by Joanne Pence
“Oh?” Bethel leaned forward. “How did you come to know so much? No spirit guide has ever contacted you.”
“I know what I’ve been granted,” Running Spirit said, smugly superior. “At least I don’t peddle make-believe drivel from an imaginary igloo.”
Paavo hadn’t seen a display like this since watching films about dysfunctional social groups at a psych class at the police academy. With each fired salvo, heads swung one way and then the other, as at a tennis match.
“You are so ignorant, Greg Jeffers,” Bethel hissed. “I don’t know why Finley ever had anything to do with you. You poor man’s Hulk Hogan!”
“You should talk. Everyone knows your name should be Brothel, not Bethel, you old—”
“Dear friends,” Moira interjected in her most serene, otherworldly voice. “It’s so nice to have you all here with me in this time of stress.”
Shamefaced, the combatants fell silent.
Running Spirit placed his hand over Moira’s. “Forgive me. Here I was thinking of myself, of my calling as a guru who one day will fully flower, already trying hard to burst forth, to lead others…but I was forgetting your pain, your loss.”
“It’s all right, Greg. I mean, Running Spirit.” Moira pulled her hand away. “Ah, here’s our meal.”
Miss Greer rolled a cart to the table. She gave a haughty glance at Angie, sniffed, then walked away.
The meal began with appetizers of sliced mushrooms, eggplant, and broccoli. Raw. Angie took a sliver of each. If she’d been in the kitchen she’d have sauteed them, or at least steamed them, perhaps served them chilled with a nice vinaigrette. This way, they were absolutely boring.
An orange-yellow soup was presented next. Paavo took a sip, then looked questioningly at her. She tasted hers. “Carrots,” she informed him. No spices, not even salt. No self-respecting rabbit would have touched it.
The main dish was a catastrophe called “lasagna” made without meat or cheese. Giving the name lasagna to curdled soy milk between layers of wide, flat pasta floating in watery tomato sauce, a travesty of the delicious Italian dish, stirred Angie’s ethnic ire.
She looked at the others. They seemed too wrapped up in their own worlds to care what was on their plates. Chelsea watched Running Spirit, Running Spirit watched Moira, and Moira stared straight ahead. Bethel watched Martin, and Martin watched his water glass, every so often adding to it from a silver flask kept in the inside pocket of his sports jacket.
By the third bite of the abomination on her plate, Angie pushed it aside. Tomorrow, she’d take over the kitchen whether Mrs. Greer agreed or not. Meals a la Finley were simply unacceptable. No wonder there were ghosts at Hill Haven. They didn’t serve haute cuisine here. They served haunt cuisine.
6
Back in their room, Paavo had to shake his head, amazed. Working in Homicide in San Francisco, he thought he’d seen everything there was to see, but this bunch took the cake. He was starving on a lost weekend with the weird.
“They’re not so bad,” Angie said, as if reading his mind. “Just a tad eccentric.”
The rain had started and was beating lightly against the many windows of the room. Someone had already placed the kindling and stacked the logs in the fireplace. All that was needed was to light it and make sure the fire caught.
“What I can’t figure,” Paavo said as he took the matches off the mantel, “is why these particular people invested in this inn to begin with. They don’t like the food, they despise each other, and they don’t look like they’re rolling in dough.”
“I have to admit there’s nothing about the place that would seem to qualify it as a good investment,” Angie added.
“The sheriff and the town were wrong about one thing, though,” Paavo said as he lit the fire. “There’s no cult involved here.”
“That’s for sure,” Angie said, then chuckled. “These people don’t get along well enough to form a cult.”
“Their not getting along might have something to do with Finley’s disappearance.”
“Yes, poor Finley.” She sighed then, all traces of laughter gone. “You don’t think he’s just gone off to meditate, do you?”
The fire was burning brightly. Still seated on the floor, he turned to face her. “No, not to meditate. He’s either gone away for some strange purpose he couldn’t let anyone know about, or something’s happened to him. Whatever it is, it isn’t right, and I don’t think you should be in the middle of it.”
