Stone and a Hard Place by R. L. King Read Free Book Online Page A

head, more emphatically this time. “It wasn’t a real draft. For one thing, Tommy is right: this place might be old, but it’s like me. It’s solid. The only way there could have been a draft was if Iona had left a window open. And since she’s the one who gets cold, she doesn’t even open the windows. We have central air in most of the house, so we don’t need to. Plus, as I said, we had the windows replaced recently.”
    “All right...” Stone glanced over and was pleased to see Ethan busily scribbling in his notebook. “Anything else you want to tell me before I go have a look around?”
    “Well—” She shifted in her chair.
    “Come on, now,” he said with an encouraging smile. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.”
    She was silent for several seconds, clearly trying to decide whether she wanted to say more. Then she motioned him closer. When he leaned in, she spoke under her breath: “I didn’t even tell Tommy about this. I thought he’d just laugh at me. But sometimes I get the feeling that there’s something— wrong —in the house. Something... evil , even. Please don’t laugh.”
    Stone didn’t laugh. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if the old girl hadn’t picked up on something that the others were too brain-blind to notice. It wasn’t common for mundanes with an interest in the supernatural to pick up garbled signals from the real thing, like radios badly tuned to a distant station, but he’d seen it happen before.
    He gently patted her liver-spotted hand. “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Bonham. If there’s something here, I’ll find it. And if I don’t find anything, then I’ll be reasonably certain that there’s nothing to find. That sort of feeling can come from all sorts of things. Even we occult investigators—the ones who are any good, anyway—start by looking for ordinary, normal reasons for strange manifestations. For example, I once read about a family who moved into a new house and one of the kids started feeling constantly on edge and stressed. Turned out he was just sensitive to the subsonic frequency from a nearby electrical transformer.”
    “Maybe that’s it,” Langley agreed, clearly glad to have a straw to grasp at.
    “I don’t even know if there are any transformers near here, “Adelaide said. “Do you, Tommy?”
    “No idea. But we could check tomorrow.”
    Stone rose. “Come on, Ethan. Bring the bag and let’s have a look around. Mrs. Bonham, if you could spare Tommy, I’d like him to come along as well. I don’t like wandering about in people’s private spaces without a guide.”
    “You go ahead,” Iona Li said, moving over next to Adelaide. “I was about to get Adelaide’s evening cup of tea ready, anyway.”
    “And my show is on soon,” the old lady said with a twinkle in her eye. “I do hate to miss my murder mysteries. Tommy can show you where we’ll be when you’re done. Take your time, Dr. Stone. I promise, you won’t be keeping me awake past my bedtime.”
    Stone motioned for Ethan and Langley to follow him back into the hallway, but stopped halfway to the door. “One more question if I may, Mrs. Bonham.”
    “Of course, dear.”
    “Was there anywhere in particular in the house where you experienced these odd feelings? You said you heard voices in your bedroom, but what about the drafts?”
    “Upstairs mostly, in the east wing and that hallway,” she said. “I have a lovely library sitting room where I used to like to read, but I don’t like to go up there any more now.”
    “Thank you. We’ll check it out.”
    In the hall, Stone gathered Langley and Ethan into a small huddle. “All right,” he said. “If Aunt Adelaide isn’t going to be accompanying us, and she’s the only one not in on what we’re doing, we can skip all the toys in the bag. But Tommy, if you could show me her bedroom and this library—it makes sense to start where she says she notices it most.”
    “Wait a sec,” Langley