A Murder at Alcott Manor

by Alyssa Richards

  He wished Frances a goodnight and climbed into his truck.

  When he paused before turning onto the empty two lane highway, he thought for probably the millionth time how different his life almost was: he wondered if he would have married Brooke Williams if she hadn’t died. They’d dated through most of high school, she had been planning to attend the same college he went to. If she hadn’t been killed, he might have been eating dinner with her tonight, along with a couple of their kids. Maybe they all would have walked the beach after dinner, then stopped by Dixie’s so the kids could see their grandma. Brooke had their lives all planned out, and he might have rolled right along with those plans. If she had lived, and if Layla had refused him.

  It was strange how even though ten years had passed, some part of his life still felt unfinished. Because the night she died, all his plans with Layla snapped like a dried tree branch.

  Maybe he would have married Layla. He’d kissed her after prom, as well as that day they’d shared at the lake. He’d really believed they were going somewhere. Maybe they still had a chance.

  He’d picked up the pieces of his life afterward and moved on. He’d gone to college and become a New York stockbroker. He’d dated other women. But he couldn’t help but think now and then of Brooke and Layla and what might have been.

  One day he would find out who killed Brooke, and he would make them pay. This was a puzzle he would solve. Not just for himself, not just for Brooke and her family, but for Layla, too. Her life had been nearly ruined that night.

  Then he thought, also for probably the millionth time, about the kiss he and Layla had shared a few days before the campout. They had always been good friends, but something had changed between them that spring, a special closeness had developed. He felt deeply unguarded around her, as if he could really be himself and tell her anything. There was a spark that lit him up from the inside whenever she was around, and it made him feel oddly invincible. He still wasn’t entirely sure what that was, though he knew that he only experienced it with Layla. And that one day on the pier, the feeling had been so strong, he just had to kiss her.

  He pulled onto the highway and thought of his former best friend. She looked beauty queen perfect when he saw her at the manor. Even with that giant cake crumb stuck to the side of her face, he thought she was one of the sexiest women he’d seen in a long time. With that straight blonde hair to the middle of her back and curves in all the right places, she turned his head even before he fully realized who she was.

  She had a way of handling herself, she always had. Like she would be just as comfortable having tea in Buckingham Palace as she would be at the Friday shrimp and grits special down at Butts on the Creek. He liked that about her. She never judged and took people for who they were. When he’d known her better she was the sort of person who found something positive about everybody.

  She also had had a way with him. Without fail she saw him as no one else did or could. In school, he had been captain of the football team, president of the chess club, and one of the soloists in chorus. He was well-rounded, smart, not bad looking.

  Layla never saw him as perfect like everyone else did. Pleased as he was with the mask he wore, he rather liked that she saw through his act. And she showed up knowing where he needed to go next. That worked out just fine, because she was usually going in that direction herself. It was the easy rhythm of their friendship. They rode the same wave.

  That is, until the awful night their senior year when they camped on the great lawn of Alcott Manor. Their church youth group had gathered for one final celebration together, before they would all go their separate ways. They built a bonfire on the beach and opened a time capsule that their group had put together when they were only eleven years old. Everyone shared their dreams for the future: their colleges of choice, career ideas, where they wanted to live.

  He and Layla had plans. He was going to break up with Brooke the next day, because he had wanted to avoid her drama. Then he was going to take Layla out to dinner. That, he thought, was going to be their beginning. Too, they had shared that kiss. That one magnificent kiss that he couldn’t have predicted, the one that grabbed him by the heart and soul, the one he couldn’t forget.

  But that night everyone woke up in their sleeping bags under the full moon and the starry skies to find a living nightmare. Brooke had been attacked, the back of her skull smashed and bleeding. Her sister Jordan had also been attacked. Layla had been accused.

  He should have come to Layla’s defense right away, knowing she never would have hurt anyone. Though truth be known, at the time he did wonder if Layla had just had enough of Brooke. Like so many others. Finally, after several months and too much media attention, the police cleared her of all charges. They told everyone in a televised interview that Brooke’s injuries couldn’t have happened the way Brooke’s friends said it did. Layla was innocent.

  She didn’t talk to him after that, because when everyone in town blamed Layla for what happened to Brooke, he didn’t defend her. He had been her best friend and he didn’t stand up for her. Now, he was going to set this wrong to right. For Layla. For him. And for anything that they might have together. He just hoped it wasn’t too late.

  He flicked on his brights and drove onto the lightless curved road that would lead him to the manor. The tall pines on either side of the road were spiky fingers against a black sky. His car leaned into the S curves and he glanced at his phone. It was usually now when Tom would call and they would go over the plans for the day. Layla and her family still needed him to finish the restoration. And he needed her support with her family to make sure the rest of the job could get done without objection.

  His mother didn’t want him working in Alcott Manor, but he was going to do whatever it took to reconnect with Layla. She had been an innocent victim so long ago and because of him she paid a hefty price—publicly blamed and shamed and, well…it was Mason’s theory that she never would have ended up in a marriage with Asher if only he had tried harder.