She studied his face. “Are you saying we should leave?”
“Yes.”
“Leave Finley?”
He thought it was her job, the inn, she was concerned about walking away from, not her boss. “Finley?”
“He’ll need me. When he comes back.”
He frowned. “If he comes back.”
He could see the shudder that rippled through her. “Do you want to leave tonight, then?” she asked. She should never play poker, he thought. Everything she felt showed in her big brown eyes, as clearly as if written in neon. Right now, he saw her disappointment.
He ran his fingers through his hair, fighting off the need to console her. Every cop instinct he’d developed in over eleven years on the force told him to get Angie out of here immediately. But whenever he looked at her, all he’d learned flew right out of his head. He might as well have been a rookie.
He remembered, too, what Butz said about the rains. Well, it was raining now. “I guess it’d be more dangerous finding our way down that narrow road in the dark,” he found himself saying, “than just staying here tonight.”
“We’ll be comfortable here,” she said, her face brightening. “I mean, this room is really lovely, don’t you think?”
It wasn’t the room that worried him.
“It is nice,” he admitted.
“This was Susannah Sempler’s room,” she said.
“Who?”
“Susannah Sempler. She was the daughter of Ezra Sempler, the man who built the house.”
Angie walked over to the bay window and peered out at the rain. It was falling harder already, the steady beat on the windows drowning out the crash of the waves against the cliffs. Her voice grew wistful. “For over sixty years, Susannah lived here all alone. She never found anyone to love, no one to share her life with. It made me feel sorry, not only for her but also for the house. This could have been such a beautiful family home. But it’s never known love. Only loneliness.”
He stood. “You think a house can know feelings, Angie?”
“Absolutely. They’re like living, breathing things—perhaps because so much life goes on in them. Or should. I believe houses know a lot more than we give them credit for.”
As she stood at the window, her face, reflected in the dark glass, was serious and contemplative, revealing a side she rarely let anyone see. “Finley will show up soon. He has to. Tomorrow, for sure.”
“Perhaps,” was all he said.
At the sight of her worried face, he went to her side.
She leaned against him. “All these windows make me feel as if we’re afloat in the sky.” A gentle smile touched her lips. “Living in a cloud, perhaps.”
His hand lightly caressed her face, her hair, her ear. He let the diamonds she wore drape over his fingertips a moment, then he cupped her face, nudging her chin toward him. He took in her dark brown eyes, serious yet filled with warmth, pleasure, and wonder. “This is how it should be with you. Not quite real, and high above the rest of the world.”
She placed her hand over his large, strong one, scarcely able to believe that they were here, in this strange yet lovely room, alone. “But I am real, Paavo.”
“Are you?” He bent to kiss her lightly, his eyes intent, his hand moving from her chin to the back of her head to intertwine with the curls of her hair. The mystical aura of the room, the patter of the rain, the solitude of the setting stole over him and made him think of things he didn’t want to ponder—things like being together with Angie forever, l
ike never being alone again. He tried to mentally break the spell. He needed time—cold, logical time. “There’s no way a woman like you should be in my life,” he said finally. “Sometimes I think you can’t be any more real than the Sempler ghosts. That I’ll close my eyes and you’ll disappear. Or that I’m just imagining you.”
“Inspector,” she said, returning his kiss with one that seared, “there’s no way you could imagine me.”
Cold logic melted in the midst of her fire, and all his careful resolve went with it. His heart filled, and the solemnity of his expression broke. “I know,” he said softly, “and that’s the best part.”
As his lips met hers a bolt of lightning lit their room for just a moment. Then a scream filled the darkness.
Paavo was out of Angie’s arms and through the door before the scream ended.
“Stay in the room,” he shouted as he ran down the hall to the stairs.
She darted after him. “No way I’m staying here alone.” She hadn’t gotten the first word out, though, before he’d disappeared.
Chelsea, whose room was between Angie’s and the gallery, stuck her head out the door. “What was that?”
