by Etta Faire
I waved. “Good bye. We’re fine. Thanks for your concern.”
“Give me your answer by six o’clock this evening or I’m going with the other medium.”
“We’ve already given you our answer. More than once now. We cancelled. End of story,” I yelled as she left. I turned to my boss and put my hand on her shoulder. She didn’t cringe this time. “Why don’t you go on home. I’ll clean up here and take over the shop.”
She hugged me tightly, grabbing my arm and using it to help her hobble off the stool. She limped to the back room and I followed. As soon as we were alone in the back, I whispered. “Are you really okay?”
“Yes, except Paula Henkel and Caleb Bowman were here for far too long.” She held her chest again. “You know I’m too old for that. My damn heart can’t take but five minutes of certain damn people.”
She was cussing again, and I was pretty sure five more minutes with those two and she would’ve been dropping f-bombs.
She gathered up some scattered papers that were laying around the back table and put them in her purse. One of them was a ticket to the seance.
“Fancy, huh?” she said, handing me the gold and silver embossed 4x5 ticket. It had been printed on heavy card stock. “Paula gave it to me. Just now, while we were talking to the police. Can you believe it?”
“Tacky,” I said.
“She said we could get in to the dinner for free if we worked the seance. Like that shouldn’t have been part of the deal in the first place.”
I handed the ticket back to Rosalie. “I’m glad you cancelled. Look how large our names are. She wants us. We’re a draw here in Potter Grove. The women from the country club who come in here… they love you.”
Rosalie looked down at the card in her hand. “Nobody comes in much anymore. And truth is, I could use the business.”
I didn’t tell her this, but I needed it too, for my case. The bed and breakfast was where Bessie died and where she haunted. And I was pretty sure there was a reason Sir Walter felt familiar to me in the channeling. I was almost certain his presence had been the male presence I’d felt at the bed and breakfast.
“I’ll go see her when I get off work,” I said. “I’ll tell her we want half the ticket sales. She can keep the dinner profit.”
“She’s not gonna agree to that.”
“The hell she won’t. She’ll have to reprint everything if she goes with the new medium.”
Caleb poked his head into the back room. His voice was slow and drawn out. “Rosalie, I’m leavin’. Keep your doors closed from now on, okay? Wild animals can get in when the door’s left open,” he said in a slow tone, like we were all as dumb as wild animals over here.
“The door was closed,” Rosalie said.
He threw her a condescending smirk. “According to Paula Henkel, when she got here, the front door was propped open, remember?” He shook his head and left.
Rosalie lowered her voice as soon as he was gone. “I can’t prove anything, but I think Paula’s behind this.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But it also could’ve been a wild animal.”
Rosalie’s normally pale face grew red. “By the time Paula called me back last night, I’d already asked all over town. I knew she was making bank on this thing, so I told her we needed fifty percent of everything or the deal was off. Especially for an audience that large.”
“How large?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“She wouldn’t say, but at the rate they’re selling, probably expect about a hundred. I tried to call you last night.”
I sat down at her desk. I couldn’t tell Rosalie the reason I hadn’t picked up was because I was busy doing a channeling with Bessilyn Hind. She was already pretty shook up, and I didn’t want her worrying about me at a time like this. She thought channeling was dangerous, and I was fine. Probably.
Rosalie was still talking. “So we got into it on the damn phone last night. We were supposed to work out all the damn terms this morning.”
“And then this happened,” I said. “That’s some interesting damn timing.”
Rosalie nodded.
Chapter 10
On Display
Later that afternoon, Shelby stumbled into the Purple Pony, practically dragging a newborn baby carrier. I was just finishing inventorying all the damaged merchandise from the pile I’d created on the checkout counter when I noticed her. I rushed to hold the door open.
Every few steps, she’d stop and put the carrier down, take a deep breath then pick it back up again. When she turned the car seat around, I saw why she was struggling. Every inch of that carrier had been taken up by the largest baby head I’d ever seen, peeking out from a gray blanket. Thick cheeks and a round ruddy expression that looked like it might gobble up anything that got too close to its mouth.
I’d just seen Bobby Jr. a week ago, and he looked like he’d doubled in size since then, or at least his head had. Largest one-month-old head ever.
“I swear, every day he looks more and more like his daddy. Don’t you think,” Shelby said.
“Come on, now,” I said. “This baby’s cute.” She gave me a look so I had to say I was joking.
She told me all about how she and Bobby were about to celebrate their one-year proposal anniversary, and Bobby was planning something special.
“Like a wedding?”
“Don’t rush us,” she said. “We’re getting to that. But I am honestly in no hurry to have a third husband. I don’t know where he’s taking me, though. It’s a surprise…” she stopped mid-sentence and looked around at the mess on the floor and the counter. “What happened here?” she asked.
The humungous baby head was smiling at me, and I barely looked up from it when I told Shelby about Delilah Scott hearing a growling noise and what had happened with Rosalie. Like a punch in my empty uterus, my baby instincts were kicking in.
“So, they think a wild animal is running around town?”
I shrugged. “Probably just shapeshifters.”
