The Legend of Sleepy Harlow

by Kylie Logan

  That’s why I didn’t get much sleep that night, and that’s why, by Friday morning, I was groggy and foggy—not to mention more than a tad cranky. The sun was just coming up over the horizon when I finally drifted off. What seemed like only minutes later, I was startled awake by the sounds of a crash from out in the hallway.

  I grabbed the plaid flannel robe I’d once bought in Maine, poked my feet into my fuzzy bunny slippers, and raced out of my suite, only to find Dimitri and Jacklyn in the hallway, righting an equipment case that had toppled over.

  “Sorry.” Dimitri didn’t look especially sorry. In fact, his eyes sparked with excitement and he looked pumped and (my editorial opinion here, of course) completely delicious, what with a shadow of dark whiskers outlining the planes and angles of his face, his hair mussed, and his tight-fitting jeans and an equally close-fitting T-shirt that showed off the tattoo of an angel on his left forearm and the Greek-god muscles that were a perfect match to his Mediterranean good looks. It wasn’t nearly as early as I had thought it was when I’d jumped out of bed. In fact, the antique tall case clock in the hallway showed that it was just past eight. Still, in spite of the hour, Dimitri didn’t look the least bit tired. He zipped over to one side of the equipment case and told Jacklyn to get over on the other side, and they hoisted it.

  It didn’t take them long to finish, but by the time they did, I had brushed some of the cobwebs out of my brain.

  “You’re not staying here,” I said to Jacklyn.

  She had the good sense to look contrite. Or at least to try. There was a little too much twinkle in Jacklyn’s dark eyes, a little too much spring in her step, to officially qualify as contrite. “Dimitri, he thought—”

  “My decision. I’ll take all the blame. Or the credit, if someone’s willing to give it to me.” Righting that fallen case was a lot of work. He pressed a hand to his chest at the same time he flashed Jacklyn a smile. “I figured no harm, no foul, since Noreen isn’t using her room anymore.”

  Understatement.

  I waited for Dimitri to realize it, but he was a little busy. Talking and laughing, David, Liam, and Rick scrambled down the steps, and Dimitri handed out assignments, went over the day’s schedule and asked them—in a nice way that still didn’t brook any debate—to take various and sundry pieces of equipment out to the front porch so they could be cleaned and tested.

  “Not tested! Not here!” I hated myself for saying it, but I knew I’d regret it more if I didn’t speak up. (I didn’t believe in ghosts, right? So why did I care?) “This is an old house. I don’t want to find out that there’s something here that I don’t want to be here.”

  “No worries! We promise not to tell.” Dimitri gave me a wink that banished any thoughts I’d had about unwanted spooky presences at the same time it made me conscious of the aforementioned plaid robe and bunny slippers. He slipped on his sunglasses, and while he finished moving the equipment case out to the front porch and left Jacklyn in charge of whatever was inside it, I combed my fingers through my hair and automatically reached up to poke my glasses up the bridge of my nose. I would have done it, too, if I hadn’t left my glasses on the table next to my bed.

  When Dimitri came back inside, he had Fiona with him. The poor kid didn’t look any better rested than I felt. There were smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes, and her nose was raw and red. Dimitri instructed her to go up to his room and retrieve a full spectrum camera.

  “Like I was saying . . .” Dimitri slipped off his sunglasses, poked his hands in his pockets, and rolled back on the heels of his sneakers. No doubt he knew the move emphasized his six-pack. No doubt he knew I’d see it and appreciate it. No doubt he was right. “With a room open, it only made sense for Jacklyn to stay in it.”

  I wasn’t so sure Fiona agreed with this; that might explain why she froze, one foot on the bottom step, and shot Dimitri a look.

  He was not the type of man who noticed such looks. Not from gawky kids like Fiona, anyway.

  “It’s our room, anyway, right?” Dimitri went on, his words accented by the sounds of Fiona’s shoes slapping against the steps and punctuated by the noise of her opening, then slamming shut, the door of his room. “We’ve got the reservation through the weekend; we might as well use it. And speaking of that”—one corner of his mouth pulled tight—“that cop, the big guy . . .”

