Since You've Been Gone by Carlene Thompson

Landy’s and that other one, The Gold …”
    â€œThe Gold Key. But last night, after the storm, the street was empty.”
    â€œRight. I hunkered down in the doorway. I don’t think he coulda seen me. But Grandfather
never
looks out, all sneaky-like, like he don’t wanna be seen, so I usually don’t have to hunker. All that lookin’ out—that was odd. I knewI had to tell you because my daddy always said Grandfather would get his revenge on this town for not treatin’ Daddy like he deserved for bein’ a Dobbs, and with Grandfather actin’ so peculiar, I thought maybe he decided the time had come. And that girl with the second sight comin’ back is a bad omen, too. I want her to go away.”
    Bill wished Skeeter would stop focusing on Rebecca. He thought the guy was harmless, but he couldn’t be certain. He was certain, though, that Skeeter had seen unusual activity in the Klein building last night. In the attic. And Rebecca had “seen” Todd bound and gagged in a dusty, hot space with a wooden floor and mice. Just like an old attic.
2
    An hour later Bill Garrett, Deputy G. C. Curry, and Herbert Klein entered a glass door on the right side of Klein Furniture. Inside a narrow, well-lit hall was a set of nine mailboxes. Each of the three floors above the furniture store contained three spacious apartments. Stairs led upward, but the three men opted for the old elevator.
    Herbert Klein—sixtyish, portly, high-strung—was a wreck. He’d gone into near-hysterics when Bill called to ask permission to search the building for Todd Ryan based on the sighting of lights and movement in the attic. Klein had been too flustered to ask what concerned citizen had spotted the activity and Bill volunteered no information. He didn’t want Klein turning him down when he heard the citizen was Skeeter, therefore making it necessary for Bill to get a search warrant. Instead Klein offered full cooperation. Now he alternately talked and wiped his bald, sweating head with a handkerchief.
    â€œIn all these years I’ve never had any trouble here,” Herbert Klein assured Bill for the fifth time. “I have older, stable tenants, none of this drinking and arguing you get with young folks.” Apparently he believed people overforty didn’t drink or argue. “I think it’s impossible the child is in this building.”
    â€œWhy? Have you been in the attic?” Bill asked.
    â€œNo. Our storage is on the second and third floors. I don’t have any reason to be clear up in the attic.”
    â€œThen you wouldn’t have heard anything if the child was up there today even if the store were open.”
    Klein looked stricken. “Oh, you’re right. Oh dear. Oh no. This is awful.” Klein vigorously wiped his head as the elevator stopped on the sixth floor. “Only one of the apartments up here is rented. Helen and Edgar Moreland. They’ve been here for thirty years. They’re late seventies. No, Edgar’s eighty. Oh dear. They’re fragile. And here it is after midnight. Please don’t ask them any questions.”
    â€œThey live below the attic,” Bill said. “I’ll have to question them.”
    â€œOh God. Edgar will have a heart attack.”
    â€œMaybe not. I’ll be gentle,” Bill promised solemnly, aware of Curry’s mouth twitching. Bill wondered how Mrs. Klein could bear living with this fretting, overwrought specimen.
    As they walked down the hall toward the attic entrance, a door opened and an elderly man stepped out. His thick, silver hair waved back from a high forehead and the clear, azure eyes of a boy looked at them alertly through wire-rimmed spectacles. “Found me at last, eh? Thought I got away with that bank robbery back in thirty-nine.”
    â€œEdgar, stop carrying on,” a woman said sharply. “They’ll think you’re serious.”
    â€œI am