My fingers tightened on the issue of the Banner. Could it be? Was the ghost of Caroline Winchester trapped in her family’s old house?
I turned back to the first page of the paper, where the Winchesters’ collective obituary did nothing to ease my angst.
Christopher Alan Winchester (48), Elizabeth Rosemary Winchester (45), Patrick Silas Winchester (17), and Caroline Alice Winchester (15) passed away on August 16th, 1996 in a tragic boat accident off the coast of Black Bay, Washington. The Winchesters were dedicated to improving quality of life in the local town through private business, volunteer work, and a collection of positive attitudes that influenced the entire community. Christopher Winchester is survived by his brother, Aaron Winchester of Brooklyn, NY…
The issue of the Banner that had been printed prior to the Winchesters’ memorial paper spoke of the accident in a more clinical tone.
Christopher and Elizabeth Winchester were declared DOA at the scene of a fatal boat crash Friday evening. The Winchesters’ well-known sailboat, Artemis, left the marina around five in the afternoon but did not return that night. Sam Williams, Black Bay resident and a former member of the U.S. Coast Guard, happened upon the crash in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“Not sure how it happened,” he told the Banner. “The weather was nice enough. I was out on the bay myself. The rocks around the bluff are rough though. They should’ve known better than to try and sail through there.”
Authorities are still searching for the Winchester children, who were reportedly aboard Artemis when it ran aground.
The name Sam Williams struck a chord with me. I’d heard it before, in a conversation with Ethan a few weeks back.
“Who found them?” I’d asked.
“Retired member of the Coast Guard,” Ethan had replied. “Sam Williams. He works in the lumber mill now.”
I took pictures of the relevant articles and stacked the old papers on top of one another, haphazardly shoving them back onto the shelf. Mrs. Poe would probably kill me for leaving them in such a disorganized state, but I was in too much of a hurry to care. My ankle trembled as I dashed by the front desk, feeling Mrs. Poe’s gaze boring into my back. Outside, I flagged down a passing car. The driver, a woman I recognized as the owner of a local boutique, slowed to a stop and rolled down her window.
“Yes, honey?”
“Any chance you’re heading south?” I asked her. “I need a ride to Powell’s Lumber Mill. I’d walk, but I don’t think my ankle can take it.”
She leaned over to push open the passenger door. “No problem. Oh, you poor thing!”
I boosted myself into the seat and closed the door. “Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”
If there was one thing I adored about the locals of Black Bay, excluding Mrs. Poe, it was their unwavering hospitality. The boutique owner, whose name I soon learned was Angela, chatted my ear off about the Winchester house for the five-minute drive across town. I asked her briefly what she knew about the family, but she was only fourteen when the Winchesters died. She’d gone to school with Caroline and Patrick, but didn’t remember anything other than Patrick’s prowess on the football field. When she idled at the curb in front of the mill, I hopped out gratefully. Angela was nice enough, but she sure talked a lot.
I had yet to visit Ethan’s sawmill. I’d only seen it from a distance. It was hard to miss the towering cranes that hauled massive logs across the vast timber yard. Up close, it was even more daunting. Heavy machinery whirred through the extensive yard. Immense piles of logs rose above the dirt like the walls of a wooden fortress. The mill itself was an industrial warehouse, but a smaller building next door looked like some kind of office. I limped toward it, keeping my eyes peeled for potential falling lumber.
Inside, a sturdy man with flushed cheeks wearing a red flannel shirt and a hard hat sat behind a dusty desk, running through some kind of supply checklist. He glanced up as I stumbled in, and I hoped that he would be more accommodating than Mrs. Poe.
“What can I do for you, sweetheart?” he asked in a deep baritone.
“I’m looking for Sam Williams,” I said. “Is he here today?”
“Oh, yeah. Sammy’s out in the yard.” He set down the checklist and reached for the phone. “You need to talk to him or something?”
“Yes sir.”
He dialed a number and put the phone to his ear. “Hey, man. Send Sammy up front for me. There’s a lovely young woman looking for him.” He winked at me as he hung up. “Should be here in a few minutes,” he told me. “Have a seat.”
I sank into a plastic chair in the corner of the small office with a relieved sigh and ripped the Velcro straps off my walking boot, letting the blood flow back to my ankle. The man behind the desk studied my various bandages with a curious eye, but when he noticed I had caught him looking, he quickly smiled and returned to his work. Soon, the door to the office opened again, and a ridiculously lanky man bowed his head as he stepped through the frame. He swept off his own hard hat to reveal a shock of white blond hair and bright green eyes. He walked right past me, addressing the man in the hard hat instead.
“What’s up, Marshall?”
Marshall nodded toward my plastic chair. Sam Williams turned to face me. From his great height, he asked, “Do I know you?”
“I thought everyone knew me,” I said before realizing how pompous it sounded. Hurriedly, I strapped the walking boot into place and stood to shake Sam’s hand. “I’m Bailey Taylor. My husband and I bought the Winchester house a couple months ago. Is there a place we can talk? I wanted to ask you a few questions, if you have a couple minutes to spare.”
“What kind of questions?”