  It was time he made that up to her, it was time she had an advocate, it was time she had someone to protect her for a change.

  12

  Getting the girls to bed on their first night in Alcott Manor wasn’t as hard as Layla thought it would be. They weren’t feeling terribly adventurous about the elegant but spooky space they were in; their new home was still intimidating. So it was a quick dinner of ravioli and salads, then bath and bedtime. They both insisted on sleeping in their mother’s bed, with their new dog, and made Layla promise that she would join them later. She promised she absolutely would.

  When she was certain they were asleep, she searched for her cell phone then realized she must have left it in the car. She switched the button of the baby monitor base to the on position and carried the walkie-talkie shaped speaker with her. Layla had found the girls’ baby monitor tucked in a box with their baby blankets and toys and teething rattles. Asher had told her to throw out the monitor years ago, that it was a hazard. Tonight it came in handy.

  Tom had asked her to make a nightly round through the house, and she hadn’t yet done it. Now she could check on the rest of the house as she was supposed to and still listen for her girls.

  She opened the door to the stairwell and flicked the light switch that looked like it hadn’t been replaced since the early 1970s. It thunked loud when she pushed it up as if its job were heavy and cumbersome, and no light came on. Looking up where she knew the fixture to be, she turned the switch off and on again. Then again. No light appeared.

  “Dang it,” she whispered.

  She wondered if a trip upstairs and through the house was really necessary tonight. Tom’s instructions had been direct but vague: “Go from room to room, turn the lights on, spend a few minutes in there. Make notes of anything that looks out of place or needs repairing. Visit every room to keep the energy moving.”

  She stared into the pitch black that was as dense as concrete and felt unnerved. Watched. She shook her
head. She was overwhelmed. Tired. That’s all this was. She had faced so much in the last few months that she was just worn down. No strength left for the night, and now she was afraid of the dark.

  She rubbed her eyes. Then, focusing hard toward the top of the stairs, she hoped to see a sliver of horizontal light at the bottom of the door, a target she could hone in on as she went up. Instead she thought she saw shadowy movement, as though someone shifted their position.

  She drew back from the stairs and looked away. Icy adrenaline rushed through her chest and down her arms.

  Trick of the eye.

  She toyed with the idea of walking outside and around to the front door, but she wasn’t sure if the workers had set the security alarm. Maybe she wouldn’t do the tour tonight at all.

  Then she remembered the promise she had made Tom. He had given her and her girls a home, and all she had to do was walk the house three times a day. Guilt poked at her insides for trying to avoid her job, and in light of Tom’s generosity, no less.

  She glanced at the oversized frame where Asher had appeared in her dream. He was dead, she reminded herself. She looked toward the stairway. Being afraid to move forward was a sign that she was allowing a dead man to define her life. She set her jaw. Enough.

  She searched the kitchen drawers for a flashlight but didn't find one. She decided she was being ridiculous. She walked through dark rooms all the time, and nothing bad ever happened before.

  She studied the inky blackness and waited for the movement to repeat. It didn’t. But the longer she stared, the more she could have sworn she saw the outline of someone sitting on a step. Staring back at her. A strange coldness swept across her body.

  Just a flight of stairs in an old house. Woman up.

  She forced herself to blink. The first step beneath her bare foot was not as cold as she expected, but the wood was warped. Beaten down by the years. The analogy wasn’t lost on her.

  One by one the steps took her further into the darkness, and though she couldn’t see what was ahead, she became too terrified to look back toward the light. She crept closer toward the top, two more steps, each one creaking from age.

  The dark was a stygian depth, thick and secretive, and it pressed against her skin. The walls in Alcott Manor were weighted with haunted history, full to their brim with her ancestors’ suffering. One…two more steps until some presence seemed to be in front of her. She paused with her eyes wide and searching. The cold made her body tremor.

  She was determined to do this job, determined to prove that no one was there, and even if there were, she was determined not to be stopped. Two more steps.

  But she could feel someone in front of her. His presence was so real, staring her in the face, she knew if she reached out, she would touch him. Dread rushed through her, that horrible feeling that let her know she’d made a mistake, that the odds were against her and there was no way out.

  Her mouth went dry. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  13

  Dixie Holloway sat straight and tall at her narrow pine desk and cautiously placed another tarot card in the tenth and final position of her Celtic cross layout. It was a skeleton dressed in knight’s armor and riding a white horse—the card of Death.

  She left her finger on the card’s white edge, keeping the connection open, because sometimes one or two more bits of information would come through. Just enough to give her clarity, just enough to give her peace, and in this case, just enough hope that death would not be the final outcome.

  Before she did the reading, she had placed her hand over the deck and asked to see what was dangerous about the manor. Aunt Ethel had dropped in unannounced and cautioned her mid-conversation about Mason working at the manor, saying there were “dangerous things” there. Then she left as unexpectedly as she arrived.

