Chapter 16 Mj #2
“Well, this is my little home. Far more humble than the ones you’re looking at.”
“Humble and…perfect, MJ.” He took a few steps into the room, first gazing out the picture window that looked out over the mountains. It was dark, but the snowy peaks were awash in the yellow light of a full moon. “It’s so cozy and comfortable.”
“Well, no media room or walk-in closet or any of the other bells and whistles your real estate agent loves so much.”
“My real estate agent, but not me.” He paused at a bookshelf, scanning her collection of cookbooks, novels, and a few self-help books on grief.
She watched him take it all in, glancing at her kitchenette with a table for two tucked into the corner. It was all she needed with the glorious kitchen she now had downstairs.
Wandering to the other side, he peeked into her bedroom. The nightlight illuminated her bed, the nightstand with water and some framed pictures, her dresser with a jewelry box and some personal items.
It all felt very intimate for him to see, but he didn’t go into the room. Instead, he kissed her on the nose.
“Go get some sleep, beautiful. Grab me a pillow and blanket and let me start a fire and I’ll be right there.” He gestured toward the sofa in the living room. “Listening.”
After she got him squared away, she slipped into her bedroom but left the door open. She crawled under the covers, and let her tired eyes flutter closed. For the first time in weeks, her chest didn’t feel tight with dread.
As she drifted toward sleep, she could hear the faint creak of the sofa as he turned over, then a soft sigh and the rustle of his pillowcase.
His presence filled the little apartment with a sense of safety she hadn’t realized she’d been craving.
“I’m sorry, George,” she mouthed in the dark, tears stinging. “I love him.”
No one answered, but she folded the admission into her heart and finally fell asleep.
The sound yanked her awake like an insistent hand shaking her shoulder.
The familiar melody played—well, beeped—in its usual muffled way, as if someone were playing it through a pillow, but distinct enough that her heart did that awful, familiar lurch.
MJ blinked into the dark, disoriented for a few seconds by the fact that she didn’t feel alone. The apartment wasn’t empty.
The living room lights came on—all of them, including the overheads—but she didn’t move yet. She stayed long enough to hear the music play through the second of four measures of the familiar song, gentle and maddeningly exact in its timing.
She swallowed hard, then pushed herself upright. Her legs were heavy with sleep, but her nerves snapped awake. She slipped on her robe and tiptoed barefoot out of the bedroom.
Matt was already up, still in his hoodie and sleep pants, hair rumpled, moving around the space like a focused bloodhound. He had one cushion off the sofa, his head cocked as he listened to the music.
Relief almost buckled her knees.
“You hear it,” she whispered.
He turned, his eyes clear and awake. “Loud and clear.”
“Actually, soft and muted.”
“True…” He stood perfectly still and narrowed his eyes, turning slowly…slowly…trying to follow the sound as she had so, so many times.
“It’ll stop in a second,” she said. “Four times through the melody.”
“Then I need to move quickly.” He walked toward the fireplace, leaning down as if he were listening to the actual floorboards. “Do any of these come up? Secret hiding place?”
“Not that I know of, but honestly? I’ve never checked.”
“You test the floorboards and I will…” He got closer to the fireplace. “Is this new?” he asked, indicating the mantel and stone around it.
“Everything is new. The space was here, but it was an unfinished attic that my grandfather once used as a workshop. We gutted it and transformed it into this apartment.”
He nodded, leaning toward the fireplace. “It’s coming from over here.”
She couldn’t disagree—it did sound like that part of the room. Giving up on the floorboards, she followed him, her robe pulled tight around her like armor.
“Right here,” he said, tapping the drywall next to the fireplace stone. He stepped to the wall, ear and palm hovering close like he was scanning for a hidden safe. “I feel something! Vibrations or—oh.”
The music stopped.
“That’s it?” he asked, genuinely disappointed.
“Until three a.m. tomorrow,” she said. “Then he’ll—I mean it—will be back.”
He stepped back to look up and down the wall and the fireplace mantel. “What was in this spot before the remodel?”
She frowned, trying to picture the workroom. It was so different then, and she’d spent very little time up here, using the space mostly for storage.
“I think that’s where Grandpa Owen kept a worktable.”
“Anything electric?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Right before it stopped, I felt the slightest vibration in the wall. Something is back there making the sound. I know it’s not your music box, but something like that, only it doesn’t sound…mechanical. Does that make sense?”
Nothing made sense. “Maybe,” she conceded. “But why would it start two weeks ago and always play at a specific time?”
“I don’t know, but I could find out if…” He angled his head toward the wall. “I could do a little demolition. I’ll be neat and have it fixed in a day, I promise.”
She lifted a shoulder. “You can try, but there’s nothing in the wall but insulation and ancient lodge dust and probably a couple of spiders.”
He gave her a look that said trust me. “Can I cut a hole in the drywall?”
“Now?”
“Can’t think of a better time.”
She gave a breathy laugh. “Matt Walker, at three in the morning on Christmas Eve, you want to do surgery on my apartment because…”
He took a step closer and put his hands on her shoulders, drawing her into him. “Because I want to eliminate the possibility of the late, great George McBride keeping me from spending the rest of my life loving you.”
