Cranberry Cove by Piper Hailey

Author:Piper, Hailey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bad Hand Books
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

Eight: The House

Angelica Glade lived on the south side, practically at town’s edge. Chest-high weeds coated much of her property, breathing a cloud of gnats where the overgrowth groped at her porch’s lattice edges and either side of the driveway.

Gravel crunched beneath Emberly’s tires as she parked her little violet Chrysler beside an aged Volkswagen. She picked her way across a lumpy path of flat stones toward the disheveled wooden porch steps. The sun had bleached most of the house’s sky-blue paint over the years, leaving only patches of its once-rich color.

A screen door screeched open as Emberly neared the stoop. It swayed against a white scarecrow of a woman who leaned out the front door in a crimson robe three sizes too big for her. She had to be in her seventies, maybe older. Her every feature was a sharp point.

“You’re the one who called an hour ago, right?” she asked with a pinched accent. She might have come from Maine, or maybe somewhere in northern Massachusetts. “I’m Angelica Glade. You got to be Emmy, right? That’s you?”

“That’s me,” Emberly said.

She dressed in a more form-fitting jacket and skirt today, the kind Angelica might presume belonged to a secretary or an overachieving grad student. A bulky leather bag hung at her side from a cross-chest strap. She didn’t expect to need anything that she kept within, but she would hate for this summer morning to prove her wrong, only to have left her gear in the car.

“Inside then,” Angelica said, waving her hand at either Emberly or the gnats. “It’ll be too hot out here before long.”

The indoors weren’t much better. Emberly doubted Angelica had the resources for a decent AC window unit, let alone central air. Through the sweltering foyer, Angelica led toward a living room, where a fan spun lazy circles from the ceiling.

Had coming here been the right idea? Emberly might have found better luck searching for those wayward ghost hunters or contacting the true crime podcasters to see what they’d left out of their Cranberry Cove episode. Maybe she should have chased an errant detail Duke had mentioned, if she could think of one. Angelica Glade was local, but that didn’t make her the best lead.

“Make yourself comfy,” Angelica said, gesturing at the living room. “I’m not prone to visitors much these days, except the mailman. Or mailwoman. They change it so much, it’s a wonder I even get my junk mail.”

She disappeared around a corner. Porcelain clacked out of sight, where she might be readying coffee cups or a plate of cheese and crackers.

Emberly wasn’t sure how to make herself comfortable. She could only be grateful this line of work had put her in far worse situations, and often not of her own doing.

The living room was the confused offspring of a garage sale, a new age shop, and the props department for some low-budget Satanic horror movie. Dishes of brass and tin formed towers to one side, glinting with the window-cast sunshine of early morning.

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