by Mary Bowers
“Cemetery?” I asked, genuinely surprised.
He nodded knowingly. “You think we should tackle the funeral home instead? I’ve been weighing one against the other for days. I just might agree with you there.”
“Funeral home?”
“Where they displayed the body, once they found it.”
“Body?”
Teddy scowled at me. “You haven’t been researching the incident at all, have you?”
“Incident?”
“The incident we’re investigating on the show, for Pete’s sake. Is that what this is about, Ed?” he asked, looking at the paperwork for the first time. He blinked and frowned at it, muttering, “What is this?” before setting it aside on the brick wall. “I’m talking about the project for our show. It’s the most shocking thing that ever happened in Key West.”
“Key West?” I said, completing the cross-talk act. “Look, Teddy, other than barging in and sitting yourself right down on our bed the minute we got here, I haven’t seen much of you. I haven’t been able to do anything but wave as you go flying by. If you have a project in mind, you might share it with me. And Ed – he doesn’t seem to know anything about this.”
Ed did know all about it, actually. He informed me wearily. “He’s talking about Count Carl von Cosel, the radiologist who fell in love with a tubercular patient. When she died, he dug her up and kept her body in his house for years, treating it as if it were still alive. Teddy, that’s so overdone. Every ghost train that runs through this town tells the tourists that story. I mean, it happened in 1933.”
“That makes it no less worthy of investigation,” Teddy said stoutly.
“Wait,” I said, “he kept her body around after she died? I mean . . . how? On ice? In 1933? Did they have that kind of refrigeration back then?”
“He stabilized her tissues with a wax solution, and kept, um, building up the areas of her corpse that had, ah, shrunken. Essentially, he turned her into a wax doll.” Ed said all this as if he were just trying to brush it off so he could get back to more important things.
“This really happened?”
Ed shrugged. “Some people have a hard time letting go.”
“How long did he keep her like that?”
Teddy didn’t know, of course, and Ed did. “Seven years,” he said dismissively. “We’re not doing the wax bride story.”
“Seven years?”
“So when they found out and took her away from the Count,” Teddy went on ghoulishly, “they displayed her in this funeral home, and everybody in town came to see her. Some of them got back in line and went past the body over and over again. You’re right, Taylor, we should set up at the funeral home. The building is still there.”
“Teddy,” Ed said, calling him to order. “We are not doing that story. We have something fresh. Something that’s happening now. Something that may claim more lives if we don’t put a stop to it. Remember our mission statement? To protect the living from paranormal attack, even at the risk of our own lives. We roll those words at the beginning of every show. Melodramatic, perhaps, but I happen to live by that credo. This situation represents a current, active danger. We are doing the teacup.”
Lily closed her eyes and let her head sag, but from the side, I could see her smiling. She said nothing.
Teddy became sarcastic. “Oh, yeah, I remember now, the teacup from hell. That’s going to wow them. Refresh my memory. What does it do, drink the tea?”
“It kills people,” Ed said.
Teddy waited a beat, then said, “Seriously?”
“There are three deaths that we know of,” Ed said, “and I have seen with my own eyes the face of the revenant now in possession of the cup.”
“With your own eyes?” Teddy asked. Lily lifted her head and looked at him.
“Through the Full-Spectrum Clarifier.”
“Oh,” Teddy said. “That thing.”
“Taylor did too.”
Both Lily and Teddy looked at me, impressed now, and I gave a tiny shrug and nodded.
“You think this thing is real?” Lily asked me.
“I think . . . I saw something too. Something that shouldn’t have been there. And I heard a voice.”
“Awesome,” Teddy said. He was coming around.
“I was so engrossed in our findings,” Ed said, “that I forgot to use a control. Taylor, we should have asked Maryellen for another teacup and inspected the interior of that one to see if we got similar results, or the negative, which would have proved the positive.”
Our quiche arrived around that time, and I began to eat. I was surprised to realize how hungry I was, and the quiche was scrumptious.