  “Hank.”

  “Yeah, Hank. He stopped over here and talked to us yesterday. He said none of us can leave the island. At least not until he gets a handle on what happened to Noreen. If we’ve got to stay into next week . . . ?”

  “I’ve got two rooms already booked for Thursday and Friday,” I told him. “Fishermen. You’re good until then. After that if you’re still here, and if you don’t mind doubling up, we can work something out.”

  “Terrific.” Rick and David shambled back in with news about electromagnetic something-or-others. Fiona came back down the steps as noisily as she’d gone up, punched the front door open, and disappeared.

  I waited until the rest of them were all back outside. I would talk to the entire EGG crew in good time, of course. I had to if I had any hopes of clearing Kate’s name. Since I had Dimitri all to myself for the moment, it was as good a time as any to start.

  “I’ll make coffee,” I told him. “And get breakfast out on the table in a few minutes. Until then, I wondered if you could tell me—”

  His phone rang and he held up one finger to tell me to wait a sec, then answered the call.

  I took the opportunity to duck into the kitchen to get breakfast going. Truth be told, I was so sure the members of EGG would be so upset by everything that had happened the day before, I didn’t think they’d be up to eating. I hadn’t given breakfast much thought except to get some cranberry sour cream muffins out of the freezer.

  I checked them and found them nicely thawed, and got some pears and apples out of the fridge to go along with them. That done, I took out a couple dozen eggs to scramble and made the coffee, all the while listening to the burr of Dimitri’s voice right outside the kitchen door.

  “That’s perfect, Al,” he told the person on the other end of the phone. “Yeah, my name first, along with that picture we took in Ireland last year. You know, the one of me standing in front of that old castle. That will be a perfect opening shot. Then—”

  He paused, listening to whatever it was Al had to say.

  “Yeah, that will be fine. But Jacklyn before Rick and the rest of them . . . What?”

  Another pause, and Dimitri laughed.

  “Yeah, she’s back, and now that Noreen won’t be around to make sure she doesn’t get too much screen time, Jacklyn will be a great addition to the show. Yeah, so me, then Jacklyn, then Rick, Liam, and David. What’s that? Oh yeah, then Fiona. I almost forgot about her. But remember to list her as an intern in the credits. I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea that somebody with skills that basic could actually be a full-fledged member of the team. Yeah, yeah. Get right on it, Al. We’ll be back in a few days, and we’ll have plenty of video to edit. I promise.”

  I waited until I knew he was off the phone, then raised my voice so he was bound to hear. “Jacklyn’s not heading back to Hollywood for that soap opera?”

  Dimitri stuck his head into the kitchen.

  “Oh. You mean . . .” He gave his phone a look before he put it back in his pocket. “She quit the soap opera. Jacklyn’s back on our team. It’s good news. She’s a good investigator.”

  There were people who said I was, too, though I spent my time looking for the truth rather than for errant ectoplasm.

  “When I talked to her yesterday, she never mentioned joining the team again. Of course, that was before she knew Noreen was dead.”

  Dimitri grinned. “You got that right! There was no love lost between those two. And you can see why, right?”

  I couldn’t, and admitted it.

  “Well, all you have to do is take one look at Jacklyn.” His grin ratcheted up a notch
. “She’s gorgeous. And Noreen . . .” The grin disappeared completely, and Dimitri’s lips puckered like he’d bit into a lemon. “Well, not so much. And don’t think I’m just saying that because ol’ Noreen isn’t here to defend herself. I told her the same thing plenty of times, right to her face.”

  “And Noreen didn’t like it when Jacklyn was around. Because Jacklyn’s so pretty.”

  Dimitri ventured a few more steps into the kitchen. “It got to the point of being ridiculous. Noreen insisted on cutting Jacklyn out of scenes once the tape was edited for our pilot episode. She’d refuse to show evidence when Jacklyn was the one who found it. You know, all sorts of that crazy, jealous thing women are so good at. No offense intended,” he added.

  Since I’d already taken offense, there seemed little point in arguing. “So now Noreen’s gone and Jacklyn’s back. Pretty convenient.”

