The Guest House Hauntings Boxset Hazel Holmes (easy novels to read TXT) 📖

Dell turned into the station, parked, and then hurried from the car to the building, a bell chiming at his entrance, but Faye didn’t even bother looking up as he hung his jacket on the rack. “Any calls while I was out?”

“Ms. Furtter was complaining about a noise she heard in her attic, but after spending a few minutes on the phone with us, she realized it was just one of her cats that had gotten up there.” Faye turned the page of the newspaper. She was still wearing her gloves and scarf as if she were sitting outside, but as she sat so close to the door, he didn’t say anything.

“How many of those things does she have now?” Dell asked, grabbing a mint from the bowl on Faye’s desk.

Faye lowered the paper, staring at Dell as he unwrapped the peppermint candy and popped it into his mouth. “What are you doing here? You don’t have a shift tonight.”

Dell leaned on the counter, his weight pressed into his forearms as he pushed the mint around his mouth with his tongue. “The Bell house uses contract workers, right?”

“I think so. Why?” Faye asked.

“Maine law states that employers need to perform background checks on any hired employees,” Dell said then smiled. “I was hoping you could get them for me.”

Faye grunted in frustration, kicking her legs off the desk, and then rocked out of her chair. “You only flirt with me when you want something.” She turned around, hips swaying back and forth as she headed toward the file room. “If a rat bites me when I’m down in that hellhole, you’re going to have sex with me on your desk to make up for it.”

Dell laughed and then skirted the reception area and sat at his desk. He stared at Maggie Swillford’s ID, waiting for his desktop computer to turn on. It took about fifteen minutes for the hulking beast to warm up. It would probably be faster for him to just go out and grab the laptop from the car, but he liked using the quiet time to think.

The computer finally booted up, and Dell logged into the crime database to see if Ms. Swillford had had any legal trouble. She’d had a drunken and disorderly charge, but he found that it was the weekend after her twenty-first birthday. He found another charge of underage drinking when she was nineteen. Her rap sheet stretched a little bit longer from speeding tickets and parking violations, but it was ordinary as far as civilians went.

Dell drummed his fingers on the keyboard and then swiveled in his chair toward the hallway down which Faye had disappeared. “Faye? You all right down there?” After a minute of silence, he got up to investigate but then stopped at the slamming of a door and her feet thumping down the hallway.

Faye stopped at the end of the hallway just before stepping into the small office space where Dell and his two coworkers resided. “A rat bit me.”

“It’ll take a few minutes to clear off my desk,” Dell replied. “I wouldn’t want to break the computer.”

She smirked, hips swaying wildly on her return to the reception desk. “There weren’t any background checks on file, though I could have told you that if the captain would just upgrade us to a digital system so I didn’t have to root around in that musty rat trap of a file room.”

Dell frowned. “They’ve never requested any background checks or filed any paperwork? What about that groundskeeper? He was there when I was a kid.”

“Nothing.” Faye returned to her reclined position and picked up the newspaper again.

Dell looked at the ID card again, examining the young woman’s picture. She was around the same age as the woman who had given him the license, which hinted at a pattern, albeit a blurred one. But if the Bells never filed any background checks for their workers, that meant he had cause to go to the house and poke around. Which was exactly what he intended to do.

65

Once out of the town, Sarah darted off the road and into the woods but stayed close enough to the road to help guide her to the highway.

Headlights pulled her attention back to Bell, and Sarah watched the deputy’s sedan drive toward the highway.

And despite having done what she thought was right, Sarah stopped, the crunch of leaves under her boots ending as she finally turned around.

The forest blocked the view of the mansion, but she knew it was there, sitting high on that hill. When she had first seen it when she entered town, she’d thought it was a sign of what was possible, but now a cancerous tumor came to mind.

Shame reddened her cheeks. Shame from not telling the deputy about the body, about not doing more to help someone else, but she had enough on her plate to worry about. It wasn’t her fault other people couldn’t take care of themselves.

The forest was full of rustling leaves, and the darkness made its depths that much more sinister. Sarah jerked from any sudden movement or noise. She’d gotten used to being jumpy, and for better or worse, she’d grown used to being hunted.

Nothing was so soul crushing as helplessness. She had fought so hard and so long to earn independence that when she finally had it, she cherished it. No one to answer to, no one to tell her how to live her life.

But after a while, she had discovered that while the world had its freedoms, it also had its limitations. And those limitations would beat you down into a pulp if you let them.

The forest ended, and Sarah stepped from the trees and onto the highway. There were no light posts, and clouds blanketed the moon and stars, casting the road into pitch black.

Sarah turned south, staying on the shoulder, her eyes peeled for any potential rides