“I soon realized my blunder, of course,” he went on, “and I proceeded with the rest of the experiment by myself last night, but I regret not having done it immediately after viewing the lavender teacup at Maryellen’s house. And I regret even more not insisting that you do it, while your psychic pores were still open, so to speak. Still, we can only go forward. Are you willing to try it here and now?”
“You were up in the middle of the night looking into teacups with the Full-Spectrum Clarifier on your head?” I asked weakly.
“Of course. These coffee cups are dirty, but we can ask Arielle for a clean one. A teacup; not a coffee mug.” He was already turning around, looking for Arielle. In another moment, he’d be rooting around in her kitchen for teacups.
“Is this really necessary?” Michael asked before Ed could get up. “What did you see when you looked into the control cup?”
“Nothing. It was 2:36 in the morning, of course. I had been without sleep for a while, but I’m confident of my results. Going by past experience, a lack of sleep makes me see more things, not fewer.”
“Then let’s just let Taylor have a day off today, okay?” Michael said reasonably.
Ed was disappointed, but he gave it up.
Lily asked me, “So who died because of the teacup? You said three victims?”
“So far,” Ed said.
Lily apparently wanted to get it from me, not Ed, so I told her, and Teddy, for once, listened without trying to take over.
When I was done, Teddy sat back and considered, the Wise Captain from Central Casting. “We might just be able to make something out of that,” he said finally.
Ed was ungracious in victory. “It’s better than a retread about the Count. May the poor girl rest in peace, at last. Her name was Maria,” he added, as if he’d been insensitive, just referring to her as the poor girl.
“Whatever happened to Maria?” I asked.
“They were careful to make no official records, but anecdotally, her corpse was divided and re-interred. They didn’t want the Count getting at her again. So four of the most trusted men in town took their allotments and buried them in secret, at nighttime, when they couldn’t be observed. And so, Maria is finally at rest.”
“In pieces,” Teddy said, but nobody laughed.
“So we go with the teacup,” Lily said. She picked up Ed’s notes, started to read them, but gave up quickly. She set them down and murmured, “Later.”
Teddy seemed to be having a hard time letting go of the necrophiliac Count, but between Lily and Ed, they kept the plan moving along, centering on the teacup.
“By the way, Lily,” Ed said, “I’ll be needing you this morning. We’re interviewing a witness, and I want to put it on record.”
“Do we need the crew?” was all she asked.
“Better bring them. We might get footage we can use for cut-ins. At the very least, we’ll have a redundant record.”
Lily went over to the crew’s table to give them the bad news, if they’d planned something more fun for the day.
Ed turned back to me for one more try. “It would be useful to have you there, Taylor. Are you sure you won’t come?”
“Interviewing witnesses isn’t my part of the gig.”
“Attagirl, Taylor,” Teddy said. Then he hunkered down against the tabletop. “Hey, gu
ys, remember yesterday when Arielle’s cousin showed up and Porter made me barge in on them?”
“Porter made you do that?”
“Porter always knows where I should be going,” Teddy said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. He looked around carefully to make sure Arielle wasn’t coming back out onto the patio. “His name is Darrien, and he was pissed. Our Arielle has been going to Uncle Oswald for money, and he’s a soft touch. As far as Darrien is concerned, she’s been tapping into his inheritance, and he doesn’t like it.”
“I know,” I said. “Helena told us.”
“Helena?”
“One of Ed’s sources on the teacup, and a very nice lady. Also,” I added, “Oswald’s girlfriend. Maybe.”
“Good,” Teddy said. “I’ll tell Ed to get her on record. We’d better send the crew, once Ed’s finished with his first witness. Who is he, by the way?”
Without pointing out to him that it was his show, so he should be the first to meet these people, not the last, I described The Professor, Helena, Maryellen and Camille as best I could.
Teddy considered. “Anybody young and sexy?” was all he asked. He was being serious.
