by Kylie Logan
The truth dawned on me much as it must have on Kate when she heard the news. I flinched like I’d been slapped. “Noreen?”
“I’d bet any money on it.” Kate spun to the door. “I’m going to the winery, Bea, and you’d better come along, because I’m going to need a witness to testify in court about my mental state when I go on trial for Noreen’s murder!”
4
I’ve never seen anybody, anytime, anywhere, turn the color Kate did when we pulled around to the side of Wilder Winery and saw the EGG trucks tucked against the back wall, where I’d bet any money they thought no one would ever see them.
Kate’s cheeks were maroon. With purple tinges.
The way she slammed on the brakes, I was pretty sure I’d have a bruise in all the same rainbow hues across my torso courtesy of my seat belt.
“I’m going to kill her, Bea.” Kate’s words were punctuated by her heavy breaths.
I would have grabbed on to her and urged caution if she had given me the chance. Instead, she pushed open the door and jumped out of the car.
Turns out a woman in fashionable black stilettos can walk pretty fast when she’s fueled by pure anger.
This woman in her sneakers had a hard time keeping up when Kate zipped along the side of the building and on toward the front entrance.
Wilder Winery had been built back in the late 1800s. From what I’d heard from folks on the island and from Kate herself, the original building had been a grand and glorious Old World sort of monstrosity, complete with half timber framing, plenty of stucco and even a gigantic cuckoo clock in a tower above the main door. Because of an electrical fire soon after Kate’s parents stepped back from running the business and she took over, Kate had been forced to start anew. Kate being Kate, she’d rebuilt with practicality—rather than historical ambiance—in mind.
The current building was a pleasant, farmy-looking place, a lovely slate blue in the daylight that, now that it was dark, looked gray and (dare I say it?) ghostly. The building had a peaked roof above the spacious entryway and a wide foyer that opened to a sleek and modern showroom and tasting bar where there was plenty of room for wine sippers—most of whom turned into buyers—to mix and mingle. Kate had her fingers in every aspect of the business, including the gift shop, which was quickly gaining a reputation on the island for unique and elegant products that included local artists’ works.
The front porch of Wilder’s was scattered with benches, and picnic tables were strewn around the lawn under the gigantic oak trees that dotted the property.
I was breathing hard when I caught up to Kate right outside the front door, where there was a massive planter jam-packed with mums. I’d been to Wilder’s just a week earlier to pick up a case of wine; I knew the mums were yellow and orange. In the pale light of a sliver of a moon, they looked anemic. Like eyes that swayed and bobbed in the breeze off the lake. Eyes that watched our every move.
“Don’t do anything stupid.” I grabbed Kate’s arm just as she was about to open the door. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”
“Oh, come on, Bea!” In the glow from a security light somewhere behind me, the smile she flashed was predatory. “If I got to draw and quarter Noreen Turner . . . if I burned her at the stake . . . or used that guillotine to chop off her head, the one that weird rock band brought to the island last summer for the Bastille Day celebration”—she released a long, slow breath—“honest, Bea, I wouldn’t regret any of that. Not one little bit.”
I didn’t doubt it for a moment.
Which is why I wedged myself in front of her and dashed into the winery the instant Kate had the door unlocked.
She flipped on a phalanx of overhead lights and a startled voice cried out, “The lights out there came on all by themselves. Nobody touched them. It has to be paranormal. There’s no other explanation!” I followed the sound past the tasting bar and back toward the room where the newly fermented grape juice was stored in rows of gigantic stainless steel tanks.
No explanation?
Au contraire!
EGG should have figured that out when they heard the crack of Kate’s footsteps against the hardwood floor, along with the noise she made from deep in her throat—the one that sounded a whole lot like thunder.
Call me crazy, but when I touched a hand to the light switch on the wall in the fermenting room, I thought the ghost hunters would look a little less disappointed to see good ol’ corporeal me—and a little more nervous about the whole breaking and entering thing.
