Working quickly Gustavia swapped the highest lenses leaving the lower ones to Kat. With the second set of five settled into place, the sun picked out two more letters, T and E.
The pair stepped back to wait for what would happen next.
_,.-'~'-.,_
Again, Kat was watching Julius as the light moved slowly toward the prisms. More agitated than ever, he made several exaggerated eye movements before she realized he was trying to communicate something. The third time he looked pointedly at the other window in the room, Kat got it and moved to close the curtains, darkening the room slightly.
Just as she turned back toward the window, light sliced through the glass to strike each of the three prisms. One directed a beam onto the painting to illuminate the number nine of the clock rendered with fine brush strokes behind Julius as he stood next to his desk.
A second beam arrowed across the room to land on the keystone of the arched fireplace. Long-legged Zack reached the spot first and called out, “Twenty-two. It’s carved into the stone just there.”
The third and final flare of light speared into the light fixture hanging in the center of the room where it flashed into the etched glass star that was the central feature of what Julie had always considered the ugliest light in the house.
“And that would be a five, I presume?” Tyler grinned.
“Good thing we didn’t pull that eyesore down and replace it.”
“9-22-5.”
All three clues in hand, the next step was to check out the spot in the library that corresponded with the painting. Shaking off the emotions that threatened to distract her again, Kat settled down with the other women to watch the men figure out how to access the secret area.
The four of them tapped, tested, poked, and prodded every nook and cranny of the trim surrounding the small spot. Finally, Zack reached out and simply shoved his hand hard against the flat panel. When it slid back and up, he turned with a broad grin and hoisted his fists in the air to indicate victory before stepping aside to let Julie take his place.
Already prepared, she pulled a small flashlight from her pocket to shine into the recess. A quick look had her passing the light to Tyler before reaching in to remove a box from the space, which she carried to the desk. Everyone gathered around to get a better look.
A complicated series of five small, lettered, combination lock dials formed a circle around a larger, numbered dial. The lettered dials spun easily but the numbered one refused to move off zero.
Julie’s dust dry comment pulled a giggle from Kat that finally broke some of the tension, “Overkill much?” As always, Julius was prevented from speaking until the search was completed. At his exaggerated scowl, some of the heavy atmosphere slid away.
“ARHTE? What kind of word is that?” Reid tried the combination in clockwise order but nothing happened. “I’m assuming we have to dial in the correct outer combination before the inner dial will move.”
“It’s an anagram. Try the word earth,” Amethyst suggested.
Reid spun the dials, spelled it out. No dice.
“Heart?”
This time there was a soft click and now the middle dial spun free.
_,.-'~'-.,_
Gustavia handed Julie the box. “Hurry up and open it.”
The dial spun and Julie felt the slight vibration as each tumbler locked into place. 9-22-5.
With no idea what might be inside, she slowly lifted the lid to see a stack of thin, leather bound diaries. Flipping the first one open, she read her great, great grandmother’s name in flowing script.
“My mother’s diaries.” Finally freed to speak, Julius smiled at his great granddaughter with affection. “She was quite a woman. You remind me of her.” It was his highest compliment and delivered in a voice gruff with emotion. He had come to love this group of young people and hated to leave them but it was time. Julius stepped back to let Estelle say her goodbyes
Tears flowed from both ghostly and corporeal eyes as Estelle surveyed the room. “Take good care of each other.” Then her eyes locked onto Julie’s, “My love will be with you always, darling girl.”
“And mine with you,” Julie choked out the words and waited for the spirits to fade away.
And waited.
Nothing happened.
Estelle looked over at Julius, “I thought Galmadriel would be here.”
“I haven’t seen her since we brought Kat back across the bridge.”
“Uh, Daddy?” Samantha felt it first, a prickle of energy that started at her toes, and quickly worked its way up through her whole body, “Something’s happening.”
Before she finished her warning, everyone else felt the sensation and a booming voice not unlike Galmadriel’s filled the room. “Galmadriel has fallen. The pair of you caused this; you will work together now to fix it. She will be your first charge.”
It seemed like everyone in the room gave a collected shiver as the sound faded away taking most of the prickling energy with it.
“Why do I still feel…?” Julie trailed off as her attention became riveted to the spot where Julius and Estelle stood. Estelle had one hand up and was slowly turning it in place, staring at it with a look of wonder. Her hand, and the rest of her, glowed with light. An equally glowing Julius seemed less surprised. It appeared they had earned their angel status after all.
Estelle closed her eyes, concentrated, and the light faded to leave her looking more solid than ever. She turned to Julius and punched him as hard as she could in the arm. “I’ve wanted to do that since you talked me out of going into the light,” then went to Julie and embraced her tightly to start a second round of goodbyes that included hugs for everyone.
Chapter 26
Once the pair had finally gone, a long moment of silence threatened to turn maudlin until Amethyst, who was closest, turned to glance at the cavity where the box had been resting. A flutter of paper caught her eye.
“Jules, there’s something else in here.” It was enough of a distraction to pull the focus back to the present.
Finn stepped past Amethyst to reach in to pull out an envelope containing several folded sheets of paper which he handed over to Julie who flipped open the first and scanned it.
