The Haunted Valentine (A Lin Coffin Mystery Book 7)

by J A Whiting

  “It means there’s a clue in this building, at this event,” Lin said.

  “Is it Anderson?” Viv screwed up her face.

  “He could be part of the clue since I found out he’s the real owner of the Cape.”

  “What’s this guy, George, up to then?” Jeff asked.

  “Did George make you feel cold?” Viv stared at her cousin.

  “No … and he talked to me,” Lin said. “None of my ghosts have ever talked to me.”

  “And then there’s the guy who said he was the property’s maintenance man,” Jeff said. “Anderson told us he doesn’t employ a maintenance man.”

  “I’ve never had a ghost case that has made me feel so flummoxed.” Lin sighed in frustration. “The old ghost has only appeared once. I’ve met two men who have lied to me about working at and owning the Cape. How are they all linked to this mess? What does the ghost want me to find out? Why doesn’t he help me?”

  Jeff took Lin’s hand. “You’ll figure it out. You just need more time.”

  “I’m so, so tired.” Lin’s upper eyelids drooped.

  “Don’t give up,” Viv said. “Tomorrow afternoon we’re going to the library. We’ll find some information on the two men you think might be your ghost. We’ve been so busy that we haven’t been able to spend time doing any research. Tomorrow we’ll find something that will move the case forward.”

  A grateful smile played over Lin’s face. “When I fall down, you two pick me up.”

  “That’s what we’re here for.” Viv returned her cousin’s smile. “You can’t be expected to carry the weight of your “skill” all by yourself.” Suddenly, Viv’s eyes widened and she sat up straight. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Lin asked.

  “I’ve been wondering and wondering why I can’t see ghosts and you can. Why did you inherit our ancestors’ skills and I didn’t? Why did you get the ability to help the ghosts and I didn’t?”

  “You figured out why?” Lin asked.

  “No, you figured it out.”

  Lin stared blankly at her cousin.

  “You fall down and I pick you up. The ability to help ghosts is too much of a burden for one person to bear. My family skill is to be the one who helps you. We were born on the same day. We’re the same age. We’re two peas in a pod. We’re a team. That’s why you didn’t see ghosts again until you moved back to Nantucket … until you moved back here with me. We’re supposed to do this together.”

  Lin’s eyes got all misty. “You’re right,” she said softly. “I can’t do this alone. I need you.”

  Viv sat in her chair with a triumphant look on her face. “I didn’t get cheated out of the family skills. I have a role to play, too.”

  Jeff smiled broadly and squeezed Lin’s hand. “That’s it. That’s why you see ghosts now. They waited to show up because you needed Viv’s help.”

  “Yes.” Lin squeezed her boyfriend’s hand and looked deeply into his eyes. “And before I could ever tackle all this, I think I needed you, too.”

  16

  Lin stood in the dark kitchen with only the light from the living room lamp pooling onto the wood floor. With Nicky sitting quietly at her side and leaning against her leg, she stared at the object on the shelf of the tall hutch. A bit of moonlight played over the sailor’s valentine and illuminated the hundreds of tiny, colored shells arranged in the intricate pattern.

  On returning from the charity event, Lin showered, made some toast and tea, and sat on the sofa working on a crossword puzzle. Feeling worn out and frustrated over the case, she’d avoided thinking about the valentine or the old ghost and each time she went into the kitchen, she averted her eyes away from the hutch.

  When she dozed off for thirty minutes, she dreamed of chasing after bits and pieces of information that swirled in the air and blew just out of reach every time she leaped to grasp them. The dog had curled up next to her on the couch, and when she woke with a start, Lin was comforted and calmed by the rhythmic sound of Nicky’s gentle in-and-out breathing. He lifted his head and rested it on her leg, his dark brown eyes looking up at her.

  “Why can’t I figure this out, Nick?” Lin asked. “I can feel clues darting around me, but I can’t grab hold of them and put them in any order.”

  Despite wanting to avoid the whole thing for a few hours, a strong urge had compelled Lin to get up off the sofa and go to the kitchen to look at the valentine, and she and the dog ended up positioned in front of the old hutch in the dark, quiet room.

