Eve stretched back in her chair after several hours in the same hunched-over position. She reached her arms overhead and stretched her fingers and wrists, too. Work didn’t normally make her so tired, but even at a little after 3, exhaustion was starting to make her head ache. Still, she’d managed to get her long list of orders down to a handful, and the pile of large envelopes on the corner of her desk had grown to precarious levels.
Harvey stood up from behind Eve’s computer and stretched into an arch, his face scrunching. Eve patted him on the head and pursed her lips. What was she supposed to do with this cat? She’d posted about him on the online Blackwood message board the day before, but no one had claimed him yet. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere; he’d taken to subtly following Eve around the apartment and somehow always ending up in the same room as her, lounging casually like he’d been there first, like it was a coincidence.
And, considering the collar, the food, the cat toys he’d dragged out from under the couch and other hiding places, this had probably been his home.
“I wouldn’t mind if you stayed,” Eve said. He opened one orange eye to look at her. “Che—her parents might want you, though.”
Harvey yawned, showing off his long teeth, and turned it into a meow at the end. Eve looked over at her pile of finished orders. There was a post office a handful of blocks away, and it was still open for a few more hours. So was Pearson’s Hardware. Pearson might know how to contact Chelsea’s parents, considering they’d have been the ones to pack up her personal things.
She cracked her neck and chugged an energy drink before gathering her envelopes and heading down to the alley. The sun shone high and hot between the close brick walls, and Eve wished she’d put her sunglasses on before loading up her arms. The breeze off the lake cooled the sweat already forming on her face as she made her way around to the front of the small store.
She pushed open the glass door to Pearson’s with her shoulder and pressed the envelopes close to her chest. The store was crowded with tall shelves that formed aisles barely big enough for one person to walk down. To the left of the door, the counter stood in an oasis of open space. As she turned to face it, she stopped short. A person stood in front of it, talking to Pearson himself. Pearson was old, unsmiling, and seemed to only say a handful of words at a time. She loved it. Finally, someone in this nosy fucking town that didn’t give a shit about her. It was all she’d ever wanted.
“Your order,” Pearson said to the younger man in front of him, voice gruff and monotone. His gaze strayed to the small book of crossword puzzles that sat to the side on the smooth, wooden counter. Eve was pretty sure he’d made the counter himself; a shelf behind him held a handful of small, half-finished woodworking projects, and the counter had a kind of careful look about it, like someone had put effort into making it perfect.
“Thanks,” the younger man said, glancing around the store, briefly noticing Eve. He looked to be in his early 20s, with black, curly hair, and was pulling a huge, untidy pile of chains toward him across the counter. “Thank you.”
Pearson sniffed and nodded. “$57.97,” he said.
As the customer dug through the pocket of his khakis, he cleared his throat. “These, uh,” he said, eloquently, “these will be good for, um, storage.”
Pearson stared at him, a look of complete disinterest on his face. Still, the guy kept talking, stumbling over his explanation of what, exactly, he was planning on storing with his many feet of chains. Eve raised an eyebrow as he mumbled, “For, you know, things in my garage, and, ah, securing my garbage bins.” For about half a second, she was tempted to consider whether this dude was a serial killer. She dismissed the thought immediately. The guy was taller than Eve, in a gangly way, and looked like the epitome of nerd-hood. For fuck’s sake, he was wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into his khakis, complete with a pen in the breast pocket. Not that nerds couldn’t be serial killers, but this guy definitely wasn’t. Eve got the impression he didn’t even like to kill spiders in his house.
“Sure,” said Pearson.
The customer laughed a quick, nervous laugh and clutched the chains to his chest before stepping back against the rows of shelves to let Eve approach the counter. She eyed him and the chains. Those had to be 40 pounds at least, and he didn’t even seem to notice the weight, despite how scrawny he looked. As she walked up, he began stuffing them into a weathered black backpack.
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Eve nodded to Pearson, who nodded back. “Question about the apartment,” she said. “It came with a cat.”
Pearson blinked, and the chain guy dropped his backpack on the tile floor with a loud thump. Eve ignored him and his second round of nervous laughter.
Then Pearson nodded and frowned under his thick mustache. “The last girl had a cat,” he said.
“You know how I could contact her family?” Eve asked.
Pearson sighed, grabbed a scrap of receipt paper from under the counter, and wrote out a phone number. He handed it to her without speaking.
“Is there pet rent?” Eve asked as she tucked it into the pocket of her shorts.
“Does the cat have a job?”