“It’s a dispensation allowing Julius to own several troy ounces of gold for the purpose of creating his inventions.”
“In 1933, the president signed and order making it illegal to own more than a small amount of gold without permission,” Tyler explained.
The rest of the papers were gold certificates.
“You won’t find it.” Nine faces turned in surprise to see where this new voice had come from.
Julie recognized her from Estelle’s pictures. “Mary Lou?”
“Yes.” Mary Lou nodded.
“That gold is long gone and those certificates? They’re worthless.”
Mary Lou had been a woman of medium height with a long but gentle face.
“Arrogant man thought he was doing the right thing, keeping his wealth safe from his own son. Well, I knew all about that gold. Pried it out of those worthless clatter traps with his own tools once I found where he’d stashed his plans.”
“Behind the plaque in the kitchen,” Julie breathed.
Mary Lou gave a savage nod. “Messing around in my kitchen and didn’t think I would find out,” she sniffed with derision, “took some time, but I found his precious notebook with all his plans.” She sneered. “Never found that dispensation paper, though. So we couldn’t sell it through legal channels but I found a buyer on the sly.”
Had Julius known any of this? Kat didn’t think so and now she knew who had been whispering apologies into her ear every night that she’d stayed at Hayward House.
“Turns out Julius was right, Edward went through the money so fast I don’t think Estelle ever knew he had it.”
She shrugged, the weight of confession heavy on her shoulders.
“But that wasn’t as bad as what I did when I told that young man about the gold certificates.�
�
The ghost dropped her head into her hands, her voice muffled, “I had no idea things would turn out the way they did. I thought I was helping.” Mary Lou’s head came up to show her face a mask of anguish.
“You have to know I only meant to help,” she repeated, “figured maybe after all this time those certificates might still be somewhere in the house and worth something. Maybe enough to fix up the roof, anyway. So I told your young man, the one that gave you all the trouble, all about the certificates. I was the cause of everything bad that happened to you.”
“That jerk called me a whackadoodle and he’d already seen a ghost?” Gustavia’s voice seemed unnaturally loud in the silence that had followed Mary Lou’s revelation but her outraged exclamation broke the icy silence.
Kat snickered. Then Amethyst giggled and before long, a smile tickled at the corners of Julie’s mouth. Mary Lou sat patiently watching as the entire group of young people slowly sank into a fit of laughter that left them breathless and clutching their sides.
When it had finally passed, Julie waved a hand at her great grandmother and said, “You had no way of knowing and it’s all over now,” while she wiped away the tears laughter had sent streaming down her cheeks.
“I really am sorry.”
Kat looked around the room, plenty of good had come from the events that Mary Lou had set in motion it was time for her to rest. “You’re forgiven. Please, go back into the light, find your son. We’re all fine.”
_,.-'~'-.,_
The End
This ends the Psychic Seasons series but the story continues when we learn Galmadriel’s fate in the next Psychic Seasons book
Coming Soon
_,.-'~'-.,_
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Ponderosa Pines Cozy Mystery Series
Co-authored by Erin Lynn
Cat Killed A Rat
Crafting Disorder
Psychic Seasons Romance Series by ReGina Welling:
Rings on Her Fingers
Bells on Her Toes
She Shall Have Music
Wherever She goes
Keep reading for an excerpt from Cat Killed A Rat
Chapter One
Douchebag.
The word scrawled across Chloe’s notebook made Emmalina Valentina Torrence—EV to her friends snort out loud. Mostly because, while inelegant and downright crass, it perfectly described the annoying man currently speaking to the sizable group of citizens attending the Ponderosa Pines quarterly town meeting.
A typical New England town meeting takes place once a year but in Ponderosa Pines, anything worth doing once, was worth doing four times. Hence, the quarterly town meeting. Once a year, the town voted in a new set of officials: three Selectmen to oversee the group and handle day to day tasks, a new treasurer to handle financial issues, a secretary to keep everyone organized and record the goings on for posterity, a sexton, a dog catcher, and committee members and leaders for various undertakings were all either appointed or elected in the spring. The other three meetings were less well-attended and most often no more than a formality.
Tonight, however, the mere formality had already ended and a three ring circus was about to begin. EV could tell because they’d already brought in the clown.
After fifteen minutes of fidgeting in his seat and clearing his throat repeatedly before the First Selectman opened the floor for new business, local handyman, Luther Plunkett now held court at the front of the room. Still in his work clothes with an attempt at an earnest expression pasted on his round, freckled face and a liberal sprinkling of sawdust in his curly, mouse-brown hair he stalked back and forth while he made his plea.
“You got my hands tied with all these regulations: recycled materials, energy efficient building. That’s not the way they do things in Warren or in Gilmore. I’m a business man; I gotta be able to make a profit. You all know me. I been good to my customers: always going above and beyond, but I’m losing money on every job,” his voice rose to a whining pitch that grated EV’s nerves and clenched her teeth.
What a phony; and worse, he was a phony with aspirations. More than anything Luther wanted to elevate himself from a lowly handyman to a high-end contractor. Never mind that Ponderosa Pines had neither the population nor the commercial base to support such a desire.
