Deader Homes and Gardens

by Angie Fox

  He was calling me and my home old fashioned? “What sort of updating did you have in mind? You’re from 1932.”

  “So’s your light fixture on the back porch,” he said, hesitating when we reached the edge of the cultivated garden.

  It wasn’t that old. From the 1970s, maybe. “I’ve been focusing on other things.” Like paying for food and electricity. I didn’t know how I was going to afford a new cell phone. We stopped in front of a low wall of overgrown rosebushes. “Are you sure you’re up for this?” I asked.

  He nodded his head. “I’m Frankie the German. Nothing scares me.”

  “Hold on to that thought,” I told him.

  Silently, we stepped into the wild section of the garden and I found the break cut into the thorny bushes. I turned sideways, sucking in a breath to avoid the inch-long thorns. Frankie passed straight through.

  The remains of an ornamental garden lay ahead. Dead branches littered the rippling red brick path, and overgrown bushes spilled from their beds, their scraggly branches brushing my legs as we passed.

  “I met the gardener who haunts these paths,” I murmured, competing with the hum of insects. The hot morning sun mixed with humid air made me sweat. “His name is Tobias.”

  “Never heard of him.” Frankie glided through a tree limb brought low by the weight of predatory vines.

  “Maybe he doesn’t get out much.” We passed under the chipped and leaning trellis and into the tunnel beyond. I breathed in the stink of rotting leaves and kept my eyes open for…anything.

  “I forgot how much I can’t stand this place,” Frankie muttered.

  I hadn’t. Dead ahead stood a small courtyard with a bubbling fountain. A stone nymph stood naked in a large round pool, her generous figure twisted in a coy pose as she held aloft a jug of water. I remembered this place. The last time we’d been here, the fountain had held doll heads.

  I didn’t see how it could get much worse.

  We approached it slowly. Frankie let out a curse as water began to bubble from the nymph’s eyes and streak down into the pool. “Move it! Move it!”

  He disappeared while I did a fast walk past the fountain, refusing to even look into the basin.

  When I’d cleared the courtyard, I blocked my face with my arms and broke into a run. Branches slapped my ankles and my elbows. It didn’t slow me down a bit. “Frankie,” I said, searching ahead for him. I rounded a corner and located my buddy near an overgrown boxwood. He stood with his back to a falling-down wall.

  “That place…” he began.

  “I know.” A group of birds took flight, shaking the trees above. “Come on. I’ll show you the grape arbor. It’s right over there,” I said, pointing to a bare stretch dead ahead on the right.

  Frankie passed it right up. “Anything good in here?” he asked, moving to the carriage house beyond.

  “Not exactly,” I said, going to draw him back. The place appeared as abandoned and forlorn as it had the last time I’d seen it. “I met Tobias when I was peeking in the window,” I said, noticing the shutter I’d broken. On the ground below it lay the stone cherub’s head I’d used as a step stool.

  Frankie flicked his eyes in every direction, as if he anticipated a surprise attack.

  I hurried over to him. “You hear something?”

  “Maybe,” he muttered. “I don’t like this place.”

  I stepped up onto the cherub’s head. “I stood right here and looked at the cars inside.” I peered through the rippled glass, with Frankie right next to me. Inside, we saw an open-roofed roadster and a turn-of-the-century truck. Both had rusted where they stood. Hay bales, blackened with age, littered the floor.

  Frankie let out a low whistle. “Hotsy totsy.”

  “What do you see?” Because I was looking at a decaying mess.

  Frankie scoffed. “You got a packed truck in there.”

  “Yes. Full of gardening supplies, most likely.” It was the only thing they’d need in bulk out this way. Large bags marked fertilizer thrust from the back end. A tarp hid the rest.

  “How much fertilizer do you need?” Frankie scoffed. “Looks to me like somebody was packing a score.” He glided through the wall without me.

  “For real?” I tried to see, but all I managed to do was press my nose up against the dirty glass. “I’m coming around.” I hopped off the cherub and searched for a way inside.

