Read Cemetery of Angels for Free Online Page A

room distinctive.
    “Tell me again. How many children?” Essie asked, ignoring the smell.
    “Two,” Bill said. “So far.”
    His wife blushed.
    “We have a boy named Patrick who’s seven, and a girl Karen, who’s five.”
    “That’s lovely,” said Essie. “I have a daughter who lives in the East with her husband. Went to the University of Pennsylvania, and then married a dentist. Stayed East. I only see her twice a year.” She grinned. “But that’s also when I get my dental checkup.”
    “That’s too bad,” Rebecca said, “that you don’t see your daughter more often.”
    “She has her own life,” Essie said with a shrug. “She’s happy. And the dental work is not bad.”
    “Grand children?” Rebecca asked.
    “Two. I’d bore you with the pictures, but they’re downstairs in my purse.” Bill walked around the empty room.
    “You could make this a playroom,” Essie said, noting Bill’s interest and shifting back to commerce. “With four upstairs bedrooms, you could keep the master for yourselves, give the kids two on the side, and keep this as a playroom. Or a study for you, Mr. Moore.”
    “Either could be done,” Bill said. “There’s a wall here that could be taken out, too, and moved. There’s a way this whole floor could be reconstructed easily.” He eyed the walls, putting a hand to one. “If we wanted to, that is,” he added.
    “Structurally, this is a very sound house,” Essie said. “Last big earthquake? Not a crack in the plaster anywhere.”
    “I’m impressed,” Bill Moore said. “I have to admit. There are possibilities here.”
    Essie agreed. So did Rebecca.
    She and Mrs. Moore left the room. Bill left last, turning to look behind him as he left. No voice anymore. He tried the doorknob and it was no longer resistant to his touch.
    Odd. He left the door open and followed the women.
    Essie led them upstairs to the attic, a hot unfinished chamber with one small window and several exposed beams from the roof.
    “This could be converted…” Rebecca found herself thinking. “Bill could put in a skylight, enlarge the window. Give it a southern exposure, redo the floor…”
    “No! Don’t!” A contrary thought came to her as forceful as a voice. So forceful that she looked around. Mildly rattled, she left the room in a hurry.
    She was still thinking when Essie led them back down the attic steps. They walked all the way back to the ground floor, Bill trailing the women.
    At one point on the steps leading down from the second floor, Bill thought he heard something, too. That funny murmur again.
    … Ignorant fool. Why do they come here? Why don’t they leave me be?
    He was disturbed by it. He stopped short again to listen. But he still couldn’t place the direction from which it had come. And after two or three seconds, he continued down the stairs, convinced that whatever he heard or thought he heard was his imagination. And it made no difference, anyway. Someone somewhere had a radio or television on.
    Fool!
    Esther led them to the only part of the first floor that they hadn’t seen, a section under the turret room of the second floor.
    First they visited the dining room. The floor was a wreck. Clawed and scratched. But the old boards were sound beneath the damage. Bill looked at them carefully. An architect’s trained eye saw that the damage and the dirt were superficial. Beneath that was something solid. And then there was a den, adjacent to the living room. Mrs. Dickinson probably hadn’t used that room too much. It didn’t show much wear.
    Then they arrived back in the living room. For some reason, Essie’s notebook had fallen on the floor from the table. And she couldn’t find her red-framed reading glasses.
    “I know I put them down here,” she was saying. “I’m absolutely certain of it. Or at least I think I did.”
    She gathered the notebook from the floor. It looked like it had tipped off the table and landed hard. She searched her pockets and her