by Angie Fox
He sat up slowly. “Well,” he said, drawing out the word, “Sticky Pete stole it out from under me. But he’ll be back.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a ghostly Rolex. “I lifted his watch.”
We watched as it dissolved in his hand. “Dang. Pete’s left the property.” He shrugged. “Now I gotta steal it again.”
This was what I’d invited into my life.
“At least you have all your parts back,” I said, looking on the bright side.
He stood, shaking out his legs as he did. “I find I recover much faster when I’m having fun.”
“That actually works out well, because I need you to come to the mansion. I’m worried about Lee.”
He laughed. “That is not fun. This—” he spread his arms “—this is where I’m meant to be.”
Really? “Lying in a field at one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Pretty much,” he agreed, running his fingers through his hair. “Besides, you want my friends to have free run of this place?”
“How many of them are still here?” I squinted, looking out over my peaceful backyard, as if that would help me see.
“A few. I mean, we did lose some. Crazy Sam doesn’t like to be gone from the asylum too long. The Greely brothers haunt the highway. Suds is off robbing the liquor store. Last I saw, the band had passed out in the lake. No telling who else. It’d be impossible to clear them out, not if they don’t want to leave. So if I did go with you, we’d have to leave Five Alarm Harry in charge.”
It had been so much simpler with one ghost on my property. “Why do you call him Five Alarm Harry?”
“He likes to set fires,” Frankie said, as if it were a hobby or something. “Big ones. Remember the great Nashville fire of 1916?”
I didn’t know if he was warning me or joking. “You know what? Fine. You stay here.” No doubt it was what he wanted anyway. “But I do need to borrow your power. I need to see what’s really happening over at Rock Fall.”
“Yeesh. You haven’t given up on that place yet?”
“I never will.”
Frankie listened to someone I couldn’t see. “Yeah, I know she’s got spunk. And she’s quick.” He eyed me. “She’d be real useful for the armored car heist.”
“I didn’t hear that, Frankie.” I would not be an accessory to crime and they couldn’t touch an armored car, anyway. They’d pass right through it and everything it contained. “Now lend me your power.”
“Give, give, give…that’s all I do,” he said, walking toward the house, a bit unsteady on his feet. He motioned me to follow. “Let’s head out front”—he glanced behind us—“since you don’t want to see what we have cooking out here.”
Because whatever they had going on at the moment was worse than drag racing in my field or skinny-dipping in my pond.
“Let me get my keys,” I told him.
I fetched my purse from the house and made sure to lock Lucy inside, curled on her favorite blanket.
Frankie cringed when he saw the doll in the backseat of my car. I’d exiled it there after the bathtub incident.
I hesitated. “There’s no way to make you feel better about this, is there?”
“Just drive,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.
I steered the land yacht out to the front of the house and parked. “All right.”
He glanced out the window, toward the rear of the house. “Drive a little more.”
“Truly?” I transferred my foot to the gas and eased the car along the driveway.
“More,” Frankie coaxed, almost to the end of my property.
“Now?” I asked when we’d reached the very edge.
Frankie made the iffy sign with his hand. “Beware of loud noises,” he said, letting his power prickle over me.
A gunshot cracked behind the house, startling me.
“Told you,” he said pragmatically.
“The house had better be standing when I get back,” I said, only half joking.
He chuckled and floated out the door.
I told myself it didn’t matter. I couldn’t control the ghosts, not even the one who lived with me. I’d just have to trust Frankie and pray for the best.
In the meantime, I kept looking forward, toward the job I had to do and the ghosts I’d face at Rock Fall mansion.
* * *
Lee wasn’t at the cottage when I pulled up a short time later. His garden behind the house stood deserted as well. Nothing of a ghostly nature stirred, which I supposed could be considered positive, except that I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
I hopped back in the car to try the mansion itself. It stood dark and forlorn under the cloudy sky.
