“Sorrel understands that the attic is off-limits,” Lia said, her tone pleasant but steel underlying it. The teenager looked sulky but ducked into her bedroom as Lia led the way to the door at the end of the hall. Like all the others in the house, it had an old-fashioned brass knob. It also had an ancient keyed lock with no key in it.
Behind it was a staircase steep enough Conall wouldn’t have wanted to navigate it after a few beers. Lia’s hips swayed seductively at his eye level as she preceded him up.
Don’t look.
He couldn’t not.
It was a relief to have her stand aside at the top, where a huge open space was poorly lit by only four, smallish dormer windows. The dormers would allow them to stand upright in front of the windows, but the men especially would have to duck their heads in much of the rest of the space.
“Yesterday I washed those windows on the inside.” Lia sounded apologetic. “I can’t even get my hose to squirt that high on the outside.”
The two light fixtures up here didn’t do much to illuminate the attic, especially around the edges where the ceiling sloped sharply down. As in many old houses, it was cluttered with unwanted pieces of furniture, piles of cardboard boxes filled with who knew what, more modern plastic tubs stacked closer to the top of the staircase, and a few oddities and antiques. A naked female clothing mannequin with a bald head stared vacuously at them. Conall saw an old treadle sewing machine cheek by jowl with a gigantic plastic duck.
Lia’s gaze had followed his. “I think the duck rode on a Fourth of July float every year until my uncle died.”
“The mannequin?”
“My aunt owned a small clothing store in town.” She looked around as if she hadn’t thought about the contents of the attic in ages. “I don’t actually know what’s up here. Someday I should go through it all, but I always seem to be too busy.”
“The animals out there yours?” Jeff was peering out one of the windows.
“The horse and the pony are. They’re fun for the kids. I rent the other pasture out. Keeps it from growing up in blackberries.”
Conall found himself curious about her and wanting to ask questions, but none of them had anything to do with the job. Had she inherited the house? Why did she foster kids instead of having her own? Why wasn’t a woman who looked like that married?
Focus, he told himself. Lia Woods wasn’t the point here. Her neighbors were.
He walked to the second of the two windows looking to the south and saw immediately that they had a bird’s-eye view of the target. Except for the film on the outside of the glass, it couldn’t be better.
“Do these open?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
From the reluctance of the latch to give way, he could tell no one had tried in years. He muttered a swear word or two under his breath, scraped the latch open and heaved upward at the sash window. It groaned, shuddered and rose two inches before jolting to a stop.
“Hell.”
“Is this not going to work for you guys?” Lia sounded hopeful. And why shouldn’t she? She’d probably rather they got in their Suburban and drove away never to be seen again.
“We’ll loosen it up,” Conall said. He saw that Henderson was using his muscle to work on the other south-facing window. They’d need the damn things open, if only to get some air flow up here. Not surprisingly, the attic was stuffy and warm, and that was on a cloudy day with the temp reading sixty-nine when they passed a bank in town. If this op dragged on long, with spring edging into summer, it could turn hellish up here.
He was starting to turn away from the window when movement caught his eye. “Damn,” he muttered, and Henderson joined him. Oh, yeah, the neighbors definitely had a dog.
“You know those folks have a Doberman?” he asked.
Lia hurried over, catching a glimpse before the dog trotted around the corner of the other house. “No.” She sounded worried. “Maybe they put up an invisible fence of some kind. I haven’t seen it in the pasture. If I do, I’ll have to talk to them—” She looked fiercely at the two men. “I’ll have to do something if that animal scares my horses or attacks them.”