Brooke and I decided to do a little more investigating by way of my grandparents until Glitch got out of football practice. I couldn’t imagine what a team manager did, but the guy rarely missed a practice and never missed a game. His job must have been really important, whatever it entailed.
“Hey, Gram,” I said, strolling into the kitchen with Brooke in tow. Grandma was a couple inches taller than either of us, but that wasn’t saying much. She was thin with light gray hair and soft baby blues that Grandpa said made all the boys’ hearts go pitter-pat. He would wriggle his brows and assure me she’d been the prime catch of the season. It cracked me up.
“Hey, kids. I’m trying a new recipe for the gang.”
The gang she referred to was her bingo group. She and Grandpa played bingo at least once a week at the church Grandpa pastored, so that made it almost a religious experience in their eyes.
“It smells wonderful,” I said, plopping my books onto the kitchen table. The store and our kitchen were separated by a pocket door, so Grandma could work in the house when we didn’t have customers. I often did the same on my shifts, concocting all manner of salsas in the kitchen until the bell rang, announcing a potential sale. My peppered red
Brooklyn tiptoed to look into the pot. “You need any taste-testers? We’re available all afternoon and have excellent taste buds.”
Grandma chuckled and handed us a bowl of chips as she stirred. We dipped freely of the
“Oh, my gosh,” Brooke said, her mouth half full. “This is incredible.”
“Mm-hmm,” I agreed, going in for another test.
“I made plenty, so I’ll leave you a bowl.”
“Thanks, Grandma,” I said.
“You girls aren’t double-dipping, are you?”
I turned as Grandpa walked in through the back.
“Hey, Pastor,” Brooke said, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Hey, Grandpa.”
He placed his cap on its usual hook and walked over for a hug, squeezing both of us at the same time. “Well, now that you two have tested the fare, I guess I can have a go without the threat of imminent death hanging over my head.” When Brooklyn looked up at him in surprise, he said, “Oh, yeah, this woman has been trying to kill me for years.” He shook an accusing chip at Grandma. “Didn’t pix tell you?”
She turned toward me, her brows raised in question.
“He’s right,” I said between bites. “She tried liquid Drano once, but he could taste it in the food, so she had to get more creative.”
“Now, now,” Grandma said. “That Drano thing was just a big misunderstanding.” She winked at Brooklyn, and we both laughed at my grandparents’ teasing. They were so fun.
While Grandpa was a pastor, he made preaching look more like stand-up comedy than a lesson on the teachings of the Bible, so we had a pretty big congregation. He had a thick head of white hair, soft gray eyes, and a wide, solid frame. He wasn’t particularly tall either, but at least my grandparents could see over the seats in the movie theater. They were my mom’s parents. I’d never met my other set of grandparents. They died before I was born. But I had this set, and I was perfectly happy with them. When they weren’t lecturing me.
“Can I ask you guys a question?”
Grandma spared me a quick glance as she poured us our own bowl of
“You know down in the Abo Pass where it turns three times really sharp and then levels off?”
“Right,” Grandpa said, wiping his mouth on a napkin. “The turns past the Missions?”
“That’s it,” Brooke said, heading to the fridge for a soda.
“Sure do. That’s pretty far,” he said, wondering what we were up to.
“We’re not going out there or anything,” I assured him. “We were just wondering what’s there.” I couldn’t help but think Jared might have found some kind of shelter nearby, if there was any to be had, maybe in someone’s barn or shed.
He rubbed his chin in thought, but Grandma beat him to the punch line. “The old Davis mansion is out there,” she said. “And the Aragon homestead.”
Brooklyn’s head popped up from behind the fridge door. “The Davis mansion? I’d forgotten about that.”
So had I. And it was in the same area Jared had last been seen.
“Far as I know, nobody’s lived there for years,” Grandpa said. “Probably nothing but ruins now.”
“Do you know how to get out there?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible.
“There’s a turnoff right past that last curve. Have to be careful, though. Foreigners are always taking that curve too fast.” Grandpa called anyone not from New Mexico foreigners. He cracked me up. New Mexicans took those curves just as fast as anyone else, but hard as we tried, we never convinced Grandpa of that. “What’s all this about?” he asked, munching on another cheese-covered chip.
“Oh, it’s for our science fair project,” I said before biting the bullet and trying my hand at a big black lie instead of the little white ones I was so fond of. “Speaking of which, I know we’re grounded and all, but we were wondering if we could go back to school and help Ms. Mullins set up for the science fair this afternoon.”
“My mom said it’s okay with her if it’s okay with you,” Brooklyn added. Man we were getting good with the lying.
“Science fair, huh?” Grandma said as she hurried to clean the kitchen before they set out for a wild night of legalized gambling. Bingo players were hilarious. “I guess if it’s for science. Just be home before dark.”
Grandpa winked at me behind her back and whispered, “She’s so easy.”
I had to agree. My grandmother would let me rob a bank if it was in the name of science.
“I’ve always wanted a peek inside this house.” Brooklyn bounced in the front seat of Glitch’s car, giddy with excitement.
Glitch looked at me in the rearview mirror as we wove through the menagerie of ponderosa pine and alligator juniper. “So, no one has lived there since the Davises?”
“According to my grandma. After Elliot Davis died, his parents closed up their business, boarded up their house, threw the kids in the car, and moved to South Texas. They didn’t sell it or anything. I think Mr. Davis was a freshman at the time.”
“I wonder if they still own it,” Brooklyn said.
“I wish we knew,” I agreed before explaining more of what we’d learned to Glitch. “Elliot Davis was younger than my grandma, but she remembers him, remembers what happened. She said the Davises were devastated. It broke her heart.”
As much as we’d found out about the Davises and the incident, we still had nothing to tie Jared to Elliot Davis’s death. We’d asked my grandparents what they remembered. I thought they might know something, might have heard something that wasn’t in the papers. I was surprised at how much she remembered, but just as the paper reported, it was a medical condition. Nothing suspicious.
“If they do own it, why wouldn’t Mr. Davis have moved into it when he came back?” Glitch asked. “It just seems odd.”
Mr. Davis had moved back to take the principal job when it opened up a few years ago. Apparently, the whole town was surprised when he moved back.
“Grandpa said it’s in shambles now and would cost more to repair than it would to just tear it down and start over.”
Brooklyn turned and peered around the passenger’s seat at me. “And why do we think the boys might be here?”
I shrugged. “Just a hunch. It’s a straight shot from where Jared jumped out of Cameron’s truck to here. And it’s abandoned. What better place to take refuge?”
“That’s true, I guess. If I were seeking refuge, I’d want to hole up in a cool old mansion.”
“Can you believe this?” I asked, my mind wandering back to Jared, to everything we’d learned so far. “The first guy I’ve ever really liked, and he could be some supernatural bringer of death. I should just give up.”
“Give up on boys?” Brooklyn said. “That’ll be the day.”
