The Burning Read Free Page B

something burning. It had been permanently stuck in her nose since they’d moved in.
     
    Eric shouted, and she jumped on the spot.
     
    “What?” she yelled back.
     
    “Get in here.”
     
    Tessa ran through the front door. Their furniture lay piled in the center of the living room covered in a white sheet until the room could be painted. The cathedral ceiling was sixteen feet high with a wooden railing along the top that led from one bedroom to the other. He wasn’t upstairs by the railing where she’d last seen his computer.
     
    “Where are you?” she asked.
     
    “In the kitchen,” he said.
     
    At the archway to the kitchen, Tessa stopped and gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.
     
    “Why did you do that?” Eric asked.
     
    She had nothing to do with what sat in the oven, and since it was only the two of them at the house, it had to be him.
     
    “You know I didn’t do that ,” she said, pointing at the oven. “I’m not capable of doing that .”
     
    “Then who did?”
     
    “I have no idea,” she said.
     
    Eric looked away from her. “You don’t have to be sarcastic. There’s only the two of us and since I didn’t do it, it had to be you.”
     
    The smell intensified as the oven’s door lay open. Tessa wanted to cover her nose but instead crossed her arms and stared at Eric.
     
    “That’s funny. I was just thinking the same thing. Is this some kind of prank?”
     
    “You’re kidding, right? You set this up and now you’re pretending it was me.”
     
    “Okay, Eric, I trust you,” she said, unfolding her arms. “But if I didn’t do this and you didn’t, then who did?”
     
    He looked at the stove and then back at her. “I have no idea. Could someone have come in while we were talking to the cop?”
     
    “How? The back door is covered up with furniture. They would’ve had to walk right by us at the front door.” The smell became overwhelming. “Can you grab that thing and toss it in the bush, and then we’ll talk about this outside?”
     
    Eric opened the cutlery drawer and pulled out the barbecue tongs. Carefully, he leaned into the stove and applied the tongs to either side of the rat’s burnt carcass. With the blackened rodent’s body held firm in his grip, Eric walked across the kitchen toward the door. Once outside, he continued away from the house and tossed the body into the trees.
     
    “There, it’s gone,” he shouted back at her as she stepped outside.
     
    Tessa shuddered the length of her body. “We’ve been here since yesterday. Do you think that charred smell was the rat all this time, and we just found it?”
     
    Eric shook his head. “No, the oven light was on when I went back into the house after the cop left. This is new.” Eric touched his chin and looked sideways, lost in thought. “Funny how it coincides with the cop showing up.”
     
    “Yeah, funny,” Tessa said, with sarcasm.
     
    Dark clouds formed overhead. Blue sky still surrounded the area and the sun shone in the late afternoon position. “It looks like we might get a sun shower.”
     
    “Tessa, I’m going to run into town to see if I can find our real estate agent. After that, I’m going to see if the library is open. Maybe they have newspapers or records on the Jared Tavallo missing person report. I’d like to know more about that. Will you be okay here?”
     
    “Yeah, but maybe you could walk through the whole house to make sure whoever stuck the rat in our oven isn’t still here?”
     
    “Of course,” Eric said and stepped past her.
     
    He entered the front door and skipped up the steps. Tessa stood alone, staring up at the gorgeous chalet they had just bought for a steal. They paid less than half the going rate without wondering why. Full disclosure didn’t reveal that any murders or suicides had taken place in the home. As far as they could tell, the mysteriously anonymous previous owners just wanted to unload the property as fast as they could.
     
    Tessa