Page 97 of The Sister's Curse

Monica peered into the fridge and grimaced. “Some new civilization’s in there, ready to call Sumner their leader.”

I headed down the hallway, looking into the bedrooms and closets. They were a mess, but not a criminal mess. I checked the garbage. Nothing unusual there.

I clicked my UV light on and swept it down the hallway. Ididn’t see anything interesting in the living room or the bedrooms.

I went to the bathroom where I’d found Dana Carson’s prints. The place had been painted in the twenty-five years since her disappearance, and the fixtures updated, so I wasn’t expecting to find much. I’d lucked out with the prints because they had been in a protected place on the exterior windowsill, where they wouldn’t be disturbed.

“See anything?” Monica asked from the hallway.

“Not yet.” I held out hope, though, that I could retrieve some speck of evidence to blow the case wide-open. But there wasn’t anything in the bathroom.

I headed to the basement, while Monica went to check Sumner’s office. When I was halfway down the steps, I was nearly knocked over by a dark shadow.

“Gibby!” I hissed.

He thundered past me into the basement. He was the Houdini of dogs. I had no idea how he’d slipped his lead.

I swept my UV light on the carpeted steps before me. It looked like the carpet hadn’t been replaced in a long time. At the bottom of the stairs, I saw a couch, a television, a bar, and wood paneling dating back to the sixties. It was weird that the Sumners hadn’t ripped it out, but basement bars had come back into vogue recently. Everything else in the house had been updated. I wondered why the basement den hadn’t been.

Gibby sniffed around the perimeter of the room, tail twitching.

“How did you get loose?” I reached for his collar, but he evaded my grasp, nose glued to the floor, and sprinted to the other side of the room.

I paused, seeing faint luminescent blue marks in the grooves of the paneling. My heart skipped a beat. They could’ve been blood,or any number of other bodily fluids I didn’t want to think about. I spritzed them with luminol, and the glow remained.Blood.

I swabbed the panel, hoping to get a sample. I followed my light to a spot where the glow pooled on a baseboard, and tore out a chunk of the baseboard. Maybe Forensics could work with it.

I turned my attention to the bar. There was no actual plumbing here, and the Sumners had evidently been using the bar for wine storage.

I peered below the bar with my UV light, and frowned. I saw some stubs of burned candles. I sniffed them, detecting a whiff of carbon. They’d been lit recently. Maybe Sumner was into mood lighting. Maybe something else.

I glanced over the bar. A railroad spike had been driven there. Peering at the corners of the room, I saw three more spikes, driven into the walls. I spritzed the spikes with luminol, but they remained inert.

Gibby found a spot in the middle of the floor that he was inhaling. He pawed at the carpet.

“Gibby, stop that!”

He sat down on the floor and whined.

Monica came down the steps. “Lookit this.”

She held up a black hood. “You think this is one of the kinky things Drema was talking about? Or do you think this belongs to the girls?”

“I doubt it belongs to the girls. They think costumes are for losers.” I took it from her with gloved hands. “I think that belongs to Jeff. Anything in his office?”

“Just a printer. He must work on a laptop that he takes with him. There’s nothing interesting in his paper files.”

“I think something happened here.” I showed her the luminol streaks.

Our eyes fell on the floor, on the incongruously old carpet, and on the perturbed Gibby.

“Wanna rip that carpet up?”

I shrugged. “I mean, we have the homeowner’s permission.”

“Cool. I’ll grab a crowbar from the car. Be back in a minute.”

I stared at the railroad spikes. They meant something to the Kings of Warsaw Creek, and to Viv. All I knew was that Viv had told me they were meant to keep evil out.