Christmas Spirit

by Rebecca York

  Copyright © 2008, © 2017 Ruth Glick

  Second Edition

  Previously print-published as Christmas Spirit

  Cover Copyright © 2017 Patricia Pinianski

  This is a work of fiction, a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental. This novel may not be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author.

  Return to Jenkins Cove

  Something evil lurks in the charming town of Jenkins Cove. When Sophie Caldwell devotes a room in her B&B to communicate with spirits, dangerous secrets rise to the surface, and the lives of three couples will never be the same.

  Part 1: Christmas Spirit

  Michael Bryant is sure he doesn't believe in the supernatural, but when Chelsea Caldwell's life is in danger, he must trust the words of a ghost to save her.

  Part 2: Christmas Awakening

  When Marie Leonard returns to Jenkins Cove for her father’s funeral, she never expects to rekindle her romance with billionaire recluse Brandon Drake…nor to be haunted by the ghost of his dead wife.

  Part 3: Christmas Delivery

  Haunted by ghosts, Jenkins Cove will now have to deal with Simon Shea who has “returned from the dead” seeking revenge...only to reconnect with Lexie Thornton, the girl he loved, and the daughter they conceived thirteen years ago.

  Each of these compelling stories ends with an HEA for the hero and heroine. But only the full set will finally get to the bottom of the Jenkins Cove mysteries. Be sure to read them all!

  CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

  Chapter One

  Chelsea Caldwell drove through the fog-shrouded darkness, her hands gripping the steering wheel of her Honda as she leaned forward and prayed she wouldn’t end up in the swamp.

  Too bad she’d forgotten how fogs could roll in from the Chesapeake Bay—or from the creeks and rivers that crisscrossed this part of Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

  “Relax,” she whispered to herself. “Tensing up isn’t going to help.”

  She should have put her foot down about this trip. It wasn’t an emergency. They didn’t need Christmas decorations for the Bed-and-breakfast tonight. Tomorrow morning would have been a better time to drive over to Tilghman Island and pick them up.

  But with Aunt Sophie getting on in years, Chelsea was bending over backwards to be accommodating. She knew her aunt could no longer run the House of the Seven Gables by herself. And if her aunt was forced to sell the business she’d run for the past forty years, her reason for living would be gone.

  Unable to let that happen to her only living relative, Chelsea had done what she’d sworn she’d never do—moved to Jenkins Cove.

  Once, she’d loved the quaint little community whose main business was tourism. Now it felt like foreign territory. But here she was, living in a town where the merchants sponsored a contest for the best and most creative holiday display every year. Aunt Sophie wanted to win—which was why she’d sought out a woman known for her specialty garlands and why the trunk of the car was full of holiday greenery.

  Chelsea felt her shoulders tense again. It was spooky along this stretch of four-lane highway. She could imagine ghosts weaving their way through the trees.

  “Stop it!” she ordered herself, firming her lips as she kept driving. “Don’t think about that. Just get home, and you can have a cup of hot chocolate in the parlor.”

  A car honked and passed. A fool going too fast for the foggy conditions.

  When a noise in the trees to her left made her jump, she took her eyes from the road for a moment.

  “It’s only an owl,” she muttered, then flicked her gaze to the blacktop again—just as her headlights illuminated a shape right in front of her. Gaping, she slammed on the brakes.

  In the swirling mist, she saw what looked like a person huddled on her side, lying on the pavement. A woman with hair fanned out behind her head.

  Easing the car to the gravel shoulder, Chelsea sat with her heart pounding for several seconds.

  Though she wanted to stay in the car where it was safe, she knew she had to get out and help the woman. With an unsteady hand she cut the engine, then reached toward the glove compartment and got out a flashlight.

  Gripping the barrel like a club, she stepped out, shivering in a sudden gust of wind that rattled the bare branches of the trees. During the day, the weather had been warm for the last of November, but after dark the temperature dropped sharply.

  After glancing up and down the highway, she walked back toward the place where she’d seen the woman. But when she shone the light on the ribbon of macadam, she saw nothing.

  “Hello? Where are you? Are you okay? Can I help you?” she called out.

  When no one answered, her fingers tightened on the flashlight and her throat clogged. Maybe she’d been mistaken, she thought as she swung the beam along the road, then onto the far shoulder, the mist distorting the light.

  As luck would have it, no other vehicles passed. With a quick glance back at her car, she walked along the shoulder, shining the light into the underbrush.

  Again, nothing.

  Finally, she returned to the Honda and fumbled in her purse for her cell phone. But when she pressed the phone icon, the whole screen went black.

  She muttered something very un-Christmas-like under her breath and put the instrument back. Who was she going to call, anyway? Police Chief Hammer? And tell him what? That she thought she’d seen a body on the road to Tilghman Island and now it was gone—vanished like a ghost?

  The lazy old bulldog would really thank her for that.

  Charles Hammer must have had some kind of pull to get voted into office. Too bad the town couldn’t get rid of him for another couple of years.

