Purrfect Haunt

by Louise Lynn

  Patricia went pale. "I was just fixing the garden the other day. And you're saying it was where I planted the bulbs?"

  Hazel nodded. "Only a few inches further down, as far as I can tell. You didn't find anything?"

  Patricia shook her head. "No, but that area of the garden has had a lot of soil erosion over the years. Nothing was planted there for ages, and you know what the wind is like here. It will blow everything away. When I was a girl, the garden was made of raised plots, but the boards were taken out, and you see what it looks like now."

  Hazel had seen, and if that were the case, it made sense why whatever sort of bones they were were so close to the surface.

  But who had buried something that large in the garden? And when?

  She thought of Marcus, and decided to make a quick phone call to Celia to let her know what happened, and to ask if Marcus would do a little bit further digging into the case.

  She managed to do that before she showed Sheriff Cross the grave.

  He looked more tired than he had that morning, and pinched the bridge of his nose as he stared at the mess Anthony Ray had made. "Let me guess, he found it?" he said and reached down to give Anthony Ray a pat on the head.

  "Obviously. I don't mean to brag, but he's better than a lot of cadaver dogs. Always stumbling across dead bodies."

  Sheriff Cross let out a huff of laughter. "We'll have to dig it up to see if it's human or not, but this is going to make the rumor mill even worse."

  Hazel squeezed his shoulder. She knew what he meant. Once Cedar Valley found out there was some sort of body buried in Massacre Mansion’s garden, the rumors would get even more out of control. Considering how bad they were now, that was saying something.

  “We can try to keep it as quiet as possible. I don't think we’ll be much help here, but I was gonna give the house another look. Do I have permission to step into the crime scene if needed?"

  He gave her a smile and leaned in to kiss her forehead gently. "You don't even need to ask. Though, wipe your shoes first. And Anthony Ray’s paws. We don't need contamination in there if we can help it."

  She nodded, and turned back toward the house as Sheriff Cross started giving out orders. However, something struck her as she turned away. “You know, don't get mad at me, but I'm sure Milo and Violet wouldn't mind looking at the Ghost Hunters Extreme videos either. Plus, it keeps them from getting involved here, and you know what Violet’s like when it comes to crime scenes." Hazel said.

  The girl had a bad habit of showing up where she probably shouldn't.

  Sheriff Cross didn't look as convinced. "She would love that, but she's gonna have to get her homework done before I let her look at YouTube videos for clues."

  * * *

  When Hazel exited the garden, she saw Patricia slumped on the porch watching the police vans unload and rush about the place.

  Hazel approached her tentatively. "You doing okay?"

  Anthony Ray sniffed at her boot again and gave it a quick swat before deciding it was safe to sit beside.

  Patricia wrung her hands. "I'm trying to look on the bright side of everything. I sunk so much into this place, and now look? There's a body in the garden, and someone was murdered here just a couple of nights ago. The rumors flying around town are even worse. All anyone can talk about is Massacre Mansion!"

  Hazel chewed her bottom lip. A haunted murder house bed-and-breakfast would probably draw plenty of the macabre crowd, and hadn’t Patricia said something similar a couple of nights ago?

  “At least they’re talking about it. Once the police are done, I’m sure you’ll have tons of business, like the Lizzie Borden House."

  Patricia’s eyes lit up. “Do you think we could be as famous as the Lizzie Borden house? I just don’t know. It seems like no one outside of Lake Celeste knows what the Pearl House is."

  Hazel crouched and rubbed her fingers over Anthony Ray's slick black fur.

  Here she thought Patricia was upset about the murder, but now it sounded like the murder just wasn’t famous enough. Her mother had said Patricia liked the limelight. Maybe this was an example of that. "I'm sure it'll all work out in the end, no matter how terrible things seem now. Hey, I meant to ask you, were there any horses on the property recently? We all heard horse hooves the other night."