  Lin had placed the valentine vertically on the shelf so that the shell pattern faced outward and was visible from anywhere in the kitchen, but now it was positioned horizontally on the hutch. Tilting her head as she stared at the object, Lin spoke out loud to the valentine. “When I saw you at the antique Cape the other day and at the Whaling Museum this evening, did you actually leave the house or is what I saw like a hologram or something?”

  The look of the shells began to change as if they were being lit from within … first, the pinkish shells would brighten and fade, then the white ones would illuminate and grow faint, and then the purple shells would light up and dim. The pattern continued and, with wide eyes, Lin shuffled closer to the valentine and reached out to touch it.

  As her hand hovered over the octagonal box, her skin warmed from the heat rising off the valentine and she withdrew her hand.

  Images, sensations, and snippets of conversations whirled in her brain. Meeting a young man named George at the old Cape house who told her he was the owner … meeting Wallace Anderson, the real owner of the place, at the evening’s charity event … running into and talking with the maintenance man who told Lin he worked at the Cape … and Wallace Anderson denying employing a worker for the property.

  Lin shook her head as if the movement might help arrange and connect what she knew.

  The former renters’ words bounced in her mind. Odd things happened in that house the renters told her … lights would turn on, objects would be moved or flew through the air, locks didn’t stay locked, men were heard arguing and yelling in the home, the Cape’s back staircase gave off an air of danger and terrible sadness.

  Another thought popped into Lin’s mind. Why won’t Leonard let me into his house? For a second, the answer seemed to be within reach, but then the particles of the idea spun and swirled away without coalescing. Lin leaned back against the kitchen island and let out a sigh.

  When a huge yawn escaped from her mouth, Lin turned and headed for the bedroom. “Come on, Nick. We need to sleep.”

  The dog let out a woof causing Lin to startle. Her eyes flicked to the valentine and she saw one tiny, white shell lit up so brightly it felt like a searchlight was cutting into her optic nerve. Her eyelids snapped shut and as she whirled away from the light, her hand came up to cover her eyes.

  Behind her lids, an image formed of the pile of white scallop shells near the harbor off the Polpis Road that she and Viv discovered while on their bike ride.

  Lin’s heart raced. There was something about that location. The awful feeling of unease she’d experienced while gazing at those piles of scallop shells flooded through her veins.

  Lin looked down at the little dog at her feet. “There’s something about those shells, Nick.”

  The words repeated in her head.

  There’s something about those shells.

  Lin drove her truck down the dirt road and pulled it to a stop at the edge of the lane. The early morning sun had only started its climb over the horizon an hour ago, but the air was sticky and held the promise of another scorching hot day.

  Barely able to sleep the night before, Lin felt slow and sluggish and wondered how she would drag herself through her work day. The concerns about her stamina faded the closer she got to the end of the road. As her heart began to pound, Nicky looked up at Lin and whined.

  “I know, Nick. I feel it, too.” Beads of sweat dribbled down Lin’s back and the perspiration had little to do with the heat and
more to do with the area she was approaching. She stopped at the edge of the huge lot.

  The scallop shells spread out before her in one, long, huge white pile. Because the sun was lower in the morning sky, the scene was less bright than the first time she’d seen the dumped shells, but the sense of unease and anxiety was the same, strong and powerful, and it hit her square in the chest.

  Nicky whined again and stayed behind his owner, his small face peeking around Lin’s legs.

  The humid air wrapped itself around the young woman and pressed against her making her lungs feel heavy and tight and she had to force herself to take in slow, deep breaths. The temperature seemed to be rising with each passing minute as Lin stood there staring at the discarded shells. There was an old, long, low building to the left and she could see the bright blue water of the harbor at the far end of the lot.

  With tiny drops of sweat beading up above her lip, Lin imagined jumping into the cool ocean to erase her discomfort.

  The dog growled low and deep in his throat.

  Lin glanced down. “What’s making us feel so anxious, Nick?”

