Sinister Secrets

by Colleen Gleason

  “What do you think?” she asked. “Can you fix it?”

  “Of course I can fix it. But it won’t be cheap.”

  She sighed and crossed her arms over her shirt, releasing a soft puff of drywall dust. “I was afraid of that. But in order to keep my historical society designation, I’ve got to replace it accurately. When can you get me on the schedule to start?”

  “Next week, probably.”

  “Probably? All right, then, that’s sooner than I expected, to be honest. So why did it take over a week to get you out here to take a look at it?”

  Declan gave her a forbidding look. “Had some things going on with my daughter. Was busy.”

  Leslie felt a surprising sort of deflation. His daughter. Which implied a wife too. Not that it mattered—she was too busy to be interested in a man. “I hope everything’s okay,” she said automatically.

  “She’s fifteen. What do you think?” he said wryly, then turned back to the matter at hand. “I want to know what’s under there.” He gestured to the thin base of the balustrade, the flat channel into which the stairway spindles were set. “Maybe there’s damp under that skinny section there and that’s causing the rust to work its way up from beneath.”

  “You said it wasn’t rust,” Leslie reminded him.

  “Well, I don’t know what the hell it is,” he said absently, picking at it again with his thumbnail. “That’s why I want to look under there.”

  She shrugged. “Fine by me. You’ve got to take it out anyway if you’re going to restore it.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’ll help. I already tangled with some dastardly drywall anyway.”

  He eyed her for a moment, and she swore his lips twitched again. “Dastardly drywall?”

  “It fell on me with no provocation whatsoever. I call that dastardly.”

  “I see.” His eyes were crinkling at the corners, but for whatever reason, he didn’t seem to want to let a full-blown smile erupt. He turned back to the railing. “Well, let’s get to it.”

  Leslie didn’t have to do much at first. She stepped out of the way as Declan removed the main column at the bottom of the stairway with a few well-placed thuds of a rubber mallet. Then it was short work to dismantle the handrail, separating it from the spindles, which positioned the organic, curvaceous design about three inches above the base.

  While Declan carried the old pieces outside, Leslie began to work out some of the iron spikes from their moorings. They were set in a wooden track made from maple, which, she noted, definitely needed a new coat of varnish.

  Several spikes came loose easily, and she moved a two-foot-wide section of railing away and leaned it against the wall. But when Leslie got to the area with the rust, they didn’t want to budge. “Do you think they’re cemented or glued in there?” she asked when Declan paused to watch her struggle with them.

  “They would have been glued originally, but by now, it wouldn’t be that strong. Let me try.”

  Leslie stepped aside. She had a moment of pure female appreciation as Declan stood in front of the railing and clamped his hands around one of the spikes, fist over fist, and pulled up.

  Though the spike didn’t budge, his muscles sure as hell did. She actually went a little dry in the mouth, watching the way his bare forearms rippled and his shoulders shifted as he tried in vain to wiggle the spikes free. Oh my God.

  “What the hell?” he muttered, and the moment was over as he stepped back from the railing.

  “I’m thinking cement,” she said, bending over to look into the holes of the three spikes she’d already removed.

  “That would be very unusual, but there’s definitely something going on in there. Okay if I get a little more insistent with it?” he asked. “It might make a mess.”

  Leslie made a show of looking down at her powdery clothing and then around the foyer, which showed definite signs of being a work in progress. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

  “I’ve got to grab a few tools from the truck. Be right back.”

  While Declan was outside, Leslie made her way back to where she’d left her cell phone and other tools. One of her life-altering changes when she’d left the corporate world was to no longer be a slave to her smartphone or computer, so she often made herself leave her phone in another room, or at least out of sight or reach.

  Another life improvement, as she called the list she’d created when she decided to leave corporate America, was to learn how to cook. She was getting pretty good at that, too. As for another one on the list—getting at least seven hours of sleep a night? That one was a piece of cake. She loved being able to sleep past six a.m.

