The Legend of Sleepy Harlow

by Kylie Logan

  “She’s a friend of yours? Then it’s perfect,” she said, and even though she stood three feet away, I couldn’t help but notice that she vibrated with excitement. “You can talk to Ms. Wilder. You can convince her. You can talk some sense into her.”

  It wasn’t fair to laugh, but then, it was the most ridiculous thing I’d heard in as long as I could remember. “You don’t know Kate well, do you?”

  “I do know her. We met last year when EGG was here. Wilder Winery, that’s where we shot the video.”

  “Of the ghost?” I just about kicked myself the moment the words were out of my mouth. Sure, that video Noreen had shown me earlier in the day was startling, but it was also . . .

  I searched for the right word and came up with more than just one.

  Peculiar.

  Suspicious.

  Unbelievable.

  Improbable.

  Unlikely.

  I may have seen the transparent shape without a head, but there was no way this girl was ready to believe it was what it looked like it was. Not without a huge helping of proof that amounted to more than a quick glimpse obscured by a swirl of shadows and the flash of that bright pulsing lantern on the floor in front of Noreen.

  I shook my head, the better to send the message that I’d misspoken. “The video you showed me earlier,” I said, firmly refusing to use the G-word again. “That was taken at Wilder Winery?”

  “If you watched our pilot . . . !” Noreen swallowed the rest of what I was sure was going to be a scathing criticism of my TV-watching habits. Good thing. She was already walking on thin ice, what with taking over my parlor with her alphabetically arranged equipment, then with insulting my friend. Maybe she knew it, because she clutched her hands at her waist and bit her lower lip.

  Contrite?

  Maybe.

  Or maybe Noreen was just cagey enough to see an opportunity and didn’t want to let it pass.

  “If Ms. Wilder’s your friend, you could talk to her on my behalf,” she said.

  “Talk to her about . . . ?”

  Noreen’s sigh was so deep, all those flash drives in all those pockets of her fishing vest rattled. “We’re here to gather more evidence. To see if we can capture another video of the apparition. You know, Sleepy Harlow.”

  I refused to groan, but let’s face it, had I been so inclined, no one could have blamed me. First I find out the island is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a Prohibition-era bootlegger, then I discover it’s the same Prohibition-era bootlegger that Marianne Littlejohn’s book is about? It was only natural that from there, my thoughts would scamper to the phone call I’d been putting off, the one I had to make to Marianne to deliver the news about the manuscript that was spoiled, soiled, and soggy.

  This time, I did groan. “You shot that video at Wilder Winery.” I didn’t ask Noreen the question because I had no doubt it was true. “And you came back to the island to film there again.”

  The smile I got from Noreen told me that maybe I wasn’t as completely dense as she’d thought. “Exactly. We’re here. We’re all set to film. And now she says—”

  “Why?”

  As if I’d slapped her rather than just asked a question, Noreen flinched.

  I pressed my advantage. “Why?” I asked again. “I heard what she said. Why did Kate tell you not to come back to the winery?”

  Her shrug wasn’t exactly convincing. “Like I said, she’s crazy. You’d think after we put that tacky little winery on the map—”

  “Their really good wine already did that. Long before you showed up here last year.”

  “Sure. Yeah. Of course.” When she flashed me a quick smile, Noreen’s teeth showed. “Good wine. I get that. But when a place is a hotbed of paranormal activity, the people who own that place owe it to the public in general and to the scientific community in particular to—”

  “You think?” I stepped back and cocked my head, as if I really had to think about it. “You don’t suppose that private property is private property and the person who owns that private property has the right to say who comes and goes and what they do there?”

  “I would. I do. But we gave the winery plenty of publicity in our pilot, and we’ve talked it up in the promo spots for the new show, too. We said we’d be filming there. The network’s already airing the commercial for our first show. And in it, we talk about returning to the winery.”

  “But you never actually asked Kate’s permission.”

