Emily darted forward. “Jonathan, Olivia. I ran into Brodie in the cemetery, and he suggested I stop by to discuss the tour. This is my friend Kate Brewer. She’s been a huge help since I found, you know, Patti.”
“In your yard, yes, how awful,” Olivia said. “Come in out of the rain.”
I slammed the door shut, locked it with my remote, and accompanied the three of them to the mansion’s small porch. At the door, Olivia leaned forward, shook her long, blonde hair, and then combed it back in place with her fingers as she straightened. “Rain—even mist—plays havoc with my hair,” she said. “Kate, it’s nice to meet you, considering the circumstances. Full name, Olivia Atkinson.”
“Hello,” I said, giving her my hand. She grasped it so firmly that I felt my knuckles grind together. I tried not to wince.
“And this is Jonathan Selkirk, our number two in command. No, number one now. Patti ran the society.”
Jonathan was kinder to my knuckles, taking my hand gently and briefly before he stepped back and looked me up and down. “But where is your umbrella? And yours, Emily?”
“They’re broken,” Emily said. “Both broken and on the back seat. Bad luck. Are the police still here?”
“They just left,” Jonathan said. “How did you break your umbrellas as the same time?”
“It was a freak accident,” I replied. “Did Detective Rancourt talk to everyone?”
Opening the door, Jonathan extended his hand, inviting us to enter the house ahead of him. “We were questioned rather than talked to,” he said. “He thinks one of us killed Patti.”
“Oh, Jonathan, please stop saying that,” Olivia said. “He does not. He can’t.”
“My dear, naive Olivia,” he said, shutting the front door. “He does. Trust me.”
Being a good six inches taller than Olivia, Jonathan literally looked down his large and pointy nose at her. He was in his mid-fifties, I guessed, tall and thin, with unusually small eyes and thinning gray hair. And he had a thing for black. Black pants, a black tie, and a black suit jacket over a gray shirt.
I tried to avoid the thought, but there it was. Ichabod Crane. He looked like an older Ichabod Crane in a cartoon version of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
“None of us would kill Patti,” Olivia said. Again she fiddled with her hair. The habit must have comforted her. “It was someone else. Like her ex-husband, for instance. Their divorce was nasty.”
“They divorced years ago and he lives a thousand miles away,” Jonathan said. “That makes for an excellent alibi.”
“There are planes, cars, and trains, Jonathan. Think laterally.”
Olivia spun toward Emily. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here.” Eager to change the subject, she led us to the mansion’s office, and we seated ourselves on a pair of tattered couches while Jonathan poured coffees. Once more I sat at an angle in an attempt to conceal the coat pocket Minette had flown into.
“We’ve decided to call off the cemetery tours tonight but proceed with the house tours,” Olivia began. “I know you were looking forward to giving your first Mount Hope tour, but with Patti, we thought—”
“No, no,” Emily said, “I understand completely. It’s the only thing to do.”
“And I’ve made an executive decision,” Jonathan said, handing white ceramic cups to Olivia and Emily.
“We made an executive decision,” Olivia corrected. “Is this cup clean?”
“I’m the executive, aren’t I?” Jonathan said. With a twinkle in his eye, he turned his gaze on me. “My family has been a part of Smithwell for over two hundred years, and finally the mantle of authority rests on me. It’s been a long wait.”
“Get to the decision, Jonathan,” Olivia said.
“Anyway, we’re opening up the third floor for the tour,” he said. “Starting tonight. I know Patti wanted it closed off, but that made no sense to me—or you, Emily. I heard you arguing with her.”
“It was a disagreement, not an argument,” Emily said.
“It was rather heated, from what I heard,” Olivia said. “In any case, we never should have considered closing it.” Looking from Jonathan to Emily, she clinked her bright blue nails on her cup and then took a dainty sip of her coffee. “It’s what people come to see, isn’t it? Fairfield’s haunted library.” She was in her late thirties and had a polished, professional look about her, down to her sapphire blue pumps. Yet despite her appearance, it seemed to me she was no more at ease now than she’d been standing in the foyer, talking about one of the society’s members being a killer.
