by Wendy Webb
“I do,” I told her. “And Harriet does.”
“Then, it was obviously one of you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I spat back at her. “We don’t make a habit out of ruining the work of the fellows here at Cliffside. Just the opposite, as a matter of fact. But since I answered your question, you answer this one. Did you have the door latched?”
“Of course it was locked.”
“I didn’t ask if it was locked. A lock can be opened with a key. Did you have the door latched?” I strode over to the door and pointed to the oval attachment that, when mated with a bolt, prevented the door itself from opening, even if someone had a key.
She narrowed her eyes, as if thinking was painful. “It was latched,” she said. “I had to open it to get out of the room just now.”
I looked around the room. The others were shaking their heads and muttering. Cassandra threw up her hands. “For God’s sake, nobody could’ve gotten in here,” she said, her voice shrill.
“But—” Brynn tried, but Cassandra cut her off.
“They couldn’t possibly have latched the door on the way out.” She let out a sigh. “That means nobody was in here while you were sleeping. It happened before you turned in. I’m going back to bed. And if I’m too tired to work tomorrow, you are to blame.”
She stomped out of the room with Diana slipping off behind her.
Brynn, a look of utter confusion on her face, was staring into the study. “I don’t understand it,” she whispered.
“We’ll sort this all out in the morning,” Henry said, rubbing her arm. “I’m going to retire as well. If you need anything, you knock on my door.” He kissed her on the cheek and was gone.
I grabbed a couple of pages of the journal. “I just want to examine these a little closer,” I said to Brynn, who had now turned her confused eyes to me.
“I don’t understand this,” she repeated. “What happened here?”
I patted her arm. “I don’t know,” I said to her as gently as I could. “But I do know that journal didn’t tear itself up. We’ll get to the bottom of it, I promise.” I took a breath. “If you’d feel better about it, I can call the police right now. They’ll have somebody here in no time.”
She crossed her arms. “I don’t know,” she said. “It really scared me.”
“I suggest you try to get some sleep,” Richard broke in. “I’m just next door. You call out if anything else happens, and I’ll be in here in a heartbeat.”
She nodded, eyeing her study and the strewn papers.
“Tomorrow, if you want to call the police, we will,” I said. “Make sure you latch the door after we go. There’s no way anyone can get in here with the latch on.”
Richard and I walked out into the hallway, and I pulled the door closed behind us. I could hear Brynn locking and latching it.
“Do you buy that?” he said, his voice low.
“Buy what?”
“This whole thing,” he said.
I nodded my head toward my room. “Let’s go in here,” I whispered. “I don’t want to disturb anybody.”
He followed me into my room, and I shut the door. “Now,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Obviously nobody was in her room while she was sleeping,” he said. “It’s impossible, because of the latch. So, either somebody got in there while she was looking at Henry’s etchings . . .” He raised his eyebrows.
I let out a chuckle. “You caught that, too?”
“Oh, yes.” He grinned. “They weren’t exactly discreet about it. So, either someone was ripping up the journal while she was with him and she just didn’t notice it before going to sleep, or—nobody did it at all.”
I squinted at him. “I don’t follow you.”
“Who benefits from her ‘priceless family heirloom’ being destroyed?”
“You sound like a police detective, Mr. Banks.”
“And you, a reporter, Miss Harper.” He smiled. “I think we’re thinking the same thing.”
“She did it herself.”
“Either that or she had an accomplice,” he said. “Did you notice, Diana didn’t say a word. She seemed to be trying to make herself very small and unremarkable.”
“I did notice that,” I said. “But, I don’t know, it could be Diana was just really tired. Tell me, how did you come upon your theory that Brynn herself did this?”
“At first, I thought she was truly terrified,” he said. “Good actress, that one. But then, the ‘Lies’ rubbish.” He rolled his eyes. “A little over-dramatic, don’t you think? That made me suspicious, even more so when she mentioned the bit about suing you. It was too much. And the latch sealed it. So to speak.”
“So, what should I do?” I asked him.
“Watch what she does tomorrow,” he said. “If she persists with this lawsuit business, or even makes noises about contacting her insurance company for a payout, I think we’ll have our answer.”
I let out a groan. Miss Penny had warned me about diva-ish behavior but nothing like this.
The thought of Miss Penny’s name made something click in the back of my mind, and all at once, I wanted Richard to go.
“Well,” I said, with a note of finality, “thank you for your help tonight. We’ll sort it all out tomorrow, and I think you’re right. If she starts talking about insurance or suing us, we’ll have our answer. Why don’t you try to get some sleep before morning?”
He let out a yawn and ran a hand through his hair. “I think I’ll do that. It was a tiring day. Travel always takes it out of me.”
“Sleep as late as you can,” I said. “There’s always coffee and things to nibble on if you miss breakfast.”
He put his hand on the doorknob. “Goodnight, Miss Harper.”
“Call me Norrie,” I said, smiling at him.
“Norrie,” he repeated. “It suits you. Goodnight, then, Norrie. Sleep tight.”
