Her neighbor hadn’t always been wheelchair-bound. He’d once been quite the handyman around the house as well as a shade-tree mechanic. And he still had the tools to prove it.
Tools in hand, she’d begun her mission.
That had been a full hour ago.
And she still hadn’t found anything other than dust and the occasional earring along with a few nickels, dimes, and pennies. Not even a quarter for her trouble.
“Shit.” She surveyed the mess she’d made in Shelley’s room. She’d pulled up several loose floorboards and turned a small hole in the wall behind an old junk sale painting into a new entry into the next room.
Braddock had said that her sister was planning to video an encounter that would get him busted. To do that she would have needed equipment. A setup. The way people who videoed their sex activitiesdid. But there was no equipment anywhere in the house that she’d found. Nothing.
And yet it had to be here.
She had practically torn apart the sparse furnishings. Two windows, walls, floor, and a dinky closet were all that remained. She’d explored every crack in the wall in addition to all the loose floorboards. She’d torn the closet apart.
Think!CJ looked at the bed. If she were going to video a sexual encounter, the most logical place to set up the camera would be aimed at the bed. The only thing on the wall across from the bed was the closet.
Just get it over with and look again.
The closet door stood open already; all the clothes and shoes it had held were now piled on the bed. CJ stepped into the small rectangle and slowly checked the walls. No cracks. No holes. She looked up at the shelf overhead. Nothing there either. But the ceiling.
CJ grabbed the one chair in the room and dragged it to the closet. She climbed onto the seat and poked her arms above the narrow shelf. The ceiling seemed awfully close to the shelf.
The boards moved. Her breath stalled in her lungs. The ceilings in this old house had once been old-fashioned beadboard, the kind that came in four-inch strips. Most of the rooms had been plastered at some point. But not inside the closets.
She pushed until the boards were out of the way.
It was nothing. Dammit! Just the small square hole that provided entrance to the attic. What was it called? A scuttle hole.
Frustrated, CJ stepped off the chair and considered whether she should clean up the mess now or later.
Later, she decided. She should check the other two bedrooms. Just in case. She’d checked this one from top to bottom already.
Wait. She looked up. She hadn’t checked the ceiling. Hadn’t even thought about anyone trying to go up in the attic. Truth was, she hadn’t even known where the attic access was.
There was a small round hole on the ceiling above the center of the bed and right next to the light fixture. The hole was so small she almost missed it. It didn’t really appear big enough to provide camera access, but it was worth a look.
She climbed back onto that chair, considered her options, and then just went for it. It took a bit of pulling and swearing, but she finally levered herself into the attic via that small scuttle hole.
On her hands and knees, CJ surveyed the rafters and uneven boards that made up the rustic floor. The steep pitch of the roof made the attic large enough for another floor. Light from the small windows on each end kept the darkness at bay to some extent. She’d had no idea it was so large. And dusty. She sat back on her heels and swiped her palms together to dispel the black dust. Years of burning coal in these old houses had left its mark.
Between the dust and the smothering heat, it was difficult to pull in a decent breath. Boxes were scattered about. Medium to large boxes with product imprints boasting the contents. A part of her wondered what was really inside. Remnants of her and Shelley’s childhoods?
No time to get lost on memory lane. She pushed up to her feet and moved carefully between and around the boxes. Years of dust covered everything. She tried to estimate where the center of the room below would be.
Right here. She stopped, stared down at the box at her feet. Now that she really looked, this box was the only one not layered in dust.
Anticipation detonated in her veins.
A hand on each side of the box, she lifted.
Rather than heavy with junk as she’d expected, it felt empty.
When she tossed it aside, her heart stumbled into a frantic pace. A video camera, the kind used for security purposes, and an accompanying recording device—an old boxy VCR—sat on the wide plank floor where the box had been.
She dropped to her knees. An electrical outlet had been wired directly into some of the light fixture’s wiring. The red light on theVCR glowed, indicating there was power. Hands trembling, she reached for the eject button. A grinding sound, then nothing.
No tape popped out.