  Patricia let out a hysterical laugh. "Horses? Here? Not that I know of. At least not since I've owned the property. Albert couldn't have cared for horses. I had some, my babies back in Oregon, but I had to sell them all when I sold the house to move here," she said.

  Emma approached from the shadows at the side of the house, a mug in her hands, and she offered it to Patricia. "Are you sure you don't want to come back to the caretaker's cabin? You still have some of your things there," she said, and Hazel swore the young woman gritted her teeth at the end.

  Patricia took a deep breath of the steaming mug. It wasn't hot cocoa, Hazel noted, but some sort of herbal tea. “I do need to clear a few things out. Excuse us, Hazel."

  Hazel gave Patricia's back a quick pat and stood up. "Emma, you don't know anything about a horse, do you?"

  The girl coughed and gave Hazel a startled look. "A horse? You mean the ghost horse? I don't know anymore about it than you do."

  "Ghost horse. Right. And how many horses did you have?" she asked Patricia as the woman descended the porch steps.

  Patricia took a sip of the tea. "Six. Every single one of them was a darling."

  Hazel nodded and decided to let that line of questioning die for now. If there was a live horse somewhere close by, it’d be difficult to hide. An animal would leave a trace. And someone needed to be feeding and caring for it.

  "Where were you that night?" Hazel asked suddenly.

  Patricia froze and turned slowly. "I went straight to the Lodge. I think the sheriff may have had a hard time reaching me since I turn my cell phone off at night. I know young people don't do that, but I don't like to be disturbed at all hours. I honestly only remember the phone call that came well after everything had taken place. I'm sure there are employees at the Lodge who saw me go into my room. Do you want to question them too, Hazel? I know you're working with the police now, but that doesn't mean you have to question someone who nearly raised you, does it?" Her tone was more indignant than Hazel thought the situation warranted.

  And nearly raised her? That wasn't even close to the truth. Her mother and Patricia had been friends, but she hardly remembered the woman babysitting. Much less having anything to do with the way she was raised.

  She decided not to press the matter.

  "I'm going to have another look around the house," Hazel said.

  Emma gave an exaggerated shiver. "I wouldn't, if I were you. Even at this time of day, it's filled with evil. Especially with her around," Emma said and cast a nasty glance at Tess.

  The young woman in question was huddled with Deputy Simmons near the Sheriff's SUV and having a conversation Hazel assumed involved a lot of the questions she'd already asked.

  "I think I'll take my chances," Hazel said and opened the front door.

  The house creaked with the whipping of the wind outside, and Anthony Ray yowled. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her, and the house itself seemed to let out a sigh.

  No—that was just the wind.

  "Find some evidence that this isn't the work of a ghost, Anthony Ray, and I’ll give you extra dinner and treats for a week."

  His ears perked and his tail stood ramrod straight.

  She wasn't sure if that was a reasonable request or not, but she was about to find out.

  Chapter 16

  There was nothing to be afraid of, Hazel told herself, as she moved through the house. Was it just her imagination or did Anthony Ray also take tentative footsteps through the first floor?

  Of course, it was her imagination. Anthony Ray wasn't scared of anything—even when he should be.

  She glanced down the stairs that led to the basement and let out a long sigh. Yeah, she sho
uld probably start there.

  It didn't help that every single step creaked under her weight, and that the dim electric lights flickered as she touched the light switch. She hoped the power didn't go out like it had the other night, or else she probably would make a run for it. Not that she thought a ghost was in the basement, but there was an axe murderer about.

  With that line of thought, she wondered why on earth she decided to go in the house alone. Well, Patricia and Emma weren't going to come with her, and she couldn't tear Esther or her mother away from their shops. Sheriff Cross was busy digging up another body—possibly human—so that left her.

  She could do it.

  And hopefully not get horrifically murdered at the same time.