  Her abandoned phone had four texts that she needed to return (one was for an interview with a potential assistant-slash-teen-intern that sounded very promising), and by the time she was finished with that, she heard thuds from the foyer.

  She returned just in time to see Declan prying up pieces of the maple base where the spikes had been positioned.

  “Here we go,” he muttered, and Leslie moved to help him as he pulled the stubborn section of wrought iron free. The whole base moved with it, and there was an eerie, groaning sound as the two of them dragged the rail from its moorings.

  As it came free, the groan tapered off into an echo that didn’t really belong to the sound of iron being wrested from wood. Leslie had the odd sensation that the entire house was shuddering, as if giving a reluctant release.

  A chill skittered over her shoulders, and the scent of dust and must, and something else…something sharp and cold and unfamiliar…seeped into the air from the opening beneath the railing.

  The hair lifting at the back of her neck, she glanced at Declan, feeling very strange about the fanciful thoughts that had overtaken her. He seemed oblivious to anything out of the ordinary, for he’d turned to set the section of wrought iron squares against the wall.

  Now that part of it had been removed, Leslie could see how the rust—or whatever it was—had encroached not only onto the bottoms of the spikes, but inside the narrow, hollow base beneath the railing.

  “Is it some sort of mold?” she asked, using a flathead screwdriver to poke and scrape at a portion of it.

  Declan returned and looked down into the hollow of the railing’s base. Pieces of insulation and other debris were stuffed inside, but moving some of it out of the way exposed the inside of the stairway wall. The coppery rust appeared to be all along the inside, and when Leslie looked at the underside of the maple channel into which the spikes had been thrust, there was more of the strange rust.

  “It’s more of a discoloration,” he said, poking at it with his own tool. “It doesn’t scrape off like mold or rust would.”

  Leslie stepped back and sighed. “I guess I’d better get someone in to look at it, and make sure.” She crossed her arms and surveyed the damage—both literal and figurative. She could see her nest egg dwindling like a little puff of smoke.

  Declan seemed to feel her pain. “Sorry about that. And I’ll do my best to keep the costs down on the iron.”

  She smiled ruefully. “Ah, thanks, but I expect to be charged a fair price, Mr. Zyler. I knew what I was getting into when I started down this path—I mean, I suspected there would be surprises along the way. I just want everything to be done right.”

  “Right. I can appreciate that, but I also understand budgetary constraints. So let me know if you change your mind and want to just replace it all with the spindles from Home Depot.” He swallowed hard. “I can’t bring myself to do that personally, but I know someone who can.” He managed a smile.

  “Thanks. You’ll really start on it right away?”

  “Yes, tomorrow. I’ve got a few projects going, but I’ll take this section with me and get working as soon as possible. And call me Declan. Or Dec. Mr. Zyler just makes me feel uptight.” Now, there was a real smile.

  “And I’m Leslie.” She held out her hand for the shake that hadn’t happened originally, and wasn’t su
rprised when she felt a shock of awareness when their hands touched.

  Somehow, Leslie suspected she’d make certain to find a way to use the blacksmith’s skills at Shenstone House as much as possible.

  Even if it cost a fortune.

  Two

  The cozy town of Wicks Hollow was located in the center of a handful of rolling hills. None of them were large enough to be considered a mountain, but they did offer some protection from the harsh, lake effect winters that rolled in from Lake Michigan, only two miles away.

  With a population of roughly two thousand, except during tourist season (Memorial Day through Labor Day, then a few weeks in late September for Fall Colors), Wicks Hollow could barely be considered a town. However, because of the tourists and seasonal workers—which could bring the population to five thousand or more—the village had a three-member police department headed by Captain Joe Longbow—and a full-sized high school that had recently been updated.

