Tymber Dalton by Out of the Darkness Page A

be—there wasn’t any liquor in the house. He poured himself a cup of coffee.
    “Sorry I didn’t come up until late,” he apologized.
    “Early.”
    He looked at her, started to say something, thought better of it, and nodded. “Yes.”
    “What were you doing in the basement?”
    “Huh?”
    “I heard you go down into the basement last night.”
    “I thought I heard a noise down there.”
    “Oh.”
     
    * * * *
     
    Basement? What the hell?
    The truth was, he not only didn’t remember going into the basement, he didn’t remember much between the hours of nine last night—when he remembered checking the time—and getting up this morning.
    He sipped his coffee. Toothpaste and coffee didn’t go well together, but he’d had a foul taste in his mouth when he awoke. And a pounding headache.
    “Do we have any aspirin?” he asked.
    She looked at him, grabbed the bottle from a cabinet, and handed it to him. “Headache?”
    He swallowed two, chased with coffee. “I think I need glasses. My eyes are bothering me.”
    “If you didn’t spend sixteen hours a day on the computer, they wouldn’t bother you.”
    She smiled behind her coffee cup, but he felt the bite in her tone.
    And his own guilt. “I’m sorry, Sami. My writing’s going so well, you know what it’s like. When you get on a roll you have to ride it until it plays out. No telling when I’ll get blocked again.”
    She put her cup in the sink and kissed him on the forehead. “Just don’t wear yourself out, okay?”
     
    * * * *
     
    Sami settled into a routine. Tuesday morning she decided it was a good day to start her research. Maybe Steve wouldn’t be the only one to benefit from their “vacation.” If she could dredge a real-life story out of the house’s history, it might be her next book. She spent the morning doing chores and working. After lunch, she opened Steve’s office door.
    “I’m going into town. Want anything?”
    He didn’t turn from his computer. “No.”
    She paused in the door of his office. “Well, good-bye.”
    “Yeah. I’m trying to work, okay?”
    She fought the urge to slam the door behind her.
    “Asshole,” she muttered.
    His writer’s block had lifted—so he said. But his surly attitude was returning.
    The horses were waiting when she stepped outside. The day already a scorcher, the morning news had promised afternoon thunderstorms. She secured the geldings in the pasture and drove to town.
    The Brooksville courthouse was a mixture of old and new architecture where modern additions had been grafted onto the original structure. She’d been to Brooksville a few times when she lived in Florida, and was happy to see the downtown still maintained its small-town air. A huge oak shaded the grassy area where a war monument honored Hernando County’s dead veterans. Older two-story buildings flanked the main courthouse square, and the library was nearby. She parked in the courthouse lot and found the tax collector’s office.
    Once she told them what she wanted, they directed her to an office across the street where the property appraiser’s office kept the plat maps. She trekked over and found the property identification number and legal description. With that in hand, back at the tax office they showed her to a computer terminal where Sami researched the property’s history.
    The records went back past the turn of the century, when the entire area was free-range grazing land. The Oriole-Dade Mining Company purchased ten thousand acres and split it into separate properties. She followed the time line and narrowed it down to the individual owners, from George Simpson, the name on the tombstone, all the way to Shelly Johnson.
    Sami wasn’t sure if Shelly Johnson was a mister or a missus, but she copied down the most recent address from the tax records. Johnson had owned the property since the mid-sixties. Over the years there were several transfers of ownership only to have Johnson take control of the property