it right here,” he said, and the last word sounded like “hee-ya.” Mom would call that accent charming and say it was local “flavor.” Cody found it irritating as all get-out. The sheriff held up a big old key on a brass ring. Like a jail-cell key from an old western. Or the key to the dungeons in a horror flick. Cody felt the tone slipping from King to Poe. This was not a good sign. “I’ll help you with your things, if you like. Power’s been turned on, and everything should be ready for you.”
“That was kind of you, Sheriff.”
“Yeah,” Cody put in. “I’m glad to know we’ve got pow-uh.”
His mom’s elbow dug into his ribs, but the doomed sheriff didn’t seem to notice Cody’s mimicry. He just nodded. “Least I could do for your grandmother, ma’am. Kate Fortune was one hell of a lady, if you’ll pardon the expression. When she asked me to watch after the place for her, I was more than happy to do it. Pity we’ve lost her now.”
Jane nodded. “I miss her terribly.” She slipped an arm around Cody’s shoulders and squeezed. “We both do.”
The sheriff nodded, cleared his throat. “Well, come on and follow me. I’ll show you around. And while I’m at it, I’ll tell you all about our town’s one and only claim to fame. This place’s original owner, and resident ghost, if you believe in that kind’a thing. Zachariah Bolton.” He walked as he spoke, in that slow, lazy pattern that left every sentence sounding like a question. They followed him up the porch’s wide steps and across it to the front door, which was tall, and dark, and to Cody’s way of thinking just a little bit scary.
Then Quigly O’Donnell opened the front door, and he decided he’d been wrong. It was a lot scary.
Quigly O’Donnell snapped on a light.
It was fabulous! Everything Jane had ever wanted in a home was in this house. Oh, she knew most of her family thought her hopelessly old-fashioned, but she wasn’t fond of modern society and all its trappings. Modern-day values were what had landed her pregnant and alone ten years ago, and that shock had gone a long way toward guiding Jane to her own perhaps outmoded system of morality.
This house was the embodiment of the life she wanted for her and Cody. A simple, old-fashioned life. With one notable exception. There would be no father in this traditional American family. Jane was mom and dad and everything in between. Everyone said she couldn’t do it all, that she was pushing herself too hard. But she could. And she’d do it without her family’s money. She wanted no part of the family business or the wealth that went with it. It was a rat race, everyone fighting to hold on to their share of the pie and always worrying about someone trying to take it from them. No. That wasn’t anything she wanted to be involved with.
This, though—this would be perfect.
“I never thought my modern-minded grandmother had a clue what to make of me,” she whispered as she moved through the modest entry hall and into the Gothic living room, with its high ceilings and intricate, darkly stained woodwork. “But Grandma Kate knew me better than I ever imagined. She must have, to have left me this place.” All around them, furniture stood draped in white sheets, like an army of ghosts.
“And that guest house out front will be perfect for my antique shop.” She couldn’t stop smiling. The place was her dream come true.
“The house isn’t the half of it, ma’am,” Sheriff O’Donnell offered. “It’s the history that goes along with it that makes it so special.” He’d carried in two of their suitcases, and he set them on the hardwood floor. “You’ve heard of quinaria fever, of course?”
“Heard of it?” Jane glanced behind her, but Cody was already off exploring nooks and crannies, flashing his ever-present penlight into closets and cupboards. Her heart twisted a little in her chest at the mere mention of the disease. “I nearly lost my son from it,” she said quietly. “He was exposed as a baby. Thankfully, we caught it in time.”
Frowning, the sheriff tilted his head. “Well, now, if that don’t beat all…” Then he shrugged. “Hell of a coincidence, ma’am, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“Why’s that, Sheriff?”
“Well, Zachariah Bolton was the man responsible for finding the cure. Tryptonine, you know. Same drug we use today, with a few modifications, of course. If it hadn’t been for him— Ah, now here’s the dining room. Floor-to-ceiling hardwood cupboards on two walls. See there? Same as in the kitchen. And the ones here on the wall in between…” He opened a cupboard door, left it wide, then meandered into the kitchen. Opening the cupboard from that side, he peered through at her. “See that? Accessible from either side.”
“That’s very nice.” But she was more interested in the tale he’d been telling before.
Cody joined them then, having heard the tail end of the sheriff’s comments. “You’re dead wrong about tryptonine, Sheriff,” he said, then grinned innocently at his mom and added, “if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“Cody!”
“Come on, Mom. Everyone learns this stuff in fourth grade. The quinaria virus was cured by Bausch and Waterson in 1898.”
Jane scrunched her eyebrows and shook her head. “Are you a walking encyclopedia, or what?”
He shrugged and looked past her to Sheriff O’Donnell.
“Well, now, that’s a bright young fellow you have there, Ms. Fortune. Cody, is it? Well, Cody, m’boy, you have part of it right. But you don’t know the whole tale. Did you know, for instance, that Wilhelm Bausch and Eli Waterson spent most of their time competing against one another? Great researchers, sure enough. But more focused on getting the jump on each other than on the importance of their work. Blinded by ambition, you might say.”
Jane saw Cody’s eyes narrow suspiciously. But he listened.
“It was their friend Zachariah Bolton who finally brought them together. And only by working together were they able to find the cure.” He waved a hand to indicate that they should follow him and turned back toward the living room, then headed up the stairs. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
Jane knew she was grinning like a loon, but she couldn’t help herself. “Isn’t this great, Codester? A house complete with a ghost and a historical past?”
“Mom, you’re too into history. Get with the nineties, willya?”
“Yeah, yeah. Hurry up, I want to hear the rest of this.” She followed her son, noticing the way he paused just outside the door of the room at the top of the stairs. He stood still for a moment, staring at that door. Then shivered and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand.
“You okay, pal?”
“Yeah. Sure, fine. C’mon.”
Sheriff O’Donnell headed into a bedroom farther down the hall, snapped on a light and waved his arm with a flourish when they entered.
Jane caught her breath. “My God,” she whispered, blinking at the portrait on the far wall. “It looks like a Rockwell!” She moved closer, ran her fingertips lovingly over the ornate frame, then touched the work itself. “But it can’t be. This has to be at least a hundred years old.”
“You
