Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

“He’s hired the dynamic duo,” he said. “Ray Muldune, retired detective, and Eloise Montgomery, psychic sidekick.”

Maggie released a long, slow breath, rubbed at the bridge of her nose. Those names were bound to bring up a lot of bad memories.

“She came here today, too. Coincidentally,” Jones said. He just dropped it in, so that it would sound casual. “Or maybe not so coincidentally. Maybe it’s part of whatever scam they’re running. Who knows?”

She looked up at him, surprise creasing her brow. “Eloise Montgomery came here? What did she want?”

He released a disdainful snort. “She had a vision about me pulling a body out of water. She thought I needed to know about it.”

He rolled his eyes to further emphasize his skepticism, but he could tell she didn’t buy it. She pinned him down with an inquisitive look. He sank into the couch beneath the weight of it. The clock on the DVD player read 12:03.

“How did you feel about that?” she asked.

She didn’t fool him, either. She didn’t want to deal with how it made her feel, so she was asking him about his feelings.

“Annoyed more than anything,” he said. “Who does she think she is?”

Maggie wrapped her arms around herself. A lifetime ago Maggie’s mother had visited Eloise Montgomery. And the things she’d learned from Eloise had far-reaching impact, the true nature of which was discovered only last year. Jones slid in closer to his wife, dropped an arm around her shoulder, and she molded herself against him.

“So… what?” she said. “Chuck had questions about the Marla Holt case?”

Jones shrugged. “He asked if he could bring the files by, wondered if I’d take a look and see what I remembered. Who knows, maybe from a distance something might pop.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“If that’s okay.”

She gazed up at him with something like relief. He felt her body relax under his arm. “Are they paying you?”

“Just barely,” he said. “Holt is making noise-calling the chief, writing letters to the mayor. Muldune has been asking for the files. Chuck held them off by telling them he’d put someone on it unofficially. But with budget cuts they had to let two guys go this year; they don’t have the manpower.”

“So they want you as a consultant.”

He liked the sound of that, couldn’t help but smile. “On the cheap and down low,” he said.

“I think it’s a good gig. Maybe you need something like this.”

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with my other thriving business-guy around the neighborhood with nothing to do but get your mail.”

She lifted a hand to touch his face. He caught it and pressed it to his chest. She gave him a tentative smile, then looked away.

“That reminds me,” she said. “You got a call today from a woman by the name of Paula Carr from The Oaks. She got your name from the Pedersens.”

The Oaks was a wealthy neighborhood about ten minutes north of the downtown area where Jones and Maggie lived. It was his first call off their street, and it reminded him again of Eloise’s visit and her other warning that he was getting a reputation. What had she said? People are going to start coming to you for more, from farther away. It might lead you to places you don’t expect .

He shared this with Maggie, and she accepted it with a nod but didn’t say anything right away. In the quiet, Jones noticed the ticking of that goddamn clock again. He really hated that thing.

“So that could mean Chuck, too,” she said. She sounded thoughtful, far off.

He pushed out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, if we’re putting weight behind the ramblings of a mentally ill woman.”

He felt her snake her arms around his middle and hold on tight. He returned her embrace, leaned down to kiss her soft, open mouth.

“We’re not, are we?” he asked. He looked into those deep, sweet eyes.

She leaned up and kissed him again. Was it a little urgent? It sent a jolt through him. They still had it, that heat. It had never once waned in all their years together, even in the hard times, even when they were sleeping in separate rooms. He always wanted her. Always.

“No. Of course not.” She stood and offered him her hand. “Come to bed.”

Michael Holt pulled into the driveway of his childhood home and cut the engine. The windows were dark, the lawn overgrown. One of the lower-level shutters hung by a single nail, listing to the side. He sat in the warm interior of the car and considered driving back into town and getting a hotel room. The Super 8 off the highway had rooms for sixty-nine dollars a night, including cable television and a pancake breakfast. The billboard had boasted superlatives like CLEAN! and SAFE!-which might not be enough for some but were more than enough for Michael, especially given his current residence.

He thought about his dwindling bank account, though, and the fact that the house-run-down and badly in need of modernization-could sit on the market in a struggling economy for months, even years.

Well , said the agent he’d hired to list the house. The word had sounded more like a sigh coming from her pretty, glossed lips. We’ll see what we can do. Some people are looking for teardowns and handyman specials . She’d been all smiles in the office. On the property, when he was showing her the house, she’d gone stiff, her smile turning down into a kind of grimace, a look of falsely bright endurance. She’d made polite little noises of dismay. “Um,” she’d said in the upstairs bath. “Oh,” she’d murmured in the attic. “Wow,” she’d said in his father’s room. In the kitchen she’d lost her composure. “Oh, my God. How did he live like this?”

“I don’t know,” Michael had said. “We weren’t… close.”

“Michael,” she said finally in the foyer. He’d watched her back toward the door, a beautifully manicured hand to her forehead. “You’re going to have to clear out some of this clutter . I really can’t show it until you do.”

Clutter. It was an interesting choice of words. Clutter seemed so innocent-maybe a pile of papers on the desk, or a closet filled with too many old clothes, maybe a mess in the garage. Clutter was almost funny, something that needed to be cheerfully tidied up. It didn’t begin to describe his father’s house. It was a towering menace of filth. There were the overflowing boxes in the hallways, stacks of newspapers and magazines in the bathroom; Michael’s old room was filled with computer parts and old telephones, an unexplainable graveyard of nonfunctioning electronic devices. There was a closet where they’d kept the cat’s litter box. The cat was long dead, but the smell of his urine and feces remained. Opening that closet door was to invite an olfactory assault that could bring a man to his knees.

There were shelves and shelves of books in every room, and a cartoon plume of dust flew up whenever one was removed from its place. It was the kitchen, though, that was the dark heart of the house, the smell of decay so oppressive, the buzzing of flies so unnerving that he’d not even set foot over the threshold. And that was just the first floor.

Movement on the property next door caught Michael’s eye. He saw Mrs. Miller on her porch, her arms folded across her middle. It was dark, but he could tell she was looking in his direction, wondering why he was sitting there in his car. She was probably wondering, too, about the sign that the agency had placed in the yard today. He’d thought it would bring him some relief to see it there. But instead he felt a familiar dark hollow within him, this terrible emptiness he had carried around ever since his mother had left. It started just below his navel and spread through him like a stain-red wine on linen.