  The dead who visited Dixie shared good insights—like the fact that her son had someone new in his life. Though the information wasn’t always as clear or abundant as she would have liked. And they didn’t usually take questions or spend as much time as she needed with them. They were here one minute and gone the next. Whatever they did on the Other Side, she assumed they were busy and they had a schedule. She figured their quick visits were errands for God.

  Nothing else was coming through. So she gathered the cards together and shuffled them and thought distractedly of how Layla was living at the manor. Shaking her head, she said aloud, “If she were my daughter, I wouldn’t let that happen. Even if I had to dig deep into savings to make it work, I would have found someplace else for them to live.” She put the cards in their black velvet bag.

  She rearranged several of the geodes and crystals and gemstones that she kept around the outer edges of her desk and selected her current favorite— a polished labradorite. Every stone carried a specific energetic meaning, and this one was all about finding truth.

  Her former husband Steele used to say, “Dix, you’ve got so many rocks in this place, I can’t tell the difference between the outside and the inside anymore.” Several months before he died, she could see his dead mother and father around him. Because she knew that deceased relatives waited close by their loved ones for a few weeks before they passed, she insisted he have a full check-up. She also tried to get him to carry a few small quartz crystals in his pocket for protection, but he refused to follow her direction on all counts.

  She glanced toward his recliner to see if maybe he was visiting. He often showed up in the evening when everything was quiet. But he wasn’t there.

  She ran her thumb over the stone and thought about how Tom had asked her to give him a reading on the house a few months earlier. He wanted to know if there were any ghosts in the manor, if they were safe to move ahead with the restoration, and most importantly, if Asher had moved on to the Other Side.

  She walked from room to room in Alcott Manor, reading the energy, inspecting every square inch. Her reading had come back clean, so to speak. No, she couldn’t find any ghosts, and no, she didn’t see Asher. She had looked hard, too.

  Crickets chirped from the back yard, and the pool lights cast an eerie glow across the lawn. The cherry tree branches dipped and swayed with the wind. She and Steele had put the pool in years ago to entertain their sons and their friends and to keep them close to home when they were teenagers. The gray privacy fence at the edge of the lawn stood tall and firm and made her feel confined. At this age, she had planned to travel with her husband to see the pyramids, the northern lights, and the land down under. Instead, she was alone and anchored to a house that no longer breathed with the life it used to when her family was young and loud and full of fun.

  She grabbed the stack of photographs she had taken at the manor that day she’d visited. Sometimes spirits left traces in photos, which was good validation for her clients when she told them there was someone in the home. She had gotten into the habit of taking pictures of spaces before she read them.

  She opened the French doors that led to the back yard and let the cool breeze wash over her. One by one she flipped through the pictures she’d printed. Something was wrong with the manor, she could feel it, and she agreed with Aunt Ethel that it was dangerous. She just didn’t know how, specifically.

  She had walked into the manor that day expecting to put her finger on the exact problem like she could in most readings. She rarely, if ever, read anything wrong.

  She reached the end of the pile of photos and started again. This time, she returned to her desk and used her lighted magnifying glass to examine the details of each photo up close. She looked for unexplainable shadows, orbs, transparent figures. But there was nothing. Just a few squiggly white lines that looked like dust or lint that had gotten on her camera lens.

  She couldn’t shake the unusual feeling that this time she was indeed missing something. A chill drifted across her neck and she rubbed at it.

  She laid the magnifying glass down, opened her laptop and the file of photos, then enlarged them to fill the screen. If she couldn’t find a
nything this way, she was going to have Mason connect her laptop to her husband’s big screen TV so she could see the photos even larger.

  It felt to her like the house hid its secrets. Which wasn’t possible. If anyone could see beyond someone’s masquerade, it was her. Besides, why would a house hide its secrets?

  “Zoom out,” a familiar voice said to her from across the too-dark den.

  Her smile became the one-of-a-kind that only he could bring to her face. “You’re late.”

  Her dead husband sat cross-legged in his former recliner as he often had, and tipped one side of his mouth in a sly grin. “I’m not late. You’re impatient. Zoom out.”

  “What?”

  He nodded to her computer “Zoom out. Not in.”

  She did as he suggested until she had a bird’s-eye view of the great hall. “Okay. What am I looking at?”

  “Pull back a little. Soften your focus,” Steele said.

  Dixie scooted away from the computer. “I’m going to need my glasses.”

  Her husband stood behind her and pointed to a place in the photo where curtains hung on the back wall. “Here. And then here. See?”

  Dixie ignored all the details of the room in the photo except for where her husband pointed. She followed her husband’s finger as it traced a glassy outline in the pattern of the fabric. “Is that a face?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” her husband said. He still had the scent of pipe smoke about him and her heart ached to be close to him again. He pointed to another area. “That’s his arm. And see that?”

  “Why didn’t I see this person when I was there? Why aren’t they showing up like they normally do for me?”

  “Not everything is visible at the manor, even to you. It’s a dangerous place.”

  “So I keep hearing.” A sick feeling was rising in her throat, and she tried to swallow.