by B. J Daniels
“You think they’re remodeling it?” Hoyt said. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live in such a huge place. Unless they have something else in mind for it.”
“Are you talking about that old mansion north of here?” Emma asked. “I’d hate to have to heat that place in the winter. Why, it must have thirty bedrooms.”
“I heard the old woman who lived there last stayed in just a small part of the house, boarding up the rest,” Hoyt said, still frowning.
“Was it once a hotel or something?” Emma asked.
“That might have been the original plan,” Hoyt said, “but the community of Wellington died when the railroad came through twenty miles to the south. I still can’t believe anyone has moved in there with the idea of staying.”
In the silence that followed, Tanner said, “The place has a dark history. I had some friends who went out there one night. They said they heard a baby crying and when they left they were chased by a pickup truck that disappeared at the edge of town. Just disappeared.”
“I’ve heard stories about the Phantom Truck,” Logan said.
Emma laughed. “Oh, posh. You aren’t trying to tell me that the place is haunted or something silly like that.” She glanced around the table. “Hoyt?”
Her husband sighed. “Let’s just say that if a building can be haunted, it would be that one. The Wellingtons had their share of tragedies.”
“Ghosts are said to have been born out of tragedy,” Logan added and grinned mischievously.
Emma shook her head and turned to Marshall. “What do these people who have moved in look like?”
“I only saw one of them,” he said, then remembered the image he’d seen behind the woman and felt a chill snake up his spine. “She could have been a ghost.”
Emma shot him a disapproving look. “I’m asking if they seem like decent enough people and if they do, I think as their only neighbor you should go over there, introduce yourself and be neighborly. I’ll bake something for you to take.” She was already on her feet.
Hoyt was shaking his head. “You might want to get the lay of the land before you do that. Who knows who might have moved in there? We’ve had trouble with drug runners from Canada, escaped prisoners from Deer Lodge, criminals crossing the border through some barbed-wire fence and heading for the first house they see. Until you know who you’re dealing with—”
“Hoyt!” Emma chastised. “I’m sure all those instances were rare. I’ve read the local paper. There is hardly ever any crime up here. And Marshall is no fool. He’ll go over and meet them and make up his own mind. I’m sure they’re fine people if they’re remodeling the place and determined to live here.”
They all loved Emma’s positive attitude, no matter how naïve. But Marshall found himself poking at his food, his appetite gone as he remembered how his horse had spooked—not to mention his own reaction to what he’d seen just inside that balcony.
SUPPER AT WELLINGTON MANOR was served in the warm kitchen at a long, old table with mismatched chairs and dishes. The casserole that Carolina had fixed was delicious, and Alexa did her best to relax.
Carolina was a twenty-something, soft-spoken, pretty woman with blond hair, green eyes and porcelain skin. Her father, Sierra had said by way of introduction, had made his fortune in the hotel business. Carolina seemed shy and clearly embarrassed by Sierra’s introduction.
Her husband, Archer, was boisterous and big, a bodybuilder who apparently had been a football star until an injury had sidelined him. His father was a producer in Hollywood, his mother a lawyer.
The other couple, Gigi and Devlin, seemed cut from the same expensive cloth, both with parents who had retired to Palm Desert, California. Gigi’s long white-blond hair was pulled up in a ponytail, making her blue eyes seem even larger, her tiny nose all the more cute. A slender, athletic-looking young woman, she was in her twenties but could have passed for sixteen with her sweet, innocent face.
Her husband, Devlin, was a beach-boy blond with blue eyes. He laughed when Sierra introduced him as a rich kid whose parents owned a couple of vineyards in northern California. He’d had some wine shipped from home, which he poured with enthusiasm.
The lone wolf of the group was Jayden Farrell, whose father was an unemployed actor in Los Angeles, according to Sierra. Unlike the others, he was thirty-something and apparently hadn’t been raised privileged. But he was as movie-star handsome as the others, maybe even more so because there was intelligence behind his blue eyes that Alexa found both appealing and disturbing.