“Oh.” She put her fingers over her mouth, the sentiment so sweet.
“So, Mary Jane, if you’ll let me cut a hole, we can settle the sound. If it’s him, I’ll back away. If it’s not, well…life as you know it is about to change for the better.”
She wasn’t sure what that meant—move into one of those big houses? Well, now wasn’t the time to discuss that. Now was the time to answer her questions.
“Then get some tools from the mudroom, Graham Matthew Walker. You know, the red toolbox from when you saved me from a plumbing emergency.”
“I know the box well. Gimme a sec.”
When Matt returned, he carried a small handsaw with a pointed tip and a short, jagged blade that she recognized from her tool collection.
“You have the perfect jab saw,” he told her, holding it up. “This’ll cut clean without destroying the whole wall. This place is too special to hurt.”
“Thank you.” She stood back to observe the process.
He pressed the sharp tip into the drywall with controlled force until it punctured. Then he sawed a careful square, the blade rasping softly. Drywall dust drifted to the floor like pale snow. MJ watched with a weird combination of dread and fascination, clutching her robe.
Finally, he pried the little square of drywall free, grabbed his phone from the coffee table, and used the flashlight to peer in.
“What do you see?” MJ asked, not surprised that she was holding her breath.
“I see…” His shoulders moved like he was…laughing.
“What is it?”
With a smirk, he handed her the light and stepped back, allowing her a chance to look into the open space behind the wall, right next to the firebox. There, resting on a wood beam, was a cell phone plugged into a charger that ran to a loose electrical box.
MJ slapped a hand over her mouth. “What the heck?”
“Let me see if I can reach it,” he said, easing her to the side to stick his arm all the way in. Making a face, he stretched and stretched, then slowly pulled his arm out, an iPhone dangling from a cord.
“How did that get in there?”
“Probably a construction worker who forgot it,” Matt said, touching the screen to bring it to life. Sliding his finger over the glass, he tapped the clock app, went to alarms, and there it was.
Daily Wake Up 3:00 AM What a Wonderful World
MJ let out a sound that was half gasp, half strangled laugh. “That’s…an alarm.”
“Yep.”
“In my wall.”
“Also yep.” He tugged the cord. “It’s been plugged in this whole time.”
“Who on Earth—”
Matt followed the cord to the outlet. He tugged lightly, then frowned in concentration. “The charger’s plugged into an interior electrical socket. That socket must be live but wasn’t before, or it wouldn’t have passed code. Have you had any electrical work done recently?”
MJ felt her jaw open. “Jack had electricians at the lodge the morning of their wedding! One of the speakers in the Starling Room was wonky and they had to do something to the circuit breaker.”
“They most likely brought this old outlet to life and—wham—you’re getting some poor guy’s three o’clock wake-up call.” He tapped a few times and brought the phone’s home screen up, showing a picture of a muscular man with a baby on his knee.
“Oh! That’s…Izzy! He built the fireplace.
He told me he drove all the way from Ogden and had to get up at three to get to the gym and make it here by seven.
And that’s his baby…little Ashton.” She smiled, remembering the kind young man who her contractor said was one of the best stone masons in Utah.
“So he accidentally left his phone charging and you never heard it because they closed up the wall—”
“Goodness, yes. They finished the drywall when Izzy was out for a few days. They must have missed the phone and the socket went dead…until the electrician activated the line.”
“The phone came back to life,” he finished. “Izzy’s alarm started going off again.”
MJ blinked as the puzzle pieces fell into place and the picture was…not scary or supernatural or confusing. It all made sense.
Matt chuckled at the look on her face. “Do you have a way to reach Izzy to tell him you have his phone?”
“I’ll call the contractor,” she said, shaking her head as a wave of warm relief washed over her.
“So the mystery is solved,” Matt said, a slow smile lifting his lips. “Do you feel better?”
She sighed. “Yes, I do. Thank you, Matt.” She wiped at her eyes, surprised to find they had tears in them. “I feel like I can breathe again,” she confessed.
Putting the phone down, he wrapped her in a tight hug. “Honey, I didn’t know your wonderful husband, but I do have this much in common with him—he loved you, and so do I.”
MJ felt a little wobbly. “Oh, Matt.”
She pulled back and looked at him in the bright living room lights, seeing everything so clearly now.
“George wouldn’t have wanted me to be scared,” she said quietly. “He wouldn’t have wanted me lonely. I know that.”
Matt’s eyes were steady on hers. “I think he’d want you happy.”
“I think so, too.” Her voice shook. “And I think he’d like you.”
Matt smiled. “High praise. Thank you.”
MJ reached up and touched his face, letting the truth rise without fighting it. “I love you.”
His breath caught, like the words hit someplace deep. Just as he lowered his head to kiss her, they heard a loud, high-pitched scream that cut through the hushed night.
MJ gasped. “What was that?”
They both rushed to the window, looking down to see Cabin Four lit up with every possible light, the front door gaping open.
“Help! Help me!” a woman screamed.
Not any woman—Bianca.
That woman could ruin anything—including MJ’s best moment in many years.
Without saying a word, they both rushed to the door. MJ grabbed her phone on the way, instinct telling her to call Gracie.