A Murder at Alcott Manor

by Alyssa Richards

  “You need to get Layla and her girls and Mason out of there.” He nodded slowly. Seriously. “Someone wants to hurt them.”

  “Mason won’t listen to me when it comes to ghosts and whatnot,” she said. “Can’t you do something?”

  “I’ve tried. Can’t get through to him.”

  She glanced at the watery reflection of a face. “Is that Asher?” she breathed.

  Her husband nodded. “Stay away from the manor. Promise me. He killed Tom. He’ll kill you, too.”

  14

  “Daddy?” Emma’s voice called through the baby monitor that was still clasped in Layla’s hand and she gasped.

  The presence in front of Layla shifted in a release of pressure and she dashed ahead in a frenzy, stumbling upward in the dark and toward a door she prayed to God was unlocked. Her knees banged against the rounded edges of the steps, and her free hand hit everything in front of her in search of a way out.

  She moved faster than she ever had, scrabbling, grasping and praying. And yet with the unseen presence close behind her she felt unbearably slow.

  Why oh why oh why had she chosen to come back to this house?

  Her knuckles finally hit a door. She clamored up the final steps until she was upright, her hands fumbling the loose round doorknob that was cold in her hand. With a firm twist of the knob and a hard shove, the door flew open and Layla pitched forward, landing on the black and white marble flooring of the great hall.

  She scuttled on all fours across the hallway, knowing that he was behind her, grabbing for one of her legs. When she reached the wainscoting on the opposite wall, she spun around and prepared to fight for her life.

  The hallway was empty.

  The open throat of the stairwell gaped wide in front her, dark and quiet and waiting.

  The sound of her breath bounced off the stone floors and walls and made her feel quite alone. The lights from other rooms shone bright, but the hallway lights barely flickered. She slid upward against the wall and eyed the dimmer, the one she knew controlled the gold and crystal sconces on the walls. Keeping her eye on the mouth of the stairway, she sidestepped to the light switch and pushed it up, increasing the brightness until she squinted.

  The illumination covered the first few steps of the stairwell and she stretched upward to see the next few. She fully expected to see Asher’s clown-like smile and dark eyes staring back at her as though death couldn’t hold on to him. She walked closer and pushed the door wide with a squeak until the light from the hallway spilled downward.

  The baby monitor crackled and she jumped.

  “Daddy…”

  Emma Catherine. She was dreaming. Imagining that her father was still alive and nearby.

  Layla stood on tiptoe and peered down the stairway: no one there. With light shining, the passage seemed unthreatening now. The presence she had felt moments ago was gone. She tried to sense the danger, but it wasn’t there. This was just an old staircase: old creaky wood and old electrical wiring in an old narrow passageway. Maybe she was reacting in old ways, too. The way she would have when Asher was still alive.

  She waited for a noise, a movement, a feeling she couldn’t explain, something to justify her reaction. But there was only warm light falling gently over an old nightmare. She drew in a deep and stuttered breath.

  She must have imagined the whole thing.

  She walked down the long hallway and thought about what she looked like—scrambling up those stairs like a crazy woman. She chuckled nervously and sweat prickled under her arms. The air through the baby monitor breathed steady and quiet, like the ocean through a conch shell. Emma must have settled down. Everyone was fine.

  Layla walked into the music room, acting calm even though her insides trembled from too much adrenaline. Too many memories. The oversized crystal chandelier glowed softly like hundreds of lit candles. The hard parquet floor, the antique Queen Anne’s couch, and the robin’s egg blue fabric in the room—blurred. The historically accurate scene reminded her of the manor’s dead zone. The strange place she’d been yanked into the week before, the unexplainable place between what used to be and the present day. Where young girls in hand-sewn dresses of yesteryear ran through the kitchen in flickering images and sounds. Where things happened that shouldn’t.

  If Tom were still around, she would have spoken to him about it. He was open-minded. He would understand. The idea that she was the one left to manage this home chilled her. She backed out of the room.

  She headed toward the kitchen for water. She couldn’t have explained it, but there was another dimension to this house, a reality that couldn’t be seen by most people. One that she couldn’t see either, unless she shifted into a lucid dream and she had recently spent time at the manor. But she felt it. It was as if memories never died here, they continued to live on in some capacity, forgetting that their place was in the past. She wondered, and not for the first time, if that cake and the dog really did cross over from this other dimension.

  She passed by arched doorways that were wide and tall enough to dwarf full grown men. Wall sconces cast more than enough light now for her to see everything in her path. They also cast spindly, shifting shadows against the gold wallpaper. The grandfather clock on the second floor chimed. She stopped and looked back in the direction of the open doorway, still expecting Asher or someone to be cast forth.

  Stop it, Layla.

  The dream about the mug was a fluke. Stress. She and Emma were both dreaming about him as though he were alive.

  Which he wasn’t. Nothing would change that. It would just take a little time for everyone to adjust.

  She passed the grand staircase, realizing that she was only steps away from where Asher had died. She wondered if she ought to leave a flower to help make peace. Then she decided what she really wanted to do was throw confetti and say a prayer of thanks.

