by Joanne Pence
It looked like a miniature projector, with a tiny lens. She plugged the cord into it, but couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. The entire device must have been operated from some remote location. But what was it? And why was it there?
Only one person in this inn seemed to have any idea about electronics. Reginald Vane.
So much had already happened around here that had made her suspicious of everything and everyone. The thought that it had all been orchestrated by a mad scientist made a lot of sense.
Who else could it be but Reginald? On the other hand, she had been warmed by his obvious interest in Chelsea. The two seemed somehow peculiarly right for each other. Or would be, if only Chelsea forgot her macabre love for a dead man. Could Reginald be a murderer? And if so, could his interest in Chelsea put her life in danger?
Angie had to find out. She needed to show this to Paavo, to tell him all about her finding.
She put the projector back under the chair and slid the peacock-blue chairs back against the wall. No sense alerting whoever had put it there that they’d been found out. What could the projector possibly be for, though? Could it be used to make ghostly holograms on demand? Just like at Disneyland’s haunted house? Chelsea said she saw a ghost the night of their séance, and Reginald Vane said he believed her.
Angie went into the hall to check on Bethel and Chelsea in the drawing room, since they’d agreed to keep an eye on each other. They were there, still planning Bethel’s return. They were fine since, after all, the house was empty.
Empty.
The perfect time for checking out Reginald Vane’s room—the sole room up on the third floor. Angie had never even been up there yet. If Vane was behind this, if he used electronic devices in some strange way, his room would be the perfect hiding place for them.
She really ought not go searching, though. She ought to wait for Paavo. To tell him about it.
Of course once he returned Vane would return, too. They couldn’t very well search Vane’s room with him looking over their shoulders.
She’d have to do it on her own. Paavo wouldn’t like it, but then he wasn’t here, was he? If she didn’t find anything, she wouldn’t have to tell him she’d even looked. And if she did, he wouldn’t mind that she’d looked. Case closed.
She went into the kitchen to get the set of spare keys, then snuck up the stairs to Vane’s room. As she’d suspected, the door was locked. Angie unlocked it and walked in. The room was immaculate. If Vane wasn’t an electrical engineer, he should go into the housecleaning business. Angie would hire him in a minute.
This had been Elise’s room, the pathetic, lonely, ever crying Elise. It was small, with a peaked ceiling and two dormer windows. But the view of the ocean was breathtaking. The room looked directly out upon the cliffs from which Elise had jumped.
Suppressing a shudder, Angie began to look around the room.
No electronics were lying about, but that didn’t surprise her. The man could hardly keep such things out in the open. She searched his closet. Nothing.
Judging from the outside of the house, the roofline was quite a bit wider than the room, which meant there could be eaves on either side of it creating attics. Now all she had to do was figure out how to get into them.
In the back of a closet, she found a small, half-size door. She opened it. Two VCRs, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a timer, a small framed mirror, batteries of all sizes, and several flashlights filled the space. No televisions, so just what Vane did with the VCRs was anybody’s guess.
Incredible. How did he get so much paraphernalia in here? she wondered. Were Finley and Moira so oblivious that the man practically set up his own Radio Shack and they hadn’t even noticed? But as she thought of Finley and Moira, she realized, maybe so.
What did he do with all this stuff? It had to somehow be connected to the mysterious ghost sightings around Hill Haven. He was the one who kept running around warning people of the ghosts, telling them that they ought to leave. Was all this equipment to back up his pronouncements? Obviously he had planned all this before ever coming to the inn, but why? And just what did he do with everything?
She’d get Paavo up here and he’d be able to figure it out. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Fix-it, but men seemed to understand this sort of thing. As if it came with their Y chromosome or something.
She backed out of the attic and quietly shut the door. She had to get out of here; no telling when they’d be back. Wouldn’t Paavo be surprised when she told him!
She was crossing Vane’s room when she glanced at his bureau. What if, just as he brought the equipment before he ever arrived at the inn, he also brought something that explained his actions?
It might be right there, in one of those drawers. How long could it take her to find out? Not long. They wouldn’t be back quite yet. At least she hoped not.
She dashed over to the drawers and began to open them. Socks. T-shirts. Purple bikini shorts. (For Reginald Vane? Unbelievable.) Waffle-textured thermal underwear. (That was more like it.)
She shut the drawer and went on to the next. It was empty. So was the one after that.
But in the bottom drawer of his dresser she found a large padded envelope and inside it some papers and a Bible. Could this be what she was looking for?
She could feel her nerves tense as she carried the envelope to the bed and slid the contents out. Would she find something here that could cause a man to commit murder?
She picked up the Bible. It was old—old like the diary and letters that belonged to Susannah. The dried leather cover felt as if it might crumble to dust under her fingers.
The pages, almost tissue-thin, had gold leaf on the edges. Carefully turning them, she saw nothing unusual until she reached the back cover. There she found a handwritten paragraph in an ink so faded, and a hand so stylized, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to read it. Following it was a list of names, written in different inks and by different hands. Her glance traveled down the page to the bottom where, in bold, black letters, she saw the words, “Reginald Vane, born 1950.” The Vane family Bible.