“Bull puckey!” someone called out from the back of the room. “Why don’t you shut up and sit down, Luther?” EV craned her head around to search unsuccessfully through the crowd for the heckler.
Luther’s reputation for bragging about his abilities then providing shoddy construction had not stopped people hiring him. Better the devil you know and all that. His worst critics said he wouldn’t know the truth if it walked up and bit his face off. Without scrupulous supervision Luther rushed around doing things to make himself look busy , but supplying homeowners with hurried, slapdash workmanship—for which he charged premium prices.
Customers grumbled about how he never finished a job on schedule or on budget and spent more time talking about what else he could do for them—at an additional cost, of course—than listening to them explain what they actually wanted or needed. Bottom line, Luther had a reputation as a greedy shyster with minimal skills and a big mouth.
Who else moaned and complained about losing money but still bought a new truck every year?
Rising to her feet, EV moved toward the front of the hall, controlled fury giving her the grace of a panther stalking its prey. Tension announced itself in the clench of her fists, the way her eyes narrowed and cooled, the angle of her chin. Long legs carried her forward until she stood toe to toe with Luther. She had six inches of height on him and the authority of age combined with conviction sat well on her strong shoulders.
“Reducing our carbon footprint is part of the town charter, and that means building and maintaining energy efficient homes; but it also means using a percentage of recycled materials. You’re asking us to set aside our goals and regulations, not for the sake of the community, but so you can increase your profit margin?” EV’s voice fell like a rain of dry desert sand. She turned direct, brown eyes toward the crowd and brushed an errant strand of hair behind her ear.
Before Luther could answer, John Peterson spoke up, “Maybe you could explain why using reclaimed materials is so much harder on your bottom line. I know my cousin in Warren paid you enough to cover your crew plus exorbitant dump fees for tearing down that old barn of his. You ended up with a load of perfectly good lumber, enough usable steel roofing to do a house, and made a little profit on the job. You got a lot of nerve standing here complaining.”
“I had to pay to haul the materials back here, didn’t I? Then I had to sort everything and store it.”
From the back of the hall, someone’s cough sounded suspiciously like the word jackass.
Looking around the room, EV spotted many annoyed expressions; yet there were still those who listened with interest to his spiel. Their rapt attention chafed her past the point of patience. So what if Luther occasionally did a few repairs for the church on the cheap. Did that mean he should get a pass on upholding the basic tenets of their town?
“Give the man a break.” Evan Plunkett spoke up. No surprise there, the Plunkett brothers were cut from the same cloth. “All this green living stuff is a pipe dream. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee or,” he sneered, “would that be the Chai tea?”
Where Luther was ineptly incompetent, his younger brother Evan intentionally caused chaos. Driven by greed and a need for validation, he spent an inordinate amount of time scheming to gain a measure of control in town affairs.
His most recent shenanigan involved a parcel of land that was currently enrolled in a tree-growth program. Ignoring the fact that the land was protected by the tax-reduced program, he wheeled a deal for the brutal, clear-cut harvest of the mature trees. As the cherry on the sundae, he then offered the land, for pennies o
n the dollar, to a big city developer with visions of a strip mall or some such monstrosity.
To retain his brother’s support, Evan convinced poor, dumb Luther that he, backed by his motley crew of underpaid workers, would be the general contractor for whatever the developer decided to build. Anyone with half a brain would have seen this for the pipe dream it was but, Luther, blinded by dollar signs, accepted this hogwash as gospel truth.
The plan had hinged on schmoozing the board of selectmen and keeping EV, their most vocal opponent, in the dark.They thought they managed to do it, too—until the erstwhile lumber baron strutted into the last town meeting with a series of ridiculous demands that fell to the floor like little chunks of detonated mortar when he blew Evan’s deal to bits.
No one bothered asking the man who had made the call inviting him to the meeting.
EV smiled and watched the scene play out.
As careful as he thought he had been, every detail of Evan’s plan was fodder for the town gossip mongers, who could disseminate information faster than the speed of light.
Such were the workings of the Ponderosa Pines grapevine. With roots running deep and true, its leafy goodness snaked through nearly every household in town before returning to the spot where its seed had long ago been planted.
Smack dab in the middle of EV’s front yard.
If a gnat sneezed in the woods, EV knew about it. Anyone with a lick of sense would have picked another chicken to pluck, another fish to try and fry. It was a lesson both Evan and Luther seemed unable to learn.
When Luther offered the first selectman a cheap bathroom remodel if he voted in Evan’s favor—EV knew.
When Evan got one of the survey companies he worked with in Gilmore to lay to rest a property dispute between the third selectman and her neighbor—and for once and all prove who was responsible for the dead tree neither wanted to pay to cut down—EV knew.
In the end, it had been Evan who left the meeting with his tail tucked between his legs. Thinking he had two of the town’s three selectmen tucked tightly in his pocket, it was with shock and awe that he watched as the man who was supposed to slash and burn the forest, slashed and burned any chance for a vote in his favor.
Wherever She Goes (Psychic Seasons Page 16