  She hovered at the doorway of the kitchen. She remembered Mason standing in this room, looking too handsome in his T-shirt and jeans. Seeing him again after all this time was such a strange thing. Odd and right out of the blue. There was a time in their friendship when she would have trusted him with her life. Funny how things changed, and not always for the better.

  She remembered walking to the neighborhood pool with him on the weekends when they were about eleven. He was gangly then. His feet seemed to grow ahead of everything else, and it wasn’t unusual for him to just trip and fall for no reason. One minute they were having a conversation, and the next he was picking himself up off the grass while she was bent over in a fit of laughter. He had a way of tickling her funny bone, no matter what silly little thing he did.

  Plain shelves along the kitchen walls stored plates and other dishes, and there was an austere but functional white sink that was standard for the day. The black iron range attached to a fireplace, and strangely she could almost feel the heat. The shadowy sense of kitchen work bustled around her like long gone experiences that couldn’t settle.

  A heavy wooden work table in the middle of the room had been sanded but not finished, and sheets of newspaper lay beneath it. She could almost see bowls of fruit and small barrels of sugar and flour. Maybe containers of spices, too.

  When she turned, she saw the one thing she didn’t expect: an ugly, brown fat-bottomed mug with the words Born to Golf printed on the side of it. Something loud and frightening jarred inside of her, an unwelcome awareness that once again she was not alone.

  “Make me a tea, would you, Lay?”

  Her breathing came fast and shallow, her heart raced to keep up, and a hatred for all things Asher fired in her chest. She felt bound and captive. Smothered and trapped.

  She could almost smell it, that whiff of Asher she’d noticed on her first day here. Like a bad cologne, it drifted through the room and around her with a sense of ownership.

  “No,” she said aloud.

  He was her past. She should not be afraid. Her body shivered, then she straightened her shoulders. She would not allow any sort of
place for him in her new life.

  She cringed inwardly at the tiny squeaks her bare feet made against the hardwoods in the silence. She lifted the mug by the outside curve and smashed it on the floor. The commercial-grade pottery broke into thick shards that rocked on the floor.

  If Asher had been alive, he would have raged about how this was his favorite mug, and he would have made her clean up the shattered mess. He would have made her replace it with a new mug, a replica. Then he might have slapped her. Or twisted her arm. Or bent a few of her fingers just shy of the breaking point.

  The metallic taste of panic flooded her mouth. She slid to the floor and leaned against a leg of the heavy work table. She strained to hear any evidence of his presence—footsteps, laughter, knocking. The silence didn’t feel quiet. There was a vibe of movement even with no one around.

  She willed herself to get up. She needed to walk outside or go downstairs. But she couldn’t move. She was being watched, she could feel Asher nearby. The idea of a deep breath made her feel too vulnerable, though she desperately needed it.

  The rap at the back door turned her inhale into a sharp gasp, and a man’s face pressed close to the glass on the back door.

  Mason unlocked and slid through the opened door quickly. “Hey, Layla-pop. Everything okay?” His voice was tender and his use of her nickname was a sweet memory, not to mention a well-timed one.

  She pressed her palm to her chest to calm her heart that pounded like a jackhammer. “What are you doing here?”

  He placed a Sammi’s-On-The-Sea to-go bag on the side table, sat next to her on the floor, and put his hand on her knee. “I thought you might need a hot meal on your first night. Joueat?”

  She knew exactly what he asked. A good Southerner always combined those three words—did you eat—into one: joueat? She couldn’t answer.

  He studied her face then asked, “Are you okay?”

  She nodded short and quick, as usual, keeping her secrets to herself.

  He leaned toward her slowly, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. Under normal circumstances, she would have pushed him away. But she had never felt more alone or frightened than she did right then, so she allowed herself the momentary oasis of his strength. Her nerves were knocking together as if they were surrounded by ice.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered after a long moment and next to her ear this time.

  The ice inside of her melted by half. She closed her eyes, let Mason hold her until he pulled away to look at her face.

  “No.” She caught her breath and fought a wave of embarrassment. The very last thing she needed right now was to depend on someone else, least of all another man.

  “You’re not okay? What’s wrong?”

  “No, I mean, I haven’t eaten. I’m fine.”

  The smell of food in the kitchen made her suddenly aware of how hungry she was. She had been so busy straightening up the kitchen, cooking and cleaning up that there hadn’t been time for her to eat. “I’ll put something together later.”

  “Well, now you won’t have to.” He gave her leg a little hug, as if to say I’m-here-for-you.

  She was caught at the intersection of needing to create some distance and yet feeling a strange intimacy and comfort with him. As if time hadn’t passed between them over the last ten years, as if she’d never killed Brooke, and as if Asher had never been a part of her life.

  She pinched the skin on the back of her hand to make sure she was awake.

  Yes, still awake.

  “Didn’t like that mug?” His smile was the same. Easy, well-meaning and tipped in humor on one side.

  She stared at the thick shards on the floor and decided to come clean for once. It had been a too-difficult week, and she didn’t have the energy to configure politically correct answers anyway. “Asher used to have one just like it.”

  He nodded. “Reason enough.”

  She pushed the pieces away from her with the side of her foot.