  “Pretty awesome.” Dimitri either didn’t see where I was going with this or he had decided I was as easy to ignore as meek and mild Fiona. “We’re pumped. I just talked to our producer about the opening credits for the show. You know, to get Jacklyn added.”

  “And yourself shown first in front of an old Irish castle, the leader of EGG.”

  This time, his smile wasn’t as cocky as it was calculating, and as cold as a January morning. “You’re not saying—”

  I didn’t give him a chance to finish. I poured a cup of coffee and handed it over the breakfast bar to him. “So tell me, what really went on at the winery the other night?”

  “You mean with Noreen?” I hadn’t offered, but he grabbed one of the cranberry muffins and took a bite. “You were there. You heard what I said then. Noreen, she told us we had permission to be there. None of us knew she was lying. Honest, if we knew she bypassed Ms. Wilder, none of us would have gone near the place. We’re not that kind of team. At least we never were before Noreen took over.”

  I put out a small crystal pitcher of cream on a tray, then added another pitcher of milk, a sugar bowl, a variety of sweeteners and a jar of wonderful, local honey, the kind I hoped to someday produce from the hives I dreamed of installing in my back garden. “So what happened when you left there?” I asked him.

  Dimitri was in mid-chew, and he waited to speak until he swallowed. “After Ms. Wilder kicked us out, we came back here.”

  “Was Noreen with you?”

  He nodded. “We had three vehicles, and we came back here together. Everybody but Fiona, that is.”

  I grabbed a mixing bowl and the eggs and started cracking and whipping. It was better that than looking too eager to hear whatever he had to say. “What happened to Fiona?”

  Dimitri shrugged. “She wasn’t inside the winery when you got there, remember. She was getting equipment out of the trucks. We were all in such a hurry to get out of there before that cop changed his mind and hauled us in, we forgot all about her! I don’t know where she was or what she was up to, but she wasn’t anywhere in sight and we didn’t stop to look for her. I hear she hoofed it all the way back here.”

  “Poor kid.”

  “She’s going to have to learn to suck it up if she plans on being a paranormal investigator.” Dimitri’s shoulders shot back. “It’s not an easy business.”

  “I don’t imagine it is, what with the TV contracts and all.”

  “Even before we had the TV contract. Old, abandoned buildings. Wet, moldy basements. Deep, dark forests in the middle of the night.” Though I was sure he wanted all this to sound sinister, the glimmer in his dark eyes told me this was what Dimitri lived for. “It’s not easy, and it’s not always safe. Then there are the spirits themselves, of course.”

  I controlled a laugh. “You don’t think spirits can actually—”

  “Cause harm to the living? Of course they can. In fact, if you ask me, that might explain what happened to Noreen.”

  This time, I couldn’t help myself, no matter how much I tried. I barked out a laugh. “You think she was killed by a ghost?”

  “I believe it’s a very real possibility. Think about it. Noreen’s been hot on the trail of your local dead celebrity for a couple of years now. She’s the one who took that video of Sleepy last year. And being caught on camera . . . Well, we don’t understand it all completely yet. But from what I’ve been able to discover, apparitions don’t like to have their ectoplasm disturbed. My own theory is that cameras disrupt the electromagnetic fields around spirits. That they break up their signals. You know, like static on a radio. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sleepy wasn’t looking for a little revenge.”

  “Really?” I gave the question all the oomph that could be managed by a woman in a red plaid robe and bunny slippers. “You’re telling me that a ghost can—”

  “There are plenty of documented cases. Poltergeists, for instance. You’ve heard of them. They’re spirits that cause all sorts of problems. And there’s other evidence, too, about ghosts that lure people to their deaths. Your Sleepy just might be one of them.”

  “He’s not my Sleepy,” I told him, even as I reminded myself that he sort of was. At least until I could re-create his life and times for Marianne’s history. With that in mind, I figured Dimitri was fair game. I mean, when it came to finding out more information about Sleepy.

  “What about the real Sleepy?” I asked him. “If Noreen and the rest of you were interested in the legend, maybe you know something about the man, too? Could there have been something in his life that someone wanted to keep secret? Something worth killing for?”

