Seance on a Summer's Night

by Seance on a Summer's Night [MM] (retail) (epub)

  “Oh, Artie. I thought so once. But what else could it be?”

  “I know you’re convinced otherwise, but I still believe the source of your problems is—could be—human.” She opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “I know you think it’s a stretch, but it’s worth making sure, don’t you think?”

  Aunt H. hesitated, nodded reluctantly, and wiped her eyes.

  I didn’t sleep well that night.

  Every time a floorboard squeaked or a panel popped or a gust of night breeze whispered down the fireplace, my eyes flew open and I spent the next few seconds listening intently to a silence that felt increasingly ominous.

  But I must have finally drifted off, because around two o’clock I woke to the sound of footsteps overhead.

  I blinked upward at the shadowy ceiling.

  Were those footsteps, or was that a squirrel or a raccoon scampering around? For a moment I lay there, ears attuned. I was starting to think I’d been dreaming when I heard a muffled thump, as if something heavy had fallen over.

  No, I was not dreaming, not imagining things. Someone was moving overhead.

  A burglar?

  Wouldn’t a burglar be more likely to grab a microwave or TV set from downstairs and make his getaway?

  Previously, the “ghost” had stuck to walking this floor. What was it up to on the third floor? I couldn’t think of anything that would be of interest to a ghost, let alone a professional criminal. There were more bedrooms, of course, but no one slept up there. There was the ballroom, which had not been used since the fifties.

  The attic was on the fourth floor, so that couldn’t be the target.

  Did the footsteps belong to Tarrant? At this point I could almost believe it. Given his open discontent, I could imagine him wandering around, pocketing a few stray collectibles and antiques to pawn.

  Liana? Her behavior was erratic these days, to say the least. Could those muffled footfalls belong to Liana hunting for her dear dead brother’s spirit among the mothballs and dust sheets?

  Doubtful. Liana had been Nyquilized for the evening.

  Aunt H.?

  Even more doubtful.

  There was another possibility. What if a tramp or a vagrant had taken up residence on the rarely disturbed third floor? They could live there undetected, safe and secure—and pretty comfortable, all things considered—emerging only at night to steal food, which would likely go unmissed, from the overstocked pantry and refrigerator.

  By now two or three minutes had passed, and I could still hear that mysterious someone moving furtively overhead.

  I threw the sheet back, grabbed my robe, shoved my feet into slippers, and let myself out of my room.

  I stepped quietly down the hall and tiptoed up the stairs to the next level.

  When I reached the third floor, all was silent. Had I missed my opportunity? I moved soundlessly down the hall until I came to the double doors of the ballroom.

  I leaned my head against the wooden surface and listened.

  Nothing.

  I reached down and noiselessly turned the knob.

  The doors did not budge.

  Hell. Was the room locked? That possibility hadn’t occurred to me. As far as I could remember, the only locked doors at Green Lanterns had been Ogden’s study.

  I tried again, this time leaning my weight against the door. The wood creaked, but the hinges seemed remarkably silent as the doors slowly opened inward to a black void. I reached back to feel for the nearest hinge, and my fingertips brushed something slippery. I sniffed my hand. Household oil. My suspicions were confirmed. Someone had gone to the trouble of silencing the doors up here.

  Using my smartphone’s flashlight app, I stepped across the ballroom threshold.

  The brilliant white beam bounced down a dusty vista of parquet flooring and dull, gilt-framed mirrors to a raised platform at the far end. Black plush chairs and small oak tables lined either wall, and above, suspended from the ceiling at intervals, hung three enormous amber chandeliers. Everything was festooned with cobwebs; the chairs and draperies, the chandeliers woven to one another in shrouds of gauze, intricate, hairy, shimmering in the phone’s light beam.

  It was both grand and creepy.

  I advanced farther into the room. There was no sign that anyone had been there for years. The dust-blanketed floor stretched ahead like smooth, untrodden sand. Halfway down the long room, I spotted a brown, crumbling corsage resting on the seat of one of the chairs.