  Since the town had been an escape from the heat and city life of Chicago and Detroit even at the turn of the 20th century—for the wealthy, anyway—Wicks Hollow boasted an inordinate number of mansions considered historic “painted ladies.” These single-family homes were built during the boom of the Gilded Age and into the Roaring Twenties, with all the curlicues and garrets and towers characteristic of that era. Because of historic accuracy, the “ladies” were painted shockingly bright colors: lemon yellow, bright purple, Kelly green, and many different shades of blue or pink. They had neat, square yards, broad, shady trees, and trim flower beds. Some even had iron-spiked fences and detached carriage houses. There were large, square houses with flat roofs and cupolas on top, and others with dormers, garrets, and peaks jutting up everywhere. There were a few, like Shenstone House, that had circular towers.

  The streets leading into town were lined with mansions, single-family residences, cottages, and stately farmhouses. Three blocks of Elizabeth Street, which ran directly north one block west from the town center, was known as B&B Row, where each well-maintained house was a small inn or bed and breakfast. A few lucky ones even had glimpses of Lake Michigan, only two miles to the west, from their upper floors. On the upper floor of Sunflower House, from the northwest tower, you could even see Stony Cape, a lighthouse which sat out on a rocky point of Lake Michigan.

  In the center of the village, the business and tourist district was just as manicured and inviting. It boasted two main streets—named Faith Avenue and Pamela Boulevard after the daughters of the town’s founder, George Wicks—that intersected in the middle of the tourist district.

  Leslie had decided George Wicks had been either optimistic or delusional, for the two main drags were nowhere close to being either an avenue or a boulevard. Two cars could just pass by each other because parking was only allowed on one side of the street. Nevertheless, the massive stone pots containing spills of pansies, geraniums, and ivy and the Victorian style streetlamps gave the place a comfortable, welcoming feel even as the evenings turned chilly with autumn.

  For two blocks in each of the four directions from the town’s center, shops, restaurants, cafes, and other businesses sprang up. Every one was a brick-fronted building of with unique heights, widths, and brick pattern. Leslie walked past Aunt Cherry’s yoga studio, which was on the second floor and had a view of long, ribboning Wicks Lake outside of town to the northeast, a vintage clothing shop called Gilda’s Goodies, and the trendy, urban-looking Trib’s, which was the best restaurant in the county.

  To the south and east of the town, a bank of thickly wooded hills rose like a natural, protective wall. Through the trees, Leslie could see the peaks and towers of more Victorian mansions—including a hint of the roof of her own Shenstone House, which sat on the highest hill but was cloaked by thick woods. Beyond the hill was the high school, which had been around since 1950, though it had been updated several times over the years.

  The bells jingled over the door when Leslie stepped into Orbra’s Tea House and saw her aunt sitting at a round table near the front window.

  She gave her a quick hug, even though she’d seen her last night. But for the last few weeks, she’d been so busy with the renovations, she’d hardly left the house except for the grocery store. She pulled up a chair to sit down. “You look relaxed, auntie.”

  “Meditation and twenty-five Sun Salutations will do that for you,” Cherry replied with a smile.

  “Well, have you seen the ghost yet?” asked Orbra van Hest unceremoniously as she approached. She’d appeared from the back room just as Leslie came in, and was carrying a tray with a full tea service on it: two delicate china pots, two cups and saucers, a small plate with paper-thin lemon slices, a sugar bowl, and a tiny creamer pitcher. “You’ve been living there almost a month.”

  Cherry grinned back at Leslie as the six-foot-plus Dutch woman loomed expectantly over their table. The proprietor of Orbra’s Tea House didn’t seem to be in any hurry to set down the tray for her customers—at least until she got a response to her question.

  “No,” Leslie replied. “Not a sign. No slamming doors, no footsteps in the night, no fluttering curtains over a closed window…not even an inexplicable chill wafting through the air.”

  “You can put the tray down, Orbra,” Cherry said, gesturing to the lace-covered table. Beneath the large doily was a blue floral cloth of cotton, and each place setting boasted a small hand-painted china plate, flatware of real silver, and a lace-trimmed cloth napkin. “I told you Leslie is too practical for the metaphysical to speak to her.” She said this with a wink at her favorite niece—her sister’s daughter—who shook her head in mock disgust as the tray clinked into place in front of her.

