The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus

by Clarke, Alexandria

  With our kitchen out of service, it was up to Bodhi or me to pick up breakfast in town. I stopped by the Sanctuary on Friday morning, ordering blueberry muffins and two cups of coffee to go. As I waited at the counter for Ava to pour the coffee, a woman sitting in the far corner of the cafe caught my eye. She absentmindedly stirred honey into a cup of tea as she read through a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice. Her round face and layered brown hair was familiar to me, though I was certain I’d never run into her in town before.

  When Ava returned, passing the paper bag of muffins across the countertop, I asked, “Hey, Ava. Who’s that woman in the corner?”

  She glanced over. “Oh, that’s Jane Lacroix. She teaches English at the high school.”

  “Would I know her from anywhere else?”

  I handed over a ten-dollar bill. The cash register pinged as Ava answered. “I’m not sure. I don’t suppose you’re a part of the book club. Jane runs it these days.”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s not it.”

  “Sorry, sweetie. I’m at a loss then.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, smiling. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Any time.”

  I turned to leave, my gaze lingering on the woman. She turned a page, immersed in her novel, and the sun glinted off of her whiskey-colored eyes. I could’ve sworn I’d seen her somewhere before. My curiosity got the best of me. I walked over to her.

  “Excuse me?”

  The woman looked up with a polite curiosity, but when she saw who had interrupted her reading, she smiled in recognition. “I know you.”

  “You do?” I asked, taken aback. “I was just trying to figure out why you looked familiar to me.”

  Delicately, she closed her book and set it aside. “Oh, we’ve never actually met, but I’m an avid fan of your blog.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  Her answering laugh pealed like bell tones in the cafe. “Not at all. Actually, I followed your adventures long before you ever landed in Black Bay. Can you imagine how surprised I was when you showed up in our little town? I’m Jane, by the way.”

  “Bailey,” I said, balancing the coffee and muffins against my chest to shake her hand. “I still can’t remember how I know you.”

  “I’m not sure—oh!” She snapped her fingers as if she’d just remembered something. “Ethan has been helping out at your house, hasn’t he? He and I go way back.”

  The comment jogged my memory. I had seen this woman before, but not in person. There was a picture of her in the Winchesters’ photo albums, the one with Ethan and his father. No wonder it took me a while to recognize her. That photo had been taken twenty years ago.

  “You were Ethan’s fiancée, weren’t you?”

  She sipped from her teacup, though I guessed it had gone cold by now. “That was a long time ago.”

  There was no iciness in her tone, but I sensed that I had broached a topic of conversation not often acknowledged. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to pry. Ethan’s mentioned you. That’s all.”

  “Ah, if it’s Ethan who’s mentioned me, I doubt you have a positive impression of my personality.”

  “Pardon?”

  Jane pulled her novel toward her, opening it to the first page. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” she read off. She tapped the page with her index finger and looked up at me. “At one time, the locals might’ve described Ethan as a young, modern version of Mr. Darcy. He was proud and aloof, and I sure fancied myself his Elizabeth. Unfortunately, our story didn’t end happily ever after.”

  “Would it be intrusive of me to ask why?”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “The whole town knows the story anyway. Ethan went through a rough patch after his father died. You would never know it now, but for a while, all he did was drink and gamble. I broke it off when I realized he’d emptied his bank account playing roulette.” She shook her head, chuckling lightly. “Boy, did the town hate me after that. No one could believe I broke Ethan Powell’s heart.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I never would’ve guessed Ethan had that kind of trouble when he was younger. He seems so put together now.”

  “He finally got help,” Jane explained. “It did him a world of good. All of a sudden, he was the town’s golden boy again. He stopped drinking and wasting his money. Got the guys at the lumber mill back on their feet after Chris Winchester died. It was like he was an entirely different person.”

  “But the two of you never got back together?”

  “Oh, I tried to get him back,” she said, pushing her cold tea across the table. “I sent him a letter, telling him to come find me when he was ready, but he never took me up on it.”

  “That seems like a shame.”

  Jane sighed heavily, tracing the printed face of Mr. Darcy on the cover of her book. “I only have myself to blame. Ethan and I dated on and off since high school. Everyone expected us to end up together, but I blew it. I left him when he needed me most. I wouldn’t forgive me either.”

  Jane’s regret struck a chord with me. Her relationship went south and she bailed out, unwilling to take on the challenge of making it work. When Bodhi and I lost Kali, I had considered the same option, but where would I be now if the two of us had decided to divorce then? The last five years had been full of remorse and empty promises, but if I were alone, would I have ended up with the same misgivings as Jane?

  “Ethan never married though,” I pointed out. The wedding band on her finger had not escaped my notice. “You did.”

  She wiggled her ring finger. “Yes, it all worked out in the end. But you know how it is. Sometimes, you can’t help but wonder what could have been.”

  I nodded in agreement. “I’ll leave you to your book. It was nice to meet you. If you like, stop by the house. I’ve never met one of my followers in real life before. It would be fun to show you how we get things done.”

