Page 22 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

Seventeen

We have Josie’s cop flashlight, which is ridiculously heavy with an equally ridiculously strong beam.

My best flashlight from the house looks like a candle flame beside it.

I also take a couple of old beach towels, and she raises her brows at that, but high-fives me when I spread them over the windowsill with its slivers and bits of broken glass.

We crawl through. She takes in her surroundings with that gajillion- lumen flashlight, as I continue on to the bathroom.

“Ooh,” she says when I move the bathroom mat aside. “That really is a super-secret hiding space.”

“More like a place to stash the booze off-season. My da—” I clear my throat. “My family always said the only thing people would break into our cottages for was the leftover booze. We didn’t keep anything else here.”

“What about your gran’s pirate booty?”

I smile. “She’d say they were welcome to it, and would hope they enjoyed it as much as she did. The alcohol is another story, especially if the local kids decided to pour something else in to cover up the theft.” I make a face. “Sorry. You’re one of those local kids.”

She shrugs. “It’s a trick used by teens everywhere.

Add a little water and food coloring to hide the missing booze.

Also, full confession, as teens, my friends and I knew all the summer cottages where owners kept the key under the back mat and a shit ton of booze in the cupboard.

We never bothered watering it down, though. ”

“I used to sneak my grandfather’s crème de menthe up here.”

“The stuff that tastes like sweetened mouthwash? Ugh. How old were you?”

“Eleven? Twelve? It was a very small amount—like a quarter of a shot—that I poured on my ice cream. Told my parents the shop in town had mint syrup. Which worked very well until the day my mom asked for some on hers. After some confusion, Mrs. Cooper said they were out of it.”

Josie laughs. “Mrs. Cooper is the best. My mom really didn’t like me having sweets, so Mrs. Cooper would tell her that I’d used my snack money for apples.”

I smile and unlock the crawl space hatch. When I tug it open, dust flies up, and we fall back, coughing.

“Forget strong flashlights,” Josie says. “We need gas masks.” She leans forward and makes a gagging noise. “And not just for the dust. Something died down there.”

“A lot of somethings, I bet.” I ease onto my haunches. “You want to abandon ship?”

“Never.” She pulls her shirt up over her nose and mouth. “Ready when you are. Just … leave the hatch open.”

“For ventilation? Or escape?”

“Both.”

I wasn’t kidding about the booze in the crawl space.

That’s the first thing we find—two plastic milk crates full of half-filled bottles.

We heave those out, and Josie jokes about distributing them in all the local teen bonfire spots.

There are a few unopened bottles of wine and one of scotch, and I tell her she’s welcome to those.

She says her parents will appreciate them, especially after the extra aging.

Otherwise, the crawl space is full of household stuff.

The outdoor furniture and lake toys always went in the shed.

Down here are things like the hibachi grill, sleeping bags, and boxes of old sheets and dishes that my grandmother was too thrifty to throw out and my grandfather was too stingy to donate.

The crawl space itself is about four feet high, meaning we can walk at a crouch and then hunker down to sift through boxes. The single space stretches the length and width of the cottage, interrupted only by support pillars.

I do find a box of my grandmother’s “pirate booty”—as well as highlander booty, duke booty, and sheikh booty. As I leaf through the moldering paperbacks, I remember the one upstairs and how I’d planned to sneak it onto Gail’s nightstand.

I sit there, gazing down at another bare-chested pirate, tears falling on the cover. Then I shove it back into the box and turn to see Josie fifteen feet away. She’s reading what seems like a piece of paper.

“Files?” I ask.

She jumps and drops what she’d been holding. Then she holds up an old paperback. “No, just books. Some are falling apart.”

“Anything interesting?”

I’m making my way over when her light goes out. She curses, and I hear her smacking at it. Then it comes on, brightening the area enough for me to continue my trek. I join her at the box she’s going through, where she holds out the hardcover.

It’s an old book titled Spooky Legends of the Great Lakes.

“Oh,” I say. “That one. Can’t remember a word of it, but I read it about ten times as a kid.”

She passes it over. “You should take it.”

“I will.” I tuck the book under my arm. “Anything else interesting?”

“Well, I did find two very tempting boxes of clothing from the seventies.”

When I eye her, she says, “I like vintage, okay?”

“No judgment. I just wasn’t sure whether that was sarcasm.”

“I am never sarcastic about tie-dye and bell-bottoms.”

“You can have them if you want. They’d be my grandmother’s, and she was about your size.”

Josie crawls over and picks up a plastic box. “There. I have my treasure.” She peeks over the top. “Unless you see something you want.”

“I doubt it.”

“Nope, you will. Or I’ll find you something. I’ll clean everything up, get my mom to help with any repairs, and once you’ve put in your month here, we are going barhopping, seventies-style. On you, of course, ’cause you’ll be loaded.”

I laugh softly. “I will be, and we will definitely go out and celebrate. I will even wear bell-bottoms, just for you. Now let’s finish looking through this stuff.”

Finding nothing else in the crawl space, we retreat upstairs with our treasures, me holding the book on Great Lake legends and Josie with her box of vintage clothes.

As we circle to the front of my grandparents’ cottage, Josie tells me the story of her last bar night and the guy she’d picked up.

“So I’m leaving his place afterward, and I see this photo of two little kids, and I’m like, are these yours? Nieces? Nephews? And he says, oh, those are my grandkids.”

