The Haunted Inn (A Lin Coffin Mystery Book 8)

by J A Whiting

  No phone.

  I left it near the cooler. Bubbles of rage rose in her chest. Maggie took it.

  With her heart pounding, Lin looked up to the windows of the house, and then whispered to the dog, “Let’s get out of here.”

  The two took off running from the backyard around to the front driveway and when they reached it, they stopped short.

  Maggie stood in the driveway beside her late husband’s black BMW, her face contorted with hate and fury. The BMW’s trunk was open. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  The fur on Nicky’s neck stood up and he let out a menacing growl.

  “To the police.” With the dog at her heels, Lin started towards the far side of the long driveway to head for the street.

  “Stop right there.” Maggie held a gun in her hand and it was pointing right at Nicky.

  With her teeth clenched, Lin stepped in front of her little dog and gestured for him to stay behind her. “Really? You’re going to shoot my dog? You pathetic witch.”

  “Get in the trunk.” Maggie used the gun to point to the car. “Or you can watch me shoot your dog before I shoot you.”

  Lin began to inch towards the woman. “Or, I’ll jump you and my dog can watch me shoot you.”

  “Stop. Stand still. You’ll do as I say.” Maggie’s eyes were wild and her hand seemed to shake slightly.

  Lin stopped.

  “Keep your distance from me. Walk slowly to the trunk. Very slowly.” Maggie gestured to the vehicle. The bright sun glinted off of her gun. “Get going. Small steps.”

  “Stay with me, Nick,” Lin said softly and began shuffling to the back of the car. When she was a few feet from the BMW, she made a hand gesture and the dog slipped under the vehicle.

  “Get in the trunk,” Maggie demanded.

  Lin knew the odds of surviving if a person left a scene with an attacker and was taken elsewhere. Those odds weren’t good.

  “Get in,” the woman screeched.

  “How? How should I lie down?” Lin played dumb hoping to get Maggie to come closer.

  “Just get in.” Maggie seethed and when she took one step forward to give Lin a push, Lin wheeled with her arm raised, and used her elbow to ram it into the woman’s face. Maggie shrieked and blood trickled from her nose.

  Although the woman staggered, she did not drop the gun, but Lin had enough time to rush to the other side of the vehicle for cover.

  Sputtering and muttering, Maggie ran her hand over her nose to wipe at the blood. Her eyes blazed with madness. When the woman moved to the side of the BMW where Lin stood, the young landscaper dashed to the front of the vehicle as if it were a game of musical chairs. Maggie moved to the front and Lin moved to passenger side.

  Furious with frustration, Maggie moved back to the driver’s side of the car, lifted her hand and shot through the windows of the BMW hoping to hit Lin standing on the passenger side. The window glass shattered with a roar, but Lin had ducked down just in time to miss being hit by the bullet.

  Maggie let out a curse.

  The sound of an engine reached Lin’s ears and in three seconds, Leonard’s truck came into view as it came down the long driveway.

  Lin frantically waved and pointed at Maggie so that Leonard wouldn’t drive right into her gunfire.

  Kneeling beside the BMW, Lin called for her dog and when Nicky crawled to her on his stomach, she lifted him into her arms and hurried onto the front lawn where she stood to see Maggie raise her gun and fire over and over at Leonard’s windshield.

  Leonard wheeled the truck to the side and deliberately crashed it into the sedan sending the car hurtling in Maggie’s direction. He leapt from the cab of the truck and rushed towards Lin who had crouched on the grass with her sweet dog cradled in her arms.

  “She tried to poison us,” Lin yelled. “She poisoned Maura and Warren.”

  Leonard lifted Lin to her feet, took the dog into his own arms, and was about to hustle them around the side of the palatial home to the tree line away from Maggie when he heard a groan.

  “Stay here.” Leonard pushed his phone into Lin’s hands and jogged to the driveway where he used his truck for cover as he walked around it to get a look at the woman.

  Maggie was on her back in front of her vehicle, unconscious. The gun rested on the crushed-shell driveway. When Leonard’s truck crashed into the BMW, the force sent it careening across the driveway where it hit the woman.

  “Coffin,” Leonard yelled. “We’ll be needing an ambulance.”

  The police and the ambulance arrived. Maggie Topper was taken away to the hospital, alive, but unconscious.

  Lin gave her account of what had happened at the Topper house and directed the officers to her cooler at the rear of the home where the dog’s bowl and her water bottle were safely tucked inside as evidence that Maggie had attempted to poison them.

  Two hours later, the police were still working the scene and Lin, feeling weak and shaky, sat on the front steps of the Topper’s house with Nicky on her lap and her head resting on Leonard’s shoulder.

  “You figured it out, Coffin. And you lived to see another day.”

  “Thanks to you. If you hadn’t come back, she would have killed me.”

  “Well, she didn’t get that chance.” Leonard took a deep breath. “Her killing days are over … and that is thanks to you.”

