The Mint Julep Murders

by Angie Fox

  The doctor’s brow furrowed. But Charlie saved me the trouble of explaining as he dutifully rose off the floor and retrieved the jar for Dr. Anderson.

  He frowned, turning the jar over in his hands before he unscrewed the lid.

  The ghost of Nurse Mary streamed from the jar with a harsh groan.

  “Mary Francis!” Dr. Anderson let go of the jar, not even noticing when it shattered on the floor.

  The nurse jumped at the noise. She cowered a few feet from him, dripping on the floor. “Don’t put me in the tub again,” she begged.

  Claymore moved swiftly behind her nurse and grabbed her by the shoulders. “She’s delirious,” she stated. “I’m taking her out of here now.”

  Dr. Anderson blocked the way. “Tell me what happened to you, Mary.”

  The nurse stared at the puddles she was making on the floor and shivered.

  “Mary?” Dr. Anderson prodded.

  Her voice came like a whisper on the air. “Nurse Claymore killed me in the tub,” she sobbed. “Please don’t let her hurt me for telling you.”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” Claymore said, hurrying to her cart, scrambling through a drawer underneath her tray of horror.

  “She was angry at Charlie, and at me for leaving a knife next to the cake for him to find,” Mary said quickly, her voice clear. “I went down to see if I could help her coax him back upstairs, and that’s when I caught her burying Charlie in the basement.” Charlie let out a sob. “I’m sorry,” she said to him. “I’m so sorry. I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do, so I kept to my rounds. I just…I never expected to see such a thing. I was treating Loretta when Nurse Claymore confronted me and ordered me not to tell. But I had to tell. I was going to tell.”

  “She killed you in front of Loretta,” I said, sad and horrified for both of them.

  It was all starting to make sense now.

  Loretta witnessed Nurse Mary’s murder. She knew about Charlie buried in the basement, but nobody believed her, not even her friend Juliet. Everyone thought Loretta was paranoid. And maybe she was—but not about this.

  I looked at Nurse Claymore. “You killed Loretta to keep her quiet.”

  Claymore stiffened. “Loretta hanged herself in the stairwell,” she declared.

  I wasn’t sure how to prove her wrong until Loretta shimmered into view in the doorway.

  She didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “Tell them,” I pressed. “They’ll listen to you now.”

  A pained expression crossed her face and her image flickered.

  “Tell me,” Dr. Anderson urged.

  Loretta worried her hands. “Nurse Claymore strangled me and made it look like I went crazy and killed myself.” Her eyes held tears. “Maybe I am crazy, but I know what I saw.” She gulped. “Mr. Rink was the only one who believed me, and she lobotomized him!”

  Nurse Claymore held her hands up as if she were the one under attack. “This is absurd. Preposterous. I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation.”

  The doctor stood stock-still. “I want to know the truth,” he said to her.

  She let out a small laugh. “Doctor, are you going to believe these patients, these people who have been committed to an asylum—”

  “She tried to lobotomize me, too,” Juliet said from behind Loretta. “I never knew why.”

  Loretta turned to her. “I should never have told you anything. If you hadn’t known…”

  “I should have believed you,” Juliet said to her friend.

  “I’m so sorry,” Loretta insisted as Juliet embraced her in a long-overdue hug.

  Dr. Anderson closed his eyes. “I don’t know what to say.” He opened them again to face the patients who had been so abused under his care. “I never imagined this could happen under my watch.” He looked absolutely crestfallen. Broken. “I have kept you here under Nurse Claymore’s insistence that you were all still unwell. I’ve done you each a horrible disservice.”

  Charlie ambled up to him and took his hand.

  “Please,” Claymore spat. “You can’t possibly believe such wild stories. I’m the only other doctor you could get to help you long-term. I’m the only one who cares how hard you work.” She strode toward him, prim. Controlled.

  Holding a syringe behind her back.

  Holy smokes. “She’s going to—”

  Before I could finish, it vanished from her hand.