Not only that, Jayden also seemed to set himself apart from this group, watching them almost with amusement. Alexa doubted the rest of them had noticed the disdain for them that she glimpsed in his gaze. What was this single man doing here with these married couples, especially when she sensed he didn’t like them?
As the group around the table talked and joked, she and Jayden remained silent, she noted. She listened to them talk about their many university degrees, extended European trips and the benefits of growing up in sunny California.
None seemed to have professions, at least no jobs that kept them from helping their friends Sierra and Landon with their mansion, Jayden again being the exception. He’d made a point of saying that he’d studied business finance and would have to leave this fall to pursue his career.
The others seemed to see this Montana bed-and-breakfast venture as a lark, a great adventure, something to tell their friends about when they returned to their real lives. Jayden was more serious, which made Alexa all the more curious about his motives for being here.
Through all the laughter and camaraderie during the meal, Alexa found herself studying her brother. If she hadn’t known Landon so well, she might have thought he felt at ease with the assembled group, even though his roots were nothing like theirs. It was clear that Sierra had come from their world, though, rather than the one Alexa and Landon had grown up in. This made the reporter in Alexa curious, since Sierra had said she had been raised by a single mother in what she made sound like the Los Angeles projects.
Something was definitely wrong with that story, Alexa thought as she watched Sierra interacting with her friends. There was a gaiety to their stories. These young people had no worries—unlike her brother who seemed to be working hard not to show his.
Alexa also sensed tension within the group but couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. All she knew for sure was that her brother’s forced merriment tonight didn’t fool her for a minute. If only their mother was here. Tallulah Cross would have sized up this bunch in an instant and known exactly what was going on.
Alexa hated that she felt bombarded by conflicting sensations in this house. Something was trying to break through the wall she’d built to keep these kinds of sensations out. For years, she’d feared she’d lied as much to herself as she had to her mother and brother. She felt things, things she didn’t want to feel. But if she truly had her mother’s gift, she was terrified of it, didn’t know how to use it and had done everything she could to block it for so long that she had no control over it.
Coming here had been a mistake and yet even as she thought about leaving, she knew she couldn’t abandon her brother. Not when she knew something was wrong in this house. He’d said he’d already had a series of accidents. What if he was right about something—or someone—wanting him out of the mansion?
By the time supper was over, Archer had the flushed face of a man who’d consumed more wine than anyone else. Sierra was in a friendly debate with Carolina and Gigi about the best sushi restaurants they’d ever gone to outside of California. Archer and Devlin excused themselves, saying they were going to try to catch the baseball game on television.
Alexa rose to help with the dishes.
“It’s Gigi and Landon’s turn to do the dishes,” Sierra insisted. “Come on. I want to show you the house.”
“Go on,” Landon said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Alexa had hoped to talk to her
brother after supper and wished the two of them could have done the dishes together, but Sierra was determined to show her the house.
“You have to see this,” she said as they passed through the huge living area. She pushed open two large carved wooden doors. “The library,” she announced with a grand gesture. The books on the shelves had been moved and stacked as if someone had gone through them, the thick layer of dust that coated the room disturbed.
“We have so much to do before the house is restored,” she said. “But I love this room and can’t wait to get to it.”
Closing the doors, Sierra led her down a hallway, pointing out the servants’ quarters, most of the rooms empty except for one that Jayden was using. In another wing there was a music room with an old piano, and finally the ballroom.
All of the rooms looked as if a little work had been done in them. Alexa had the feeling, though, that not much was getting done—at least from what she’d seen so far.
“Let’s take the back stairs,” Sierra said and led Alexa up to a wing of the second floor.
Alexa felt a little turned around and said as much.
Sierra laughed. “It does get confusing. That’s why I ask that you not go exploring on your own. It is too easy to get hurt, and who knows how long it would be before anyone found you?” She laughed as if delighted by the size of this place.
