The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus
Page 23
“Or he needed a cover story,” I suggested instead. “Face it, Bodhi. Ethan had a motive. He wanted to get back at the Winchesters for taking over his business. And now we’ve just discovered that he lied about his alibi. Do you really still think that he’s innocent?”
A traffic light ahead turned yellow. Bodhi floored it, and the truck shot through the intersection just as the opposing light flickered green. “Don’t you think the police would’ve opened a murder investigation if there was any evidence that Ethan was up to no good?”
“Not if the entire incident looked like an accident,” I pointed out. “You said it yourself. The whole town thinks the family died in a boat crash, including Patrick and Caroline.”
“We’re missing something,” said Bodhi. We finally cleared the shopping district, and Bodhi sped up even more as we passed through Black Bay’s one and only neighborhood. “I don’t know what, but we sure as hell don’t have all the puzzle pieces, Bailey.”
Ahead, the space between the trees marked where pavement gave way to packed dirt and the road swiveled upward to the Winchester house. As we plunged into the shadows of the forest that blanketed the side of the bluff, the truck’s tires drifted over the dirt. The tail end cut loose, and Bodhi wrenched the steering wheel to correct our path.
“Baby, slow down,” I warned, bracing my hands on the dashboard.
He eased off the gas ever-so-slightly, but we still careened up the hill at a hazardous pace. “What do we do now?” he asked. “Do we go to the police with this?”
“It’s not the police I want to talk to.”
Bodhi threw a sharp look at me. “You want to ask Caroline first, don’t you?”
I watched the trees whiz by, blurring together in a haze of dark greens and shadowy browns. “She is the one who convinced us to look into this whole mess.”
“To be honest, I would’ve been perfectly happy living in blissful ignorance,” grumbled Bodhi. “What I wouldn’t give to believe all four of the Winchesters really did die in a tragic boat accident.”
The sunlight filtering in through the trees vanished, darkening the path in front of us. I glanced skyward. Roiling black clouds were moving in over the town. It felt like an omen. Would the storm dissipate by the following afternoon, or would the Winchester celebration be ironically rained out?
“That’s why we’re doing this, isn’t it?” I asked Bodhi. “Because the Winchesters deserve to be at peace?”
“I thought we were doing it because a homicidal teenaged ghost threatened to kill us if we didn’t,” Bodhi bit back.
“Fair point.”
The truck surged over a steep incline. As we crested the small hill, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky. I looked up, watching as the energy boomeranged through the clouds. When I glanced back down at the front windshield, a truly terrible sight waited for me to notice it. Milo stood in the middle of the road, coated in blood.
“Bodhi, stop!”
With an incoherent yell, Bodhi slammed both feet on the brake pedal. The truck’s tires locked up, but our ballistic momentum propelled us across the merciless dirt road. Bodhi’s arm flew out, slamming me against the passenger seat, and he yanked the steering wheel to the left. The entire truck turned sideways, slowing us further, but Milo was still in harm’s way. He stood stock-still in the middle of the road, blood pouring from a gash in his head. The vacant expression of his startling blue eyes was the last thing I saw before we careened into him.
With a horrible thump, Milo bounced off the passenger side window. I screamed, sobbing at the bloody imprint his face left on the glass. Finally, the truck skidded to a halt, and I threw open the door to leap out of the truck. Milo lay in the space between two spruce trees, his legs bent at an unnatural angle. I raced over, throwing myself to the ground.
“Milo! Milo!”
Bodhi slammed the door of the truck closed with unnecessary force. “Christ! What was he doing in the middle of the road? We all could’ve died!”
I bent over Milo. He was unconscious, and I didn’t want to move him in case the impact had somehow affected his spine. Behind me, Bodhi dialed 911.
“Hello? We’ve just hit someone. Yes, with a car!” His voice pitched and cracked as he paced back and forth, glancing down at Milo’s unmoving body. “Halfway up the road to the bluff. Please come quickly. No, he’s not responsive. Bailey, is he breathing?”