Instead, Ben and Eddie simply took the cameras off their shoulders and stepped back to watch.
Liam and David and Rick paused, Mel meters and whatnots at the ready. Dimitri flicked off the digital tape recorder he held in one hand. And Noreen—
“We were in the middle of filming,” Noreen said when she saw me, puffing out a breath of annoyance. “You can’t just walk in here like that and turn on all the lights. We work in the dark for a reason, you know. The UV rays from light make it harder for spirits to manifest. You ruined the shot and maybe a chance for a spirit to communicate!”
“I’ll ruin you.” Do I need to say that this comment came from Kate? Fire in her eyes, she raced into the room and pushed right past me and that gigantic lantern-looking thing I’d seen in the purported ghost video. Step by infuriated step, she backed Noreen toward one of the stainless steel tanks. “You’re trespassing. You’re breaking laws. You’re—”
“Wait a minute!” Dimitri stepped forward. “Chill out, honey. We’ve got permission to be here.”
If I thought Kate was upset before, I was as wrong as wrong can be. She stopped, and when all the color drained from her face, she looked like an ice queen. Dimitri must have felt the transformation, too; when Kate spun his way, he froze.
“I own this winery, honey,” she snapped. “That’s my name on the front door. And I’m the only one who can give you permission to be here.” Kate’s voice was so controlled and quiet, it terrified even me. “I never did that.”
Dimitri’s gaze shot to Noreen, his cheeks flushed and his breaths coming in long, hard puffs. “You . . . you liar! You told us—”
“That’s for sure.” I didn’t know if it was Ben or Eddie who spoke up, I only knew it was one of the cameramen and that both of them backed up a step, distancing themselves from the confrontation. “She told us it was okay,” the cameraman said, glancing from Kate to Noreen. “Don’t blame us, lady. Noreen told us that after you two had your little . . . er . . . disagreement back at the B and B yesterday, she talked to you again and that she arranged everything with you. That you told her—”
“Oh, I told her, all right.” Kate took another couple steps forward, until Noreen was as flat as a camouflaged pancake against that stainless tank. “I told her no. In fact, I told her no, no, and no again. I told her to stay away. And never to darken my doorstep again.” Kate glanced around at the crew. “So if she told the rest of you any different, Dimitri here, he’s right. You are a liar, Noreen.”
She swiveled a gaze that could have cut through steel in Noreen’s direction. “Is that what you did, Noreen? Because if you just forgot what I told you, you have one short memory, lady. But if you flat-out lied to your crew, then you just got yourself and them in some really hot water.”
“Now, wait a minute!” Dimitri put a hand out toward Kate, then thought better of the move and tucked his hand in the pocket of his jacket. “You can’t blame us for what Noreen . . . for what this lunatic did. We didn’t know. She told us—”
“Shut up!” Noreen’s voice shot up to the high ceiling and echoed back at us. “She’s got it all wrong.” She swung her gaze from Dimitri back to Kate. “You’ve got it all wrong. I remember what you said, and—”
“And I said no.”
Was that a smile Noreen attempted? It came and went so fast, I wasn’t sure. But hey, after years in New York in a high-powered, high-pressured, high-income profession, I was sure I recognized kissing up when I saw it, and what hap
pened next was so classic, it turned my stomach.
Noreen tucked her meter into her pocket so she could scrape her palms against her camo pants, and I swear, I could just about see the effort it cost her to lower her voice. Like she was standing in front of a firing squad, she pulled back her shoulders. “I know what you said, Ms. Wilder, and believe me, I thought about it plenty and I understand why you feel the way you do. What we did last fall when we were here . . . well, that was wrong. We were wrong. If we hadn’t gotten so carried away by catching that video of Sleepy Harlow, it never would have happened. I swear. But that’s what it all comes down to, don’t you see?” Noreen made a swirly sort of motion with her hand and, for a moment, I thought maybe she was twitching because she was nervous.
I should have known better.
