Ghosts from the Past

by Bonnie Elizabeth

  “Why not?” I asked. If there was vandalism, you’d think she’d want a record of it, at least.

  “We’ve called them any number of times already for various types of vandalism. I think she doesn’t want to keep on calling them,” Jimmy said.

  “Yes, but doesn’t that sort of keep a record of the sorts of things that have been happening? And won’t that help for an insurance claim?” I asked.

  Jimmy sighed. “I’m not sure why she doesn’t want to keep calling them. There was kind of a pow-wow with her and I wasn’t invited in, but when she came out, she was pretty upset. I don’t know what was said but maybe they suggested that she was having this done for a big insurance claim.”

  “I can’t imagine that they’d do that, would they?” I asked.

  “They might not have,” Jimmy said. “Bethany can take things personally even when you don’t mean it to be. I know that some of the things I’ve said about her aunt have been taken badly, so we try not to mention the family to her. She gets really excited about certain things and really upset about others and you can’t always tell which it will be.”

  I waited, looking interested.

  “I told her her aunt had been courted by this guy down in Halifax, a historian of some sort who studied the history of Cape Breton. It was really a sort of romantic thing. I think Audra was charmed by him and they’d go out to lunch whenever he was here and he’d bring her flowers and chocolates, the whole romantic gift giving thing, you know?”

  I nodded.

  “He even brought her a necklace which she wore all the time,” Jimmy continued. “We teased her about it. Audra laughed like she was a girl. I hadn’t seen her that happy in a long time. I’m not sure what happened but his visits stopped in frequency and they sort of just drifted apart. I think I was more heartbroken than Audra was, really.”

  “What did Bethany object to?”

  “The whole idea that her aunt had a boyfriend, as we called him, I guess,” Jimmy said. He was frowning a little. “I never really understood.”

  I didn’t either.

  “The odd thing was that when I found out that Audra’s father had been investigated for criminal negligence over a mining accident, Bethany was ecstatic about it. I hadn’t even told her that he ultimately wasn’t charged, although there is still some hard feelings around the local area about the Schillings. It’s mostly died off, particularly because everyone pretty much liked Audra, what little we saw of her.”

  I frowned with Jimmy too, after hearing that. It didn’t make sense. It was almost as if Bethany didn’t want to hear anything that countered who she believed Audra to be. I wondered what sort of relationship the two of them had had.

  “We might as well eat in here,” Pat said when she’d made up some turkey sandwiches. She had a bunch of them on plates, ready for us to dig in.

  I pulled up a stool and Jimmy grabbed one as well.

  We all dug in, with Bob getting sodas from the refrigerator. “Unfortunately we can’t make coffee,” he said with a smile.

  Rachel came in about that time, pausing to look at us almost in horror because we were eating around the kitchen counter.

  “Pull up a stool and have a sandwich,” Pat said. “No use spending time in that big old hall with just the electric lanterns.”

  “They’re cold,” Rachel said. She didn’t smile.

  “No power,” Pat offered.

  “Can’t you fix that generator?” Rachel demanded of Jimmy.

  “We need a new one,” Jimmy said easily, eating. He didn’t pause to discuss it with her, just taking another bite.

  “What do you mean we need a new one? Isn’t that your job to be sure you purchase things before they wear out?”

  “This didn’t wear out,” Jimmy said. “Someone damaged it and it won’t work right now.”

  Jimmy was keeping his cool quite nicely.

  Rachel snorted and sighed. “I’m not sure how anyone expects me to get anything done around here. Just let Nathan get on me about being too slow and wondering what I’m doing up there after a night like this!” She threw up her arms in exclamation.

  I didn’t actually find the night that horrible. I liked talking with Pat and Bob and Jimmy.

  “I suppose Nathan’s in town again?” Rachel said. She said the word town like it was a bad thing.

  No one answered.

  “I asked you where the boss was.” Rachel moved over to me and tapped my shoulder three times as if to make a point.

  “I don’t know. I’m not his keeper,” I said, looking back at her.

  “You didn’t see him in town?” Rachel asked, stepping back, folding her arms across her chest.

  Sydney was a fairly small town, but it wasn’t like I could see the whole thing from any one vantage point.

  “He wasn’t in the library,” I said. I avoided mentioning the historical society. I wasn’t sure what Rachel would do with that information. She might already be aware of what I had found out, or perhaps not. I couldn’t imagine that if she did know that she wouldn’t have said something to the rest of us.

  Rachel gave me a long humph and then glared at Pat and Bob.

  “It’s not a meat day,” she snapped and left.

  “Excuse me for not knowing what diet she’s on today,” Pat breathed as Rachel stomped out.

  Jimmy just shook his head. “I’m surprised that Nathan puts up with her. I mean someone else has to be available for the job, don’t they?”

  “I think Bethany is getting tired of all this,” Pat said. “We all sort of want things done. The faster she can get the antiques valued and out of here or stored, the faster she can go through and do the updates that the central wing needs. That’s when you’ll get really decent electricity out here, too.”

  Bob nodded. “This is all so piecemeal. I’m surprised the place hasn’t burned down.”