“No, Teddy, I’m afraid it’s a cast of older, wiser people, though I think Helena is very attractive.”
“Very,” Michael added.
Teddy wasn’t impressed. I’d already told him she was the little lady sitting at the table with us having tea as he’d run by with Porter to eavesdrop on the cousins, and he remembered her. Finally, he said, “Maybe we can work in a shot of Arielle. She’s got legs. And I promised her a little publicity for the B&B, though I have no idea how we’re going to do that unless we bring the teacup here.”
“Arielle is not exactly young and sexy,” I snapped. “Anyway, she’s not young.”
“How old do you think she is?”
“Forty-five at least.”
Teddy was surprised. He’s so easy to fool.
Lily was returning to our table after talking with the crew, and Ed waited until she was seated before he said, “We’re definitely going to have to bring the teacup back here and shoot the episode in the B&B, I’m afraid. If we bring it back to Oswald immediately, he’s going to lock it up in the cabinet and not let anybody near it. Ah, Arielle,” he said, as she came out of the house with hot coffee, “we were just discussing the logistics of the shoot. Are you willing to let us stage our investigation in your establishment?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “You’re not going to tear the place up, are you?”
“We’re investigating a teacup,” Teddy said unhappily. “I don’t think things are going to get rough. Unless you’ve got a poltergeist?” he added hopefully. “No, I figured you’d have mentioned that by now.”
“So when are you shooting?” she asked, hiking herself up onto the brick wall next to Teddy.
Teddy looked to Ed for an answer.
“In all probability, tomorrow night. I should warn you, though, that this teacup is possessed by an unbalanced entity and has been known to kill. Are you sure you want it in your house?”
She blinked. “Who did it kill?”
It didn’t strike me until later that her question had been disingenuous. Hadn’t her uncle been all upset about it? After all, Ed had said that she was the one who’d suggested he call in the ghost hunters, once she’d booked Teddy and the gang. At the time, I simply tried to answer her question, but I could only remember their first names.
Ed had the list of victims down cold by then, so he took over. “Ferdie Stoffel, Marnie Carnahan, and possibly before that, its original possessor, Lydia Stoffel, though I’m leaning now toward the theory that it is she who is infesting the cup and committing the violence, so her death may have been through natural causes. The chain of ‘accidents’ proceeded from there.”
“So only two victims,” Teddy said.
“This is why we investigate,” Ed said. “Hopefully we are going to find out.”
“Is this the teacup Uncle Oswald has been talking about?” Arielle asked innocently. “That pretty little purple thing he keeps locked up in a cabinet?”
“Yes.”
“It’s so small and delicate,” Arielle commented. “The people who have it do seem to run into bad luck, though. Should I worry about Uncle Oswald?”
“Maryellen Grundy has it in her possession at the moment.”
“Her? She’d be no great loss.”
I wasn’t a big fan of Maryellen’s, but I thought the remark was uncalled for. “Why don’t you like her, Ella?” I asked, enunciating.
She stabbed her eyes at me and didn’t bother to remind me that it was Elle. Michael kicked me under the table.
“She’s an old battleax,” Arielle said. “She keeps sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong. ‘Mimi Fontaine’ if you please. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig. Can I take your plates away now?” she asked, hopping down from the wall.
Dammit, she did have legs. Slim and shapely, going all the way up from the wrap-around laces of her espadrilles to the ragged edges of her short-shorts, but at least her legs weren’t as long as mine.
She spent a few minutes clearing the table, then disappeared back into the bed-and-breakfast.
Teddy had practically been bouncing in his seat, dying for her to leave so he could tell us something else. When the door closed behind her, he leaned forward and said, “That’s one of the things that came out while her cousin was here. He said even Oswald’s friends are saying Arielle should be standing on her own two feet and not constantly hitting him up for money. What friends, Arielle asked. Everybody, Darrien said – Helena, Maryellen, everybody. Even Marnie, before she died.”
