by Skylar Finn
“What’s the matter, Madame Lucia?” He held me by the shoulders as if to support me, but his grasp was too tight for comfort. “Did you see a ghost?”
Laughter burst out behind me, echoing through the old lobby, and two boys—the same age as Tyler—unchained the door to reveal themselves. Both of them were wearing a black sheet across their shoulders. They were the figures chasing me in the hallway.
The taller boy, whose buzzed black hair connected to his sideburns and chin strap like one cohesive unit, doubled over. “You should have seen your face. ‘Ghosts, oh no!’” He smacked his shorter friend’s chest, who was too overcome with laughter to join in on the fun. Tyler grinned.
“It was you?” I heaved for breath and shoved Tyler away from me. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you pull a prank like that? God, the screaming alone—”
“Get out,” Tyler hissed in a voice I recognized from the library. “Get out, Lucia. Get out.”
The other boys began chanting too. “Get out, Lucia. Get out, Lucia.”
“Stop it,” I ordered.
Tyler held up a fist, and his friends ceased automatically. He backed me up against the doors to the old lobby the same way he cornered Karli against the bar during my first night at the resort. “The old wing is closed off to guests,” he said, towering over me. “You shouldn’t be in there.”
“From what I gathered, neither should you. Get away from me.”
Tyler sneered and moved closer instead. “Make me.”
His friends flanked his either side. There wasn’t much room to maneuver. If I slipped by Tyler, one of the other boys would catch me instead, but when Tyler slid his hand around my waist, I instinctively nailed him in the torso. He clenched his stomach, the muscles absorbing the impact, and grinned.
“Oh, you’re going to pay for that,” he said, pressing forward.
“Mr. Watson!”
All three boys scattered as Detective Hawkins—Daniel—strolled through the double egress doors with his hand resting on his gun. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and Tyler’s friends immediately took their leave, but when Tyler tried to pass him, Daniel stepped into his path.
“This is the second time I’ve found you in the condemned section of the hotel,” Daniel said. “And now you’re aggravating a guest of the resort. If it happens again, I will take you down to the station regardless of what your father has to say about the matter. Do you understand?”
Tyler saluted Daniel and goose-stepped out of the ballroom. Once he was gone, Daniel motioned for me to join him. When I crossed to him, he squeezed my shoulder reassuringly.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Tyler and his friends played a dumb prank on me, but I’m fine.”
“Your camera’s on.”
“Oh.” I switched it off. I’d review the footage later. No doubt most of it was too embarrassing to post online. “What are you doing here anyway? You’re not still investigating Thelma’s death, are you?”
He guided me through the old kitchen and restaurant until we returned to the regular hallways of King and Queens. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
“But I thought the case was closed.”
“Remember I told you I had a feeling something was wrong?” he said. “I was right. I went up the mountain this morning and cleared a path underneath the lift with a snow blower. Guess what I found?”
“What?”
“Bolts.”
“Bolts? So what?”
“Big bolts,” he added. “Like the kind used to secure a chair to a ski lift.”
“Oh,” I said. “So the bolts on Thelma’s chair came unscrewed?”
Daniel held open the door to the lobby for me. “No, I don’t think so. These are heavy-duty pieces of metal. They wouldn’t fall out on their own. I think someone tampered with them. They were stripped of tread.”
“What are the odds Thelma gets on the one chair that’s been toyed with though?” I questioned. “There’s gotta be at least a hundred on that lift.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Daniel said. “One thing’s for sure. This wasn’t an accident. Thelma Watson’s death is officially a homicide.”
We climbed the stairs to the Eagle’s View and sat down at the bar. I picked rubble from the palms of my ashy hands, which were scraped up from my fall in the old lobby. “Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked Daniel.
He signaled Karli for two glasses of water. “Because I think you can help me. The bolts weren’t the only things I found.” He pulled something shiny out of the pocket of his leather jacket and set it on the bar. It was a small silver bracelet with a skier pendant. “Look familiar?”
“No. Shouldn’t that be in a little plastic evidence baggie or have I been watching too many crimes shows?”
He flipped the pendant around to show me the name etched into the plain side.
“Riley,” I read out loud. “Makes sense. She was there, remember? She put the call in to 911.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to wonder if Riley’s more troubled than we originally thought,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she was fine at the scene of the crime,” Daniel replied. “She didn’t react to her mother’s death at all. Didn’t panic or cry. I saw a picture in the paper of the family at the funeral. Riley looked bored.”
“She’s a strange kid,” I said. “And we all have different ways of coping.”
“Strange.” He rolled the adjective around in his mouth like a piece of chocolate. “Haven’t you noticed that’s how everyone describes her? King and Queens employees, her dad, you.”
“I’ll admit she’s precocious for a twelve-year-old, but I don’t think she set up her mother’s death,” I said. “That is what you’re insinuating, isn’t it?”
Karli returned with the waters. Daniel freed a straw from its wrapper and poked the ice cubes to the bottom of the glass. When one resurfaced, he hammered it down again.
