Page 25 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow
“No,” Smits says. “I mean your dam—your caretaker. Have you met him?”
“Uh, yeah. Ben Vandergriff. Austin’s…” I swallow. “Older brother.”
“That was your grandfather’s way of making amends, I guess. The kid should be grateful, but instead, he does a half-assed job, and now you have a squatter living in your shed.”
“Ben’s thirty years old, Dad,” Josie says. “He’s not a kid.”
“Then he should stop acting like one.” Smits exhales. “I know I sound awful, snapping about a young man who lost his brother, but that boy wields his family tragedy like a baseball bat, hitting anyone who comes into range.” He looks at me. “I hope he was decent to you.”
I go to say something neutral, but my expression must answer for me, because Smits shakes his head. “He was an ass, wasn’t he?”
“Dad…” Josie says. To me, she says, “Ben’s fine. His bark is much worse than his bite. The point right now is that you have someone living in your shed and you walked in on them at night.” She shivers. “I don’t think I could have stayed here after that.”
“I have my aunt, who has a gun.” I quickly add, “A legal handgun in a locked case.”
Josie taps her hip. “I’ve got a gun, too, and I still wouldn’t have stayed.”
“I’m not sure the man is living there. That’s just a guess.”
Her hard look says this isn’t the point, and I have to bite my cheek to keep from laughing. Now that I know who she is, I keep seeing the little girl who tagged along and tried so hard to keep up. Having her giving me shit is adorable… which is not the reaction she wants.
I nod solemnly. “We just didn’t want to call the police our first night here.”
“And seem like a couple of nervous ladies from the city?” Josie shakes her head. “Don’t think that. Please. If you’re concerned, call. This isn’t the big city. Peak tourist season is past, and things have slowed right down. No drowning scares. No campers reporting strange noises in the night. No hikers who didn’t make their rendezvous.”
“No false alarms from city folks,” Smits says.
“We are, however, fully trained officers,” Josie says. “We can handle an intruder, and we should be the ones handling it. If you’re worried we’ll overreact, don’t be. Out here, we know that whoever is in your shed is probably just a drifter passing through. We’ll act accordingly. Now remind me where that shed is, and let’s take a look.”
The shed is empty. We’re all in there with flashlights. Josie spent a couple of minutes fussing with the shed light switch, until her father grumbled again about Ben’s incompetency, and she abandoned it.
There’s no one in the shed. Nor is there any sign that someone has been squatting in there.
“I definitely saw someone,” I say. “I heard them and then I looked up and saw eyes and the outline of a figure in the dark.”
“You didn’t have a flashlight?” Smits asks.
My cheeks heat. “No. City-girl move, I know. I decided to have a bonfire, realized I needed wood, which meant I needed a hatchet… so I tramped out here without a flashlight. I have completely forgotten everything I knew about cottage life.”
“It’ll come back,” he says. “But yes, always have a flashlight. Even in the daytime, these woods can get dark.”
“As for wood,” Josie says, “there’s a place just down the road. The kids sell firewood at the end of the drive, but if you go to the houseand ask, I’m sure they’ll cut you a deal on enough to get through the month.”
“Thanks. Gail will check it out. I’m pretty much stuck here.”
When she frowns, I lift my leg to show the ankle monitor. Then I realize how that might look—especially to cops—and hurry on. “It’s part of the will.”
“Your grandfather—” Josie begins, staring at the monitor. “That’s messed up.” She pulls back. “Sorry. He’s still your grandfather. I shouldn’t judge.”
“Oh, it’s plenty messed up,” I say. “But I am determined to win this last little game of his. My mom really needs—” I clear my throat. “Anyway, I can only leave the property for an hour, so I’m probably not going to take the chance.”
“You need anything, you call Josie,” Smits says.
“We’re fine. Gail isn’t under any restrictions. But yes, we will get that firewood, and we will start carrying flashlights—or at least make sure I always have my phone with its light.”
“About this fellow,” Smits says. “You said you looked up and saw his eyes. Any idea how tall he was?”
“Maybe six feet?”
