Chapter 1

“It hasn’t changed at all. At least on the outside,” Spence said.

“It’s only been what? Ten years since you last saw it? You expected a totally new house?” Jeff replied, laughing.

He had a point. On a whim—while doing research for a story he and Jeff had thought about setting in the city where Spence had grown up—Spence had done an online search for his family home. Or what had beenhis family home until ten years ago when his parents had been murdered by person or persons unknown, as the police had put it.

According to the police, Spence’s parents had been walking home after visiting friends two blocks away. It was late, somewhere around eleven thirty. But the neighborhood was safe, so no one who lived there thought anything about walking rather than driving, no matter the hour, if they weren’t going far. From what the police had told Spence and his brother, their parents had been on the path, only a few yards from the house, when someone had shot them. With no reason to think otherwise, the police had eventually put the killings down to an attempted robbery that had gone very wrong.

A month after their parents’ funeral, Spence and his brother Tom had put the house up for sale. They had found a buyer—a family with three small children—soon after it went on the market. The buyers hadn’t seemed worried that the police hadn’t found the killer. As the husband had told Spence at one point, “The murder happened on the path that runs between this house and next door neighbor’s home, not inside. So, no blood stains on the carpets or wherever. Beside which, whoever killed them would have no reason to come after us. Right?”

“Right,” Spence had agreed.

When the sale was finalized, Spence and Tom had returned to their respective lives. Tom back east where he and his family lived, Spence to the west coast.

Spence wouldn’t be here now, sitting in his car across the street from the house, if he hadn’t found it listed on a realtor’s website. That had surprised him. He thought the people who had bought it planned on staying there for the long haul—or at least until their kids were grown up. He’d discovered when he called the realtor, that the man’s company had relocated him several hundred miles from the city.

“So it makes sense for him to sell,” he’d told Jeff after learning that. “I wonder…”

“Umm?”

“Nothing. Just thinking.”

Jeff was Spence’s writing partner and on-again-off-again lover when the spirit moved them. So, he knew Spence quite well. “You want to see it again. Or—” Jeff winked at Spence, “—maybe even buy it.”

“That thought had crossed my mind. Not that I would. It could throw a real monkey wrench in our partnership. You here. Me out there.”

“There’s this thing called the Internet,” Jeff had pointed out. “God only knows we use it enough when we’re working on a story.” They lived about fifty miles apart, Spence in San Francisco, Jeff in San Jose, so much of their writing was done using a cloud program, and IM-ing or phoning when they needed to discuss a plot point. Jeff grinned. “It’s really the fact you don’t want to give up the conjugal visits when I come to town, or vice versa.”

Spence smiled back. “There is that.”

“Look,” Jeff had said, “Why don’t we take a few days off and go out there. I bet you take one look at the place and decide it’s a crazy idea.”

“Probably,” Spence had agreed. “We could definitely use a break before starting the next book we’re contracted for.”

“No kidding. So…”

“We’ll do it. If nothing else, it’ll give you a feel for the city, if we decide to set the story there.”

The next day, they’d packed up and taken off, arriving in the city late that afternoon. They found a motel not too far from the house, unpacked, then decided to drive by the house before eating supper.

“It looks sad and empty with no lights on,” Spence said. He pointed to a window on the second floor. “That was my parents’ bedroom. The one next to it was Tom’s.”

“Which one was yours?” Jeff asked.

“Come on, I’ll show you.” They got out of the car then Spence led the way up the driveway on the left side of the house. “There,” he said, pointing to another window. “That was the dining room, right underneath it.”

“You had a big back yard,” Jeff commented.

“With a big garden. Vegetables and flowers. If I bought the place…”

“You’d do the same?”

“Maybe,” Spence said. He chuckled. “Or put in a swimming pool. Tom and I used to bug Dad about that. He’d always reply, “And lose half your mother’s garden. She’d drown us in the pool if I did that.”

Spence turned to look at the path next to the house, shivering.