Mrs. Morris and the Vampire

by Traci Wilton

  “Charlene!”

  “Hi—everything all right?”

  “Yes. Dru said you gave him the idea to track down the driver for that night, and guess what? He did! Guess Dru tipped the guy really great and told him to make sure I was on the porch. I remember that part, a little. Dru is talking to the detective, who is being so cool. Can’t believe it. We owe you, Charlene.”

  “I’m so happy things are working out. Do you happen to remember any more about a vampire named Asher?”

  “No. I know like four Ashers, three girls, one guy. He was a pipsqueak in middle school.”

  Pipsqueaks grew. Sometimes into really tall men who would know that the Flint family was very powerful in a real way. And maybe even tell Alaric. As she thought this, she heard Serenity curse and say, “Asher Torrance.”

  “Go tell Sam, Serenity. Whatever you do, don’t confront Asher yourself. He’s very dangerous.”

  “I will. I’m still at the station.”

  That was the safest place for her until Asher was behind bars.

  “Do you have the star sapphire necklace?”

  “Nope. I must have lost it. I feel really bad about that.”

  “I don’t think you lost it, hon. I suspect it was taken from you.”

  “Who would take it, and how?”

  “My hunch is that Elisabeta put something in your water when you both were at the house. You were totally coherent when you left the ball that night, and yet Dru said when you were at the pier with him, you were out of it. You don’t remember. Elisabeta said she gave you water—supposedly to calm you down. I bet she took the necklace back then.”

  “That bitch!”

  Charlene nodded. “Elisabeta and Asher are not nice people. The necklace is very valuable, so make sure you tell Sam to search her house.”

  “Why wasn’t Asher there that night?”

  “Don’t know, hon. Asher had been dancing with one of my guests, Celeste, and she overheard Asher and Alaric argue over you and the ritual. Alaric told Asher to stick with the plan.”

  “What plan?”

  She shrugged, not that Serenity could see the action. “I think for everyone to be immortal.”

  “Jerk.”

  “Yes. Anyway, Asher decided to make sure Celeste didn’t say anything about the plan, so he told her that he’d argued with his other roommate, Elisabeta, and needed a place to stay. She invited him to the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “I feel bad for her, another innocent girl, getting dragged into this mess. Do you think Asher killed Alaric?”

  “I can’t say for sure.” She did, she did, she did.

  She wouldn’t be surprised at all if the star sapphire was also part of a jewel heist, but she had to let that thought go because Kevin was beeping in. “Got another call. I have to go. Stay alert, and tell Sam everything we just talked about.”

  “Bye, Charlene!”

  She clicked over but missed Kevin. Patrick was on the line when she said hello.

  “Charlene! How are you? I received your messages and I admit you have me tantalized.” He chuckled. “Orpheus was the name—you got it. Is it important?”

  Charlene knew it! “Not important . . . it just was bugging me, trying to figure out who had contacted you. When was that again?”

  “That Friday night.”

  “Oh. Hard to believe Halloween was a week ago. I hope you notice some sales—I’ve been bragging about how wonderful your book is. People love the idea of smugglers and hidden tunnels.”

  “Appreciate that. Thanks. I’ll check in with Lucas when I get back on Tuesday.”

  She felt her spirits sink with disappointment—she’d hoped he would be able to show her the tour earlier.

  “Well, let me know when you’re ready. My friend Kevin Hughes is also interested in the tour.”

  “Wonderful! Ideas for a second book are coming at me faster than a snow flurry.”

  “What do you think of Sordid Secrets as a title? I hope you’re able to concentrate more on the treasures still in Salem. I had no idea that there was so much wealth here all related to that time period.”

  “I knew you were into it,” he said with a chuckle. “We’ll talk later—no matter how curious you get, please stay out of the tunnels. I’ve been doing some structural work on parts of them and hope to get the city’s approval to start the tours again.”

  “Let me know how I can help. I’m a pretty good fundraiser.” She ended the call and immediately dialed Kevin. “You won’t believe what’s been going on. Serenity and Dru are at the station with Sam and all is well—she knew Asher in middle school!”

