Page 50 of Crazy Spooky Love

Below us we hear Scarborough charging around in the kitchen, and I nod and scan the room quickly. It’s a large, square room with a huge, old, brass bedstead and a couple of wooden cupboards.

“Under the bed?” Marina suggests. To be perfectly honest they’re all crap hiding places. If this was a game of hide-and-seek we’d be found in a heartbeat, but I duck and roll all the same, because right now anywhere is better than nowhere and there’s a chance he’ll just open the door and glancein.

We lie there like statues and listen to him thundering around, and then inevitably he goes into the sitting room and starts shouting at the top end of his lungs again.

“Who the blazes are you lot and what are you doing in my house?”

“He’ll be in there with them for a couple of minutes,” I say quickly and, with difficulty, I wriggle my phone out of my back pocket and click it on.

Right at this moment, I’m actually glad I got Lestat, because without him I wouldn’t have the phone number I urgently need right now. Marina watches as I type.

HELP. TRAPPED UNDER BED IN SCARBOROUGH HOUSE. IN DANGER.

“You can’t send that, you’ll give your mum a heart attack,” she says.

“I’m not sending it to my mother.” I press send. “I’ve sent it to Fletcher Gunn.”

I know. I know . Why, of all the people on earth, would I send it to Fletch?

Well, here’s the answer. I saw the look of pure, unadulterated hatred in Lloyd Scarborough’s eyes when I made Artie reach through him to unlock the French doors earlier, and I’ve only seen that level of vitriol on one other man: Lloyd’s great-grandson, Donovan.

There’s already been one murder in this house.

I really don’t want there to be another one, and the only thing I can think of that Donovan Scarborough values over the lucrative sale of the house is his public image.

He courts the press, he loves the camera, and he trades on his reputation as an affluent businessman; if there’s anything that will make him temper his behavior it’s the idea that he’s likely to end up on the front page for all the wrong reasons.

“Fletcher Gunn?” Marina whisper-shouts. “Christ, Melody! We’re in mortal danger and you’ve got the horn?”

I twist my head to shoot her daggers. “No, I have not, thank you very much! I just know that if he thinks there’s a sniff of a story he’ll be here like a bloodhound.”

She looks slightly mollified. “I suppose he’ll be more use than your mother.”

“If he comes straight from the offices in town he could be here within a few minutes,” I estimate.

“Or he could be in a meeting, or in the pub, or on a date and not check his phone.”

I quite like the idea of him in a meeting.

It fires a completely out-of-context boss-and-secretary fantasy across my frontal lobe.

God, having sex with him has ruined me forever.

I’m having inappropriate thoughts about him even when my life is in danger.

I’m not so keen on the suggestion of him being at the pub too busy to check his phone, and the idea of him on a date gives me the hump with Marina for even suggesting it.

“Let’s just hope for the best, shall we,” I mutter sourly, and then we both go silent and hold our breath because someone is thumping up the stairs.

“Oh God, Melody.” Marina’s hand finds mine on the floorboards between us. “If he kills us, I’ll miss you every day.”

I don’t have time to reply, because the bedroom door just flung back on its hinges and I can see Donovan Scarborough’s shiny brown brogues.

I squeeze Marina’s fingers tight and cower as he comes closer, and I think he actually whispers, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” He’s enjoying this way too much; he’s definitely Lloyd’s great-grandson.

A second pair of shoes comes into view, equally shiny, and then Leo speaks.

“Let me help you look.”

He’s standing beside the bed, and then he drops to his knees, dips his head, and looks directly at me with his one good eye.

I stare back at him, and for a second I feel like Liesl from The Sound of Music, and hope like hell that Leo’s loyalties to me are stronger than Ratbag Rolfe’s were to her.

Please don’t blow the whistle, Leo, Marina can’t run for the hills in those heels.

He stands, dropping the edge of the sheet back down carelessly. “Just suitcases.”

They leave the room in a clatter of leather soles on wooden boards, and Marina and I look at each other and let painfully huge whooshes of air out from our lungs.

Marina loosens her death grip on my hand. “Unfortunately, I think you officially owe Leo Dark a favor.”

We hear them moving away along the landing into the other bedrooms and I rack my brain for our next move.

“We need to get down the corridor to the main bedroom,” I say, and then I gasp because a hand has just grabbed my ankle and is hauling me out from under the bed.

