Chapter 4 #3
She got out her phone once again and moved as close as she could without the cross-thingy turning too blurry. Then she took a series of shots and hoped that at least one of them would be serviceable.
Actually, several were, so she uploaded the most likely candidate and waited to see what Google had to say on the subject.
And waited…and waited….
The screen appeared to be frozen, even though Verizon claimed she had three bars of 5G. That should have been plenty to upload a simple image, especially since she’d only sent a medium-sized photo, not the high-resolution one.
Frowning, she closed the browser and reopened it, hoping that might have jiggered things loose. Once again, she attached the image to the Google search bar and waited.
And once again, nothing happened.
Okay, fine. She’d send the thing to Caleb and ask him to try looking it up.
After all, just because Verizon said she should have sufficient bars here, that didn’t necessarily mean the company’s assessment of the local situation was accurate.
This wouldn’t be the first time she thought she had a strong enough cell signal to do whatever she needed, only to have her service provider demonstrate otherwise.
She went back to their message thread and typed, Can you check on this symbol and let me know what it is? My cell service is kind of shaky here.
And then she attached the image and pressed the screen to send the text.
Again, nothing. Or rather, it looked as if the message had gone off into the ether the way it was supposed to, but there was no sign that it had been delivered. Since both she and Caleb had iPhones, she always got that confirmation when they were communicating this way.
Today, though?
Bupkiss.
For a moment, Delia wondered if she should go out onto the porch and ask Aaron if he usually had issues with sending attachments or surfing the internet on his phone when he was in this neighborhood. It could have been a dead spot, despite what the bars on her phone showed.
Something inside told her not to do that, though.
Instead, she kept her phone out and peered inside the rest of the kitchen cabinets. No other strange symbols, unfortunately…at least, that she could find.
The space opened onto a service porch that held a Kenmore washer and dryer that looked almost as old as the cabinets and Formica counters in the kitchen.
A pair of cupboards was mounted to the wall above the appliances, but when Delia peered inside — using her phone’s flashlight to illuminate the interiors as best she could — she didn’t see anything except one abandoned dryer sheet.
So much for that.
Trying to ignore the mounting frustration inside her, she went back through the kitchen and over to the other side of the house.
Just past the sitting room was a small guest bath, something she guessed had been shoehorned in there around the same time the kitchen had been “updated,” since in general, the front parlor or whatever you wanted to call it would have been somewhat bigger than its current footprint.
Beyond that was the room she guessed had been the home’s main living space, since this was the only place where she’d seen a TV so far.
It was mounted to the wall above the fireplace, which didn’t look as if it had been used in years and in fact was filled with a large silk flower arrangement that needed a good dusting.
In here, Delia got the feeling more than ever that someone was watching her. “Alba?” she ventured again.
One of the blue-striped curtains at the window moved ever so slightly. It could have just caught a current of air from the whole-house swamp cooler…or that faint flutter could have been caused by something else entirely.
Unease moved down her spine, even as Delia told herself she’d been in this particular situation plenty of times before. Not every ghost wanted to reveal itself, and sometimes it took a good deal of coaxing to get to a place where they could actually communicate.
That didn’t mean she wouldn’t keep trying, especially if it meant she wouldn’t have to go upstairs. For some reason, that idea seemed extremely unappealing, even though it was a bright, sunny day and she knew she didn’t have anything to worry about.
All right, more like hoped than actually knew, but still.
A soft footfall behind her nearly made her jump out of her skin, but then she realized it was only Aaron, holding his phone and looking apologetic as he stood just inside the entrance to the room.
“Sorry,” he said. “I hate to bail on you like this, but I just got a call from an agency over in Bullhead City that I applied with, and they want me to come in now. I can’t really blow them off, not when I need to get a new position as soon as possible. Are you okay with staying here by yourself?”
Absolutely not, her mind said at once, but Delia quashed that thought. She’d come here to cleanse the house, and she wasn’t anywhere close to accomplishing that goal.
“Sure,” she replied. “I think I’ve picked up on a few things, but I still don’t know who’s here or what they want.”
Aaron’s expression grew troubled. “I suppose I can try to reschedule — ”
“No,” she cut in. Considering the financial mess he was currently dealing with, the last thing she wanted was for her own cowardice to prevent him from getting a job he needed. “It’s fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am.”
He hesitated, but it seemed clear to her that he wasn’t going to argue too much, not when he wasn’t in a position to blow off a potential employer.
“Okay.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys attached to a silvery fob set with what looked like inlaid turquoise and mother-of-pearl.
“Here are the house keys. When you’re done, you can text me and then leave them under the mat. I’ll swing by and get them when I can.”
Delia wanted to ask if that would be taking something of a risk, but she figured he knew the neighborhood better than she did and had a much clearer idea of what was safe and what wasn’t.
Instead, she took the keys from him and put them in her jeans pocket. Since he was standing right there, she thought she might as well ask the question.
“Do you ever have problems with cell service here?”
He nodded, then said, “Oh, yeah. I guess I should have warned you about that. This property is kind of a digital sinkhole. It looks like you have service, but sometimes you still can’t send a text or get the internet to work right. Calls usually go through, though, for whatever reason.”
Well, that was something. Delia knew she’d been able to get at least one text out to Caleb, so it sounded as if the service was just unreliable rather than being completely nonexistent.
Obviously trying to be helpful, Aaron added, “If I need a clear signal, I usually drive up to Heritage Park. It’s about five minutes from here — just go back out to Casino Drive and head north. The road ends there, so it’s hard to miss.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Delia replied. Maybe it wasn’t the most convenient thing in the world to leave the property altogether to get in touch with the outside world, but it was better than nothing.
“How long do you think you’re going to be?” he asked, and all she could do was give a noncommittal lift of her shoulders.
“It’s really hard to say. I can sense someone in the house, but they don’t seem very eager to make contact. I’ll keep plugging away, though — it’s still early enough that I can spend a couple of hours here and not have to worry about driving home in the dark.”
Which she’d done once or twice when a client she’d worked with in Las Vegas had insisted on her handling a transaction in Laughlin.
There really wasn’t all that much to the drive, but all the same, she didn’t like traveling over those long stretches of empty road, even if there were plenty of other cars sharing the highway with her.
“Okay,” Aaron replied. “Then I’ll swing by after I’m done with my meeting. If you’re still here, great, but otherwise, I’ll just pick up the keys and head home.”
Wherever that was right now. He’d mentioned an Airbnb, but she didn’t know whether it was located here in Laughlin or back in Vegas somewhere.
“Sounds good,” she said.
“Good luck.”
Why did that supposedly friendly admonition sound so ominous right now?
However, she only smiled and lifted a hand, and he did the same before he headed back outside.
She couldn’t hear his car starting up, but that wasn’t so strange — the windows in the house were mostly closed, although she’d noticed the one in the kitchen had been left open a crack so condensation from the swamp cooler wouldn’t start to build up.
For a moment, she stood in the middle of the family room, not sure what she should do next.
Then she pulled in a breath and headed for the stairs.