“I have to look at this from every angle,” he said. “If Riley was always a troubled kid—”
“If you’re trying to blame this on one of the Watson kids, I think you’re going after the wrong one,” I said. “Tyler’s the one that just tried to accost me.”
“I’m keeping an eye on him too, but I need you to do something for me.”
“Does it have to do with Riley?”
“Yes,” he said. “I need you to ask her what really happened when she found her mother underneath the chair lift.”
I groaned and kicked my toes against the footrail. “No, come on. Don’t ask me to that. She’s sick of me already. Besides, you’re the cop. You do it.”
Daniel set aside his straw and drained his glass like a college student at a tailgate with free beer then asked Karli for another. “What makes you think she’s going to tell any part of the truth to a burly detective she doesn’t know? You already have an in with her. Get her to open up to you.”
“Have you met Riley? She’s about as open as the rest of this resort.”
“Just try,” Daniel said. “You have a better chance of getting her to tell the truth than I do. If she had a motive—”
“Once again, I’d like to remind you that she’s twelve.”
“And twelve-year-olds sometimes kill their parents,” he replied. “It’s not unheard of.”
I shuddered and drank from my cup to soothe my nerves, but the icy water only chilled me further. I pushed the glass away, drawing a line of dewy condensation across the bar top. “What were you doing in that part of the lodge anyway? It’s not like it’s open to the public.”
“After finding the bolts and Riley’s bracelet this morning, I put in a request for a warrant to search the entire lodge,” he explained. “Not that I needed it—Mr. Watson has been relatively accommodating these past few days—but I thought it might be wise in case things get dicey. Besides, the younger Mr. Watson and his friends like to frequent places they don’t belong. I could a
sk you the same question though. What were you doing in there?”
“Exploring,” I answered truthfully. And then I embellished for the sake of Madame Lucia’s career. “I was following the essence of the spirits roaming around the resort. It’s no wonder they led me there. Those rooms are crawling with energy. What’s the story there anyway? Why does King and Queens have two lobbies? It’s like whoever was in charge after that fire built the new resort right over the old one.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Daniel said. “I was as surprised as you to find all of that, so I pulled the public records on the renovations. None of the information on the construction after the fire mentioned anything about the old wing.”
“What about the fire itself?” I asked. “From the looks of the old wing, it sure wasn’t a small one. People probably died. That sort of thing makes the front page.”
He showed me an article stored on his smartphone. “You’re right about that too. 1988. Forty-nine people died when the resort caught fire in the middle of the night.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said, skimming the article. It didn’t include many details. “Why would anyone leave the burned bits?”
“That’s what I intend to ask Mr. Watson as soon as I find him. You don’t happen to know where he might be, do you?”
“He’s skiing with Riley.” I checked the time. “It’s been hours though. They should be getting back soon.”
Right on cue, the lobby door slammed below, and Oliver’s indignant shouts echoed through the lobby and into the Eagle’s View. Daniel and I hurried across the lounge and looked over the double staircase. Oliver stomped by the front desk, startling Trey out of his Tetris-induced coma. His skis and parka were dumped in a puddle of melting snow as if he was too upset to return his equipment to the rental shop. Riley trailed after him, her own skis dragging behind her.
“It’s an outrage!” Oliver yelled, ripping off his gloves and throwing them to the floor. “The nerve. The nerve! I’m going to sue him. That’s what I’m going to do. I am going to rip that ugly piece of crap resort right out from under him.”
“Sir?” Trey collected Oliver’s gloves and hat. “Did something happen?”
“Did something happen?” Oliver snarled. “I’ll tell you what happened. That son of a bitch Nick Porter is trying to sabotage me.”
Daniel jogged down the stairs to join the fray. I followed after him, beelining toward Riley. Her face was paler than usual, and for once, she didn’t hone her withering stare on me.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Detective Hawkins,” Oliver boomed before she could answer. He clapped Daniel on the shoulder. “Perfect. I need a word with you. How do I sue Nick Porter?”
Daniel glanced warily at Oliver’s grip. “I guess that depends on what Nick Porter did to warrant being sued. Why don’t you explain what happened out there?”
“He’s trying to screw with me,” Oliver declared. “All I wanted was a nice day on the slopes with my daughter, but—”
“The point, Mr. Watson. Get to the point.”
“We were skiing the regular routes,” Oliver said. “Riley’s favorite trails. Everything was fine—great even—until a couple hours in, two goons on snowmobiles showed up.” He held up air quotes. “‘White Oak Trail Officials.’ Give me a break. Anyway, these idiots had the nerve to tell us we weren’t allowed to ski that route because Nick Porter had recently acquired the land, and that if we wanted access to the mountain, we had to be guests of White Oak. They had the nerve to tell me that I couldn’t ski on my own land. I’m going to kill him.”
Daniel led Oliver toward the office behind the front desk. “Probably not the best thing to say in front of a detective, Mr. Watson. Let’s go talk this out.”
As they closed themselves in Oliver’s office, I knelt in front of Riley and waved a hand in front of her vacant eyes. “Hey. Riley, are you okay?”