  “You mean the whole thing about his treasure.” Dimitri said this like it was the most natural thing in the world, then laughed when I froze, mid-egg-whisking.

  “You live on this island and don’t know about the treasure,” he said.

  “I’m new to the island, and I don’t know about the treasure. Tell me.”

  “Well . . .” He brushed muffin crumbs from his hands. “They say that Sleepy haunts the island in October because—”

  “Because that’s when he was murdered.”

  “Right. That’s one of the stories. Another one is that he’s looking to get revenge on the rival gangsters who murdered him. Some people say he’s actually roaming the island because he’s looking for his head. Other people believe that Sleepy’s looking for the treasure he buried before he died.”

  “If he buried it, why does he have to look for it?” I asked. “Why doesn’t he know where it is?”

  One corner of his mouth pulled into a sneer that should have been enough to tell me this was a stupid question. Still, Dimitri felt obliged to elaborate. “While we’ve learned a great deal about the Other Side in the last few years, we don’t know how it all works. Not yet. Maybe a spirit’s memories get all mixed up. Maybe time over there isn’t the same as time over here. Maybe Sleepy doesn’t know where to find the treasure because on the Other Side, he hasn’t even buried it yet!”

  Maybe it was time to change the subject, and I guess my expression must have said that, because Dimitri laughed.

  “My guess is you don’t believe in any of this, right?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Hey, I’m used to skeptics. In this business, you have to have a thick skin. But the fact of the matter is, what you believe doesn’t matter. Our research tells us that people have been seeing Sleepy’s ghost on this island for years. Ever since back in nineteen thirty when he was killed.”

  1930.

  I thought about the old magazine I’d found in the storage room and wondered what Hank made of it. I’d told him about it before I left the winery, and no doubt he’d already gathered up the magazine as evidence.

  For now, that wasn’t my problem. Sleepy’s history, on the other hand, was. So was Kate’s freedom. “He’s been dead a long time, and all that time, you say folks have seen Sleepy. All over the island?”

  Dimitri nodded. “Not just at the winery, if that’s what you’re thinking, though he worked there for a while. Some people think he even used some old caves nearby to store the liquor he smuggled
into the country from Canada. I can’t say if that’s true or not, but Noreen believed it. She claimed if she could find the caves, we’d have a better chance of gathering evidence.”

  She more than claimed it. She had probably been trying to prove it by finding her way into the old storage room through the series of caves and tunnels that Kate wasn’t even sure existed. I did not bother to mention this to Dimitri. The exact place of Noreen’s murder was one of the facts Hank wanted to keep from the public as long as he was able.

  “What else can you tell me about Sleepy?” I asked Dimitri.

  “Not a whole lot.” He finished his cup of coffee.

  “Then how about Noreen? What else can you tell me about her? You say you came back here together the other night. Did you know she went out again?”

  “I had not a clue,” he said. “But then, I’m a pretty sound sleeper.”

  “But when you didn’t see her around on Thursday morning, you didn’t wonder?”

  His shrug tugged that already snug T-shirt across his chest. “Noreen was”—he cocked his head, searching for the right adjective—“difficult. Surly. High-and-mighty. Ornery. Truth be told, I was glad when I didn’t see her Friday morning. It meant I didn’t have to deal with her craziness . . . Hey, we won’t have to arrange the equipment alphabetically anymore!” This was apparently a new thought, because his grin lit the room. “That’s perfect, because I’ve got this way better method for packing and moving the equipment based on what it’s for and how much we use it and—” His grin melted into a sheepish expression that would have disarmed a weaker woman. Or one who wasn’t as concerned that her friend was going to prison for a murder she didn’t commit.

  “Sorry. I’m pretty excited to be back in the driver’s seat.”

  “You used to be the head of EGG?”

  Dimitri’s dark brows dropped low over his eyes. “Seven years ago, I was the one who founded EGG. Let me tell you, it wasn’t always easy keeping the group going. We all worked full-time jobs, and we did our investigations at night. Try explaining to your boss why you’re falling asleep at your desk when you’re falling asleep at your desk because you were up until four in the morning running around some old, abandoned cemetery—and then there are the volunteers!”