I leaned over Milo, furiously wiping my eyes to clear my clouded vision. Milo’s chest was still. I moved closer, reaching out to press my fingers gingerly to his throat in order to find a pulse, but as soon as I made contact with his blood-soaked skin, Milo inhaled sharply. I yelped, scrambling away from him. His hand shot toward me at an impossible pace and wrapped around my wrist so tightly that my fingers throbbed. Milo dragged me downward, bringing my face within an inch of the horror of his own.
“We’re running out of time,” he whispered, the words bubbling as though his airway was restricted. “Tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?” I asked, heaving for breath as I tried to ignore the coating of blood on Milo’s long blond eyelashes. “Milo, stay with me.”
Milo’s eyes rolled back as his head lolled on his neck.
“He’s going to pass out,” Bodhi said. Whether the information was for me or for the emergency dispatchers on the phone, I didn’t know. Regardless, Bodhi’s prediction was completely incorrect.
Milo’s head snapped upright. He ripped himself out of my grasp, stumbling to his feet, and stabilized himself against a tree. A smudged bloody handprint marred the bark.
“What the hell are you doing, man?” Bodhi shouted as Milo staggered through the trees.
He looked back at us, a crazed embodiment of hell itself.
“Tomorrow,” he rasped.
And then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness of the woods. The heavens opened up, and fat raindrops fell from above, soaking us to the skin within seconds as we stood in shocked silence beside the dented truck.
I watched from beneath the overhang of the Winchester house as Bodhi spoke to Black Bay’s fire department team. They arrived on the scene shortly after Milo ran off, searched the surrounding woods for hours, and found neither hide nor hair of him. No footprints. No trail of blood. No indication at all that we had met Milo on our way back up to the house. Even the blood on the side of the truck had been washed away by the rain.
The thunderstorm had fully unleashed its wrath. Rain poured off of the roof in buckets, turning the front yard into a mudslide. It hammered on the top of Bodhi’s big yellow umbrella as the wind threatened to yank the small bit of coverage right out of Bodhi’s capable hands. The words exchanged between Bodhi and the fire captain were lost in the rolling thunder, but even from a distance, I could see that the captain was frustrated and confused. I didn’t blame the guy. His squad had braved the narrow, slippery road, the top of the truck trimming the overhanging branches off of the trees, for what appeared to be a false alarm.
The conversation wrapped up, and Bodhi nodded his thanks to the fire captain as the thick man stepped up into the truck. As they drove off, tires squelching through the mud, Bodhi jogged over to me. Beneath the overhang, he shook the excess rain off the umbrella. It hadn’t done him much good. The wind blew the rain sideways, drenching him from the shoulders down.
“Well?” I prompted as Bodhi shucked off his sopping shirt. It landed with a wet plop on the wood decking.
“I’m pretty sure the captain thinks we’re pulling his leg,” reported Bodhi. He shook out his damp curls like an overexcited dog. His hair had grown well past his chin now. In Black Bay’s clean-cut community, Bodhi’s casual nature boy look stood out like a sore thumb.
“Meanwhile, Milo’s out there somewhere.” I squinted into the woods, but the heavy rain shrouded the view beyond the front yard in a gray curtain. “Hurt and bleeding.”
“What did he mean anyway?” asked Bodhi. He picked up his shirt and wrung it out. “We’re running out of time. To
do what? What’s happening tomorrow?”
I draped a dry bath towel across Bodhi’s shoulders. “The summer festival is the only thing I can think of, but why would Milo care about that? He’s made it perfectly obvious that he doesn’t care for the local color.”
Bodhi tugged me forward, nuzzling my shoulder. The soft, terry towel felt cool and comforting against my cheek as I linked my hands around the small of Bodhi’s back. We stood like that on the deck, a moment of peace tucked safely away from the turbulent weather.
“Let’s go inside,” I murmured. Bodhi nodded and pushed the front door open for us, but as soon as we stepped over the threshold, it became obvious that Milo wasn’t the only distraught soul on the bluff that day.