  She reached the bottom of the steps and glanced around the empty space. It was as large as the house and stretched in several directions. The rooms were separated by walls of brick and stone, so she had to peek around each one to make sure there wasn't anything there. It looked like it had been a laundry room at one time, as there was an ancient washer in one of the alcoves and one of those old-fashioned irons as well. For all the time Ghost Hunters Extreme spent down there, she didn't see anything worthy of her time or interest.

  She let out a sigh of relief as she reached the first floor again, and went through each of the rooms: kitchen, parlor, dining and living areas.

  She paused at the door to the study, the room where Mr. Pearl had been killed, but stepped inside after a moment’s hesitation.

  Anthony Ray sniffed at the old bloodstain, but he didn't let on that there was anything else particularly interesting in that room.

  Hazel stepped around the desk and peeked out of the windows. They were draped in heavy velvet curtains that let out a puff of dust when she nudged them aside. She wrinkled her nose to keep from sneezing.

  The view from the study overlooked the garden with a glimpse of Lake Celeste in the distance. She couldn't see any of the police from that angle, though she did hear distant voices.

  Hazel turned to resume her study of the house when Anthony Ray yowled. He stood near a bookcase, his chin pressed to the ground, and sniffed the bottom of it.

  "Not this again." Hazel said and stepped close to see if she could tell what he sensed.

  He batted a fluffy paw at the bookcase, not bothering to hit the books therein.

  The quick glance told her they were those old books that filled rich people’s libraries. Things with titles like: ‘A Gentleman's Leisurely Afternoon,’ ‘Stories to Tell Young Children on a Winter's Eve,’ and ‘A Treatise on Medieval Ethics’. They would all be filled with strange lost accounts that were usually incredibly dull to a modern reader.

  Her father had a whole shelf of them at home.

  However, something about it did strike her as odd. The other bookcases were all flush with the floor, but when she bent to check, this one was about a fourth of an inch above the floor.

  Why would that be?

  "Is there a mouse in there or is it something else?" she asked her cat.

  Like usual, Anthony Ray didn't answer.

  Her heart quickened as she wondered through the possibilities. A bookcase that wasn't quite flush with the floor. She glanced at the rest of it and found nothing amiss. It looked like all the rest of the bookcases, filled with books and various expensive looking knickknacks.

  But if this was what she thought it was, then they’d been looking at this case all wrong.

  She started touching all the books, pulling them out to see if they budged.

  They did.

  Darn.

  She thought that would work. It always seemed to in the movies. Well, maybe there was a trigger for a hidden door somewhere else.

  She picked up a couple of the heavy statues and they moved, leaving smears in dust.

  She tried everything on those shelves, and nothing did anything.

  Then, Anthony Ray meowed again.

  Of course!

  Maybe it wasn't the shelf itself that had the trigger, but the one next to it.

  He'd jumped there and was sniffing at an old picture frame. It was silver, though it hadn't been polished in ages. The surface was tarnished and the glass foggy, but Hazel could make out the black and white photo inside. It was a man and a woman with three children gathered in front of them. She’d noticed it her first time in the house.

  Her heart thumped in her throat.

  It was probably the Pearl family before devastation visited them, and it was right in line for Mr. Pearl to look at from his desk. How that picture must have broken his heart a countless number of times.

  She tried to pick it up, but it didn't lift.

  It bent forward instead.

  A click sounded from behind the wall, and the bookcase creaked open on rusted hinges.

  Anthony Ray squeezed in the gap before Hazel could stop him, and she snatched his leash as quickly as she could. She grabbed it just in time and heard Anthony Ray meow in protest as his chase had been halted.

  "You really need to wait for me during these situations, considering you could be headed into horrible danger," she said and pushed the bookcase open as far as it would go.

  That also meant she could be headed into horrible danger.

  Hazel gulped.

  Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and the passage wasn't nearly as tall as the bookcase, about three quarters the size of a normal door. She would have to duck to step inside.

  Heart thudding, she thought of the implications.

  A secret passage in the house.

  Could this have been how the killer got to Cameron?

