Praise for Nine Lives:
“Wendy Corsi Staub’s writing sparkles and the book fairly crackles with suspense. Her characterizations are spot on and you are sucked in from page one . . . If you’re looking for a different type of cozy, then this one’s for you!”
—Night Owl Reviews, Top Pick
“A good cozy by a good writer telling of a town that is its own character, just as much as the people that reside there”
—Suspense Magazine
“Nine Lives achieves just the right balance of charming and quirky, with Staub offering up a loveable cast of characters who will hopefully be haunting readers for years to come.”
—Hartford Books Examiner
“Nine Lives is not just a mystery, but a story of a mother’s determination to provide a life for her young son . . . I definitely recommend it to mystery and nonmystery fans alike. It’s just that good a read.”
—Long and Short Reviews
“The strength of this new series, written by award-winning suspense author Wendy Corsi Staub, is how her heroine very realistically transitions between states of vulnerability, anger, strength, and overwhelming sadness . . . Lily Dale extends a warm welcome to readers, who will find themselves charmed by its superstitious population of believers and practitioners.”
—Kings River Life Magazine
“Wendy Corsi Staub’s Nine Lives hooked me from page one. In fact I didn’t want to put it down: with warm characters, an intriguing setting, and just a touch of the unexplainable, it’s a thoroughly satisfying read.
—Rhys Bowen, New York Times bestselling author of the Molly Murphy and Royal Spyness mysteries
“Wendy Corsi Staub weaves a spectacular tale of suspense . . . Lily Dale would definitely be on my must visit list. It’s an appropriately quirky town with an even quirkier cast of characters—and a cat, Chance, who’s adept at pulling Houdini acts. Who could ask for anything more? Definitely a must read.”
—T. C. LoTempio, national bestselling author of the Nick and Nora Mysteries
Praise for New York Times and USA Today bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub:
“If you like Mary Higgins Clark, you’ll love Wendy Corsi Staub.”
—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson
“Once Staub’s brilliant characterizations and top-notch narrative skills grab hold, they don’t let go.”
—Publishers Weekly
“As always, Staub leaves us wanting more.”
—RT Book Reviews
“When it comes to mysteries of the home and hearth, Wendy Corsi Staub is unrivaled. Just when you think you’ve figured her out . . . think again!”
—John Valeri, Hartford Books Examiner
Also Available in the Lily Dale Mystery Series:
Nine Lives
Other Recent Mysteries by Wendy Corsi Staub
Blue Moon
Blood Red
The Black Widow
The Perfect Stranger
The Good Sister
Shadowkiller
Sleepwalker
Nightwatcher
Hell to Pay
Scared to Death
For a full list of titles, visit wendycorsistaub.com.
Something Buried, Something Blue
A Lily Dale Mystery
Wendy Corsi Staub
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Wendy Corsi Staub.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-62953-772-6
ISBN (ePub): 978-1-62953-802-0
ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-62953-803-7
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-62953-804-4
Cover design by Louis Malcangi.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
34 West 27th St., 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
First Edition: October 2016
For the real people of the real Lily Dale
For the real Chance the Cat and Li’l Chap
For my sons, Morgan and Brody
And for my husband, Mark, on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Prologue
“I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
Charlotte Ackerly-Toombs—now officially Charlotte Ackerly-Toombs Driscoll—smiles up at her handsome new husband.
“Happily ever after, darling,” Thad murmurs, then leans in to kiss his bride.
“Happily ever after.” She feels light-headed, and not necessarily in a swoony, head-over-heels way.
Yes, Thad is the man of her dreams. And yes, she’s elated to be marrying him. But something isn’t right.
Is it altitude sickness?
She’s not used to being six thousand feet above sea level. She and Thad live in Florida. The wedding is in Colorado Springs—a destination wedding, because who wants to get married in the tropics in August? Still, she was fine yesterday after they got here. When she woke up this morning, she felt a little jittery, but wedding-day nerves are to be expected.
Maybe she shouldn’t have had that omelet for breakfast. She usually just drinks a cup of black coffee, but one of the fellow guests, just some random person who happens to be staying at the inn, kept insisting that she eat something.
“You don’t want to faint on your wedding day, do you? Try the applewood-smoked bacon. It’s delicious.”
It was delicious. But it doesn’t seem to have agreed with her.
Why did you listen to a total stranger? Why did you . . .
Wait a minute. Did you marry a total stranger?
Confusion churns into the nausea as she stares at the man beside her.
No, of course not. He’s Thad.
Isn’t he?
Is he?
Come on, Charlotte. Who else would he be?
His handsome face is blurry, but she can see that he’s smiling at her. She forces a return smile and shifts her gaze.
