“The dogs? Yes. Come on, Tuck. You too, Albie.”
Amber hit the button on the remote and was pleased that the doors unlocked.
# # #
The lights were still on. There were no shadows in Romeo’s garage, just an empty place where the truck should have been and the overturned tables. Amber pulled to the side so George could put Romeo’s truck back in the garage. Before he got out, George wiped the truck down with a rag that he had found in the back.
Before they drove away from Jan’s place they had done the same thing—they tried to remove most of the evidence that they had been there.
Amber got out slowly, looking at the upper windows of Romeo’s house and wondering how they were going to tackle it.
From the back of Mary’s SUV, Albert whined to get out. Mary kept the dogs in the car and she came up to where Ricky and Amber were standing. From her pocket, she pulled a handful of nitrile gloves. They were Mary’s size. Ricky struggled to put his on.
“Mom, they’ll find our hair and skin everywhere in there.”
“Just wear the gloves,” Mary said.
“I will,” Ricky said, “but I’m just saying that this isn’t going to help all that much when they decide to investigate.”
Amber put her gloves on while Ricky led the way into the house.
In the kitchen, Ricky found cleaning supplies under the sink. He sent George back to the garage with a bottle of disinfectant and a roll of paper towels.
“Wipe down those tables as good as you can,” Ricky said. “Maybe stack them up somewhere.”
“Watch out for the tripwire,” Amber said.
George nodded.
Ricky found another bottle and started on the floor.
“I think this is my blood from when I got into a fight with Romeo,” Ricky said. “I can’t remove all trace, but I can make it hard to find.”
Amber made sure she had a flashlight before she went to the bottom of the stairs. There was light up there in the hallway. A patch of light on the wall was growing and shrinking. Amber kept her eye on it as she climbed the stairs. Alan was right behind her.
“What is that? A curtain?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
She found out at the top of the stairs. In one of the rooms, the plywood door over the window was blowing in and out with the morning breeze. She and Alan stood in the doorway. Alan pointed at a corner.
“Point your light over there?”
She saw what he was looking at. At first, she thought it was a towel or something. The dark spot turned out to be a discoloration of the paint on the wall and baseboard. The room was empty. Amber swung the light up to examine the chipped plaster ceiling. It looked like the place over the discolored spot had been a perch. She could see claw marks up on the ceiling above it.
Alan went to the window and lifted the plywood door so the room was flooded with light.
“They could have gone to the woods to hide,” Amber said.
Alan nodded.
They checked the rest of the rooms. In each of them, they found at least one discolored spot. Amber struggled to remember if they had been there before. Alan touched one of the spots that they found.
“It’s dry. At least I think it is.”
“You believe that they all died and that’s some kind of residue,” Amber said.
“I never said that.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“Hoping, I guess,” Alan said.
Amber was about to argue, but realized that she was just trying to impose her pessimism on him, while he seemed hesitant to impose his optimism on her. She decided to leave her arguments unsaid. It was safer to be pessimistic, but definitely not happier.
“It’s like a monster dormitory,” Alan said. “I bet those things were asleep up here that day Romeo talked to me and Ricky downstairs.”
“We all hide things,” Amber said.
She led the way back to the stairs. They found Ricky and Mary down in the basement, cleaning up any spots they might have touched the night before. Romeo was still lying there, looking upwards with unseeing eyes. There was a familiar odor to him. The memory of Cousin Evelyn popped into Amber’s head and she hated that her dear cousin had anything in common with Romeo.
“Can’t we cover him up?” Amber asked.
“Best not to,” Mary said. “Are we finished here?”
Ricky wiped down the light switch and nodded. They all headed up to the first floor.
# # #
Amber walked down the driveway until she found a patch of bright sun to stand in. It was amazing, the temperature difference between the sun and the shadows. It was the difference between life and death. George had Albert on a leash. He came over to stand near her. The dog sat down, staring back at his former house.
“Mom wants to leave him,” George said.
“Who?”
George gestured down towards the dog.
“Alone?”
George sighed and nodded. “I mean, it makes sense. He has a dog door and we can put out some food. Then, when Ricky comes back to interview Romeo again and reports his suspicion that something has happened to the old man, Albert will be discovered. Otherwise, it’s tough to explain why he’s not here.”
“There are a lot of things tough to explain,” Amber said. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Thanks,” George said. “What do you think about all this?”
Amber looked over at him to see if he was going to clarify the question. He was leaving it up to her to decipher what he meant. She decided not to participate.
“Don’t you have class?”
“I do,” George said. “I’m going to have to claim an illness in the family or something and see if I can make up the work. It’s okay. My parents will give me an alibi.”
“Must be nice.”
“It is.”
The others, Mary, Ricky, and Alan were standing in a tight knot over by the garage door. They were huddled around a pad of paper that Ricky was holding.
“How much longer?” Amber asked.
George shrugged.
“I think I’m going to head