Certainly, Lee wouldn’t enter alone, especially after what had happened yesterday. I tried the door anyway. The wood rattled against the old lock, but didn’t open.
I had to admit, I was a bit relieved. If I could have walked inside, I’d have felt obligated to search for Lee.
Alone.
“All right,” I said, stepping back, keeping my gaze on the windows by the porch and on the empty yard beyond.
I ventured out back, past the half-dead hedgerows.
The remains of an expansive brick porch hunkered under a falling-down pergola. Weeds spilled out of rusted iron pots. Beyond, crumbling rock paths stretched out toward a round pool choked with vines and purple flowering weeds.
Beyond the pool, gnarled trees towered over life-sized statues of Greek goddesses, their faces turned to the sky or toward their water jugs, blissfully unaware of the vines snaked around their bodies, squeezing them like giant anacondas.
“Lee!” I called, passing under the shadows of the trees, trying to stick to the remains of the path.
If he was out here working, he could be hard to spot.
The trees broke. Straight ahead, I saw the fountain we’d visited on our first night in the gardens. I made a hard left, away from that place.
A low brick wall ran away from the clearing and I followed it toward a looming structure behind a copse of trees. When I drew closer, I saw it was an old carriage house. It stood two stories tall, with two pairs of arched wooden doors. Narrow windows squeezed in between, their shutters closed tight.
This might be a convenient place for Lee to keep his gardening tools. “Lee?”
The doors were locked tight, but I did spot a window with a shutter half falling off. Nearby, a naked smiling cherub had lost his head. It lay on the ground at his feet, so I borrowed it and placed it near the wall. Standing upon it, I could just see over the window ledge. When I tried to open the shutter all the way, it gave up its hold on the building and clattered to the ground.
“Whoops.” Now I was kind of glad the owner hadn’t answered my calls.
I peered in the window, through the rippled glass caked with dirt.
It seemed as if this building had stood abandoned for some time. It appeared on the ghostly plane as it did in real life. Large tires with white rims and honest-to-goodness spokes hung from hooks on the wall, as if waiting to be mounted onto the open-roofed, single-seat roadster parked inside. The next bay held a turn-of-the-century truck, with a boxy closed carriage. Hay bales, blackened with age, were stacked in the back. More hay bales crowded the small workbench to the right.
“You get a nice look?” a voice asked from behind me.
I spun and leapt off the cherub’s head. “You scared me,” I said, realizing I was addressing a handsome, dark-haired ghost. He held a pair of large garden shears and eyed me like he didn’t quite know what to make of a girl standing on his statuary. “It was broken when I found it,” I explained.
He made a helpless gesture with his free hand. “The whole place is falling apart. It’s a shame.”
“Do you work here?” I asked. His rough black pants and simple shirt seemed appropriate for a job outside, even if his vest didn’t seem entirely practical.
“I’m in charge of the gardens.” He glanced out over the ru
ined landscape. “Or I was.”
“Verity Long,” I said, by way of introduction.
“Tobias Crowe.” He nodded. “I saw you the last time you were out here. You tell the Treadwell boy he’s doing a fine job.”
“Lee?” I asked. “Have you spotted him this morning?”
“Sure did. He was out by the gazebo. I’ll show you,” he said, gesturing for me to join him on the path. “I think he’s getting ready to plant some blue lobelia, a fine choice,” he said, his head passing through a low-lying tree limb.
I ducked around the overgrowth. “I’ll bet you see a lot that goes on here,” I offered.
He gave no reaction. “My focus was always on plants rather than people,” he said diplomatically, “it makes life simpler.”
Right now, I would have preferred a gossip. “Did you work here during the tragedy?”
We walked in silence for a few moments and I was afraid he wouldn’t answer. “Jack’s father, Hank Treadwell, hired me. He was an amateur botanist and spared no expense on his garden.” He paused to look over a plant that had overgrown the path. “You tell Lee he’s doing a good job. He reminds me a lot of Hank in the way he cares for his plants. He takes the time to do things right.”
