Thicker Than Blood - the Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy - Blake Crouch [138]
Vi glanced at her watch: 10:50. Max’s planning period. She took out her cell and called him. She got his voicemail, left a brief message: "Hey baby. Just wanted to check in. I’m getting ready to go interview the Kites now. Hope you’re having a good day. I’ll call you tonight. Love you."
From the outside the Harper Castle B&B looks childish and fanciful with its gabled roofs, asymmetrical right wing, and imposing façade of seven dormers. Vi looked out the window of her Cherokee up to the fourth story cupola, the penthouse of the establishment, and wondered what a night up there might cost. Maybe she could convince Max to bring her back for their anniversary next June. There was so much she wanted to see—the lighthouse, the British Cemetery, the Banker ponies, Portsmouth Island.
She turned out onto Silver Lake Drive, the road that circumscribed the harbor. A guidebook to the island had warned of traffic jams in the village during the summer months but this bleak November morning it seemed every bit its reputation as the most sequestered outpost on the North Carolina coast.
At the corner of Silver Lake and Highway 12, a man was selling conch shells out of his truckbed for five dollars apiece. Vi would’ve pulled over and bought one but she already felt guilty for sleeping late and Sgt. Mullins would be expecting her full report this evening.
Though the island of Ocracoke is less than a mile and a half across at its widest point, it took Vi thirty-five minutes to find the mailbox of Rufus and Maxine Kite. She couldn’t see their house from the dead end of Kill Devil Road, their drive being a private overgrown affair that wound for a hundred yards through a stand of live oaks.
As she proceeded down the narrow drive, Spanish moss draped from the overhanging branches and swept across the windshield, its tuft of graygreen filaments a living curtain. Though only ten minutes from the harbor (tourist garrison of the village) it felt much farther, seeming to exist in its own timeless universe.
Driving through these sad old trees made something sink inside of Vi. This unpillaged tract of land radiated a sleepy southern gloom and it pervaded her soul.
The dirt road emerged from the thicket and there stood the sound and the gray of the sky and the deeper gray of the crumbling granite that comprised the prodigious home of Rufus and Maxine Kite, a gothic residence that looked as though it belonged on a dreary English moor.
There was no driveway. Wild beach grass had overrun the lawn and two ancient live oaks guarded the house, their gnarled branches nearly touching the disintegrating masonry of the third floor like arthritic fingers.
Remnants of a stone path, broken by roots, meandered between the trees to the front door.
The house was three stories of rock, as if God had cast off a gigantic block of stone, dropped it on the edge of the sound. Great chimneys spiked like horns from each end.
Vi thought the edifice resembled some alien skull, its teeming windows like hollowed eye sockets, portals into darkness.
32
VI parked under one of the oaks beside the only other vehicle on the premises, a rusting Dodge pickup truck that might’ve been sixty years old. As she followed the path toward the front door she gazed up at the tall black windows and the cupola.
The house oozed vacancy.
A twinge of fear and guilt shook her. She’d promised Sgt. Mullins she’d hook up with local law enforcement, get the sheriff, or at least a deputy to escort her on the Kite interview. But the last thing she wanted was some good old boy from down east tagging along, patronizing her.
She stopped at the door, smoothed herself, ran her fingers through her short blond hair, and knocked.
Something scurried through the grass behind her.
Turning, she saw an emaciated gray cat streak