Alexa thought of her brother’s accidents and wondered how long it had been before he’d been found.
“We are in the north wing. Your room is in the east wing, Gigi and Dev have a room on the west wing, Carolina and Archer are on the south wing, Jayden’s on the first floor in the servants’ quarters. His choice,” she added quickly. “We decided we might as well stretch out and have our own space.”
She remembered at supper how she’d felt the others occasionally studying her with interest. She realized with a start that Sierra had probably told her friends about Landon’s sister’s “sight.” She groaned inwardly at the thought that everyone in this house would be watching her now.
“Jayden’s kind of a loner.”
Alexa mentioned her surprise that he had wanted to be here with three couples, as Sierra led her along a long, dark hallway.
“He’s one of the gang,” Sierra said. “I guess I was a little surprised too that he came with us. But we all loved him the moment we met him. Isn’t the house in great shape for how old it is?”
“Some relative of yours lived here most recently?” Alexa asked.
“My great cousin lived here until she died,” Sierra said. “I never knew her. Most of the rooms were closed off while she lived here. She stayed in one of the maids’ rooms downstairs, where Jayden is on the first floor.” She chuckled again. “The old maid in the maids’ quarters. It’s pretty funny. I doubt she even came up to these rooms.”
Alexa couldn’t help but wonder why Jayden preferred one of the small rooms for maids rather than the opulence—not to mention the views—of an upstairs bedroom. Maybe he didn’t hold himself apart only at supper.
As they left the catacomb of rooms and hallways to return to the main hall, she saw that the kitchen was empty. Gigi and Landon had finished the dishes. Alexa couldn’t wait to get him alone to talk to him again.
“Do you know where I can find Landon?” she asked.
Sierra shrugged. “I’ll tell him if I see him before bedtime.”
She got the feeling Sierra had no intention of telling him. “Thank you for the tour.”
“My pleasure, although I do wish you had waited until the house was done before coming for a visit,” Sierra said.
“Landon asked me to come now.”
Her sister-in-law raised a brow. “Did he? I wish he’d discussed it with me first.” She smiled and let out a small, humorless laugh. “I guess it isn’t that big of a deal. I just wanted everything to be perfect the first time you saw it.”
With that, Sierra gave a wave and disappeared down a hallway.
Alexa looked around the huge living room, thinking that her brother had made a mistake calling her. Not only had he upset his new bride, but also, she thought, spotting a Ouija board on the coffee table in front of the huge fireplace, he’d called the wrong person.
Landon would have been much better off trying to reach their mother.
Chapter Three
Sheriff McCall Crawford knew it had been impulsive and no doubt a fool’s errand, especially coming here after work. It was dark and late as she pulled into the parking lot at the state mental hospital.
Her husband, Luke, had tried to dissuade her, but after the call she’d gotten from the doctor, she had to make sure for herself—not to mention for the safety of the Chisholm family.
“Why did you fail to mention the extent of Aggie Wells’s alcoholism?” the doctor had chided her on the phone when he’d caught her at work earlier. “We almost lost her last night. Had we known of her problem, we would have eased her off the alcohol with the use of drugs—”
“Doctor, I’m sorry. I was completely unaware that Aggie Wells had an alcohol addiction. Are you sure she wasn’t…faking it?”
“You can’t be serious! One look at this woman and it would be apparent to anyone that she was most certainly not ‘faking it,’ as you so delicately put it. A blood test confirmed that the woman is an alcoholic. We don’t assume anything around here.”
McCall had felt confused. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same patient?”
“Agatha Wells.”
Still something was wrong and McCall felt it.
Now as she climbed out of her car and started into the state mental hospital, she had to see for herself what Aggie Wells was up to. Aggie hadn’t exhibited any signs of alcoholism when she’d been in the Whitehorse jail over the past few months.