I cling to Marina in panic, and she kicks out viciously at the fingers with her high heel.

I take a moment to reflect on how different a movie Taken might have been if Liam Neeson’s daughter had been a stiletto fan.

He wouldn’t have needed to find the abductors and kill them, but then the internet would have been deprived of one of its finest memes.

Whoever it is hanging onto my ankle mutters an irate “fucking hell” under his breath and lets go, then bends down to stare at us.

“Fletch,” I breathe with relief, trying not to look at the blood on his knuckles as he reaches his hand out and tugs first me and then Marina from our hiding place.

“You came.”

Not only that, he came in not much more than four minutes. Maybe he just happened to be in the area, or maybe he truly is my real-life superhero on call whenever I really, really need him.

“Again,” he says softly, and for one moment of scorching hot eye-sex I think he’s going to kiss me, or that I might kiss him.

“What the fuck is going on here?” he asks instead, low and urgent.

“There isn’t a quick answer to that,” I say, thinking how to shrink this down into his terms, which means no ghosts or things that go bump in the night to make him sneer, then get mad and leave again.

Luckily there are chunks of this story that are black and white.

“Donovan Scarborough is furious with me because he thinks I’ve broken in and that I’m going to hold up the sale of the house. ”

“Have you, and are you?”

“Well, technically yes, and yes, but for a good reason.”

Fletch rolls his eyes as if to say he doesn’t think he’s going to like what he’s about to hear.

“Don’t tell me anything about ghosts or I might just leave you to get whacked.”

Marina jumps in to help. “Okay, forget the ghosts. There was a murder in this house about a hundred years ago and we’re going to solve it, if you’ll help us?”

Oh, now he’s interested. His reporter’s ears prick up and his moss-green eyes glitter with excitement he can’t hide.

“No bullshit?”

We both shake our heads, and Marina crosses her heart for good measure.

“Why do I think I’m gonna regret this?” he mutters and then sighs heavily. “What do you need me to do?”

It’s a hastily cobbled-together plan, but I think we might just be able to pull it off.

It’s two-pronged, and Fletch doesn’t approve of the first prong at all on account of the fact that it falls into the gray area between black and white that makes no sense to his logical brain.

Pulling my phone out again, I quickly text Artie.

What’s happening down there?

Donovan’s chucked us out, we’re in the garden. Be careful, he’s crazy.

Can you get Richard and Jojo into the cellar without being seen?

There’s a pause, and then,

Yes, I thinkso.

Good. Meet me there in five minutes.

I click my phone off and put it in the back pocket of my jeans, then thank the gods of good timing that Douglas chooses that moment to saunter in. I don’t miss the way he looks at Fletch, as if he is envious of his beating heart and ability to kiss my hand if he choseto.

“What did I miss?” he asks.

“Douglas, I need your help. Can you please go up and ask Isaac to meet me in the cellar right away? It’s vitally important that he comes as quickly as possible.”

He nods, all traces of his usual easy humor gone.

“Is this it, at last?” he asks, solemn, and I nod.

“I think it will be, yes.”

He looks at me as if he’d like to say more, and then he disappears.

I turn back to Marina, and to Fletch who’s been twitching the gray net curtains to keep an eye on the street while I do the stuff that makes him crazy.

“Done. Now I just need to get down to the cellar without being seen.”

Fletch listens out by the door. “They’re up in the attic. I’ll go up there and keep them talking. They don’t even know I’m here yet. The front door was open, and I just walked straight in.”

“It’s going to have to be enough,” I say. “Go now, but remember I need to get back up to the bedroom to search for the teddy bear when I’m done in the cellar.”

He goes out onto the landing and then sticks his head back around the door.

“Bittersweet…” he pauses. “Just be careful.”

And then he’s gone, and I can’t help but feel bolstered by the fact that Leo turned out to be more loyal than Rolfe from The Sound of Music and Fletch is potentially a superhero.

Captain Haribo? That could so work for me.

Is it any wonder I’m confused? When this is over, I might need to take a holiday to get my head around all of this.

That’s assuming I live, of course, and I can find someone to take Lestat. Yeah, like that’s ever gonna happen.

Marina kicks her high heels off and we tiptoe-run down the grand staircase, taking care not to draw attention to ourselves as we dash silently across the hall and slide into the cellar, exhilarated and terrified in equal measure as we lean against the wall and almost laugh as Artie comes bounding up the steps to meetus.