  Kevin sniffed. “Middle school? Wow. If he was raised in Salem too, he would know about the Flints and their magickal powers.”

  “That’s it exactly. How are you?”

  “Well, I’m ready to take you up on that steak dinner. Maybe tomorrow night—after we get back from the tunnels. Underground.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I explained the situation to my friend, and he told me exactly where to get into the tunnels below the Hawthorne Hotel.”

  “But they were filled up!”

  “Maybe not. Who told you that?”

  “Dr. Steel. He said he’s been under them himself—back in the day, before they decided to keep everybody out.”

  “He sounds like a cautious old man afraid of a lawsuit. Where is my adventurous friend? I say we go check it out. But you can’t tell Sam. Got it?”

  She exchanged a look with Jack, who hesitated before saying, “You should go.”

  Tomorrow Asher should be behind bars and possibly Elisabeta too—the only danger she’d be in was getting stuck in the dark. Kevin had been in the tunnels before. “All right. What time should I meet you, and where?”

  “In front of the Witch Tea shop. Dress warm. Boots or sneakers. Let’s go see if it would be possible to get a body from the hotel to the wharf.”

  Not just a body. Alaric’s body.

  CHAPTER 24

  Saturday-morning frost glistened on the ground. It was chilly outside, so Charlene wore her favorite black jeans, a light-blue cashmere sweater, and a warm wool jacket. She put on a pair of dangly silver hoops, reminded of the platinum earrings Orpheus had worn. She’d had dreams of vampire pirates as her brain tried to justify going in the tunnels.

  She opened the door to the sitting room. Jack waited for her with a scowl on his handsome face. “I want you to be very careful with this,” he said. “Why isn’t Kevin picking you up like a gentleman should?”

  “Whoever called him a gentleman?” she countered. “Besides, we both have things to do once we’re done there.”

  “I know this is important,” Jack conceded, “but I worry about you beneath the city, even with Kevin and your pepper spray.”

  “I’m not at all worried. I have a flashlight with extra batteries.” She blew him a kiss and let herself out.

  Kevin, in hiking boots and a thick jacket, waited for her outside the Witch Tea, which used to be the old First Federal building.

  “How do you feel about breaking the law?” she asked him.

  “Not breaking it really, just . . . a mild bending of the rules. I do have my tour guide license.”

  “And you’re putting it at risk.”

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve been below Salem’s streets, Charlene.” Kevin shrugged, his eyes bright. “Unless you don’t want to go?” He pulled a copy of Salem Confidential from his inner jacket pocket. “Got the last copy from Lucas yesterday. This Patrick Steel is brilliant. I know exactly where the Hawthorne Hotel is on this map.”

  “Lead on!” Charlene stifled the rising guilt at not letting Sam know where she was or what she was doing. “It had to be Orpheus who wanted to get an underground tour from Patrick—offered him five hundred bucks. Patrick is not bribable, however, and turned Orpheus down.”

  “Didn’t I just say he was smart?”

  She couldn’t tell Kevin about Orpheus being choked be
fore supposedly leaping from his balcony window at the Longmire Hotel. The historical Longmire . . . was it possible that it too was connected somehow to the tunnels?

  Orpheus had been reading a book on Salem’s sordid history. The dirt on the boots by the door. Asher had to have been down in the tunnels. But when? He’d been visible at the ball. Hadn’t she seen him after Alaric disappeared?

  Did Asher have to keep Orpheus quiet about . . . what? What secret?

  “Earth to Charlene!” She raised her head at Kevin’s voice. Though nine in the morning, it was gray and dreary—the fall air crisp. “Ready?”

  “I’m ready!”

  “Be careful, follow me precisely. I’d hate for you to trip over a piece of rock or brick.”

  “I’ll pay attention.”

  “Most of the tunnels are shored up.” He looked at her sneakers and his own boots. “Watch your step. Remember, there might be rats. We’ll clomp and scare them away.”

  “How far to the Hawthorne Hotel?”

