She tossed the sheets over the stair rail to the floor below. She’d deal with them later.
Then she and Deputy Thibodeaux stopped at the foot of the stairs to the attic.
“You have a flashlight?” she asked. The long attic had a couple of windows, but they were at either end of the space.
“I do.” He looked over at her. “You been up here before?”
“Not since I’ve been back,” she admitted.
“If we find anything, this will be the most likely place.”
She thought about asking him to call for backup. That would be the smart thing, right? But she was determined not to be the hysterical female. She wasn’t even sure he would have backup available.
“Now or never,” she muttered, and took the first step.
The steps here were dustier and creakier than the ones leading to the second floor. Clearly her grandfather hadn’t been up here much, nor had Daisy. That was reassuring, though, because if the dust was undisturbed, that meant someone hadn’t entered the house from the attic and come downstairs to torment her.
No person, anyway.
She sucked in a breath when the door to the attic swung inward—mistake because that meant she drew in a lungful of dust which made her cough, obscuring her initial impression of the room.
She should have brought up a couple of bottles of water to wash the dust from their throats.
Neither moved from the doorway. Deputy Thibodeaux turned on his flashlight and shone it around the room.
Boxes and boxes and boxes—some modern, cardboard and stamped with the name of a big box store, some ancient and crumbling at the corners—were piled the length and width of the room, and the space smelled even worse than the study.
“Oh man,” the deputy breathed. “What a mess.”
She wanted to cry. Cleaning all this up was all her responsibility. All because her grandfather had loved her.
If someone was squatting, though, this would be an ideal place to hide. She moved closer to the deputy as he edged toward the west end of the house, swinging the flashlight from one side to the other.
“Got some water damage,” he said in a whisper, as if he didn’t want to startle anything that might be living up here. He pointed with the beam of the flashlight to a box weak with dark stains. He trailed the beam up to the roof, and sure enough, an irregular circle of dark wood revealed the roof had a leak.
Despair threatened to weigh down on her, but one thing at a time. She wasn’t used to operating that way, but necessity, and all that.
They reached the window at the west end of the house without encountering anything living or dead, and when he tested the window, they both saw it was swollen shut.
“No way anyone came in through here.”
She made him follow a different path through the boxes to the other end of the building, at the same time knowing that if someone was up here and heard them, they could have easily moved to avoid them. She supposed she and the deputy could split up, but she didn’t have a flashlight of her own.
Or courage.
They were more than halfway to the other end of the attic when a loud thump sounded behind them and she shrieked, jumping forward and clinging to Deputy Thibodeaux’s sleeve as he swung the flashlight around to aim it at a box that had disintegrated and spilled its contents—more books—into the path they’d just passed. Her shoulders relaxed as the deputy let out a relieved laugh.
She didn’t let go of the deputy’s sleeve, however, until they reached the east end of the room and he pulled free to check the window.
Which opened easily.
The windowsill wasn’t dusty, either.
“Probably just kids playing pranks,” he murmured. “You’d best get a new lock up here.” He flicked the loose metal latch.
She looked out the window past him, to the steeply pitched roof. Someone would have to be very determined to get inside this way. And why? Just to scare her?
She followed the deputy downstairs to the front door.
