by Laney Monday
“Mr. Thompson!” the chief bellowed, “we have a warrant for your arrest. Come out with your hands up!”
“‘Come out with your hands up?’” I cried. “That’s not reassuring!”
Riggins shot me a chagrined look. I couldn’t tell if he was angry and embarrassed at me, or at being part of the Bonney Bay PD. Frankly, I was too mad to care. But, smart enough to know I’d just made a dumb, dumb move, I clamped my mouth shut and put my own hands in the air for good measure. Chief Sanders had probably been waiting his whole career to say that. I stood wa-a-ay back and prayed that Harvey would cooperate. Chief Sanders had his hand poised to draw his weapon.
“Step outside.” Riggins met my gaze with an intense look in his deep brown eyes.
I nodded mutely and backed out the door, hands still up. I moved all the way to the street, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave.
There was a flurry of commotion inside—a cacophony of thumps and shouts. But thank God, no shots fired. With a drag-thud, the men emerged from the house, Riggins on one side of Harvey, Chief Sanders on the other, virtually carrying him by the arms, which were bent behind his back and cuffed.
“Of course it was murder!” Harvey bellowed. “You didn’t think they’d just let Derek do this to their house, did you? It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me, I tell you! It was Moira! I tried to warn Derek. I tried to warn all of you, but no one would listen! And now look what’s happened.” His voice caught on a sob, and he buried his face in his own shoulder. His tangle of white curls shook.
“Mr. Thompson. You’ve got to calm down,” the chief said.
“It’s too far. I told them, this was taking it too far. But they’re dead. What do they care about making him dead too, except it means he’ll leave their house alone?”
Another police car arrived on the scene. No doubt Riggins and Chief Sanders had called for backup once they realized how uncooperative Harvey was. They stuffed him into the back of the chief’s SUV.
“Excuse me, Officer Riggins,” I said, just as Will opened his car door. “There’s another emergency here. I was just about to call the police when you showed up.”
“What is it? Is someone hurt?” Will looked ready to spring into action.
“No, but Harvey and I were almost killed a few minutes ago. You don’t need an ambulance or any backup; just come inside and look.”
Riggins told the other cops he’d meet them back at the station, and he followed me inside the house. “Brenna, this had better not be some excuse to get me to talk about this case.”
“I can’t help it if my near death experience is connected to this murder case. Speaking of which, it seems you’ve concluded that it is a murder case?”
Riggins shrugged nonchalantly. “It turns out Harvey was right.”
“About the ghosts?” Was Riggins getting completely gooey-headed on me? Not only slipping up on keeping mum on the case, but believing in Harvey’s ghosts?
“About the nature of Derek’s death.”
“He was really murdered?”
Riggins hesitated, as though considering what to tell me. “Poisoned,” he finally said.
“Are you sure?”
“Seizures can result from some types of poison. I had some tests done and confirmed it. One hundred percent certain.”
Wait. He had some tests done? Surely that took time. Surely he hadn’t just initiated those tests after our talk last night, and gotten the results back already. Riggins had treated this as a possible murder from the beginning. And he’d led me to believe he suspected no such thing. Nice. Very nice.
“I guess I’m just supposed to assume you have some actual evidence that Harvey was the poisoner?”
Riggins gave me a firm look and kept his mouth shut.
“Fine, don’t tell me.” I quickened my pace. “It’s in the ballroom,” I said briskly, cooly.
Riggins stopped short in the open doorway. Shards of chandelier debris scattered around his feet.
He stated the obvious. “The chandelier fell?” He was clearly unimpressed.
“The chandelier fell, right above me and Harvey.”
I told Riggins how upset Harvey had been when I arrived, how he’d been yelling directly at Moira right before the chandelier fell.
“I’m not saying the ghosts are responsible for the murder. Just that there’s some kind of connection. What if someone’s been orchestrating this whole thing? What if Derek was in the way of that?”
Riggins grunted.
“Maybe you could investigate what happened here. Figure out if the chandelier could’ve been sabotaged. And maybe you could, you know, tell me you’re going to investigate this time!”
