P.J. Alderman - Ghost Ship

She pulled alongside the sedan and turned off the Prius. Grabbing the packet of original documents, she climbed out of the car, letting Malachi out for a romp in the adjacent woods. Since her last visit, Holt hadn’t seen fit to fix any of the house’s maintenance problems—the roof was still covered with moss and tree detritus, the cement steps leading to the porch were still cracked. The front door was closed—a feat, since it was warped from moisture. She couldn’t hear any sounds coming from inside. Climbing the three uneven cement steps, she gingerly crossed rotten porch boards, looking for a doorbell. Finding none, she rapped on the door.

No one responded.

Frowning, she jumped off the porch and climbed through the shrubbery along the foundation to peer in the living room window, but she couldn’t see anyone.

Well, damn. She couldn’t very well leave the papers propped up against the front door in the hope that someone would eventually find them. They were historical documents, and as such, precious and fragile. Too much humidity, which the Pacific Northwest had in abundance, would ruin the old pages within hours.

She walked back up the steps and tried the front doorknob. It turned freely; the door swung inward. Putting her hand on it, she called, “Anyone home? Hello?”

Silence.

The living room looked even messier than the last time she’d seen it, and that was saying something. Shaking her head, she shoved the door open and was crossing the threshold when it slammed back into her. Thinking the wind had somehow caught it, she put up a hand to keep it from hitting her in the face.

The door kept coming, and she realized someone had to be pushing it from behind.

“Hey!” she said crankily, shoving back with her shoulder. “What—”

The door flew open and a figure wearing a dark hoodie rushed right at her, slamming into her with both hands. In an instant, she and the documents were airborne, flying backward. She landed hard on her back, sliding down the cement steps. The back of her skull connected with something equally immovable.

The intruder leapt over her, landing in the gravel walkway behind her. She heard the sound of running footsteps, then the roar of a car engine and Malachi’s frantic barking.

Chapter 8

THE jerk—whoever he was—had knocked the breath out of her.

Malachi whined and licked her face. “It’s okay, boy. I’m all right,” she whispered, trying to drag air into her lungs.

She lay without moving, listening for any sound that someone might still be lurking. After a couple of minutes, she realized that if he had been, Malachi would still be going crazy. “Did you scare him off, boy?”

“Raaaaooo.”

“Good. I hope you also took a very big chunk out of him.”

He growled his agreement, then anxiously nudged her with his nose.

It took her a moment to figure out that most of her skewed perspective came not from brain damage, but from the fact that she was lying almost upside down, angled down the steps. She reached into her jeans pocket for her cellphone and held it up to her face so that she could punch buttons on the display.

“Where are you?” she asked when Darcy answered.

“Just coming up to Holt’s place with the crime-scene technicians.”

“How convenient.” The phone went silent long enough that Jordan wondered if she’d lost the connection. Then she heard the crunch of gravel as vehicles turned into the driveway.

“Do I want to know?” Darcy asked finally.

“Probably not. Did a dark sedan come flying past you just now?”

“No, why?”

Malachi started barking directly above Jordan’s head. “Arrrgh!” Jordan dropped the phone and clapped her hands over her ears. She couldn’t decide which hurt worse, the loud noise or the movement caused by touching her skull.

A car door slammed, unhurried footsteps crunched the gravel, then Darcy knelt by her head. Upside down, they gazed at each other. “Am I to assume you aren’t in this position on purpose?” Darcy asked tartly.

“Someone was inside the house,” Jordan explained. She managed to scrunch around, rolling sideways down the steps.

Darcy gripped her under her arms and hauled her to her feet, then helped her brush dirt and leaves off her clothes. “I’m guessing whoever it was, wasn’t thrilled to see you. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Returning the family documents. You know, Seavey’s papers that I borrowed from Holt and never got back to him? They’re part of the estate, and I thought Holt’s relatives would want them right away.” Jordan winced as she gingerly felt the back of her skull, her hand encountering something wet and sticky.

Darcy brushed her fingers aside and looked for herself. “Yuck. A smashed slug”—she pulled it out of Jordan’s hair—“a scratch and a nice goose egg. Most of the sticky stuff is blood. Head wounds bleed a lot, but it’s already stopped. You’ll live,” she pronounced. She waved the crime-scene techs inside, then turned back to Jordan. “Holt doesn’t have any relatives in the area. In fact, we haven’t been able to locate any at all yet. Did you get a good look at your assailant?”

Jordan shook her head, then instantly regretted it. “He shoved me backward down the steps, then drove away in the car.” She frowned. “I must have hit my head when I fell.”

“What did the car look like?”

“Dark. A sedan. I don’t know what kind.”

“Color? License plate number?” When she drew a blank, Darcy looked disgusted. “You mean you can’t tell me anything about it, other than it was dark?”

“Well it’s not like I drove up thinking, ‘Hey, that looks like a villain’s car, so I’m going to write down the license number and commit its description to memory,’ ” she grumbled. “It was either blue or black, maybe midsized, and it might have had four doors.”

Taking a careful step into the grass, she tried to bend over to pick up some of Seavey’s papers that had landed there, but her head wasn’t having any of it. She must have hit it fairly hard.

Darcy made a rude noise and started picking up papers and handing them to her. “Unbelievable. Holt Stilwell was just murdered, and you thought it was safe to come waltzing out to his house all by yourself?”

“I do not waltz . I told you, I figured his relatives might be here.” Jordan flipped pages this way and that, trying to arrange them into some semblance of order. “You know, packing up his stuff, figuring out what he had that would be part of his estate. I didn’t feel right hanging onto family papers, and I had no idea there weren’t any other Stilwells around. How could I?”

“You still should have thought before coming out here alone,” Darcy retorted, holding out more crumpled pages. “What if the person you ran into was the murderer?”

“It’s the middle of the day. And Holt was murdered miles from here,” Jordan reasoned.

“You don’t know that for certain.”

“Besides, what kind of murderer—or burglar—breaks into a house in broad daylight, leaving his car parked in plain sight in the driveway?”

“Hmmph.”

“Honestly, it never occurred to me that I would be in danger. I planned to drop off the papers, then head home. If someone had answered the door when I knocked, I wouldn’t have even tried to go inside.”

“So you can’t describe the car or your assailant. What about general height and build? Clothing? Even a fleeting impression?”

“If I go by how strong he was, since he pushed me hard enough to make me fly backward, whoever it was participates regularly in pro wrestling.”

“Right.” Darcy said it sourly.

Jordan stopped straightening pages and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to conjure up an image of who she’d seen. “A few inches taller than me, so maybe just under six feet? He was moving fast, and I didn’t have any contact with his body, just his hands, which seemed big but not overly so.”