  And, why was she going to step into it alone? Well, mostly alone. She was accompanied by Anthony Ray.

  Sucking a breath through her nose, she sent a quick text to Colton before she went any further, just in case the door slammed shut behind her and she was trapped. He said this whole situation was like a horror film, and she wasn't about to go making the same mistakes characters in those movies tended to.

  Her text read: Found secret passage in this study. Bookcase. The picture is the trigger. Not sure where it leads but going inside.

  She hit send, sucked in deep breath, and stepped into the passage.

  Chapter 17

  Hazel immediately regretted stepping inside the secret passage. For one, it was dark. There was no light switch on the wall. Who would put lights in a secret passage? That would be like shining a beacon on it.

  She had a penlight on her keychain, and it was going to work better than her cell phone, so she yanked it from her purse and shone it into the distance.

  Anthony Ray's leash was pulled taut, and he tugged on it, urging her to move forward.

  "Hold on a second. I need to get my bearings."

  She swept the penlight over the walls. She noted that there were plenty of cobwebs, but it looked like someone had pushed through them quite recently, thankfully. She didn’t want to be the one to do it. They didn’t look like fake Halloween cobwebs either, but the real kind, with real spiders.

  Dust clotted the floor, broken only by the drag of footsteps.

  Swallowing all of her fears, Hazel moved forward.

  She wasn't sure how the secret passage worked particularly, but it wound around the downstairs for a good twenty feet. She lost her bearings quickly, but at least there weren’t multiple turns. She followed the passage to a sharp corner and then a very narrow set of stairs—narrower than the ones that led to the servant’s quarters.

  She crept up them, and kept a tight hold of Anthony Ray's leash since he charged in front of her into the darkness.

  Once at the top, the ceiling was even lower, and she assumed they were on the second floor.

  There was a short stretch of hallway and a dead-end.

  Or what appeared to be a dead-end from inside the passage.

  As Hazel got closer, she noticed a little latch inside of the wall and pressed it. The door popped open, and she held her breath.

  She squinted into the i
nterior, though it wasn’t what she expected to see.

  She thought it would lead to Dora’s bedroom, and it would explain how the killer got in and out without the door or the windows opening. However, this was Mr. Pearl and Mrs. Pearl's bedroom.

  Anthony Ray darted out and the leash slipped from her loosened grip. Her cat settled on the bed and began to purr.

  Hazel scowled at him. "Oh yeah, you're proud of yourself. This doesn't solve much though."

  A secret passage from the study to Mr. Pearl’s bedroom didn’t mean Dora’s room had one as well, though it also didn’t negate the possibility.

  Hazel moved to gather Anthony Ray when the house groaned.

  She froze, and a sudden buzzing made her jump.

  Her phone. It rang again, and Hazel answered without checking out it was. Probably Colton.

  “Hazy, good! I’m glad I caught you. The family dinner is at our house tonight. Bring Colton if you can. You both need a break, and we have to talk!" her mother said.

  Hazel frowned. “Now is really not the time."

  “I’m certain it is. Have you found Tess?"

  “Yes, she’s talking to Simmons right now."

  Her mother sighed. “Thank goodness. I expect you both at seven. Esther will bring Violet straight from the bakery so he doesn’t have to pick her up. Ooh, I’ve got to get back to work. Carol Collins is going on again," she said and hung up.

  Hazel huffed and shoved her phone away.

  A creak sounded on a floorboard from somewhere outside of the room.

  Anthony Ray’s ears perked to attention, and she stiffened.

  It was just the wind. Just an old house settling.

  Not a crazed axe murderer who had been hiding in the walls this whole time, which was suddenly more possible than it had been before.

  She snatched the end of the leash and moved toward the open door.

  Another creak.

  This time, it definitely sounded like a footstep.

  She bit back the urge to call ‘hello’ into the house. Had one of the deputies come in? Maybe, but she didn’t want to take that chance.