sniffed.
“I’d probably leave, too, if I were you. It’s hard to live with ghosts.”
She sighed. Her shoulders loosened. “Thank you. I’m glad someone understands. I’m afraid to tell my friends and family. I’m afraid they’ll think I’m trying to make Chet and Tommy disappear. They all think it’s the bills that are making me sell, or the sheer size of the place.”
“Let them believe what they want. It doesn’t hurt you,” I suggested.
Mrs. Ingstrom nodded, then straightened her skirt and sniffed one last time, seeming to shift a weight off her shoulders. “Well, now that you’ve put up with me acting like a watering pot, let’s see what I can do for you.”
She picked up a manila file folder that had been lying on the table and handed it to me. “The bill of sale is in here and a copy of the original bill of lading for the lien that was attached to it. I thought you might want that, too. I don’t need it, since it’s so old and long gone that not even the tax men are interested in it.”
I flipped open the folder and scanned the papers within, then smiled at her. “Thank you for all your help, Mrs. Ingstrom. I’m sorry about what you’re going through and I appreciate your digging into your husband’s records for me at a time like this.”
“It was pleasant to be doing something that wasn’t for an estate lawyer or a bankruptcy lawyer or a tax accountant, for a change. I hope it helps you.”
“I’m sure it will,” I said, rising. “Thanks again and thanks for the coffee, also.”
She rose to escort me to the door. “It’s the least I could do. And it was so nice to see you again.” She saw me out, acting the part of hostess on autopilot.
Once back in the Rover, I sat in the driver’s seat and fiddled with the seat belt, tired. From the corner of my eye, the Grey flickered, giving the house a writhing patchiness—its own personal fogbank. The cat, who now sat on the porch, was solid as a stone and staring at me with malevolent yellow eyes. Mrs. Ingstrom waved to me. I waved back and drove away.
I just drove for a few blocks and let everything in my mind drift. I felt a bit out of sync with something I couldn’t place and still under the weather. Maybe I had the famous flu RC had gone on about. Frowning, I headed back to the office. It wasn’t a solution to the problem of Cameron Shadley, but all I could think of was to call this Philip Stakis and try to make some ground on that case while I could.
No further depredations had been attempted on my office and no shady characters lurked in the alley or my hallway. I flopped into my desk chair and tried the phone number I’d got from Mrs. Ingstrom. No answer, no voice mail. I would try again after six.