  I didn’t have to try hard. The lock had rusted on the pair of arched wooden doors to my left. I bashed it with a rock and it broke right open.

  Success!

  For a split second, I debated the moral implications of being glad to have such an easy time breaking and entering, but that lasted about as long as it took me to toss the rock. Frankie and I had a ghostly mystery to solve.

  I stepped into the musty garage.

  “I was right,” Frankie called from the truck. “They’ve got guns up front and crazy stuff in the back!”

  “Let me see.” I moved quickly to the truck, every step stirring up dust. I put a foot up on the runner and looked through the open driver’s side window. Two shotguns rested on the front seat. “We’ve got to call the police.”

  “Not so fast.” Frankie’s head popped through the driver’s side seat, scaring the bejesus out of me. “We’ve got a king’s ransom in gold back here!”

  “Gold?” I repeated, my mind racing to catch up.

  “Those bags are full of gold doodads!” he exclaimed, losing his hat, not even caring as it fell straight through the car and out of sight. “You got three big statues of babes with no shirts. Let me tell you: that is art. You got a mummy. You got gold beetles. They look solid. Even if they’re not, you got a necklace with rubies.”

  “It’s the find from the tomb,” I said, scarcely believing it.

  “Ain’t that a kick.” Frankie grinned. “If I knew a score like this was coming, I’d have helped you sooner. Hell, I’d have broken in eighty years ago.”

  What a sweetheart. “Someone cleared these items out of the house.” Into what appeared to be a getaway vehicle that had never made it off the property. “I don’t get it,” I said, dropping down off the runner. “Who would kill Jack, Robert, Annabelle and Charlotte, steal the treasure, and leave it here?”

  “Who cares?” Frankie asked, his power surging. I felt it crackle down my arms. “We’ve got the loot! We did it. We finally did it!

  We did. Lee would be so glad. If he was okay.

  No, he had to be okay. He hadn’t found the carriage house. He didn’t see. Heck, I didn’t even realize what I’d seen.

  “We’re home free,” I said, digging in my bag for the phone. “I’m going to call Ellis. He and the police can secure this spot. I don’t want to touch those guns.”

  “Verity.” His voice chilled.

  “I don’t care if you don’t like the police,” I said, spotting the phone under Frankie’s urn. “They’ll help us. You’ll see.” I’d look up Lee’s number. We’d get him right over here. We’d fix this once and for all.

  “Not the coppers. Look,” he urged. “It’s creeping down the wall.”

  “What?” I looked up and saw the jagged shadow. “Oh.”

  I didn’t even have time to scream before it took the form of a man, a large imposing man, before crystalizing into the full apparition of Robert Treadwell.

  This probably looked really, really bad to the ghost. I slammed my back against the truck. “We’re not stealing anything.” Now I understood why he hadn’t wanted me or anybody else near the house and its contents. This was his life’s work. His and Jack’s biggest discovery. And he thought we were trying to take it out from under him. “We only want to see what’s here,” I promised.

  “It’s mine!” he hissed, reaching for me.

  “Run!” Frankie screamed, disappearing into thin air.

  I used the split-second distraction to dash past Robert and out of the carriage house.

  “Die!” he rumbled, chasing after me.

  He had to r
ealize that I didn’t want his treasure. Well, maybe I did. For Lee. But what was a ghost going to do with it at this point?

  And how was I supposed to outrun a ghost?

  I tore through the ruined gardens, with Robert cold at my back. I didn’t dare turn and risk a stumble. I leapt over gnarled roots and busted pavement and ran for everything I was worth.

  I lost my bearings, dodged toward the mansion, and saw Robert appear dead ahead.

  “Frankie!” I didn’t know if he could fight the ghost in his condition, but I knew I had no shot.

  But Frankie was nowhere to be found.

  I turned and ran the other way, away from the mansion, away from the queen’s treasure. I dashed past the haunted fountain, and a path opened up to my left, the one that led back to Lee’s house. Just as I was about to take it, Robert shimmered into view several yards down the ruined walkway.

  He sneered, gliding toward me.