  “Nurse!” the doctor admonished. “You would hurt me, too?” He deflated. “Worse than you already have?”

  “It was for the patient,” she managed, desperate now.

  “I thought you had my patients’ best interests at heart,” the doctor said, his voice laced with steel. “I thought you cared, that you deserved another chance. That you were worthy of trust. Instead, you used my confidence in your skills to hide your secrets and crimes.”

  She folded her hands in front of her. “I’ll have you remember that I have served you faithfully for a century.”

  He merely observed her, letting her speak.

  “I’ve made a few mistakes along the way,” she conceded, “but not outright murder. Not several times. Not—”

  He snapped his fingers and she disappeared.

  That was one powerful ghost.

  Dr. Anderson kept Charlie’s hand and led him over to me. “I’m sorry,” the doctor said as an unseen force cut through the canvas straps at my wrists and ankles.

  “Thanks,” I said, struggling to sit. My head screamed, and my muscles ached in all the wrong places.

  “He didn’t know,” Nurse Mary said to me as she moved to stand at his side. “Now he knows, and he can make things right.”

  The doctor wore his pain for each of us to see. “My first priority is to do no harm. And I have done terrible, terrible harm.”

  “Not you,” Loretta said, braving the doorway, stepping into the room.

  “I put my faith in her,” he said, giving himself no excuse. “I gave her power she never should have controlled.”

  He had. But none of us could have imagined the full depth of Nurse Claymore’s depravity. “She tricked me, too,” I said, hoping to help him feel a little better. I was also curious. “Where exactly is she?”

  Hopefully, he’d sent her far, far away.

  “Nurse Claymore is in a secure cell on the first floor,” the doctor assured me. “There is a wing under police guard.”

  “I’m familiar,” I said, moving to dangle my feet over the side of the gurney.

  “She has no power of her own,” the doctor explained. “I lent her the ability to move things on the mortal plane, to interact with the living. I wanted her to protect this place.”

  “I suppose she did,” I said. “In her own way.”

  The doctor’s jaw tightened. “We’ll turn her over to the authorities. She’ll receive her judgment and her punishment,” he assured me. “And in our world, the guilty are held for as long as it takes them to change.”

  Mary let out an audible sigh of relief.

  “The rest of you will be free to go,” he added. “Although I’d like to talk a little to each patient first, if only to apologize. I was wrong to keep you. I want you to go to the light.” He wiped a tear from his eye and clapped Charlie on the shoulder. “You don’t need to be fixed. You just need to be happy.”

  23

  Dr. Anderson lifted the lockdown measures, unblocking the exits so we could leave the asylum at last.

  Well, soon.

  First, I found Frankie and Ellis in the basement morgue, maintaining their watch. I informed them their duty had ended. The killer would not be returning to the scene of the crime. She had been found.

  Ellis executed a quick check of the crime scene, making sure we left it secure, while Frankie searched the maze of corridors for Joan.

  He found her huddled and weeping in a side tunnel, scared out of her mind. I knew the feeling well. Together, we calmed her down and got her out of there. Slowly, steadily, we helpe
d an injured Ellis up to the first floor.

  That was where we found Brett and Cash, who’d tried to jam themselves through a window that was too small for them. I’d been wrong about them, too quick to judge. We extricated the boys from the north hall, and then we did what had once been impossible—we walked straight out the front door.

  Ellis organized the caravan out, with me driving the lead car and Joan riding with the ghost hunters. The creek still flowed high, but the rain had slackened to a dull drizzle, and the rushing water had receded enough for us to travel over the bridge again.

  Our first stop was the small town police headquarters. There, we gave a full report of our encounters in the asylum and the deaths of Barbara and Tom.

  The police did a lot of nodding and writing, but I had the feeling they didn’t truly believe our stories. They didn’t even ask for details. At least they agreed to send a patrol over.

  They’d see soon enough.

  The ghost hunters ferried Joan back to her hotel and took care of her while I got Ellis to the hospital. At last.

