Murder Under the Mistletoe

by K. J. Emrick

Kneeling down next to Swanson, she put her hand next to his. He smiled at her and nodded his approval.

  When she pushed down on that one particular red stone – with far more force than she expected, no wonder she had failed to find it before – a doorway opened in the dead end, outlined in the stonework itself. The sound of rocks scraping against themselves filled her ears, and another breath of musty, closed-in air filled her nostrils.

  She returned Swanson’s smile. “Thanks. That’s exactly what I needed.”

  In just a few steps she found herself looking at a set of wooden, switchback stairs. They were squeaky with age but solid under her feet. She followed them up, and up again, until they led her to a door.

  She hadn’t seen Tiptoe since she sent her off on her mission to remove the mistletoe. She had no doubt that the cat was busy doing exactly that. Maybe she was even collecting the sprigs from out in the main room. That’s what her daddy would have done. Tiptoe was cut from the same cloth.

  Swanson had shadowed her up the stairs, tripping three separate times and somehow managing to tumble down the steps that he should have passed right through. Darcy had to put a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling. She supposed she shouldn’t find it as funny as she did, but the sight of a ghost tripping downstairs was just too funny for words.

  He floated carefully up the last few steps to stand there beside Darcy on a narrow landing in front of what Darcy could only assume was another door. At least, it had the appearance of a door. A tall, narrow rectangle barely visible in the light of her cellphone’s beam as an outline in the rest of the wall. There was a lever handle, and Darcy was glad to see she wouldn’t have to play pantomime with the ghosts this time to figure out how to open this one.

  She settled her hand on the lever, but then hesitated. She hadn’t seen Maxwell anywhere downstairs. She was assuming it was him who closed the bookcase entrance to the secret passage to trap her inside, but what if that had swung closed on its own, and he was somewhere else…like, behind this door inside the third floor room. What if he was in there when she burst in?

  Swanson waved a hand in front of her face again, until Darcy looked his way. He tilted his head toward the door, and then gave her a wink.

  What was that all about?

  Grinning like a fool, he put his hand out like he was going to lean up against the door. He crossed his ankles, and put his other hand on his hip, and dropped to the side…and fell right through the door.

  Darcy slapped her hand to her forehead. Could this man be any clumsier? The answer was obviously no. So now the handyman’s ghost was in the room, and she was out here, with no idea what she would find if she opened the door…

  Swanson’s face bloomed out through the door, right in front of her.

  “Hey! Didn’t we talk about this? You have got to stop popping up out of nowhere like that and scaring me half to death!”

  Unphased by her scolding, he brought one hand through the door too, and then held up his fingers with the thumb and forefinger in a circle.

  Then he winked at her again.

  “Oh!” Darcy got it, finally. That was the ‘okay’ sign he was giving her. He was telling her that he checked the room out, and they were okay to go in. No one was in there.

  Still, she took her time turning the handle, listening to the cold metal squeak until finally the door opened and she could swing it inward. She made sure to hold her cellphone’s light out and ready as she went inside. She closed the door behind herself.

  Only, it wasn’t a door. Not really.

  Now that she was on this side of it, she realized it was another set of wooden shelves, artfully constructed as one piece with a flat back and hidden hinges. At a glance, it would appear to be part of the wall. She stood there admiring the craftmanship that was needed to build something like this and keep it hidden…and then she gasped.

  “No. No, no, no no…” In a panic she felt all over the shelves and the wall around it, looking for the release lever. If this one didn’t have a release on this side, either, she would be stuck up here in this room with no way out but a swan dive like Jennifer Bylow had done all those years ago.

  Then her hand found the hidden handle, at the back of the bottom-most shelf. She almost missed it, twice, until her fingers caught at the little edge in the wood that could be pushed, and then pulled, and with that the shelves swung open again.

  Darcy breathed a huge sigh of relief. There was another question answered. The killer got in this way and got out this way, too. Not that it would do her much good. If she went back in there, she still couldn’t get out through the bookcase downstairs. Now that she was calm again and not frozen with fear that she would be trapped up here, she gave the room a good look.

  Spanning her flashlight around the room she found the door on the other side. That would be the one that the police had found locked from inside with a slide chain, when they came to investigate Jennifer’s death. That was her way out.

  If Maxwell hadn’t kept these rooms in the same condition they had always been, then she would have never found these answers. Not without actually doing a very complicated spirit communication. She was just as happy that it wouldn’t be necessary now. It would have completely drained her to call out to ghosts without the proper equipment. And besides. She didn’t always go right to a spirit communication. It was good to switch things up sometimes. Even when it was something you were good at.

  After all. She was on vacation.

  The room was spacious. Huge. Everything in it was covered in drop cloths. The furniture looked like huge, misshapen ghosts lurking and waiting for someone to come and disturb them. Darcy had no intention of doing anything of the sort. She wasn’t interested in what lay under those faded white cloths. A couch wasn’t going to help her solve this mystery. The walls were bare even though she could see several huge squares where the paint had faded unevenly, indicating there had once been paintings of some kind all around. Maybe even the portrait of Millicent Cussington that now glared at guests downstairs.