  I blew straight past, toward the gazebo and Charlotte’s daisy patch.

  The trees broke and I saw the cliff ahead of me. Sweet Jesus. I stopped dead in my tracks and a wall of energy slammed into the back of me, shoving me forward.

  “What the—no!”

  It surged ahead, carrying me faster than I could have run, straight toward the drop-off.

  I fell to my knees and still it pushed me toward the precipice. I grasped at weeds. Clumps of grass and soil came up in my hands. The energy at my back took my breath away and drove me forward. “Frankie!”

  “I can’t stop it!” he yelled, head hovering over the drop-off. “He’s too strong!”

  The ghost of Annabelle materialized in front of him, her eyes blazing and her mouth set in a rigid line. “Enough!” she snarled as I went over the edge.

  Her energy slammed into me from the front, forcing me against Robert’s strength from the back, trapping me like a bug between two pieces of glass.

  I stared at the rage-filled mother in front of me before daring to look down past my dangling feet to the thin air and the sheer drop below.

  Chapter 20

  I froze. One wrong move by me or either of the ghosts who held me and I’d plunge to my death. Annabelle gritted her teeth and shoved her power straight at me, through me. I felt it burn as it slammed against Robert’s power behind me.

  “You,” she hissed, looking straight through me, her hate focused on the ghost at my back. “I see you now. You showed yourself yesterday in the bath when you tried to drown the mortal girl.”

  “She didn’t belong in our house,” he boomed.

  “So you drown her. You push her off a cliff.” Her eyes blazed with hate. “Just like you pushed my baby off a cliff.”

  Robert’s power sputtered and his grip on me loosened. I slipped.

  “That was a mistake. I was chasing her. It was a game,” Robert entreated, from behind me. His power surged. “She fell! She did that!”

  “You killed her!” Annabelle’s eyes blazed and she let out a blast of power that pushed me against the wall made by Robert so hard it made my head spin. It squeezed my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

  The shadows around Annabelle’s eyes deepened. “I caught you looking in Charlotte’s room after she died. What did you want?” She shoved again. The air whooshed from my lungs. “Tell me!” Annabelle screamed, pushing forward, thrusting Robert and me back. My foot caught the edge of the cliff and sent pebbles tumbling to the ground at least twenty stories below.

  I could feel his hard, cold breath at my back. He tossed an arm out, hitting my shoulder, the cold wet impact slamming through me as he swept me away behind him. I landed with a thud on solid ground, shaking, thrilled to be alive.

  I scurried away, keeping an eye on the ghosts.

  Robert stood his ground on the cliff’s edge, with Annabelle hovering over him. “Charlotte stole some property of mine,” he said, biting off every word. “I would have found it and I would have been gone if you’d have stopped asking questions.”

  “Gone?” she gasped. “You would have just left? Left me to mourn Jack all alone?”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” he shot back.

  “You hurt me,” she said, her voice eerily cold.

  “What did you do, Robert?” Jack stood behind me and drew a pistol. Annabelle gasped when she saw her husband. He pointed the barrel straight at his brother-in-law.

  I scrambled out of the line of fire.

  Robert stared at Jack, tears welling in his eyes. “I didn’t mean it. She was all I had left. She’s my sister, for God’s sake.”

  Jack leveled the gun at Robert’s head. “What did you do?”

  Annabelle glided to the side of her husband. “He drowned me.” Her breath hitched. “I caught him in Charlotte’s room after she died. I looked at him and I knew what he did. He chased me. He held me under water.”

  “You were going to tell everyone,” he urged, eyes wild, backing away. “You didn’t realize—it was a mistake. I just needed the jar with Imseti.”

  “My find? You killed my wife and daughter over a canopic jar?” Jack pressed, advancing on his former partner. “Did you kill me, too?”

  The look on Robert’s face said it all.

  Annabelle let out a loud sob.

  “You weren’t happy,” Robert said to Annabelle. He appeared flustered, unsure. “Jack was never around. I was doing you a favor. It would be you and me again. You would have liked that. Don’t deny it.”

