Bump in the Night

by Meredith Spies

  “Snitches get stitches even beyond the grave?” She flipped the folder open again, then checked her phone with a frown. “According to the lab, Mr. Ernest had traces of powdered amygdalin on his fingers. Know anything about that?”

  I thought of Ernest on the kitchen floor, surrounded by broken pottery. I thought of the pulverized sugar bowl that had been near his hand. “Can I make a call?”

  Grim satisfaction settled on to Officer Barton’s features. “Lawyering up already? I’m gonna win the pool for quickest turnover.” She turned the desk phone in my direction and settled back in the squeaky office chair. “What’s wrong? Forget your lawyer’s number?”

  “Er, I don’t have one. Can I use that computer or is Googling forbidden?”

  “What? No you can’t use it!”

  “In that case, do you know the number for the library?”

  Janet Hendricks was a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman in no-nonsense sneakers and a tidy A-line skirt decorated with falling leaf appliques and a tidy row of brique-a-braque trim. She also took no shit and descended on the Bettina Police Department like the avenging angel of the research desk. “Oh, honestly! Just like I told that Mark Thomas fellow when he came around a month or so back, the causes of death were clearly described in the original reports. My ancestors were accidentally poisoned by a tea set gifted to them by a friend of the family. Nicolette Lacroix lived with them for several years and was well known as a local free-spirit.” Her pursed lips told me all I needed to know about her opinion on Nicolette Lacroix and how truly accidental those deaths were. “The deaths were all ruled accidental. The tea set was destroyed in 1910 by my great-grandmother. She had it pulverized beneath the tires of her new car and raked the remains into the dirt of the front drive then covered the whole mess with gravel.”

  “Was there another tea set?” I asked. “Maybe she made another?”

  Janet shook her head. “Not that I know of, anyway. She became known for her painting and had made many small works of art for local establishments, including the original police station.” She shot a sharp glare at Officer Barton. “She was apparently quite civic minded.”

  “As much as I appreciate this little history lesson, Mr. Fellowes, what the hell does it have to do with your friends being poisoned?”

  “Poisoned?” Janet’s eyes were wide as she whipped around to face me. “How?”

  “I’m fairly certain it was the tea set some of us had been using.” I hesitated a moment. “I won’t play coy and pretend you have no idea who I am and what I do. It’s been all over the local gossip, hasn’t it? What we’re doing up at the house? Mr. Ernest seemed to think that he should destroy the tea set this morning, and it seems like he may have been influenced by a spirit there.” I left out it might be her own great-great grandfather.

  She sat down heavily in the chair I’d vacated. “It’s possible there was another set,” she said carefully. “I can’t say for certain as I only know of the one, since it was specifically related to my family history. Nicolette Lacroix made her own paints and it was believed she accidentally poisoned my family members when she added crushed apricot seeds and ground peach pits into some of her mixtures, trying to experiment with fixatives for the paints so the cups and plates she painted could be used daily instead of hidden away for special occasions.” I thought of the recipe book and the scribbled lists in the back of the diary and knew Janet was right.

  The way she described Nicolette sounded nothing like the unhinged woman who wrote in the diary, who hinted at what she had done but never outright claimed the deaths as her doing. The diary was still hidden in Julian’s things and I wondered if it should stay there or if Janet should have it so she would know better what had happened to her relatives so long ago.

  Janet smiled sadly. “Mr. Ernest had worked for Hendricks House since before I was born. Whenever my parents brought me up there to see the place, he’d always have candy for me, always show me some hidden feature of the house or a neat little hiding spot perfect for a small child.” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue from the box on the desk. “The story was that he had been orphaned as a boy and wound up at Hendricks House after hearing about it being converted to a hotel and looking for workers. He stayed there through the change from a hotel to the conference center and was the first person the family insisted on hiring once the house became a historic site and was returned to it’s former glory. My mother…” she trailed off for a moment, then blew out a harsh breath and shook her head again. “My mother had always thought Mr. Ernest was a by-blow of the Hendricks family, but when I was about twenty years old, when I’d come back for a visit from college, I was feeling awful full of myself and decided to go snooping around in the family history. I have the Hendricks curse of pride,” she said quietly, blushing and refusing to meet our gaze. “Despite growing up pretty solidly middle class, I wanted to show off to those girls in my program who were always off on ski vacations or chalet this and manse in the Hamptons that. I wanted to prove the Hendricks name had some cachet to it, maybe not Aster or Rockefeller level but something meaningful. Oh, I was terrible. Well, dig deep enough and you’ll find something unpleasant, right? Frank Ernest wasn’t actually a by-blow but his father was.”

