The Secret (Seacliff High Mystery Book 1) (4 page)

The next morning Mac showed up bright and early, despite the lateness of the previous night’s partying.

“How about some coffee?” a slightly less energetic Alyson offered.

“No, thanks. I never drink coffee; it makes me jumpy.”

Alyson poured her third cup of the morning and sat down at the kitchen table. “After hearing the story about this house, I’ve really been excited about checking out the stuff upstairs. Maybe there’s some old and valuable stuff left from generations of Cutters. I’d love to find out more about the previous occupants of the house. Who they were, how they lived, what it might have been like to live here all those years ago.”

“Well, let’s get started then.” Mac jumped up in her usual energetic manner and headed toward the stairs leading to the attic.

“Okay.” Alyson groaned, refilling her coffee cup again and bringing it with her. “We’ll stop off upstairs so I can introduce you to my mom. She’s really great.”

The pair climbed the stairs to the second floor, stepping over drop cloths and cans of paint.

“Mom, this is my friend Mac.” Alyson gestured toward her as they made their way into the room. “Mac, Mom.” She nodded toward the slim woman perched precariously on a tall, rickety ladder.

“I’m happy to meet you. Alyson has told me so much about you.”

“It’s great to meet you too.” Mac looked around the room. “I love the wallpaper.”

“Alyson picked it out. I really like the way it’s turning out. Are you girls headed up to the attic?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to stop off on our way up to introduce you and see how the room was coming along.”

“There’s a lot of stuff up there.” Alyson’s mom turned slightly so she was half-sitting on the top rung of the ladder. “Don’t hurt yourself carrying those heavy boxes down the stairs.”

“Trevor is coming by this afternoon to help out too. We’ll save the heavy stuff for his manly muscles,” Alyson assured her mom as she headed out the door and started up the stairs toward the attic

“Oh my gosh,” Mac gushed from behind her on the stairs. “Your mom looks exactly like you. Or maybe you look like her?” she corrected. “At any rate, you look exactly alike. You could practically be twins.”

“People think we’re sisters all the time,” Alyson confirmed. “She looks really young for her age and has this sort of quirky, youthful air about her.” Or at least, Alyson thought to herself, she did before the murder. Now she seemed serious and worried a lot of the time.

“It’d be so cool to have a young, hip mom. My mom’s a lot more, you know, momish. Short hair, sensible shoes, polyester pants; she definitely has that whole middle-aged mom look about her. Don’t get me wrong; she’s a great mom—most of the time, anyway. But there’s no way anyone would mistake us for sisters. At least I hope not. Wow.” Mac stared in wonder after completing the four-story climb to the top of the house. “You weren’t kidding about the amount of stuff stored up here.”

“I know.” Alyson stood next to her, wondering where to start. “I can’t even see much past the first couple of rows of boxes, and the room looks like it’s probably pretty big if it mirrors the size of the other three floors.”

“I guess we’d better get started.” Mac opened the first box. “Oh my God,” she shrieked as she jumped back through the doorway.

“What’s the matter?” Alyson ran to her friend’s side.

“There’s something in that box. Something dead.”

“Oh, God, it isn’t, is it?”

“No, not a person. A rabbit, I think, or maybe a raccoon. It just startled me. I opened the box expecting to find old dishes or discarded paperwork, not the skeleton of some long-dead animal.”

Alyson walked over and lifted the lid of the box. “I see what you mean. Maybe we should wait for Trevor before sorting through this particular box. I’ll just move it off to the side.”

Mac gingerly opened the next box and began sorting its contents. “It may be the dead rodent talking, but doesn’t this place seem a little creepy? It feels like someone’s watching me.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

Mac stopped working. “Yeah, I guess. Why do you ask? Do you see one?”

“Not now, but I did. At least I think I did. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want you to think I was psycho before you got a chance to know me.”

“Who was it?”

“Barkley Cutter, I think. One night I woke up and saw him standing at the foot of my bed. The door to the attic had been rusted shut since we moved in, but I followed him up the stairs and the door just opened with no effort at all.”

“Wow. I think I’d die of a heart attack if I saw a ghost at the foot of my bed. Were you scared?”

“Sort of, but not really. Like you said about feeling like someone was watching you, I’d felt him watching me for days. When I woke up and saw him it was like I’d been expecting him. I think he wants us to find something. I think he left behind a secret when he died. Maybe it has to do with a possible heir, maybe it’s something else, but I’m pretty sure the answer is up here.”

“Now I’m really anxious to sort through this stuff, but Barkley, if you’re listening, no late-night visits to my bedroom, please. I’m afraid I’m not as brave as Alyson.”

Four hours later, Alyson pushed her hands into the small of her back to ease the soreness that was starting to develop there. “I’m starved. How about taking a break for some lunch?”

“We’ve been working all morning and we haven’t even made a dent.” Mac groaned.

“Maybe things will go faster once Trevor shows up. Where is he anyway? It’s almost twelve thirty; didn’t he say he’d be here by noon?”

“That’s Trevor for you.” Mac set the box she’d been looking through to the side. “He’s usually late. But he’ll be here. He was as excited about going through this stuff as I was, but that was before I found out about the ghost. I hope we can discover what Barkley wants you to find.”

“So far all we’ve found is a bunch of old clothes, broken appliances, and boxes of paperwork,” Alyson complained.

“It makes sense that if there’s anything valuable up here it would be toward the back. Everything we’ve come across so far was probably put here by Barkley during his later years. Besides,” Mac reached her hands over her head and leaned from side to side, “we might find some clues to his missing heir in these boxes of paperwork once we get a chance to go through them.”

Alyson started toward the stairs. “You’re right. Let’s go down and make some lunch before I completely fade away.”

