The Family Plot (6 page)

Out on the front lawn, someone called for her attention. “Dolly? You in there?”

It was Bobby, who damn well knew better than to call her that. She declined to respond. Really, she couldn't possibly hear him, inside that stairwell that was scarcely wide enough for her to walk without rubbing her shoulders on the walls. That was her story, and she was sticking to it.

Her boots were heavy, and so was their echo on the steps, and under them. She paused, kicked gently, and yes—it was hollow under there. Storage? She hoped so. People leave great things behind in storage, when they're done living someplace.

At the top, a trapdoor stopped her.

She pushed her palm against it and it moved easily, letting her up inside a spacious semi-finished attic. It was mostly empty, with no promising crates, trunks, or boxes; but she saw stray books, and the suggestion of toys. Old toys could be worth a mint. She'd take a closer look later on.

She stood on the stairs, her head and shoulders in the naked space—all of it lit by the attic windows (not leaded, not valuable) and as dusty as everything else. It was warmer by a few degrees up there, which made the air feel stuffy. In the exposed rafters overhead, she saw elaborate spiderweb clusters, nets, and balls; and she detected the nibble marks of rats or squirrels (please let it be squirrels) and, along the floor, droppings from the same (probably rats).

“Rats aren't so bad,” she told herself, and mostly meant it. “The rats will give you gifts, and the bugs will give you kisses. Right, Dad?” Could be worse. Could be rabid raccoons, or needle-toothed possums. Besides, any rats in the Withrow house wouldn't be the big black plague rats of lore, but little brown wood rats from the mountain. Give 'em fluffy tails, and you'd feed 'em peanuts in the park.

“Dahlia?”

This time it was Gabe calling her name. She dropped the trapdoor back into place and headed down the stairs—then over to the broken window, which opened when she yanked on the latch. She hung her head out, and hollered: “Up here, boys. Come on in, and take a look around.”

“We can't.” Brad shielded his eyes against the sunny morning glare. “You locked us out.”

“I did no such thing…?”

“Then the door locked behind you. Come on down here and let us in,” Bobby pleaded.

“Well, shit. Hang on.”

Dahlia left the window to stand at the top of the grand staircase and gaze across the first floor. The door was, in fact, closed. Had she shut it? No, she was pretty sure she'd left it ajar … but then again, old places, old floors, old frames, old hinges. She hadn't heard it move, but that didn't mean that the wind, the warped wood, or some quirk of gravity hadn't seen fit to shut it anyway.

She took the stairs slower than she could have, stalling the inevitable every step of the way. She didn't want to let them in. She didn't want to start work on the Withrow house. This wasn't some favor she was doing for an old friend; this wasn't a restoration gig to preserve a landmark. This was a vivisection, a slow slaughter of a thing on its last legs. She loved the house, and she loved all its parts, so she hated her job, this time. She didn't want to take anything. She wanted to fix everything, but that wasn't up to her.

The door was indeed locked. Its dead bolt was turned.

Maybe she'd shut the door without thinking. All right,
maybe
—but Dahlia was about 90 percent sure she hadn't done the dead bolt. Ten percent was a hefty margin of error, though, and she'd been lost in her own head, hadn't she?

Lost.

The house was insistent, but its defensive resources were few.

On second thought, Dahlia knew good and well that she must've locked up without thinking about it after all. It was exactly the kind of thing she'd do. She was still dragging her feet. Still barricading forts that had already fallen. Scavenging mementos. Harvesting organs.

But it was like she'd told the house in the first place: It wasn't her decision to make; it was just her job to sift through what was left. Did that make it easier, thinking of herself as more archeologist, less grave robber? It still sucked.

She unlocked the door. “Come on in, guys.”

 

3

“I
T
'
S ABOUT TIME
,” Bobby grumbled. “We've been out there yelling for you for, like, ten minutes.”

“No you haven't.”

Gabe agreed with Dahlia. “Don't listen to him; we just got here. Man, this place is huge!”

