Grave Doubts (A Paranormal Mystery Novel) Read online

  At that, Robin finally broke a smile. “Okay,” she said, squeezing Lee’s hand. “But be careful. You’re not a detective. And you need to get some sleep first. You look a little like the walking dead yourself.”

  Lee laughed. “Thanks. Only a friend could get away with that.” She gave Robin a quick hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  They said goodbye, and Lee got into the car and pulled onto Marcola Road, overwhelmed by having confessed so many of her inner truths. The sky had cleared, and she cracked the window, hoping the fresh air would relieve the leaden feeling in her stomach.

  Now that she’d given voice to her suspicions about Diane’s death and why she felt so compelled to look into it, she realized the seriousness of what she was doing and the potential danger. She had no intention of trying to solve a murder, but felt driven to find one piece of information that would take this out of the realm of speculation and place it squarely into the center of an investigation. Her resources were few, and she didn’t know the first thing about sleuthing. So, what could she do?

  As she watched the night shadows pass her window, she decided that somehow, Diane would have to point the way.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lee left the open country and pulled onto Highway 126, feeling the need to get home to consider her options. The Kingsford briquette plant whizzed past on the north side of the highway, its mountain of cedar chips blotting out a portion of the night sky. The strip malls flashed past in a blaze of neon light, and a moment later she was crossing over the interstate into Eugene. As she neared the turnoff for home, Diane’s condo came to mind and she made an abrupt decision. With a quick turn of the wheel, she was heading north.

  Diane had lived in a large complex built on the Willamette River. Lee had a key, and it was the only place she knew to look for answers. It was nine-thirty when she pulled into Willamette Oaks and parked in an empty space next to Diane’s lonely Ford Escort. Diane’s was the last of four townhouses facing a large, sloping lawn that fronted the river.

  The parking lot was at the back of the townhouse. Although the parking lot was lit, the condo’s windows were dark and this end of the complex was encased in deep shadows. A nervous chill prompted her to climb out of the car and quickly skirt the building before she could change her mind.

  She came around to the condo entrance from the south side, noticing for the first time how isolated the front door was from the adjoining units. Even the small front porch was encircled by a waist-high wall topped with wooden planters. No one would have a clear view of the front door. Diane liked her privacy, and Lee remembered her mentioning how she had chosen the unit partly for this very reason. Unfortunately, that decision may have contributed to her death. The thought made Lee look anxiously behind her as she approached the door.

  Lee opened the door and gingerly stepped inside, locking it behind her. She was immediately struck with how crisp the air felt. The condo was silent except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. Lee flicked on the overhead light and then stood in the entryway, wondering if she might somehow smell the scent of death. But all she detected was the faint aroma of the rose potpourri that sat on a small antique table by the front door.

  Lee ignored her impulse to turn around and leave and moved into the living room. She turned on the brass lamp that flanked Diane’s dark green Queen Anne sofa and threw her purse onto a wing-back chair. She stood back to survey the room.

  Carey had been there. A few boxes filled with books and loose paper sat next to Diane’s fourteenth-century writing table. Another empty box sat next to the bookcase on the far wall. An antique trunk stood open in the corner, revealing Diane’s neatly folded quilts. Lee couldn’t help but stare at the middle of the floor, just in front of the fireplace. There was no indication of the body. The police hadn’t drawn a chalk outline like they do in the movies, and of course there was no blood. There was just the oval braided carpet Diane had purchased at a discount warehouse, surrounded by the newly finished hardwood floor.

  Lee forced herself to shift her gaze to the fireplace mantel where Diane’s old 35mm Olympus camera sat tucked in amongst some family photos. Since Carey had offered it to her, Lee stepped over to pick it up, thinking about the many times she’d teased Diane about not moving up to a digital camera. When she lifted up the camera, the back dropped open exposing an empty interior. This made Lee pause. Diane had taken a picture of Lee the night she died. So where was the film? Lee stared at the inside of the camera until she had to rub her eyes. She was tired. Too tired. And she wasn’t here to worry about the camera. She was here to find the Italian vase.

