The Haunted Bones (2 page)

But on dark days like today, taking a ride
to that part of town so she could see that wall made her happy. She
could laugh silently, knowing that behind the wooden shelves filled
with liquors and exotic spirits, behind the dated wallpaper, behind
the drywall, between the layers of bricks and cinder blocks, hung
the remains of the woman who had birthed her and the future that
would have ruined her life.

It had been a few years since her last visit
to the old bar. But she was ready, and she had cash in her wallet
so she could buy something very expensive and drink it in front of
her mother, to prove to the old crone that now she could afford
anything she wanted.

And there it was—the corner building on the
left—

Her heart fell into her
stomach when she didn't see the sign over the door. The iron hanger
was still there, but the wooden sign with the pub name,
The Alley Haunt
, wasn't
there. She slowed the car and stopped in the middle of the street.
There was no traffic in the storm, so no one honked a horn or
flipped her off as they moved around her. Her headlights cut a beam
through the rain as her intermittent wipers cleared the glass with
every other beat of her heart.

The windows were dark and the bar's old logo
had been scrubbed off the glass.

The unthinkable came to her. Had they gone
out of business? Was it the economy? And, more importantly, had
anyone started construction inside?

Common sense said to drive away. Never look
back. No one could ever connect her to the body in the wall. The
person who had walled that woman up was dead. Long dead. She had
gone to great expense and lengths to change her appearance, alter
everything about herself.

Anger replaced guilt and fear. She believed
the owners would always be there! That was the deal when she sold
the place to them under an assumed company. How dare they close it
down?

A lone silver Prius in front of the store
caught her attention. Businesses on either side were also dark. She
looked around and realized the entire neighborhood had For Sale
signs in its windows.

No…no, no, no. This couldn't be happening.
Three years ago, this was a thriving area of town. Up-and-coming
yuppies—did they still call themselves that? They were here. They
were moving in. Her secret was safe as long as the building was
being used.

A ghostly image appeared in the front
window. Someone was inside! It looked like a man from her angle.
Maybe it was the owner of the car. That's when she noticed a For
Sale sign on the door of the bar. Was he a prospective buyer? A
contractor? Was he a PI?

Drive away!

No. She had to know who this man was and
what this man was doing here.

It was easy to find a parking spot for her
Mercedes. The rain had moved from a downpour to a drizzle. She
hesitated about bringing her gun with her. If she had a gun, she'd
use it. And now wasn't the time for making more mistakes. She
needed information. If this person proved to be a problem, she
could pay to have him disappear later.

She had money.

Lots of money.

And she had power.

After she shoved her purse under her seat,
she grabbed the keys, got out, hit the lock on the key fob, and
walked swiftly across the dead street to the corner where her life
had started.

The man wasn't in the window anymore. Had he
seen her and left through the back alley? She tried the handle—an
innocent customer looking for a former store was a good cover, just
in case. The door was locked, so she took a step back and looked at
the car.

After a few seconds, she heard the lock
slide and the door opened.

The man who stepped into view was the same
one she'd seen in the window. But now he was clearer. He was tall
and lean, with a thin face and light brown hair. The hair was thick
and looked as if someone had tried to cut it into submission but
failed. It was short around the collar of his dark blazer and the
maroon shirt beneath. His expression, when he spotted her, was
pleasant. He was just a few inches off of handsome, but he was
attractive.

The eyes were what put her off guard at
first. They were haunted eyes. Eyes that held secrets. "Can I help
you?" he asked. His voice was nice. A medium tenor, filled with
apprehension and a Southern drawl.

She put on her best smile and half-feigned
surprise. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. I used to come here a few years
ago with my husband. It was a bar—but I see the sign's gone and the
place is for sale."

He nodded and glanced behind him before he
spoke. His right brow arched up into this thick hair. "Yeah, it's
been closed down for about a year and a half. Everything's cleared
out. Sorry."

She stuck out her hand. "I'm Mary
Smith."

He hesitated a second before taking her
hand. His was warm and a bit clammy. "Devan McNally." He gave her a
firm handshake and let go. "Did you want to come in and see?"

She schooled her features into the proper
look of appreciation, even though she couldn't believe her luck.
This guy was a sucker, and given the look of his car and his
clothing, there was no way he was a buyer. "Yes, if you don't mind?
I lost my husband a year ago and I was being nostalgic."

He stepped aside to let her in, then closed
and locked the door behind them. "Sorry—I'm not a crazy lunatic or
anything, but this neighborhood went downhill pretty fast and the
guys at the bank told me to make sure I locked all the doors and
windows while I was here. Oh, and to keep an eye on my car."

That was all interesting news, and given
with little prompting. "So…the bank owns this property now?" She
moved to the farthest wall, the one separating this store from the
one next door. A fire wall and the tomb of a wicked lady. The old
shelves were still there, along with the mirror between them.
Nothing had been disturbed.

Yet.

Mr. McNally moved to the bar. An
expensive-looking camera sat near a black bag. He had one of those
tablets in his hand and was moving his finger over the surface.
"Yeah," he said absently. "They own all three of these units now
and they're looking to sell." He nodded to the For Sale on the
window.

"So are you here," Mary said as she
approached him and tapped the camera, "to take pictures for the
bank?"

"Yes and no. I'm here for the bank to make a
portfolio to show a client who's interested in the whole building.
But I'm tailoring the pictures to the client's tastes." He
continued to stare at his tablet. "He wanted me to take shots of
the interior of each store. I took pics of the other two units
yesterday, but I didn't get the keys to this one 'til this
morning." He looked up at her and then around at the room. "You can
look around if you want. I'm basically finished. But I wouldn't go
upstairs."

"Oh?" She frowned at him. "Why? Is it messed
up, up there?"

