Drip Dead (2 page)

I could start there.

I crawled between the footings, my flashlight casting a narrow line of bright light in the darkness. Cold seeped up from beneath me, penetrating the heavy denim of my coveralls. The calendar might say it was summer, but the dirt under the house hadn’t got that memo.

The pipes under the kitchen were galvanized steel, no surprise given the age of the house. There was no way to know what shape they were in, since they corroded from the inside out, but the life expectancy of galvanized was only about thirty years.

I would likely be replacing pipes in the near future.

I scribbled a few notes in a small notebook and stuffed it back in the breast pocket of my coveralls. This was one place I agreed with Barry. A pencil and paper were the best tools for the job—I wouldn’t want to drag electronic gizmos under a house with me.

I turned left, moving slowly between the footings, imagining the rooms above my head. I moved under the dining room, toward the living room, bedrooms, and bathroom beyond.

Up ahead, about where I thought the hallway should be, a sliver of light caught my eye. I doused the flashlight for a minute, letting my eyes adjust to the low light. Sure enough, there was a narrow band of light in the floor above, outlining a square about three feet on a side.

On the dirt below the strip of light there was a deeper shadow. A large box, maybe. Had mom stored something under the house? As far as I knew, everything was stacked neatly in labeled boxes in the attic.

What was down here in the cold and damp?

I turned the flashlight back on and worked my way toward the object. In the beam of the flashlight I could see that it was several smallish boxes stacked on top of one another.

Something stuck out from one end of the pile of boxes. It wasn’t another box; the shape was irregular, though most of it was hidden from sight behind the stacked boxes.

The crawl space was more than musty, and I was grateful for the small protection of the face mask. I had the sinking feeling I was going to find a small deceased animal somewhere in my travels, judging by the odor that seeped under the mask.

I was close enough now to see that the boxes were wooden shipping crates. Only a couple feet on each side, they could easily have been lowered through the opening faintly outlined above.

My curiosity was piqued. I wanted to know what was in those crates, and why they were hidden under the house I was buying—my mom’s house and my old family home.

It was like a buried treasure.

I suppose I could have crawled back out and called Mom to ask her what this was all about, but I didn’t want to wait for an answer, or give her another chance to discuss every minute detail of the wedding. Why couldn’t she just elope to Reno or Las Vegas?

I got close enough to make out a shipping label on one box. It was addressed to Gregory, my soon-to-be stepfather, with a return address in Paris—France, not Texas.

A shiver ran through me. I couldn’t think of a single good reason for Gregory to get a shipment from outside the country and hide it under my mother’s house.

I could think of several bad reasons.

I wondered if my mother might have a big problem.

Then I realized I was kidding myself. Just because Gregory wasn’t the man I’d choose for Mom to marry, it didn’t mean he was running guns or hiding nukes.

I moved to one side, trying to guess how many boxes were stacked under the house.

I shined my flashlight over the scene in front of me, trying to make sense of what I saw. Something didn’t look right, no matter how I moved the light or turned my head.

I heard a scream. It took a few seconds to realize it came from me.

Mom’s problem just got a lot bigger.

The lumpy shape behind the boxes was Gregory Whitlock.

And I was pretty sure he was dead.

I clamped my mouth shut, cutting off the scream. Instead I started to whimper. That didn’t help, either.

I should check for a pulse. Maybe Gregory just fell and he was hurt. Or stuck. He didn’t have to be dead.

I crawled a little closer. My heart pounded so hard I was sure it would burst right out of my chest, and I couldn’t seem to hold the flashlight steady. The beam flickered crazily over the scene in front of me.

Gregory wore a pair of neatly pressed khakis, a crisp oxford cloth shirt in pale blue, and expensive penny loafers. Casual but not sloppy. The shoes were nearly new, the soles facing me were still unmarked by wear.

I didn’t want to touch him.

I stretched my arm, holding the flashlight out in front of me, and tapped it against his left foot.

No response.

He hadn’t reacted to my screaming, either.

I backed away from Gregory and the boxes. Within a few feet I ran into one of the concrete footings. I had to turn around to watch where I was going as I made my way toward the access hole.

My stomach clenched and my breath came in gasps. I felt as if there was something lurking in the dark corners. Something big and bad. Something I had to get away from.

Panic pushed me forward.

I reached the opening to the outside world and clambered through it. The tool loop at my right hip caught on a corner. I tugged to free myself and escape from the crawl space.

From whatever was hiding down there.

Logically I knew there was nothing under the house. But logic and fear don’t mix, and right then fear was definitely in charge.

I ran in the back door and grabbed my cell phone from the kitchen table.

I punched 9-1-1 into the cell and tried to calm my breathing as I waited for the emergency operator to answer.

I somehow managed to explain my situation to the man who answered. I probably wasn’t very coherent, but I don’t really remember much of the conversation. He kept me on the phone while he talked to the fire department and local sheriff’s office, assured me someone would be there within a few minutes, and kept talking calmly to me while we waited.