No sooner did Noreen gesture than both Ben and Eddie lifted their cameras to their shoulders and started filming again.
Perfect timing, especially when Noreen looked right at one of the cameras and said, “We caught that video of that apparition last year and now, we owe it to ourselves and to the scientific community as a whole to see if we can find more evidence. It’s not just something we want to do; it’s something we have to do. It’s our mission, our duty. That’s why I knew you wouldn’t mind. Look around!” Noreen did, but Kate sure didn’t. Like a sniper homing in on a target, Kate’s gaze was trained on the leader of the ghost getters.
“We haven’t touched a thing,” Noreen assured her. “We’ve been very careful and, of course, respectful of you and your business. Between that and all the publicity you’re going to get from our TV show—”
The screech rose out of Kate like a banshee’s wail and cut Noreen off. She immediately signaled to the cameramen to stop filming. Too bad. Had they kept on, they would have gotten some darned sensational footage of Kate when she darted forward, her hands raised and her fists clenched.
Time for me to insinuate myself into the middle of the tiff.
“You’re going to have to leave,” I told Noreen, one hand on Kate’s shoulder to calm her. “You heard Kate. She doesn’t want you here.”
“She’ll change her mind when she hears what we’ve already found tonight.” Noreen was so sure of herself, she lifted her chin and signaled that the filming could recommence. “I think all the paranormal activity has something to do with the geological makeup of the island. It’s mostly limestone, you know. And limestone near running water is known to increase the incidents of paranormal activity. That’s because limestone can hold information. You know, like a camera recording historic events. The limestone records it, then releases it, and that information plays back over and over again as what we call a residual haunting.”
“They call it the stone tape . . . theory,” Dimitri added, breathless at the very thought. He would have been better served realizing that neither Kate nor I cared. The cameramen did. They swiveled around and began recording Dimitri. “It works because . . .” He gathered his thoughts. “Because limestone can trap vibrations and then, if conditions are right, the vibrations play back, like a tape recorder or, you know, a DVR.”
“And some theories even say the limestone is like a battery.” This came from David, a tall, good-looking African American who, when it came to vibrations, had apparently missed the whole I’m-going-to-kill-her vibe coming off Kate and thought that an actual discussion about all this horse hockey was appropriate. With the cameras rolling on him now, he said, “The limestone holds energy and that energy keeps the haunting going. But like Noreen said, this only works when it comes to residual hauntings. It’s important to remember that. These aren’t intelligent hauntings, not entities you can interact with. These are residuals, like watching a movie projected into the air. They don’t know we’re here. They just keep playing over and over. Like the apparition we caught last year. Which is why, with the help of the plasmometer there”—he looked at the big lanternlike contraption—“we’re pretty sure we can catch the apparition on film again.”
“Or the whole stone tape theory might actually work because electromagnectic fields are generated by water flowing over the limestone,” Liam put in, stepping in front of David and, not incidentally, in front of the camera, too. “You know, like—”
“Like are you all deaf?” I whirled around, taking them all in, and at the sound of my voice ping-ponging against the stainless steel, both Ben and Eddie lowered their cameras. “Limestone, batteries, residual whatevers . . . the only thing that matters is that you get out of here. Now.”
“Yeah.” Kate followed my example and gave each of them a look until they squirmed. “Before I call the police.”
“You can’t. You can’t do that. Not until we have a chance to film. Just a few hours’ worth of footage. What difference is a few hours going to make?” Noreen made the mistake of trying to plead her case by putting a hand on Kate’s arm.
I felt the change in Kate’s attitude rather than saw it—a shift in the anger that simmered in the air around her, a flare like when wind stokes the flames of a fire. Before I had a chance to respond to it and grab hold of her so she couldn’t do Noreen any real physical damage, a voice called out from the tasting area.
“Trouble here?”
We all looked that way just in time to see Hank Florentine, the local police chief, saunter in, one hand laid casually on the butt of the gun in his belt holster. “Kate, I saw all the lights on and pulled around back and saw the cars. Funny time of night for you to be working. Thought I’d better stop and see what was going on. Trouble here?”