  “Here. I’ll do that.” He patted her knee twice as he got up. “You making your evening rounds?”

  “Yeah. I was just on my way upstairs.”

  Mason’s back was bodyguard broad, and the sheer size of him made her feel safe. She took that deep breath she needed, and the icy fear inside of her melted by yet another half.

  He held the broken pieces in his open hand and showed them to her. “He’s gone now,” he said with such seriousness that she wondered if he knew about the way Asher had treated her.

  Mason had never spoken positively of Asher. “I don’t trust him,” he’d said over and over. That was part of the reason she had enjoyed marrying Asher, to prove Mason wrong.

  She stared at the crumbled mess that he held in his large hands and felt comforted by what she saw.

  “That’s not a bad thing,” she managed. “Wait, that wasn’t your mug, was it?” She hoped it was, actually. Because that meant that Asher hadn’t found a way to put it there.

  “No.” The pieces hit the bottom of the metal trash can with a clatter. “Wasn’t mine. I don’t know whose it was, but I wouldn’t worry about it. Smashing a mug is cheaper than therapy.” He wet a paper towel and wiped the floor where the mug had fallen. To pick up any tiny pieces, she guessed. He had always been a perfectionist.

  She used the top of the long work table to lift herself upright, and the table squeaked, showing its age.

  “Do you like it?” He patted the table that was the center point of the kitchen. “We found her in the attic storage, I think she had been forgotten up there. Lots of nicks and damage, but I can bring her back. She’ll be perfect again before long.” He was changing the subject, taking the pressure off, giving her a minute to restore herself. They both knew he had walked in on her mid-falling apart.

  His expression was reassuring, even interested. He rested his hands on his hips and faced her, appearing as though he had nothing else to do in this world but talk with her. Just over his shoulder and through the window was a view of the great lawn, and a long-ago memory hit her like the sharp end of jagged lightning: Mason hovering over Brooke, her head bloodied and her sister Jordan screaming and pointing to Layla.

  She blinked and refocused while he described the table’s flaws—deep grooves from the cooks who used it as a cutting surface, an uneven slope and one leg shorter than the other. “But I’ll bring her around. Before too long, she’ll be all right angles with a smooth finish. No one will know what she used to be.”

  Although Layla thought she might know. “Are you here to work?” she asked.

  “No. I’m here because I brought you dinner.” He slowly pointed to the bag from Sammi’s.

  “Oh. Right. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know. I wanted to.” His smile seemed to offer compassion.

  She knew she must look shaken, with little wonder as to why. With a glance to the place where the mug had been, she had a sudden urge to wake the girls, pack their bags, and leave the house. “Do you think there’s any chance of moving up the deadline on the remaining repairs?”

  He nodded hesitantly. “Ah, well. Tom and I laid out a schedule. Why don’t we go over that tomorrow?”

  “I want to get the tours going as fast as possible. He left us in a bad place,” she said, referring to her former husband.

  “Understand.” His light brown eyes looked at her softly, warmly, and his gentle smile was quiet and patient. It was as though he waited for her to say something. If she had been her sister, she might have known the perfect thing to say.

  As it was, their history coiled around her like a python squeezing her to death, so she just said, “Well. I guess I’d better get upstairs before the night gets away from me.”

  He gestured in the direction of the grand staircase. “Of course.”

  “Ah, I was actually going to take the back way. To avoid—” She didn’t want to say his name, let alone stand anywhere near where he had died. Unless it was to throw confetti.

  He frowned as people did
when they wished they hadn’t missed the obvious. “Sorry about that.” He extended an arm in the opposite direction. “This way, then.”

  She pushed her long hair over her shoulder and made a smile. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll go with you.” His voice was cheery as if he was happy to go with her, as if they did things together all the time and as if this was the reason he was there tonight.

  She stared at him for a moment and half-thought of telling him no.

  Why was he really here at this time of night? Why was he giving her so much attention? When they parted ten years ago he never said as much as goodbye. She knew he hadn’t forgotten.

  He followed right behind her when they went up the spiral staircase to the second level. It felt good to climb so many steps and not be out of breath, not to have to pause because her knees or her back hurt and not to let someone pass because she was afraid of being judged from behind. She let her hips sway a little with each step.

  The first guest room they entered was framed with sunny yellow drapes and anchored with a gold-toned hand-hooked rug. The room ought to have been welcoming, but the period four poster bed, side table, and dresser were minimalistic at best, and more functional than gracious. The grand height of the room dwarfed the pieces, making them seem more suitable to a dollhouse.

  Layla adjusted the yellow rose print quilt and fought a disconnected feeling, as though she had fallen through the proverbial rabbit hole. The mug incident left her rattled. Each time she looked up, she half-expected to find Asher standing somewhere in the room.

  “How’s Jayne Ella these days?” Mason’s voice was deep and clear and she jumped when it cut into the evening quiet in the room.

  She glanced in his direction and saw him leaning against the doorway. He flashed her an effortless grin, and she thought about how Asher would hate the fact that Mason was here.

  “She’s a good grandmother, the girls love her.” Layla turned out the light in the bathroom and passed Mason on her way to the next room.