Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Chapter 18

The evenings in June were my favourite time of the year. As the summer solstice approached the nights were so long, even though it was bordering on nine o’clock there was still some light in the sky. The air began to cool, but the heat from the pavement still kept everything warm enough to be comfortable. A light, warm breeze swept over my skin and gently rustled the leaves of the trees as I walked down the street with Sprinkles towards Andrea’s house.

Yup, this was basically the perfect evening. I made a mental note to take dinner to the barbeque outside for tomorrow, some grilled zucchini boats and fresh fruit would make for an amazing dinner on the balcony tomorrow night.

“What are you trying to find out?” Sprinkles asked as we walked down the street.

“I’m looking for anyone that lives on the same street that Andrea did,” I told him. “I want to ask them questions about who they saw there that morning.”

I desperately wanted to ask Sprinkles if he remembered anything at all from that morning, but the poor thing was so obviously traumatized, the last thing I wanted to do was pressure him and make things worse. Besides, the way things were going, it looked like the three of us had solved the mystery without Sprinkles having to spell it out for us anyway.

This was all about the details.

From the smell of barbeque wafting up from a house down the street, it was obvious that I wasn’t the only person who decided to spend this gorgeous evening outside, which made me hopeful that I’d find at least one or two people on Andrea’s street who may have seen something.

Sprinkles and I walked towards his old street. Pine Road was a short, straight road that backed onto a forest that led to the road leading out of Willow Bay towards the highway for Portland. To access it from the east you had to go up Oak Street, where Andrea’s body was found. For access from the west, which is where Sprinkles and I came from, you had to go up Birch Road. Whoever came up with the street names in that part of Willow Bay wasn’t exactly the most creative type.

Pine Road had four houses on it: Andrea’s was on the side closest to Birch Street, with the abandoned house right across from it. There were two more houses on the Oak Street side. They were right by the intersection with Oak Street, around 200 yards from Andrea’s house. These were the houses where I held the most hope that someone might have seen something. After all, Elise still lived quite a ways from where Andrea’s body was found; if someone closer to her home was around they may have seen something even more important.

Sprinkles sauntered along next to me as we made our way up Birch Road towards Pine. In the distance I could see one of the edges of the old abandoned house.

When we finally got to Pine Road, Sprinkles began to sniff in front of Andrea’s old place. I stopped to let him do what he wanted; after all, this used to be his home.

“You ok, Sprinkles?” I asked him as he moved along the fence at about half a mile an hour.

“Yes, sorry, I was just trying to remember what life was like here.”

“Ok, take your time. We’re not in a rush Sprinkles, so you take all the time you need here.”

“Thank you, Angela,” he replied. I let the leash slack and gazed around the street. Pine Road was such a rural part of town, and by Willow Bay standards, that definitely meant something. A squirrel scampered across the road with a pinecone in his mouth, and I could hear a few robins whistling their songs in the trees in the forest on the other side of the road. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a couple deer popping out of the forest, it was just that kind of place.

Suddenly, I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye, like there was some dry lightning or something. But no, that was impossible. And if I wasn’t mistaken, the flash came from the abandoned creepy house across the street.

No, that had to be wrong. That place was abandoned. It had been abandoned for as long as I could remember. But as I stared hard at the boarded up windows, I couldn’t help but feel like I should go and have a look. My witch’s intuition was almost always correct. There was something weird about that house, and I had to go see what it was.

“Hey Sprinkles,”I asked him. “What do you know about the house across the street?”

“Andrea says it is a bad house. A very bad house.”

“Anything more specific than that?”

“No. Just that it’s a bad house.”

I nodded. “Ok. I want to go check it out for a minute, if you don’t mind.”

“Ok, but be careful. Andrea says it’s a bad house.”

Trepidation filled me as I got closer and closer to the ‘bad house’. Suddenly, I began to wonder if maybe this was a bad idea. What if the house was haunted after all? Or cursed? No, if it was either of those things Lisa would have mentioned it. Right?

I took a deep breath as I reached the picket fence at the front that had once been white, but had now long since fallen into disrepair. Covered in mould and lichen, it could now kindly be described as a mixture of beige and puke green.

Touching as little of the latch as possible, while thinking that maybe I should go to the doctor and make sure I got a tetanus shot, I pushed the door in the fence forward. It squeaked so loudly I knew it must have been years and years since anyone had oiled it. Sprinkles resisted coming in for a split second, but a light tug on the leash and he followed.

It felt like the light level had just dropped about four levels. It no longer felt like evening; now it was well and truly night time.

“What is wrong with you? You’re afraid of the dark or something?” I asked, muttering to myself. For goodness sake, I was twenty seven years old. My days of being afraid of the dark were supposed to be over.

My resolve steeling after my self-talk, I walked forward towards the house. As I reached the front steps, I realized I had no idea what I was going to do. All the windows were boarded up, and had been for years. Surely the front door was going to be locked. I supposed I could use the spell to unlock it; there were no occupied houses in view, and the street looked deserted.

It was upon that realization, that if anything happened I was well and truly on my own, that my heart really began to pound. As I got closer to the front door, I could tell Sprinkles next to me was scared as well. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

I was about to turn back and head home, wrap myself under a blanket and try to sleep without having nightmares when the front door began to open.