Jonathan handed me the last cup of coffee and then took a seat next to Olivia. “The others are up there now, dusting and cleaning, except for Brodie. He’s going to write an addition to the mansion tour talk. We could all talk off the tops of our heads about the ghost stories, but he wanted to streamline, add a few hard facts, that sort of thing.”
Olivia cleared her throat. She wanted the floor. “Do you know about the ghosts?” she asked me. “A hundred years ago, Thomas Fairfield got away with the murder of two of his servants in that upstairs library. A man and a woman—engaged to be married. It’s said the two spirits never left the house. I’m not a superstitious person, but I refuse to stay here alone at night. This is one of the most haunted houses in Maine, and that library is the most haunted room in the entire house.”
Was Olivia trying to frighten me or weave an entertaining ghost story? I had no idea.
CHAPTER 6
Olivia led me and Emily up the mansion’s grand staircase to the third floor, and from there to the turret room, which housed Thomas Fairfield’s substantial but rather dark and musty library. It was going to take more than a dusting to slap this place into shape before the night’s first tour. Though I supposed mustiness added to the requisite sinister atmosphere. Was there any such thing as a freshly painted, brightly lit haunted room?
“Charlotte and Zane,” Olivia announced, “I’d like you to meet someone. This is Kate Brewer, Emily’s friend.”
Offering her hand, Charlotte lunged forward as though her arm were a fencing foil. “Hi there, Kate. Have you come to volunteer?”
“No, sorry, I haven’t.”
She grinned. “Just kidding. I try to guilt everyone into grabbing a dust rag. I’m Charlotte, not Zane, of course. Last name King.”
“And I’m Zane Parsons,” the man said, taking my hand. “You won’t get any guilt from me. We’ve got it covered.”
“It looks like a big job,” I said, casting my eyes over the room. “Are all these books original to Fairfield’s time?”
“Most of them,” Zane replied. “Either Thomas, the father, or Edgar, the son, though there are a few books from the home’s last owner. He left three decades ago.” He clasped his hands behind his back and strode to the room’s four large windows. “It’s said Thomas would hole up in here for hours on end, sometimes reading but other times gazing out these windows. The room’s turret shape gave him a wide view of the town below. There are some who say he was seeing more than the town when he gazed out the windows. His servants brought him tea every afternoon and whiskey every evening, and one day he killed them. Are you interested in haunted spaces, Kate?”
I laughed. I mean, honestly. “Not especially.”
Zane took no offense at my response. He laughed good-naturedly, seemingly well aware of how silly, if profitable, the society’s whole haunted house pitch was. In his mid-forties, he was no taller than I was—five foot seven—and possessed a wide nose and big eyes. In those three qualities, he was almost the physical reverse of Ichabod downstairs, though he shared the curse of thinning hair with the older man.
“Are you saying you don’t feel the library’s ectoplasm?” Zane said. The skin around his blue eyes crinkled as he smiled.
Thank goodness he had a sense of humor. “I’m saying I’ve never felt ectoplasm, period. Not that I know what it feels like.” Spying faint traces of red paint on the window frames and sills, I moved closer.
> “Back in Fairfield’s time, the room was painted red,” Zane said. “The last owner did a poor job of covering it, as you can see. There are remnants of red paint all over the room. There used to be a tin ceiling, too, but it was stripped out.”
“Fairfield painted the window frames red?”
“Everything was red, except for the ceiling and walnut bookcases.”
“Can you think of anything more ugly?” Charlotte said, joining us at the window. “I’d scrape that all down and bleach it. Same with the walls.”
“Thus destroying the historic value and the reason most of us are employed,” Olivia said.
Charlotte pivoted, facing Olivia. “So what? There’s no value to ugly. This could be a beautiful mansion if we had the money to fix it. Warm and homey, not creepy crawly. Who cares about Thomas Fairfield? A terrible man—and a dead man. I’d like to take bleach and paint to the whole house, and the neighbors would agree with me, I know. Imagine looking at this monstrosity out your kitchen window.”