“I run a popular web blog,” I said. It was the perfect excuse to dig for information. Everyone knew that Flipping Out covered more than just our renovation progress. “I wrote a few posts about the Winchesters, but my readers want to know more. Would you be willing to sit for a quick interview?”
Sam was a man who looked eternally tired. The skin of his face drooped downward and his mouth angled toward the floor.
“Five minutes,” I promised.
Perhaps Sam found it exhausting to fill the innumerable feet between his head and mine with words, because he simply nodded, held the door to the office open for me, and led me to a nearby picnic table in complete silence.
As we sat, I cleared my throat awkwardly. “I was just wondering if you wouldn’t mind telling me about the Winchesters’ boat crash.”
Though his bushy eyebrows lifted in anticipation, he made a hand gesture that I took to mean I should continue.
“You found them that night, right? Christopher and Elizabeth.”
His gentle voice barely rose above the noise of the machinery around us. “The next morning.”
“And they crashed against the rocks?”
“Yes, ma’am. The front of the boat was ripped to bits.”
“Just the front?”
“The back had taken damage too,” explained Sam. He rested his elbow on the picnic table, picking at the faded red paint. “I’m not sure how they managed that if they hit the bluff head on.”
“Did the Winchesters drown? Or—”
Sam’s mouth contorted into a frown. “Mrs. Taylor, I don’t mean to be rude, but do you think your readers really want to know about this?”
“Well, I—”
“Because what I saw that morning has haunted me every day for the past twenty years.”
In my haste to obtain information, I’d forgotten to consider Sam’s feelings. From what I gathered, the crash was dreadful, and if Christopher and Elizabeth were already dead by the time Sam arrived on the scene, I had to have stirred up a slew of bitter memories for him.
“I want to do this story justice,” I said. “I’d like to do a series about the Winchesters. It helps to have as much information as possible.”
His eyes were doleful, and he continued to strip paint from the picnic table as he resolutely filled me in
. “I don’t recall what the official cause of death was,” he said. “But I imagine both Chris and Lizzie died from their injuries. They hit the bluff at full speed, Mrs. Taylor. There ain’t no surviving a crash like that.”
I hesitated to push Sam for further knowledge, but the thought of returning to the Winchester house without a head start on the identity of our ghost intimidated me more than risking insensitivity with Sam.
“I heard the weather was fine that day,” I said. “No storms or rough waters. Why do you think the Winchesters crashed?”
Sam lifted his enormous shoulders. “The currents up that way are tough to navigate. That’s why no one sails near the bluff.”
“Then why would Christopher and Elizabeth go there?”
He rubbed his forehead between his forefinger and palm, smearing dirt or oil across his skin. “Mrs. Taylor, I don’t have a straight answer for you. And I don’t intend to speak poorly of Chris and Liz.”
“Why would you speak poorly of them?”
Sam hesitated. He seemed to be choosing his next words carefully. “Everyone knew that the Winchesters loved a good party. They were inclusive too. If there was a shindig at their house, everyone was invited. They had all the best booze. Champagne, scotch, wine. It wasn’t a secret that Chris and Lizzie let loose every once in a while. They were never sloppy, but they certainly enjoyed a good buzz.”
“You think they were drunk when they crashed?”
“I don’t know what I think anymore,” replied Sam. He pushed himself up from the picnic table. “Honestly, I try not to think about it. But it seems unlikely Chris and Liz would risk sailing toward the rocks with their kids on board if they were both in a sober mindset.”
“Speaking of the kids, what happened to them?” I insisted, clumsily getting to my feet and tripping over my boot in the process. “Patrick and Caroline?”
“Not a whisper of them on board,” replied Sam. He offered me a hand to help me clamber over the bench.
“But their bodies were never found.”
His low voice stuck in his throat. “Must’ve been thrown over the edge. Like I said, the currents up that way are strong. I suppose they got dragged farther out.”
I debated whether or not to mention that I thought neither Patrick or Caroline had ever been on the boat to begin with. My time with Sam was wearing thin. He obviously wasn’t comfortable with answering my questions. He drifted toward the lumber yard with every passing second, either eager to return to work or desperate to get away from me. I threw caution to the wind.
“But what if Patrick and Caroline never got on the boat?”
Sam paused and turned to look at me. “Mrs. Taylor. You were not a resident of Black Bay twenty years ago. If you want to raise questions about the nature of the Winchesters’ accident, I highly suggest you speak to the police.”
And with that, he lumbered off, replacing his hard hat on his head by way of goodbye. I sighed. Maybe coming to the lumber mill had been a bad idea. Once Sam spread the news of our impromptu interview, all of Black Bay would wonder why I was raising questions about the Winchesters. I’d have to publish more blog posts about them to keep up appearances. Not good for keeping our paranormal activity on the down low.
I looked up the road. The bluff was on the opposite side of town, and my ankle was in no mood to make the trip. I doubted the red-faced man in the office was willing to drive me back to the house, but if there was a chance to convince him to at least drop me off at the bottom of the footpath, it might be worth the awkward conversation. I turned toward the office.
And ran smack into Ethan Powell.