My mouth dropped open as the old oak door squeaked open, and I found myself standing face to face with Gareth Sims, owner of Boss the German Shepherd. He was holding a gun, and had it pointed towards me. I dropped Sprinkles’ leash in surprise, and as soon as the dog saw Gareth he let out a whimper like someone had hit him, and ran off as fast as he could.

“Gareth?” I asked, barely believing what I was seeing. Why was he in this house? Why did he have a gun?

“Angela. Please, come in,” he said. My mind whirled with a thousand thoughts. Was Sprinkles going to be ok? Poor thing had run off again. How could I contact Sophie? Did anyone know I was here? No. They just knew I’d gone for a walk towards Pine Street. Oh God, this man had a gun trailed on me and there was no one coming to save me.

My heart plummeted to the bottom of my stomach. I was definitely in trouble here. But still, I had no choice. After all, Gareth had a gun. I followed him into the house, which was dark. There were no lights on at the front. He nudged me towards the living room at the back of the house, however, and there the lights were on.

What I saw stopped me in my tracks. There was no furniture in the room at all, except for a cheap plastic chair in one corner. But in the middle of the room was what I immediately recognized from years of watching bad action movies as bricks of cocaine. Boss was sitting in the corner, and he growled at me, but one look from Gareth and he stopped and sat down.

Oh boy. This was not good. Suddenly, everything started to make sense. Sprinkles calling it a ‘bad house’. Andrea living right across the street.

“She found out about your drug den, didn’t she?” I ventured to ask, trying not to look at the gun Gareth was holding. He nodded, and put it in the back of his pants. Evidently he didn’t think I was much of a threat in here, especially not with Boss around. And as much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Gareth was a strong, young guy. He could easily overpower me, not to mention the dog.

“Nosy old lady. We were so careful, too. For six months we’ve been here, and no one has been the wiser. There wasn’t a single person in town who’d even guessed that we were running drugs through here.”

I thought about Jason Black and what he said about his source in the police department.

“That’s not true,” I replied. “The cops know. They don’t know where you are, but they know you’re here.”

Gareth scoffed. “Well what good is knowing we’re around if they can’t find us? That’s the beauty of Willow Bay. Everyone said I was a moron for doing this, but it’s perfect. No one suspects a dumb little tourist village, so far from the interstates, to house a drug running operation. After all, it’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone, right? Someone would notice, right?”

I nodded. “How come no one has noticed, except for Andrea? I mean, this house is rural, but its’ not that rural. There are two other houses on the street that aren’t Andrea’s, and a few others on the nearby streets. If you’re on Birch, the quickest way downtown is to pass through Pine. Why hasn’t the extra traffic been noticed?”

Gareth smiled at me, a cold smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Obviously that would be too conspicuous. No, we’ve done much better than that. You might see a small hole behind Boss, that leads into the crawl space under the house. We’ve built a tunnel there that leads into the forest. All we have to do is park our trucks on the side of the road, move the goods to the other end of the tunnel and load them up. No one drives on the roads around here at 3am, it’s such a deserted part of the world. Plus our trucks can pull off far enough that they’re almost impossible to see from the road. That way no one knows we’re here.”

“How long did it take? Building the tunnel, I mean.” A part of me was genuinely curious, but to be honest, I really just wanted to keep Gareth talking. I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like anyone knew I was here to rescue me. It would take at least another hour before Charlotte began to get worried, and then even if she did, what reason could she possibly have to think I was in the creepy house?

“About a month. GPS makes it a lot easier than it used to be.”

“But if you were so careful, how did Andrea find out about you? And I found out too, just now. Surely you can’t expect to continue this forever.”

“Andrea was too nosy for her own good. She would always be looking out her curtains at the street, glaring at this house, like she knew we were in it. Then one day she was walking past when Boss got scared and let out a bark. She came to the front of the house, and started looking inside the shutters. She went home, but I knew she wasn’t going to give up. I was going to take her out right then and there, but then that stupid niece of hers showed up. At least when the girl left I was able to follow Andrea by pretending to walk Boss. That was all the time I needed.”

So it hadn’t been Kelly after all. Sophie was going to be so disappointed. If she ever heard about this, that was.

“It’s just too bad you had to get involved too,” Gareth said.

“There are people who know I’m here,” I tried. “They’re waiting for me to come back home. When I don’t, they’re going to come looking for me.”

Gareth gave me that cold smile again. “Nice try, but I saw you coming. I know you weren’t planning on coming to this house, and why would you be in the creepy old house that no one ever goes to? No, they’ll narrow it down to this neighbourhood, but no one will ever find your body. Especially since it’s not going to leave by the front door.”

A shiver ran up my spine as Gareth spoke so casually about my death, like it was just another day in the life of the drug dealer. I had to keep him talking. My only chance was to distract him and try and run away. If I could make it out the front door, maybe I had a chance of screaming loudly enough to get the neighbours to notice. Although Boss would definitely be able to catch me in that time.

“Was Boss really poisoned in the park?” I asked. “Or was it here?”

“One of my idiot runners left his stash out and Boss got into it,” Gareth told me. “Now, come on. Get up. It’s time to go.”

“What are we doing?” I asked, my heartrate instantly flying up to a record high.

“You’re going to walk through the tunnel, and we’re going to meet a truck there. I’ve already texted a friend to meet us. It’ll be easier to kill you out there rather than have to drag your body through the tunnel.”

I felt like I was going to puke.