There’s the minister—a woman wearing a white robe. She’s standing right here in the little gazebo with Charlotte and Thad, but her face is blurry, too. The guests seem to shimmer and shape-shift, seated in folding chairs on the lawn beyond.
Even the vast panorama of the Rocky Mountains is hazy, though the temperature is a crisp sixty degrees with a cloudless blue sky and zero humidity.
The string quartet begins the recessional, sounding as if they’re perched on a neighboring crest. Bows glide across strings with jarring dissonance.
“Charlotte!”
She turns toward the whisper.
&n
bsp; “Here, take this.” Her maid of honor, her friend Miranda, thrusts something into her hand.
Right. Her bouquet.
The flowers are in shades of deep purple, mossy green, and white. So are Miranda’s floral print dress, the satin ribbons festooning the chairs, even the candy heaped in glass bowls on the dessert buffet table.
Sheer perfection, Charlotte thought when she first glimpsed the finished effect.
For her, as a graphic artist, the wedding’s color scheme was perhaps even more important than choosing her own dress. Brides wear white, but the rest of the day was an empty canvas onto which she could splash her most vibrant palette. She chose to reflect the surrounding mountain peaks, snowcapped even in summer.
Charlotte gulps fresh air, clinging tightly to Thad’s arm as they make their way along a grassy aisle strewn with purple-and-white petals. Mercifully, the discordant Bach concerto fades to a murmur of voices, but they, too, sound warped. Someone hands her a slender flute of champagne garnished with plump ripe blackberries.
She sips. Swallows.
The world swims before her. Fragments of conversation float toward her as if from distant peaks:
Congratulations . . .
So happy for you . . .
Cheers!
Her mouth smiles and attempts to say all the right things.
Her brain peptalks her like a coach trying to keep an injured player in the game.
Come on, you can do this. You’re just nervous, you’re just jetlagged, it’s just the altitude, it’s just the champagne . . .
No. I can’t do this.
You can. Take a break. You just need a minute.
She excuses herself to go to the restroom.
Dusk is falling.
She is falling.
She tilts into a doorjamb, banging her arm hard.
At the sink, heedless of her painstakingly applied makeup, she splashes cold water onto her face. It helps a little. There she is in the mirror, a distorted vision in white and green and purple: silk gown, flowers and ivy woven into her blonde chignon with a pouf of illusion veil, and a large ugly bruise forming on her arm.
She sways back to Thad.
“What happened here, darling?” He gently touches her arm.
“It’s nothing. I just—I think . . . I’m tipsy.”
“You need to eat something.”
Dinner is served on the terrace. Strings of lights glitter in the trees, and votives flicker on round tables covered with more purple, green, and white: linens, flowers, petals.
A salad course with more of the same: oak leaf lettuce, radicchio, blue porterweed blossoms, goat cheese in a lavender vinaigrette.
Charlotte nibbles at it.
Sips champagne.
Clinks for toasts.
Nibble . . .
Sip . . .
Clink . . .
Crystal shatters on flagstone.
Her flute has dropped from her hand.
Her chest constricts.
Her throat constricts.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t . . .
“Charlotte!” Thad cries out in alarm as she falls. “Someone help! Help!”
Human shadows loom; voices warble.
“Is she choking?”
“She’s turning blue!”
The last sound Charlotte Ackerly-Toombs Driscoll will ever hear is her husband’s frantic plea: “No! Please, someone . . . help her!”
Above her, white lights twinkle like stars in lush green branches against a deep purple twilight sky that slowly fades to black.
Chapter One
Lily Dale, New York
Labor Day, One year later
“Destination wedding?” Isabella Jordan echoes, gaping at Odelia Lauder.
“It’s when the bride and groom decide to get married in a faraway place, and their guests travel from all over to be there.”
“No, I mean, I know what it is—I just . . . here? In Lily Dale?”
“Yes!” Odelia’s curly carroty head bobs with enthusiasm. “Can you think of a more beautiful spot in the world? Look around, Bella!”
Bella looks.
On this balmy Monday afternoon, the view really is spectacular. Tucked into western New York’s rolling green hills, Cassadaga Lake shimmers in late-afternoon sunshine. White seagulls swoop and dive from the deep blue sky while fat brown ducks bob alongside swimmers and small boats. Bella’s five-year-old son, Max, and his pal, Jiffy Arden, are skipping stones from the weathered pier that juts from the pebbly shallows.
She and Odelia are seated in a pair of painted red Adirondack chairs, surrounded by abundant flower beds in full bloom on a wide lawn that stretches to the water’s edge. A gentle breeze jangles the wind chimes dangling in nearby gingko tree branches and the porch eaves of Valley View Guesthouse behind them.
