Trouble Restored

by Carolyn Haines

  While the cats are away, I hope the mice do come out to play.

  * * *

  Hank and Katie were all in for the plan to publicize the “treasure find,” a fact that gave Tommie even more confidence. She sent photos to the two renovators of the hole and the elaborate box she’d found inside. The ancient map, which was of extreme historic value if not monetary, had been carefully put away. She’d have the document evaluated and preserved as soon as possible. Harley had even mentioned donating it to a museum, which really appealed to her.

  To make the treasure story enticing, she’d decided that the box contained a fabulous emerald and diamond necklace and matching earrings—fodder for the rumor mill. Hank and Katie would rave about the beauty and value of the jewels. When their audience was salivating with a desire to see the “found” treasure, they would show a photo of an incredible necklace that Tommie had found on the internet and “borrowed.”

  Once the fishes had snapped at the bait, the renovators were to tell whoever would listen that the work crews would be back at Loftus Manor bright and early the next morning to continue tearing out the wall. They would add that all indications were that more treasure would be found in the secret hidey hole as they opened the enclosure. And Hank and Katie would casually mention that Tommie and Harley had been called away from Loftus Manor on some kind of family emergency. They would be gone over night.

  Tommie was on edge to hear if their plan was working at all.

  When Katie called Tommie at lunchtime, the renovator was elated with the success of the plan. “Everyone is talking about the treasure,” she said. “People are coming up to us, asking questions, wanting to know what you’re going to do. Will you tear down the manor to search for more treasure? The town is abuzz. And we did exactly as you asked. We indicated we believed more treasure would be found once you returned from your emergency trip.”

  “Thank you so much.” Tommie felt tears threaten. The Evans had been more than true friends to her, and she barely knew them. After years of feeling mostly alone, she’d found a niche in Wetumpka and people who genuinely seemed to care about her. And one very special man in particular.

  She glanced at Harley and he put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her in for a gentle hug as she thanked Katie and put the phone away.

  “This is going to work,” Harley said. “We’re going to find the guilty party and put an end to this so that your dream of an inn can become a reality.”

  “Had I not met you, I don’t know that I would even have a dream,” Tommie admitted. “You made the dream seem possible.”

  * * *

  Darkness had fallen over the manor, and Harley felt the rush of adrenalin that warned him danger was imminent. Tommie had drifted into a fitful sleep on the old sofa they’d found in the attic, where they’d set up their base camp to catch the person trying to run Tommie away from Loftus Manor.

  Harley had restaged the game cameras and connected them to his phone so he could watch the driveway to the manor and also the woods that led from the river. Only two of the cameras still worked and he hadn’t had time to purchase new ones, but at least he had a visual of the two primary ways to reach the manor.

  They’d driven their vehicles deep into the woods down a trail that eventually connected with the road to town. It was overgrown and almost unusable, but the paint on the vehicles was hardly a concern for either of them.

  Harley wanted to pace but more than that he wanted Tommie to sleep while she could. They had a lot of work to do if anyone took the bait they’d so carefully set.

  Harley checked his phone, which he’d put on silent. Aiden Waters had been alerted, and he and some of his officers were ready to arrive on the scene, sirens blaring, if anyone showed up. Harley texted the police officer just to be on the safe side and got an instant response back. All was in place. Now it was a waiting game, and Harley was glad Tommie had found some rest. Even Trouble was snoozing beside her.

  In the quiet of the house, Harley thought about Samuel and the wonderful times they’d shared in Loftus Manor. Never in a million years would Harley have thought that Samuel would die, and that his heir would prove to be such a wonderful person and companion. Harley had accepted that his heart had been frozen by the past, but he’d been wrong. Tommie had thawed it. The more he learned about her, the more he cared. And amazingly, he looked forward to deepening his feelings for her. Instead of running away, he was headed straight into her arms and he didn’t want to put on any brakes.

