The Sound of Footsteps: The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries, #1

By Diane Patterson

Ghosts are fun. Ghosts are easy to deal with. Ghosts aren’t real.

Reality is where the trouble starts.

Drusilla Thorne and her sister Stevie need a place to live in San Antonio while Drusilla sets up her new identity. The place they find is definitely cheap — the landlord can’t find tenants because it’s supposedly haunted. That’s fine with Drusilla, because she knows ghosts aren’t real.

But something is making enough noise to keep her awake at night. And if it’s not ghosts making those noises, what is?

Sometimes Drusilla needs to remember asking questions might bring answers nobody wants to hear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diane Patterson
• Release date: Jul 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781941935040

Book preview

THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS

Diane Patterson

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Copyright © 2014 Diane Patterson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

This is a work of fiction.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

To Nina, who said Yay!

THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS

Ghosts are fun. Ghosts are easy to deal with. Ghosts aren’t real.

Reality is where the trouble starts.

Drusilla Thorne and her sister Stevie need a place to live in San Antonio while Drusilla sets up her new identity. The place they find is definitely cheap — the landlord can’t find tenants because it’s supposedly haunted. That’s fine with Drusilla, because she knows ghosts aren’t real.

But something is making enough noise to keep her awake at night. And if it’s not ghosts making those noises, what is?

Sometimes Drusilla needs to remember asking questions might bring answers nobody wants to hear.

*   *   *

The Sound of Footsteps is the prequel novella to You Know Who I Am.

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CHAPTER ONE

AFTER NEARLY THIRTY-SIX HOURS straight driving from Montréal through Chicago and then down to New Orleans, I started hallucinating at the outskirts of Lake Charles, Louisiana. When the man on the billboard holding a glass of liquor was seated in a different position the second time I looked at him, it was time to get off the road. We found a cheap motel as far from the lake as we could manage and I bargained with the check-in girl until she offered me a cheaper room rate than what was advertised. Then Stevie and I walked to a nearby drugstore to get some dark brown-almost black hair coloring.

I checked the color on the box against my sister’s hair coloring, since my natural hair color was the same as hers. Close enough, I said.

After eighteen months living in Montréal, my sister and I were back on the move. We followed our usual pattern: first, I picked up paperwork for a new name—this time, the safe deposit box was in a bank in New Orleans—and then we changed my look. In Montréal, I’d been caramel blonde. Now I was going back to my original hair color, for the first time in years. Even better, Stevie and I would match again. Her eyes were a darker blue than mine, though. The stark contrast between the whiteness of her skin and the dark of her hair and the startling blue of her eyes always gives people the impression that she’s some kind of delicate and alien porcelain doll. I just have dark hair and light eyes.

As we did my hair in the motel bathroom, we marked up every thin, rough bath towel. Her thin, fine fingers worked the dye through my hair.

You should remove your sweatpants, Stevie said. We’ll get dye all over them.

Normally I had no problem removing all my clothes in front of her, since we always lived together in very close quarters, but I had good reasons to avoid it this time. I’m not kneeling on this cold floor completely naked, I told her. Kneeling was difficult enough for me at the moment. So. Tomorrow morning we start driving to our next port of call. What did you have in mind?

We are close to Texas, Stevie said.

I might not be as smart as my little sister, but even for me it’s hard to miss Texas on a map. Gosh, really? I hadn’t noticed. What do you think of Colorado? I always liked Colorado.

Too many places you might run into family members or people who know you.

Only if we go to the ritzy ski resorts. We can avoid Aspen. Wherever we go, we’re not staying in the South, I said.

Why?

It’s not my favorite area of the United States.

"Is Texas considered part of the American South? I thought they were sui generis."

I stuck my head under the tap to rinse. They certainly think they are. But Austin’s too expensive for us.

There’s always San Antonio. It’s the seventeenth most visited city in the United States.

I squeezed the water out of my hair and felt sorry for her yet again. The poor girl was doomed to remember every stupid fact she’d ever read in her entire life. Is it so hard to get a passport people would rather visit Texas?

It’s only three hours west of here, Silla, she said quietly.

When my sister doesn’t give in to me on a topic, she wants something and doesn’t know how to be up-front about asking for it.

You have something you want to tell me? I asked her.

She bit her bottom lip, a sure sign she was nervous. We don’t have anywhere to be. We’re here now, and I’d like to see Texas.

Was she serious? You know Texas is full of Texans, right?

It has fewer resorts your family might visit than Colorado does.

True, as far as that went. However, Stevie’s memory was perfect: she couldn’t have forgotten my first stepfather, Jimmy, was Texan. In addition to being Texan, Jimmy also used to hit me in places where my clothes covered the bruises, which kept my mother from figuring it out for a long time. When I hear the word Texas, I think Jimmy.

Coincidentally, I was currently suffering a mass of bruises I didn’t want my sister to see.

They talk funny there, I said.

She wrapped my hair in our last towel and then followed me into the motel room. Most Americans think I talk funny.