  At the far end of the room, she found the double-paned window that could be seen from outside. The one at the very top of the house, in the third floor.

  This one room was all there was to this part of the Inn. It must have been a sunroom, or a lounge of some sort, back when Orson Bylow owned it as his home. One thing she noticed was the conspicuous absence of any sprigs of mistletoe up here. She supposed that since Maxwell had managed to keep guests away from this part of the house, he didn’t feel the need to keep the ghosts away from it too.

  It was sort of odd that Maxwell and his family hadn’t made this part of the official tour of the place, though. As sordid as the history of the Hideaway Inn was, this would have been a big tourist attraction. She knew from experience with her own town that tourists flocked to the unique and the bizarre. After Misty Hollow was labelled the “Little Murder Capitol of America” by a certain third-rate reporter, the tourism dollars had started to double for them, and then triple.

  The only reason she could think that Maxwell would have literally hidden this part of the Inn away from guests would be that he was embarrassed by what it represented.

  She gave the room another look, her flashlight moving slowly left to right—

  And this time a figure was standing in the window. A woman standing with her back to Darcy, in a long black dress.

  Jennifer Bylow looked over her shoulder at her and smiled a sad smile. Then she turned away and was suddenly looking at something in the middle of the room. Darcy focused her light there, but that part of the room was empty.

  Whatever Jennifer’s ghost was staring at, it was in her past, faded away by history.

  Darcy looked back at Jennifer, knowing that something was about to happen. The ghost’s lips were moving. She was talking, repeating words that had been said two hundred years ago, spoken to whoever it was that had stood here with her, in that empty spot in the middle of the room.

  Jennifer’s killer. The person w
ho ended her life, here in this room. Darcy had a suspicion she knew who it was.

  Face twisting, rippling into a mask of fear, Jennifer’s ghost screamed. The silence of it chilled Darcy’s blood. As she watched, the ghost’s arms came up, and crossed defensively, and she began backing away. She flinched, as if she’d been struck. She hunched her shoulders against those invisible impacts, again and again, backing away from her attacker…

  Until she was forced back to the window.

  She screamed, and tried to strike back, but suddenly she was shoved backward, and her legs caught the ledge of the window, and she couldn’t stop herself from going over. She fell, disappearing into the night. For a moment, Darcy could hear her screech of terror.

  The window stood closed. It was only open in Jennifer’s memory.

  This was an echo of history. No one was dying now. No. the ghost was just reliving her death, as she had probably done over and over for two hundred years. It had felt so real to Darcy, like something physically touching her sixth sense. She had to remind herself it wasn’t real. Not to her, anyway. It was real enough for Jennifer.

  It was what had her trapped here, so long after her death.

  Another question answered with absolute certainty. Jennifer didn’t jump. She was pushed. She was murdered.

  The big question still remained, however. Who was it that Jennifer had seen here in this room? Who had been beating her, and who pushed her out that window?

  Now that the ghosts were talking to her, things were coming together. If she could look through the books on the family history down in the library, she had a feeling that she would find the missing pieces. That’s where she needed to go now.

  She turned around, remembering the door out of the room was over this way…

  Swanson was right in front of her, so close that her cellphone and her hand went right through him, sending a tingling all the way up her arm to her shoulder.

  The phone dropped out of her numb fingers, and she drew her hand back as if he’d bitten her. Thankfully her phone case took the impact on the corner as it hit the floor and bounced, and fell harmlessly on its back. The flashlight faced downward now but she could still see Swanson clear as daylight, his outline shimmering with ghostly light.

  “Swanson! I told you to stop doing that!”

  He pantomimed with his hands, sorry, sorry, sorry, and then lifted a single finger to tell her to hold on while he bent down to get her phone back for her.

  Of course, being a ghost, his hands passed right through the phone, and the floor, and back again. He blinked at the phone, wondering why it was still there. He grabbed for it again, with the same result. His hand went right through. He brought his hand up in front of his transparent eyes and wiggled his fingers. His expression was comical in its confusion. He had no idea why it wasn’t working.

  “Oh, give me that,” Darcy snapped at him, swiping the phone up from the floor. “I swear. Guys can sometimes be idiots, alive or dead. Come on. We’ve got things to do.”

  He shrugged and nodded. Darcy was just about to open the door when she saw Jennifer Bylow materialize out of the shadows next to Swanson. She gave him a sweet kiss on his cheek, and as she did her lips curved into a smile.

  Then she faded away again.

  Her eyes flashed an angry red at Darcy as she went.

  That ghost was not stable. She doubted Swanson or Millicent or the boy, Rupert, were any better off. Swanson might be hiding it better, but Darcy had the impression he was only doing it for Jennifer’s sake. He was keeping himself together for the sake of their love.

  Now Darcy knew she had to help them. She simply had to.

  Chapter 9

  The dawn broke bright and cool, with the forecast calling for more snow on top of what had already fallen. They were scheduled to be here at the Hideaway Inn for the rest of today and tomorrow morning. Now, after reading three of the oldest books in the library, Darcy wondered if maybe they wouldn’t be checking out early.