“That’s not funny. Everyone knows that’s only a rumor, thank goodness.” She shivered. “Whatever it is, it sounds like it’s in this neighborhood. Aren’t you the least bit afraid?”
I thought about that a second. I should have been, I guess. It wasn’t like I was raised on weapons. My mother had been an engineer in Indianapolis. She tried to teach me things like rewiring circuit boards, (which after the fifth time, I would just nod and say I had it). And, I didn’t have a dad. “I guess there’s nothing to do except keep the doors shut and my eyes open,” I said.
“I’m gonna get some bear spray. That’s what I’m gonna do. You should get some too,” she said, dragging the baby carrier back toward the door again, looking around as she did. “I never told anyone this, but I’ve had this feeling for a while. Something in Potter Grove isn’t safe.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that’s the town’s new motto.”
After work, I found myself sitting in my car at the bed and breakfast, rehearsing all the different ways I might be able to negotiate with an awful woman. I glanced out my window, catching something large and furry in the shadows around the side of the house. It moseyed around the back before I could get too much of a look at it, though, making me wonder if I’d really even seen anything.
I opened the car door and practically fell out of it.
Maybe that was the wild animal that had trashed the Purple Pony.
The sun was just setting and the shadows of dusk could’ve been playing tricks on my mind, or so I told myself. A cool September breeze blew through my curls, and I pulled my jacket in tighter as I followed the animal, pushing my camera app on, already counting the money I was going to get from the first good picture of Big Foot.
I followed the decorative stone around toward the back, looking in all directions, listening as I walked. Shelby’s words echoed through my head, “Something in Potter Grove isn’t safe.”
The sound of that something sloshing through wet earth made me
momentarily gasp until I realized it was my new boots slipping through the bed and breakfast’s manicured lawn. Apparently, for my $10, I’d also received a weird suction-cup sound included with my no-traction boots.
I stopped just before I reached the back of the house and listened for a second. A low guttural growl.
My heart felt like it was going to pound its way out of my jacket and I tried to get my hands to stop shaking so I could get a good picture. No wonder all the photos were blurry.
I backed away just as a shadow came closer. Screaming louder than I’d intended, I dropped my phone and ran. Something else screamed back.
I turned back around to see what it was. Paula Henkel.
“What is wrong with you?” she said, coming out from the back, her arms full of firewood.
“You didn’t see or hear anything? Like a wild animal? I thought I heard growling.”
“Sure you did. You and your boss.”
I looked all around the back yard. There was nothing back there, except a manmade pond and a gazebo. I flashed back to the night before. This was the part of the yard where Sir Walter and Bessilyn had had their argument. To my right was where the rock used to be, the one where Bessie set her champagne glass down.
“Don’t tell me. You’ve come to say you want your job back,” she said, smugly carrying her firewood over to the entrance. I wasn’t sure how she managed to do everything smugly, but she did.
I didn’t answer as I followed her inside. Every part of me hated the fact I had to ask for this.
Inside was warm, the fire toasty. She put the logs on the hearth as I looked around. The bed and breakfast seemed different to me than it had in the channeling last night. The then-and-now differences were huge, even though Paula had made an attempt to recreate them. The furniture set-up was all different, and the chandelier was gone. It probably should’ve felt cheerier with the new colors and the bright lighting, but it just felt pit-of-my-stomach hollow and sad. Maybe channeling was harder on my psyche than I thought it’d be. Maybe I was just missing that corset.
There was a new display now. Another glass museum-like enclosure at the front of the room by the check-in counter, where a black felt bowler hat sat on a stand, a description typed on card stock underneath it. It read:
Love Can Make You Lose Your Hat…
This bowler hat was a popular style in 1906 when it was found outside Hind House on the night rich socialite and philanthropist Bessilyn Margaret Hind took her own life at her birthday party. The hat belonged to millionaire Sir Walter Timbre, Bessilyn’s fiancee, who told police he lost it during a heated argument with Bessilyn when she begged him to come back and they broke up for good. With her prospects for marriage ending, the despondent 35-year-old suffragist and women’s rights leader retired to her room where she shot herself in the heart.
“Like my display? I just got it.”
I nodded, even though I was pretty sure Bessie was going to lose her hat when she saw it.
Paula motioned around at the decor of the lobby. “It really adds to the ambiance of the business, huh?” She leaned in and lowered her voice like we were sharing a secret. “I’m not just selling a cozy place to spend the night anymore. That was the old bed and breakfast and that’s why they went out of business. I’m selling death, and the stories that go with it.”
“Where did you get all your display stuff?” I asked.
She smiled, obviously thinking I was impressed with her morbid marketing skills, which I absolutely was.
“The police,” she said. “If you can believe it. All by accident. I was talking to the sheriff about how I thought the bed and breakfast might be haunted by Bessie Hind, and he told me they still had some of her stuff in their old evidence locker. He wasn’t even sure why they had it there. It was a routine case. Sometimes, I feel like the luckiest person alive.”
She went on, telling me all about how she purchased the items for a steal from the police department, and the huge amount she estimated their real worth to be. “Of course, I had to make Caleb think he was raking me over the coals…”
“So, did Sir Walter really say this to the police?”