I shut the door behind him, latched it, and hurried to the study. I sat down at my desk, opened the drawer where I had stashed Miss Penny’s suicide note, and pulled it out. I flipped on the lamp and set the page I had taken from Brynn’s journal next to the letter.
My whole body went cold at the sight of it. The message written on the journal page, Lies Lies Lies Lies, was written in the same spidery scrawl as Miss Penny’s suicide note.
CHAPTER 20
There would be no more sleep for me that night. I lay in bed, my eyes open wide, my heart pounding in my chest. I had locked and latched the door, knowing it wouldn’t do one bit of good if the perpetrator could simply float through it.
Brynn Kendrick might very well have ripped the pages from her journal, but she certainly didn’t write those words. It wasn’t possible. That was Miss Penny’s handwriting. There was no mistaking her distinctive scrawl.
But, how could it be?
A cold, stark terror gripped me when I let myself think what I had been trying to convince myself wasn’t true. Was she here, at Cliffside still, threatening us? Is that why she killed herself—to terrify us?
It sounded fantastic, even to me, alone and shivering in my bed that night, but what other explanation was there? I thought of all the strange things that had happened to me since I arrived at Cliffside—the voices and laughter in the hallways, the sight of those children outside my window, my ghoulish experience on the third floor. Even my encounter with that old man in the boathouse—what was his name? Pete? He had said Death himself resided at Cliffside. What if it wasn’t Death but the three Dare sisters, finally together once again?
Just hours before, I was laughing with Nate. I had left his house convinced that my suspicions were just a product of my imagination running wild, that there was nothing going on at Cliffside, and that, whatever Miss Penny’s reasons for bringing at least some of us here at the same time, they died with her.
But now, I suspected that just the opposite was true. It felt like something dark and dangerous was happening, and I had no idea what it was.
&
nbsp; I sat up and poured a glass of water from the pitcher on my bedside table. I drank it down, holding it with shaking hands. I needed a plan. As the director of Cliffside, I needed to take control of this situation. But what should I do?
I looked at the clock. Four twenty-five. It would be a few hours before people were moving around.
I slid back down under the covers and made a list in my mind—that always helped me make sense out of the nonsensical. The first thing I’d do in the morning was talk with Henry and Diana. I wanted to know exactly how they had come to be at Cliffside. I’d also get the whole group together to brainstorm any connections we might have between us, to figure out a reason for this thing.
I must’ve drifted off, because I found myself opening my eyes to a bright, clear day. The sun was streaming into my room, warming me as I slept. I rubbed my eyes and glanced at the clock—it was after nine, already! I bolted out of bed, cursing myself. I had wanted to talk to everyone at breakfast.
I glanced out of the window toward the gardens and saw Henry set up there, his easel and paints in front of him. He had obviously been at work awhile. I wondered about the others. Where were they?
I didn’t bother showering. I just threw on some clothes, brushed my hair, and started to make my way downstairs when I thought better of it. I turned around and headed to Brynn’s suite. I knocked on the door, hoping she was all right.
A moment later she opened the door, scowling. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be disturbed.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I came to check on you,” I said. “After last night. I wondered . . .” But my words trailed off. Her expression told me all I needed to know.
“You wondered what?” She stood there, one hip jutted out, arms crossed.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I said.
“You yourself said there’s no way somebody could’ve gotten into my room while I was sleeping because the door was latched. So it had to have happened when I was . . .” She thought a moment. “. . . out of my room, and I just didn’t notice it before I went to bed.”
“But you said you turned off the light in the study and didn’t see anything.”
“Well, I was tired.” She sniffed. “It had to be that I just didn’t notice it.”
“We mentioned the police last night,” I said. “If you’d like me to, I can make the call right now.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Waste of time,” she said. “I think it’s just somebody’s idea of a practical joke.”
“If that’s a practical joke, it’s a pretty nasty one.”
“Malicious,” she said. “Absolutely malicious. That odious Richard Banks made a crack about me writing a horror novel, and then a few hours later something out of a horror novel happens to me. Ripped out of the pages of a horror novel, to put a fine point on it.”
“Are you saying you think Richard Banks did this?”
“Who else?”
“I don’t know,” I said. How could I possibly say that I thought it wasn’t a practical joke, that the malevolent ghost of Miss Penny had destroyed her journal? In the light of day, it seemed like a ridiculous idea.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get back to writing.” And with that, she shut the door in my face. Temperamental divas was right.
I found Cassandra and Diana at the table in the winter garden, finishing their breakfasts. I smiled, noticing that these two ladies couldn’t have been more different. Cassandra’s sleek, black hair was styled in a neat bob, not a strand out of place. She was wearing a blue, silk blouse, cream slacks, and heels, a strand of pearls wound around her neck. Diana, on the other hand, wore a purple cotton dress and flip-flops, her long hair a wild tangle, cat-eye glasses on a silver chain around her neck. So typical of their roles: the serious, nonfiction writer and the poet.
I poured a cup of coffee for myself, grabbed a croissant, and joined them at the table.
“Hi, ladies,” I said. “I hope you got some sleep after the incident last night.”
Diana pushed the eggs around her plate with a fork but didn’t respond. I remembered what Richard had said about her the night before. She did look a little guilty, now that I thought about it.