  I turned and started back, my shadowy image reflected multiple times in the wall of grimy mirrors.

  Once in the corridor, I listened again.

  A complete and solemn silence met my ears.

  Not so much as the rustle of a dust sheet.

  The ballroom took up most of the floor, but there were a few additional bedrooms on this level. Murky, musty small rooms in various states of disuse. I had the vague idea these extra rooms had been used for household staff back when Green Lanterns ran a full stable of servants.

  I took each room in turn, working my way down the main hall to the end and starting up the smaller corridor. The dust was not as thick in the bedrooms. The floors had been swept once or twice in the last year, so I couldn’t say for sure no one had been through there. I didn’t find any sign of actual occupancy: no crumbs, ashes, cigarette stubs, or discarded candy wrappers; no mussed bedclothes or disarranged pillows—no bedclothes or pillows at all. Some of the drawers were not flush to their dressers, and in a couple of cases, they even lay on the unmade mattresses. Maybe that meant something. Maybe it didn’t. There could be any number of non-sinister reasons why empty drawers had been moved aside.

  I was almost ready to believe I’d dreamed up those stealthy sounds, when I came to the final room on that floor. As I reached for the door handle, I heard a slight sound that raised the hair on my head.

  No mistake. Someone was inside that room.

  I put my ear to the door, and yes, I could hear the cautious slide of wood on wood.

  Cabinets being opened, drawers being shut.

  The sounds stopped. I heard the pad of footsteps. Then the scrape of wood on wood resumed.

  Someone was searching for something—and I knew with sudden certainty who that someone was.

  I yanked open the door and shone my phone flashlight in the direction of those secretive sounds. The blast of white light fell full upon the startled face of Seamus Cassidy.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “That’s what I thought!” I said.

  Seamus’s face was a study in shock: mouth agape, eyes squinting as he winced in the glare of my phone’s flashlight. But his recovery was quick. I had to give him that.

  “You’re up late,” he said casually. “Can’t sleep?”

  “With you dropping armoires and chaise lounges overhead every few minutes? No.”

  He put his hand up to block the blinding beam. “Do you mind?”

  “Do I mind that you’re searching my aunt’s home in the middle of the night? Yes. I rather do.” But I removed the light from his eyes.

  Seamus put his hand down and offered, “There’s an explanation.”

  “I’d love to hear it.” It occurred to me that we were both speaking softly. I could understand why Seamus would want to keep our encounter quiet, but why was I half whispering?

  Seamus said, “You probably won’t believe me, but I saw a light moving around up here and thought I’d come up to investigate.”

  I scowled. “You’re right. I don’t believe you. Try again.”

  “Well, what do you think I’m doing at two o’clock in the morning?” His tone was perfectly reasonable.

  “I think you’re systematically searching for something,” I said.

  He managed a grin. “The family jewels maybe? I wouldn’t be looking in a dusty closet.”

  Was he seriously going to try and flirt his way out of this?

  “I’ll tell you what else I think. I think you’re no more a gardener than I’m Noel Coward.�
�

  He stopped grinning. “Noel Coward, huh?” He was clearly giving himself time to think. “I’m not a thief. If you want to search me—” He linked his hands behind his head, mimicking someone in police custody, which only served to convince me I was on the right track.

  “I don’t think you’re a thief,” I said. “I think you’re a cop.”

  That surprised him. Nonplussed him, in fact. “A cop.” He quit clowning around, studying me with narrowed eyes. “That’s an interesting theory.”

  “And more interestingly, you don’t deny it.”

  “Would you believe—”

  “Nope.”

  Seamus grimaced. “Then I won’t waste my time.”

  “Good.” I held out my hand. “I assume you have some identification?”

  That earned a rueful half-grin. “You’re not very trusting, Artemus.”

  “No. I’m not. I’ve learned the hard way not to take things at face value.”