Brad brought up the rear, crowding them all into the foyer. For some reason, no one was in any great hurry to go any farther. “It's almost 4,500 square feet, that's what Chuck said.”

“And that's just the house—never mind the outbuildings.” A gust of wind took hold of the door, but Dahlia caught it, and closed everyone inside. The wind still pushed, so she reached for the dead bolt. It stuck, and wouldn't move even when she shoved it with her palm.

“Damn…,” Gabe said. He strolled forward, into the empty formal room. “Dahlia, you were busy in here.”

His father added, “
Really
busy.”

She struggled with the lock for a moment more, working it back and forth until it surrendered. “I poked around a little. Tried to get a good sense of the place, so we can get our priorities in order. I figure we start with the barn and carriage house. Once we're done with those, we move inside and take the marble fireplaces.”

As if he hadn't heard her, Brad asked, “Would you
look
at that floor…?” He lifted his voice at the end, turning the suggestion into a query.

Dahlia finally turned around to see what the fuss was about.

The floor wasn't just crisscrossed with footprints in the dust—it was scored in a large pattern like a wobbly figure eight, drawn in the drag marks of somebody's feet.

“Oh. That.” She shrugged. “With all this dust, every little move you make shows up. Which reminds me: No one gets started on any cutting or removal without a mask. There's probably asbestos, mold, you name it up in here.”

“But, seriously,” Brad insisted. “What were you doing in here?”

“Sometimes I pace around when I'm thinking.”
Or talking to myself, or to houses
. She didn't say that out loud.

“In a figure eight?”

“It's as good a shape as any.”

Gabe frowned. “Looks like you've been ballroom dancing.”

“Yes. I was ballroom dancing in my work boots.” She whapped him gently on the shoulder, and ignored the pathway in the dirt. “Then I did a little tango into the dining room, pirouetted through the kitchen, and sambaed up the stairs. Come on, I'll show you.”

She gave her crew the same cursory tour she'd taken alone, and made sure to declare vocal dibs upon the master suite. Brad took one of the other rooms. Bobby wanted to double up with Gabe, but he said no. He wanted the attic.

“But there's bats up there, and Christ knows what else. You'll wake up in the morning with rabies,” his father warned.

“I don't care. I don't want to share with nobody.”

Dahlia shook her head. “Your dad's right—and that's something I won't say every day, so you may as well listen. Why don't you take that little dressing room—or see what's behind door number three, if you want your own space? The door's stuck, but you're a big boy. You can shove it open. We'll have to get in there eventually, anyhow.”

He shot a side-eye toward the attic stairs, then back at the jammed door in the hallway. “I'll check the room out later,” he semi-relented. “There's plenty of time.”

“True,” Dahlia agreed, and she headed back downstairs, the rest of the crew following behind her. “But only
sort of.
We need to get started, if we're going to stay on schedule and budget. Let's open the trucks, pull out the bolt cutters, and check the carriage house. Then we can start making lists, and getting more specific with our task plan.”

“Is there any power out there?” Brad asked.

“I'd be shocked to find any,” she said. “To the best of my knowledge, we only have power and water for the house.”

Then Gabe wanted to know, “Are we going to turn off the water when we get inside the walls? Like we do the electricity?”

She tromped down the last of the stairs, leaving fresh prints across the figure eight and muddying its shape. “Maybe, but I haven't seen any bathroom or kitchen fixtures to get excited about. They're all mid-century, but not in a good way.”

Bobby darted around her, heading for the front door. “Some people
like
mid-century. And this family was shitting in high cotton. Even if the fixtures are ugly, I'm sure they're good quality stuff. We ought to take them with us.”

“And we might, but only as a last resort—and only if there's room. We're here for last century, not mid-century. Or … the century before last, technically. Stupid millennium.”

“We'll have plenty of room,” he said stubbornly.

“We'd better
not
. We ought to be able to fill the trucks and then some, without ever resorting to that other junk.” She pushed past him, reaching the front door first, and grinning like it was some kind of victory. She drew back the bolt and wrenched it open. She paused at the threshold, but didn't look back when she spoke. “Everybody get that? Kitchens and baths are last resort. Don't let Bobby tell you different.”