I wondered if the dispatcher was anyone I knew. I’d met a lot of the local deputies over the last several months. Maybe it was one of them. I tried to remember their names.

Anything to avoid thinking about what was under the house.

In the distance I heard sirens.

“Are there trucks coming?” I asked the operator. “I can hear sirens.”

“That should be them,” he answered. “There aren’t any other calls in the area. Are you okay to wait for them now?”

I swallowed hard. “I, uh, I think so,” I managed to lie.

“They’re just a couple streets away. If you go outside, you should be able to see them coming.”

I walked to the front door, bumping into furniture as if I had never been in the house before. When I stepped outside, the sirens sounded very close. And very loud.

The operator spoke, but it was impossible to understand him over the wails of the sirens.

“They’re here,” I said, seeing a rescue unit come around a corner a couple blocks away. “I have to go.”

There was a noise from the other end of the phone that I assumed was the operator signing off. I hung up and slipped the phone in my pocket.

The square box on wheels with “Pine Ridge Medic Unit” on the front was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

The rescue unit pulled to the curb in front of the house and two men in navy blue uniforms jumped out.

One of the men started taking boxes and supplies from the back of the truck while the other one ran toward me.

“This way,” I said, leading him along the side of the garage. There was a gate at the back. I figured it would be easier to get their equipment through there instead of having to drag it through the house.

“You said there was someone under the house?”

“It’s Gregory. Gregory Whitlock. He’s my mother’s fiancé. This is her house. Well, I mean, it’s my house, almost. I’m buying it from her but she still lives here until the wedding—”

I stopped in the middle of the yard.

Wedding!

The groom-to-be was under the house. Dead.

There wasn’t going to be any wedding.

Someone had to tell my mother.

Whoa.

That someone was probably going to be me.

“Miss?” The paramedic was looking at me and it was clear he had spoken before. I had been lost in my own little nightmare. And it was only beginning.

I showed him where the access hole was. He played his high-powered flashlight under the house, lighting the space up a lot more than mine had.

“That direction,” I said, pointing toward where the boxes had been. “Toward the front.”

He nodded. By now his partner had joined him and they quickly donned protective jumpsuits and breathing gear. “Does this house have gas heat?”

I shook my head. “All electric. Why?”

I remembered my mother grumbling about electric rates and how she could barely afford to heat the place.

“Want to be sure the problem isn’t a gas leak. Dispatch said there wasn’t gas to the house, but I like to be sure.”

He lowered his face mask and followed his partner under the house.

I could hear them scuffing along in the narrow crawl space. I could follow their progress by the movement of the flashlight beam. They were getting close.

“Miss Neverall.”

It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

I stood up quickly from where I was crouched, watching the progress of the paramedics, and found myself looking up into the face of Fred Mitchell, the sheriff of Pine Ridge.

I knew he’d told me to call him Fred, since he was dating my best friend, but I was certain this wasn’t a good time for that. “Hello, Sheriff.”

The sheriff glanced around as though he expected to see someone else appear. When no one did, he turned his attention back to me. “Care to tell me what happened here?”

I explained that I was buying the house from my mother, and I wanted to make an assessment of the structure. I was just getting to the part about checking the plumbing when he interrupted me.

“That’s all very interesting,” he said in a tone that implied it quite clearly was not, “but what happened?”

He pulled a small notebook from his pocket and started writing. “You were the one who called 9-1-1, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you said there was someone under the house and you thought he might be dead.”

I nodded, suddenly unable to actually speak. I did think Gregory was dead, but it was the first time anyone had actually said the word.

“Did you recognize the man? You told the dispatcher you knew him.”

“It was Gregory. Gregory Whitlock. My mother’s fiancé, and I don’t know what he was doing down there—besides maybe being dead, I mean—and I don’t know how he got there, or anything, and there isn’t anything I can tell you.”

My voice was rising in pitch, the words tumbling out faster and faster. I could feel panic taking control. My hands shook, and my legs refused to hold me up for a second longer.

I sat down on the wet grass, adding grass stains to the dirt and damp from the crawl space. It didn’t matter. I was going to burn these coveralls just as soon as I could take them off.

“Georgie?” Sheriff Mitchell crouched next to me, and put a hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”

Why did people even ask that question when it was abundantly clear someone was not okay and would not be okay for a long time?

“No,” I said softly. “I’m not. I just found a man under the house I am buying, the house where my mother lives. I think he’s”—I swallowed hard and forced the word out of my mouth—“dead. I know who he is, and he’s supposed to marry my mother in a few weeks. I am definitely not okay.”

Sheriff Mitchell suggested we sit in his car to talk. He offered me his hand and helped me to my feet. The paramedics were under the house and an additional crew arrived as the sheriff was opening the car for me.