  “I said some things,” she stuttered. “I was sad. I didn’t mean them!”

  “It was mine anyway. All of it. I located the dig site. I discovered the tomb! I went in first! I tried to catalogue as much as I could while he made a damned mess of the place. It was a disgrace. I did everything, saw everything, and he took the credit because he had the bank account. I freed you and myself!”

  She gasped.

  Robert sneered. “If you would have left things alone, you would have been a wealthy widow. I did it for both of us!”

  “He was my husband!” she cried.

  His expression went cold. “It doesn’t matter. You’re stuck with me. I’m never leaving until I get what’s mine.”

  Jack pulled the trigger and shot him in the head.

  The ghost of Robert crumpled to the ground.

  Annabelle let out a wail and clutched her husband, who holstered the gun over his shoulder and embraced her. “I’m sorry,” she said into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

  He held her tight. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were upset and I didn’t help you. I was confused. I was stuck. I’m not anymore.” He smoothed her hair. “I didn’t even know you were still here. All I saw was that jagged thing everywhere.”

  She sniffed into his shoulder. “Me too. I was so scared and alone. I lost you, I lost Charlotte. Robert hurt me so bad. The shadow followed me everywhere. I can’t believe it was Robert,” she sobbed. “He’s so angry.”

  “He’s gone now,” Jack promised.

  I hated to break it to him. “Robert is only stunned. A bullet can’t kill a ghost.”

  I’d seen the way the gangsters shot each other for fun. No spirit death was permanent on the ghostly plane.

  Jack’s eyes widened, as if he’d never considered it. “Then what do you suggest, ghost hunter?”

  I ignored how strange that sounded when he said it. “Let me think.” My mind raced. Robert had died here at Rock Fall, which meant he had immortal ties to the property just as the family did. And Robert seemed to have more power. He’d kept the family members from finding each other for more than a century.

  But the ghosts themselves had done better against Robert than I had. The governess had stopped him, as had Annabelle, and now Jack. No doubt they’d be even stronger together. Perhaps it was my job to unite them and let them fight for themselves.

  Jack and Annabelle might not even know that Charlotte still existed.

  “Charlotte?” I called. “You can come out now.” If she was even around.

  I’d
barely said the words when the little girl shimmered into view between the daisy garden and the gazebo.

  “Do you see her?” I asked, pointing. “Your daughter is waiting for you by the gazebo.”

  “She’s there?” Annabelle rushed for the falling-down structure, running straight through the ghost of her daughter. “Charlotte?” she called, searching. She was soon joined by Jack, but Charlotte didn’t appear to notice either of her parents, nor could they see her.

  She simply stared at me.

  I gathered my courage and walked quietly toward the little girl, who could inspire more than one nightmare.

  “Hello,” I said when I’d gotten close enough.

  She showed no recognition or emotion. She simply pointed toward the gazebo.

  I glanced past her, toward her anxious parents.

  “Is this where you liked to play?” I asked, crouching down to her level, hoping it was a good idea. “Tobias told me about your daisy patch. You are a big help.”

  Her nostrils flared and she stared at the ground. Again, she pointed to the gazebo, or rather, the base of it. It was made of loosely stacked white stone held together with gray mortar. Charlotte pointed to a grouping of stones where it appeared the mortar had worn away.

  “Do you want me to play here with you?” I asked, removing a stone.

  She nodded, her hair falling over her face.

  I glanced back to her parents, who stood watching, their hands entwined.

  “I met your mom and dad,” I said, removing another stone. “They love you very much.”

  She showed no reaction. She merely stood over me. Hovering. Making me distinctly uncomfortable.

  Tobias said she’d played here. Perhaps this was her special spot. If I had to guess, I’d say Robert had interrupted her game after he’d cleaned out most of Jack’s office and realized he was missing the fourth canopic jar.

  Oh, my God.

  I worked faster, pulling away several more stones to reveal an opening about the size of my head. “Is this it?” I asked, reaching inside. “Is this what you want me to see?” The little girl nodded and my fingers closed over metal.