  Or maybe most of the people in Jenkins Cove thought he was doing a fine job.

  After casting one last anxious glance at the spot where she thought she’d seen the woman, Chelsea started the engine again. The mist was thicker now, and she drove more slowly, afraid to hit a deer leaping across the highway.

  Maybe that’s what she’d seen earlier. A deer, hit and momentarily stunned. There hadn’t been anybody lying on the blacktop, after all. It was just her imagination working overtime.

  She’d started to relax when a flash of movement made her brake again.

  This time she didn’t see a body lying across the blacktop. This time, in the moonlight, she saw a woman running through the woods at the side of the road. And a man chasing her.

  Her long black hair was streaming out behind her, and she looked as though she was wearing a dark coat that hung loosely on her body.

  The woman screamed, then screamed again as the man caught up with her, yanking her by the hair.

  Chelsea pulled to the shoulder once more. Grabbing the flashlight again, she leaped from the car.

  “Get away from her,” she shouted as she charged into the underbrush.

  She heard the woman whimper and thought she saw the man raise a knife. Then they both disappeared into a thicker patch of woods. When Chelsea tried to follow, she splashed into cold water that slopped over the tops of her shoes. As she pressed onward into sucking mud, she floundered into a water-filled hole and almost fell on her face. If she kept going, she was liable to end up waist-deep in freezing water.

  Heart pounding, she stared into the bog. The woman and the man had vanished into the darkness as though they had never been there.

  She backed up, feeling her way carefully, trying not to step into another hole. She’d only been out of the car for a few minutes, but her pant legs were soaked, and her feet already felt like blocks of ice.

  As she retraced her steps, she wondered what she had seen. Had her overactive imagination combined wit
h some trick of the moonlight to make her think that a woman was running for her life?

  Chelsea made it back to her car and stamped her feet to shake off some of the mud. Climbing inside, she closed the door and sat behind the wheel, shivering.

  She started the car and turned up the heater, thinking that she had to report this to the police. Even if it turned out to be nothing. Even if the last thing she wanted to do was tell her tale to the cops.

  She raised her head, looking around for a landmark. A few yards away was a sign advertising a restaurant in Jenkins Cove. Now she knew how to find this spot again.

  While she stared at the sign and the blackness beyond, she thought about something that had happened when she was ten. Something she could block out of her mind most of the time. But not now.

  She’d been at a friend’s house out at Mead’s Point, on a farm that bordered the bay. She and Amanda had been playing outside down near the water. When it got dark, neither one of them wanted to go in, so they went over to the old icehouse to look for fireflies.

  That was where it had happened. Amanda was looking out toward the bay, while Chelsea was staring at the icehouse, trying to figure out why the shadows seemed so strange around the little building and why the air felt so cold.

  Then a young woman stepped out of the doorway and stood facing Chelsea. She held out her hand, her face pleading as though she wanted something urgent.

  Her lips moved, but Chelsea couldn’t hear what she was saying. She only felt a terrible pressure inside her own chest and horrible waves of anguish coming off the woman.

  She moaned or screamed something, because Amanda came running. But her friend didn’t see anything.

  When Chelsea looked up, the woman had vanished.

  “She was here. I saw her,” Chelsea insisted.

  “You’re making it up.”

  “No, I’m not. I saw her.”

  Maybe it was fear that made Amanda start teasing her.

  “Liar, liar. Pants on fire.”

  Chelsea had burst into tears. She’d been looking forward to spending the night at Amanda’s, but now she was too upset for that. She ended up going back to the House of the Seven Gables, where Aunt Sophie did her best to find out what had happened and then to comfort her.

  But Chelsea was beyond comfort. She knew with a strange certainty that the woman she’d seen was a ghost. A ghost who was depending on her to set things right—whatever that meant. But Chelsea simply hadn’t been able to understand her. And she felt like a failure.

  It was a lot to put on a ten-year-old girl. So much that the experience changed her whole feeling about Jenkins Cove. Until then, she’d loved spending the summer down on the Eastern Shore. It had been a child’s dream vacation.

  After that incident, she’d only made short visits with her parents—until they’d been killed in a car accident right after her senior year of college. Then she’d come back from time to time to visit Aunt Sophie, her father’s older sister.

  Now she was back in town again—for the time being.

  At first, she’d felt a vague sense of foreboding. When nothing upsetting had happened, she’d started hoping that living with Aunt Sophie would work out for her. She’d taken over a third-floor room in the House of the Seven Gables for her art studio, where she worked most days. Galleries in Baltimore were still buying her paintings, and she was also selling at some of the shops on Main Street right here in town.

  And now this.

  But what was this, exactly?

  She took her bottom lip between her teeth. Had she seen another ghost?

  She didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, least of all Chief Hammer. But she knew she had to—in case this was something real, and she could save the woman’s life. Or help the police find her body. That last thought made her shudder.

  With shoulders hunched, she drove into Jenkins Cove, past the town square and all the shops and restaurants, to the side street where the police station was located. It looked like a two-story beige clapboard house with a gable over the wide front porch and a red front door.

