The footage rewound. I scanned it quickly, looking for traces of a laptop. I don’t know how long I stared at several different screens, but I finally noticed a black shape in the bedroom.
“Pause. Where’s pause?”
I banged away on the board until the video stopped. I studied the image. It was a small, thin case. “That’s the laptop. Now. What happened to you?”
I let the footage roll forward. The date and time stamp showed earlier tonight. It was after Xavier had been murdered. Only about an hour ago.
“Henry, did someone else come to the house?” I said.
He yawned. “Not that I remember.”
A dark figure appeared in the footage. They hovered in front of the computer and then moved out of the frame. When they disappeared, the computer was gone.
“Someone else was here. You don’t know who?” I said again.
Henry shook his head.
Trying to get a ghost to focus on time was like trying to catch water. They simply didn’t have any sense of time, not after dying. Time and dates weren’t relevant to them anymore. What happened ten years ago to me might seem like five minutes to a ghost.
I rolled the camera back, trying to see who had entered the house. After all, the person who stole Xavier’s computer might also be the killer. In fact, I was willing to bet money on it.
“Come on,” I said. “The police will be here soon.” The feed was working backward when a sharpcrackcame from upstairs.
“Crap. The cops.” I glanced at Susan and Henry. “You two scat. No one needs to see your light.”
I stepped away from command central and moved to the stairs. I raced up them as quickly as I dared to go without making a lot of noise. When I reached the top, I pushed the panel back into place and stood quietly, trying to figure out where the noise had come from.
Nothing sounded in the hallway, so I deemed it safe to head that way. I crept slowly. Susan and Henry had vanished, which was fine. I worked better alone anyway.
I tiptoed down the hall, heading in the direction I hoped led to the back door. I wasn’t sure what the noise had been, but I was going to leave anyway. I could always come back later and see the footage.
There was enough light that I could make out furnishings. I’d just reached the kitchen and could see the door when my feet crunched something.
Glass.
Someone had broken a window in an attempt to get inside. A cold, hard fact entered my mind. I wasn’t alone. There was another person in the house. I stood stock-still, listening.
The sound of breathing came from behind me.
“Hold it right there,” said a voice. “Don’t move a muscle.”
TEN
Ihad no idea who I was talking to, but I had to make them more afraid of something else than me. “The police will be here any minute,” I said. “You should be more concerned with them.”
“Ruth, I told you we should have just stayed in the background and let her go.”
“Alice, you idiot, now she knows your name.”
I groaned. These were the two grannies from earlier. Figuring they weren’t actually going to do me any harm, I crossed to the wall and flipped the switch.
White light flooded the room. The old women blinked. Ruth, the tall one with the blonde bangs, was pointing at me, her hands in an L-shape like a pretend gun.
“You going to shoot me with that?” I said.
She glanced at her hand, then flexed it and awkwardly slid it down her dress. “No. I wasn’t going to shoot you. We didn’t know who it was poking around. We figured whoever killed Xavier was here.”
I raised my hand. “Wait. You know Xavier was killed.”
