The Man in Black: A Gothic Romance (Crookshollow Ghosts)

by Steffanie Holmes

  “You’re a lawyer, isn’t that your job?”

  “For the last time, I am not THAT kind of lawyer.”

  “It’s a shame, because you could’ve pulled this out for me days ago and saved a ton of effort. It’s taken me three hours of back-breaking labour to pull it out this far.” Eric flexed his biceps. “My fingers are solid one moment, then fade to ghostly the next.”

  “What is it?” I stared at the short wooden box.

  “Elinor, it’s my violin case. My real violin case.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said, kneeling down beside him. “Why would it be here?”

  “I must have left Isolde here after I visited Mother. But I don’t understand why I would’ve done that. It’s not as if I ever came back here unless I could help it.”

  “No, I mean, we already knew it was probably in the house, because if a thief had taken it then it would have appeared on eBay by now. Maybe you were planning to stay for some reason? Maybe she wanted to borrow—”

  Eric waved his hands impatiently. “Deduce later, Sherlock. Please just open it!”

  “Fine.” I pulled the case up on to the bed. It was lighter than I expected, but I guess a violin is largely air. “This is locked. Where’s the key?”

  “It was in my pocket when I died. I was never without it.”

  “Oh,” Disappointment surged through me. That meant the police probably had it. But then I remembered the envelope of keys Duncan had given me. He’d said they were all the keys for the house that Eric had, so maybe … I skipped downstairs, retrieved the envelope from the hall table, and returned with it, dumping the keys out on the bed.

  “That’s it!” Eric pointed a finger at a small silver key on the edge of the bed. I pushed it into the lock of the case, turned it, and flipped open the lid.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed.

  I stared down in horror, my knees growing weak. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

  That was no violin inside the case.

  Eric

  Elinor’s face had gone pale. She brought her hand to her mouth, and I saw that her fingers were trembling. Her eyes changed from delight to terror as she stared down at the contents of my case.

  I peered around her, wondering what had struck her so. Isolde was old, certainly, and a little beaten up—certainly in a more shabby state than the new one she’d bought me—but nothing worthy of such a terrified gasp. Perhaps she had broken in transit …

  No. Oh, no.

  I stared down at the contents of the case, and I felt my own body surge with fear. There was no violin inside. Instead, nestled in the velvet lining, were bags and bags of white powder. Every inch of the case was filled with them.

  My entire violin case was stuffed with cocaine.

  I floated back, reeling. My body was so shocked it slipped through the floor, burying me half in the room below. Elinor turned to me, her hand still over her mouth. “What is this? Is this what I think it is?”

  “I don’t understand,” I peered down at the wooden frame, the familiar scratches around the rim, my father’s name etched into the veneer along the outer edge. It was my case all right. But why was it filled with drugs? I’d packed away my violin myself backstage after the London show. I remembered laying the instrument into the velvet cushion. I’d locked the case and dropped the key into my pocket, and shortly afterward I was dead. It hadn’t been opened since that night, so where had this cocaine come from?

  “Eric,” Elinor’s voice was tight, strained. “Say something.”

  “Where’s my violin? I don’t understand. How—”

  Elinor slammed the case shut. “So this isn’t yours?”

  “Of course not. Elinor. I’d never touch the stuff.”

  “This isn’t a personal stash, Eric. This amount of cocaine is worth millions. The only person who’d have a use for this much coke would be a dealer. So what’s going on? Is this the real truth? You were part of a drug ring, and you smuggled this lot out of Prague after your tour, and you were meant to make the drop in London? But then you got greedy and decided you wanted all the profit for yourself. So you took the goods and ran for home, stashing the case here until you could sell it. But your buyer got wind of your plan, and ran you off the road to get the stuff back. Am I getting warm here?”

  I snorted in laughter. The whole concept of me being a drug trafficker was so ridiculous, I couldn’t even contemplate how she could’ve come up with that scenario. Elinor stared at me in horror, as if my laughter was somehow incriminating me. The smile froze on my face. She was serious. She actually thought this coke was mine.