I snort a laugh. “Underestimated his age, I take it?”

“Hey, it was dark. At the bar and at his place. Also there’d been drinking. So he was a little—lot—older than I thought. No big deal. Then I see a photo of his grandchildren’s father and…” She glances at me. “I dated him in high school.”

I start choking on my laugh. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. He was, like, my first boyfriend. Which means I’d also known his dad … the guy I just slept with.”

“Did he know who you were?”

“I was not going to ask. I got out of there so fast. From now on, I’m taking my big-ass flashlight with me so I can get a good look at any guy I go home with. Also, pro tip? Always check the family photos before you hop into bed.”

I’m laughing. Then I spot the pickup outside my cottage, Sheriff Smits standing beside it, and everything rushes back, and shame courses through me.

My aunt has been missing for less than a day, and I’m already finding things to laugh about.

If Smits sees anything untoward, he gives no sign of it, only taking off his hat in a way that has my stomach dropping. I pick up the pace and soon I’m running toward him.

“You found her,” I say as I stop short in front of him.

He looks startled. Then he seems to realize what he’d done, taking off his hat, the way cops in movies often do before delivering bad news. He quickly puts it back on.

“No,” he says. “I’m sorry. We haven’t found anything.”

He doesn’t ask where we were or what we have in our hands. Josie puts the plastic storage box down by the porch, and I set the book on top.

“I just wanted to update you,” Smits says. “I know it’s hard on families when they don’t hear anything, but mostly, that’s because we have nothing to tell.”

“Okay.” I wipe sweaty hands on my jean shorts. “So … nothing?”

He shakes his head. “We’ve checked the lakeshore. I wanted to get a diver out, but there’s a strong current, and it’s stirring up the bottom too much to see.”

“Do you think that current had anything to do with Gail disappearing?”

“I hope not. But I’ve notified departments all along the lake. They’ve scouted the shoreline and taken out boats.”

“And the sonar?”

He makes a face. “We used it, of course, but it’s tricky.”

“Because you’d be searching for a body, and even that’s tough to find at the bottom, before it bloats and rises.”

He glances up sharply in surprise.

“I looked it up when you said you were using sonar,” I say.

He nods. Then he squints into the setting sun. “I wish I had more to tell you.”

“I understand.”

The sounds of tires on the dirt road has us all looking south. Ben’s old pickup appears, rolling along. It passes us, and stops about fifty feet away, close to the shore.

As we watch, Ben gets out. He doesn’t even acknowledge us. Just takes a tent bag from the pickup bed and tosses it down near my bonfire spot.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Smits calls.

“Setting up camp.”

“Should have done that last night. Little late now.”

I see Ben’s jaw tense, but he only starts unzipping the tent bag.

“You don’t need to do that, Ben,” Josie calls as she heads toward him. “I’ll stay with Sam.”

“No one needs to stay with Sam,” I say.

“Yeah.” Ben meets my gaze. “Someone does.”

I flinch at that look. I’d thought he meant he was making sure I was safe tonight. But he didn’t say that, did he?

Keeping an eye on me. Ensuring I don’t test that exception Ms. Jimenez mentioned? Fire a few shots from Gail’s gun and claim I narrowly avoided death?

“I will stay,” Josie says firmly.

Her father shifts, his gaze cutting to her in a way that says he understands, as her boss, but as her father, he really doesn’t want her here.

I agree.

I don’t know what happened last night. My brain has been working overtime to shut down every wild imagining. But I do know I don’t want Josie here. I don’t want anyone here. I’ve already endangered Gail, might have gotten her—

I take a deep breath. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’m staying,” Ben says. “You saw a man in the shed. Someone has been leaving mutilated dead animals on your doorstep. And now your aunt’s disappearance is just a tragic accident? Can someone tell me why it’s the damned caretaker—not the local cops—who has a problem with that explanation?”

“Of course we’re concerned,” Josie snaps. “Why do you think I’m staying? For a girls’ night in?”

He meets her gaze. “Yeah, kinda.”

She rocks forward, but he raises his hand.

“I’m not insulting you, Smits. I’m saying you and Sam are obviously chummy, and that might relax your guard.

I don’t have that problem. Also, if someone targeted Sam and her aunt, they might see a twenty-year-old girl—even a cop—as another potential victim. ”

“I’m twenty-three, asshole.”

“Already? Huh.” He shakes out the pop-up tent. “Point still stands. You really want your daughter here, Sheriff?”

Smits clears his throat. “I would advise you to come home, Josie, and let Ben handle the night shift so you can put in the day shift tomorrow.”

“I really don’t need—” I begin.

Smits continues, speaking to me now. “I have expressed some concerns about Mr. Vandergriff, but I want to assure you, Sam, that they are not the sort of concerns that would affect him staying the night.”

Ben mutters under his breath and then says, “That’s his roundabout way of saying that whatever horrible crimes I’ve committed, they don’t include stalking, molesting, or assaulting women.”

“No physical violence of any kind,” Smits says. “Nor any actions against women.” He turns to Josie. “Would you have any concerns about Ben staying here?”

“Of course not,” she says. “But I also think I should do it.”

“Then maybe you two can switch shifts tomorrow. For now, you’ve had a long day and Mr. Vandergriff has not. He will stay. You will come home and rest.”