  “We did.” Noreen nodded. “I wrote to her and—”

  “She said no.”

  “I figured there was no way she actually meant it. Not with all the publicity she’s going to get. Our show is going to be huge. You’d think she’d understand that. That’s what I was going to tell her. That’s why I asked her to stop by. You know, so I could explain all that to her and try to get it through that thick skull of hers that there are only a very few spots, really, where the paranormal activity is that powerful. I figured she’d understand.”

  I glanced at the door Kate had so recently slammed behind her. “She didn’t.”

  “But if you’d just talk to her.” Noreen looked out one of the long, narrow windows that flanked the door on either side. “She’s just crossing the street. If you hurry, you can still catch her. You can talk to her. If you’re her friend, you can convince her, right?”

  I was pretty sure I couldn’t, but there is something about a woman in camo and a fishing vest that gives a whole new and pitiful meaning to needy and pathetic. I gave in and walked out the door.

  “Hey, Kate!” When I called out to her, Kate stopped and turned my way. She’d just crossed the street and was on her way over to her house, which was catty-corner from mine. Kate’s backyard is a bluff that overlooks the lake and her front yard is pretty much nonexistent: a streamer of grass that undulates between the road and the single-story cedar-sided house with its deep front porch and low-maintenance and very minimal landscaping.

  When I caught up to her, Kate was breathing hard. I knew it had nothing to do with the stroll toward her house and everything to do with the pushy EGG-head who was my guest.

  “Sorry,” I said, even though she had no idea what I was about to say. “Noreen Turner asked me to talk to you and—”

  The rest of my sentence was lost beneath Kate’s aggravated screech. “That woman . . .” She pointed one perfectly manicured finger back toward my house. “The woman is a nutcase. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know she’s a guest, and I told her I’d try to smooth things over. Except I don’t really understand what went wrong. They filmed at the winery last year?”

  When Kate nodded, her fiery hair glistened in the late afternoon light. “They showed up here. You know, because of the ghost.” Kate studied my blank expression. “You don’t know.”

  “Not about a ghost. Come on, Kate. You don’t really believe—”

  She waved away my concern. “Of course I don’t. But hey, what’s a little legend going to hurt? There really was a gangster named Charlie Harlow around here back during Prohibition. And everyone really did call him Sleepy. If you don’t believe me, stop at the cemetery and check out his grave. He died on October third, nineteen thirty.” She barked out a laugh. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not some sort of Sleepy groupie. Anybody who grew up on the island knows Sleepy’s history. He’s our local celebrity. You know—Al Capone, South Bass–style.”

  “But you believe his headless ghost haunts the island?”

  “When I was a kid and I’d go to sleepovers at friends’ houses, we’d sit up all night and see who could tell the spookiest Sleepy story. Then when we were teenagers . . .” Kate shivered. “Well, you don’t have to believe in ghosts to get scared when your friends drag you out to a cemetery in the middle of the night to try and see if they can raise Sleepy from the dead. Looking back on it, it was crazy and fun. But at the time, I’ll tell you, it’s like the book we’re reading for the discussion group, right? The Legend of Sl
eepy Hollow. This story’s got Washington Irving beat. Ichabod Crane only had to deal with the headless horseman scaring him as he walked through the woods at night. But our ghost . . . They say a rival gang killed ol’ Sleepy and cut off his head.” Kate slid a finger across her throat and made a face. “Every year in October, his ghost comes back to the island in search of his head.”

  “And last October, Noreen says she got a video of the ghost. At your winery.”

  Kate’s lips twisted. “If you believe that sort of hogwash!”

  “Last fall, you let them film at the winery.”

  “I figured it would be good for business. And it’s not like I thought they’d find anything. There’s no such thing as ghosts. Except . . .”

  A cloud scuttled across the sun and, for a moment, we were plunged into cold shadow. A second later, the sun was back, but Kate’s mind was still a million miles away.

