Back Against The Wall. Janice Kay Johnson

box and couldn’t resist peeking inside. Tangled chains were jumbled with earrings and bracelets. Mom had obviously taken some of her nicer pieces, except...was that a real diamond in a stud earring? Beth didn’t remember her mother wearing those. After a moment, she put the box back, setting it on top. She’d want to go through this later. Eventually. There might be something in here that Emily would like as a keepsake. The rest...well, anything that wasn’t too familiar or particularly valuable could go to the thrift store.

      A wave of exhaustion and discouragement hit her. After a full day yesterday, her muscles ached, too. Her back to Matt and Emily, Beth leaned against the workbench. What happened to her plan to go through everything, make brisk decisions, be done with it?

      Speed bump, she told herself. They’d been moving along pretty well. She’d been right that most of what they’d found would be useful to someone. Matt had agreed to ask his wife if she’d like to go through the boxes of children’s clothes before they passed them on. She was pregnant with their first baby.

      The next box held things Beth didn’t really recognize but guessed to have been from Mom and Dad’s bedroom. She opened a stiff portfolio to find unframed art prints. Worth looking at later.

      Finally, she shoved all the remaining boxes associated with Mom back under and on top of the built-in workbench, which her father would never use. Home repair was not on his list of skills. She’d left the window above the workbench unblocked, making a mental note to come back with some glass cleaner. Even so, the light falling through the window helped.

      Pulling herself together, she decided to tackle the things piled against the wall beside the workbench next. An ancient Weedwacker. Could it have come with the house? Several fans on stands, wrapped in white plastic trash bags, must have been out here forever. A folded stepladder. More boxes.

      Beth sighed.

      Wallboard had covered the garage walls as long as she could remember, which meant it was discolored and battered. Nobody had ever taped or spackled or painted out here. She could just see wall-hung shelves on the other side of the garage. Probably that was where the oldest stuff was. Anybody would fill shelves before starting to pile junk on the floor, right?

      Strange, though—the one sheet of wallboard in front of her looked a little different from the rest. Not really clean, but cleaner, except for some gross but long-dry stains at the bottom. None of the dings, either. Maybe Mom and Dad had had it replaced at some point. If so, it had to have been put up shortly before the piles grew in front of it, protecting it. Except for a big hole bashed into it six or seven feet up. Something had probably smacked it. The extension ladder lying on a sheet of plywood suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the garage, right above the tracks and motor for the automatic garage door opener? Maybe. It would have been awkward to maneuver.

      She doubted her father even knew he owned a tall ladder. He certainly wouldn’t have any use for it. Once upon a time, Mom had nagged him into occasional tasks like painting. Later, if something obviously needed doing, he hired someone. Well, Beth hired someone. He’d look surprised but pay the bill without complaining.

      Back to work.

      Fans—thrift store. Or garage sale, if she had one. Stepladder—who didn’t need one? If Dad didn’t want it, she’d take it. The Weedwacker? It could probably be recycled, even rusty.

      For some reason, the gaping hole kept drawing her gaze. Matt and Emily had moved their squabbling outside. They wouldn’t see her give in to an inexplicable compulsion. She unfolded the stepladder and climbed up on it.

      A flashlight would have helped, but at least the window was close. Beth angled her head to see down inside the wall. Her heart began to drum at the sight of something...

      She screamed, lurched back and tumbled off the step stool.

      * * *

      TONY NAVARRO ADDED gas to his lawn mower, carried the can to the garage, wiped sweat from his face, then pulled the cord to start the damn thing again. Not too far to go, which was good. July in eastern Washington was hot. He should have gotten the mowing done during an evening this week, when it was cooler. Keeping up with his own yard and his mother’s and often one or even a couple of his sisters’, though, that got time-consuming.

      A vibration in the pocket of his jeans had him sighing. Please, not work. He needed the day off. Bad enough he’d already caught shit from his mother for not going to church.

      He let the mower die and pulled out his phone. Unfortunately, he knew the number all too well.

      “Navarro. Isn’t there anyone else who can take this?”

      “I’m afraid not, Detective.” The dispatcher sounded genuinely regretful. “Detective Troyer is on vacation, and—”

      “Beck isn’t back to work yet. I know.” With a broken leg, David Beck wouldn’t have to mow lawns, either. Jack Moore...no, he was caught up in a messy investigation. Tony sighed again. “What do you got?”

      “This is a strange one,” she said. “Somebody noticed a hole in the wallboard in their garage and took a look in it. He says they can see a human hand. Kind of...withered. His words.”

      Tony swore. “It didn’t occur to this guy it’s probably some discarded Halloween decoration?”

      “I don’t know. He was pretty shaken up.”

      Thus, she hadn’t sent a uniform to check it out. She’d called him. What could he do but commit the address to memory?

      Glad he’d been mowing his own lawn and not another family member’s, he was able to go inside for a quick shower and change of clothes. Badge and weapon. Out the door.

      The address he’d been given wasn’t half a mile from his house. Homeowner was listed as John Marshall. Caller had been a Matt Marshall.

      He could get in, he calculated, look, soothe the homeowners and be home firing up his lawn mower again in forty-five minutes, tops.

      To his dismay, in that half mile, he passed from the neighborhoods made up of ranch-style homes, mostly built from the 1960s to the ’70s, to those with older houses. These weren’t as fancy as the ones close to Wakefield College, a private, very expensive, liberal arts school. Those had been handsomely restored. The bungalows on this block weren’t rundown, but homeowners hadn’t done much but keep up the painting and neatly mow the lawns. Still, they were constructed differently than newer homes. A two-by-four really was two inches by four inches, for example, rather than the current, abbreviated size still called by the misleading dimensions. Walls might be even deeper than that, the supports farther apart than in modern construction, too. He’d been counting on the fact that stuffing a body in a typical wall of a house like his was next to impossible, unless it was child-size. Here...he couldn’t say impossible.

      He spotted the right number on a white house accented with a bland beige. 1940s, at a guess. The lawn in front was brown—no one here had bothered watering. The detached garage was set back a little farther from the street than the house. Tony had expected the garage door to be open, but it wasn’t. Two vehicles filled the driveway, and two more were parked at the curb in front of the house. A six-foot fence and gate blocked his view into the backyard.

      Tony parked in front of a neighbor’s home, grabbed his flashlight and walked up the driveway. Before he could veer toward the front door, the gate swung open and a young woman appeared from between the house and garage. Brown hair was starting to straggle out of a ponytail. Dirt streaked one of her gently rounded cheeks. Her nose, too—no, those were freckles. Maybe her hair was more chestnut, with a hint of red?

      “Oh! You’re not...” She spotted the badge and holstered gun at his hip and faltered, “Are you?” She blushed. “I mean, are you a police officer?”

      “I’m Detective Tony Navarro, Frenchman Lake P.D. And you are?”

      “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m rattled, and—” Breaking off again, she shook her head. “I’m Bethany Marshall. Beth. This is my dad’s house. He teaches