A muscle in his strong jaw twitched. His brown eyes smoldered. “I do my job. I always do my job. I don’t know why you’re so convinced I won’t.”
I almost said, I didn’t say you don’t do your job; I said you don’t tell me about it. But then I realized how ridiculous that sounded. Grr. So what if it was ridiculous? I was there when Derek died. I was the first one trying to breathe the life back into him, agonizing moment after agonizing moment. It ticked me off that he didn’t tell me what was going on with the investigation—that there even was an investigation. It’s not like I was a suspect this time.
And Harvey, a poisoner? If Harvey were ever to kill anyone, it seemed much more likely he’d do it in a fit of rage or confusion. How did they know the poison wasn’t intended for someone else? I doubted they’d found the means of the poisoning yet. As far as I knew, they hadn’t really gone through the house as a crime scene. Nope. They’d just discovered it in Derek’s system and concluded Harvey was the killer, because … ? Because he lived with Derek? Because the two of them disagreed? Because he was a little nutty?
Riggins turned around abruptly and headed back toward the front door. So that was it, huh? I hurried after him.
“What about the house? We can’t just leave it like this.”
Riggins faced me and pulled a key ring out of his pocket and dangled it in the air. “Harvey’s. I am smart enough to lock up.”
I rolled my eyes. Riggins gestured with mock gallantry for me to go out the open door first. I waited and watched while he locked it securely behind us. What if there was someone in there? Someone who’d been terrorizing Harvey? What if he’d just locked a suspect inside? I opened my mouth to say something, but what good would that do at this point? Riggins was in no mood to listen to my crazy theories right now. For the hundredth time, I wished I had a tiny fraction of Blythe’s natural sense of diplomacy. I tended to want to throttle people when things weren’t going my way. Not that I was a violent person. At least not in any inappropriate context. I saved my warrior self for competition, on the mat.
But that part of my life was over now. I guess it hadn’t really sunk in yet, that I was retired. That there would be no more channeling of Brenna the Beast on the mat. Now how was I going to cope with this recurring desire to smash Will Riggins? Unless … maybe those private lessons he’d requested from me weren’t such a bad idea after all.
Riggins went around to check the other doors, leaving me standing on the front porch. This could get me into so much trouble; I knew it—but I ran around to the other side of the house. Finding the kitchen door open, let myself back in the house. Riggins would think I’d gone home. He’d never know.
15
I crept up the shadowy stairs, up and up, until I reached the attic. The ballroom ceiling was so high, I figured the attic would be the only way to access the joist the chandelier had undoubtedly hung from. Something had to support a light fixture that big.
The stairs dead-ended at a small, narrow door. Its paint was dull and worn thin. I tried the small metal knob, and couldn’t get the door to budge. At first I thought it was locked, but then I put my shoulder into it. It burst open so abruptly, I nearly fell forward. Once I caught my balance and recovered from my surprise, I took a big step back. What if the killer was on the other side of the door? Shouldn’t
I have armed myself with something? A candlestick? A billiard cue? Colonel Mustard?
Well, I wasn’t about to turn my back and head down the stairs. That would just be begging to get bashed from behind. I turned my cell phone onto the flashlight app and held it in front of me as I eased the door open. The room was heaped with large objects draped in white. Just old furniture, I hoped. I poked around the cobwebs and the shadows, moving in the direction of the ballroom.
In a relatively debris and dust-free circle on the floor between two joists, a shaft of pale light shine from below. I inched carefully toward the hole in the floor—the ceiling of the ballroom below.
A huge U-bolt, which I supposed had held the electrical box attached to the base of the chandelier, lay beside a heavy metal bar that spanned from one joist to another. The chandelier had basically hung from that bar. At least its base had. With the U-bolt unfastened, the electrical box, which was attached to the chandelier, had fallen. Certainly the base of the chandelier had been attached to the ceiling somehow, but that wouldn’t have been enough to support its full weight. The U-bolt should’ve done the job, except that it was no longer fastened to the bar. How had it come off? Had it just been weakened or loosened over time? Was it mere coincidence that it had popped completely free at just the right—or wrong—time? Or, had someone been up here, waiting, loosening it?