  “Paul Hendricks.”

  She nodded. “Paul Hendricks is a persona non grata in family conversations,” she chuckled weakly. “Up until the day he died, my father insisted Paul was soft in the head and just made the whole story up about being Matthew’s son. I’ve never been able to prove the exact connection but…” she trailed off again.

  I had a pretty good feeling I’d be able to find it if the ghost of Paul Hendricks had lingered. Nicolette had been pregnant, she’d had the baby she hated, and I was sure he’d grown up being told all about how he’d lost her the fabulous Hendricks name, the house, the money, the lifestyle. Paul Lacroix had come home to demand recognition on behalf of his dead mother and…. Well. Someone had probably served him tea to be polite. A maid, probably. A maid who had no idea what she had done until it was too late.

  Killed, inadvertently, by his own mother, who had never wanted him to be born in the first place.

  The idea made me sick to my stomach and I hoped I was wrong, but I would have placed good money on me being right.

  Officer Barton inhaled deeply and let her head fall back against the headrest of her chair for a long moment. “Okay. Let me be honest here. This is a fantastic goddamn soap opera but nothing in it is telling me I shouldn’t hold you for questioning.”

  “No,” I admitted, “but nothing is telling you that you should, either.”

  A rapid knock on the door interrupted us and it swung open to reveal Barton’s partner, Les. “Hey, that Thomas guy broke. All hands for a recovery up at Hendricks House.”

  “All hands… what?” Janet was on her feet and rushing out after them. “No one touches a thing until we get the historic society on site! You’re not digging up the garden, are you?”

  “It’s the conservatory,” Annie said from beside me. “That’s where I am. Under the orange tree.” Her smile was wistful. “I told him how much I loved orange blossoms.”

  “Told who? Mark Thomas?”

  “No. Mr. Grant. I told him. He must’ve told Mr. Thomas after…” She frowned, a far-off look moving over her face. “Shit. I gotta go. I’ll see you later, okay? Tell Mandy not to freak—I’ll be back in a bit.”

  “Wait!” She disappeared again, the only trace of anything paranormal the vague energy left behind by someone who had died of an overdose in holding, and the faintest twinge of Officer Barton’s grandmother.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Julian

  Returning to Hendricks House was out of the question, as was leaving Bettina. At least until we were all cleared in the poisoning of Cec, Heath, and Ezra. No matter how many times they told the authorities it was accidental.

  Anne Renton was exhumed from her temporary resting place beneath the orange tree in Hendricks House’s co
nservatory. She was still wearing her blue dress with the phone in her pocket and half-chewed gum in one cheek. Oscar said she looked like she was sleeping. He was lying—I’d made my life dealing with the dead before I met Oscar. I knew she would have looked nothing like her ghost. But I told him I was glad and he said it was okay that I wasn’t there when she was exhumed. She hadn’t been, either.

  I think he was lying about that, too.

  Mark Thomas cracked like an egg, his bravado worth nothing once they started asking why he had been visiting Bettina so often. Apparently, it had been idle curiosity on the officer’s part, since Bettina isn’t exactly a tourist hotspot, but Thomas fell apart and admitted the entire deal with Jacob, admitted accidentally killing Anne during an attempt to break into Hendricks House and getting startled by Ernest. Anne had died quickly, apparently, and that much I believed.