“I don’t know, Hank. As a matter of fact, I was just going to ask.” She pinned her gaze on the leader of EGG. “Is there trouble here, Noreen?”
Noreen gurgled and burbled. Her cheeks shot through with vivid color, then went as pale as the moonlight outside. She bit her lower lip. “Somebody go find Fiona,” she grumbled. “She’s getting equipment out of the truck. Tell her to get everything put away again. And then let’s get out of here. Paranormal activity?” Her snort put an accent on her mood. “No self-respecting ghost would bother with this place.”
The smile Kate turned on her wasn’t as much about relief as it was about one-upmanship. “No trouble at all, Hank,” she told him while she kept her eyes on Noreen. “Noreen and her EGG-heads were just leaving.”
Noreen commanded Liam and David to grab the plasmometer and, under the careful gaze of Hank, they all marched out. A few minutes later, we heard the engines on the EGG SUVs start up and saw their headlights skim the wall when they pulled out of the parking lot.
“Want to explain?” Hank asked Kate.
I had to give Kate credit for handling the situation with so much poise, and I could only imagine how much strength it took for her to hold it together. Rather than make her relive it all for Hank, I stepped forward. “Just a mix-up,” I said, and paused to give Kate a chance to contradict me. When she didn’t, I went on, “The ghost getters were just leaving when you got here.”
“Well, all right then.” Hank, his gaze still fastened to Kate, stepped back toward the tasting room. “You want me to have a look around before I leave?”
Kate snapped to. “No. It’s fine, Hank. They’re gone. I’ll lock up. Bea’s here with me.”
“All right then, ladies.” Hank wasn’t wearing a hat, but he touched his hand to his buzz-cut hair. “I’ll see you both at the wake on Friday, right? Last days of summer!” His sigh vibrated through the vast room. “I for one am happy summer’s over. We can get rid of the tourists and have the island all to ourselves for a while.”
With that, Hank banged out of the front door.
“Come on.” Kate led the way. “I want to check things out and make sure those idiots didn’t break anything.” She screeched her frustration. “The nerve of that woman. She told her people they had permission? She said it was all right for them to be here? I swear, Bea, if you weren’t here with me, I would have dumped her in one of these tanks and let her ferment for a month or two. Then maybe she�
�d get the message.”
We crossed that room and headed into a back corridor. Ahead of us, a series of hallways led to the rooms where the wine was bottled, packed, and shipped, and we found and locked the back door that the ghost getters had jimmied open to get in. I wondered what Noreen had told them to explain the inconvenience, then instantly knew: Kate had forgotten to leave a key. I’d bet anything she told them Kate had forgotten to leave a key.
In the other direction was Kate’s office, and she went that way.
“They better not have been in here,” she said, flicking on the light.
Kate’s office was a lot like Kate’s house, and a lot like Kate herself. Plain enough to let the world know she was no-nonsense. Stylish enough to be attractive. She zipped right past the sleek Scandinavian-inspired desk that dominated the room in front of a wide window that looked out over the vineyards and went right over to a cabinet that she unlocked. She came back across the room holding an old-fashioned oil lamp, the kind with a fat, round bottom and a tall, conical chimney.
“It might be more efficient if we just turned on all the lights in the winery,” I suggested.
Kate set down the lamp on the windowsill. “Huh?”
“An oil lamp.” I pointed even though I didn’t have to. “We don’t need that to search the winery. We could just turn on the lights.”
“Oh, the lamp!” She laugh, and truthfully, I was grateful. Though Kate might be hardheaded when it comes to business, I had never known her to be cruel or hard-hearted (okay, with the exception of the times she took me to court because she said my remodeling at the B and B brought too much traffic through our neighborhood). Watching her seethe in anger had not only been uncomfortable; it left me feeling as if I should have/could have done more.
