“I was adding a little atmosphere, okay? It’s not a crime.”
“Then why did you run?” I asked.
Charlotte held up a finger. “Hear that? Jonathan’s group is already on the second floor, and Zane’s is on the third by now. That’s why.”
Bilge. My radar was going off and red flags were flying in the wind. “Where did you drop these books?” I asked. “We didn’t see you in the room above Letty’s room.”
“Well, that’s where I was. I move fast—what can I say? I’ll bet Zane heard it.”
“I think you scared him,” Emily said.
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “He believes all that stuff about ghosts. I’ve tried to talk sense into him, but he’s superstitious as all get-out.”
“Maybe that’s what makes him good at tours,” Emily said.
“I guess. Listen, I have to refresh the refreshments. It’s my job tonight.”
Charlotte turned to leave, but before she could take off, I stopped her, saying I needed to ask one more question. “When did you join the historical society?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Come on,” I said, “it can’t be a secret.”
“It’s not, but I don’t see why it’s your . . .” She flapped her arms, conceding defeat. After all, I’d caught her in a scam. “It’s no biggie. I joined in August after I met Olivia, so like three months ago. Now I really am going.”
As I watched her walk away, I wondered if she’d played a part in Patti Albert’s death. She’d been up to more than dropping books on the third floor, but as a newbie to the society, what beef could she have had with Patti?
“Why don’t we join Jonathan’s tour?” Emily said.
“You sure?”
“There’s something fishy going on here.”
“More than making scary noises for the guests,” I said with a nod.
We trotted back up the side stairs, found Jonathan on the second floor, and hitched ourselves to the back of his tour group as they ambled down the hall.
Jonathan’s voice, loud and deep, rose above the crowd. “This hallway has seen numerous hauntings. Look to your left and right. The Fairfield children slept in these two rooms across the hall from each other, and though they both lived long, full lives, their rooms are almost as haunted as Letty’s room. Why? We can only guess that Letty, who was responsible for the children’s care, still feels that responsibility and still tries to fulfill it.”
I shot Emily an oh-brother look. It didn’t matter what Minette had said about ghosts being real but not being what we think they are—whatever that meant—because as far as the Fairfield was concerned, the point was moot. I wasn’t buying this whole haunted mansion thing. Letty was dead, at the hands of Thomas Fairfield, and I couldn’t imagine that wherever she was she cared a fig about the long-since-dead Fairfield children.
“And now, let’s make our way to the third floor,” Jonathan said, “where both Letty and Edwin Moors died. Like Letty, Edwin walks the second floor, but he’s been seen most often on the third, in either his room or the library. Please turn around, find the stairway behind you, and head upstairs.”
Emily and I were the first to make it to the third floor, just as the last of Zane’s group was heading back down the staircase, their tour over. I was determined to slip away at some point and explore the rooms more thoroughly. I had to find out what Charlotte had really been up to, because my instincts were telling me it wasn’t dropping books to scare the customers.
“And here we are,” Jonathan said, winding through the crowd until he was again at the head of the group. “There are only two rooms on this floor that to our knowledge haven’t experienced a haunting. A spare bedroom in the middle of the hall”—he directed our attention—“and a utility closet at the far end, across from Edwin’s room. The other rooms—Edwin’s, a spare bedroom across from his room, and the library—are well known for their sightings. They are, as a matter of fact, paranormal hotspots in Maine.”
A woman raised her hand. “Excuse me. Can people stay overnight in the bedrooms?”
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
“Ten years ago we allowed guests to stay overnight,” Jonathan replied, “but due to financial constraints, we had to stop. Hopefully we can do that again someday.”
“I’d pay a lot to stay here at night,” a man said. “What about ghost hunters? Have you ever invited them?”