  We were there for less than two hours (which is nothing in an ER waiting room) when my phone blew up with calls from the local sheriff’s office. They’d sent a pair of officers to the scene, and now they wanted to talk to us.

  First thing in the morning, the sergeant on the phone demanded.

  Ellis told them it should be sooner than that. But I—for one—was glad when the man didn’t listen.

  Unfortunately, both Barbara and Tom could wait until morning.

  The next morning, bright and early, I made sure to start the day by getting Ellis a hearty breakfast. He needed something to go with his antibiotics and pain pill—although he refused the pain pill.

  He was “fine” now that he had a cast on his broken leg and a half dozen stitches under his arm. I hadn’t even known about the deep gash there or the blood that had soaked his undershirt. When pressed, he said he’d gotten it when the ghost—we’re assuming Claymore—had attacked him in the dark. I hadn’t noticed him favoring it with everything else going on, and while he was wearing a black T-shirt and jacket. And of course, Ellis hadn’t said a word.

  The jerk.

  I glanced over at him as I drove over the rain-soaked bridge and back to the asylum. We’d have our discussion. And soon.

  Right now?

  The local police were already on the scene.

  Ellis made it up the asylum stairs with the help of a crutch, which he promptly handed off to me in favor of a scooter that allowed him to brace his bad leg up on wheels and maneuver with his good one.

  The police had plenty of questions, and we gave our stories again. This time, they seemed to believe us—or at least the part about the living.

  No one could explain the ghostly voice my iPhone had recorded at the scene. Well, no one except for Dr. Anderson. After I’d first met him and told him about Barbara’s murder, he’d gone down to investigate and let out an anguished “no” when he’d seen the violence of the crime and reacted to the senseless loss of life.

  When the local police had finished with me, Ellis stayed with them while I went up to the third floor to find Juliet.

  Her room stood empty. Even the desk lay bare, with no sign of the paper bearing those words she’d written so fiercely in the dark: It’s not my fault.

  Instead, I heard the murmur of voices—and even a stifled laugh—coming from Levi’s room.

  He wasn’t the type to entertain guests. Levi had made it clear that he didn’t abide company or interruptions. Or anyone in his space.

  I went to his door and knocked gently.

  After a few moments, he opened it. “Well, hello, Miss Verity.” Juliet stood behind him with a book in hand.

  “Hi,” I said, startled at the sight. “I was actually looking for you both.”

  Levi beckoned me inside, so I went. His sanctuary was filled from floor to ceiling with books, both in his world and mine. It smelled like old leather and coffee. The two ghost cardinals in the cage by the window chirped contentedly.

  “This place is amazing,” I said, taking in the rows upon rows of books. He had a leather-bound copy of Treasure Island. Most likely a first printing. He had Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and A Study in Scarlet, the very first Sherlock Holmes book. Amazing. “These look like originals.”

  “They were merely old books when they were given to me,” Levi said plainly.

  “What will you do with them now?” I asked.

  “I’m staying here,” Levi said. When I turned to him, surprised, he shrugged. “It’s the only place I know.”

  “I’m staying, too,” Juliet said, smiling up at Levi. “It’s nice to finally get to know my neighbor. This is a good place now.”

  “And Loretta?” I asked.

  Juliet’s face lit up at the mention of her friend. “Loretta’s gone to the light,” Juliet said. “So has Nurse Mary. They both found peace. They were quite eager for it.”

  “We have peace right here,” Levi said, handing her another book. “Look. This is the one I was telling you about.”

  She took it eagerly. “I asked him how he named his birds,” she said, holding Treasure Island.

  “Most of the other patients have gone,” Levi said. “Dr. Anderson helped them go to the light.” He glanced out the window. “All except Mr. Rink and Charlie. They weren’t ready yet. The doctor says he’s going to give them a different kind of therapy.”

  Oh no. It scared me to think of what else the medical books from Dr. Anderson’s time recommended for people who were having trouble adjusting to life.

  “There they go now,” he added, pointing out the window.