As I crouched there, pondering, I heard a sort of scurrying sound on the other side of the attic. Rats? Ew.
Bang!
I stilled. And then it hit me. That was the door! I rushed in that direction, imagining a key turning in the lock, sealing me in here forever. I gripped the doorknob and yanked for my life. The door flew open with ease. I fought to keep my balance. Of course, the thing didn’t even have a lock. Still … I’d left the door open, for sure. And I’d distinctly heard it slam shut. Rats might possibly sound like a person moving around, but they could not shut doors, no matter how big they were.
Was the chandelier meant to get me to dismiss the whole thing as the work of spirits after all? Or was it a warning to stop nosing into Derek’s death? It could be that someone wanted to kill Harvey. But there was another possibility. Someone had really tried to kill me. Again. I raced down the stairs, searching for the culprit. But I could hear Blythe’s voice in my head, warning me, making me promise not to do anything stupid. I’d never forget how I felt when I almost lost her. I knew how she’d felt when she thought she lost me. I couldn’t chase after a murderer, unarmed, in an unfamiliar house.
16
I slipped out the side door, into the daylight, and stood there drinking in the sunshine, calming myself down and debating whether to call Riggins. And tell him what? That I’d sneaked back into the house and started snooping around? That I heard a door shut, and possibly footsteps? Yeah, right. I couldn’t even say for sure there’d been anyone in the house. I could nag him about investigating that chandelier. That was about all I could expect, given the cold shoulder I’d turned to my favorite cop lately.
I sighed. I couldn’t deny I regretted that. A little voice inside me kept saying, Wouldn’t it be nicer to just be, you know, nice, to that nice Officer Riggins? But then there was that much deeper, much louder voice that reminded me I’d be sure to regret playing nice with Will Riggins much, much more.
I snooped around the yard and the garden a bit, looking for clues, listening for doors opening or closing. Maybe the culprit was still inside, and I’d get to see him trying to sneak out. I got my phone ready just in case I needed to record him trying to escape.
As I made my rounds, I saw a car arrive and park across the street. I wasn’t sure, but I thought it looked like Jacinda Peters behind the wheel. I ducked behind the carefully trimmed shrubbery at the foot of the front steps to Reiner House and peered at the car. It was probably just Jacinda coming to ogle Reiner House, or even to talk ghost stories with Harvey, but I wanted to find out for sure. A woman emerged, followed by a girl in her late teens or early twenties, with short, straight, mousy brown hair.
The older woman was Jacinda, alright. She’d changed into a bright, lightweight teal sweater that billowed about her arms. Layers of beaded necklaces in white and translucent blue hung in a similar, casual-dressy way. Her hair was gathered up in a beaded clip, and her lips freshly glossed.
The pair strode across the street, and Jacinda positioned herself on the sidewalk, right in front of the base of the steps. In other words, just a few inches from me. Fantastic. Now I was stuck, crouching behind a bush. I tried to think of a way to gracefully emerge from hiding, to come up with a sensible reason for being there, or perhaps a greeting so brilliant it made Jacinda and her friend fail to notice I’d just burst from the greenery like a fairy out of a dewy morning blossom. A big, wingless, slightly sweaty, still-somewhat bloated-with-banana-split, fairy.
“Just a little bit to the left,” I heard the girl tell Jacinda.
Carefully, I pushed down a feathery evergreen branch until I had a narrow tunnel to spy through. The girl stood across from Jacinda with her smart phone positioned for picture-taking.
“There?”
“Yes, perfect! Ready?”
“Go!” Jacinda put on a serious face. “Welcome, once again, to Bonney Bay. Many of you may recognize the incredible building behind me,” Jacinda began. She gestured and spoke as if for an audience. And her friend was clearly recording. “The house, built just above the deadly cliffs, which fall into the ice cold, treacherous waters of Bonney Bay, Washington. You can find out just how treacherous those waters are in my historical novel, Bonney Queen of the Bay, a tale of tragedy inspired by real events.”