  “If there’s really a ghost at Shenstone House,” Leslie said as Orbra poured vanilla oolong into her cup, “then why didn’t Alice ver Stahl see him? Or her. Does anyone know whether this so-called ghost is supposed to be a man or woman?”

  “Alice ver Stahl was half-deaf and had cataracts. She never went anywhere in that house but the kitchen and the bathroom before they brought her to the nursing home. What was it, five years ago? She wouldn’t have seen or heard a ghost if it pulled out a chair for her at the table.” Orbra turned to pouring a fragrant floral tea of a much lighter color into Cherry’s cup.

  “She was half-deaf and had cataracts and lived alone?” Leslie was horrified.

  “Orbra’s exaggerating, my dear. Mrs. ver Stahl had a perfectly fine hearing aid, and her cataracts had been removed years earlier,” Cherry said, and sipped her jasmine green tea. She smiled, curling her fingers around the cup as if to warm them. “Mm. This is still my favorite, even though the caffeine wreaks havoc on my meditations.”

  “The way you drink it, brewed hardly more than a minute, there can’t be much caffeine in there to speak of,” Orbra replied. She stood with her hands on her hips, clearly unwilling to move on until she got more information from her best friend’s niece.

  Unlike other tea shops with a Victorian flair, Orbra’s wasn’t decorated in pink, cabbage flower prints, or with too much lace. There was some lace, but it was restricted to covering the dark blue tablecloths, and an occasional doily. The rest of the decor was mostly cornflower blue, yellow, and white. Though there were tiny flowers printed on the wallpaper and fresh Gerbera daisies, sweet peas, and alstroemeria stuck in vases on each table, the florals weren’t overwhelming.

  “I don’t like to make the men feel uncomfortable. You know a lot of them won’t come into a place that feels too much like a woman’s bedroom—unless it is a woman’s bedroom,” Orbra had told Leslie with a grin. “So I try to keep it feminine without going overboard. Regina Underwhite helped me find some of the antiques, along with that silver tea service in the front window. But I did the rest of it myself. And business is all I can handle, believe you me.”

  However, today Leslie and Cherry were the only customers in the tea shop. As it was early October, summer was over and school was back in session, and it was just past the high season of
fall colors. Thus, Wicks Hollow was devoid of the tourists that kept it buzzing and humming from late May through the end of September. This meant Orbra had plenty of time to sit and pepper Leslie with questions.

  “Bethy,” the proprietress shouted toward the swinging doors that led to the kitchen, “bring out those scones, will you, hon? I’m going to pull up a chair myself.”

  But just as she was wrangling a heavy Victorian side chair to their table, the door opened and three elderly ladies burst in on a swirl of leaves and chilly autumn air.

  “I told you it was a word,” said the one who was clearly the oldest, and, it seemed, the loudest as well. “All you had to do was trust me, and you would have won.” She had dark skin so smooth it appeared polished, thick iron-gray hair and a sturdy build, and was practically shouting at one of her companions as she led them through the door. She was carrying a walking stick, but didn’t actually appear to need it for locomotion.

  “Mornin’ Orbry,” the woman crowed as soon as she saw the proprietress, but she stopped just inside the threshold to direct one of her companions. “Now, Juanita, you watch here so you don’t trip on that little step—you know you’re blind as a bat.”

  With a little sigh of exasperation, Orbra muttered, “As if they haven’t come here five times a week for twenty years. Which is five times too many, some days,” she added in an undertone. Then she lifted her brows at Leslie. “You’d better move. You’re in Maxine’s seat.”

  “Yes,” said Cherry around a chuckle as Leslie moved over. “She likes to sit there so she can see the street and direct the happenings in the entire tea house. Nosy old bag.” Then she projected across the cafe, “Welcome back, ladies! How was Chicago?”

  Leaving her two companions behind, Maxine was barreling her way across the hardwood floor, her cane thumping with alacrity. For a woman who had just turned eighty—as she announced to anyone who would listen—she was remarkably agile and nearly stomped Leslie’s toe with her heavy wooden cane as she plopped onto her chair.