But why bring it here?
She wove back through the list of names, reading about Vane after Vane, until she reached the topmost entry. The room was growing dark as evening fell and she turned on the lamp on the nightstand to better see the faint ink. Under the bright light, reading slowly and carefully, she was able to read the words:
I give this book to my adopted son, Benjamin Arthur Vane, to record for all time that, although he came to us as a poor orphan, the son of Jack and Elise Sempler, he is now and evermore shall be known as a Vane. Let him and all his heirs record the Vane family on these pages, and may they prosper on this earth. Your loving father, Lucas Allen Vane.
Jack and Elise. The Vanes, then, were the childless family that Ezra and Susannah Sempler gave Jack’s son to. Ezra must have told them that the child was an orphan, and they took him and clearly opened their hearts to him. And now Reginald was here. The last survivor of Jack’s line. Was he coming to proclaim his heritage?
She unfolded the sheets of paper. An article entitled “Ghosts of the Pacific Northwest” from a 1967 copy of Look magazine lay before her. In it she found photos of the Sempler house, Jack’s and Susannah’s portraits, and a brief retelling of the love story of Jack and Elise.
As Angie looked at the papers in her hands, she was struck by the sadness of it, the senselessness, and the loss.
Could Elise’s great-grandson be murdering people because of her story? That seemed too horrible to contemplate. But what other explanation could there be for the happenings at Hill Haven?
Quickly she put the material back in the envelope and placed the envelope in the drawer. As soon as Paavo returned, she’d tell him everything. She turned around.
Reginald Vane, his bow tie bobbing in agitation, stood in the doorway watching her.
26
“It’s still a mess out there,” Paavo said to Moira as he walked into the drawing room. “We
couldn’t even get close to the area near the mud slide. As it was, we nearly lost Vane in a slide of his own making.” He went to the fireplace, trying to thaw his nearly frozen hands and feet. Bethel and Chelsea sat at a table scribbling on a large notepad, oblivious to the outside world. “Where’s Angie?” he asked.
Moira sat facing the fireplace. “Does it look at all promising?”
“The water’s going down, but still running too fast to try to cross. There’s a chance it’ll be crossable tomorrow, as long as we don’t get any more heavy rains. Why isn’t Angie here with you? Have you seen her?”
Moira looked around. “I’m sure she’s nearby. What about the search for Patsy?”
“We’ve scoured the hill, over and over. She had to have been swept out to sea, got off this hill somehow, or is deliberately hiding.”
“Are you giving up?” Moira asked.
“No.”
Moira nodded.
“I told Angie to stay with you,” Paavo said. “Didn’t she?”
“I was lying down. I just got here.”
“Bethel, Chelsea.” Paavo walked toward them. “Where has Angie gone?”
“Angie?” Chelsea looked around. “She was right here.”
“She gave me a wonderful idea for my channeling,” Bethel added. “She’s so clever.”
“Damn!” He ran up the stairs two at a time to their room, and in scant seconds he was back. “She’s not up there. What about the kitchen?”
“I don’t know,” Moira said. “She might be there.”
“I don’t believe this,” he muttered as he hurried down the hall, looking in the dining room and the kitchen, his heart beginning to beat a little too fast, a little too fearfully, in spite of himself. She wasn’t there.
She was nearby, he told himself. She was fine. She was just poking around where she shouldn’t be, but that didn’t mean she’d come to any harm. She never listened, that was all. Someday maybe he’d get her to listen. If he didn’t wring her neck first for worrying him.
He ran to the library. If he knew her, she was probably sitting in there reading a book.
Small chairs had been moved near the windows and draperies lay over them. “Moira,” he shouted. “Come here. Fast.” He had no patience for her slow, sleepwalking ways now.
In no time, he heard her gasp. “What happened?”
“I’d hoped you would know.”
“It’s much too bright in here,” she said, walking into the room.
He ignored her and ran to the foyer. Which way? Where could Angie have gone?
The banging of a door, followed by shouts and the sound of running footsteps, stopped him cold.
“Good God,” Moira cried, looking toward the ceiling where the cry had come from. “The ghosts are sounding more human all the time.”
“That’s no ghost,” Paavo said, running up the stairs. “That’s Angie.”
He put his arms out and Angie ran into them full steam, clutching his neck in a stranglehold. He held her tight, relief filling him.
Reginald Vane was right behind her, bellowing almost as loud as Angie was shrieking. “You caught her! Thank God!” he cried. “She’s a thief! I wouldn’t be surprised if she is a murderer as well.”
“Arrest that man!” Angie yelled. “He’s a murderer. I have proof!”
“You idiot woman!” Vane yelled. “You won’t get away with this. I caught you red-handed. The jig’s up.”
“You won’t get away this time, you, you…Sempler!”
“Quiet,” Paavo ordered. “Both of you. Let’s go talk this over.”
“Where’s your gun, Paavo?” Angie asked as Paavo held her arm and led her toward the library, where Moira waited. “You can’t trust him.”
“Don’t worry about it, Angie.”