“Come on,” Angie said. “Follow that cop.”
Chelsea ran into the hall wearing a long, thick flannel nightgown with huge orange pansies on a bright yellow background. “What cop?” she asked, looking down the now empty hall. “Do you think that was Elise Sempler? They say she cries at night.”
“Cries?” Angie stopped halfway down the stairs and looked back at Chelsea. Luckily, Chelsea wasn’t close enough to barrel into her or she might have pitched Angie right over the bannister. “Elise cries?”
“Yes.”
Angie shivered at the memory of the strange crying sound she had heard last night. No, she told herself, couldn’t be. “That was a scream,” she said. “And far too human.”
As she reached the bottom step, she saw Running Spirit stepping into the living room through the French patio doors. “What’s the ruckus?” he shouted.
“This way,” Angie called without slowing down. She stopped abruptly, however, at the entrance to the kitchen.
Paavo and Moira were bending at the waist, facing each other. Stretched out between them was a yellow checkered tablecloth. They let it go, and Angie watched it drop down over a body and cover it from the knees up. Still showing were support-stocking-covered legs leading to black round-toed, square-heeled sensible shoes. Angie knew those shoes.
Running Spirit pushed past her. “Stay back,” Paavo said.
Moira pressed her hands to her mouth as she slowly backed away. Running Spirit’s hands clenched and unclenched. He was cearly torn between offering her comfort and obeying Paavo.
Chelsea grabbed Angie’s arm. “Who is it?”
“The cook, Miss Greer,” Paavo said. “Don’t come any closer, and don’t touch anything.”
Angie, Chelsea, and Running Spirit nodded.
“What happened to her?” Angie asked.
“We’re not sure yet,” Paavo answered.
“I came in here to make sure everything was turned off for the night,” Moira cried, “and found her lying there. I didn’t even have to touch her to know—”
“What’s going on here?” Bethel’s voice rang out as she and Martin appeared in the doorway. “A party? Without us?” As she pushed her way past Chelsea and Angie into the room, she gasped and stopped short, Martin right behind her.
“Who is that?” Bethel demanded.
“Miss Greer,” Angie said.
“Who?”
“The cook.”
“Hey,” Martin said, “the old witch must have eaten some of her own cooking—Rat Delight.”
“Martin!” Bethel said.
Martin’s statement, Angie knew, was on all their minds—especially after Angie had told everyone about the dead rat the night before.
Paavo turned to Moira. “Is your phone working yet? We need to get the sheriff up here right away.”
“The sheriff?” Moira said with a half laugh, half cry. “No, the phone’s still dead. Someone would have to try to go down the mountainside in the rain. The roads are slick, though. And it’s dark. It would be too dangerous. That’s why Miss Greer stayed. She’d been afraid to drive home, and now—”
“What about a four-wheel drive?” Paavo asked. “Does anyone up here have one?”
“Quint does. My gardener.”
“Any chance he might make it?” Paavo asked.
“If anyone could, it’d be him. But Miss Greer had a heart condition. The doctors warned her something like this might happen when she refused to let them operate. It was just a matter of time.”
Paavo had seen heart attack and stroke victims, natural deaths of all kinds. One look at the corpse when he walked into the kitchen this evening and he knew this was no natural death. Her face was a bloodless gray, her lifeless eyes a fiery red from broken blood vessels. There were no signs of a struggle near the body. Instead, she was lying there neatly. Too neatly. She was on her back, her arms at her sides, legs straight and together. Even the top button of her blouse had been fastened, and her collar rode high, completely covering her neck.
“Even if it was a natural death—” Paavo began.
“If?” Running Spirit bellowed.
“If it was, we would still need to get the sheriff up here. He needs to find out what killed her.”
“What do you think did?” Angie asked.
He glanced at Moira. “Miss Tay said she had a bad heart.” He counted the investors—Jeffers, the Baymans, Chelsea. “Where’s your wife, Jeffers?” he asked.
“Asleep, I guess. I was out on the porch meditating.”