  Seamus muttered something, reached for his hip pocket, pulled out a square of leather, and handed it to me. “The married boyfriend,” he commented.

  It was my turn to be startled, which I tried to cover by opening his identification holder and studying its contents. I couldn’t help saying, “You’ve done your homework.”

  “That’s what they pay me for.” He sounded less lighthearted.

  The picture ID and blue-and-gold NYPD badge registered on my consciousness.

  Sergeant Seamus A. Cassidy, Grand Larceny Division.

  “NYPD. You’re a long way from home,” I said. I was thinking, grand larceny? “What are you supposed to be doing in our garden? Looking for counterfeit cabbage?”

  “Ha. I’m working in liaison with SFPD’s Financial Crimes Unit.”

  “Investigating what? Who? Er, whom?” Seamus hesitated, and I said in alarm, “Aunt H.?”

  “Shh.” He took my arm. “We can’t talk here.”

  I freed myself. “We can talk here as well as anywhere else. No more lies. Why are you at Green Lanterns? What are you looking for?”

  Seamus looked pained. “Artemus—”

  I wasn’t having any of it. “Talk. Or go pack your bags.”

  Seamus studied my face, then groaned softly. “All right. But…keep your voice down.”

  “That’s going to depend on future events. If you’re after my dear old auntie, you’re done here, Cassidy.”

  He made another of those pained sounds. “It’s not… You’re making this very difficult.”

  “I may soon make it impossible. What is it you think Aunt Halcyone has done?”

  “Aside from knocking off her ne’er-do-well husband?” He said it almost lightly.

  The lightness was both cue and clue. “You’re not a homicide detective.”

  “True.”

  “What are you up to?”

  His gaze searched mine, and whatever he read there caused him to capitulate. “I believe your aunt knows the whereabouts of the three million dollars your uncle Ogden embezzled when he fled New York six years ago.”

  “Three…million…”

  “You heard me.”

  I sat down on the edge of the mattress and stared up at Seamus.

  His face was stern and unfamiliar as he met my stunned gaze. No sign now of the easy-going, not terribly efficient, but definitely charming Master Gardener. This man was on a mission, and woe to whoever got in his way.

  “Embezzled from whom? From where?” I asked finally.

  “From his own company. Blue Moon Books.”

  My initial reaction was simple surprise. “Ogden ran a successful publishing company?”

  “For a time. He was publishing soft-core porn and did very well financially until he branched out into filmmaking.”

  “P-P-Porn films?”

  “Correct. He had a couple of big hits, but that was followed by a string of flops.”

  “Ogden was producing porn films?”

  “Writing, directing, and producing, yes. Six years ago, Blue Moon Books was on the verge of financial collapse due to his pending divorce settlement, the poor box-office performance of his final film, Hot Wet Mutant—”

  “Hot Wet what?”

  “—and a lawsuit which halted the release of Pink and Naked. Foxworth embezzled over three million dollars from the Blue Moon bank accounts and vanished.”

  This was a lot to absorb. I latched on to the one thing that stood out. “Foxworth? And this Foxworth is supposed to be Ogden?”

  “Oscar Foxworth is Ogden Hyde. Was. I was on his trail a long time. Despite the extensive plastic surgery, there’s no doubt in my mind.”

  Porn films? Plastic surgery? Police investigations? What next? Where the hell to begin?

  I said, “If you think Aunt H. was involved in any of that, you’re nuts.”

  “I don’t believe she was initially involved, no. There’s no evidence to prove Foxworth knew your aunt before Ogden Hyde turned up in Russian Bay. But your aunt is a smart woman. Too smart not to have figured things out. Maybe she didn’t kill Foxworth for that money, but I’m betting she has a pretty good idea where he stashed it.”

  Great. Maybe not a murderess. Just accessory after the fact. He believed it too! I said clearly, carefully, “You’re out of your tiny little mind, Cassidy.”

