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“So you bought into this place, did you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Having second thoughts?”
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know. ” He shrugged the camera up onto his shoulder. “You’re acting funny. ”
“Funny?”
“Quieter, but with more questions. If I didn’t like having my balls right where they are, I might pry. ”
The big gray sky was swirling low, though the sprinkling had stopped for the moment. I shaded my eyes with the back of my hand and watched the clouds boil. “It’s a good thing you’re so smart,” I said. “Hey, you’d better get a move on. We’re about to get soaked out here. ”
“I’m working on it. Shut up unless you want to go on tape. ”
He zoomed and panned, grabbing footage of the burned-out block and some of the broken windows. Then he stepped up over the curb and got a closer look at the worst of it. True to his word, it didn’t take long.
“That ought to be enough. If it’s not, I’ll shuffle it up and loop it,” he said, unshouldering the camera and folding the tripod he hadn’t even used. “And because I’m feeling bold—or maybe stupid from sleep deprivation—I’ll go ahead and say this: I get the impression that something’s going on down here. And not just from you, either. Did you see that letter in the Enigma? The one from that construction worker?”
“I saw it, yeah. ”
“It didn’t bother you?”
“Not particularly. ”
“Then what did?”
A loaded drop of rain landed on my forehead. “Let’s go. I bet this equipment doesn’t like getting wet. If you really must know, my aunt has been bugging me about moving down here too. I can handle a little arson. I can even handle a little haunting, if there’s been some kind of archeological cover-up down here. But when Lu throws a fit about something, she’s usually got a good reason for it. This time, she won’t give me one. ”
“How so?”
“She says I ought to move farther from the river in case of flooding, and that’s ridiculous. It’d be like me telling you I didn’t want to live here because I heard some punk had torched an empty building here twenty years ago. It’s a bullshit reason; it doesn’t stick. But she doesn’t seem interested in clueing me in to her real motives, so. Well. Whatever,” I finished lamely.
“I see. ”
“No you don’t. ”
“All right. I don’t. But I’ll quit asking, if that’s good enough. ”
“That’s good enough. ” I zipped up one of his bags while he finished stuffing the other one, and within minutes we were back in the gaudy SUV.
Though Nick had promised pizza, he recommended a Mexican place for lunch. I didn’t care, so I said it was fine. Over burritos, he dragged the conversation back to the Read House, and to Caroline.
“There was a flu epidemic,” he said, a trace of guacamole dangling from a crease in his lip. “Around 1919. Killed a whole bunch of people. Any cemetery will show you that much. It’s depressing; you wander around and see all these itty-bitty headstones—for kids, you know—and they’ll all have these expiration dates in the same year. ”
“Expiration date. Real sensitive way to put it. ”
“You know what I meant. I only mention it because that’s about the time our girl Caroline started going batty. According to the records I’ve found, they had her briefly institutionalized in 1919, but it didn’t work out and they moved her back home the next year. ”
“Didn’t work out?”
“She was starving herself there, and Daddy brought her home. A few years later, they brought her into the hotel, and there she stayed until she killed herself in ‘33. At first I thought maybe they’d sent her away because of the flu, like they wanted to get her safely out of town. But it doesn’t sound right, and the rest of the facts don’t line up with it. ”
I chewed on my chips and tried not to get interested in the story. If I got too interested, I’d get weak to the idea of going back inside. I don’t know if Nick knew me well enough to understand that or not, but he kept feeding me bits and pieces of it until I started asking questions. “Why didn’t they put her in the hotel right away? It seems like an easy halfway house, if she was too crazy to live at home and if they weren’t worried about the flu epidemic. ”
“They were busy rebuilding it. It burned down a couple of times and was eventually rebuilt as the big brick monster we know and love, but it wasn’t finished until 1927. ”