  I didn’t— no, didn’t want — to believe Jacob had known anything about Anne’s death, but he had admitted to it after Thomas turned on him. Jacob had helped cover Thomas’ tracks, helped arrange things so it seemed like Anne had just done a runner and was behaving like an irresponsible twenty something, ignoring her family’s calls and friends’ trying to find her on social media.

  It made me wonder about Victor Milton, whether or not he’d really gone off with his PA, or if there was going to be more coming out soon from Jacob and Thomas.

  I’d been the one to tell Cec about Jacob. She’d been transferred from Bettina Medical Center to a larger hospital in Rochester, along with Ezra. Heath had been released. He’d only had one cup of tea from the poisoned cups.

  “You alright? For certain values of alright?” Oscar asked, stretching out beside me on the hotel sofa. We had our feet propped on the press board coffee table, a mindless documentary about something cute and fuzzy on the t.v. When I didn’t answer, he slid his fingers between mine and held my hand. We sat like that for a long time, until the documentary ended and it turned into a game show involving an obstacle course and contestants in ridiculous costumes. “I know it doesn’t help anything, but I was able to talk to Matthew.”

  It took me a moment to realize who he meant. “Oh. Oh. Was it him in the billiard room that night?”

  He nodded. “And he’s the one who encouraged Ernest to destroy the set in the kitchen. Ernest was… well. He was not a well man. He never made peace with seeing Thomas burying Anne in the conservatory. He told himself it was a ghost but he knew, deep down, apparently. He was just too terrified to admit it. It ate at him.”

  “So he decided…”

  “Well. It was definitely a contributing factor.” He squeezed my fingers gently. “He had unman aged bipolar disorder. When it became obvious what his intent was, Matthew Hendricks exerted nearly all of his energy to influence Ernest in one final act before he was too far into a manic episode for Matthew to control.

  “So Matthew’s… not gone? He used most of his energy up so that means ghosts are battery powered or something?” I let him pull me closer, tugging my head down to rest on his shoulder. I didn’t want to relax, didn’t feel like I deserved to, but his fingers carding through my hair were more influential than I thought.

  “Not quite,” he chuckled. “Ghosts are energy, but not like a battery.”

  I closed my eyes and let him talk. Maybe, I thought, I’ll learn in my sleep like bees, or maybe if he kept kissing my head like he was doing, I’d absorb his knowledge that way. When I opened my eyes again, he was asleep and my head was on his chest, our legs a tangle on the sofa and the late news murmuring about the sordid history of the local historic attraction.

  “I swear to go, I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. You nearly died,” I reminded CeCe. She’d been released after much fuss and threats of being a worse patient than she already was. I apologized profusely to any staff member who would listen and made a note to send an enormous cookie bouquet to the nurses’ station as soon as possible. “Stop dragging your feet and let me push the chair or I’m going to walk off and leave you here.”

  “That’s elder abuse,” Ezra said. He and Oscar were ahead of is in the hallway, having arranged Ezra’s release at the same time as CeCe’s. We were to go back to the hotel in Bettina ‘just in case,’ but really there was nothing else for the police to ask us. CeCe had gotten Harrison Temple, her pet lawyer, on the phone and within the hour we were told we could head back home so long as we agreed to return should there be any further questions.

  “Elder abuse,” CeCe seethed. “You rotten little twink!”

  Ezra cackled. “I may be a rotten little twink but at least I’m not old.”

  “Hey! Watch it!”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Ezra turned his evil grin on me. “You’re twins. You’re both old!”

  “Oscar, rein him in before I borrow that cook book from Hendricks House. I feel a painting spree coming on…”

  Ezra laughed until he coughed. They sat in the back seat of my rental car—Ezra and Oscar’s was still stuck in the river mud somewhere outside Bettina, a loss to be covered by UnReality’s team. The way they got their heads together and started whispering made me nervous.

  “Should we separate them at the next rest stop?” I asked under my breath.

  “Mmm. Nah. Let’s see what they come up with. If nothing else, it’s bound to be better than this mess,” he waved in the general direction of Bettina.