She looked at me sideways, probably because I was more interested in what a dead man said to the police 100-something years ago than how much money she was going to make off the dead man’s hat.
“It was in the police report. Why?”
“Do you have that report? I didn’t see it in the display.”
“I was thinking about adding it, but not until it gets some work done. It’s faded and disintegrating.”
I just decided to tell her the truth. “I don’t think Bessilyn Hind killed herself. I’m going to try to prove it, and solve her murder.”
She rolled her eyes like I was joking.
I went on. “The mere fact the police department had this stuff in evidence, that they took pictures and documented witnesses, says someone there thought something seemed off about her suicide.”
“I don’t think it matters too much anymore.”
“Maybe only to the people selling tickets.” I winked. “It’s an interesting angle. You have to admit.”
Her jaw moved back and forth under her smile.
I tried to feel the room for that same familiar presence as before, but I couldn’t really pick up on anything, just a quiet stirring. “I think Sir Walter Timbre is here too,” I said. “It might be fun to ask him about the police report. Don’t you think? Maybe solve Bessie’s murder at the seance.”
I thought I heard a cash register ca-ching-ing away in the woman’s head. “You want me to go get the police report? It’s just upstairs in my room.”
That stocky woman could sure move fast when marketing was on the line. She hustled up the stairs, rubbing her hands together. Apparently, we both needed this seance to be a hit.
Attached to the pedestal, beside the bowler hat, was a slightly enlarged photo of Sir Walter. It was the exact one from the microfilm. And I tried, once again, to make contact with the gorgeous man.
Orchestra music played softly from a stereo somewhere nearby, a nice touch but a little out of era from the music I remembered that night. “Sir Walter,” I whispered into the living room. I went over to Bessie’s display, just to see the glove again. I forced myself to look at the dress too. The lace that had trimmed the bodice area hung free on one side and a large brown stain covered the heart area. I looked away. Even though it was more than 100 years ago and everyone who was at Bessie’s party was now deceased, the finality of that one moment — the second between life and death, now finely pressed and on display — made me understand the disdain most of the dead seemed to have for the living, even though they’d all been living once too. We did seem to have problems keeping our priorities straight.
Paula fast walked back into the room, a Ziploc bag dangling from her hand. She held it out for me, but when I went to take it, she pulled it back. “Sorry,” she said. “This is a great angle, and I truly believe this might bring in a larger draw, but you and Rosalie cancelled on me. This isn’t your seance. Thank you for the idea, though. I will tell the new medium to see what she thinks.”
“I’ve done a ton of research on this thing. I… I…” I stopped short of telling her I had Bessilyn Hind staying at my house and that I’d already done a channeling with her.
“You… you what? You bring in a big crowd? Bessilyn Hind is what people are coming to see. Any monkey can perform the show. You’re welcome to buy a ticket, though,” she said. “Tell Rosalie the one I gave her isn’t valid anymore.”
A young couple came through the front door, carrying shopping bags and saying, “hello” at pretty much the same time.
The woman had the longest straightest jet-black hair I’d ever seen. It was pretty much the opposite of her partner’s bright orange spiky do.
The woman stared at me. “You’re Carly Taylor, aren’t you?”
I smirked at Paula Henkel. “Why yes, I am.” I wondered if the new medium was going t
o be as easily recognizable to strangers.
“I’m Emerald and this is my husband, Dragon Fire.” She pulled an EMF reader from one of her bags and started waving it around the room. “I looked you up as soon as we were asked to take over the seance from you.”
I could hardly believe Emerald and Dragon Fire were about to see Sir Walter’s evidence, and I wasn’t.
The woman put the reader over by Walter’s display. “Yes, I’m picking up very specific energy here, Ms. Hind. I will definitely be able to sign an agreement that says Bethany Henkel will be here for the seance coming up.”
I headed for the door but hesitated at the knob. “You guys didn’t hear a large animal growling out here, did you?”
Dragon Fire looked at me like I was crazy. “No.”
“You will if you cancel.”
Paula shouted to me as I left. “Tell Rosalie I want my book back. Landover County: Then and Now. I only gave it to her so you’d know who Bessilyn Hind was.”
“Don’t you mean Bethany Henkel? You all have a wonderful seance.”
Chapter 11
Crooked
I had the next day off, which was unfortunate because it was a Thursday, one of the days my creepy housekeeper checked on the house.
I tried to look the part of comfortable, sitting on the couch, while Mrs. Harpton moved at break-neck speed around me, like a black tornado of motion. She swirled around from room to room, making checks on how I was keeping the place while she dusted here and swept there.
It was all part of the stack of paperwork I had to sign as part of my inheritance. From what time I put the dishes away to the temperature of Rex’s dog’s food, I had to do everything perfectly.
And I was pretty far from perfect. I caught quite a few scowls from my housekeeper, but then, it might just have been the dress she was wearing. I’d scowl too if I had to wear something that went all the way up my neck and seemed to be made from whatever that awful material is that umbrellas are made out of.