14
Reunion
Ethan grinned down at me. He still wore his Powell’s Lumber Mill shirt, but here at his actual lumber mill, he didn’t fit in as much as I’d expected him to. While the other employees’ foreheads dripped with sweat, staining their white work polos, Ethan was cool and dry. As the owner of the mill, he evidently filled a supervisory role rather than joining in on the labor himself.
“Twice in one day,” he announced, straightening the collar of his shirt. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a little crush on me, darlin’.”
I fixed Ethan with a sardonic stare. He barked out a laugh.
“I’m just kidding, Bailey. I know an old dog like me don’t have nothing on a young, impressive man like Bodhi.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Ethan.” I patted one of his well-defined biceps. “I’m sure there’s one or two women in town who would be impressed by your Popeye the Sailor Man build and—what is that? Do you actually have an anchor tattoo?”
Ethan yanked down the sleeve of his shirt to cover the ink. “I was twenty and stupid, darlin’. Make no mistake.”
I pursed my lips, trying not to laugh.
“Anyway,” he said. “What are you doing down here in my neck of the woods? Shouldn’t you be resting that ankle of yours?”
Now that he’d mentioned it, my ankle reminded me that I had abused it all afternoon with an excruciating surge of discomfort. I wrinkled my nose, trying to camouflage the pain. “Bed rest gets boring very quickly. I wanted to see the mill. Bodhi keeps talking about it.”
Ethan squinted dubiously at me. “Uh-huh. Is that why you upset Sammy like that? Boredom?”
“Crap.” I sheepishly ducked my head. “You saw that?”
“I did indeed.”
I picked up the walking boot, balancing like a graceless flamingo on my good foot. “I didn’t mean to upset him—”
“Tell you what,” interjected Ethan. He offered me a hand. “How about I drive you back to the house and you can fill me in on what you had to say to Sammy. Does that sound all right?”
Anything was better than limping the few miles across town and up the hill. I nodded, and Ethan hoisted my arm over his shoulder, letting me lean into him as he escorted me to his dark blue truck parked around the side of the office building. He opened the passenger door and lifted me inside.
“Thanks,” I said, my face burning. I wasn’t used to needing so much help.
“Don’t mention it. You might want to look into a pair of crutches though. I don’t think that boot’s doing you much good.”
He shut my door, rounded the truck to the driver’s side, and hopped in. As he fired up the engine and backed out of the lumber yard, I surveyed the view toward the bay. The water picked up at the edge of the lumber yard, and with the sun on its way back toward the horizon, the bay and the mill glowed a peachy golden color.
“So?” prompted Ethan, peeking left and right before he pulled out onto Black Bay’s one and only through road. “Why are you bothering my guys at work?”
“That was never my intention,” I said. I rolled down the window to let the breeze play with my hair. “I wanted to know more about the Winchesters’ boat crash.”
“Why’s that?”
Because the homicidal ghost in the Winchester house that probably belonged to Caroline Winchester wanted justice.
“For a few different reasons,” I said instead. “I want to focus on the Winchesters for my blog, but there’s also something about living in their old house, you know? I’ve been sidelined with all of these injuries. I can’t help Bodhi much as of late. My mind wanders.”
We rode past the library where Mrs. Poe was locking up the front doors.
“Bailey, the last thing I want to do is scold you for being curious,” said Ethan, his gaze fixed on the road as he piloted through the pedestrians crossing the town square. “But you’re digging into old wounds here. The Winchesters may have passed nearly twenty years ago, but the town remembers it as if it were yesterday.”
“I know—”
“I’m not sure you do,” he said in a tone that was firm but pleasant. “Everyone who lives here owes their livelihoods to the Winchesters, including Sammy. Can you imagine what it was like for all of us when we realized that the people who had made it possible to keep our homes ended up dead for no apparent reason?”
“I didn’t think of that,” I admitted, trying to ignore the tightening pressure of guilt in my chest.
“And that’s not your fault,” Ethan reassured me. He waved to a young couple piloting a double-wide baby stroller through the crosswalk. “You didn’t experience it firsthand. I can imagine it would be hard to understand the collective grief we went through.”
“I guess that’s what I’m trying to do though,” I said. A small hand flung a milk bottle out of the baby stroller, and I grinned as the dad chased it across the road. “I just want a better understanding of the Winchesters themselves.”
“You might do better to focus on their lives then, rather than their deaths,” suggested Ethan.
“Where were you?” I asked suddenly, turning to him. “When you found out about the boat accident. Or is it callous of me to ask? You don’t have to answer.”
The family finally cleared the crosswalk and the truck continued on its way through town.
“No, it’s all right,” said Ethan. “Honestly? I was hungover.”
I elbowed him playfully. “Tore up the town on Friday nights, did ya?”
“Not quite,” grumbled Ethan. For the first time since I’d met him, his demeanor darkened. The dimming light in the cab of the truck bounced shadows off of his usually cheerful features. “I spend that whole night arguing with my fiancée.”
“Your fiancée?”
“That confused look on your face is well-placed,” he said, glancing my way. “We never married. High school sweethearts don’t tend to stick, I’m afraid.”
“So then that morning—”
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 14