"No…" He licked his lips. "It just feels
bad. You know? How places have a certain aura about them?"

She wanted to roll her
eyes.
Oh great, one of those touchy-feely
people
. "No, I don't."

"Yeah, it's hard to
explain." He looked back down at his tablet. "Ah, here it
is.
The Alley Haunt
. Wow…they did a thriving business for more than twenty
years."

She stepped closer and looked over his hand
at the tablet. He lowered it for her to see. "Yes, that's what I
was remembering."

He used his fingers to
expand the article in the Atlanta
Journal
and Constitution
, then moved it to the
right and tapped a link. That link brought up a new page with a new
headline: JEALOUS RAGE FUELS MIDNIGHT MASSACRE.

She reached out and pulled the tablet
closer. He didn't seem to mind as he read alongside her.

Mary ground her teeth together as she
skimmed. That bastard, the one she sold the property to, had killed
his wife, the daughter of the owners next door, and then himself.
What the hell?

"That sucks." Mr. McNally moved the article
up to finish it with a brush of his finger. He sighed and started
to move away.

"Can I continue reading?" She asked.

He let her have the tablet as he moved back
to the doorway to the back rooms. She knew there was a kitchen back
there and a door to the alley. The upstairs was storage and the
office.

More links brought up smaller articles on
the Haunt Massacre aftermath. What the owners had in assets was
absorbed by debt and the bank inherited the property after the dead
daughter's family tried suing the estate. But it was hard to get
milk out of a dead cow.

She hit the close button for the tablet's
Internet browser and froze when she saw a picture beneath. It was a
shot of the wall. Time stamp said it was taken a few minutes ago.
In the center of the shelving to the right of the mirror was a
strange, ghostly image. Was it a flash flare? Or maybe something
smudged on the camera's lens? She looked from the tablet to the
camera. Was the image stored in there?

"Oh… sorry." He had his hand out for his
tablet. "I was doing a bit of work on one of the pictures."

"Work?" She reluctantly returned the device
to him. "That's a picture of that wall, right?" She pointed to
it.

"Mmhmm." He looked at the wall and then held
up the tablet so they could look at both.

"What is that?" She pointed at the
image.

"I don't know. But if you see it, too, then
it's not just my imagination. That's why I was messing with the
lighting and hue. I'm not sure about you, but it looks like a woman
to me."

Her breath caught in her throat, but luckily
Mr. McNally wasn't paying any attention. "You're right. It does. I
wonder why?"

"I have no idea." He continued holding up
the image for a few seconds. Then he set the tablet on the crate
and took up his camera, and, to her horror, started taking more
pictures of the wall.

"What're you doing?" Her voice came out a
bit high-pitched and filled with panic.

But he didn't seem to notice. "I'm taking
more shots, just to make sure it's a fluke with the light. It
happens sometimes."

"So you come across this a lot in taking
pictures?"

"Not like this." He lowered the camera. She
had to admit he had a nice profile. He looked young. Had to be at
least eight to ten years younger than herself. Long straight nose
and a nice jaw line. She wondered how nice it would look with a
metal pipe slammed into it.

She suspected that camera wasn't an ordinary
camera. It had to have some sort of x-ray attachment to show what
was in that picture. If there was one thing she remembered from
that night, it was how her mother looked, tied and strung up inside
that wall before Mary bricked it back up. And the ghostly woman in
that picture was the exact same image.

She had to get hold of that picture, his
tablet, and the camera. Looking around, she saw there wasn't much
to use in the way of a weapon. The place had been picked bare, and
her gun was in the car. It wasn't a problem killing him—after all,
it was a bad neighborhood. Even the bank said to lock the door.
Killing him and taking everything—it would all look like a
robbery.

After that, she would look into buying the
building herself! That was the answer—it was there all along. The
only reason she sold it was to make the money she needed at the
time. Then she could demolish the wall the way she wanted and
remove the remains so no one would ever find her.

It was a perfect plan. There just wasn't
anything she could use to kill him with.

He started packing up, slipping everything
back into his bag. "Sorry, but I need to go. I can't let you stay
here or they'll have my head." Mr. McNally slipped the bag over his
shoulder and pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the face.
"Christ—it's already late."

She balled her hands into fists. No…he
couldn't go yet! "So are you giving the pictures to the bank
now?"

"Oh, these? No. I have to go through them
and delete the ones that don't work. I'll have to work with them
and create a portfolio. Sort of like a slideshow for the
buyer."

"So you have them saved to your tablet and
camera?"

"No. I've uploaded them to my cloud."

His cloud.

Sonofbitch!
Of course he was using a cloud—separate storage so
he could access files from different devices. So how was she going
to get access to his cloud and get the pictures out of there?
"Oh…uh…are you a professional photographer?"

"Yes." He slipped his hand into his bag and
pulled out a card. "I'm not a huge fan of taking pictures of
weddings, but anything else I can manage. My portfolio and info are
online at that url."

She took the card. It was white and very
simple. Clean. His name, which she already had, his phone number,
and a website. No physical address. "No store?"

"No. I work at home and that's private." He
unlocked the door and let her out, then turned and locked it again.
When he faced her, his gaze moved past her, and he frowned. "Do you
have a Mercedes?"

"Yes."

Mr. McNally looked around the street and
picked up a good-sized rock. "Hey!" he called out and then threw
the rock.

She turned to see two kids trying to use a
slim jim to open her car door just as the rock hit one of them in
the side of the head, missing her car. The kid hit with the
projectile yelled out obscenities.

"I'm calling the cops!" Mr. McNally shouted,
and the two of them ran off. He looked down at her. "I'd get in the
car and get out of this neighborhood, Ms. Smith." He offered her
his hand.

She took it, wide-eyed. "How did you…" She
looked back at the now-empty street. "How did you do that?"