  Lin’s phone buzzed with a text from Anton. The police had found her phone inside the house and returned it to her. “Anton says that he’s found notes and records that show Vernon Willard bought this land in the spring of 1843. He had this house built in 1844.” She looked at her partner. “Elise went missing a few months after Willard bought this land. He owned this parcel when he killed her.”

  Leonard wore a questioning expression, but before he could ask anything, a detective approached them and thanked them for their reports. “A couple of the officers have found a substance in the house that will prove interesting once it’s analyzed. I suspect it might be something highly toxic. You were very lucky,” he told Lin with a nod. Looking at the dog on Leonard’s lap, the detective added, “So were you, little fella.” Walking away, he said, “I’ll be in touch.”

  “How about we get outta here?” Leonard asked his partner. He noticed Lin looking across the yard and at the same time, Nicky yipped a happy bark. “What’s up?”

  A smile had formed over Lin’s face. “It’s Elise,” she said as her forehead scrunched up. The shimmering ghost floated about a foot above the ground and began moving slowly to the side of the house. Her see-through hand gestured for Lin to come along.

  “I think she wants me to follow her.” Before the young woman stood up, Nicky had jumped from Leonard’s lap and ran to the spirit.

  “Come with me.” Lin tugged on her partner’s arm.

  The threesome followed the ghost to the trees at the far end of the grassy, open section of the yard. Elise waited for them and then drifted like smoke into the wooded area as her companions stumbled over vines and underbrush.

  “Where is she taking us?” Leonard grumped.

  Lin didn’t say anything, but she thought she knew where her ghost was leading them.

  When she reached a huge boulder standing deep in the woods, Elise stopped and hovered next to it making eye contact with Lin.

  The dog woofed and wagged his tail.

  “What is it?” Leonard asked. “Why did we stop?”

  When Elise gave Lin a nod, her form shimmered with silver light, swirled in a rush, and shot into the air above the treetops and was gone.

  “Coffin. Why did we stop?”

  As Lin stared at the boulder, Nicky rushed forward and began to dig, his paws moving so fast they blurred against the ground.

  Lin held onto Leonard’s arm and spoke softly. “I think we just found the spot where Vernon Willard buried Elise’s body.”

  25

  Maggie Topper survived the injuries from the BMW hitting her in her own driveway. With her lawyer by her side, she
confessed to poisoning her husband as well as Maura Wells. She’d discovered Warren’s infidelity by hiring a private detective who reported on Warren’s visits to the two women, one in Chicago and one in Boston, who did not know that Warren was married and believed they had an honest relationship with the conniving man. Maggie had flown into a rage when she learned of Warren’s activities and now claimed to have been in the throes of mental instability when she committed the crimes.

  Maura was poisoned while sitting in a coffee shop doing some reading. When she got up to use the restroom, Maggie slipped into Maura’s seat and deposited the poison into the woman’s coffee. Warren was easier. Knowing that it took the poison from thirty to forty-five minutes to act, Maggie put it into the coffee her husband was drinking right before he left for the restaurant to meet his friends.

  Maggie had the same plans for Sofia Rizzo, but because the young woman had been in Europe on business, she had to wait longer than she’d wanted to. When Sofia arrived on Nantucket to speak with the police, it was a pleasant turn of events for Maggie. She wouldn’t need to travel to Boston to carry out her plan and, in fact, had prepared the poison for Sofia on the day Lin noticed Maggie was wearing Elise’s necklace and was on her way into town to murder Sofia.

  Instead, the poison ended up in Lin’s water bottle after Lin asked Maggie about the necklace she was wearing and inquired if she knew Maura Wells and Sofia Rizzo.

  The necklace that was stolen from Elise’s body would eventually be given to Maura’s sister, Bridget, and later, passed to Bridget’s daughter since they were the only living relatives of Elise Porter.

  Elise’s bones were uncovered by investigators who dug next to the boulder in the woods behind the Toppers’ house. Elise would find a proper resting place in a cemetery plot right next to that of her descendant, Maura Wells, and both women would be accompanied to Chicago by Maura’s loving sister.

  The strangeness of Vernon Willard murdering Elise and then two hundred years later, a descendant of Willard murdering Elise’s descendant was not lost on Lin and Viv and they had several discussions about the poetic justice of Willard’s last descendant spending the rest of her life in prison while Elise’s relatives, Bridget and her daughter, would carry on their family genes.

  “We’ll never really know why Vernon Willard killed Elise,” Viv said. “That secret is buried in the long-ago years of history. But at least you found her bones.”

  “And the murders of Maura and Warren have been solved,” Lin said.

  “Yesterday, when I was dropping the baked goods off at the inn, Patricia told me that her ghost hasn’t been seen in the inn for weeks,” Viv told her cousin with a smile. “I bet Elise has crossed over.”

  “I hope she did,” Lin said despite the twinge of sorrow she felt knowing she would never see the ghost again. “I hope she’s at peace now.”