  “In a straight line, can’t be more than a mile. Nothing is far in the center of town. The city filled a few in when the sewer lines were added. Broke the chain of tunnels in a few spots when they did the work.” Kevin stepped in the narrow space between the shops.

  Charlene followed him and didn’t dare look back at daylight.

  Kevin stopped abruptly. “Hang on. I brought these.” He put a headlamp attached with a band around his forehead and turned it on, then handed one to Charlene.

  “I have a flashlight.” She patted her purse.

  “Hands-free is best.” Kevin grinned. “You sure you can do this?”

  “I’m sure.” She nodded quickly, eager to get answers and satisfy her curiosity.

  “Salem’s tunnel system was arranged so that the merchants could bring the goods in from the ships without bothering the townsfolk.” Kevin stomped on a metal slab. “According to Patrick’s book, this used to be an elevator shaft. The boats would unload, and the shop owners would have their goods delivered and whisked belowground. Usually guarded to stop thieves.”

  “You’re pretty knowledgeable,” Charlene teased. “I can tell you studied last night.”

  “I talked to another one of my tour guide friends. Because the underground tour was nixed, the main guy doing it now changed the name from Underground Tunnels to the Pirate Tour. They can walk the streets above the tunnels, pointing them out. City’s happy. Stories still get told. No fines.” Kevin unlocked a door to the Witch Tea building. “No adventure.”

  She laughed, a thrill of anticipation making her tone higher than normal.

  “There’s an entrance through here. I called Teresa and she agreed to let me use her access below.”

  Though morning, the back space of the tea shop was very dark.

  “This way. Teresa told me that she uses this for storage so it’s pretty clean and well-lit, but once we leave this space, we need to be careful.”

  Charlene entered the storage area, the scents of herbs and spices reminding her of her friend Kass Fortune’s tea shop. She’d have to see if Kass had a basement. They crossed the cement floor to the door connecting to the main tunnel.

  “Bolted from within, that’s good.” Kevin slid it back and walked out, the headlamp creating shadows along the brick and stone walls. When they were both in the corridor, he shut the door to the shop and Charlene’s heart thudded.

  “You know how to get back?”

  “I do.” Charlene made out Kevin’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed hard. “This way.”

  Dirt and stone crunched beneath her sneakers. Kevin’s boots created an echo as he strode forward. She hurried after Kevin into the dark, the rubble and dust in the tunnel musty and dank.

  “It smells old.” She reached out to touch the rough brick, which scraped her fingertips.

  “Couple hundred years,” Kevin said, stopping to admire the pieces. “See this brickwork? Made local.”

  “It’s in such good shape.”

  “Protected from the elements down here,” Kevin said. He pulled the book free from his jacket pocket and read it, the headlamp flickering ominously. “This way to the Hawthorne.”

  They walked for about ten minutes, then Kevin stopped to check the map again. The path was about four feet wide with arches on either side. Occasionally there would be a door, or a filled-in place where a door had been. Wood trusses lined the ceiling.

  Eerie shadows that could be rats or mice darted around the corners. Charlene was glad for her extra flashlight, just in case. She’d tossed nuts and a bottle of water into her purse as well. Not that anything would go wrong.

  “You know where we are?” Charlene asked. Her voice was much more confident than her racing pulse.

  “Yeah.” Kevin’s headlamp bobbed in affirmation. “We continue on, then hang a right at the crossways.”

  Rocks sounded behind them. Rats?

  Kevin shone his light in the dark, but there was nothing there.

  Charlene’s temple pounded. “What about the pier?” She risked a glance behind her, certain a giant rat would be sneaking up on her. “Does this particular tunnel lead to the water?”

  He patted his map he’d copied from the book. “It’s a mess of corridors so it’s hard to say.”

  “I thought it would be more of a direct route.”

  Kevin chuckled. “That was the original point of the tunnels. Smugglers had to bring in legal and not-so legal goods. Legal aboveground, illegal below. They’d have had their own passageway from the wharves.”

  What washed in, could go out. Like Alaric. Dead or alive?