  “I would love that,” said Jane. “Have a good day, Bailey.”

  “And you.”

  Back at the house, Bodhi stood on a ladder, inspecting the giant wooden beams that stretched across the ceiling of the living room for wear and tear. With any luck, we wouldn’t have to replace them, but Washington was infamous for termite damage. As I set the coffee and pastries on the card table—now the only surface free of construction dust—Bodhi glanced down.

  “Took you long enough,” he said. “Was there a line?”

  I unwrapped a muffin and took a bite. “No, I ran into Ethan’s ex-fiancée.”

  “How was that?”

  “Enlightening.”

  “Really? What did she—”

  The ladder clanged, and Bodhi’s voice cut off, replaced with a horrifying gagging sound. When I spun around, he dangled just below the support beam, as though an invisible hangman’s noose was strung around his neck. Bodhi kicked his feet wildly, eyes bulging out of his skull as he groped for the rope around his neck that wasn’t there. I sprang into action, limping across the living room to pick up the fallen ladder. I grunted as I lifted it and propped it against the beam. Then I grabbed Bodhi’s sneakered feet and placed them firmly on the rungs of the ladder. As soon as his weight settled, the force released him, and he practically fell down the ladder and into my arms.

  We sank to the floor together. Bodhi massaged his throat, drawing in short gasps of air. His eyes watered, bloodshot, and his face was bright red from the pressure.

  “Patrick,” Bodhi declared hoarsely. “I saw Patrick.”

  My pulse thundered through my veins, pounding in my head. “What?”

  “He was there,” Bodhi went on, pointing upward weakly. “Next to me. Already dead. Bloody, too. Like someone beat him with a baseball bat before stringing him up.”

  The image made my stomach lurch, and I felt that one bite of blueberry muffin rise in the back of my throat. I tried to think rationally. “Let me get this straight. Three days after I dream
that Caroline drowned in a bathtub, just like Kali, you suddenly see Patrick being hung up in his own house.”

  Bodhi squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to banish the thought from his mind. He lay still on the newly installed wood flooring, his hands still resting on his throat. I brushed his curls back, wondering what would’ve happened to Bodhi if I hadn’t been around to put the ladder back up.

  “Bodhi.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I don’t think this is a coincidence.”

  He opened one eye to study me. “Meaning?”

  “At first, I thought I dreamt of Caroline in the bath because that’s how Kali died. Now I think she’s been trying to tell us how she and Patrick were killed.”

  Bodhi propped himself up on his elbows. He looked like hell thawed out, but at least he was no longer in immediate danger. “Bailey, what are the odds that Caroline died the exact same way as Kali?”

  “In Caroline’s case, I don’t think it was an accident.”

  Bodhi looked nauseous at the implication, a pale green tint coloring his features. “It does have a perverse romance to it, doesn’t it? Christopher and Elizabeth drown at sea. Their kids suffocate to death in different ways. Whoever did this was sick in the head, Bailey.”

  “No doubt, but knowing how the Winchester children died doesn’t help us figure out who in town wanted to kill them.”

  Bodhi sighed and looked up at the support beams. “Caroline?” he called. “I know you’re there. We could really use a hint that doesn’t involve bodily harm, if you don’t mind.”

  Upstairs, several doors slammed in quick succession. Caroline was listening in. Carefully, I helped Bodhi to his feet. He swayed, leaning heavily on me. I steadied him against the wall.

  “You okay?”

  “Head rush,” he said. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

  Together, we climbed the stairs. In the hallway, the door to each bedroom and bathroom was closed except for one. Caroline’s bedroom lured us toward it, but we hesitated in the landing. I had yet to find the time to pick the books up from the floor. They lay abandoned, spines cracked and pages torn, as though waiting for someone to light a match and set them ablaze. I frowned at the continued absence of her journals. We hadn’t found them in the house, and I strongly suspected that someone had confiscated them from the premises.

  A small paperback fell from the broken bookshelf, joining its brethren on the floor. Bodhi jumped, bracing himself against the door frame in anticipation of a bigger event, but nothing else moved. I stepped through the wreckage and knelt to pick up the book.

  “What is it?” asked Bodhi from the hallway.

  I held up the paperback to show him the mournful painted face on the front cover.

  “Ethan Frome.”

  20

  Reconnaissance

  Bodhi and I sat at the card table in the empty living room, nursing our cold cups of coffee. I skimmed through the pages of Ethan Frome, wondering if Caroline had left another hint between the front and back covers. The margins were full of notes, and I recognized the cramped handwriting as Caroline’s own, but there were no clues as to why she led us to the book.

  “Why don’t we just ask Ethan if he knows anything?” Bodhi suggested. A faint red line had appeared around his neck, as though the noose that had strung him from the ceiling earlier had really been there.

  “Obviously, he knows something,” I countered, flipping to the last few pages. I’d filled Bodhi in on my interesting conversation with Jane Lacroix that morning. “Otherwise, why would Caroline have given us his name? God, this book is depressing.”

  “Why, what happens?”