  He shrugged. “Naturally, you’re going to feel that way. You’re probably not aware that keeping Foxworth in the style to which he was accustomed ate up a large part of your aunt’s fortune. She’s not broke, but she’s not far from it. She needed the inn to be a success, but it wasn’t. She could sell this house, but she won’t. That doesn’t leave her a lot of options.”

  I stood up, pugnaciously thrusting my face in his. Disconcertingly, I could see the flicker of his dark eyelashes and feel the warmth of his breath against my mouth. “My aunt is not some femme fatale in a neo-noir pastiche. There is no possible scenario in which Aunt H. would consider murder a viable option.”

  He opened his mouth, and I added, “I mean, where does Liana fit into all this? She would have to know the truth. What’s her story? Is she even Ogden’s sister? Maybe she knocked him off.”

  I remembered the first séance when Liana had called the ghost “Oscar.” I’d thought I’d misheard or that it was a slip of the tongue or too many tranquilizers. Maybe it had been a slip of the tongue, but it had also been the truth. Of course she’d known Ogden’s real identity the whole time.

  “We’re considering all possibilities,” Seamus said in an official, stolid tone that made me want to conk him over the head with the nearest marble bust.

  “You didn’t answer my question. Is she his sister or not?”

  We tried to stare each other down. He blinked first, admitting with disarming candor, “Artemus, I could get kicked off this case for what I’ve already told you. I can’t—”

  “You’ve told me too much to stop there, that’s for sure.”

  “I can’t force you to cooperate with this investigation, but if you lie to me, hide evidence, or act to hinder this investigation in any way—”

  I snapped, “You mean by firing your ass and throwing you off this property?”

  He stopped trying to appeal to my better nature and glared. “Don’t try it. I’m warning you. You’ll only make it worse for your aunt.”

  “My aunt is innocent. I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about the fact that she’s surrounded by treacherous assholes who aren’t who they pretend to be, starting with you and possibly including Ogden, who is clearly not dead.”

  “You’re wrong there,” Seamus said regretfully, apparently only hearing part of my speech. “Oscar Foxworth—Ogden, if you prefer—is dead all right. We’ve got the body to prove it.”

  Well, no. They didn’t. Because what remained of Ogden—which had been little enough—had been since cremated.

  “Burned past recognition. Did anyone bother to actually test for DNA?”

  He looked both pained and patient. “Even if we had reason to bel
ieve Foxworth faked his death, given the state of his remains, the results of DNA testing would be at best inconclusive.”

  “So in other words, no.”

  “You’re not listening to me.”

  “He pulled a runner once before,” I said.

  “He didn’t try to fake his death. That’s not an easy thing to do, you know. For one thing, it requires getting hold of a corpse—unless you’re suggesting Foxworth also committed homicide?”

  “Why not? You seem to think Aunt H. is capable of it!”

  Seamus chose to overlook that. “Anyway, of course we investigated that possibility. No bodies were hijacked from local morgues or mortuaries or graveyards.”

  “What about missing persons? Anybody MIA?”

  Seamus looked torn between sympathy and exasperation. “I understand how difficult this is—and how convenient it would be to pin everything on Foxworth. But Foxworth was not a master criminal. He was not a murderer. He was an embezzler—and not a very good one. And yeah, also a terrible filmmaker. But that’s still a long way away from committing murder. Homicide would be skipping a few grades for a guy who had no record of violence.”

  “That you know of.”

  “He was the subject of an ongoing investigation for six years. There isn’t much about Oscar Foxworth we don’t know. Other than where he hid his loot.”

  “What makes you think he didn’t spend it?”

  “The money trail. Or, more exactly, the lack of a money trail.”

  “The kind of plastic surgery you’re talking about is expensive.”

  “Not that expensive. It looks like Foxworth used just enough of his resources to…salt the mine.”

  “What does that mean? Salt the mine?” I had the unpleasant feeling I knew exactly what it meant.

  “Foxworth bought a fancy car, a fancy boat, and rented a fancy apartment. He joined all the right social clubs and local business organizations so that he could meet…the right people.”