Joanne had been right. The old Calloway house stuck out like a sore thumb. All the other houses on the block were totally fixed up, with potted geraniums and old-fashioned porch swings and bright green shutters. And right in the middle of all that new paint and cuteness stood this dark, faded, shabby old house.
I don’t want you to think this was one of your typical haunted houses, with shutters hanging off at an angle and broken windows and all. It wasn’t that bad. It just felt—I don’t know—sad.
I turned to Beamer. “Are we ready for this?” I asked. “Do we know what we’re going to say?”
“Well, not really. I mean, we can’t exactly plan it till we get a feel for the situation. Like if he’s angry or seems dangerous, then we need to take one approach. If he invites us in for milk and cookies, then that’s another story.”
“I’d be more worried about the milk and cookies,” I said. “Isn’t that how child molesters work?”
“You’re saying we shouldn’t go in the house? Even if he invites us in?”
“Well, I don’t know. But I think we ought to talk about it now, before we go up there.”
“Can’t we just play it by ear?” Beamer suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like if he turns out to be some muscular hulk that could overpower us, then we probably want to stay outside. Maybe just talk on the porch. But if he’s some wizened little old guy with a cane—well then, the two of us can probably handle him.”
“Okay,” I said. “That makes sense.”
“But how do we open this conversation? ‘Hi! We think you’re evil’?”
“Yeah, that’s good.”
“Franny . . .”
“Sorry. Okay—how about this? We start out by apologizing for bothering him. I mean, he’s really gone out of his way to protect his privacy, so I don’t think he’s going to be all that happy when we come knocking on his door. So let’s say we’re very, very sorry to bother him and we know how busy he is—and then we can try a little flattery. You know, how he’s so famous and people must always be wanting his autograph. Like that.”
“Right, at which point he slams the door.”
“Fine, Beamer. Let’s hear your version.”
“I say we hit him between the eyes. Like we’re the FBI. Tell him we know what he’s up to and we plan to make him stop. That we’ll be watching and if he ever does it again, we’ll tell the police. And I think we should say we left a note at home, to be opened in case we don’t come back, telling where we went and why. That way, he won’t kill us, thinking he can cover up his crime.”
“Kill us! Beamer, you watch too much TV.”
“I do not.”
“Look, here’s what we should do. We’ll start out my way and end up your way. Only a little nicer. We’re not a SWAT team here, Beamer. We don’t want to look totally stupid.”
“All right,” he said, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “Let’s get this over with.”
The house sat high on the lot. To reach the front door, we walked up a sloping sidewalk with a few steps placed at intervals, then up more steps to the porch. From there, we could see out past the green space across the street to the town of Wimberly spread out below.
Despite the great view, the house itself was pretty run-down—a lot worse than it looked from the street. The paint on the porch floor was peeling and the white trim was dirty and stained. There was a yellow sign nailed to the door frame: NO SOLICITORS, it said.
Beamer rang the bell. We waited a full minute, but nobody came to the door.
“Shouldn’t we knock?” I suggested. “Maybe the bell’s broken.”
“Keep your shirt on,” he said. “I heard a dog barking.”
We waited another minute. I was just about to knock, when I heard a shuffling sound on the other side of the door and the click of a dead bolt being turned. Then the door opened about six inches, held fast by a safety chain.
Peering out at us was a woman, very gaunt and pale, with short, frizzy red hair. Her eyes were electric blue.
“What do you want?” the woman said.
“We need to speak with I. M. Fine,” Beamer explained. “We won’t take long, I promise. But it’s very important.”
“You have the wrong house,” she snapped, and shut the door.
I looked at Beamer and Beamer looked at me.
I knocked again. The door opened immediately. The woman must have been standing there, waiting for us to leave.
“Will you please get off my property?” she said.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, trying to sound harmless and sweet, “but we must have gotten bad directions. Do you know which house he lives in?”
“No, I don’t. And I would like you to go now.”
“Okay,” we said in unison, and scurried off the porch and down the hill like a pair of terrified rabbits.
We stood in the park area, gazing up at the house.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the big question: Who the heck is that woman?”
“You don’t think we just got the wrong house?”
“Well, I mean maybe . . . but it matches Joanne’s description.”
“He might have moved.”
“Yeah, but if that’s the case, why didn’t she say so?”
“I don’t know, Franny.”
“I think he’s there and she didn’t want us to know.”
“Why not?”
“Well, you remember that Stephen King movie we saw on TV? About the writer who is held hostage by a crazy fan?”
“Yeah—with Kathy Bates.”
“Well, what if that lady is keeping I. M. Fine a prisoner in there?”
“You know what, Franny? You watch too much TV.”
“Oh, shut up, Beamer. Let’s concentrate.”
“I am concentrating. And what I think is, we need to stop it with the wacko theories and find out whether he actually lives in that house or not.”
“It was not a wacko theory,” I said. “But okay, I agree that is the key question. So maybe we should ask the neighbors. . . .”
But Beamer wasn’t listening to me. He was gazing up the street, with his eyes bright and his mouth hanging open.
“What?” I said, following his gaze.
And then I saw it, too. Happy days! Here came the mailman.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.
“Yes, I am—only . . . isn’t it against the law?”
“What?”
“Tampering with the U.S. mail.”
“Who’s tampering? I just want to see who the mail’s addressed to.”
“Yeah, so do I.”
We waited until the postman put the letters into the mailbox. I decided that if the lady came out and got her mail before we could sneak up and look at it, I would chase down the mailman and ask him. But she didn’t. We sat there in the shadow of the trees and watched for a full ten minutes, and no one came out.
“She probably doesn’t know the mail has arrived,” I said. “If we’re going to do it, we need to do it now.”
“What if she’s watching out the window?”
“Then she would have seen the mailman.”
“Yeah. All the same,” Beamer said, “let’s go up to the blue house and cut over to the porch from the side. It won’t be so obvious.”
I agreed. We got as far as the flower bed, then turned and headed across the lawn to the gray house. We ducked down slightly as we came around the side of the porch, then tiptoed up the steps.
“Let’s do this quickly and get out of here,” I whispered.
Beamer nodded silently. He reached up and opened the mailbox. He pulled out a few letters and some catalogs. Then Beamer held out an envelope for me to see, a huge smile on his face.
It was a bill from the telephone company and it was addressed to I. M. Fine.