Jonathan grinned wildly, clasped his hands behind his back, and rocked back and forth on his heels a couple times. “Oh, yes, we’ve had ghost hunters, and very well known ones. Every one of them have confirmed paranormal activity on all three floors of the mansion. One ghost hunter refuses to return. While alone in the library, he heard voices, heard a chair scrape loudly over the floor, and experienced an extreme cold spot where Letty’s body had fallen after her death. But what frightened him most was that he distinctly heard a piano playing. There was no piano in the library at the time, but in Thomas Fairfield’s time, there was.”
The crowd murmured.
“Like I said, the Fairfield is a hotspot,” Jonathan added. He held out a hand, presenting us with Edwin’s end of the hall. “Our first stop is Edwin Moor’s bedroom.”
I latched on to Emily’s arm, holding her back as the tour guests moved around us toward Edwin’s room. “Let’s look at the two rooms that aren’t haunted,” I said under my breath.
“Why?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. But I have a feeling Charlotte was up to no good.”
Jonathan and his tour group were in Edwin’s room now. Muffled voices floated out of the room and into the dim and depressing hallway. The closed door to the spare bedroom was only ten feet away across the hall.
Emily followed my line of sight. “Is it locked?
“There’s only one way to find out.”
I glanced up the hall to make certain we were still alone, then strode to the door, put my hand on the knob, and smiled as the door opened.
CHAPTER 11
I shut the bedroom door behind me and stared ahead into the semi-darkness. Seeing the shadow of a lamp atop a low chest by the window, I carefully shuffled my way across the floor and switched it on. The spare bedroom looked much like Letty’s room, which is to say it was ugly, dingy, and on the small side. Turning to Emily, I put a finger to my lips.
“They’ll throw me out,” she mouthed.
I nodded. She was taking a risk, and I was not. We had to move quickly and quietly and get out fast.
The floorboards creaked when I crossed the room to turn on another lamp, but as we were on the third floor and the first tour group was back on the first, I figured we were safe. Getting down on my knees, I searched under the bed, a task made easier by there being no bedskirt around the spare bed. There wasn’t anything there, and there hadn’t been in some time, if the thick and undisturbed layer of dust I saw was anything to go by.
“This room is almost over Letty’s on the second floor, isn’t it?” I whispered.
Emily considered. “Part of it, maybe? The rooms aren’t precisely one over the other, especially since the library is much larger than the bedrooms.”
I strode to a small wardrobe on the other side of the bed, opened it, and found that it was empty. Next I examined a tall chest, sliding the drawers out one by one. I found old picture frames, a pair of glasses, and several books—none of them heavy enough to account for the noise I’d heard. Emily pulled open the bottom drawer and found an antique doll. “Don’t they catalogue these things?” I said.
“They should. This doll should be sitting on the bed. It would make the room cheerier.”
“You’re not actually—”
“I hate dolls stuffed away in drawers and closets.”
It was a pretty doll, not one of those moth-eaten ones with shattered porcelain faces, so it lacked that macabre, horror-movie look I associated with old dolls. When Emily sat it on the bed, it did cheer the place up, I had to admit.
“One m
ore place,” I said, moving for the low chest by the window. I tugged open the top drawer. “Good heavens.”
“What is it?” Emily said, coming up beside me.
I pointed.
“Yipes. It’s a headstone.”
“It’s a child’s headstone. An old one.”
The stone was marble, I thought, only a foot and a half high and ten or eleven inches wide, with the figure of a curled-up, sleeping lamb on top.
“Maria Hamilton,” Emily read. “Born December 12, 1861. Died February 18, 1862.”
“This was stolen from Mount Hope. Bank on it.”
“I can’t argue with you. So was this what Charlotte was doing?”
“That’s my guess.” Lifting the stone an inch, I judged its weight. “I think she dropped it trying to hide it.”
Emily was staring at the stone, gnawing on her lower lip. “They’re worth money these days. Quite a lot.”
How could anyone steal this small wafer of a headstone? I wondered. Had Charlotte even read the epitaph? It was so simple, it would break anyone’s heart. If they had one. “We’ll tell Rancourt about this. Then first thing tomorrow morning, we’re going to Mount Hope to find out if this stone if missing.” I reached into my jeans pocket for my phone and took two shots of the headstone: one close up for identification, the other farther back, showing where it had been stashed.
