“Yes, but it’s not as… All right, well it can be plastic, but my neighborhood is great. My dad worked at UCLA, and so I went to UCLA, and they have a great school of art and animation.”
“I’ve seen your column. But you do gaming, too?”
“I don’t. My partner, Avery, does.”
“Ah.”
When they pulled in front of a house, he turned off the car’s engine and sat staring up at it for several moments.
“My grandfather was not some kind of evil wizard who cursed the house and set a dozen demons loose in it,” she said, surprised that she sounded so resentful.
He flashed her a smile. “I wasn’t afraid of demons. I’m afraid of real people breaking in to steal things and not caring much if they take a human life in order to do so.”
“Liam, honestly, if there was some kind of really terrible thief who knew about the strange treasures that might be found here, they could have easily broken in while my grandfather was alive. He was an old man living alone.”
He was quiet, and that disturbed her.
“He died of a heart attack, right?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re trying to unnerve me, it isn’t going to work. I grew up in that house,” she reminded him. Kelsey wasn’t sure why she was being so insistent. Maybe she felt that she had to stay there to honor her family in some way. No one in the world would ever understand Cutter Merlin the way that she had. If she didn’t stay in the house, she would just perpetuate all the rumors about it being evil and Cutter being some kind of a devil worshiper.
He lifted his hands. “I’m not trying to make you angry. I’ll come in and take a walk around the place, just because some kids and a couple of the barely employed were recently inside.”
“But the locks are new—and the entry over the washer and dryer is sealed now, right?” Kelsey said.
He nodded while exiting the car. She wasn’t sure if he meant to come around and open her door or not, but she hurriedly stepped out herself before he could do so. He was staring up at the house.
“Do you see something?” she asked.
He turned to look at her. “No.”
“There you go, see?”
She started walking toward the house. He followed her. She opened both locks and pushed the door in.
The house was just as she had left it. A gazelle—obtained at an auction of objects from an 1890s safari—stared down at her from the far wall, its glass eyes baleful.
“See?” she asked Liam.
“Yeah.”
He walked through to the dining room. She stood where she was in the parlor, halfway closing her eyes.
It had always been a beautiful house. Her mother had been a historian, a perfect daughter for Cutter Merlin, and her father had been an anthropologist. Her parents had met at a university function at Oxford, and her father, a California native, had been madly in love with her mother, and in awe of Cutter.
What had changed that? How had an accident on a stairway made her father so determined that he had to get her away? Or had it been, in truth, the insanity of grief?
Liam appeared again, coming through the family-room archway. “Okay, just the office—” He broke off, opening the door to Cutter’s library. He walked in, and she heard him moving about, shuffling boxes around. He reappeared. “The upstairs,” he said.
“Okay. Mind hauling my suitcase up while you’re at it?” she asked, smiling. He had no right to stop her from staying, and he knew it. But it wasn’t making him happy.
“My pleasure, Miss Donovan,” he said, but there wasn’t a lot of pleasure in his voice.
She’d brought only one bag, because it was Key West. One jacket was enough, a few pairs of jeans and shorts, two dresses and sandals. If she needed anything else for her time here, she could buy it in dozens of shops.
“This is all you brought?” he asked her.
“It does weigh a full fifty pounds,” she assured him.
He grunted, hefting the bag. “Yes, I believe it does.”
She followed him as he climbed the stairway without pausing. Of course, he knew the way to her room. The last time she had seen him before tonight had been in that room.
“You might have waited one night,” he said, entering through the doorway of her room. It faced south, toward Jonas’s Salvage Inn. There were two more rooms on that side of the hall, while the large master bedroom and another guest room were on the other side.
“Why?”
“Dust!” he said, and sneezed.
She laughed. “It’s okay. I’m really tired. I’ll fall asleep fast, and wake up and start with the cleaning. With any luck, the washer and dryer still work.”
She flicked the switch by the side of the door. Light flooded the room.
He set her bag down and looked around. “I’ll check the other rooms. One of the thieves who broke in said that the kids had used these rooms to smoke pot. I’ll just check them out.”
She laughed, and he turned back, frowning.