She steadied herself on my shoulders but made no reply. Warm liquid dripped from her gloves and onto my sweater. It was blood.
“You’re hurt.” I pulled off her borrowed glove, which was drenched in blood, and rolled up the sleeve of her jacket. The pale skin on the underside of her wrist was raw and bleeding like she’d scraped it against a patch of asphalt. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up. Trey, can you return their things to the rental shop?”
“No problem, Miss Star.”
I took Riley by the hand—the uninjured one—and led her into the first aid room. Oliver and Daniel’s muffled voices echoed from the office next door as I sat Riley in a chair and gathered the supplies to clean her arm. She stared at the floor, showing no pain or discomfort at the sight of her mangled skin.
“Something happened out there,” I guessed as I rinsed the wound with saline. “Other than your dad’s run-in with the White Oak Trail Officials. How did you hurt yourself? Riley?” I snapped my fingers in front of her face, and she blinked. I softened my voice. “Tell me what happened to your arm.”
“Someone was on the mountain with us,” she whispered.
“Who? The White Oak guys?”
“No, after that.”
Her jacket sleeve kept falling over the wound. I maneuvered her out of it and set it aside. Underneath, her thick fleece sweater was drenched in melted snow, like she’d taken a fall on the slopes and rolled through a deep drift.
“Who was it?”
Riley pivoted her head—slowly—to look up at me. “One of them.”
My entire spine threatened to evacuate my body as I attempted to control the shiver that Riley’s answer induced. I blotted Riley’s wrist with clean gauze. “You met a spirit?”
“She followed us,” Riley said. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell Dad, so I went faster to get away. But she kept up. I got distracted and fell. Tried to catch myself on a tree, but the bark—” She brandished her red, exposed skin. “Dad didn’t notice. He was so mad about the White Oak thing that he kept skiing.”
“I’m sure he was preoccupied,” I said. Thankfully, Riley’s wound wasn’t deep, just ugly, so I dressed it the same way I’d done the cut on my palm, with a layer of antibiotic cream, fresh gauze, and sterile tape. “Do you feel like the ghost was trying to hurt you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “She didn’t say anything. I’ve never heard one of them on the mountain before. It usually only happens in the hotel. This was different too. I felt her. Like energy. We have to go back.”
I ripped the tape prematurely and ended up with a piece that was too short to make use of. “Excuse me? Go back where?”
“Up the mountain,” she clarified. “You and me. To tell the ghost to leave me alone. We’ll have to go at night though. My dad can’t know about this. He already thinks I’m insane.”
“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” I said, finishing up the bandage. “First of all, it’s not safe to go out in the snow at night, and second, we don’t know if this spirit meant you harm or not. We shouldn’t provoke it.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?” Riley challenged. “To provoke the spirits?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m here to help you. And you should never waltz into mediumship with the intention to provoke anything. What do I always say?”
“Confidence, candidness, and caution.”
“And which one do you think is most important?”
“You want me to say caution, don’t you?”
“Right.” I tossed the gloves into the trash with the rest of the used gauze since the original owner wouldn’t want them back with Riley’s blood all over them. “Caution is the most important thing to consider during any conversation or connection with the dead. We don’t know anything about that realm, no matter how much any of us claim to. Understood?”
Riley examined me as I wiped the counters down with disinfectant. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“You are,” Riley accused. “I can see it all over y
our face.”
“Riley, I’m not scared,” I said. “And we’re not going up the mountain through the snow in the middle of the night to track down a spirit that may or may not be amicable. That’s final. We’re not in a Casper movie, kid.”
“Okay.” She hopped off the counter with a significant boost of confidence. “But I wonder what my father will say when I tell him you’re not doing your best to help me after all.”
I ground my teeth together. The kid had me, and she knew it. The satisfied smirk on her face said it all.
“Fine,” I said. “Meet me in the lobby at midnight.”
6
Ileft my room five minutes before midnight, bundled up in as many layers as possible. Without the sun to warm us, the mountain was bound to be as cold as death. The irony wasn’t lost on me. As I slipped into the vacant corridor and pressed the call button for the elevator, I felt fifteen years old again. As a teenager, my mother was constantly trying to rein me in. Naturally, I pulled tighter against her ropes. Sneaking out after curfew was a specialty of mine. I rode the elevator down, reminding myself on each floor that, as a responsible adult, I wasn’t going to get in trouble for being out of my suite in the middle of the night. However, I might get arrested for taking the resort owner’s daughter up the mountain for a ghost hunt. It was a toss-up.
Riley waited in the lobby, a ghost herself, standing outside the elevator door as it opened. Her jacket bulged, a backpack creating a humpback from underneath. My heart jumped into my throat before I realized it was her. I steadied a hand against my chest.
“Don’t do that!” I whispered.
“What?” She spoke at a normal volume. The marble floors and domed ceiling magnified her voice. The single word bounced around like a repeated tone on the marimba.
“Scare me,” I said. “And would you hush? The last thing I need is for your dad to find out what we’re doing.”
“Dad’s room is in the old wing,” Riley said. “It’s miles away. Unless he’s a bat, he won’t hear us.”
