House of Strangers. Carolyn McSparren

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СКАЧАТЬ give it a try. If I get uncomfortable, I can always spend a night in a motel.”

      Buddy scratched his balding head. “Your choice, but I wouldn’t advise it. You surely don’t plan on cooking, do you?”

      Paul laughed. “Not with the café next door.”

      “Good, ’cause that old stove might blow up the first time you try to light the pilot.”

      Paul followed Buddy to the front door and opened it for him. He was, after all, the host. Odd feeling. He’d never owned a house or even a condo in his life.

      “My crew will be here first thing tomorrow morning,” Buddy said. “I got to get back to police work.”

      “Fine.” Paul closed and locked the front door of the house behind the man. He planned to absorb the atmosphere of the place. Maybe meet a ghost. Weren’t ghosts supposed to be troubled spirits doomed to walk the earth to pay for their crimes in life?

      If that was true, then he knew of at least one ghost who ought to be walking the halls of the Delaney mansion in torment. His father.

      CHAPTER TWO

      PAUL’S SHOULDER ached. He drove back to his motel using only his left hand. His right arm would never be really strong again. Even with all the physical therapy and the operations he’d endured, he’d been warned the pain might never completely leave him.

      The damp chill in the Delaney house wasn’t helping. He probably shouldn’t have explored the place again after Buddy left. He hadn’t uncovered anything worth noting, anyway. The dirt floor in the basement, which hadn’t been disturbed since the house was built, was as hard as concrete, and the attic seemed to hold no hidden spaces. He decided he’d explore further when he was rested.

      Another night in a good bed was more necessity than indulgence.

      Time enough to organize his camping equipment tomorrow. And if he hated staying at the house, he could always check back into the motel.

      He shut the door of his room behind him, tossed the key on the dresser and collapsed onto the king-size bed. In his years of flying he’d spent too many nights in anonymous rooms like this. Sometimes when his wake-up call came, he’d have to check the notepad beside the telephone to remember where he was. He never thought he’d miss those days, but now if he had his right arm and shoulder back the way they’d been before the attack, he’d never complain about his crazy flight schedule again.

      Not going to happen. But at least he’d managed to pass the physical for a Class III commercial pilot’s license. He could still fly his own small plane and would be flying a cropduster for the local fixed-base operation in a few weeks. So in some sense, he still had the sky. Doug Slatterly and Bill McClure would never be able to fly again. Doug still had memory lapses and tremors. Bill had lost the sight in his right eye and along with it, his depth perception.

      And all because one of their colleagues had decided to crash the L-10 transport they were flying so that his family could collect double indemnity on his life insurance.

      They’d all had military experience, but even so, the attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that they’d all been badly hurt before they’d fought back. It was a miracle Doug had stayed conscious, keeping the man at bay to give Paul a chance to turn the plane and keep it level.

      In the end, they’d managed to disarm the man and land the plane safely with no loss of life on the ground, but at a horrific cost to their bodies. Paul smiled ruefully. The lunatic was the only one who got what he wanted. After he’d tried to escape from the plane, a police sniper had shot him, and the insurance company had been forced to pony up the double indemnity.

      The three survivors—Bill, the navigator, Doug, the co-pilot, and Paul himself, pilot-in-charge—had been paid off handsomely. The company hadn’t wanted any lawsuits with the attendant publicity. They’d settled generously.

      But he’d be willing to bet that both Doug and Bill would give back the six million bucks they’d each been awarded if they could still qualify for their old jobs. Paul certainly would.

      The last he’d heard, Doug was planning to open a seafood restaurant in Coral Gables. He didn’t know what Bill was doing. Both their marriages had survived, although Bill and Janey had separated for a while.

      Maybe Bill and Janey wouldn’t have come through if they hadn’t actually been legally married with children. Certainly Paul and Tracy hadn’t. Tracy had stuck with him in the hospital and for the first month of physical therapy after he came home, but in the end she’d broken their engagement.

      He didn’t blame her. Tracy had been a flight attendant long enough to have her pick of the prime runs. She’d expected to marry a transport pilot, not a bad-tempered man with a bum arm and no idea what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. She wasn’t the one who changed. He had.

      They’d taken no marriage vows, no “for better or worse.” The breakup had been nasty. They’d both said terrible things that could never be unsaid.

      Tracy had mailed him an invitation to her wedding a month ago to a pilot for one of the big commercial airlines. He had sent her a very expensive silver tray and toasted her alone in his apartment with too much brandy.

      He soaked for an hour in the bath, slept for another and then drove back to the house. He wanted to poke and pry further. Maybe he’d be able to thrash his way through the damp weeds and vines in the garden to the summer kitchen or the garden shack.

      Mrs. Hoddle had told him that nothing remained in the house from the Delaney years. The heir had commissioned an estate agent to sell everything he and his wife didn’t want. A junk dealer had carted off what remained.

      Paul parked in the broken concrete area at the back of the house. No garage, of course. That would have to be built from scratch. He climbed out and stepped into the tall grass that had once been the back lawn. He was surprised to find a herringbone pattern of bricks just visible under the weeds. Must’ve been some sort of patio. He forced his way through tangled vegetation until he found himself snared by overgrown rosebushes.

      Years without pruning should have killed them, but despite the long bracts that snagged his clothing, he could see the beginning of a few green shoots. Maybe they could still be saved.

      The door to the summer kitchen had a heavy, rusted padlock on it. Looking around, Paul decided he wouldn’t be able to get to the fence at the back of the property without a machete, so he gave up and went back to the house.

      Imposing from the front, the house looked much more informal from the rear. He could barely make out the outline of the piano through the filthy bay windows. On his left beyond the music room, the window wall of the conservatory stretched down the entire side of the house. Judging from the layers of grime and the festoons of spiderwebs, no one had washed the outside of those windows in twenty years.

      He walked up the two steps to the back door and fitted his new key into its new lock. The door silently opened on oiled hinges. Buddy’s doing, no doubt. The broad center hall ran straight through the house. Paul could see shadows of the trees in the front yard through the glass of the front door.

      He turned into the kitchen.

      An old butcher-block table marred by the nicks of countless knives stood in the center of the room.

      He СКАЧАТЬ