“Fuck you.”

Now she turned around. “That's not a nice thing to say to your boss.”

“Uncle Chuck's my boss.”

“Uncle Chuck isn't here, and you've already had a talking-to about that. Now open your goddamn truck. I think you've got the pry bars and cutters back there. Gabe, lend me a hand, if your dad's gonna be a pain in the ass.”

“Yes ma'am.”

Bobby glared at Gabe, who ignored him while he unlatched the back of the truck and hoisted the door up overhead.

Bobby reached inside and drew a toolbox out of the back, its metal corners dragging with a screech along the truck bed. “This is what they call a hostile work environment—you know that, don't you?”

“Nobody here gives a good goddamn, Robert.”

“If you don't call me Robert, I won't call you Dolly.”

“Fine. That's a deal.”

Brad looked like he wanted to open his mouth and say something, but he wasn't stupid. He wasn't family.

Dahlia stopped by her own truck for the satchel she used as a purse, because she felt naked running around without it, and she still wanted an antihistamine. Her phone was in there, anyway. Dad wanted pictures, and she needed to take some.

Everyone else picked up something useful but heavy—crowbars, bolt cutters, sledgehammers—and added work gloves and masks to the pile.

This first trip around the property was a survey mission. Over the years, she'd learned the hard way that the best use of her time was to get a plan in order, then get to work. Diving right in was more her dad's style, but she was working on him; one of these days, he was bound to admit the useful glories of a list and an itinerary. Maybe one of these days real soon, if she could break down and cram enough Withrow stuff into the trucks before he got there—but that would all depend on what they found in those two tantalizing structures.

Across the great yard they all traipsed, and when they reached the carriage house, Gabe whistled like he was impressed. “It's even bigger, up close. They must've had some big-ass carriages.”

“High cotton,” Bobby reminded him. “Nothing but money, these people. This was the four-car garage of its time.”

Brad offered the bolt cutters to Gabe, since he'd shown the most interest. “A lot of these old things were converted for vehicles, usually in the twenties and thirties.”

Gabe examined the loosely hanging padlock. He positioned the bolt cutters and snipped the thing off with a hearty press. “Uncle Chuck said it'd been closed up for eighty years.”

“That's what the Withrow lady told him.” Dahlia stepped forward and drew a corroded chain down and away, dropping it into the grass. “Now, let's get all hands on deck for these doors, boys. They're heavy as hell, and the hinges are broke, to boot.”

“Hang on a sec,” Gabe offered, and took up a position beside her.

Brad reluctantly joined Bobby on the other door. He couldn't figure out where to put his hands for the best leverage, but he made an honest go of it. “On the count of three?” he suggested.

On three, all four people pulled, and the great double doors split open like a wound. They cracked, splintered, and scraped along the ground, just far enough to admit the whole party standing shoulder to shoulder.

Dahlia would've preferred a wider opening for the sake of the light, but that wasn't in the cards just yet. She was fairly confident they'd have to cut out the doors with a Sawzall or just pry them free when they needed more clearance. They weren't chestnut like the barn, and they weren't worth saving.

She stepped forward into the long-closed building, casting a weird, short shadow in front of herself. One by one, her companions did likewise.

Brad pulled a mask out of his back pocket and held it up to his face. Before Bobby could make fun of him, Dahlia said, “Hey, good idea. Masks on, folks.”

“Are your allergies acting up?” Bobby asked.

She couldn't tell if he was being an ass, just curious, or even trying to be friendly—which was possible. He could be a kiss-ass when it suited him. “Always, but nobody needs a noseful of paint chips and termite shit. There's nothing manly about a fungal infection, so everybody's going to suck it up and be safe. Now, let's uncover these windows and let a little light in here…” She looped her own mask around the back of her head, so the rest came out muffled. “So we can see what we've got to work with.”