  She set the camera on the chair next to her purse, and then turned to the coffee table where a cut glass bowl sat right where the urn used to be, looking quite small and anemic in comparison. A quick look around the living room confirmed the urn was nowhere in sight. For the next fifteen minutes, Lee conducted an intense search, opening cupboards and drawers. She even looked behind furniture, but everything was in perfect order, not a dust mote or a single spec of dirt in sight. And no urn.

  She climbed the stairs to the second floor, but Diane’s bedroom and closet were studies in perfection. Hanging clothes were organized by color and season. Plastic shoe bins, labeled by type and color of the shoes inside, were stacked on the floor in strict alignment. Large plastic bins were stacked on the upper shelf, each labeled by their contents. The closet alone was enough to indicate that an obsessive-compulsive person lived here.

  The bathroom didn’t offer any clues, either. The counter was bare except for a small porcelain cup. Her toothbrush, hairbrush, and hair gel were all put away. In fact, the only indications that a living, breathing person had once lived there was a full trash basket and a small piece of paper sticking out of a hastily closed drawer. Lee pulled out the sheet of paper and read the heading. It was from the hospital. Some kind of lab report. Feeling intrusive, she carefully replaced it and headed back downstairs.

  She stopped in frustration when she got to the kitchen. “C’mon, Diane, help me,” she mumbled to herself. “Where’s the vase?”

  Diane’s kitchen floor was cleaner than most of the dishes in Lee’s cupboards, and the counters looked downright lonely for company. Lee had never realized how sparse the condo was before. It made Lee think of her own home where she had trouble understanding the need for empty space. Every counter and wall was filled to capacity.

  “I don’t believe in clutter,” Diane had once said. Lee couldn’t help smiling, remembering her response. “You can’t believe or disbelieve in clutter, Diane. Clutter isn’t a religion!”

  Diane had merely raised an eyebrow before putting a pair of scissors in a drawer where they belonged.

  Lee sighed, feeling a heavy ball settle into the middle of her chest again. She knew that time would eventually lift the weight she felt at Diane’s loss. But that time couldn’t come soon enough.

  She took a deep breath and surveyed the rest of the kitchen, trying to focus on the task at hand. Her gaze came to rest on the tall plastic trashcan that stood next to the kitchen sink. On impulse, she stepped over and lifted the lid, thinking Diane might have broken the vase and thrown it away. But she was surprised to find the container lined with a clean trash bag. When Lee had stopped by the night Diane died, she’d arrived just as Diane was putting in a new trash bag. As they talked though, Diane had tossed in an empty cat food can and chicken broth box. Even those were missing now. So where were they? According to the coroner, Diane had died between nine o’clock and midnight. So, she wouldn’t have emptied the trash can a second time. Unless…

  Lee ran outside to the Pathfinder and grabbed the flashlight from her glove compartment. A minute later, she was standing by the shed that camouflaged the condo’s two large trash containers. This was a long shot if there ever was one, and yet, if she didn’t check now, she might regret it later. According to the sticker on the side of the dumpster, the trash would be picked up the next day.

  L
ee held her breath and lifted both steel lids. She pushed them back with a bang, giving her an unencumbered view of the inside. Both bins were filled to the top. Crumpled brown shopping bags, white plastic garbage bags, and shiny black leaf bags were scattered across the surface of the first bin, along with old shipping boxes, and an empty stereo box. Tucked in the corner was a broken lawn chair.

  Lee knew Diane used only white plastic trash bags with yellow ties, purchased at the same store. God, that woman was compulsive! Lee figured the bag she was looking for would be at, or near, the top. It was difficult to sort through everything while holding the flashlight, so Lee placed the light on the ledge and pushed up her sleeves. She balanced herself on the wheel and leaned in, carefully pulling bags and boxes out. Occasionally, she paused to point her flashlight into the depths of a bag. Several times, she pulled out a false lead. Once it was a yellow ribbon, another time it was a yellow envelope addressed to someone in number seventeen. One bag with a yellow tie string surfaced, and she turned it over. Empty cat food cans and cigarette butts dropped out. She almost gagged at the smell of rotting tuna, but the cigarette butts confirmed that it wasn’t Diane’s. Feeling foolish, she threw everything back in and closed the lid. She turned to the second dumpster. This time, she was a little overwhelmed to find six or seven bags with yellow ties right near the top.