  He settled into an old club chair, checked the cameras again, and checked his watch. It was only eight o’clock at night, but Loftus Manor was isolated and the darkness wasn’t mitigated by streetlights. It was just the moon and the stars, which were actually brilliant. Harley stood up and slipped over to the big window that gave an excellent view of the front of the manor. His breath caught at the sight of the woman standing in the middle of the oyster shell driveway.

  She wore a hooded cloak, and she made no effort to hide herself. She stood silently looking up at the manor, almost as if she were communing with the house. Harley felt the goosebumps move down his arms. He wasn’t afraid, but the figure was a little creepy. He looked over, thinking to wake Tommie, but when he looked back, the driveway was empty.

  Phantom or human? It was the same old question.

  He felt something brush his legs and he looked down to see Trouble staring up at him. The cat jumped to the window ledge and looked out.

  “Time to move,” Harley said softly, stroking the cat. “Wake Tommie, please.”

  Trouble jumped down and ran to the sofa. In a moment he was purring and head-butting Tommie awake.

  “What happened?” she asked, sitting bolt upright when she realized she was in the attic. “Did I miss something?”

  “We have company. A woman in a cloak.”

  “Who?” Tommie was on her feet.

  “I couldn’t see. The hood.”

  “Is she coming inside?”

  Harley considered. “I don’t know. She was in the driveway and then she was gone.”

  “We have to lure her inside,” Tommie said. “Then we can catch her. And I’m going to find out who’s been tormenting me the whole time I’ve been here.”

  “To be honest, Tommie, I didn’t anticipate a female.” Harley had truly pointed the finger of guilt—if only in his own mind—at Paul Rider, the real estate man.

  “I know,” Tommie said. “But whoever she is, she’s trespassing. And I’m not going to believe she’s some wayward spirit. She’s flesh and blood and therefore we can get her. And then we can make her talk.”

  Harley smiled. He loved her spirit. “And that’s exactly what we should do. Remember the plan?”

  “I’m to make some noises up here, like a ghost would make. Too bad we don’t have some chains to rattle.”

  “Lock the attic door behind me. I’m going down the servant’s stairs and see if I can find her. Just stay safe, Tommie. Whatever happens, you stay here with Trouble. And call Aiden if you hear anything that concerns you. I don’t think this woman is alone in this, so there’s likely someone else on the property.”

  Harley went to the attic door. He was armed with a flashlight and a wooden baseball bat he found in a corner of the attic. And his cell phone camera, which would document what happened. Tommie had a bat, too, and a flashlight. He didn’t feel good about leaving her, but she also had Trouble. Something told him the cat would protect her to the death. Trouble was just that kind of feline. Thank goodness.

  When he heard the dead bolt slide into place, he started down the steep stairs. Now that he knew the true history of Loftus Manor, he couldn’t help but wonder how many slaves had slept in the attic and made their way down these stairs in a bid for freedom. He could almost hear the ghostly echo of their feet, shuffling softly down the worn boards.

  Assisting a slave to run away was a capital offense that often resulted in hanging. But somehow he wasn’t surprised that the Loftus family had been
involved. Samuel was a man who stood up for what he believed. Harley thought of Tommie and shook his head. She was a chip off the Samuel block, for sure. And soon the true story of the manor would be told by Tommie and the guests who came to her inn. There was something very satisfying in that.

  He’d made his way to the ground floor when he stopped to listen. The woman in the cloak had to be somewhere on this level. He would have heard her on the stairs or in the upper hallways. She was likely in the kitchen area, looking for the hole where treasure had been found.

  Now he had to use extreme caution. His goal wasn’t to confront the woman, but to spy on her. To see what she went after. And hopefully to discover the other people involved in tormenting Tommie. Trespassing was at least one crime they could be charged with, though pretending to be a ghost wasn’t a real crime. Aiden, though, would have a better handle on the legal charges that could be brought—and he intended to make sure every possibility was thrown at them.

  As he eased from the back of the house toward the kitchen, he heard a soft whisper of a voice.