“Lunch sounds good.”

In the kitchen, Alyson opened the refrigerator and began rummaging around for ingredients to make sandwiches. Her mom hadn’t really done much in the way of grocery shopping since they’d moved into the house. First there hadn’t been a functioning kitchen, and then they’d been so busy with the remodel it seemed easiest to make sandwiches or go out to eat.

“I think I hear Trevor now,” Alyson said, walking to open the door leading off the kitchen and out to the yard. “Who’s the guy with him?”

“I have no idea.” Mac stared at the exceptionally tall and exceptionally handsome blond god who was getting out of Trevor’s car.

“Hey, guys,” Trevor said as he approached the back porch. “This is Eli Stevenson. He just moved here from California. Eli, meet Alyson and Mac.”

“Come on in.” Alyson stepped aside to let them in. “We were just going to have some lunch. You guys hungry?”

“Starved,” they responded in unison

“Eli’s the new receiver on the football team,” Trevor explained as they settled into the chairs surrounding the kitchen table. “I hope it’s okay that I brought him along.”

“It’s great,” Mac blurted out a little too enthusiastically. “I mean, there’s a huge mess upstairs and we could really use an extra pair of hands.”

“How about ham sandwiches and leftover potato salad?” Alyson asked. “The ham’s from dinner last night and I can vouch for its yummy goodness.”

“Sounds good,” the others agreed.

“So, Eli,” Mac focused her attention on the new addition to the group, “why did your family move all the way up here from California?”

“My dad owns his own company. He specializes in customized software for select clients. He can work from anywhere, and he was sick of the noise and pollution in SoCal, so we packed up and moved here after my mom died.”

“What type of software does he write?” Mac asked.

“All kinds, really. Right now he’s working on some type of security software for a large company back east, but he’s done games and business applications too.”

“Wow, I’d love to see some of the stuff he’s developed.”

“Sure, any time.”

“Mac’s our computer genius,” Trevor explained. “She probably thinks she just fell into computer heaven.”

“I’m just interested,” Mac defended herself, looking away.

“I’m sure my dad would be happy to talk to you. He loves to talk about his work, and frankly, except for the games, I’m not all that interested.”

During lunch the girls filled the guys in on their progress, Alyson told them about her visit from Barkley, and everyone filled Eli in on the history of the house. By the time they’d had their fill of the delicious lunch, they were charged up to resume the adventure in the attic.

“The stuff that’s obviously junk, like the small appliances and broken knickknacks, we’re bagging up and taking to the trash pile in the yard,” Alyson explained as they resumed work. “Anything that has no value to us but might to someone else, like clothes in decent condition or undamaged bric-a-brac, we’re putting in the room nearest to the front door. There’s a bunch of old furniture in there, but we’ve pushed it back and started a pile right inside the door. If you find boxes with paperwork or anything that might be of interest, we’re putting it in the empty room to the right of the stairs on the floor below this one.”

“You weren’t kidding about the volume of stuff up here.” Trevor sounded awed. “It’ll take weeks to get through all this stuff. I saw a bunch of things in the back of the room covered with old sheets. Maybe that’s the valuable stuff.”

“That’s the advantage of height,” Mac declared. “Alyson and I couldn’t see any farther into the room than the first couple of rows. What do you think might be under the sheets?”

“I have no idea.” Trevor stood on his tiptoes to try to get a better look. “I really can’t make out any shapes. I guess we’d better get working so we can get back there to find out.”

The next few hours provided nothing of much interest except a few more boxes of papers to go through later. Well into the third hour of work, however, Eli alerted the others to a possible find.

“Hey, guys, check this out,” he said, holding up a small painting.

“Oh my God, it looks like a Monet,” Mac exclaimed.

“I’m sure it’s just a copy,” Trevor speculated. “Who would keep a genuine Monet in the attic?”

“No, it looks real,” Alyson confirmed, taking a closer look at the object in question.

“How can you tell?” Mac asked.

“I used to have . . .” She paused and crossed her fingers behind her back, “a friend,” she stuttered, “who had one. Of course, we’d have to take it to an art dealer to have it authenticated, but my guess is it’s the real thing.”

“This painting must be worth thousands,” Trevor predicted.

“At least,” Alyson confirmed.

“I can’t wait to get to the stuff under the sheets. This painting wasn’t even covered,” Eli added.

“So is this stuff all yours?” Mac asked. “I mean, you bought the house with the stuff in it, so it seems whatever you find must belong to you, right?”

“I guess. But I’d still like to find Barkley’s child if he or she exists. Somehow it doesn’t seem right to keep someone else’s legacy.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Mac carried the box of old dishes she had been looking through to the door and set it aside to be carried downstairs by one of the boys later. “But can you imagine what it would be like to have hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars?”

“Actually,” Alyson ventured, “I’ll bet it wouldn’t be any better than this. Good friends, a quiet and safe place to live, an unfolding mystery to try to solve. And we can’t forget about the kick-ass football team that’s sure to take state.”

“You said it,” Trevor and Eli shouted, giving each other a high-five.

“Are you going to the dance next Saturday?” Mac asked Eli. “Because if you are, you can go with us. We’re all going together.”

Alyson smiled when she noticed the coy way in which Mac was looking at Eli.
You go girl
, she thought to herself.

“Sure; it sounds like fun,” Eli answered.

Alyson looked out the window to see the sun setting over the ocean beyond. “Maybe we should call it quits for the day. It’s getting late and I’m beat.”

“Yeah, I should go,” Mac agreed. “Mom will want me home for dinner.”

“Thank you, guys, for all your hard work. I can’t believe we’re only halfway through the room,” Alyson said.

“I can come back tomorrow if you want,” Mac offered.

“That’d be great.”