By Familiar Means by Delia James

alive,” said Grandma, softly but very firmly. “
I
know the rules. Perhaps you’d care to tell
me
what you were doing that got poor Alistair so upset he had to come get us?”
    I opened my mouth and closed it again.
    â€œWe found a dead body,” I said.
    â€œOh,
dear
.” Just like that, the lecture was over and I was being hugged by my grandma. I held on, hard, and for a long time.
    â€œâ€™Scuse me,” called Pete Simmons. He’d come back from his other conversation and was waving his pencil to try to attract our attention. “I know this is tough on everybody, but the sooner we’re done, the sooner you can get home.”
    â€œSorry, Detective,” I muttered and went back over to stand with Jake and Miranda. Naturally, Julia and Grandma followed.
    â€œNow, Mr. and Mrs. Luce.” Pete flipped his notebook open. “We were talking about . . .” He turned over another page. “The tunnel. Who found it? Was it the two of you?” Pete sort of waggled his pencil at the pair of them. “Or were all three of you together?” The pencil, and Pete’s attention, now pointed at me.
    I glanced back at Alistair, looking for a little moral support. He had come out from behind the tire, but he had also hunkered down on the pavement with a calm
you got yourself into this one, human
, air.
    â€œI found the tunnel,” I told the detective. “Miranda and Jake were giving me a tour of the space. I’m going to be painting some murals for them—”
    â€œOn the basement floor?” asked Pete with perfect calm. He’d probably heard stranger things.
    â€œI tripped over a brick,” I lied. “It was loose.”
    I looked at Pete. Pete looked at me. I was not going to be able to keep this up for long. You cannot win a stare down with a cat—or a cop.
    â€œHow long has he . . . the body . . . been there?” I asked, hoping to sort of, kind of change the subject.
    Pete shook his head. Kenisha looked grim. They’d both been down to have a look at the corpse. “Rough guess, I’d say it was at least a week.”
    â€œOh.” Miranda covered her mouth, and Jake, who had been trying to maintain at least a little calm while the police trooped in and out of the old drugstore, was looking a little green around the gills.
    â€œAre you all right, Mrs. Luce?” asked Pete gently. “Do you need to sit down?”
    But Miranda waved him back.
    â€œJake, that is, we”—Miranda squeezed her husband’s arm—“we’d been experiencing some strange phenomenon over the past month, including some thumping we couldn’t explain. We thought . . . we’d been thinking, the building might be haunted.”
    â€œHaunted?” said Pete.
    â€œIt was one explanation,” replied Miranda firmly. She might not have believed Jake’s claim, but she was not going to talk him down in front of the police. “But, now, I mean, what if . . .”
    â€œWhat if we were hearing that poor guy pounding on the trapdoor, trying to get out?” Jake reached up under his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Oh, man.”
    I couldn’t help shuddering. My Vibe had been all about secrets and wanting to be discovered. What if that had been an echo of the man’s desire to be rescued? His very desperate and dying desire?
    â€œWe can’t tell anything yet, Mr. Luce,” said Pete. “When did you start hearing these noises?”
    â€œWe’ve really only been in the space for maybe a month,” said Miranda. “Regularly, I mean. We’ve been in and out for longer. Cleaning, and like that. I guess we’ve been hearing things for maybe two weeks?” She looked at Jake forconfirmation. “But the contractors say they’ve been hearing things almost since they started.”
    â€œWell, I’m pretty sure the guy we found