Conversation and song blared in the first floor hallway, as though one of us had left the television on at full volume, but the old 90s era TV in the office didn’t have the power to fill every corner of the massive house with sound. Something—or someone—amplified the audio, and the melodious peal of Caroline’s laughter reverberated so loudly it felt as though the house itself was alive and emoting.
“Alex!” cried Caroline’s voice, followed by an immediate giggle.
“Shh. You’ll wake someone.”
Bodhi and I looked at each other. At the same time, we broke into a run toward the office where the television was. The front door banged shut behind us, although I didn’t know if it was an effect of the wind or Caroline’s temper. We skidded across the floor into the office and watched the action on the television screen with mounting confusion.
It was footage from one of the Winchesters’ home videos that I hadn’t seen yet, but instead of playing straight through, the tape rewound itself over and over to show the same ten seconds of film. On the screen, Alexander Lido twirled Caroline around a candlelit glen in the dark woods while Alanis Morissette crooned from a small, battery-powered boom box. He wore a tuxedo jacket over a black T-shirt and jeans with a red rose pinned to the pocket. Caroline danced about in a flowing white nightgown, a matching corsage around her wrist. Above them, stars twinkled in the cloudless night sky. The moon shone down, highlighting the couple’s smiles as Alex pulled Caroline close and kissed her. Then the tape rewound again.
“Alex!” Caroline laughed as Alex dipped her dangerously low to the ground, his strong arms firm around her waist to prevent her nightgown from sweeping through the dirt.
“Shh,” he said, the joy of their taboo nighttime caper evident in the upward tilt of his lips. “You’ll wake someone.”
They twirled. They kissed. The tape rewound again.
Bodhi crossed the office, stepping over the fallen grandfather clock, and pushed the eject button on the VHS player. Nothing happened. The footage played on. He tried the volume control next, but Caroline’s giggles intensified instead.
“What does she want?” he asked me, studying the screen.
My heart cracked a little more with every additional viewing of Alex and Caroline’s dance. “Something she can’t have probably.”
The footage lagged, distorting Alex and Caroline’s voices. They whirled in slow motion, Caroline’s nightgown rippling around her legs like wispy clouds. The tape rewound and played again, this time even slower.
“I already talked to Alex, Caroline,” I shouted over the twenty-year-old warped dialogue. “He doesn’t know anything else.”
The tape rewound.
“Alex!” called Caroline.
Again.
“Alex!”
Bodhi covered his ears. With every repetition, Caroline’s altered voice sounded more and more like a morbid call from beyond the grave. The video froze, focused on Alex’s laughing face, and white noise drowned out even the thunderous downpour outside.
“Just a guess,” Bodhi yelled over the deafening hiss of the TV. “But I think she wants us to talk to Alex again.”
As soon as he finished his sentence, the television went black. The abrupt absence of static was a welcome respite, and I let out a relieved sigh.
“I’ll drive down to Lido’s,” I told Bodhi. “You stay here.”
“What? Why?”
“Because if Milo comes back, at least someone will be around to take care of him,” I said. I left the office, pausing just long enough to fetch my raincoat from the small closet beneath the stairs. Bodhi followed me out.
“Then you stay here,” he suggested. “The road is too muddy. You’ll spin out. Not to mention how terrible visibility is right now. I’ll go talk to Alex.”
I swung the raincoat over my still damp shoulders and freed my hair from the collar. “I can drive a truck, Bodhi. Besides, I’ve already met Alex. He’s more likely to talk to me.”
Bodhi tracked me to the front door as I picked up the truck’s keys from the card table. “What are you supposed to ask him, Bailey? ‘Hey, Alex. I was just wondering. Do you happen to know if Ethan Powell murdered your high school girlfriend?’”
“Yeah, that’s exactly how I’m going to phrase it,” I said sarcastically, pulling my hood over my head. “Maybe Milo’s message shook me up, but it feels like Caroline’s getting more and more desperate. We need answers. Soon.”
I yanked open the front door and stepped out onto the deck, but Bodhi pulled me backward. “Bodhi, let me—”
He silenced me with a kiss, tilting my chin up with the tips of his fingers. Heat rose in my belly as his other hand roamed beneath the raincoat and found my bare skin. Then he pulled away, panting, and cradled my face between his palms.