I tried to see the garden as it once was, full of life and beauty. At least the birds still chirped. And animals scuttled through the underbrush.
“Were you here for the fire in the grape arbor?” I asked.
He dropped his eyes to the path. “They let us all go after the family died. But I heard about it. Happened right over there,” he said, pointing to a tangled mess of weeds a short way from the carriage house. A ruined statue of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, stood half-buried in the overgrowth. The muscled, bearded god held up a handful of grapes and a flagon of wine.
I stepped off the path, into the tangle of weeds, but I saw no other ghosts and no lingering evidence of fire damage in the overgrowth of wild bushes and weeds. “Is it true that the fire happened a month after the family’s passing?”
He scratched his jaw. “That sounds about right.”
Intrigued, I ran my feet along the ground, searching for…I didn’t know what.
“You’d best stick to the path,” Tobias warned. “We get snakes.”
“I’ll be careful,” I called. Then my sole hit something hard.
The ghost frowned as I bent and dug out a half-buried iron candle plate poured in a floral pattern. Black wax collected in the grooves. Or it could be old wax gone black with age. “Do you know whose this is?” I asked, holding it out to him.
The gardener made a sign of the cross. “Leave it there.”
“Did it belong to the governess?” I pressed. “The flowers appear to be jasmines. I smelled those in her room. She was out here when the arbor burned.”
“I never gave her no mind,” Tobias said, going defensive. “She was a strange one.”
“I think I’ll keep it.” It would go nicely with my creepy doll. I’d keep all the pieces together, even if I didn’t quite know what they meant yet.
“Leave it,” Tobias instructed, gliding away from the ruined grape arbor. “It doesn’t belong to you.”
“True,” I conceded. And I did want his help, and his company. Quickly, I placed the candleholder back where I found it, making note of its location so I could examine it again if need be.
A short distance away, under a copse of trees, I spotted an old graveyard. “Is this where the family is buried?” I asked, pushing farther into the garden.
Gnarled tree roots thrust from the soil, tripping me, and weeds rose up all around. Yet the small, fenced cemetery appeared tidy. The wrought-iron gate creaked as I pushed through and stepped onto perfectly manicured grass. I saw the rounded graves of Jack and Annabelle and a smaller stone for Charlotte. Robert’s stood a distance away, stark in its simplicity.
“Lee keeps it up nice,” Tobias said, hovering near the more modern, flat grave of Jack Junior. “Lee came back to Sugarland because it was his father’s wish to be buried here. Annabelle begged Jack Junior to come home after Jack’s death. He took the next train from New York. By the time he got to town, there were two policemen waiting for him at the station. Told him his mother was dead and his sister. They thought someone was targeting the family. Told him to turn around and go back to New York.”
I crouched low and ran a hand over his cold grave. “How awful for him.” To be separated from his family like that when they needed him most. “Did the authorities ever tell him it was safe to return?”
“Even if they had, what was left to return to?” Tobias asked. “His family was dead and buried. He stayed in New York until it was time for him to be buried with them.”
“How sad. And then Lee moved into the gardener’s house. Is Jack Junior here in spirit?”
Tobias shook his head. “I’ve never seen him.”
“What about the governess? She stayed. Is she buried here?”
“She is,” he said quietly. “They didn’t give her a tombstone, but she’s right over there,” he said, pointing to a narrow plot a small distance away from the family.
Good. At least she had a place. “I’m told she was found in the kitchen. Do you know how she died?”
He glided away through the fence and into the trees. “That’s enough gossip.”
“Wait for me.” I said a quick prayer for the departed and rushed to join the ghost.
He’d made it all the way to the path beyond the overgrown orchard by the time I caught up with him. I knew I was trying his patience, but I needed his help.
“I’m sorry to impose, but it is important we speak,” I explained. “Lee asked me to help figure out what’s going on in the house and gardens,” I added, fighting off the gnats.