  “Except?” I asked.

  She twitched away her misgivings. “It was nothing. Really. It’s just that last night I worked late and when I was leaving the winery . . . well, like I said, it was nothing. Maybe a stray cat got in. Or a car went by and threw some crazy light against the wall and that caused the shadows to look weird for a second. I thought I saw . . . something.”

  Of all the Ladies in the League, Kate is the most practical and the most hardheaded. She is not prone to flights of fancy, and not inclined to believe what she doesn’t see, hear, taste, and feel. If asked, I’d have to admit it was one of the reasons Kate was having such a hard time falling as much in love with ferryboat captain Jayce Martin as he was with her. But I hadn’t been asked. I stuck to the matter at hand.

  “It wasn’t a headless ghost, was it?” I asked her.

  “It wasn’t anything.” To put an end to the thought, she turned and headed toward her house, and I walked along at her side. “I just heard a noise and I got spooked, that’s all.”

  “So you’ve never actually seen this ghost that Noreen says she has video of.”

  Kate glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “There are people who say they have. But I’m not one of them.”

  “So you let EGG come in last year and film. But not this year.”

  “You got that right, sister. You know, because of what they did.” Kate grumbled under her breath. “But of course, you don’t know what they did. I keep forgetting you weren’t here last fall. It feels like you’ve lived here forever.”

  I took it as a compliment. Like in most isolated communities, the folks of South Bass are a close-knit bunch, and though I’d lived there less than a year, I was honored to be considered one of the old-timers.

  Unlike my front porch—a riot of wicker furniture, floral cushions, and those flower pots Jerry Garcia found oh-so-irresistible—Kate’s porch was as clean and as sparse as an operating room. There was a white Adirondack chair on either side of the front door, and though she motioned me into one, Kate didn’t sit down. Her arms crossed over her chest, she paced the length of the porch and back again.

  “Last fall when those ghost idiots were here, they filmed at the winery, all right,” she said when she got back to where I sat. “And while they were at it, they trampled my entire crop of Lambrusco grapes.”

  Pretty much the extent of my knowledge about wine is that I enjoy drinking it. Still, even I knew . . .

  “Lambrusco grapes are only grown in Italy,” I said, looking up at Kate. “In Lombardy. I’ve been there. I’ve seen the vineyards. Are you telling me you’re growing them here in Ohio?”

  “It’s just an experiment,” she said. Kate hugged her arms around herself and started pacing again, the fingers of her right hand beating out a frantic rhythm against her left arm. “Lombardy is in the north of Italy; our climates are similar. I know other winery owners who thought I was nuts when I mentioned giving it a go, but hey, I figured we’d never know if we didn’t try. So I planted a crop.”

  “And EGG destroyed them.”

  She froze and stared out at the lake, her rusty brows low over her eyes. “They claim they were so overcome by the excitement of the ghost hunt, they didn’t notice the newly planted vines. They cost me a lot of money.”

  “You’ve replanted?”

  Kate nodded. “And the money I used to buy a new crop of Lambrusco vines was money I’d earmarked for a faster bottling system. So technically, those idiots affected my production capabilities, too. And that means they’ve messed with my bottom line. They’re rude, they’re inconsiderate, and that Noreen is the worst of the bunch.”

  Suddenly, Chandra’s reaction to seeing the EGG logo on Fiona’s T-shirt made perfect sense. Chandra and Kate might have their differences—how loud Kate plays opera, how Chandra builds bonfires at the full moon—but deep down inside, they were friends, and loyal to a fault.

  “Honestly, Bea.” Kate’s laser look banished my thoughts. “If I knew they were staying at your place, I would have told you to toss them out on their ghostly tushies.”

  I slapped the arms of my chair and stood. “After what they did, I don’t blame you for not wanting them to come back. I’ll tell Noreen I talked to you and that you explained what happened, and while I’m at it, I’ll tell them that they don’t have to keep their reservations for the rest of the week if they want to go back to the mainland.”