  “I’m in. There’s no one here. I left the front door unlocked.”

  Harley recognized the voice—he’d heard it before, but the timber of the whisper made it hard for him to pinpoint the owner. He eased closer to the door, hoping to sneak a peek. If he could just catch a glimpse, he’d know who she was. But he also couldn’t get caught or the plan would be foiled. He cast a quick glance into the room and saw the cloaked figure. The woman was tall and slender, but with the hood up and from the back he couldn’t even determine the color of her hair. When she started to shift to face him, he ducked back into the hall.

  He checked his impulse to peek again and slipped away. As he’d anticipated, the intruder was poking around the hole in the wall that Hank had created and Tommie had widened. There was nothing else to be found, but the intruder didn’t know that.

  He slipped back to the servants’ stairs. According to the plan, his job was now to follow the intruder wherever she went, hoping she would lead him to her confederate. But he had a niggling worry about Tommie in the attic. She’d promised to stay there and stay safe, behind the locked door. There was only that one way into the attic, and if she stayed there she should be okay.

  A terrible thought came to him. One that almost froze him to the spot.

  What if there was a secret passage that ended in the attic? What if Tommie was a sitting duck for someone who intended to get her out of Loftus Manor. One way or the other.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I applaud Mr. Brawny for managing to keep the Loftus Lass safe behind a locked door, but I have to point out that surely he knows her well enough to realize she won’t stay up here for long. She is already pacing. Her nerves are stretched too thin and she is ready to pop a gasket, as the seamstresses of White Chapel would say.

  Hark! I hear something that sounds like a mouse rustling in the northern corner of the space. Tommie hears it too. She’s not the kind of lass to wallop a rodent—far more likely to trap it in a kindness cage and set it free in the woods. But she is heading in the direction of the noise with her bat raised and her flashlight at the ready.

  I’m a cat with a lot of skills, but I admit, I wish Mr. Brawny were here now. He’s a lot bigger and stronger than I am, though I do have a few moves in the martial arts department, should that become necessary. Pouncing cat, leaping tiger. I can do some damage if I must.

  The noise is getting louder, and Tommie is sussing out the source. It seems to coming from…the back wall.

  Oh, no! This isn’t a mouse. It’s a rat. A big human rat. One who has been tormenting Tommie the whole time she’s been here. Well, the villain is about to be unmasked. At least we’ll know who it is, which may not save our lives, but it will satisfy my curiosity. A cat should never die with curiosity unfulfilled.

  * * *

  Tommie’s first instinct was to unlock the attic door and run downstairs and out into the cold night. But there wasn’t time. She swung her flashlight to the north wall of the attic where the heart of pine wood was slowly opening into a passage. Standing in the passage was a woman in a hooded cloak.

  Tommie couldn’t stop the sharp intake of her breath, which drew the figure’s attention to her in the attic’s gloom. The hood sheltered the person’s face from view, but Tommie knew she was a woman.

  “Who are you?” Tommie asked. She was too stunned to try to run. She held the baseball bat loosely in her left hand and the flashlight in her right.

  “Why couldn’t you just leave?” The woman threw the hood back and Nancy Smith stood in the passageway. From beneath the cloak she drew out a gun. “All you had to do was leave for a week or two. That’s all I needed to find the treasure. But no, you had to start renovating, tearing out walls. You had to be so greedy. You have no claim on Loftus Manor. None at all.”

  Tommie heard the fury in Nancy’s voice, but she didn’t understand where it came from.

  “You have no idea how many times I listened to Samuel bragging about this manor, about what was hidden here, about the riches he intended to distribute in Wetumpka to all the people who’d shown him kindness. And what did I get? Not one damn penny.”

  “You expected to be paid for befriending an elderly man?” Tommie knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t stop herself. “What kind of soulless person are you?”