The doctor didn’t know how smart and manipulative this woman was. Nor was he aware of the extremes Aggie would go to in an attempt to get what she wanted. McCall did though, since she’d been the one to arrest her.
A former insurance investigator, Aggie Wells had taken pride in exposing anyone who tried to defraud the company she worked for. But something had happened on one of her first cases, more than thirty years before. It had been the life insurance case of Laura Chisholm, first wife of Hoyt Chisholm, of the Chisholm Cattle Company.
Aggie hadn’t been able to accept that Laura Chisholm’s drowning had been accidental. And while she couldn’t prove it, she also wouldn’t give up. When Hoyt’s second wife was killed in a horseback riding accident, Aggie again tried to prove murder. Failing that, she’d only become more obsessed. A few years later, when he’d remarried once again and his wife had disappeared, Aggie Wells was determined the woman had been murdered—to the extent it was now believed that Aggie had killed his third wife herself to prove Hoyt Chisholm a murderer by framing him.
Hoyt had gone years after that without marrying, turning all of his attention to raising the six boys he’d adopted. A few months ago he’d met Emma McDougal at a cattlemen’s convention in Denver and fallen so hard, that the two ran off to Vegas and married.
Even though she’d lost her job at the insurance company because of her obsession with the Hoyt Chisholm case, Aggie Wells had come back into his life, determined that he wouldn’t get the chance to kill another wife. She’d bugged his house, tried to frame him for the murder of his third wife, after her body had mysteriously turned up, and she’d abducted Emma, his new bride.
Fortunately, McCall had stopped her before Aggie could harm Emma. After taking Aggie’s statement following her arrest, she claimed that Hoyt Chisholm’s first wife, Laura, was still alive, and it was Laura who had killed his other two wives and would soon kill wife number four unless the sheriff didn’t set her free to save Emma.
After hearing Aggie’s testimony, the county attorney had finally ordered a mental evaluation to see if Aggie Wells was fit to stand trial, and sent her to the state hospital.
“I’m here to see Aggie Wells,” McCall said as she showed her ide
ntification at the front desk of the hospital. “Dr. Barsness is expecting me.”
“The third door on the right,” the receptionist said, pointing down a long hallway.
At her knock, a male voice on the other side told her to come in. A balding, short man looked up from his untidy desk as McCall entered the small office. Dr. Barsness looked busy and irritated. It was clear he thought her visit was a waste of his time and hers. She thought he might be right.
But if Aggie Wells had a drinking problem so extreme that she’d almost died from withdrawal at the mental hospital, then McCall wanted to know why none of them had suspected it during her stay in the Whitehorse jail. Unless Aggie had somehow talked someone at the jail into getting her alcohol behind McCall’s back. And if that was the case, the sheriff was bound and determined to find out.
“I won’t take but a few minutes of your time,” she said as the doctor got to his feet with a heavy sigh. “I just want to see Aggie for myself.”
With a shake of his head, he led her down the hallway through several locked doors into a noisy ward and finally to a room at the end of a hall.
He opened the door with a key. “Miss Wells? You have company.”
McCall looked into the narrow room. The only furniture was a bed bolted to the wall. A figure lay in the bed, covered with a blanket, face to the wall in a fetal position.
McCall remembered the woman she’d arrested for abducting Emma Chisholm and suspicion of murder. Aggie was a tall, slender, attractive woman. Also a very intelligent woman with a lot of resources at her disposal and enough knowledge about illegal things to make her dangerous.
“Aggie?” McCall asked as she stepped in. The room had an odd smell to it and she was reminded of a homeless man her deputies had put up in a cell for the night last winter. He’d had that smell. “Aggie?”
The woman in the bed rolled over and squinted. “What?”
McCall took a step back, shocked by what she saw. Alcohol and a hard life had ravaged this woman’s face, making her appear years older than she was. “You aren’t Aggie Wells.”