  “The mainland, yeah.” Kate’s top lip curled. “The rest of them can go back to the mainland. That pushy Noreen, I’d like to see her go somewhere else. Like right to the bottom of Lake Erie.”

  I couldn’t blame her, but rather than encourage Kate’s murderous thoughts, I told her I’d see her later in the week at the big party planned for Friday. It was a yearly tradition, I’d learned, a good-natured and boisterous wake—complete with a funeral procession and a coffin painted in garish colors—to mark the passing of summer and the beginning of a few long, quiet months on the island free from all visitors but a few hearty ice fishermen who braved the weather after Christmas. Like everyone else who lived here and the flocks of tourists who’d be arriving for the event, I was looking forward to it.

  Honestly, I wasn’t surprised when Kate didn’t answer. With her gaze still fastened to the lake and her expression thunderous, I was pretty sure she’d forgotten I was even there.

  No such luck with Noreen.

  She was waiting for me on my front porch when I got back to the house.

  “So?” Noreen looked across the street toward Kate’s, and I looked that way, too, only to see that Kate had gone into the house. “Did you get her to agree? You did, right? You talked some sense into that uppity little snob. She’s going to let us—”

  One hand out like a traffic cop, I stopped her before she could annoy me even more. “Kate’s not going to change her mind.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said I’d talk to her. I did. And she told me what happened last fall. She lost an entire crop of grapes because of you.”

  “Oh, like that was our fault!” Noreen could sneer with the best of them. “Like we were supposed to know that those grapes were there. Those plants were small and it was dark and—”

  “And it doesn’t matter.” I pulled open the front door and stepped into the house. “Once Kate makes up her mind about something, she doesn’t change it. And she’s made up her mind. There’s no way you’re going to get near that winery to film.”

  “Well, that’s just great!” Dimitri said, stepping out of the parlor. He had a magazine in his hand, something called Dead Time, and one look at Noreen and he flung it back over his shoulder. The magazine skidded across the Oriental rug and landed with a slap against a stack of ghost-hunting equipment. “I’ve been waiting for you, Noreen. We need to talk.”

  Noreen clamped her lips shut and marched into the parlor, where she snatched up the magazine, smoothed its pages and set it—precisely—in the center of the coffee table in front of the couch.

  “I doubt we have anything much to say to each other.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” He
shot me a look. “Maybe not here. Maybe not now. But we do need to talk. The new issue of Dead Time—”

  “I have an article in the issue,” Noreen cooed, and since Dimitri had apparently already seen it, she added, for my benefit, “It’s about the way entities attach themselves to cabinets of curiosities. You know, the collections people used to make of rocks and gems or art or artifacts. They were like mini-museums, and it’s a well-known fact, isn’t it, Dimitri, that if you find one of those old collections, you’ll find evidence of the paranormal?”

  I could just about hear Dimitri’s teeth grind together. He breathed hard when he growled, “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Such a sweetie!” I swear, Noreen nearly pinched his cheek. Good thing she stopped herself just in time; I wouldn’t have liked to see what would have happened if she took the chance. “I’ll handle it,” she purred, her voice low. “Just like I handle everything else.”

  “Yeah, like you handled our chance to get back to the winery?” He backed away from her and grabbed the smart phone that was on top of one of the equipment cases. “While you were wasting your time, Noreen . . .” He coughed. “While you were wasting your time, I was doing some research,” he said, and tapped his way through various screens.

  “The lighthouse . . .” He flipped the phone around so that both Noreen and I could see the picture on the screen. I’d been to the lighthouse since I’d moved to the island, so I recognized it right away, of course. It was built at a place known as Parker Point on the southwest corner of the island, a two-story brick house with a three-story square light tower attached. The lighthouse hadn’t been in service for years and these days, it was used to house the scientists who visited a university aquatic research station that wasn’t far away.