Charlotte’s nasal tone made her sound petulant and funny at the same time, but I agreed with her wholeheartedly and said so.
Olivia cleared her throat again—apparently, it was her favorite attention-grabbing tactic—and we all turned her way. “Some say you can still see bloodstains on the wood planks,” she said. “After the murders, the blood sat in pools for hours, soaked into the wood grain, and could never be fully scrubbed away.”
I shot a glance at Emily. Olivia had left spooky and was now entering gruesome territory. I didn’t want to hear anymore, and neither did Emily by the looks of her.
“Well, I’d refinish the floors,” Charlotte said. “A good sanding is all they need.”
Olivia’s mouth tightened. “Don’t mock what you don’t understand. It’s more dangerous than you know.”
“Oh, Olivia, stuff it, please,” Charlotte said, wrinkling her slightly upturned nose. “I’m not a tourist, and I don’t have my checkbook out. I know you don’t believe in all that ghost nonsense.”
“I know a lot more about the Fairfields than you do,” Olivia retorted, “and I’m not asking you for money. I know the history of this house, and you don’t. Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t be so quick to make fun. Believe me, the Fairfield family wasn’t laughing when they lived here.”
Charlotte sighed, shoved a strand of dark brown hair behind one ear, and then dropped her arms, letting her hands dangle at her sides. “Okay, so I don’t know the history as well as you. I’m learning. Let’s just get on with cleaning, right? We don’t have much time before the first tour.” She was perhaps all of two years younger than Olivia, but while Olivia carried authority in her voice and posture—merited or not—Charlotte seemed willing to acquiesce if it meant avoiding confrontation.
Frankly, I was enjoying Charlotte’s company more than Olivia’s.
Having won her victory, Olivia ran her finger down a dusty lampshade and then declared she was going to find Brodie to check on the progress of his library addition to the tour talk. “I told him to keep it to three paragraphs to make it easier to memorize. More coffee, Kate? You didn’t finish yours.”
Was she shooing me downstairs? “I thought I’d take a look around the library, if that’s all right.”
“Oh. Sure, yes. Are you coming to the tour tonight? The first one is at seven, and then every hour until eleven o’clock.”
I glanced at Emily. “I don’t know. I was going to join Emily’s cemetery tour. I hadn’t decided about the mansion.” In my awkwardness, I nearly shoved both hands in my coat pockets. I shuddered to think what might have happened to Minette if I hadn’t caught myself. When we got home, the two of us were going to have a talk—meaning I was going to talk and Minette was going to listen and agree—about her pocket diving.
“Emily, what about taking the nine o’clock tour?” Olivia said.
“That’s mine,” Zane said. “The tours have been scheduled out for two weeks, Olivia.”
“I’ve never given a mansion tour,” Emily said.
“Quite right,” Olivia said. “I’d forgotten.”
“What if I follow along with the seven o’clock tour?” Emily suggested. “I’m new to the mansion, so it’ll be a learning experience for me. That way I can take over later in the month if anyone needs a break.”
“Excellent idea,” Olivia said. “See me downstairs before you leave.” She strode from the room, arms swinging, head back, blonde hair flowing behind her like a flag in the wind.
“So, Kate,” Zane said.
I swung back to him.
“What is it you want to know about the library?”
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you and Charlotte about Patti.”
He nodded thoughtfully, crossed the room, and sat on the edge of an ornate and very heavy looking desk. “Olivia would destroy me if she saw me sitting here.” He exchanged grins with Charlotte before looking back to me. “I thought you might be digging into that, considering where Patti’s body was found. It doesn’t look good for our Emily.”
“You’re joking, right?” Emily said.
“Of course I am, Emily. Listen, Kate, Patti was not well liked. She ran our society with an iron fist—like Olivia would if she ever came to power.”
“True,” Charlotte said.
“But at the same time,” Zane went on, “no one hated her enough to kill her. Least of all Emily.”
“Thanks,” Emily said. “I think.”
“Why wasn’t she well liked?” I asked.