Our room had only one queen-sized bed. When we’d checked in, I was tired enough I didn’t care, and my teeny sister doesn’t take much room. Now that I was confronted with the tight sleeping quarters, I hoped to Zeus this was a night without her having a nightmare. Even though she’s petite, she can flail with the best of them, and right now my body was in very bad shape.

I pulled back the covers on one side of the bed. Playing tourist is expensive. We need to get an address so I can turn this birth certificate into actual identification. And we’re not exactly flush with cash at the moment.

Which my sister knew, because she is the keeper of our money. It’s best that way. If I were in charge of the bankroll, we wouldn’t have a dime.

She pulled back the other side of the covers. Please? she asked.

Stevie wanted to visit Texas? Maybe I was still hallucinating.

Okay, I said. "We will drive through Texas, and then we get the hell out of there and go to Colorado. Capisce?"

She nodded and turned on Jeopardy. I was asleep within seconds.

In the morning, we drove to San Antonio. My lower back was in pain nearly the entire time, as it had been since we’d started our drive. Plus, the car’s air conditioner had stopped working somewhere in Arkansas and the temperatures were already crazy hot first thing in the morning. By the time Stevie announced we were at San Antonio’s city limits, I was sweaty and where my hips and back weren’t numb, they were filled with shooting pains.

Stevie, despite wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and having her long, thick hair in a braid lying against her neck, never perspired.

Where am I headed? I asked my navigator.

Downtown.

Like I can read freeway signs. Tell me where to exit.

After we left the freeway, Stevie seemed preoccupied with looking out her window. She told me to drive down what seemed to be a typical downtown street, and then to turn right, all the while craning her neck and looking back and forth.

When I heard a short intake of breath, I looked over and saw what she was staring at. An adobe building, bleached white in the sun, sat across the plaza from us.

Are you kidding me? I said. She flinched, so maybe my voice was a little louder than I intended. "We’re here for the Alamo?"

She turned and looked at me. Haven’t you always wanted to see it?

My little sister had been born in England and for the last ten years had lived in whatever place, usually horrifying, I could find for us while we used a variety of assumed names. She had spent those ten years as the human equivalent of an indoor cat. Now, a day after we entered the United States, her first request was to visit some crap piece of American history.

She calmly told me where to turn to find a parking lot.

I, on the other hand, was apoplectic. The house you grew up in in England was already two hundred years old when this...this thing happened.

You have no feeling for your own country’s history, she said.

I pulled into a parking space. "We’re driving to Colorado tonight," I told her.

Are you cranky because you haven’t eaten?

Of course I haven’t eaten. I’ve been driving. I got out of the car.

And collapsed to the ground when the severe electric pains shot up my back and stopped my legs from working.

I lay on the hot, cracked asphalt of the parking lot and tried to get my breathing under control. Every time I sucked in a huge breath, I got lungs full of hot, tar-filled air and my back spasmed again.

Stevie ran over to me. What happened? Did you trip on something?

The pain was so bad I had trouble focusing on her words. Just give me a second.

She knelt down. Something’s wrong. What is it?

A little ibuprofen and I’ll be fine. But I couldn’t push myself up.

A pair of men’s boots appeared beside me and a shadow fell over my sister’s face. An older man, maybe in his fifties, knelt down and put his hand on my shoulder. Miss, are you all right?

I tried to grin. Strangest thing, really. My foot must have caught on something.

Can I call anyone for you? Do you need a doctor?

Just need a hand standing.

Let me give you a hand. The man gripped my arms and pulled me up. The electric pain in my back jabbed me again, and my legs nearly buckled again. Instead, I casually leaned against the blazing hot door of our car and tried to get my breath.

The man peered at me. His eyes were a little yellow and beginning to be surrounded by the excess skin of age. Are you sure you’re all right? Is there anything I can do for you?

Despite everything I went through with Jimmy, I had lied to my sister: the Texan drawl is one of their more attractive features. If I’d been in better condition, I’d definitely have flirted with him.

If you had any suggestions for a nice place to eat, that would be lovely, I said. My voice wavered with the strain.

He gave us a recommendation for a

Reviews for The Sound of Footsteps

[bettesbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Prequel to Drusilla Thorne Mysteries. Ghosts are fun. Ghosts are easy to deal with. Ghosts aren't real. Reality is where the trouble starts.This was an okay mystery but in the back of my mind I was waiting for answers for the characters, why they are who the are, the timeline didn't fit some of the clues for Drusilla and her sister to be on the run. Drusilla can't read but she was seventeen (by the timeline) when they went on the run and she was from wealth. These are a few of the questions that held me back from getting involved with the characters.

[reannon_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Novella, story of a woman and her sister running for an unspecified reason, and running into more of it in San Antonio.

[ssimon2000-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Quick read introducing Drusilla Thorne and her sister, Stevie. Good, solid writing and a suspenseful story make it easy to go right into the next book in the series, "You Know Who I Am".