  She pulled each bag to the front and searched through the contents as best she could. Coffee grounds and sour milk spilled over her hands. At one point, she lost her balance and lurched forward, shoving her left hand deep into the center of a bag. Her hand encountered something gushy, which oozed through her fingers making her stomach turn. When she yanked her hand out, there was a sucking sound followed by the sound of ceramic hitting ceramic.

  Lee forgot her queasiness and snapped up the bag. She stepped back off the wheel, reaching for the pavement with her left foot. Instead of pavement however, her foot landed on something that moved, and suddenly a cat shot into the parking lot with a high-pitched scream. Lee’s foot flew out from under her as she twisted in mid-air and fell to the ground.

  With a groan, she sat up and stretched out her back. She was breathing hard, the bag of garbage forgotten beside her. When a cool breeze wafted across the trash containers, bringing the smell of something awful with it, Lee leaned forward and rested her head on both knees, careful not to touch anything with her hands. This was crazy, she thought. What in the world did she think she was doing?

  The sound of an engine caught her attention just as a brown pickup truck pulled slowly through the parking lot. The headlights swept across her as the pickup passed by, and she quickly got up. She brushed old lettuce from the front of her sweater and flicked chunks of something gooey off her sleeve. Too stubborn to leave, she ripped open the bag in her hand. Pieces of porcelain tumbled onto the asphalt, along with empty tomato sauce cans. Lee squatted in the dark, shining the flashlight onto the white, glazed pieces at her feet feeling cheated. It wasn’t the urn. Maybe Diane hadn’t broken it after all. Carey would probably find it when she emptied the condo over the weekend.

  Lee returned the pieces of porcelain to the bag and angrily threw it back with the rest of the trash. After wiping her left arm on a paper bag to get rid of the muck, she closed the lid and marched back to the condo, heading straight for the kitchen sink where she grabbed the liquid soap and began to scrub. Her hands were covered with slime, and something green filled the underside of her fingernails. Through tears of frustration, she scrubbed them clean, dried them, and then leaned on the sink as she’d done that morning with Amy.

  “I can’t do this alone, Diane,” she cried. “Please! Show me something. Anything!”

  That’s when she heard a thud in the other room.

  Lee turned with a jerk. Her heart pounded so hard, she thought it might escape her chest. But she waited – waited and listened. Her ears strained for the slightest sound. There was nothing. After a long pause, she pushed her right hand along the counter, looking for a drawer handle. She never took her eyes off the kitchen doorway. With trembling fingers, she pulled open the nearest drawer and blindly searched for something she could use as a weapon. When something sharp poked her thumb, she risked a glance. The drawer was filled with cooking accessories. She grabbed a meat skewer and moved slowly forward, holding the long spindle before her like a dagger.

  She inched her way across the kitchen into the small dining room, where the light from the kitchen splashed shadows across the oak table and chairs, but left the corners in complete darkness. Stopping at the end of the table, her senses reached out, searching for foreign sounds. Only the ominous ticking of the grandfather clock greeted her. She crossed to the front door and then turned and faced the living room, fully expecting to confront an intruder.

  Instead, she froze, her eyes wide, her veins pulsing.

  Her purse lay on the floor in front of the wing back chair, its contents regurgitated across the carpet. Along with her wallet and car keys, the small onyx bird sat upright, facing her. Lee gaped as one bird eye seemed to glint in the low light. The saliva in her mouth tasted sour, and the buzzing was back in her ears.

  She had left the figurine on her vanity table at home. She hadn’t brought it with her. And her purse had been thrown back into the corner of the chair. So how in the hell…?