  Jimmy chuckled. “The basement’s too damp and moldy, I guess.”

  I shuddered.

  “I can take you down there,” Jimmy offered grinning.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “There’s enough damp and mold up here. And darkness. I wouldn’t want to stumble on a body or something!”

  “I can assure you, there are no bodies down there.”

  As if that was any reassurance at all. Certainly not when there were ghosts around.

  Chapter 24

  After dinner, there was nothing to do but go back up to the rooms. Jimmy, Pat, and Bob had rooms along the front side of the first floor, down a hallway that led around the dining hall, past a large room that looked like an office. Jimmy often didn’t stay at the Manor, but he had a room he used when he did. Tonight was one of those nights. They left me as I went to climb the stairs.

  “Call on the walkie-talkie if you have a problem!” Jimmy said.

  “Except it’s gone,” I replied. “I forgot to mention it. I meant to.”

  Pat stopped in the hallway with Bob. Both of them looked at each other and then at me.

  “When did that happen?” Jimmy asked.

  “Just last night. I didn’t know who to tell, particularly as it was the weekend.”

  “I’ll be sure to scrounge up another one,” Jimmy said. “They go missing an awful lot and we never seem to find them.”

  He sighed.

  I went up the stairs that smelled of chemical lavender and dust. Before coming here I never thought dust had a smell, but now I knew that it did. It was a smell that tickled and dried your nose and made you want to go out into the rain for fresh air to moisten to your air passages.

  I reached my room without incident and realized only then that no one had offered me an option of getting a hold of them if I needed help. Hopefully, for one night, I wasn’t going need it.

  I paused at my door, listening to the piano music. It had to be Rachel playing it, I thought.

  I walked up the hallway to the door beyond mine, listening carefully. I thought I heard her humming but couldn’t be certain.

  I wonder
ed about knocking on her door and talking to her but decided that was a foolish thing to do. I hurried back to my room. Inside Audra sat on my bed, her feet hanging off the mattress. She was back to her pedal pushers.

  She looked up at me and nodded. “Did you find out what you needed to know?”

  I closed the door behind me. I had no desire for shadowy cats to come pouncing on me.

  “I’m verifying some things,” I said.

  “They’re true, I think,” Audra said.

  “How?” I asked.

  Audra shrugged.

  “In the letters you pointed me towards, you and Eddie, it was Eddie wasn’t it?”

  Audra nodded.

  “In those letters you talked about ‘your place.’ Where was that?”

  “We used to meet in the orchard just beyond the old greenhouse. You’d think you could see through glass, but you can’t, not really, which meant we could see shadows if we knew what to watch for. And Eddie had a reason to be out there. I would just be going for a walk if my father ever caught us.”

  A few things started turning over in my mind. They had met by the old greenhouse in an orchard, and now the orchard was gone. Were the frustrated ghosts, searching out their place, the reason the greenhouse kept falling down?

  “I don’t know,” Audra said, reading my mind once again.

  I looked over at her, surprised to get a response, and she laughed. Her laughter was high pitched and girlish. It made me want to join her, even if she was a ghost.

  “Why don’t I get cold around you any longer?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. I think I could have them if I moved on, but I feel tied to this place.”

  “How well did you and Bethany know each other?”

  Audra rolled her eyes, or did some ghostly simulation thereof. “Bethany is just my next of kin. My attorney recommended I leave the estate directly to her rather than her parents because she was younger. It would be easier to settle. I didn’t really care. I hardly knew any of them.”

  “Bethany sometimes talks about you,” I said.

  “She and her parents visited when she was younger. I hadn’t seen her in years when I died.” It was odd hearing that kind of thing from the voice of a girl who seemed a decade or two younger than I was.

  “I have to go,” Audra said, standing up.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I just do.” She walked over to the door and went through it, disappearing as she did so.

  It was an unsettling thing to see, I thought.

  I decided to wash up after dinner and get comfortable for the evening. I could probably play on my laptop if it still had battery power. Or I could read on my kindle, thankfully charged. Instead I paced around, running through what I’d learned about the Schillings and the Hannas.

  Audra’s father had one brother, a younger brother who had moved to Halifax because the city was larger and there were more job opportunities. That was Bethany’s direct ancestor. This had all been easily verified.

  The Hannas were more difficult. When Eddie disappeared, he’d been a young man. He’d gone to war and so he had a small will which left everything to his mother. She, in turn, had left all her worldly goods to her two remaining children, Bryce and Tamara.

  Bryce had died with no issue. His will had left everything to Tamara’s children, his closest relatives.

  Tamara had had a daughter very young, and that daughter had gone to school in the States. This child had a child there—I was getting confused as to how this child would be related to Eddie—and named her Rachel. Rachel had studied history and had gone on to get a job at an antique dealer’s while she was in school. The rest, as they say was fate.

  Or was planned.

  The fact that I’d come up with a bankbook with the Hanna name meant that Rachel might be someone who was entitled to a part of that money. I didn’t know for certain. I did know that Bethany wanted to be certain that the Hanna heirs got their share if they were entitled to it.