“She doesn’t have to worry,” Vane said, “but I do. You came here with her. How do I know the two of you aren’t in cahoots?”
Angie glared at Vane as Paavo took her to the center of the library and stopped. “Will you can’t stop using that Wild West jargon, Reginald? It won’t go any easier on you just because you sound like Wyatt Earp.”
“This is the Wild West,” Vane intoned. “And I just caught Belle Starr.”
Angie flushed. “You—”
“Both of you sit down,” Paavo ordered. “Now.”
They sat without argument.
Paavo gave each a long, cold stare. Angie could imagine what it must feel like to be on the hot seat in Homicide. “Let’s start at the beginning. Angie?” he said.
She sat primly on the edge of her chair and cleared her throat. “Well,” she said. “It’s good we came to this room, because it all started here.”
Paavo glanced at the room with the draperies and chairs all out of place. “I suspected that.”
“I decided to make the room better looking. Sorry, Moira. I moved the drapes and chairs, but when I did, I found a cord and a little electronic device attached to one of them. It’s under the seat on that one.”
Paavo walked over to the peacock-blue chair Angie pointed to and tilted it, finding the mini-projector. He looked the thing over, then gave it to Moira.
“That projector,” Angie continued, “made me think of who, of the people here, knew the most about electronic devices. I came up with Reginald.” She cast a pointed stare his way. “I decided to look in his room, and sure enough there were tape recorders, VCRs and other things in the attic off his bedroom. I know it was wrong of me to look—but we’re dealing with murder here.”
“We’re dealing with breaking and entering!” Reginald roared. “So what if I have electronic equipment. Most people do, Miss Amalfi! Finley wasn’t electrocuted. His head was smashed in. Forgive me, Miss Tay.” He looked at Paavo helplessly. “I fail to see any connection.”
“You haven’t heard the most important part.” Angie glanced from one to the other.
“Go ahead,” Paavo said.
“I found his family Bible.”
“Did you both hear that? There! She admitted it. I demand she be arrested,” Vane yelled.
“I put it back exactly where I found it. But the thing is, the Bible showed that Reginald Vane is the great-grandchild of Jack and Elise Sempler. It proves he’s the killer.”
“My good woman,” Vane said, jumping to his feet. “It proves no more than that my family has passed a Bible from one generation to the next. Years ago I came across a magazine article with the names of some ghosts here in the States. The same names as in my family Bible. That was when I learned about the American side of my family, when I learned that there was more to me than being the last of a rather unimportant line in Canada. I discovered a home, a heritage. A birthright.”
“But it’s not your home,” Moira said. “Finley bought it.”
“That’s the problem,” Vane admitted. “With this much land and this view, even a vacant house was priced much higher than I could afford. The owner was a distant relative who lived in Connecticut, never even saw the place, and cared nothing about it.”
“So why are you here now?” Angie asked.
“Six months ago, I learned someone was interested in buying the place. I also found out that Tay was having trouble getting together enough cash for the sale. I volunteered to pick up a piece of the house on the condition that if Finley couldn’t make a go of the inn, I could assume his bank loan, and he would lose his down payment. He agreed, in writing, to those terms.”
“That was a terrific deal for you,” Angie said. “A good reason for you not to want to see this inn succeed.”
“Yes.” He folded his hands. “It was. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one Finley duped into making a partner. One day I received a call from Patsy Jeffers, saying she and her husband were part owners, and that there were others. I knew then that I had to find a way to scare them off, to have them pull out of the deal with Finley or we’d all end up in court. I could no more afford a lawyer than I could this house.” Vane lowered his head and sighed.
“In other words,” Paavo suggested, “if you got the others to pull out, Finley would be that much less solvent, and you could get the inn that much sooner.”
“That was my thinking. So I brought my equipment and pretended to be a spiritualist. I thought I’d scare them away. I never expected that the group Finley brought together would think that the place being haunted only made it that much more attractive!”
“Killing Patsy and Running Spirit,” Angie said, her certainty that Reginald Vane was behind all this beginning to slip away, “also lessened the competition for the place.”
Reginald shook his head. “So what? Once Finley was gone, I learned he’d made agreements, written and verbal, with everyone here. The legal fees alone to sort them out would be far more than I could afford. My dreams of owning this house are gone. Everything is.”
“Why did you continue with the noises after we learned Finley was dead?”
“It seemed right. There are those in this house who want to believe in the Sempler ghosts. I let them.”
Paavo leaned back in the chair and looked at Moira. “Questions?”
She studied Vane for a moment. “How did you make the thumping noises?”
“The magazine article said that my great-great-grandfather Ezra was very paranoid about his wealth. He moved to this hill for that reason. These days, one would call him a survivalist, I believe. Anyway, he was rumored to have built this house with secret passages so that he could hide if it ever was attacked. From an engineering standpoint, it’s a simple matter to determine where any such passages might be located. Equally simple was to rig up speakers. Using the VCR timers, I set up prerecorded tapes with the kinds of sounds I wanted.”
“But Chelsea and I saw Elise’s ghost one night,” Angie said, then glanced at Paavo. “I should say, we saw what we thought was Elise’s ghost.”