  She swallowed a lump the size of a golf ball. What was going on? Was someone else in the condo? She turned towards the front door, but it was closed and locked.

  Lee moved slowly into the living room and did a quick three-sixty next to the sofa, meat skewer at the ready. As she did so, the toe of her shoe lifted the braided rug and something scraped against the floor. The noise caught her off guard, and a chill rippled down her spine. For a moment she forgot the possible intruder and reached down cautiously to lift back the rug. A thick chunk of smoky yellow porcelain, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, fell to the floor.

  Lee’s knees almost buckled as thoughts of imminent danger evaporated; it was a piece of the missing vase. She dropped the meat skewer on the coffee table and leaned over to pick up the piece of ceramic. Her eyes danced back and forth from the bird on the carpet, to the chipped piece in her hand. Was there a connection? As she studied the broken piece of urn, something else caught her attention.

  The area rug was out of place.

  Why hadn’t she noticed it before? The rug usually sat in between the fireplace and the coffee table − not underneath the coffee table. Lee’s head riveted back and forth from the coffee table to the fireplace, calculating distances. The carpet had been moved a good three feet. She picked up her purse and all of its contents and placed it on a side table along with the piece of porcelain. Then she pulled the marble-topped coffee table away from the sofa and lifted the entire corner of the rug. She couldn’t control the small cry that escaped her lips. There was a fresh gouge in the perfectly polished hardwood floor, almost exactly where the porcelain had been held prisoner by the rug’s fibers. Lee leaned over and stuck her finger into the indentation, as if the jagged edges might tell her a story. The question was − did the broken vase have something to do with Diane’s death? And if so, what could Lee do with this new piece of information?

  She replaced everything and picked up her purse, dropping the piece of porcelain into her pocket. Then she reached for the camera and the bird, convinced now that something besides suicide had taken Diane’s life. Finally, she grabbed her coat off the back of a chair and started for the door.

  She had just stepped into the entryway when something dark flashed past the large mirror on the wall, making Lee nearly jump out of her skin. When a second image flitted past her right shoulder, she spun in a circle, dropped her purse and ran for the meat skewer. She grabbed it off the coffee table and backed up to the fireplace, shaking with fear.

  Seconds passed and nothing else happened. No sound. No movement. Her heart raced, drumming an incessant beat in her ears. With faltering footsteps, she finally inched forward and peeked aroun
d the corner of the sofa into the entryway. She expected someone to jump out from around the corner, but what she saw made her dizzy instead, and she dropped her defensive stance in shock.

  Lying on the carpet, just in front of the mirror, was a long dark feather.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Adrenalin propelled Lee home in a blur. She couldn’t remember leaving the condo or getting into her car. She couldn’t even remember finding her car keys. Her heart was still racing, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. By the time she entered the area surrounding the campus, she felt completely frayed at the edges.

  She was positive she’d left the onyx bird on her vanity at home. Yet, somehow it had shown up on Diane’s floor, one eye glinting in the low light. She was just as positive her purse hadn’t fallen to the floor all by itself. And the feather hadn’t been anywhere in the house when she’d arrived. So, what the hell had happened? There were only two explanations. Either someone had been in the condo with her all along, or…or…what? What was the second explanation?

  With a sudden twist of the steering wheel, she swerved to the curb and stopped. A big truck rumbled past, throwing rainwater against the car as she put on the emergency brake. She sat with her head resting on the steering wheel for a full minute. Eventually, the adrenalin pumping through her veins began to slow, and she sat back.

  Privately, Lee had always accepted the possibility that there were things no one could explain. But she couldn’t say exactly that she believed in the paranormal. In fact, she’d attended a party once at an abandoned house in college that was reportedly haunted, and spent the entire night flinching like a school girl at suspicious noises. So, if ghosts were real, she knew she didn’t have the stomach for them. Faced now with something that could only be described as abnormal, she wondered if she was going nuts. She had no idea how to explain anything that had just happened, but decided very quickly that she couldn’t go off on tangents looking for ghosts or supernatural bullshit. What she had to do was find out what had happened to Diane.