Bud mumbled something I couldn’t make out but took as approval for my future visit.
Reed waited for me outside the door and then let us into our place. He shook his head during the quick walk. “That man has a drinking problem.”
“Seems like it.” I wondered when it started. Right after he killed his landlord? I’d be back to interview him later and see what he had to say about Lisa and her son. If possible, I’d see if Delaney would run a background check on him.
Reed yawned as he stopped outside my bedroom door. “You going to be okay tonight?”
I peeked inside to check for ghosts or hidden murderers. “Yeah… totally.”
“Hollar if you need anything,” he said around another yawn.
We parted with a quick wave. The clock read ten past three in the morning when I crawled under the covers, thinking of the different ghosts wandering around Savannah. How did people live in a town haunted by the past?
I tossed.
I turned.
I counted the speckles of ceiling drywall.
I stared at the locked closet door on the other side of the room.
At 4 a.m., I gave up and rolled out of bed with a new plan. If I couldn’t sleep, I could at least investigate. I tried the door to the owner’s closet again, hopeful that maybe the house ghosts had unlocked it for me. Wait? Did this house have ghosts?
Sometimes when people used their actual vacation homes as rentals, they tossed all their personal stuff in a closet and locked it. At least that’s what my grandpa did with his place in Florida when he returned to Michigan for the summer. But Lisa didn’t live here any longer, so what did they have locked away?
I scanned the room behind me slowly, on the lookout for any weird movements. Nothing.
The door didn’t budge, no matter how hard I twisted the handle. After a full two minutes, I gave up and quietly snuck outside my room into the kitchen, retrieving a butter knife from the drawer. A tall, lumbering body covered in shadows waited for me in the living room.
“Ahh,” I gave a quick scream and waved the knife in front of me.
The light flickered on. “Elenore, what are you doing?”
“Reed!” I whisper shouted. He had something in his hands, which flickered in the light as he quickly lowered them to his sides. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”
He cast his gaze toward my open bedroom door. “You were making so much noise in there and when I heard the door open, I grew worried.”
“Wait. Is that a gun?” I asked, slipping to my left to get a better view of him.
He did some weird movement with his hands behind him and then held them out for me to see. Empty.
“Where did you get a gun? Have you had that thing the entire time? Where do you keep it hidden?” I took two steps to the left to see around him, but he moved his body in step with mine. The adjustment put him in line with the light better, and I opened my mouth in shock as it highlighted his bare skin.
Holy shit, he was out here without a shirt on. Heaven help me. I swallowed and shook my head, pretending it didn’t affect me in the slightest.
With a head tilt, he asked about the other elephant in the room. “What are you doing with a butter knife?”
Oh. I lowered my weapon. “I’m breaking into the owner’s closet to see what they’ve kept in there.”
“You mean rifle through a dead woman’s belongings?”
I marched toward the room, feeling his presence behind me. “If you want to be technical about it. Yes.”
“Here, let me,” he said and slid the knife from my hand. Reed lowered himself in front of the locked door and, with two scrapes of metal on metal, the door popped open.
I had no clue the knife idea would even work when I went to get it. “How did you do that?”
“Government skills.” Reed walked into the narrow but deep walk-in closet. He grabbed a manilla folder off a stack of boxes, opened it, and then waved it at me. “Check this out.”
