Seeing is Believing (Cuttersville #3)(7)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Piper fought a smile at his decided opinion. Clowns didn’t particularly scare her, but if one was under the stairwell with a butcher knife, she certainly wouldn’t be amused. “I’ve never been to the circus.”

“Well, don’t go. And when you have kids, don’t take them either,” Brady said vehemently. He looked behind him, scanning under the stairs. “But other than a spider, is it all clear? I don’t see anything, but the question is, do you see anything?”

She shook her head. Whatever it was, it was no longer hanging around. “But do you think you could kill the spider?” She hated to ask, but she hated the thought of that thing crawling towards her even more.

“I don’t even see it.”

“It’s on that shelf next to the blender. It’s moving.” An involuntary shudder coursed through her. She knew it was an irrational fear but she couldn’t stop it. That was why it was called irrational.

“You grew up on a farm. You must have seen lots of critters running around.” Brady obligingly moved towards the spider.

Piper forgot her fear when he bent over, his jeans pulling taut over his backside. She really appreciated the way that denim hugged every inch of his firm butt. “Um . . .” What was the question? She forced her attention back to the matter at hand. “We had five dogs running around. Plus a barn cat. They take care of everything moving.”

“Five dogs? Geez. Please tell me they are not all teacup poodles.”

“No. Baby, my mom’s first dog, is a senior, but still kicking. There’s another poodle, Samson, who is twelve. Then two golden retrievers and a beagle mix.” Her mother liked dogs. Her father liked to make her mother happy. “Do you see it?” Piper wasn’t coming any closer until that bug was under Brady’s boot.

“Yeah, I see it.” Reaching way under the stairs, Brady picked up a stack of papers and used it to shove the spider to the edge of the shelf. It dropped to the floor.

Piper looked away out of guilt. The spider really shouldn’t have to die because she was a wimp. “Maybe you can take it outside,” she said.

“Oops.”

Her heart sank. He’d already killed it. “Is it dead?”

“No, it ran under the bottom shelf. I can’t reach it.”

Piper felt instantly better. “Oh, okay, that’s good. I shouldn’t have asked you to kill it anyway. It didn’t do anything.”

Brady didn’t answer. He was studying the papers he had used to shove the spider off the shelf. “Hey, check this out.”

“What?” She moved towards him, well aware that she had nothing on her feet but flip-flops. If that spider came back and ran over her with its fuzzy appendages, she was going to faint.

“It’s an old photocopy of an even older newspaper article. 1887. The headline is ‘Scorned woman kills fiancé.’” He held it up. “It’s too dark down here to read the actual article, but doesn’t that sound like Rachel’s story?”

“It does.” Piper shivered, and she wasn’t sure why. “I guess we can go upstairs and check it out.”

The idea of hearing Rachel’s story in truth, not from passed-down, potentially exaggerated ghost stories, both intrigued and frightened her. If she read about Rachel, and she sounded evil, Piper might find herself scared of her ghost. If she sounded innocent, then, well, Piper would feel guilty that she couldn’t help her. But it didn’t sound like she had a choice in the matter. Brady was studying the paper as he went towards the stairs.

“This is so cool. I mean, she was who you saw earlier, right? This is an awesome coincidence.”

Piper followed Brady, debating the existence of coincidence. There seemed to have been an awful lot of that in her life, and she wasn’t sure what it meant, exactly. Nor did she really want to consider it at the moment. She just wanted to enjoy the fact that quite unexpectedly Brady had shown up at Shelby’s when Piper was the one there. Coincidence? Or fate? Either way, it was a good view and she intended to enjoy it while it lasted.

In the kitchen, Brady hopped up onto the kitchen counter, his legs swinging below, banging the cabinets. Using one foot on the other, he pushed off his boots, letting them drop to the vinyl floor with a soft thump. His legs were spread apart, and she found herself wanting to step in between them and kiss him. The thought made her thighs burn. To avoid temptation and humiliation in the form of throwing herself at him, Piper took a seat at the table.

Brady was holding the paper right in front of his face. “This is faded and filthy. This photocopy must have been made thirty or forty years ago. But I think I can make out most of the article.”

How lucky for them. Piper just sat and waited.

“Aren’t you curious?” he asked her, dropping the paper so he could see her.

She shrugged, propping her chin on her palm. “That’s a complicated question. I am curious, but at the same time, I’m not sure how much I want to know.”

“Just dive in—that’s what I always say.”

Easy for him. Brady had always had the confidence to do that. Piper? Not so much.

“Scorned woman kills fiancé. Okay, let’s see what went down. ‘Mr. Jonathon Stradley got the shock of his life two evenings prior when he set about the ordinary task of fetching his mother a sack of flour from Peterson’s Grocery and instead encountered a bloody young miss wandering out of her house at 317 Elm Street.’” Brady looked up and made a face. “Okay, why do we need to know the name of the grocery store? Or her address?”

Piper shrugged. “Maybe the reporter owns the grocery store, too. I personally like the phrasing ‘bloody young miss.’ That’s not something you hear every day.”

“Agreed.” Brady cleared his throat and continued. “‘When questioned by Mr. Stradley, the young lady, whose dress was splattered with fresh blood, admitted that, in fact, her fiancé was quite dead inside the parlor, bludgeoned with a candlestick. Upon entering the house of doom, Mr. Stradley found a comely maid with a pleasing figure screaming in the parlor and the gruesome scene of a young gentleman on the floor bleeding about the head and face. He was quite dead, Mr. Stradley determined.’”

Quite dead. As opposed to sort of dead?

“Huh,” Piper said, when Brady paused, giving her a look that showed he thought the writing was as ridiculous as she did. “If this wasn’t a real story, I’d have to laugh. I’m not sure what the attractiveness of the maid has to do with anything. And how does the reporter know? He wasn’t even there.”