“Dean?”
He straightened in the lobby and turned to face her over the counter.
“Bring your toolbox, too.”
Cradling the coffee mug in both hands, Claire leaned against the wall and watched Dean work. He’d had no trouble cutting the padlock off, but the original lock was proving to be more difficult.
“I think you should call a locksmith, Ms. Hansen. I can’t get in there without damaging the door some.”
“How much?”
He shrugged. “If I get my crowbar from the van, I could probably force it open. Just stick it in here…” He ran a finger down the crack between the door and the jam where the tongue of the lock ran into the wall. “…and shove. It’ll crack the wood for sure, but I can’t say how much.”
Claire took another swallow and considered her options. As long as Dean stayed out of the actual room, there should be no problem; only the largest of sites were visible to the untrained eye. “Go get your crowbar.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When the sound of Dean’s work boots clumping against bare wood suggested he’d reached the lobby, Austin stretched and glared up at Claire. “Couldn’t this have waited until after breakfast? I’m starved.”
“Could you have actually eaten not knowing what we were in for? Never mind. Stupid question.”
“You’ve got your coffee, the least you could’ve done was given me the cream.”
“The vet said you’re not supposed to have cream.” She squatted and rubbed him behind the ears. “Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon. Waiting out on this side of the door has me so edgy, I’m positive the site’s in there.”
“In a just world,” the cat growled, “it would’ve been in the kitchen.”
His boots wet from the run out to the van, Dean slipped them off at the back door and started upstairs in his socks. Making the turn on the second floor landing, he heard voices. I guess she’s talking to the cat.
Voices. Plural, prodded his subconscious.
You’re losing it, boy. The cat’s not talking back.
She had her back to him when he stepped out into the third-floor hall. “Ms. Hansen?”
Claire managed to bite off most of the shriek, but her heart slammed against her ribs as she whirled around. “Don’t ever do that!”
Jerking back a step, Dean brought the crowbar up between them. “Do what?”
“Don’t ever sneak up on me like that!” She pressed her right hand between her breasts. “You’re just lucky I realized who you were!”
Although she was a good six or seven inches shorter than he was and there was nothing to her besides, somehow, that didn’t sound as ridiculous as it should have. “I’m sorry!”
Austin banged his head against her shins and she looked down. “You took your boots off.”
“They got wet.”
“Right. Of course.” Bringing her breathing under control, Claire waved him toward the locked door. “Break the lock, then step away. If there was a fire in there, you won’t want the mess tracked into the hall.”
Dean flashed her a grateful smile as he jammed the crowbar into the crack. Since coming west, he’d found few people who appreciated the kind of problems involved in keeping carpets clean. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And stop calling me ma’am. You make me feel like I’m a hundred years old.” When she saw him fighting a grin, Claire rolled her eyes. “I’m twenty-seven.”
“Okay.” A confidence given required one in exchange. “I’m twenty-one.” As he pulled back on the bar, he glanced over at her expression and wondered how she knew he was lying. “That is, I’ll be twenty-one in a few months.”
“So you’re twenty?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The shriek of tortured wood and steel cut off further conversation. Hands over her ears, Claire watched muscles stretch the sleeves of his T-shirt as the lock began to give. When it popped suddenly, it took her a moment to gather her wandering thoughts—although, she assured the world at large, it was purely an aesthetic interest. In that moment, the door swung open, Dean looked into the room, and froze on the threshold.
“Lord thunderin’ Jesus! Mr. Smythe’s been hiding a body up here!”
“Calm down.” Claire put her palm in the center of Dean’s back and shoved. She’d have had more luck shifting the building. “And move!” Over the years she’d seen bodies in every condition imaginable—and frequently the imagination had belonged to fairly warped individuals. If this body had merely been left lying around, she’d consider herself lucky.
Dean stayed in the doorway, the breadth of his shoulders blocking her way and her view.
“I don’t think,” he said, grasping both edges of the doorframe, “that this is something a lady ought to see.”
“Well, you got part of it right, you don’t think!” Choosing guile over force, she slammed her knees into the back of his at the spot where the crease crossed the hollow. As he collapsed, she pushed past him, one hand reaching out to the old-fashioned, circular light switch.
The room was a little larger than the room Claire had slept in and the decorating hadn’t been changed since the early part of the century. An oversized armchair sat covered in hand-crocheted doilies, a Victorian plant stand complete with a very dead fern stood between the two curtained windows, and a woman lay fully clothed on top of the bed, a sausage-shaped bolster under her head and a folded quilt under her feet. Everything, including the woman, wore a fuzzy patina of dust. The air smelled stale and, faintly, of perfume.
Claire could feel the edges of a shield wrapped around the body—which explained why she hadn’t been able to get a sense of what room six held. The shield hadn’t been put in place by a Cousin. At some point, a Keeper had been by and wrapped the site up so tightly that even another Keeper couldn’t get through. Had Augustus Smythe not needed to leave so badly, Claire could’ve passed happily through Kingston without ever realizing the site existed. The one thing she couldn’t figure out was why a Keeper would bother. While people did occasionally manifest an accident site, the usual response was an exorcism, not the old Sleeping Beauty schtick.
A choking noise behind her reminded Claire she had a more immediate problem. The woman on the bed had clearly been there for some years; she could wait a few minutes longer.
When she turned, Dean had regained his position in the doorway. Her movement drew his locked gaze up off the bed, breaking the connection. For a moment he stared at her, eyes wide, then he whirled around and managed two running steps toward the stairs.
“Dean McIssac!”
There was power in a name.
He stopped, one foot in the air, and almost fell.
“Where are you going?”
Shoving his glasses back into place, he tired to sound as though he found dead women laid out in the guest rooms all the time. “I’m after calling 911.” His heart was pounding so loudly he could hardly hear himself.
“After calling?”
He rolled his eyes anxious to be moving, impatient at the delay. “After calling, going to call; it’s the same thing.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know!” Frustration had him almost shouting. Suddenly self-conscious, he ducked his head. “Sorry.”
Claire waved off the apology. “I meant, why are you going to call 911?”
“Because there’s a body…”
“She isn’t dead, Dean, she’s asleep. If you look at her chest, you can see she’s breathing.”
“Breathing?” Without moving his feet, he grabbed the splintered doorjamb and leaned in over the threshold. “Oh.” Feeling foolish, he shrugged and tried to explain, “I was raised better than to stare at a woman’s chest.”
“You thought it was a corpse.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Who raised you?”
“My granddad, Reverend McIssac,” Dean told her, a little defensively.