“Be careful,” he murmured quietly.
“I will,” I promised. “If I’m not back in an hour, come find me.”
And without looking back, I plunged into the deluge.
The road into town promised more than just a muddy ride. The truck slipped and slid through the trees as I guided it downward. Muck splattered the windows, smeared by force of the rain, and by the time I reached the bottom of the bluff, the muscles between my shoulder blades ached from the effort of keeping the truck upright. When I finally took to the asphalt, steering toward Lido’s restaurant, I watched the truck kick sludge from its tires in the rearview mirror in relief.
I drove as fast as I dared in such tricky conditions. This was the worst storm I’d seen since we moved to Black Bay, and it took its toll on the town. Locals sprinted for cover as heavy branches fell from the trees. Near the supermarket, a trash can tipped over and rolled down the street, spewing garbage into the gutters. In the park, one corner of the Winchester celebration banner had come unpinned. It flapped mercilessly in the brutal wind.
Half the town had sought refuge at Lido’s. The parking lot was full, so I left the truck on the curb and powered through the weather to reach the entrance. The bell chimed overhead but went unheard. It was barely five o’clock, and the restaurant already bustled with conversation, music, sports commentary from the televisions, and the raging storm outside. I bypassed the host’s stand, ignoring the curious looks from the crowd waiting to be seated, and craned my neck to see over the heads of those sitting at the bar. At the end near the register, Alex towered over the patrons, expertly mixing cocktails and pouring beer. I made a beeline for him.
“Alex!” I called over the hum of the restaurant. He made no indication that he’d heard me, carrying on a boisterous discourse over the fate of the Mariners with a young couple sitting at the bar. I waved furiously, trying to get his attention. “Alex!”
He looked up. “Bailey! Glad to see you’ve weathered the storm. What can I get you?”
I shook my head, squishing myself between two occupied bar stools. The customers on either side of me scooched over to give me a wide berth, avoiding the drip of water from my raincoat. “I don’t want a drink. Can I talk to you? In private?”
Alex glanced around the busy bar. “I’m a little occupied at the moment.”
“Please,” I persisted. Beside me, a man nursing a glass of whiskey eyed me appreciatively despite my wet rat appearance. “It’s about Caroline.”
“Two minutes,” I promised, holding up a peace sign.
He ducked under the end of the bar, jerking his head toward a back door. I shouldered past a group of thirty-somethings, all wearing Black Bay community center baseball jerseys, and met Alex at the rear of the hectic restaurant. He held the door open for me, and I dodged through it, emerging onto an empty patio. Clear plastic drop panels sheltered the space from the rain, but the noise of the storm was so clamorous that no Lido’s customers decorated the tables here. On a sunny day, with its unobstructed view of the marina and the bay beyond, the patio would’ve been a perfect place for a lazy meal.
Alex pulled out a chair for me, but I shook my head. I was too anxious to sit down.
“What’s this about?” he asked, concern wrinkling the lines on his forehead.
I paced back and forth beside the outdoor minibar, seriously considering swiping a bottle of rum for courage. “I need to ask you something about Caroline, but first, you have to promise to keep this conversation between us.”
Alex’s dark eyebrows furrowed. “This isn’t for your blog, is it?”
“That depends,” I said. My hands trembled and I clenched my fingers to stop them from shaking. “What answer will encourage you to tell me the truth?”
“When it comes to Caroline, I don’t have anything to lie about.”
“A video I found at the house would imply differently,” I said.
Alex froze, his deep blue eyes hardening beneath his ball cap.
“The one of the two of you dancing?”
“I know the video,” he whispered, glancing furtively toward the door that led back to the main section of the restaurant. “But you don’t understand.”
“Did she know she was being taped?”
“Yes!” he insisted. “It was her idea. She said it was for posterity, since we never got to go to a real prom. She hid it underneath the window seat in her bedroom, but her parents found it when they were spraying the house for bugs.”