“Let’s get out of here,” Emily said.
“One sec,” I said, sliding open the middle drawer. It felt empty as I was opening it, and indeed it was. But the bottom drawer was not. It held yet another headstone belonging to a child who had died in the 1860s. I exhaled in disgust.
“Photo, quick,” Emily said.
I shot two photos of the second headstone, closed the drawer, and hurried to the bedroom door, where I listened for voices. Not hearing a sound, I opened the door and stepped into the hall, but before Emily could get out and safely shut the door behind her, Jonathan appeared at the head of his tour group, exiting Edwin’s room. Caught red-handed.
He did a double-take, and then, watching us but addressing the group, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s visit the other bedroom that’s shown paranormal activity, right across the way here.” He ushered them inside the room, waving them ahead while he remained in the hall. “Have a look around,” he said. “I’ll be with you shortly.”
He spun back and marched down the hall, his black suit jacket flapping like a crow’s wings. He halted at the door, and because Emily hadn’t yet shut it, he swung it wide with dramatic flair. “This room isn’t on the tour. You know better than to snoop around in closed rooms. It’s not allowed. And as executive director, I can’t make an exception.”
A peculiar statement, I thought. As executive director, wasn’t he in the best position to make an exception? “I asked to see it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Apparently bewildered, he shook his head. “Why? I said there’s no paranormal activity in there. It’s vacant in every sense of the word. I’d understand if you wanted to sneak into the library.”
“I like old places,” I said.
“Who’s sneaking into the library?”
We all whipped back at the sound of Olivia’s voice. Quiet as a mouse, and almost as invisible, she had mounted the stairs, and now her eyes were fixed like lasers on Jonathan.
“No one is, Olivia,” he said.
“I heard you say ‘sneak.’ You distinctly said ‘sneak,’ Jonathan. It’s not a word I like to hear, you know. Sneak.”
Apparently the word sneak caused her to repeat herself.
“It’s theoretical,” he said. “A theoretical sneak. And now I have to get back to my group before they think the ghosts absconded with me.”
“Why did you leave them? You can’t leave them alone to wander the mansion.”
Jonathan pulled himself to his full height and stared down his Ichabod nose at Olivia. He was the executive director, after all, and what was she? Not executive director. “No one’s wandering the mansion, and I don’t need advice from you on how to run a tour. They’re all waiting for me down the hall. I’ll bet you ten to one they’re not even breaking the furniture.”
Thwarted by Jonathan and needing a substitute target for her offense, Olivia scowled at the open bedroom door and said, “What’s going on here? Why is this door open? This room isn’t on the tour.”
Wearing a sly grin, Jonathan leaned his long, thin frame toward Emily, said, “I’ll leave you to it, shall I?” and slunk off to catch up with his tour group.
Olivia was still confounded by the open door, and Jonathan’s departure would not hinder her from pursuing an explanation for it. She walked around Emily, leaned on the doorframe—clinging to it with her blue nails—and peered inside the bedroom. “What was Jonathan doing in here? No one goes in this room. We keep the door shut at all times. And what’s that doll doing on the bed?”
“I did that,” Emily said flatly. “I thought it looked good there.”
Olivia turned to stare. “You’re decorating?”
“Not decorating, embellishing. It’s a sweet doll.”
“It’s dirty and disgusting. You shouldn’t have touched it. But why this room? And why was Jonathan here?”
Olivia was asking a lot of questions, and again my radar pinged. “I asked Emily to show me the room,” I said. “We didn’t know it was off limits. Jonathan told us to stay out, like a good executive director should.”
“It’s not even one of the haunted rooms,” Olivia said.