  “Elinor, what—”

  “I trusted you,” she whispered.

  “This isn’t mine. I’ve never touched the stuff in my entire life. I’m a fucking rock star. I have all the money and groupies I need, and I earned them legally. Why would I need the hassle of being a fucking drug lord?”

  “You tell me, Eric. You seem to have a story for every possible situation.”

  “Why can’t you believe me?” I couldn’t understand her. Why was she so adamant on believing this was mine?

  “Of course I can’t believe you. Here you are, making me trust you, making me think you were this great, tortured artist. And all along, this is what you’ve been doing.” Her eyes filled with tears. “This shit goes to children, Eric. Young, innocent kids who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. It destroys lives. Don’t you get that? Don’t you care?”

  “Of course I fucking care. That’s why I’m trying to tell you that this isn’t mine.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Her voice sounded high, hysterical. “It’s yours, it’s yours. It explains everything.”

  No, Eric, don’t get angry. If you get angry, she is going to leave again. But I could feel the rage rising inside of me. After everything we’d done together, after all the time we’d spent together, I thought we had a connection. I thought she understood me. But she didn’t. “Why would you just automatically assume this is mine? Do you think so little of me that the only possible explanation that fits all the facts in your fucked-up Sherlock Holmes scenario is that I must be a scumbag drug dealer? What happened to everything you said to me the other night? Or is that just the lawyer in you talking, all the lies to get what you wanted?”

  Nice one, Eric. Way to listen to yourself.

  Elinor’s cheeks flushed red. Her face crumpled with pain. I wanted to reach out and hold her, but I couldn’t take those words back.

  “I don’t care what you think of me,” she hissed through her teeth. “Or the fucking hypocrisy of accusing me of lying when you’ve so obviously been lying through your teeth to me. The facts speak for themselves. The drugs are in your case. A case you repeatedly talked about being fiercely protective of, a case you carried all over the world.” Elinor shook her head angrily. I could see the wheels turning in her brilliant mind, putting all of the pieces together, and coming up with something so completely plausible, but so completely wrong. “And, of course, you’re a celebrity. No one at the airport is going to give you a second glance. You could use your tour schedule as a front for meeting your dealers—”

  “Shut up! Just fucking shut up!” I yelled, jamming my hands over my ears. Elinor froze, mid sentence.

  “Don’t ever speak to me again,” she hissed. Then she turned on her heel, and stormed from the room.

  Elinor

  I fled the room, tears streaming down my cheeks. I ran down the stairs, and slammed the door of the study shut behind me, the sound a mirror of Eric’s action from earlier that day. I’d been so excited to make up with him, and all this time he—

  All this time he was a drug dealer. He was the fucking scum of the earth.

  Just thinking about it made my body boil with rage.

  Some small part of me wanted to cling to what I’d thought we had, to the possibility that maybe Eric was innocent. That maybe this Helen Manning had set him up. Maybe that was her plan for revenge all alon
g, to have Eric arrested as a drug dealer, his reputation ruined and his career taking a nosedive. Maybe you should go back, let Eric explain—

  I shook my head angrily, pounding the pillow with my fist. What was there to explain? Helen Manning was a depressed teenager. She was not a criminal mastermind able to get her hands on a motherload of coke. Eric had the connections, the money, the alibi. He was trying to be special, to be some kind of idol, but he was just like every other guy. He didn’t care who he hurt.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to halt the tears that threatened to overwhelm me. It’s Joel all over again. I remembered the same pleading look in his eyes when I’d found part of his stash hidden behind the toilet. “It was just a one-time thing, babe,” he’d said. “I’ve given up, I swear.” I wanted so badly to believe that it was true that I just accepted his bullshit. I’d ignored all the signs, and then it was too late.

  Joel was dead. Eric was dead. It was too similar. Too much of a coincidence. The only common factor is me. How do I attract these douchebags?