  Letting her eyes move around the space, Lin tried to determine the cause of the uncomfortable sensation that made her want to run back to the truck and race away down the road to her first client of the day.

  Was it the old building? Did something awful happen on this spot? Was it the sight of the thousands of shells that once housed living creatures strewn over the dusty lot and discarded like garbage?

  Muscle tension in her neck clawed its way up into Lin’s head causing a pulsing sensation to pound in her temples and her vision to blur and dim. Yanking off the sunglasses that were hooked over the top edge of her tank top, she pushed them over her face to shade her tired eyes.

  Nicky rubbed his nose against Lin’s bare leg causing his owner to jump.

  Letting out a chuckle and squatting down, Lin took the dog’s head in her hands and scratched behind both of his ears. “Why don’t we get going? I think we’ve both had enough of being here.”

  The dog woofed and wagged his little tail as he turned jauntily to head back to the truck.

  Before standing up, Lin reached for one of the small scallop shells and rubbed her finger over the smooth surface. With a sigh, she stood and gently tossed it back onto the pile.

  With a roaring blast, a wall of icy air pummeled Lin with such force that she stumbled backwards and hit the ground like she’d been run over by a freight train. Prone on the dirt lot, the roar of the wind screamed in her ears and the freezing gale that surrounded her turned her sweat droplets to patches of ice on her skin.

  The strangeness of the incident made Lin think she’d been on her back for an hour when in reality it had only been a few seconds before the howling of the wind ceased and the air temperature returned to normal.

  Nicky rushed to Lin as she pushed herself up to seated position and rubbed her hands over her arms. Little grains of dirt clung to her long, brown hair.

  “What the heck was that?” The words fell from her mouth even though she had a pretty good idea about what just happened.

  Standing on shaky legs and shivering slightly, Lin brushed the dust from her backside and tugged at her shirt to dislodge the dirt that had hit her.

  Looking down at the dog, Lin asked, “Did you feel that, too?”

  She glanced around at the piles of shells and let out a long sigh. Still rattled by her unexpected crash to the ground, Lin traipsed slowly back to the truck with the dog scurrying along behind.

  “There’s a ghost here, Nick … and he or she sure does want me to know about it.”

  17

  It was early evening when Lin and Viv sat at a long, dark oak table reading through reels of fiche that contained stored images of long-ago Nantucket newspapers. Lin pushed back from the fiche reader, stretched her arms over her head, and yawned.

  “My eyes are going to fall out of my head,” she told her cousin.

  “I know,” Viv agreed. “We’ve been here for hours and haven’t found a single thing of importance on either one of those guys.” The cousins were searching for details and information on G. W. Weeks and E. G. North, the two men who owned the haunted Cape house in the early eighteen-hundreds. North had lived in the house from 1810-1830 and Weeks was the owner of the home from 1830-1836.

  “It’s slow going.” Lin rubbed at the kinks in her shoulders that had tightened from hunching over the table for so long. “I’m reading every article. I’m afraid if I only scan the documents, then I’ll miss something important.”

  Viv groaned. “This will take us the rest of our lives.”

  Despite feeling fatigued and disheartened, Lin let out a chuckle at Viv’s comment and then clapped her hand over her mouth when an elderly man at the next table gave her a scolding scowl for making noise in the library.

  “Why don’t we stay for a little while longer,” Lin whispered and the two women leaned close to their microfilm readers to carry on the search.

  The light-levels were low outside the window when, after more than an hour had passed, Lin lifted her head from the screen and said, “I’m beat and I’m starving. Let’s call it a day.” She switched off the light on the reading machine and reached down for her bag. When she looked up, Viv still had her face stuck to the microfilm screen.

  “Viv?”

  Viv held up her index finger and kept reading what was on the screen. After nearly a minute passed, she pushed back with a smile on her face. “Guess who found something.”

  Lin’s brows went up and her eyes widened. “You did? What is it? Show me.”

  Viv made a flourishing gesture towards the machine and Lin slid over to read from the screen.

