Face Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan Read Free Book Online Page B

we can meet in a few minutes.” I point down the hall. “Figure out where the basement door is, okay? Then we’ll go down there together.” I glance at Poppy, who now has the phone tucked between her cheek and shoulder, and is consulting her notebook. “She’ll forget about the five-minute thing,” I predict. “But we should hurry.”
    Franklin nods, checking his watch, and turns down the hall. I trot up the stairway, trailing my fingers on the wall over a patchwork of faded, then bright paint. Square outlines on the wall remember where pictures used to be. Family portraits? Souvenirs from Ray’s political campaigns? Little Gaylen’s first finger painting? I think of that newspaper snapshot of Gaylen and her father. Except Gaylen would be older now, of course.
    I’m upstairs. A narrow hall. The afternoon sun struggles to make it through the four-paned window at the hall’s end, but a partly closed shade shapes the light into fluttering shadows on the closed doors, two on each side of me. There was a murder in this house. Did someone scream? Panic? There was a struggle, certainly. Violence. Passion. A body, battered and bleeding, crumpled and lifeless at the bottom of the basement stairs. The murderer, and the victim, might have walked this hallway.
    The intensity of the vision surprises me a little. I pause, hand on the banister, keeping my connection to the real world and the live people downstairs. As soon as Poppy finishes her calls, my time is up. There’s no cleaning solution potent enough to eradicate bad karma.
    I banish the ghosts and choose a door.
    Bathroom. Hand still on the doorknob, I take a quick scan and decide to come back if I can. I close the door and choose another, opening it quickly now, aware of my time limits. The master bedroom, this one must be. There’s a double closet, its doors faced with sliding mirrors. Hesitant at first, I slide open one closet door, setting off a soft clatter as a row of wire hangers rustles with my gesture. I look quickly. Nothing. I reach up to the closet’s upper shelf, patting my hand along the top in case the cleaners missed something. I check the floor. Nothing.
    Now that I’ve given myself permission, I head for the armoire. One door open, two. A few limply empty plastic cleaning bags on hangers, an empty shoe box on the floor. Even on tiptoe, I can’t see what’s on the top shelf, so I pat across it with my hand again. Nothing. Damn.
    On fast-forward now, I quickly open every bureau drawer, hearing the scrape of the metal rollers as each slides open. Still nothing. I close the final drawer, reminding myself there are still two rooms to explore and not much time to do it.
    The drawer won’t close. I try again, but there’s something jamming it. Have I broken the bureau? That’ll be fun to explain. I open the drawer again and close it more slowly, almost hearing the clock ticking. It still won’t close.
    I reach underneath, searching blindly for some mechanism that’ll release the wooden drawer from its bracket. Finding what feels like the switch, I click it open, and the empty drawer slides completely out. Holding the drawer in one hand, I stretch my other arm into the opening, reaching for whatever obstruction might have been in the way. My fingers feel a crinkle. Like a piece of paper.
    “Charlie?” I hear Poppy’s voice from the bottom of the stairs. I hope from the bottom. It’s going to be very unpleasant to try to defend why I’m standing in a convicted murderer’s bedroom with a drawer in one hand and my other arm deep in her dresser. And I’ve still got to see the basement.
    I grab the paper and carefully ease it out. Don’t want to tear it. Fumbling with haste, I tilt and wiggle the drawer to get it back into place. “ Do it,” I mutter at the drawer.
    “Be down in a moment,” I call out, still continuing to jiggle the drawer handle, trying to sound casual. Poppy’s still all the way downstairs, it sounds like, and I don’t