  Sitting in one of the easy chairs in the middle of the room, Darcy held her feet tucked up under her, with the third book cradled open on her lap. It really was interesting reading. Books like this had a historical feel. It was like she was looking back in time.

  She’d actually read these pages more than once already. The answers had been here, just like she thought they would be. It had taken her a few hours, but she found what she needed, and with these last few answers she put it all together. The door from the third-floor room had led to another set of stairs going down. This set was narrow and steep, and old. They brought Darcy down to the second floor, and to another hidden door. This one was in the library, and the shelving unit that it moved was full of books. It was the paperback section, thankfully, so it wasn’t that heavy.

  This must have been part of the remodel that was done to turn this place into an Inn. No doubt, back in the day, there was a real doorway set in place here, but not anymore. Maxwell and his family had made sure to seal off that upper room from everyone. People who weren’t as observant as Jon and Darcy might not have even noticed.

  Even though she had read these pages already, she read them again, more slowly. She had time. She was waiting for something.

  It wasn’t five minutes later when Swanson stuck his head in from the hallway and gave her another one of his “okay” signs with his thumb and forefinger circled. At the same time, Jennifer walked past the open doorway, smiling in her direction, and then frowning, and then…well, she hissed. Swanson rushed after her, stumbling after his first few steps. Lastly, Rupert stuck his young head up through the floorboards, nodding frantically. She’d asked them to keep an eye out for her, and with the mistletoe all collected and disposed of by her amazing little cat, they were free to do just that.

  That same cat was sleeping now, nice and warm, tucked into the blankets at the end of the bed in their room. Jon and the kids were keeping her company. It was okay if Tiptoe slept through the next part of the mystery. She’d more than earned her rest.

  Footsteps down the hall announced the arrival of someone who was still alive. Ghosts might wear shoes, but they didn’t make noise when they walked. No. This was the person she’d been waiting for.

  Maxwell Bylow peeked into the library, blinking his eyes in surprise when he saw her sitting there. His frizzy red hair bounced around his temples as he bobbed his head and put on a bright smile.

  “There ya be,” he said to her. “Been looking high and low and everywheres in between, I have.”

  His words were wrapped in a pure Irish lilt. Darcy had a few friends who were from Ireland, and she knew that musical accent. Maxwell was a master of copying different dialects, she had to give him that. He’d gone back to wearing the bow tie today, paired with red suspenders and blue slacks. All in all, he still gave Darcy the impression of a clown without his makeup,

  After what she’d read in this book, she wasn’t laughing.

  “Good morning, Maxwell. I hope you don’t mind.” She lifted the book up from her lap, and let it drop back again. “You did say I could read any of the books in here, right?”

  “Too right, but I was thinking you’d be more into the paperbacks. Something a wee bit more relaxing. After all, you’re here for a fine, relaxing vacation.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s what I keep telling myself, too. But this is really interesting. Did you know this was here?”

  He leaned over to take a better look at the book’s spine as Darcy lifted it for him again. A shadow crossed his face, leaving a tremble on his lips. He took a breath and came a few steps further into the room. “Not sure I did. Haven’t seen that in a year of Sundays.”

  It was his southern accent this time. Darcy thought she might understand the reason for his multiple personas now. It was all here. In the book.

  Sort of.

  “This is a journal,” Darcy explained. “I know a little bit about journals. My Great Aunt kept several of them. She wrote down her thoughts on life, and…um, other things.” Sh
e couldn’t tell him that Millie had written down everything she knew about ghosts in those journals. Not unless she wanted the conversation to spiral out of control. Best to stick to the matter at hand. “So, in this journal, your great, great, great, great grandmother Millicent wrote down all of her thoughts, starting when she moved into this place. Do you know what she says in here?”

  He edged closer, his feet scuffing on the floor. “Never read it.”

  Those three words were completely blank of accent or inflection. ‘Monotone’ was the word that sprang to Darcy’s mind, but even that didn’t describe it. Not really. It was the voice of someone who was telling a lie with no emotion about it one way or the other.

  He knew exactly what his distant relative had to say about things.

  She still walked him through it. This had to be explained in a certain way. “First of all, I think we need to start with a simple truth. Jennifer Bylow didn’t commit suicide. Someone killed her.”

  He didn’t respond. Two more steps, and he was at the chair next to hers. He sat down, his eyes locked with hers the whole time, and didn’t say a thing.

  Darcy swung her feet out from the chair, resting them flat on the floor. “So the question becomes, who killed her? Then from that question we have to ask, how did the others die?”

  “What others?” Maxwell asked her, his voice still flat and toneless.

  “The others. You know. Swanson. Rupert. And, of course, Millicent.”

  His smile only stretched one corner of his mouth. “No. I told you. Swanson fell down the stairs.”

  “You also told me Jennifer jumped to her death and that’s a lie, if we can be honest with each other. The idea that Swanson fell down the stairs is a lie, too.” She remembered the words young Rupert Bylow had written in the bathroom mirror… I fall down. It’s not always my fault.

  After all, what were the chances of that many people falling down and dying, all in the same house, all around the same time? Darcy figured it was somewhere between slim, and none.