“Nothing that a bit of elbow grease won’t fix,” the ghost muttered, his eyes straight ahead.
If only it were so simple. “We’re looking for an artifact inside that could help Lee gain the financial resources to fix up the estate.”
Tobias shoved his hands into the pockets of his work pants. “I don’t know about any of that,” he said, glancing at the mansion, leading me toward the fountain where Lee and I had seen the doll heads. “I don’t go anywhere near that house.”
I took a chance and pressed harder. “Is it because of the dark presence inside?”
“I belong out here,” he said, as if that answered anything.
I tried not to flinch as we passed the fountain. At the same time, I didn’t look inside the basin, either. “Have you ever met the little girl?”
“Jack’s daughter, Charlotte?” he asked, his voice warming. “Sure. She’s a peach.”
“She seems to have taken a shine to me. At least, she keeps appearing,” I said, glancing back at the fountain and at the window where I’d first spotted her. “Before I can say anything to her, she disappears.”
He led me under an archway choked with vines. “She used to like to watch me weed the daisy patch by the gazebo. It was her dolls’ favorite place to play.”
“I just wish I could talk to her. Even once. Can you help?”
He gave me a sideways glance. “She doesn’t speak.” He shook his head. “Poor little thing’s been mute her whole life.”
“Really?” I dodged an oak tree that had taken root in the middle of the path. “I never would have imagined.”
“Don’t be offended if she don’t look you in the eye, either. She has trouble with that. But she’s happy, or at least she was. I don’t see her much anymore.” He frowned. “That governess has got her locked up in the house.”
I swallowed down my surprise and a bit of trepidation. I’d rather not go head-to-head with the governess again. But if I couldn’t speak to the girl, how could I begin to understand what she was trying to communicate? “I suppose the governess has reason to be protective,” I ventured.
“Would have been nice if they cared more when the girl was alive.” He glared at the house. “Nobody gave a whit for her then.
They thought she was slow. So what if she was? She was a sweet child and she loved my garden and my gazebo,” he said. “Look at it.”
A rusty iron bower rose up from beyond a tangled row of half-dead box hedges. Tobias passed through while I stepped over and around, the sharp, stiff branches scraping my legs.
He sighed, as if he’d come home. “This was her favorite place to play,” he said, leading me to a spot less than twenty feet from the edge of the cliff. The gazebo leaned haphazardly on its stone foundation, flakes of white paint clinging in the grooves of the vine and leaf pattern.
“Our daisy patch was right over here,” he said, leading me to a plot of mud and debris between the gazebo and the cliff edge. “I’d take extra time with those flowers and just talk about the plants and what I was doing.” He swiped at the corner of his eyes. “She’d listen and play. I think we both enjoyed the company.”
I stood near the cliff’s edge and tried to imagine the lonely little girl playing with her dolls, unable to truly communicate, and found myself glad for the gardener who cared for her.
“Is this where she fell?” I asked, venturing toward the cliff face.
Just beyond the daisy patch, the ground grew rocky and uneven.
He lowered his eyes to the ground. “She ran straight off the edge. No one knows why.”
I braved a few steps closer until I could see over the edge, down the sheer cliff face to the rocks and the road below. “Were you there?”
He floated several feet to my right. “Not when it happened. Her mother had asked me to cut her some fresh blooms from the rose garden, so I left her playing by the gazebo.”
“Did Mrs. Treadwell request roses often?” I asked, wondering if it was a common occurrence or if something more sinister was afoot. The ghost of Mrs. Treadwell seemed to be the most tortured of the lot.
“She liked her flowers,” he said.
“So no one saw Charlotte fall,” I mused.
He hesitated. “They say not.” He turned away from the edge, as if he didn’t want to imagine it. He closed his eyes briefly. “Robert had gone looking for her. He was the one who found her, poor thing. He seemed to think her death had something to do with a curse they brought back from Egypt. Kept going on about it.”
