Between the Living and the Dead Read Free

in coincidences.”
    â€œJust tell me,” Rhodes said again.
    â€œMuch less the other thing,” Hack said.
    â€œHack,” Rhodes said. “It’s late, and I was asleep. Now tell me what the problem is.”
    â€œWell,” Hack said, “It seems like there’s somethin’ goin’ on at the haunted house.”

 
    Chapter 2
    Rhodes held the phone away from his ear and looked at it. Ruth Grady was dating Seepy Benton. Rhodes hoped there was no connection between this call and Seepy’s new enterprise. He put it back to his ear and said, “Does this have anything to do with Seepy Benton?”
    â€œNot as far as I know,” Hack said, “but then I don’t know very far.”
    Rhodes sighed and said he’d look into it. He hung up the phone and got dressed as quickly and as quietly as he could, but Yancey, the little Pomeranian, woke up and came into the bathroom to see what was going on. The dog was too sleepy even to make a single yip, and because he wasn’t the one who had to go check out a haunted house, he just watched Rhodes for a couple of seconds, then went back into the spare bedroom to get cozy in his doggy bed.
    The two cats, Sam and Jerry, were a bit more curious, but not much. Rhodes had thought cats were nocturnal animals, but as far as he could tell, Sam and Jerry enjoyed sleeping just as much at night as they did during the day, and during the day they really enjoyed it. Or appeared to, since that was about all they did.
    Sam was solid black, and Jerry was black and white. They purred and rubbed against Rhodes’s legs when he went into the kitchen to get himself a drink of water from the refrigerator before leaving. They didn’t purr and rub for long, however. They’d lost interest in him and lain back down on the floor by the time Rhodes put his empty water glass on the counter. They were both asleep by the refrigerator, and it was as if he’d never been there.
    Rhodes got his Kel-Tec PF-9 and ankle holster out of the gun safe in the room where Yancey was sleeping. Yancey didn’t bother to wake up again. The PF-9 was a lightweight pistol with a polymer body that carried seven 9 mm cartridges. Rhodes figured it would provide enough firepower to take down any ghosts he was likely to encounter.
    Rhodes left the house by the front door. He didn’t want to go through the back and wake up Speedo, who might start barking and arouse the neighbors, who wouldn’t be pleased.
    The county car was in the driveway. Rhodes got in and backed into the street. Turning north, he saw heavy black clouds banked in the sky, blocking the stars. A late-spring norther was on the way, and he hoped it would bring some rain. It seemed as if it hardly ever rained anymore.
    A flash of lightning ran down the clouds, and a few seconds later Rhodes heard a dim rumble of thunder. Just the right kind of weather for investigating strange doings at a haunted house.
    Rhodes supposed that nearly every small town had a haunted house. There was one in the nearby town of Obert, and Rhodes had experienced a little trouble there a few years back. Not from ghosts, however, and he wasn’t expecting to run into any ghosts tonight, either. Or this morning. The clock on the dashboard said it was a little after midnight.
    Clearview’s haunted house was only a couple of blocks from the local cemetery, which was probably one reason it was considered to be the home of ghosts. Another reason was that it had been abandoned for forty years or more. It had belonged to a high school teacher named Ralph Moore, who had died one evening of a sudden heart attack. Because he’d died on the weekend and had few friends, his body hadn’t been discovered until he failed to show up for school on Monday morning. A good many rumors had circulated afterward, all of them gruesome and all of them untrue, as far as Rhodes knew. One story said that the teacher hadn’t had a