  “The kind who is going to do what’s necessary to get you out of my way. You should never have come here. You should have left when the ghosts warned you to go. Why did you have to be so damn stubborn? And then you drew Harley to your side to help you. He should have been helping me. He should have been kissing me, not you.”

  Tommie shifted back, but Nancy came forward, closing the gap. The intimidating tactic sent a flash of temper through Tommie, but she wisely stayed silent and let Nancy talk.

  “You think you deserve all of it.” The skin around Nancy’s eyes was white with fury. “The house, Harley, the treasure. Your uncle strung me along for years, hinting that I would inherit. He did the same to Nina. You think she’d spend all that time out in the woods with a freaking old man just for a paycheck?”

  “Uncle Samuel paid her handsomely.” It was the first thing that came to Tommie’s mind. “He was good to her. She was well paid for her time, and she could have left whenever she wanted.”

  “Except he teased her with hints of big money at the end. He led her to believe she was going to benefit in a significant way.”

  “He did leave her money,” Tommie said. If she remembered correctly it was twenty-five thousand, but she didn’t name the sum.

  “Not enough for what she gave him.” Nancy looked around the attic. “This place was where we got the inspiration for our plan. When Nina found the portrait of Samuel’s beloved Rachel, the cloak made everything so much easier. You could see us, but the cloak concealed our identity. And you couldn’t be sure if we were real or ghosts. It was perfect. Samuel would have highly approved of our ingenuity, taking his storytelling to the perfect conclusion.”

  Tommie had never met her uncle, but from everything she’d been told by Harley and others, this didn’t sound like him. “Samuel liked to entertain people with his stories, not torment them. I don’t believe for a minute he’d approve of what you and Nina are doing. What I think is that you and Nina were so consumed with greed and jealousy that you heard what you wanted to hear. And then you roped that poor girl, Odell, into the scheme. She was smart enough to run before I sicced the cops on her. I see you’re not that smart.”

  She saw the anger flair in Nancy’s eyes and realized that she was truly dealing with someone who didn’t have a grip on reality. Truth held no ground in Nancy’s brain. Facts didn’t exist to her. Everything was filtered through her own need, grief, trauma, and pain. The view of events she maintained had nothing to do with reality. Because of that, she was incredibly dangerous. And she was holding a gun.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Nancy said. “But you are.” She m
otioned toward the locked door. “You’re going downstairs and tell Harley to give it up. He can’t save you anymore. Odell should have finished you off on the street, but she just didn’t have the killer instinct. Something I don’t lack.”

  “If you truly deserve part of the inheritance, I’ll share with you.” Tommie decided to try reason as a stall for time.

  “I deserve all of it, you stupid twit. You’re the interloper. Not me. I’ve been here all along, keeping that lowlife Paul Rider from moving in on Samuel when your uncle was lonely and vulnerable. I’m the one who has protected Loftus Manor all these years. Not you. You don’t deserve a thing.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Tommie said. She was being edged closer and closer to the attic door. Once it was unlocked, she intended to make a break for freedom by running down the stairs. It was a dangerous ploy with Nancy, so unhinged, holding a gun. The staircase went straight down to the ground floor without any twists or turns and no place to hide. Tommie could almost feel the bullet in her back. But staying in the attic with Nancy, so angry and aggrieved, was not an option.

  “Meow,” the black cat said, and Tommie had the sense he understood her plan. He would help her if he could. She slid her gaze toward him, and the cat blinked twice, slowly. Tommie had no doubt the feline understood the danger of her situation, and possibly his too. Nancy didn’t strike her as a person who had any great affection for cats, dogs, or anything alive. How had she not seen this earlier? She’d foolishly felt sorry for Nancy, even inviting her to the manor. Of course, Nancy and Nina had been in and out of the house whenever they wanted.

  Samuel must have let on to Nina about the passages and Nina had clued Nancy in. The two had been double-teaming Tommie and Harley since the beginning.

  “I don’t smell the perfume you normally wear,” Tommie said, hoping a change of subject would alleviate the murderous tension Nancy displayed.