  Pulling up in the parking area beside the building, she sat for a moment, steeling herself, picturing the chief in his rumpled navy-blue uniform.

  He’d been here fifteen years ago when she’d seen the ghost out at Mead’s Point. He hadn’t been in charge then, just one of the deputies. But, like everyone else in town, he heard about her ghost sighting. Back then, everyone was talking about her. Which was one of the reasons she’d wanted to get away from Jenkins Cove.

  She tried to shove all that out of her mind as she climbed the three steps to the porch and pushed open the door.

  Since it was after hours, the receptionist’s desk was empty, but a light was on in the back, and Chief Hammer called out, “Who’s there?”

  “Chelsea Caldwell.”

  She must have sounded pretty shaky, because he came barreling out of his office, faster than she’d thought the squat bulldog of a man could run.

  He took one look at her and helped her into one of the wooden chairs against the wall, his gaze taking in the water that sopped her shoes and slacks.

  “What happened? Did you drive into a ditch?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t that. I…saw something when I was driving back from Tilghman Island. I got out, but…then I stepped into a hole full of freezing water.”

  He looked at her through small blue eyes. “Take your time, and tell me what happened.”

  She gulped in air, then blurted, “First I thought I saw a body in the middle of the road.”

  The sharp look on the chief’s face made her cringe.

  “Thought you saw?” he asked.

  “Well, I stopped, but there was nothing there. It was foggy, so I guess it was just a trick of the light. But then, a little way up the road, I saw a man chasing a woman through the bog.”

  “Where was this, exactly?”

  “Near the sign advertising the Crab Pot. Do you know where I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got out and chased them.”

  “Bad idea,” he muttered.

  “But I…” She stopped and pointed down toward her wet feet. “But I stumbled into a hole full of water. Sorry. I tracked mud all over your floor.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” He stood there staring at her and tapping his finger against his lips.

  Holding herself very still, she waited for him to make a smart remark about the ghost she’d seen all those years ago.

  When he finally spoke, he said, “It would help if you could come out there and show us the exact place where you saw the woman and the man.”

  She nodded. She’d hoped she could go home, now that she’d done her duty. But she knew he was right. “Okay.”

  He looked down at her wet shoes and pants. “We keep clothing at the station in case an officer needs to change. I hope you don’t mind wearing uniform pants and rubber boots.”

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”

  “While you change, I’ll contact a couple of my deputies.”

  She waited while he produced a pair of navy-blue uniform pants and a pair of rubber boots. The boots were much too big, but three pairs of heavy wool socks helped hold them on her feet.

  When she came out of the ladies’ room where she’d changed, two uniformed officers were conferring with the chief. Hammer made the introductions, but the deputies—Sam Draper and Tommy Benson—had little to say to her. She wondered what the chief had told them while she was changing her clothes. Had he confined himself to tonight’s incident, or had he told them about her misadventure fifteen years ago?

  “Sorry about the boots,” Hammer said as she clumped into the room.

  “I’m fine.”

  They all left the building together, and she looked toward her car. “I’ll lead you out there.”

  “I’d prefer that you ride with us so you can show us where to stop.”

  I could have done that from my own car.r />
  When she answered with a quick nod, they walked around to where the police cruisers were parked, and Hammer opened the front passenger door of one.

  She climbed into the cruiser, and he shut the door firmly behind her.

  Hammer drove. The two younger officers sat in the back section that was walled off with a wire cage.

  As they left the town limits behind and drove into the foggy countryside, Hammer said, “The weather’s pretty bad. How did you happen to be out here?”

  “My aunt asked me to pick up some Christmas decorations from a woman on the island.”

  “Okay.”

  The conversation died, and Chelsea leaned forward, looking for the restaurant sign. When she finally saw it, she tried to gauge the spot where she’d seen the couple.

  “Right there, I think,” she murmured, pointing into the swamp.

  Hammer pulled the cruiser to a stop and switched on the red and blue flashing lights, which cast an eerie glow on the bare winter landscape.

  The three men got out and shone their flashlights on the ground, searching for signs of her earlier visit.

  Hammer handed her a light, and she also shone it on the gravel. At first she saw nothing, and she was starting to think this might be the wrong place. Then, to her vast relief, she spotted her own muddy footprints several yards beyond the car.

  “Up there.” She gestured with her flashlight beam.

  “You get back in the cruiser and wait,” the chief instructed. “We’ll take care of this.”

  She shuddered as all three men drew their weapons before starting off in the direction she’d walked earlier. Thanks to their rubber boots, they kept going through the mucky area.

  Once back in the police car she ignored good judgment that told her to lock the doors and keep the windows closed. Instead she rolled the passenger window down so she could hear what was going on in the bog.

  With the flashlight gripped tightly in her hand, she listened to sounds of feet splashing and watched lights bobbing in the moonlight. The beams moved away from her, sometimes jerking as the men struggled across the uneven ground.