House of Bathory by Linda Lafferty

Author:Linda Lafferty [Lafferty, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2014-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

Luis had left lights on in the little Victorian house. It made it difficult for Daisy to prowl about without being seen as she searched for an unlocked window.

Carbondale was in the Christmas spirit, rowdy and raucous. Despite the cold she could hear loud voices on Main Street, laughter and shouts, people on their way to restaurants or bars.

She walked across the frozen grass, her boots crunching over patches of hard snow. What was she going to look for? Something worth breaking into a house. Something worth digging up a grave. Grave robbing. The idea sounded Goth—the reality in the cemetery had made her shiver. She had no idea what might make someone do that. But she felt certain she’d know it when she saw it. She’d feel it.

All she knew was she had to get into the house.

She had forgotten her gloves. The cold slick glass and frosty chipped paint of the window frames bit at her fingers. She pushed up hard, grunting, trying every window she could find. Her bare hands came away covered in paint chips. Everything was locked up tight.

Damn, she whispered. She thought hard where a spare key might be hidden. Not under the old hemp mat, not under the flowerpots outside the door. Not nailed around the corner, or in a fake stone hide-a-key.

Then Daisy nearly tripped over the cellar doors, which were covered in snow. They were the old-fashioned kind that were at a shallow angle to the ground, opening up to what had been a root cellar in the mining days.

Daisy brushed away the snow to expose the metal handles. She tugged at the door and it opened, breaking a seal of frost. She pulled her headlamp from her backpack and went down the old wooden stairs.

There was a wet earthy smell inside. The cellar was packed floor to ceiling with boxes, old furniture, a brass coat stand. Daisy picked her way through the maze, until the beam of her headlamp fell on cement stairs leading up to the main floor of the house.

She heard the savage bark of Ringo on the other side of the door.

“It’s OK, Ringo. Good dog,” she said.

Ringo quieted and then began a series of joyous yelps.

She opened the door and emerged in a hallway, a lamp lit on a desk. No papers or files here. Ringo thumped his tail. He whined until she scratched him behind the ears.

Daisy walked into the front room, Betsy’s office. The file drawers were locked. She checked the pad beside the telephone. Only a few words jotted there, “embassy” in big letters with a long distance phone number. She bent close to the pad and shone her headlamp on a scrawled word.

“Disappearance,” she read aloud.

Also, “Dean in Chicago,” with another phone number.

She ripped the page from the pad and stuffed it in her pocket.

It was something, but not what she was looking for. And with a sinking feeling, she looked at her watch. Jaz wasn’t going to stick around very long, twenty minutes more, maybe.

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