  On a cooler day at the end of September, Lin and Jeff and Viv and John went on a hike in the Middle Moors along the sandy paths and trails. After being immersed in the sadness of the case, Lin felt the need to spend some time outdoors in the beauty and peacefulness of nature.

  The couples brought sandwiches and drinks and, under the brilliant blue sky, they ate their lunches sitting on the ground near a lake surrounded by green and gold vegetation.

  “You have a new water bottle,” Viv said when she saw her cousin remove the blue and white water container from her backpack.

  “Yeah,” Lin said with a half-smile. “My old one had some awful kind of residue in it.”

  “You mean poison?” John asked as he munched on his sandwich. “Probably a good idea that you tossed it.”

  “Actually, the police took it, but I didn’t ask to have it back,” Lin kidded.

  “I don’t know how selling the Topper place is going to go,” John said. “A murderer owns the place and her ancestor murdered someone and buried the body on the property. Not exactly positive advertising.”

  “It might take a special buyer to overlook all that,” Jeff guessed.

  “The person who will overlook those characteristics of the place will also have to be a very wealthy buyer,” John shrugged. “It might be hard to find such a person.”

  “You’ll sell it,” Viv encouraged. “Someone will come along who will fall in love with it.”

  “Or maybe it should be knocked down,” Lin frowned. “Nothing good has come out of that place.”

  “Thanks, Lin. There goes my commission,” John said.

  After lunch, Viv and John wanted to hike down to some ponds, but Lin had something she wanted to do so told them she and Jeff would catch up to them in a little while.

  Lin and her boyfriend hiked about a mile north to Altar Rock and when they reached their destination, they turned in slow circles taking in the views of the trees, low bushes, a pond, and a glimpse of the harbor off in the distance.

  Lin let out a sigh and Jeff put his arm around her.

  “This case was a tough one. It really highlighted the worst of human nature,” she said. “Sometimes it really gets to me. These spirits who are unable to cross over because of what was done to them. What if I couldn’t see ghosts? What if I never moved back here? What would happen to the spirits then?”

  “But you can see ghosts and you did move back,” Jeff squeezed her shoulders. “Maybe it’s all meant to be. We know Lilianna helped ghosts and she lived a long, long, life and right before she passed away, you showed up. Was that only coincidence? I don’t think so.”

  Lin turned to face Jeff and looked into his warm, kind eyes. “Do you think there’s always someone here who can help them?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised at all. There’s something special about this island.” Jeff chuckled. “Maybe it puts out a call for help when a ghost-seer is about to leave.”

  Lin grinned. “And someone answers the call?”

  “Could be.” Jeff pulled her close and hugged her tight for a minute.

  When they separated, Lin opened her backpack and took out a beautiful white rose. “I picked the white color because a white rose symbolizes love, devotion, spirituality, and hope.”

  Lin walked over to Altar Rock and stood in front of it thinking about Elise.

  “I’ve been feeling sort of low on hope lately,” she told Jeff. “Why can’t people be good to each other? Why do people cheat and steal and lie and kill? There’s more than enough in the world to go around, to share. Will there be a place after death where all the stupid mistakes we make are forgiven? Where all our hurts fall away? Where people can be kind and good to each other?”

  A tear rolled down Lin’s cheek as she placed the rose on the rock for Elise. “I hope so,” she whispered.

  She and Jeff stood side by side for a few minutes and then turned to walk away. They were only a few yards from the rock when the whoosh of cold air swirled around Lin and she stopped and looked back.

  Her ghost stood glimmering on the other side of the rock wearing a long white dress with a blue ribbon around the waist. Elise’s hair was soft and gently fell around her shoulders, and her bright blue eyes held Lin’s.

  The ghost smiled with such warmth that it filled Lin’s heart.

  “She’s here,” she told Jeff in a whispered voice. “I’ve never seen her look so peaceful … so light … so happy.”

  With a lovely smile on her face, Elise’s atoms sparkled silver and gold and began to spin. The ghost put her hand on her heart and bowed her head to Lin, and then the atoms flared into a wild whoosh of white sparkles that shot high into the air like a firework, and were gone.

  Lin blinked at the sky for a few moments. “She left,” she told Jeff as she reached for him and took his hand in hers.

  Jeff said, “You know those questions you just asked, about will our hurts fall away and will there be a place where people will be good to each other? I think Elise just answered them for you.”

  Lin wrapped her boyfriend in a tight, loving embrace as hope trickled slowly, but surely back into her heart. />
  Thank you for reading!

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  Books/Series By J. A. Whiting

  *CLAIRE ROLLINS COZY MYSTERIES

  *LIN COFFIN COZY MYSTERIES

  *PAXTON PARK COZY MYSTERIES

  *SWEET COVE COZY MYSTERIES

  *OLIVIA MILLER MYSTERIES (not cozy)

  About the Author

  J.A. Whiting lives with her family in Massachusetts. Whiting loves reading and writing mystery and suspense stories.

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