Zane spread his arms out. “This library, for a start. It used to be we gave tours of the third floor, but when Patti became executive director of the society, that stopped. There was nothing we could say to persuade her, and as director, she had the final word.”
“Jonathan backed her,” Charlotte said.
Emily frowned and shook her head. “Downstairs he told me it was his decision to open up the third floor and that it never made sense to him to close it off.”
“That’s not what I heard from Patti,” Charlotte said.
“He was probably covering himself with her,” Zane said. “Jonathan blows whichever way the wind blows. Patti dies and suddenly he’s on Olivia’s side, in favor of opening the third floor. It doesn’t surprise me.”
“So you didn’t actually get together as a group and vote on whether to open the third floor?” I asked.
“Huh.” Zane chewed on his lip while his eyes strayed about the office. “Weird thing. We never did. Charlotte?”
“Nope, we never had a meeting,” she said. “You and I talked about it, and Brodie and me, but nothing official.”
“Yeah, Brodie and me too, but I took Patti’s word for what everyone else thought, and according to her, everyone but you and Brodie were on her side. I never thought to question that.” Zane scratched his head in confusion. “Not that it would have mattered who disagreed with her since she was the executive director. But now it looks like she lied about everyone’s position on opening this floor and we never brought it out into the open.”
“I still don’t understand why Patti wanted to shut off her biggest draw to this house,” I said.
Zane stood. “This was her favorite room. That’s the only reason that makes any sense. I don’t think she liked any of us being in here, let alone carloads of yokels on a tour. She spent hours a week reading in here—kind of making it her home.” He walked to the windows and looked out at the street below and the houses beyond, most of them set on much smaller lots. “I found her in here a few days ago, staring out the windows. Only not like I’m doing now—taking in the view.” He turned to me. “I was just outside the library door when I saw her. She was holding a book but not looking down at it. She didn’t move an inch. Wicked weird. I got the willies after a minute and knocked on the open door, pretending I’d just walked in. I never asked her what she was looking at because I was afraid she’d tell me.”
Smiling faintly, I said, “I trust you’re not weaving another spooky story
for me.”
His countenance changed from thoughtful to serious. “I got out of there as soon as I could. Truth? I’m glad she won’t be in this house or this library ever again. It’s tough enough working here sometimes. Interesting, but tough.”
The sound of heavy footsteps on the staircase caused me to spin toward the library door. Well, footsteps and Zane’s beware-the-monster expression, which was unnerving me.
“Brodie!” Charlotte said. “About time.”
Brodie Campbell marched into the library, his mouth set in a hard line.
“You look like you’ve been talking to Olivia,” Zane said.
“No,” Brodie said. “Well, yeah, but that’s not it. You won’t believe it. Kate, right? Hi again. Man.”
“What won’t we believe?” Charlotte asked.
“I was in the cemetery. I mean, looking at the grave where someone buried Patti. Guess what the name on the headstone was?” He paused, milking the moment as his eyes traveled from face to face. “Dawson.”
“You’re making that up,” Charlotte said.
“No. It was Dawson.”
Emily scowled. “What does that mean?”
“That’s right, you didn’t know her then,” Brodie said. “Dawson. It was Patti Albert’s maiden name.”
CHAPTER 7
We were hours past my lunch time. There was hardly a point in eating at all, so soon before dinner, but I was famished. Besides, Emily needed to check her house to see if reporters were trampling her yard and Minette needed to get out of my pocket pronto. So I drove back to Birch Street. Late lunch or not, I’d reached my limit on weird tales and musty rooms, and since Emily and I planned to revisit the Fairfield that evening for a tour, a fresh-air break was in order.
I parked in my drive and got out, intending to walk Emily to her door, but she stopped me. “Have something to eat, and I’ll be over in an hour,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“Call me if you need me,” I said, “and don’t let any reporters onto your property.”
Emily started for the flagstone path but did a quick about-face and strode back up to me. “I know this sounds stupid, but was it real? I feel like it wasn’t real, but I know it was.”
Dead and Buried Page 4