Eve snorted, and Pearson’s mustache twitched in what was probably the closest thing to a smile she would ever get from him.
“Thanks,” she said, waving once as she headed for the door. Pearson nodded again and opened his book of crosswords.
Chain guy had been waiting near the door while Eve talked to Pearson, and as she went to leave, he perked up and followed her out. She scowled as she emerged onto the awning-shaded sidewalk.
But instead of hitting on her, or being creepy, he pulled a notebook out of his pocket. “Hi, I’m Ezra Park, with the Blackwood Review,” he said. It sounded practiced. “You’re Blackwood’s newest resident, aren’t you? Would you be willing to give an interview for my ’New in Town’ column? It’s a weekly piece I write about current events in Blackwood. Less breaking news and more like what you’d hear from your grandma at Sunday dinner.”
Eve stared at him. She recognized that name from somewhere, but couldn’t place him. He avoided looking at Eve straight on. He was the sort of person who had been considered unattractive in high school and, even after adulthood had given him cheekbones and made him hot, hadn’t gotten over it.
She pursed her lips, readjusted her armful of envelopes, and sighed. “Fine, whatever. As long as you can keep up. I have shit to do,” she said. Ezra nodded eagerly and kept pace as she walked in the direction of the post office, even with his backpack full of chains. They passed a few other people on the wide, cracked sidewalk, including a group wearing matching shirts that said “Johnson Henge Tour” and had a screen-printed image of a henge on them.
“Would you tell me your name and age?” Ezra asked.
“Eve Donnelly, 19,” Eve said.
Ezra dutifully took note and asked the next question without looking up. “What brought you to Blackwood?”
“Low cost of living.”
He blinked and faltered for a moment before his next rehearsed question. “Okay. And what do you do? For work or hobbies.”
“Pass.”
Eve could practically hear the ellipses as Ezra took a breath and moved on. “How are you liking Blackwood so far?”
Shrugging as well as she could with her arms full, Eve said, “I like the lake and the henges. But I could do without the ghost in my apartment.” Ezra stopped walking for a moment and rushed to catch up to Eve. “That was off the record, by the way.”
But he was fixated now. It was odd to watch his face change from uncomfortable and awkward to this intent, sharp-eyed focus. ”Chelsea Horton used to live in that apartment. What was it you said about her cat?”
Eve frowned and looked him over. The missing woman investigation, that was why his name was familiar. “Nothing. Speaking of, I read your article,” she said. “How did the police not have any suspects? What about her parents? Partner? DNA?”
“I’m not police, so I can’t answer that. Chelsea’s boyfriend, Kyle, was dismissed early on from the investigation. Her parents were cleared later on.”
“Sounds like shitty investigative work.” Eve sniffed. “Young, capable woman, promising career, it’s always the boyfriend that killed her. Did they even look for DNA? Did they search the dude’s house? Anything?”
“This is supposed to be me interviewing you,” Ezra said, frowning. “Not the other way around.” Eve stared at him, waiting, and he cracked quickly. “Fine. I was also suspicious of Kyle. Like, you’re right, it normally is the boyfriend. The police wouldn’t say why they had discounted him as a suspect. He spent barely ten minutes at the station before walking out looking like nothing was wrong.” Ezra shook his head, his face tight. Eve paused in front of the post office, a small, white-painted brick building wedged between a dry cleaner and the chamber of commerce. “What makes you think your apartment is haunted?”
“That was off the record.”
He stared at her. “Do you know who the ghost is? If it’s Chelsea’s spirit, maybe we could talk to her, ask what happened to her.”
“You wanna do a seance in my apartment?” Eve asked, crossing her arms. “No thanks, I don’t know you. And why do you care so much?”
Ezra frowned at her. “Fine,” he said, shaking his head a little and not answering her question. “I’ll write up a small piece about you for this Sunday’s paper. Minus,” he added when Eve opened her mouth, “the ghost stuff. Not like the Hortons need to be reminded about that possibility. By the way, they probably won’t want Harvey back.” He shook his head again and left, crossing the road and disappearing down a side street.
Eve roughly pushed the post office door open and sighed in air-conditioned relief. A small line of people waited on the squeaky tile floor, and she took her place behind the last person. The reporter had known Harvey’s name. How? Eve narrowed her eyes briefly and then pushed it out of her head. She was here to mind her own business, not deal with nosy reporters or nagging ghosts. No matter how weird he or the ghost were, she wasn’t getting involved. Absolutely not.