Evil Behind That Door Read Free Page A

faded, and I saw a frown cross Swan’s face.
    â€œYou guys still looking at him?” Aunt Penny asked.
    Hurley hitched his pants over his gut. He wasn’t a big guy, but he managed to look like a bear in his cop gear.
    â€œAunt Penny, you know I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation. But yeah, we’re sending the canine unit out there today, and until we know what happened to them…”
    Constable Swan was watching me. Her blue eyes were serious now. She wasn’t from around here, so she didn’t know all the local gossip, but she caught on fast. It would be so easy to blurt out that I’d found some bones. But the thought of Barry held me back. He’d be freaked out enough already with the police bringing dogs to nose around.
    So I ducked my head and made for the door. I felt Swan’s hand on my arm as I brushed past. Her voice was a whisper.
    â€œBe careful, eh?”
    I walked out of Aunt Penny’s in a daze. My skin felt hot where Jessica Swan had touched it. She’d never in a million years be interested in a scrawny, dirt-poor handyman like me, but it was nice to know she worried. My mind spun as I tried to make sense of what I’d learned. Not just from the cops, but also from Aunt Penny about Barry’s brother. I couldn’t ask Barry about him. There were too many walls in that family, too many walls in his mind. I needed more answers before I could figure out what to think.
    The Mitchell family was another that didn’t put much stock in God. Sunday mornings Pete would still be at home sleeping it off, and I’d never seen Connie in town without him. But if she’d brought back an urn, it should be buried someplace.
    I knew it wasn’t in the cemetery where my mother was buried, because I knew every tombstone in the place. So I headed to the Protestant church in town, the old one down by the creek. It was a peaceful kind of place, if that’s important to you.
    In April the trees were still bare, but their branches were beginning to turn green. Some little blue flowers were already out and the grass was full of daffodils. At the bottom of the slope, the creek brimmed over its banks.
    I searched the tombstones, looking at dates. Close to the church, the stones were over a hundred years old. Farther out near the parking lot, they were polished and new. Faded plastic flowers leaned against some of them. I hate walking in graveyards, imagining the dead bodies under my feet. When the cops took me to identify my mother, the car windshield had pretty much wiped out her face. But there was enough of her left that I can’t forget.
    I shivered. I was about to give up when I stumbled upon a bunch of small plaques down by the creek. They were spaced only a few feet apart, just big enough for an urn. As I pushed aside the wild rosebushes with my foot, I read the names. Familiar village names—Bud’s father, Ripley’s brother. Then a plain little stone on the ground.
    Louie Mitchell, beloved son.
January 4, 1979–April 20, 1982
    Three years old, I thought. About the size of a yearling lamb.

CHAPTER FIVE
    I lay awake half the night, imagining the sound of a little boy screaming in the dark.
    By morning I’d decided I was never going back to the Mitchell house. I knew Aunt Penny would kill me for quitting a real job, but I didn’t need the money that bad. Spring was here. Spring meant cottagers looking for handymen to fix their decks or leaky roofs, or to get rid of the mice that had moved in over the winter.
    It also meant the snow had melted off all the stuff in my yard. Aunt Penny called it junk. I called it supplies. I’m an inventor. A broken lawn mower could have a new life as a winch or a scarecrow. Even a three-legged chair was good for something. I knew everyone in the village laughed, but what inventor hasn’t had lean times before he made his big discovery?
    It was a sunny day. I sat on my front porch with my