Carolyn McSparren - House of Strangers

Maybe Bill and Janey wouldn’t have come through if they hadn’t actually been legally married with children. Certainly Paul and Tracy hadn’t. Tracy had stuck with him in the hospital and for the first month of physical therapy after he came home, but in the end she’d broken their engagement.

He didn’t blame her. Tracy had been a flight attendant long enough to have her pick of the prime runs. She’d expected to marry a transport pilot, not a bad-tempered man with a bum arm and no idea what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. She wasn’t the one who changed. He had.

They’d taken no marriage vows, no “for better or worse.” The breakup had been nasty. They’d both said terrible things that could never be unsaid.

Tracy had mailed him an invitation to her wedding a month ago to a pilot for one of the big commercial airlines. He had sent her a very expensive silver tray and toasted her alone in his apartment with too much brandy.

He soaked for an hour in the bath, slept for another and then drove back to the house. He wanted to poke and pry further. Maybe he’d be able to thrash his way through the damp weeds and vines in the garden to the summer kitchen or the garden shack.

Mrs. Hoddle had told him that nothing remained in the house from the Delaney years. The heir had commissioned an estate agent to sell everything he and his wife didn’t want. A junk dealer had carted off what remained.

Paul parked in the broken concrete area at the back of the house. No garage, of course. That would have to be built from scratch. He climbed out and stepped into the tall grass that had once been the back lawn. He was surprised to find a herringbone pattern of bricks just visible under the weeds. Must’ve been some sort of patio. He forced his way through tangled vegetation until he found himself snared by overgrown rosebushes.

Years without pruning should have killed them, but despite the long bracts that snagged his clothing, he could see the beginning of a few green shoots. Maybe they could still be saved.

The door to the summer kitchen had a heavy, rusted padlock on it. Looking around, Paul decided he wouldn’t be able to get to the fence at the back of the property without a machete, so he gave up and went back to the house.

Imposing from the front, the house looked much more informal from the rear. He could barely make out the outline of the piano through the filthy bay windows. On his left beyond the music room, the window wall of the conservatory stretched down the entire side of the house. Judging from the layers of grime and the festoons of spiderwebs, no one had washed the outside of those windows in twenty years.

He walked up the two steps to the back door and fitted his new key into its new lock. The door silently opened on oiled hinges. Buddy’s doing, no doubt. The broad center hall ran straight through the house. Paul could see shadows of the trees in the front yard through the glass of the front door.

He turned into the kitchen.

An old butcher-block table marred by the nicks of countless knives stood in the center of the room.

He heard the slightly off-key tinkle of the piano.

The hair on his arms stood up. His first ghost?

After a moment he got himself under control and listened. Debussy, maybe, or Ravel. Familiar, although he couldn’t identify it. Something soft and sad and French.

When he’d looked through the bay window earlier, he’d seen no silhouette at the piano. There had been no other cars parked either in the driveway or out front on the street, and he’d heard none drive in.

Buddy had the only other key, but Buddy hardly seemed the type to favor Debussy or Ravel.

Paul started to call out, then stopped. He definitely did not believe in ghosts, so there must be ten human fingers on those keys. If the pianist thought he, too, was alone in the house, then hearing Paul’s voice might give him or her a heart attack. The sudden sound had definitely accelerated Paul’s pulse.

The music stopped suddenly.

Paul waited a moment, then crossed the central hall. The music room was partially open. Paul peered in.

No one was at the piano. The room was empty. So was the front parlor, which he could see through the open doors between the two rooms.

He stepped into the music room. Absolutely empty. Had he been hearing things? The piano was open. He remembered Buddy’s closing it after showing him how discolored the old ivory keys were.

He touched the bench. Still warm. To the best of his knowledge, ghosts did not have warm bottoms.

Someone was in the house. Heart attack or not, it was time to call out.

He started to open his mouth when a huge black object hurtled through the hall door and hit him full in the chest.

Paul’s feet slid out from under him, and he landed flat on his back, barely managing to keep his head from cracking against the bare floor.

He managed a couple of gasps before the black object reached out a long, maroon tongue and licked him straight across the face.

“Get off me!” Paul didn’t think attack dogs were trained to lick their quarry, so he felt relatively safe shoving this one off his chest.

“Dante!”

Footsteps pelted down the back stairs. A moment later he saw a figure silhouetted in the shadowy doorway. “What are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same thing,” he said. “Call off your moose.”

“Dante, get off him. Down.”

Dante gave Paul one last quick swipe with his tongue, then sank to the floor beside him and stared with beseeching eyes.

“What kind of dog is this, anyway? I’ve never seen one like it.”

“He’s a Neopolitan mastiff.”

Paul rolled to a sitting position and found himself nose to nose with the mastiff. “He makes bloodhounds look cheerful.”

“He’s really a happy dog. It’s just his woebegone expression and all those wrinkles that make him look miserable. Listen, I’m awfully sorry. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Just my dignity, Miss…uh?”

“Ann Corrigan.” She offered a hand, and when he took it with his left, she helped him back to his feet.

“Ah—you’re the Ann Buddy was talking about.”

“You have to be Mr. Bouvet. Do you need to sit down or anything?”

“Not quite that decrepit, thank you.”

“I didn’t mean…I guess you heard the piano. Buddy swore you wouldn’t be back this afternoon, so I borrowed his key to start taking pictures of the inside of the house. When I saw the piano, I couldn’t resist.”

“You play well.”

“No, I don’t.” Ann laughed. “I play one tempo—slow. And one style—easy with lots of mistakes—although I spent every Tuesday afternoon for years on that piano bench. I took lessons from Miss Addy.”

“The lady who owned the house.”

“Only for the last few years. It belonged to the Delaneys. When Mrs. Delaney died, she left it to her sister for her lifetime. Miss Addy must have taught most of the kids in the county to play the piano.”

“You sounded good.”

“I was not one of her star pupils. When I wasn’t in school I was either out with the hunt or pitching for the softball team. I hated to practice. Scales, yuck. Now I wish I’d worked harder.”

“I attempted to play the tuba in my high-school band. It was a grave error. I lasted less than six weeks. Football was easier, except that I wasn’t big enough for a college scholarship.”

Dante had not moved from his position but followed the conversation like a tennis spectator, turning his head from one to the other.

Ann lifted her hand, palm up, and Dante hauled himself to his feet and went to stand beside her. He had no tail, so his entire rear end wagged.

“Look, we don’t have to stand here in the middle of an empty room,” Ann said. “Let’s sit on the window seat in the conservatory—if you don’t mind getting dirty.”