“Well, I slept like a baby,” Cassandra said, taking a last sip of her coffee. “I woke up early and got some work done. Now I’m going to go back upstairs and continue. I’m on a roll! This place has really got my creative juices flowing.” She pushed her chair back from the table and dropped her napkin on her plate. “Shall I take this into the kitchen?”
“Not necessary,” I said, “but, can you wait for a moment? I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“In that case,” she said, crossing the room to the sideboard with her coffee cup, “I’ll have a little more of this. Diana, can I refill your cup?”
Diana shook her head. “I’ve got tea.”
Coffee poured, Cassandra returned to her place at the table and settled back into her chair. “Now, Eleanor, what did you want to talk about?” she asked me.
“I wanted to take your pulse, so to speak”—I shot a look at Diana—“both of your pulses, actually, about how you’re feeling after last night. I spoke with Brynn this morning, and she’s convinced that someone—one of us—did this as a sort of practical joke because she’s writing a horror novel.”
Cassandra nodded her head. “She was down here at breakfast earlier, and she said the same thing to me. She thought someone was making a pun, so to speak, ripped from the pages of a horror story.”
“Henry came up with that,” Diana said. I was getting so accustomed to her silence that I was taken aback at the sound of her voice. “I heard them in the hallway as they came down to breakfast. She was still upset, and he was trying to calm her down.”
“Calm who down?” It was Richard, padding into the room in his sweatpants and slippers.
My face felt hot at the sight of him, standing there, smiling at me. Get it together, Norrie, I thought. First Nate, now Richard. I hadn’t had a date in two years, maybe longer, and suddenly I was blushing over every man I came into contact with? It was ridiculous. What was I, a teenager?
I shook it off. “Brynn.”
“Is she still in a snit?”
“Brynn actually thought you did it,” I said to Richard, “because of your crack about her writing a horror novel.”
“Me?” Richard looked mildly amused. “But it wasn’t a crack. She is writing a horror novel about something that took place in this very building.”
Diana set her cup down on the table with a flourish. “You were thinking it was one of the spirits who live here,” she said to me. “This house is full of ghosts. I’ve never been in a place that has had so many.”
We all stopped and stared at her. She wiped the corners of her mouth and pushed her chair back from the table. “Most of them mean no harm.”
“Oh, that’s total rubbish,” Richard huffed, taking a bite of eggs.
Cassandra caught my eye, a worried look on her face. “I really don’t put any stock in things like that, but I guess I’ll just ask. Is Cliffside haunted, Eleanor? It is a very old house.”
What, exactly, was I going to say to that? “I don’t know,” I said, finally. “I’m new here myself.” My heart was pounding in my throat. “But, Diana,” I went on, “you think a spirit did this?”
“Who else? Listen, it’s just like you said.” Diana turned to Richard. “Brynn is writing about something very strange that went on here when that little girl—what was her name? Temperance?—died. Maybe she doesn’t like it.”
“Maybe who doesn’t like it?” Richard asked, furrowing his brows.
“Temperance,” Diana said. She turned on her heel and was about to go, but I held up a hand to stop her.
“You think Temperance is still here?” I croaked out.
“Oh, they’re all still here,” Diana said, as nonchalantly as if she were reciting a grocery list.
“What do you mean, �
�all’?”
“There’s just something about this place,” Diana said, opening her arms wide. “When you die here, you stay.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Richard mumbled into his coffee cup.
Diana went on. “Cliffside is full of spirits, yes, but the world is full of spirits. They’re all around us, all the time. We pass them on the streets and sit next to them in restaurants, we chat with them in elevators and on trains, never knowing that they’ve passed over, and are just biding their time here on this earth.”
Richard shot me a glance and winked. “That does it. No more talking to strangers in elevators. One of them might be the Grim Reaper.”
“Why don’t they go?” Cassandra asked her. I didn’t know if it was a legitimate question or if she was just playing along.
“I don’t know why they stay at Cliffside, specifically, but our world is the garden of earthly delights,” Diana said. “Look around you. Would you want to leave this place for the unknown?”
She did have a point.
“But the ripping out of pages,” I pressed on, bringing the subject back to last night. “Isn’t that pretty angry?”
Diana smiled an indulgent smile. “Oh, Eleanor,” she said. “Those words on the pages, and the fact that they were all ripped out of the book—it didn’t seem threatening to me. It seemed juvenile. Like something a child would do.”
“A naughty child,” Richard said, with a huff.
“Yes, a naughty child,” Diana said. “But a child nonetheless.” She looked at each of us in turn. “You don’t have any experience with spirits, do you?”
I shrugged. “I was a crime reporter for twenty years before I came to Cliffside, so I have a lot of experience with dead bodies. Their spirits? Not so much.”
“Me neither,” Cassandra said. “I deal in facts, remember?”
“And I think the whole thing is a load of shite,” Richard said.
“Well,” Diana said, “I’m here to tell you, ghosts are no more threatening dead than they were when they were alive. And the one that ripped up Brynn’s journal is nothing more than a naughty, little child trying to scare us.”