Paavo nodded. “What about Vane? Has anyone seen him this evening?”
“His room is the only one on the third floor,” Moira said slowly. “Perhaps he didn’t hear anything.”
“He takes some kind of strong medicine for migraines,” Chelsea said.
“Can you see about getting the sheriff?” Paavo asked Moira. “If the storm continues, it might be even more difficult to get help tomorrow.”
“I’ll go to Quint’s cottage,” she replied. “I just have to get my raincoat and hat. There are a number of rain slickers in the closet just off the foyer for anyone else who might want to use them.”
“Terrific,” Martin Bayman said drily. “Isn’t this an appetizing kitchen? Such a cozy inn we have here.”
“He’s right, you know,” Angie said to Paavo. “Can’t we move her to a bed or something? This seems so heartless.”
“I should think California has laws against dead bodies in public kitchens,” Bethel said.
“Why don’t you ask your Eskimo friend?” Running Spirit said. “Doesn’t he know everything?”
“Won’t the two of you show respect for the dead and stop bickering?” Angie said, exasperated.
“It’s her kitchen now,” Martin said. “You two better listen to her or you might be next. I overheard you arguing with Miss Greer, Angie.”
“Me?” She couldn’t believe what he’d just implied. “So what?”
Martin shrugged. “Let’s go, Bethel.”
Bethel glared at Running Spirit, lifted her nose in the air, and flounced off, Martin behind her.
“I’ll find Moira and go with her,” Running Spirit said, then he, too, left.
“Do you know where they keep their sheets?” Paavo asked Angie.
“Sheets?” As understanding struck, she blanched. “Oh, yes, I’ll find you one. A big one.”
Chelsea looked around and saw that no one remained in the kitchen but the hard-looking detective and the corpse. “I’ll come and help, Angie,” she called, and ran from the room.
Outside, the wind howled and hard-driven rain lashed the house. Inside, candles instead of electric lights illuminated the library, casting an eerie glow over the somber group. Angie sat in a large wing chair watching Running Spirit pace back and forth across the room like a caged animal
. His wife, Patsy, and Reginald Vane still had not been heard from, and the Baymans had retired for the night.
Paavo stayed in the kitchen, saying he’d join Angie in the library soon. As a homicide detective, he just didn’t know what to do with a natural death, Angie guessed, and instinctively treated it as a murder.
At the side table, Moira poured herself a goblet of blood-red wine. Her black clothes disappeared into the darkness, and her white face, hands, and unbraided golden hair seemed to float, disembodied, in the room.
“Angie,” Chelsea called from the back of the library. “Come over here. You’ve got to see Jack Sempler’s portrait.” Her gaze turned lovingly upward to the portrait that hung over the mantel.
A handsome young man stood on the cliff near Hill Haven. He wore tan riding britches and a white shirt with wide, billowing sleeves and a high stand-up collar unbuttoned at the top. His thick auburn hair was slightly tousled by the wind, and his large, intelligent hazel eyes stared off into the distance. The man looked so real, Angie’s heart lurched. It seemed as if he could step from the painting and join them, full of life and telling of his adventures.
“So that’s Jack Sempler,” Angie said. “He’s the one Elise loved, right? He went away to sea and she killed herself by jumping from the cliffs near the house.”
“Yes,” Chelsea said with a sigh. “It’s easy to understand, isn’t it? He’s so handsome. So wonderful.” She reached up and lightly touched the gold frame. “If only I could touch him this way,” she whispered, then blinked back sudden tears.
“Who’s the older man in the portrait in the dining room?”
“That was Ezra, the father. The man who built Hill Haven.”
Angie couldn’t stop looking at Jack. “You’re right—Jack Sempler was very handsome.”
“Wasn’t he? This was made when he was young. About the time Elise came to live with the Semplers. He was only twenty-two, Elise eighteen, and Susannah twenty-five. You can see why Elise fell in love with him.” Chelsea faced Angie. “There are no pictures of him after he returned home from sea. He was only thirty-four when he died.”