  Charlene shivered and wrapped her jacket tighter around her body. She followed Kevin past a series of brick archways over alcoves with a knee-high wooden shelf in each. “I think these were beds. According to Patrick, Salem used to be part of the runaway slave Underground Railroad.”

  Charlene imagined the scared people running for their lives finding shelter here beneath Salem’s streets. “Poor folks.”

  They went on a bit more. To the right were new wood braces on a tunnel. “That must be some of the construction Patrick was talking about.”

  “What?” They stopped to admire the clean lines.

  “Yesterday he warned me to be careful of the new construction.”

  “Huh. He must own some of the property above us. My buddy said the permits to do anything down here are a bitch.”

  They kept walking and passed a warren of cubbyholes.

  “What’s this?”

  “On the flip side of the antislavery coin, the Chinese were forced to live down here. Couldn’t be seen by the ‘good’ citizens of the city.” Kevin snorted. “The men, however, managed to make their way down to gamble. Or”—Kevin waggled his brows at Charlene—“visit the brothel.”

  Charlene scoffed. Brothels were old news—she’d read the book too. “And opium.”

  “You got it. People and their vices.” Kevin slowed to compare the doorways in the stretch of tunnel they were passing now. They had to go around fallen timbers and bricks, but so far the path had been passable. “Can you imagine having these doorways connect, house to house? You’d better hope to have good neighbors.”

  Charlene followed Kevin carefully over a broken truss. “No. I miss the fresh air and we haven’t been underground long.” She checked her phone for the time—forty minutes had passed. As expected, there was no cell service down here. “I wouldn’t like it at all.”

  “I know what you mean. Even though this is drier, I prefer the cold, brisk wind in my face. This is claustrophobic.” He shrugged, accepting the fact but not complaining.

  Charlene enjoyed the misty rain and lighter snowfall in her new town. “It’s too dark for me to think of it being an everyday kind of thing.”

  “Back then, they would have had lamps and underground lighting so it wouldn’t be so dreary.”

  She glanced around at the shadows and jumped when a wood beam fell behind them. “This place is starting to freak me o
ut. Let’s hurry.”

  “We’re fine.”

  They reached a crossroads beneath the city, and she could hear the road above them. “I sure hope this holds.”

  Kevin laughed. “It has for two hundred years—you’re safe for the next ten minutes. This way.” He strode away from the main street into a side corridor. There was no light at all except for what they had from their headlamps.

  About five minutes passed and Kevin stopped. “Here we are.”

  Charlene looked around but didn’t notice anything different about where they stood.

  Kevin jabbed a thick finger to the stone timber and brick ceiling and brightened the light on his headlamp. “The Hawthorne.”

  Charlene scanned the walled-up doorways and brick arches above them. Light shone through one of the arches and dirt had been piled as if a rat had dug into the wall. She shivered with apprehension.

  The structure wasn’t as sturdy or well-kept as the earlier part of the tunnel, by his friend’s storage space.

  Stones and timber that had fallen from the ceiling were haphazard on the ground. The exit to their right was completely blocked. The left led into a dark, forbidding corridor.

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the ground.

  Kevin leaned forward. “Oh, hello . . .” He examined the gathering of dirt and debris at the floor. Prints.

  “Rat?” Charlene asked.

  “Too big for a rat.” Kevin’s tone held excitement. “Or a mole.”

  Charlene strode forward, taking off her headlamp to focus on the ground like a flashlight.

  Rusty-colored drops created a splash against the wall. Six feet up was a hole wide enough to remind her of the crawl space under the hotel. For the first time since they’d started this underground adventure, she was truly afraid.

  She dropped her gaze. Footprints smudged the dirt and it seemed like something had been pulled along the path. Something heavy.

  Man-sized.

  Charlene pressed her hand to her stomach.

  Kevin reached down to pick up a white and pointy object from the ground. “What’s this?”

  He screeched and dropped it.

  Charlene peered down. It looked like a part of a vampire costume. An eyetooth? Enamel rather than plastic. Asher had said he’d lost his teeth. She reeled backward.