  My chest tightened in fear as I realised that Eric’s actions had also placed me in grave danger. At some point, the people Eric had been working for would come looking for their drugs. This much coke just didn’t disappear. I needed to deal with the very real fact that I had hundreds of pounds of class A drugs in my possession.

  But not right now. Right now I needed a stiff drink.

  “What’s wrong?” Bianca asked as she slid into the stool beside me. “You look awful.”

  “Thanks.” I frowned into the bottom of my second pint glass. After discovering Eric’s secret stash, I’d texted Bianca immediately and asked her to meet me for a drink. I didn’t really trust myself to drink alone at that point. She’d been with a client and had to wait until she finished, so she told me to meet her at the Tir Na Nog, an Irish pub down a hidden alleyway not far from Clara’s shop. Bianca was running twenty minutes late, but that was OK, because the barman was very friendly and quite nice to look at, and I’d already managed to drown two pints and a small bowl of crisps.

  “I mean, you look upset. Did something happen?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I growled, pushing my glass across the table towards her. “I want to do one thing, and one thing only: get shitfaced and forget about it.”

  “Is that really a good idea? I mean, don’t you need to work with sensitive legal documents tomorrow? Do you really want to do that hungover?”

  “Who are you, my mother? No, you’re not, so stop with the third degree and make with the next round.” I’d never in a million years have talked to anyone back in London like that, especially not someone who was a new friend and about a hundred times cooler than I could ever hope to be. But I had an overload of sass ever since I’d arrived in Crookshollow, and I knew Bianca wouldn’t mind. I was right—Bianca grinned, and darted off to the bar, returning a few moments later with two overflowing pints.

  “I always thought you’d be more of a wine drinker,” she grinned as she sucked the foam off her drink.

  I took a huge gulp, enjoying the faint buzz of oblivion that was starting to encroach on the corners of my mind. “Usually, I am. But I haven’t had a wine kind-of day. I’ve had a drown-my-sorrows-in-ten-pints kind of day. How are you? Hopefully better than me?”

  “I’m fine. My client is very happy with the tiger I painstakingly drew on his left arse cheek. He’s going to come back next week with his girlfriend so she can get a leprechaun on her shoulder blade. Imagine that? Four years at art school and I was never taught how to draw a leprechaun. I spent twenty minutes googling leprechaun images before I left to meet you, and you wouldn’t believe the stuff that came up. People are weird ...“”

  Bianca started talking about something related she’d seen on the internet, and I tried to listen, nodding along at the appropriate moments. But my mind had returned to Eric. I just couldn’t believe that after all his earnest speeches and sweet acts, he’d been a drug dealing scumbag. He’d completely fooled me with his smooth talk and his brooding, artistic temperament. I thought he was the perfect guy. And that said more about me than it did about him. Am I really such a poor judge of character that I hadn’t seen through all his bullshit?

  “… and don’t you think it’s bloody disgusting?”

  “What is?” I snapped out of my internal dialogue.

  Bianca tapped the screen on her phone and shoved it across the table towards me. I could see it was an eBay listing. I shook my head.

  “It’s one thing to talk about kinky related-related internet searches, but it’s quite another thing to see the results of such a search.” I pushed the phone back across the table. “I don’t want to be put off my beer.”

  “We’re not talking about leprechauns, anymore, Elinor.” Bianca tapped the phone back towards me. “And no judgement, but I think after this pint you might need to slow down a little.”

  I glowered at her in mock defiance, took a swig of my drink, and stared down at the phone. It was a listing for a violin. It wasn’t even a particularly nice-looking violin. The picture was grainy, and I could see that the front of the instrument was covered with scratches. Then I looked at the price.

  “Whoa, is it made of some sort of rare wood or something?” I wondered who on earth would bid on such a shabby-looking instrument for £12,345.

  “That’s Eric’s second violin. He called it Tristan. Someone put it on eBay. Can you believe it? I bet it was the same people who trashed his house down in Devon.”