  It was why I wanted to verify that this woman, this Rachel, was the child that I thought she was. And why I had someone else doing that verification. I didn’t want Rachel to know I was looking into it.

  Someone banged on my door. At first, I thought it was the house playing with me. I willed it to stop but the banging continued. I opened it.

  Rachel stood there, looking annoyed.

  “It took you long enough,” she said.

  At first I thought she was reading my mind, like the ghosts seemed to. Then I realized she was only talking about the time it took me to answer the door.

  “Sometimes I hear pounding,” I said.

  “Call me,” she said quickly. “I can get rid of that for you.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say to that. Anything I might have said would have sounded completely insane. I’d talked to the ghosts and they thought she was just silly sounded beyond insane.

  “What did you need?” I asked.

  “To talk,” Rachel said, pushing past me into the room. “I want to hear all about the library downstairs.”

  “Now’s not really a good time,” I hedged. “I was getting ready for bed.”

  “Barely eight,” Rachel argued. “Let’s chat. Or don’t you like me?”

  Being a polite woman that I am, and having lived most of my life in the South, I couldn’t exactly refuse her, not after a question like that.

  Chapter 25

  Rachel made herself at home on my bed, curling her legs up under her, leaning back against the headboard. That left me at a disadvantage. I wasn’t comfortable enough to settle in next to her. I moved my laptop and faced away from the doorway, looking towards her, my legs off the side. It wasn’t that comfortable and I would have a crick in my back if things went on for any amount of time.

  I disliked the perfume that she wore, a sort of floral thing that normally I wouldn’t notice, but it clashed with the lavender scent in the room. I hoped that sitting near my pillows wouldn’t cause the smell to linger there. I doubted I could stand it all night.

  The house groaned once, but more quietly than usual. If it was an assessment of Rachel, I had to admit I agreed with it.

  “So tell me all about Sydney,” Rachel said.

  “Mostly spent it at the library. I wandered by the historical society and looked around there a bit and then went shopping. What I really wanted was a sweet tea, but they didn’t have any, even at McDonald’s,” I said, whining about something innocuous.

  “Sounds like a typical day in Sydney. Go and look for something and then you can’t find it.”

  I smiled. I’d actually liked the city. It was smaller than I might prefer but it was pleasant enough. If it hadn’t started to rain and if I hadn’t been so upset that Rachel appeared to be related to the Hannas, I’d have been fine.

  “What did you do today?” I asked.

  Rachel shrugged. “Worked, mostly. That’s all I do. I heard you found that compartment in the wall in the library. I bet that was fun.”

  “It was a surprise,” I said, carefully. “I found an old bankbook I there and I gave it to Bethany,” I said. I wasn’t going to add that she was looking for heirs. I wish I could have asked Rachel what she knew.

  “I heard it didn’t belong to the Schilling family,” Rachel pressed.

  “It was in Robert Hanna’s name but it had Schilling Coal as well. I’m sure the bank has to sort out what that means. Was Hanna paid by Schilling Coal or was he a working for Schilling Coal and he was just the name on the bankbook or what?”

  “No doubt Bethany will try and spin it in her favor. All these rich folks are interested in is furthering their monetary interests,” Rachel griped.

  I shrugged, wondering how much I should tell her. After all, Bethany was planning on trying to find a living heir for Robert Hanna. “You might underestimate her,” I said carefully.

  Rachel slapped her hands down. “Oh, for God’s sake. Haven’t you learned anything about the Schi
llings? They were horrible bosses. They were cited for unsafe working conditions and got away with it, probably because they were so rich. They dabbled in shipping alcohol to the United States, and when people died doing that in storms and what not, they said not a word, nor did they help the families.”

  “That’s all pretty ancient history,” I said. “I’m not sure you can hold Bethany to those standards. From what I understand, her side of the family was down in Halifax.”

  “Audra was just as bad. Eddie Hanna had a woman that loved him back in town but Audra was always acting as if she was swooning over him. He probably left to get away from her and live a real life. Not that anyone here cared. No one mentioned him again.”

  “What’s this about? Audra and Eddie Hanna?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

  “It was an open secret, if you knew how to do any research,” Rachel snapped at me, as if she thought I was stupid.

  She continued her rant. “Audra foreclosed on a bunch of cottages that her father had rented out. She wanted more space on the land to grow the Manor, even though she never married, never had children, pretty much knew that the place would die after she did. Even in her will, she’s tied Bethany to it, not that I see her minding at all.”

  “What do you mean, ‘tied’?” I asked.

  Rachel shook her head. “Bethany loses it all if she doesn’t keep the Manor up, even better than Audra did during her tenure as mistress of the house. Bethany was supposed to keep the orchards as they were, but all the trees were dying so they’ll be replanted soon. It was too late in the year after the arborist determined that they weren’t salvageable. If those don’t get planted, she loses the place.”

  “What do you mean, loses it?” I asked.

  “It goes to the Sydney Historical Society for preservation,” Rachel snapped. “Like they’d do anything with it. But it seems typical of the rich, trying to force a certain lifestyle on someone else even after they died.”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “So what did you learn at the Historical Society?” Rachel demanded.

  “I was there so close to closing that I’m having someone call me,” I said.