I rolled my eyes. Ice cold, yes. But treacherous?
“This is the house where furniture has been known to move on its own, where mysterious, shadowy figures can be seen wandering in the night and unexplained voices and footsteps interrupt the otherwise quiet days. Some say the house itself is responsible for these disturbances. That it has its own personality, its own spirit. Moira, the woman it was built for, once treated this house as a friend. As her beloved. As though it had a spirit of its own. But I believe it is her spirit that haunts this house. Her spirit that’s responsible for the strange happenings. And now, her spirit that is responsible for a man’s death.
“That’s right. Just yesterday, a man was killed in this house. Though the last surviving resident of Reiner House told them who was responsible, the police initially treated the death as a natural one. Today though, that unfortunate man—we’ll call him H—was arrested in connection with that untimely death. This isn’t the first time the Bonney Bay PD got it wrong. Just a week ago, an innocent woman was accused of murder. That killing turned out to have been done by another woman, in self defense. There was no murder at all. And I’m telling you, this case is the same. There is no murder. At least not within the law. Because the guilty party is far beyond the jurisdiction of the Bonney Bay PD. She is subject to no earthly law, and she knows it.
“The killer is Moira. And there’s nothing the police can do about it, since she’s been dead since 1890. You can read all about Moira’s tragic end in Bonney Queen of the Bay. As we’re about to discover, new material is mounting daily for my upcoming book on the house itself. In House of Spirits, we will explore the after-lives of Reiner House’s early residents. Spirits like Julia, a distant relative of the current owners, who died in a tragic kitchen fire at a tender young age, and of course, Moira, whose life is a tale of tragedy upon tragedy.”
There was a silence as Jacinda paused. So that’s who Julia was! A relative of Harvey’s. I shivered. Wow. For a second there, Miss Ghost Buster even had me at the mercy of the heebie-jeebies.
“Got it!” the girl said. “Should we try to get some shots through the windows next?”
“Play it back for me first, Avery. I want to make sure I got it right.”
“You nailed it, Cinda.”
“You just don’t want to shoot it again,” Jacinda snapped. “Give me the phone.”
Now was my chance. I gently let the branch I’d been holding swish back into place, then inched backward. I rose slightly, my knees creaking. Over the bush and the brick side of the stair case, I could see they had their backs turned. They’d wandered a bit further away from my hidey hole, and were focused on the phone, watching the footage. I got up and dashed around the side of the house, out of sight, then found a narrow opening between two rose bushes and maneuvered my way to the sidewalk. Then I started to jog slowly, back toward the front of the house. Jacinda, apparently not convinced she’d nailed it, stood in the same spot, with a glowering Avery readying the camera a few feet back.
“Is that shadow still there?” Jacinda said.
“There wasn’t a shadow,” Avery grumbled.
“Hey!” I smiled big and waved. “Jacinda. What are you guys doing here?” I did my best to sound surprised and curious instead of, you know, nosy and suspicious.
“Oh, hello, Brenna! This is my assistant, Avery.” Jacinda smiled and waved back, a twist of beaded bracelets dangling from her wrist.
She seemed genuinely pleased to see me there. Maybe she was hoping to milk some juicier details about Derek’s death out of me—on camera. So not happening. I kept the smile on and hoped it didn’t look plastered.
“Are you guys filming something?”
“Yes, we’ll have this episode edited and ready to upload within a couple of hours. I have thousands of followers online, and they’ll help spread the word. People deserve to know the truth.”
And apparently they also deserve to know about your book, I thought. She sure didn’t miss a chance to plug it. But then, who was I to look down on someone for trying to make a living? She was just promoting her business. I knew how it felt, going door to door, hoping for “customers,” trying to make it.
“Did you know the police just arrested Harvey, Derek Thompson’s uncle, for his murder?” Jacinda said.
Yes? No? Should I play dumb? Quick! Think! I couldn’t make up my mind, but another, more pressing—to me, anyway—question did pop into my head. “How’d you find that out?”