  “It’s about this guy who pines over his sick wife’s cousin,” I summarized. I remembered reading the short novel in high school, but the ending was what stuck in my mind. “He has no money to run away with her, and he feels bad for wanting to leave his wife, so they decide to make a suicide pact. Neither one of them actually dies though. Ethan walks with a limp, the cousin becomes paralyzed, and both of them ironically end up in the care of Ethan’s wife to live the rest of their miserable lives together.”

  “Cheery.”

  I tossed the book across the card table. It slid off the edge and landed on the floor with a light thump. “We can’t just roast Ethan for information. Talking about the Winchesters upsets him. Besides, we don’t know if he’s on our side or not.”

  “Ethan?” said Bodhi incredulously. “Are you kidding? You were the one who told me how devastated he was after the Winchesters died. Now you think he was in on it?”

  “All I know is that a murderer has been on the loose in Black Bay for almost twenty years.” Reluctantly, I picked the book off the floor and studied the cover. “And Ethan already knows about Caroline.”

  Bodhi rubbed the welts on his neck. “He hasn’t mentioned anything about it since that day I fell off the roof.”

  “Maybe he didn’t buy our explanation.”

  “This is silly,” said Bodhi. “If we can’t ask Ethan what he knows, how the hell are we supposed to figure out what Caroline meant by giving us that book?”

  The muffins were stale now. I swallowed a chewy morsel before discarding the rest in a garbage bag full of construction waste. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

  He threw me a skeptical glance. “Okay. Hit me with it.”

  “Ethan’s fiancée told me that he had drinking and gambling problems after his father died,” I explained. “He eventually sought help. As you and I already know, he used to visit Doctor Marx on a regular basis. I saw his file in her office during my last appointment. What if we were able to get our hands on it?”

  Bodhi narrowed his eyes. “You want to break into a psychologist’s office and steal confidential medical records?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think that’s easier and safer than casually asking Ethan if there’s anything he’d like to tell us?”

  Ethan Frome fixed me with an accusing stare from his two-dimensional home on the cover of the paperback. I turned the novel over so that he faced the table instead.

  “Listen,” I said to Bodhi. “Doctor Marx and her secretary both take their lunch hour at the same time. We could sneak in, have a look at Ethan’s file, and get out of there before Doctor Marx even orders a drink.”

  “You’re forgetting something. How are we supposed to get in without a key?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please. This is Black Bay. Who here ever locks their doors?”

  “We could go to prison for something like this.”

  “Oh, come on.” I nudged Bodhi’s leg beneath the table. “Like you’ve never been arrested before.”

  He jabbed the table with his index finger to emphasize his following point. “Getting booked for trespassing because you were peacefully protesting and practicing civil disobedience is entirely different from accessing medical records that don’t pertain to your own self.”

  “Whatever you say, Ghandi.”

  “Bailey, I’m serious.”

  “So am I,” I declared. I gestured to the red marks around his neck. “Look at your neck, Bodhi. Look at my ankle. Or my arm. Or my knees. How long before Caroline loses her patience entirely and kills one of us?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s a possibility,” I insisted. “She’s proved time and time again that she has no problem with injuring us, even if we are trying to help her. Do you want to figure this out or do you want to become the next ghost that haunts the Winchester house?”

  Bodhi toyed with a rip in the plastic covering of the card table. I stayed quiet, waiting out his response. I’d already made up my mind. With or without Bodhi, I was going to Doctor Marx’s office, but it would be a lot easier if I had someone to act as a lookout.

  “I know that look,” Bodhi said, regarding me from across the table.

  “What look?” I asked innocently.

  “That smirk on your face,” he clarified. “That’s the same face you
make every time you’ve decided to do something outrageous. Like jump off a cliff in Santorini.”

  “Admit it,” I said, grinning. “That was the most fun you’ve ever had. Besides, I only did it to impress you. You were the one with an adrenaline addiction. Whatever happened to that?”

  “I grew up.”

  “Hardly. Come on,” I wheedled. “It’s nearly noon. We could be there and back in less than an hour, potentially armed with new information about the Winchesters. What say you?”

  Bodhi considered the mischievous look on my face, one eyebrow raised. Then he threw up his hands in defeat. “Aye,” he said wearily.

  “Aye!” I cried in triumph, rising from my seat at the table. “Wow. We haven’t done that bit in a while. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  Bodhi rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “Come on, you nutcase. Let’s get this over with.”

  Bodhi drove us into town. The locals waved as we passed by, recognizing our familiar white truck. We pulled into the crowded parking lot of the fresh market across the street from Doctor Marx’s office. Bodhi piloted the truck into a free space behind a long, blue dumpster, craning his neck to get a better look at our target.

  “This is foolproof,” he muttered, shrinking in the driver’s seat as people around us loaded up their groceries. “No one’s going to see us at all.”

  “Shh.” I watched the door to Doctor Marx’s office. It was five minutes until noon. “As soon as Doctor Marx leaves, we’ll go in. That way, we have plenty of time to read through Ethan’s file.”