  “Oh, no… No one’s ever explained curses to you, have they? You just totally laid one on us. Almost as bad as ‘we should be okay’ in a horror movie or ‘what could possibly go wrong?’.”

  Oscar rolled his eyes. “Just drive, Doctor Weems. I’d like to get back to New Orleans before the cops here decide to bring us in for questioning about something else.”

  “Seriously. Stop talking. You’re dooming us all.”

  We stayed one more night in the hotel outside of Bettina on the way to Rochester. Ezra and Oscar shared one room, much to Oscar’s and my displeasure, while CeCe and I shared the other, made excessively awkward by the fact the last space we’d shared had been our mother’s uterus. We settled into an odd sort of quiet after CeCe managed a shower and checked in with her doctor back home. She was cleared to fly the next day and wasn’t about to waste one more second in upstate New York. We ordered pizza, shared between the four of us in a greasy, salty feast we’d regret later, and drifted to our separate rooms near midnight. Oscar and I shared a quick, sleepy kiss at the door, Ezra’s faint whooooo following me back into my room.

  “Are you going to tell him about Rey?” CeCe asked suddenly.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “You’re diverting.”

  “So I’ve been told.” I almost ducked the pillow she sent flying my way. “Jesus, you’ve got a good arm for someone who nearly died a few days ago.”

  “Just imagine what I can do when I’m at full strength,” she yawned. “So anyway. Are you?”

  “Maybe one day. Soonish,” I added.

  “He’s going to find out one day, you know. It’d be better coming from you.”

  “I’ll tell him my sordid back story on the way home, how about that? When he’s trapped at 30,000 feet and can’t ditch me until we land.”

  “You drama queen. It’s not a sordid backstory. You had a breakdown and he was a douchenozzle and left you. There. That’s the story.”

  I pulled the pillow over my face and muffled my scream. When I resurfaced, I said, “It’s not as easy as that.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “Good night, Cec. Don’t die.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  We lay in silence for a long time, CeCe on one bed and me on the other. Finally, she spoke again. “Hey, so… I’m going to be coming into some money soon. How into the idea of a ghost hunting show are you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Hm. Nothing. See you in the morning.”

  “CeCe!”

  “Shhh. I’m trying to sleep. You’re keeping me and the gh
ost by the closet door awake!”

  “…I hate you.”

  “Night, favorite brother.”

  “Seriously, CeCe… What did you mean about the ghost by the closet? CeCe?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Epilogue – Oscar

  “I don’t wanna,” Julian whinged in his best impression of a toddler. “It sucks.”

  I leaned in and pressed a long, hard kiss to his pouting lips. He melted against me as much as the seat belt across his chest allowed, his fingers creeping up my wrists to pin me in place and deepen the kiss. I smiled into it, breaking away with a small shake of my head. “Suck it up, darling. This is a business meeting.” He groaned and rolled his head to one side, glaring up at the sign for Mama Bee’s.

  CeCe had a sick sense of humor, apparently.

  “Promise we can go back to bed later? I’m still worn out from the investigation.” He smiled, sly and hot. “I could use some more sleep.”

  “Which investigation would that be?” I asked, unbuckling. “The investigation to discover how long you could edge me before I threatened you bodily harm?”

  “Two minutes,” he muttered, smug.

  “Five, thank you very much.”

  “The three minutes where you had a giggle fit about glow in the dark condoms doesn’t count.”

  “Seriously. You’re thirty-five years old. They glowed in the dark.”

  He scowled. “Maybe the condoms didn’t glow and it was just my magicae coles.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “See, that’s exactly what you said once you stopped laughing.”

  “I’m getting out.”

  “That’s exactly what I don’t want you to say later once we’re back in bed.”

  I paused. “Oh?”

  “Oh, look! There’s CeCe!”

  I grumbled but followed him from the car and up the faux-folksy front steps of Mama Bee’s. CeCe was on her phone, speaking rapidly in French to someone named Gio who, based on my limited French skills, was either a horse’s ass or had done something to horse’s ass.