Evil Behind That Door by Barbara Fradkin Page A

appreciate all the sweat I’d put into it. I admit it wasn’t pretty to look at, but I figured the rust holes improved the ventilation.
    â€œYeah, but it wouldn’t hurt to make the place safe at least,” I said, looking around the kitchen. Rusty wires hung from the ceiling where the light fixture had fallen out, and the gas stove looked older than both of us put together. “It’s a wonder your parents didn’t burn it down. A gas leak with those wires, the whole place could go up.”
    He gave me a disgusted look over the top of his bottle.
    â€œThey were pigs. Mom never lifted a finger to clean the place. The older she got, the worse she got. Up all night reading her romance novels and popping more pills than a Hollywood starlet. And Dad…well, you know Dad. What the fuck else is there to say?”
    I did know Pete Mitchell. Everybody in the county knew Pete Mitchell. If it was past two o’clock in the afternoon, you stayed out of his way. He had the blackest, drunkest rages I ever saw. And in these parts, that’s saying a lot. It was one reason why, even though Barry Mitchell gave me grief, I never gave up on him completely. My mother left me to grow up like a weed in the garden while she watched her soaps and listened to Elvis. But at least she was harmless. I never had to hide out in the barn waiting for her rages to pass. Or dodge flying shovels when I failed some test I didn’t even know I was taking.
    This time, Pete Mitchell had taken one drink too many. Valentine’s Day, two in the morning, he and his wife got kicked out of the Lion’s Head. They headed off toward home on their snowmobile in the middle of a blizzard.
    Nobody had seen them since.
    Barry popped open another beer and looked across the table at me. His face was all twisted, and for a scary moment, I thought he was going to cry.
    â€œI hate this place,” he said. “It never felt like home.” He tossed his head back and chugged half the bottle, pausing at the end to drag his dirty fist across his mouth. “I can’t pay you yet, O’Toole. I’m sitting on a fortune, that’s what the lawyers say, but unless I sell it, I won’t have a cent to pay you.”
    With the usual O’Toole luck, my great-grandfather had gotten a hundred-acre land grant of the most useless piece of cedar swamp in the county. Barry’s great-grandfather had gotten a hundred acres on a point of land jutting into Lake Madrid. These days even the crappiest waterfront shack went for a quarter of a million. No wonder the lawyers were drooling.
    â€œI know,” I said, “but working together, the expenses won’t be too high. Let’s at least fix the leaks and the electrical. After that…” I shrugged, trying not to look too desperate.
    Barry drained his second beer.
    â€œThat’s a plan, O’Toole. Hell, I can’t sell this dump yet anyway! My folks’ bodies are still out there somewhere, so it ain’t even legally mine. So let’s drink to the handyman team. Mitchell and O’Toole.” He laughed. That creepy Barry Mitchell laugh that used to curdle my blood. “Cedric Fucking Elvis the Tool.”

CHAPTER TWO
    B arry’s old truck was nowhere in sight when I finally showed up the next day. I was late because the seat on my dirt bike had fallen off when I hit a pothole on the way. I’d had to hitch into town for new bolts. Boy, did I ever need my truck back.
    There was no note, but I was half frozen from the ride and the door was open so I went in. The place was an icebox. No furnace, no heaters, and the woodstove was a fire hazard. Barry probably went into town just to get warm. The Lion’s Head serves a piping-hot Irish stew along with its pitchers of beer.
    I headed down into the basement to check out the furnace. It was in the darkest corner of the room but even in the lousy light I could see it was beyond hope. It was an