  “He’s taking them out?” I followed Levi’s direction and saw a ghostly turn-of-the century Fiat parked along the side of the asylum. It had an open driver’s seat and a closed back carriage with a spare wheel attached to the side.

  Dr. Anderson loaded the last of his suitcases onto the roof while Mr. Rink helped strap them down. The lobotomized Mr. Rink was barely recognizable in black pants and a plain white button-down shirt. He’d have to keep putting them on when he reverted back to the clothes he’d died in—but in the meantime, he looked good.

  “Cutting-edge treatment, isn’t it?” Juliet drew up next to me.

  “More like basic human interaction,” I said, relieved. Dr. Anderson cared. He really did.

  “They said their goodbyes a few minutes ago,” Juliet added, watching out the window.

  “You’re going to be okay?” I asked her.

  “Yes.” She shared a glance with Levi. “For the first time, I think we’re both going to be just fine.”

  “I’m going to see if I can go catch the doctor,” I told them.

  “Come back and visit any time you want,” Levi called after me.

  “I will!” I replied as I hurried for the side stairwell.

  I made it down just as Dr. Anderson was opening the car door for Mr. Rink. A teddy bear sat in the front seat. It was the one I’d seen in the hall when I’d first arrived. Mr. Rink held the bear tight to his chest as Dr. Anderson closed the door.

  “You’re leaving,” I said, in the observation of the century. He’d already started the car. Thank goodness the old ones needed to warm up a bit.

  Dr. Anderson flashed a grin. “We’re heading down to Florida for some R and R,” he said while his patient settled in the passenger seat. “Mr. Rink always used to tell me he wanted to see Florida, and it’s been too long for me, too.” He closed the door on a grinning Mr. Rink, who turned his face up to the open sky. “We’re going to ride a fishing boat and drink lemonade on the beach,” the doctor added.

  I couldn’t help but return his smile. “It’ll be good for you both.”

  “It will,” Dr. Anderson agreed. “We’re enjoying the sunshine already,” he said, gesturing to the bright and sunny morning. It had turned out to be a glorious day.

  It got even better when I saw a familiar figure in the back cab.


  Charlie sat, buckled in, grinning as he ate a big plate full of cake.

  “I had to stop by the bakery first thing this morning,” the doctor said, happily making his way around the front of the car to the driver’s seat. “Carter’s makes the best pies and cakes. And wouldn’t you know it—Myles Carter still oversees the operation. A century and counting! He operates a full kitchen on our side of the veil. Can you believe he’s still in business after all these years?”

  “I’m glad,” I said as he hitched himself into the driver’s seat. Glad for Dr. Anderson, for Charlie, for Mr. Rink, and for all of the people who deserved to be happy and free.

  But I still had a question. “What are we going to do about Nurse Claymore?”

  The doctor pulled a lever up to engage the car. “The guards have her.” He hitched a thumb toward the old asylum. “They’re transporting her out.”

  With Scalieri most likely.

  “Thanks,” I said, getting ready to head over there.

  “No,” the doctor said. “Thank you. For everything, Verity.”

  “You’re very welcome,” I said. Everyone had what they deserved—a new start. I couldn’t be happier for them.

  “Ready?” Dr. Anderson asked his companions. Charlie lifted a fork and Mr. Rink raised a hand to wave goodbye.

  The old car rattled around the side of the asylum to begin its final trek down the long drive. I walked the same way and found Ellis out front, standing near the main steps.

  He looked good. He had color back in his face, and the worst of the pain no longer etched his features.

  I stopped at his side, enjoying the moment Dr. Anderson’s car disappeared into the trees at the edge of the property. “I think I just let two of our primary witnesses drive away.”

  “I’m sure the authorities have it handled,” Ellis said.

  And he was right. Only a few moments later, the ghostly doors opened, and Nurse Claymore was led out in handcuffs.

  Ellis couldn’t see her. Or the two guards who flanked her on either side. So I took the liberty of describing it for him, with glee.