Could no one in the historical society see a use for the mansion other than as a moneymaking hangout for ghosts? “I like old places.” I was repeating myself, but it was the truth. Many well-kept old buildings were charming. Not the Fairfield, of course, but Olivia didn’t seem to know that.
She grabbed the doorknob and slammed the door shut. “There are safety regulations—among other important reasons—to keep out of certain rooms.”
Ah yes, safety regulations.
“We have to let the authorities know which rooms are open to the public and which are not,” she continued, “and we can’t be seen to be falsifying reports on that. Why don’t you two join the other guests in the living room? There’s plenty of food. Have something to eat.”
Olivia tossed her chin toward the stairs and then lifted a hand to smooth her mane of blonde hair. Clearly, she would brook no opposition. We weren’t being asked to go downstairs, we were being told.
But it was one thing for Olivia to shuttle me out of the hall and quite another for her to order Emily, a volunteer for the historical society, around.
“We’re not interested in eating,” Emily said, anger working its way into her voice. “Look, I made an error, but don’t treat me like a tour guest who went off the reservation. I volunteer for this society, and I’ve been working as hard as anyone else over the past two weeks.”
“I know that, but there are—”
“And isn’t Jonathan the one in charge of chewing people out? He’s already done it, Olivia, so you don’t need to.”
Olivia’s expression softened a pinch. “Fine, fine. You might as well grab some cookies or brownies before they’re all gone. I have to talk to Jonathan. Do you know where Charlotte is? She isn’t downstairs.”
“No idea,” I said. “Last time I saw her she was on the first floor. Where’s Brodie?”
Olivia tossed back her hair for the umpteenth time. “No idea.”
When Jonathan’s tour group began to leave the bedroom up the hallway, I decided it was time to say our goodbyes. And grab a few snacks. “Let’s go have some cookies, Emily,” I said.
“Sure,” she replied, still glaring at Olivia.
As I started down the staircase, it struck me that Olivia wasn’t angry, she was worried. She was metaphorically wringing her hands, in fact, and was trying to camouflage her fear with a reaction Emily and I would recognize: anger for breaching the Fairfield rules.
In the living room, I shamelessly scooped u
p half a dozen cookies, wrapped them in a napkin, and then looked about for Zane, Brodie, and Charlotte. Zane I spotted on a couch, looking tired but relieved to be among the living again—and so many of them. Figuring I’d leave him alone for the night, I looked for Brodie and finally met up with him in the foyer while Emily went to pocket a few cookies of her own before heading out to my car.
Not being in the mood to mince words, the instant I walked up to him, I said, “What did you think of the Dawson grave site?”
Startled by my question, he looked at me blankly for a moment before answering. “Oh, that. Yeah, Dawson was the name. Ironic, huh?”
“In that it was Patti’s maiden name? Yes. But what did you think of her being murdered there, or near there, and then being buried beneath the headstone? What do you make of it? I saw you inspecting the site.” I made a circling motion with my finger. “Walking around it. Were you looking for something?”
“Why would I be?” He grinned, flashing his extra-white teeth, then glanced down at my hand. “Cookies?”
I unwrapped the napkin and held out my hand. Food was known to loosen a tongue. “So what do you make of it all, Brodie? Why do you think Patti was murdered, buried, and then left in Emily’s yard?”
“The murder?” He shrugged. “Don’t know. Buried? They had to hide her for a while—and do it fast. Why? Maybe because of the cemetery tours. And left in Emily’s yard? I’d say they had to get rid of the body quick because they were about to be caught with it.”
Good heavens. Brodie had been mulling over Patti’s murder. And he’d just made three outstanding points. I gave him the rest of my cookies and made my way to the mansion’s service door and my car.
CHAPTER 12
Outside the mansion’s service entrance, Emily was standing by my Jeep, a folded sheet of paper in her hand. “Let’s get in your car before I show you this,” she said. “I don’t like standing in this parking lot.”
I hit the car key remote, told Minette to take off for the back seat before I climbed in, then turned to Emily. “This is very mysterious. What have you got there?”
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