The Dale’s rutted lanes are dotted with nineteenth-century cottages. Valley View, painted lavender gray with white trim, towers over them all, rising three stories. There’s no shortage of Queen Anne gingerbread on its gables, porches, and “witch’s hat” turret.
When Max first heard Bella describe it that way, he asked, “Are there witches here?”
“Nope. It’s an architectural term,” she assured him, though he appeared more curious than fearful. “No witches here.”
“Only ghosts.”
What was she supposed to say to that?
Lily Dale, New York, isn’t just the most beautiful spot in the entire world. It is, according to a painted blue sign posted beside the gated entrance, The World’s Largest Center for the Religion of Spiritualism.
For well over a century, Spiritualist psychics, mediums, and healers have populated the compact lakeside village. They announce their metaphysical specialties on painted wooden shingles that dangle from cottage signposts up and down the narrow streets, much like business signage in any other charming small town.
Only here, the locals aren’t advertising their services as hair stylists or tax attorneys.
In Lily Dale, things are a bit different.
Patsy Metcalf, Spiritual Healer
Reverend Doris Henderson, Clairvoyant
Andy Brighton, Psychic Consultant
And, of course, right next door to Valley View: Odelia Lauder, Registered Medium.
Bella may not be convinced her new neighbors can talk to dead people, but plenty of others are. Hordes of map-toting tourists in sneakers and fanny packs roam the Dale throughout the official summer season. They seek healing, enlightenment, and counseling, and nearly all of them hope to contact lost loved ones through a medium. Many even want to learn how to do it themselves via a full daily schedule of classes, lectures, and workshops. Visitors gape in awe at local landmarks like the Fairy Trail and the Pet Cemetery. They gather at Inspiration Stump, a mystical spot deep in the Leolyn Wood that’s said to be teeming with energy vortexes. Back at the guesthouse in the evenings, they breathlessly recap their experiences, and Bella marvels at human nature and the power of suggestion.
So . . . are there ghosts here?
“No ghosts,” Bella told Max, which was not exactly a lie.
After all, her medium friends strictly refer to the dearly departed as “Spirit.”
So even if Bella were to believe—which I don’t, she frequently assures herself, with varying degrees of conviction—she wouldn’t call them ghosts.
Over the two months she’s spent in Lily Dale, she’s become well versed in the local vernacular, which includes such catchphrases as “There are no coincidences” and “Expect truth.”
As a former science teacher, she’s approached the peculiar setting with healthy skepticism, but she can’t deny that a couple of strange incidents have occurred here. In the moment, they seemed convincing, but she later chalked them up to coincidence or electromagnetic energy or sensory phenomenology.
She hasn’t actually seen Spirit hanging around the Dale, and seeing is believing, right? This may be a
n extraordinary place, but she’s witnessed no filmy apparitions lurking in attic windows, no ladies in white drifting along midnight streets, no eerie lights or dissolving figures.
“Did I ever tell you about Johneen, my granddaughter Calla’s old college roommate?” Odelia asks.
“The one from Florida who rode her bike to Alaska?”
“No, that’s her friend Jeannine, from her writer’s critique group. This is Johneen. She lives in Pittsburgh, originally from Philadelphia, and they call her Johnny. And I’d be surprised if she’s ever even ridden a bike down the street. She’s a little bit—I’m trying to think of a nice way to put it.”
“Clumsy?” Bella certainly can relate to that, as can Odelia, who until last week was on crutches from a bad fall she took last spring.
“No, she’s not clumsy, she’s . . .”
“Lazy?”
“No, she’s . . .”
“Prissy?”
“Exactly!”
“So we’re talking about this prissy girl—woman?—named Johnny because . . .”
“Because she just got engaged, and she wants to get married at Valley View.” Odelia waves her hand at the guesthouse behind them.
“Wait, what now?” Bella stares at Odelia, who is, as always, quite a sight to behold.
Odelia seems to take the same approach to her wardrobe as she took to planting the flowers behind her house next door. Once, when Bella remarked on the colorful beds, Odelia said, “I just went to the nursery and bought any seeds that had bright colors on the packets, dumped them all together, closed my eyes, and tossed them out into the dirt. Wherever they happened to land, they grew. I don’t like fussy-looking gardens.”
In Odelia’s yard, delicate pink morning glories and frilly fuchsia sweet peas scale trellises and birdhouse poles as if in a desperate attempt to escape a sea of bold scarlet poppies and orange zinnias.
On Odelia’s person, a violet-sprigged halter top clashes with her green-and-yellow madras skirt and with her hair, freckles, cat-eye glasses, and lipstick, all in contrasting shades of red. Bella has grown as affectionately accustomed to Odelia’s quirks as she has to Lily Dale itself.
Still, she can’t help but ask, “Wouldn’t it be better to have the wedding at a place that . . . you know . . . puts on weddings?”
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