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My mother went over as well and looked down into the pot. “It’ll fill up pretty quickly at this rate.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “These monsoon storms don’t last all that long. This’ll hold it for now, and then tomorrow you can have someone come over and look at the roof, maybe put up a tarp until it can be repaired. Just call Josie — she’ll know who to set you up with.”
Tom muttered something that sounded like, “Old houses,” but he got his phone out of his pocket and made the call.
While he was engaged with Josie, my mother came back over to me. “I suppose you think we’re crazy for buying this place.”
“No,” I said at once. “It’s beautiful. And you’ll get the roof situation straightened out. I’ll bet whoever Josie recommends will be here tomorrow, even if it is a Sunday.”
Sure enough, after Tom ended the call, he said, “The workmen will be here tomorrow at ten. So I suppose that’s all’s well that ends well.”
“Exactly,” I replied. Up in the attic, the drumming of the rain on the roof had been even more obvious, but it sounded like it was beginning to slack off. “And I think our storm is moving on, so I don’t think you need to worry about the chamber pot overflowing.”
“There’s a mental image I didn’t need,” my mother said, but she was still smiling.
“It’s almost six,” I went on. “I know it’s a little early, but how about we head out to my favorite Mexican restaurant in town? My treat.”
The two of them exchanged a glance. I could almost see them both wanting to protest, then realizing that buying dinner for them wouldn’t put any more of a dent in my budget than it would in theirs. Besides, I was sure they’d reciprocate soon enough, probably when they took Calvin and me out for dinner. That way, they’d still be paying a bit more for our meal than I would for theirs, and they could feel good about the situation.
“Absolutely,” my mother said as she looked up at Tom. “That sounds perfect, doesn’t it, hon?”
He nodded, and we headed down the stairs.
My phone was buzzing on my nightstand. I blinked at the clock.
Two-forty a.m.
Who the heck would be calling at that hour?
I grabbed the phone without even looking at the screen, except to touch the green button to accept the call. When you got a call in the middle of the night, you answered it.
“Selena?”
My mother, sounding shaky and completely unlike the woman who’d laughed her way through a two-margarita dinner at Olamendi’s earlier in the evening.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
A pause. “Oh, this is going to sound crazy — ”
“I specialize in crazy,” I assured her. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s…it’s the house.”
“‘The house’?” I repeated, not sure what she was driving at. Had the roof started leaking again? But no, the monsoon storms had moved westward, and I’d gotten a nice view of a nearly full moon and a clear, starry sky just before I closed the drapes and got ready for bed.
“Yes.” She hesitated, then said, all in a rush, “There were just these horrible noises that started a little while ago. Tom thought it might be the plumbing, so he went out to see what was going on. But he couldn’t find anything.”
“What sort of noises, Mom?” I asked, a sinking sensation starting somewhere in my midsection. Horrible noises starting between midnight and three o’clock in the morning was never a good sign.
“Like a — a banging, as if there was something inside the wall. That’s why Tom thought it was the plumbing. But then it went from banging to a sort of clanging, like metal pots and pans hitting each other. Then there were the voices.”
“‘Voices’?” I echoed, and wished I hadn’t. The word had come out a little too close to a squeak to exactly inspire confidence.
“It sounded like whispers at first,” she said. “But then it turned into a horrible kind of screechy laughter. We both wondered if it might be rats squeaking, but it really didn’t sound like that.” A long pause, and then she went on, “Something about the whole thing just feels wrong, for lack of a better word. And normally I wouldn’t bother you, but this all seems like it might be something you would know about.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. “Ready to believe in ghosts now, Mom?”
A pained little silence. “I don’t know. But I’ve never encountered anything like this before in my life. I suppose Tom and I could leave and go to a hotel — we saw a Best Western as we came into town — but we just bought this house. I don’t want to run away.”