  “Oh, how sad.” Lin sat back. “G. W. Weeks’ wife, Sara, died in childbirth. The baby son died, too.”

  “Keep reading,” Viv encouraged.

  Lin paraphrased from the article. “Sara Weeks had studied literature and art and was an accomplished painter. She sang in the church choir. Her father was a prominent Nantucket businessman. Sara worked in her father’s office as a bookkeeper.”

  “Don’t stop,” Viv said. “Keep going.”

  Lin leaned close to the microfilm reader and after finishing the obituary, she turned to her cousin with a smile. “It looks like G. W. Weeks is our man.”

  “Weeks was a sailor.” Viv looked proud of her discovery. “He sailed for three years from the ages of eighteen to twenty-one.”

  “He must have bought the valentine on one of his voyages and brought it back for Sara.” Lin talked fast with excitement bubbling up in her voice. “Let’s keep reading. Maybe we’ll find other articles that mention Weeks.”

  “What a lovely reward for finding some information,” Viv mock-moaned. “I have to stay in this library for a few more hours reading on this awful machine until my eyes cross.”

  Lin chuckled and turned back to her reader. “When we finish, I’ll buy you dinner.”

  “I’ll hold you to that … and don’t you try to weasel out of it.” Viv paged through some of the uploaded articles from the long ago newspaper. “And by the way, I’m very hungry. You’re going to have a hefty bill.”

  Lin smiled as she read. “I think I left my wallet at home.”

  “Ha-ha,” Viv deadpanned. “That’s a bald-faced lie.”

  The young women bantered for a few more minutes until they settled into the reading task and after another hour had passed, Viv gave up. “That’s it. I’m done. If you want to keep reading, you’ll find me asleep over there in the corner on that leather sofa.”

  “Wait.” Lin was about to turn the light off on her machine when something caught her eye and she leaned in to check the story on the screen. “It’s his obituary. Here’s G. W. Weeks’ obituary.”

  “I was so close to getting out of here,” Viv muttered and slumped in her chair. “Let’s hear it. It better be good.”

  Lin said, “It mentions that Weeks was a sailor for several years, but that he didn
’t want to be gone from home on any more long voyages, so he did odd jobs taking work on a farm for a while, then started his own business doing handyman jobs. Eventually, he ran a store in Nantucket town. Mr. Weeks was musically-inclined and played several instruments. He married his long-time sweetheart, Sara, and they later bought a house a few miles from town. The article mentions that Sara passed away before her husband at the age of thirty-eight.”

  “How old was Weeks when he died?” Viv asked.

  “Seventy-eight.”

  “He never remarried?”

  Lin took another look at the story. “No mention of that, so I guess not.”

  “Your old ghost is G. W. Weeks,” Viv said. “He must have bought the valentine on one of his voyages. He must have given it as a gift to Sara.”

  Lin gave a nod. “I think so, yes.”

  Viv looked pensive. “Why does Weeks want you to have the valentine now?”

  Lin’s face was blank. “I have no idea.”

  “What does he want you to do with it?”

  Lin gave a shrug. “That is still to be determined.”

  Deep in thought, Viv tapped her chin with her finger. “You got knocked down this morning by the scallop shell piles when that cold wind blew you over.”

  Lin waited to see where Viv was going with her comments.

  “Obviously, a ghost caused that icy gale.” Viv shifted her eyes to her cousin. “Clearly, the ghost responsible for knocking you to the ground wanted to get your attention.”

  “I think that’s a good guess.”

  Viv asked, “Was knocking you down done out of anger?”

  “I didn’t think of that.” Lin’s forehead creased in thought.

  “Or was it simply done to ensure you knew that a ghost was in the vicinity?”

  “I didn’t sense any malice when it happened.”

  “So was it your old ghost, Mr. Weeks, who knocked you down with the icy tsunami?” Viv asked. “Was he trying to get your attention over something on that lot?”

  “I don’t know if it was Weeks or not, but whoever it was, the ghost was definitely trying to get my attention.” Lin frowned. “And, I’ve got a butt bruise to prove it.”