  “Yeah,” Eric’s violin. Although I was supposed to not be thinking about him, I stared at the picture with renewed interest. It was Eric, all right. The trader had put up images of Eric at concerts playing the exact instrument. No wonder people were going crazy over it.

  I thought Allan had that violin? Why is he selling it on eBay? My head spun. I can’t think about this now. I must remember to ask Allan later ...

  No. I shook my head violently. I’m not thinking about Eric any longer. I don’t care where his stupid violin ends up. I pushed the phone across the table with more force than I’d intended. Bianca lunged and managed to catch it before it sailed off the edge.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, but I had broken the spell. I was supposed to be getting over Eric. I was not going to help a drug dealer solve his murder. And that was final. I tossed my head back and drowned the rest of my pint.

  “It’s fine,” Bianca watched me slam my empty glass down with a concerned look on her face. “So, what’s really going on, Elinor? Why do you get so weird every time I mention Eric’s name?”

  “It’s nothing, really.” My brain seemed to float inside my skull. I felt oddly detached from my body, as if I had to push my thoughts really hard to make them exit my mouth as words. Perhaps Bianca was right, and I should slow down. It wasn’t even dark outside yet.

  “It is not nothing. You’re acting … well, you’re acting as if you’re in love with him. Which is impossible, since he’s dead. Hence my line of inquiry.”

  I leaned forward, barely noticing when my elbow hit my empty glass and knocked it over. “Bianca, if I told you something and it was really weird … I’m talking The Addams Family-level kooky here. What would you say?”

  “I live in Crookshollow. I’ve seen too many strange things and heard too many ghost stories to be a sceptic.” Bianca leaned on her elbows so her face was only inches from mine. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Eric is a ghost.” I whispered back. “He’s haunting Marshell House. And I was … well, I was falling in love with him. Until I found out he was a drug dealer.”

  Bianca stared at me for several moments, not speaking. Then she snorted. Then her snorts turned into some weird, high-pitched squeal. Her face turned red as she struggled to hold in the full extent of her mirth. The couple at the next table eyed us curiously as Bianca made strange, strangling noises in her throat, before collapsing on the table in a ball of shuddering, tear-streaked laughter.

  “What?” I
glowered at her shaking form. “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m sorry, Elinor,” Bianca gasped. “It’s just … that drink must have really gone to your head. I mean, Eric being a ghost I could almost believe, but then you said you were in love with him, and I just … you two are so different. And then you said he was a spectral drug-dealer … and … I cannot even ... it sounds like a cheesy Tales from the Crypt plot.”

  “Yeah,” I grinned weakly. “It does.”

  “Oh God,” Bianca wiped the tears from her eyes with her napkin. “I’m going to remember that one for a while. Eric Marshell a drug dealer. Now I’ve heard everything. I think we need another round, and this time, I’m getting you some orange juice.”

  Eric

  I watched from the attic window as Elinor returned home in a taxi. The moonlight shone on her silky brown hair, so that it glowed like a halo around her heart-shaped face. The time on the grandfather clock in the corner of the attic read 2:57. She was grinning stupidly as she paid the driver and skipped in a crooked line down the driveway. She fell over her own shoe and collapsed into a heap, but instead of cursing she just broke into unadulterated giggles as she struggled to her feet and readjusted her crooked glasses.

  She was drunk. Gloriously, hopelessly, dangerously drunk. I wondered where she’d been to get in such a state. Had she been out with Allan?

  It’s none of your business if she’s with Allan, I thought bitterly. She’s made it clear that she doesn’t want anything to do with you.

  The front door slammed. I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. Even though I knew I should leave her alone, something in my belly flared up. I had to see her. I flew through the door of the attic and down the steps, pausing in the shadows of the hall as I watched Elinor stumble across the landing toward my old bedroom.

  She really was a mess. Her cheeks were flushed red from the cold air and the alcohol. Her eye makeup was smudged in dark streaks across her face. Her clothes clung to her gorgeous curves, plastered there by sweat and sticky spilt drinks. There was a beer coaster stuck to her elbow.