“Well, we’ve met Maryellen,” Michael said. “She’s a pistol. If she has an opinion, she shoots first and wonders whether or not you like it later.”
“And she has no fear,” Ed said. “That’s what worries me. She thinks she can deal with the entity inhabiting the artifact.”
“If the entity inhabiting the teacup is Lydia Stoffel,” I said, “she probably agrees that Ella should be standing on her own two feet. By the way, Teddy, if you want to meet Maryellen, come to see the sunset with us tonight. She’s going to be there. In fact, The Professor and Camille will too, so attendance is mandatory. Now, Michael and I are going out sightseeing, and I don’t want to hear the word teacup until tomorrow night, understood? Tell Ella she can clean our room any time she wants to; we’re going out.”
Teddy grinned and said, “It’s Elle, you bad thing,” and with that, Michael and I went off to see what we could see.
Chapter 16
I hadn’t really expected that Michael and I would get this one, completely carefree day together, so I enjoyed it even more. We took the tourist tram and rode all over the island, looking at things and learning things. I took a picture of the marker at the Southernmost point in the United States, but I took it while the tram was moving and it came out blurred. Still, I have photographic proof I was there, for what it’s worth. Then we went to the Atocha exhibit and wandered around seeing what $400 million dollars looked like. It looked pretty good, I thought, especially the jewelry. My other takeaway: people were cheating on their taxes, even in 1622. Some of the precious metals bars didn’t have the required tax stamps.
Sometime in the late afternoon, we accidentally ran into Lily and Teddy. I was surprised to see them.
“Are you done with The Professor?” I asked her.
“We finished up around 1:00 and Ed wanted to go on and interview Helena. The Professor walked us over to her house, but she wasn’t home, so we went to a bar and had a sandwich and then we went back to the B&B. I picked up Teddy and Ed went into his room and closed the door so he could organize his notes.”
“He’s a workaholic,” I said.
“I don’t think it’s work for him. It’s more like breathing. I did feel a little guilty, dragging Tedders away from Elle, though. Now she’ll have to get some work done, and they looked like the
y were having so much fun together.”
Teddy had been listening with half an ear, and he interrupted stiffly at that point. “We were having a Bloody Mary on the patio and I was telling her about the life of a paranormal investigator. People are curious about us, you know. About the life. All the travel. Giving up a stable home life to pursue a mission. It isn’t as easy as we make it look. Elle thought it was all glamor, dating supermodels and meeting rock stars. I was just setting her straight.”
“And she was soooo impressed,” Lily said. She turned to me quickly and said, “Want to hit the shops?”
“Absolutely.”
Teddy asked Michael, “Why don’t you and I to go see if we can find a beer in this town?”
“There might be one around here somewhere,” Michael allowed. “Didn’t you just have a Bloody Mary?”
“Bloody Marys aren’t my drink.”
“Or Elle just doesn’t know how to make them,” Lily said. “I noticed your glass was still pretty full.”
Teddy shrugged. “She brought out a pitcher of the stuff and kept topping me up. After a while, I decided to just leave it alone. You know me. I like to keep a clear head when I’m working.”
“Yeah, I know you,” Lily said, smiling at him with almost motherly affection.
So we changed partners, agreeing to meet back at the B&B in time to freshen up and go see the sunset.
Lily’s a lot of fun, and she’s a certified resale-shop warrior. The best I can say about Michael and shopping is that he’s patient. He’s willing to wait at the door reading on his Kindle app until I’m done in a shop, but it’s not like being with a girlfriend. Lily can go through a shop like a pro and manage to find good stuff for herself, and for you too.
Most of the shops on Duval Street are either art galleries or tee shirt shops, so we went down the side streets and found handmade sandals, purses, papier maché figurines, jewelry, and yes, more tee shirts. And key lime pie. And bars.
In the long gallery of shops that ran through a building where workers once made cigars, we spent a lot of time looking and talking, and I was finally able to bring up what was really on my mind.
