Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [51]
Since the back door faced away from the road, I entered there. I hadn’t been in Iris’s house more than half a dozen times in my entire life, which was bizarre, considering she’d been our closest neighbor for four decades.
After buying the property, I’d toured the house with the auction company. Throughout the house I saw signs of a person who’d left briefly, expecting to return and finish household chores. Iris’s dishes were moldering in the kitchen sink. Mail and newspapers were strewn across the dining room table. A half cup of coffee had turned into a science experiment in the living room. In the entryway, the vacuum was plugged in. The auction company agreed to clean up and haul everything away in exchange for 70 percent of the auction proceeds. I considered it a bargain.
I’d believed that once the Newsomes’ personal belongings were purged from the space, it’d feel less menacing.
Not so. Now it seemed worse. The emptiness emphasized the finality of an entire family. A sudden, inexplicable chill traveled up my spine. I whirled around, expecting to see . . . what? A ghost?
Get ahold of yourself.
I inhaled an uji breath and let it out slowly. Better.
Upstairs, I made sure the register vents were open in the bedrooms and the hallway. Ditto for the main floor. The seal around the front door appeared solid.
I ventured into the basement, basically a root cellar without an outside escape hatch. The narrow stairs were steeply pitched. With limited depth perception, I kept my hand on the bumpy wall to stop myself from falling forward. As I hit the last step, a dank odor filled my nostrils. Hello, gag reflex. Definitely a dead critter down here.
Or maybe the propane connection had already been compromised. Propane companies added scent to the odorless gas so that customers could tell if there was a leak in the line. The scent varied from the smell of rotten eggs to the distinctive odor of skunk perfume to the stench of rotting meat. Since I couldn’t see, I couldn’t determine if I smelled dead mice.
My grip tightened on the flashlight. If propane was seeping inside the house from a faulty connection, even the tiniest spark of metal on metal could ignite the vapors. It was sheer dumb luck I hadn’t impatiently shoved the basement door open, causing the aluminum weather stripping to strike sparks against the carpet. Static electricity was as deadly as a match.
As much as I wanted to skip testing the flashlight as an explosive device test, I had to turn it on. Holding my breath, I painstakingly slid the plastic button on the flashlight up until it clicked and light bounced off the cement wall. Whew. I moved the beam of light across the floor until it reached the corner where the ancient heater and water heater were located.
Mice scurried from the light, little feet scratching on the cement floor.
A shiver of revulsion beaded my skin into goose bumps. Better mice than snakes.
I bent down and saw the on/off valve for the heater in the back where the tubing entered from outside. This heating system was beyond antiquated. Holding the flashlight in my left hand, I thrust my gloved hand through the world’s biggest spiderweb, hoping I hadn’t interrupted some big-ass black widow’s nap. The valve squeaked on the first turn, and I stopped.
Remember, no metal sparks, dumb ass.
I turned it again. Slower. I kept turning a little at a time until it was fully open. When I removed my hand, sections of the heavy, sticky spiderweb clung to my forearm. Eww. Gross. But it could’ve been worse. What if I’d broken a hidden egg sac, freeing hundreds of baby spiders to crawl into my clothes, my hair, my ears, my nose, and my mouth? I shuddered.
The valve for the water heater was on the other side of the heater. Again, in a difficult spot to reach and dangerous as hell compared to modern-day systems. I crouched down and pressed my left side against the cold, dank wall.
The skittering noises increased, driving my pulse