Tommie stopped reading. The house was so quiet, and she was struck by the scent of heavy perfume that seemed to come out of nowhere. Her pulse quickened and she lowered the book to her lap and looked all around the room. No one had entered. The perfume had to be an olfactory illusion of some type. As much as she wanted to call out for Harley, she didn’t.
The sound of footsteps behind her made her shift suddenly and the book slipped from her lap to the floor. When she was certain no one was behind her, she bent to pick up the book but froze. It had fallen open to a drawing. Right on the page was a beautiful woman in a hooded cloak with three unusual buttons on one shoulder. The exact same image she’d seen outside Loftus Manor that early morning when she’d run out to chase the phantom. A flush of fear slipped through her body, but she inhaled and picked up the book. Was this a rendering of Leeanne? It was the easy conclusion to jump to. But the drawing wasn’t labeled or marked in anyway. The haunting image had no real explanation. She flipped back to her place in the narrative, knowing that Harley would be equally as intrigued—and concerned—as she was.
She read through the entire story, feeling more disturbed with each paragraph. Pritchett refused to believe Leeanne’s claim. He forced her from the manor on a bitter night. A sense of impending doom permeated the tale.
Tommie abruptly stood up. She had to tell Harley. It was like the events portrayed in the book were happening again, as if history had been caught in some time loop. “Harley!” She called his name because she had to talk to someone before she popped. He came through the door and she felt relief.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The Loftus Curse.”
“What?”
“Samuel didn’t tell you that the bloodline was cursed?”
“He told me ghost stories and things like that but nothing about a curse on this house.”
“Not on the house, but on those with Loftus blood.”
“Maybe you’d better explain what you’re talking about.” He came into the room, the cat in lockstep with him. When he took the book, which she clutched to her chest, the cat jumped up on the desk and rubbed against her empty hands. “What is this curse?” he asked.
“First, take a look at this.” She flipped to the back of the book where the drawing of the cloaked woman seemed even sadder and more sinister.
“What the—” Harley bent closer to examine the drawing. “The woman in the cloak. This is her!”
“I know.”
“I wonder if Samuel knew this old legend and perhaps worked it into some of the stories he told. Maybe our cloaked phantom is a local who knows about this supposed curse.”
“If any of this is true.” Tommie pointed at the book. “This could just be a story someone made up. We don’t know. Perhaps Samuel wasn’t the only storyteller in the Loftus clan.”
“I wouldn’t be shocked or surprised, but it still doesn’t explain why someone is haunting the manor dressed from a drawing supposedly from long ago.” Harley rubbed his chin.
“Someone, or something,” Tommie muttered. She pointed to the book. “It’s too much to believe what’s happening at Loftus Manor now is merely coincidence, Harley. It’s all happened before. And Samuel had to know this because the book was kind of pulled out on the shelf over his desk as if someone had been reading it.”
“You have to slow down and tell me what you found.” Harley grasped her shoulders gently. “Take a breath and just tell me the tale.”
“Reynard Loftus had a beautiful caregiver named Leeanne after his wife died.”
“Reynard?” Harley’s brows drew together. “An ancestor of yours?”
“Yes, 1800s. According to this story, Reynard died and the caregiver, a woman named Leeanne, claimed she and Reynard were married. But Reynard had a son who was a lawyer, and Pritchett Loftus denied Leeanne’s marriage claim and fought it.”
“This is sounding a little too familiar.”
She could tell that Harley was connecting the dots, just as she’d done. “Pritchett had the woman evicted from the manor on a bitter winter night. The next day, Pritchett shut the house up, intending to put it on the market and sell it. He had a wealthy buyer who was willing to pay cash and he was eager to get back to the Northeast. It was said Pritchett hated Loftus House and the Alabama territory. He was more than eager to leave Loftus Manor and Alabama behind.”
“He obviously didn’t sell the manor or it wouldn’t still be in the Loftus family,” Harley concluded.
“You’re correct. Pritchett forced Leeanne, the caregiver, out of the house before he locked the doors. He was getting ready to board a stage and return to Boston, thinking the sale was all but done. But it never happened, because Leeanne got back into the house and hung herself in the exact spot where Uncle Samuel hung himself.”
“Well damn,” Harley said softly. “That’s horrible.” He frowned. “I don’t understand why Samuel didn’t tell me this if he knew about it.” He flipped a few pages of the book. “What’s the curse?”
“Before Leeanne died, she cursed Pritchett Loftus and all of his heirs. She left a handwritten note with the curse on it. ‘Deny the truth, and death shall come for you. Deny justice, and I shall return to call you to the grave where your bones will molder beside mine. In the end, I will have my revenge against a bloodline consumed with greed.’”
“What happened to the property?” Harley asked. “After Pritchett died?”
“After Leeanne’s suicide no one would buy the property and Pritchett discovered that Reynard had unsettled debts. Big debts. Pritchett was forced to stay in Loftus House and run a law practice from here. He married a local girl and had children, but his dream of living in Boston was destroyed. He was a bitter and angry man without a single friend. It’s said that before he died, he told his wife that none would ever be happy living in Loftus Manor. That they would meet a death worthy of their sins, just as he did. He was also a suicide.”
Harley chafed her ice-cold hands. “Well, this is certainly a story that Samuel never bothered to tell me. I doubt he even knew about it.”
“I think he knew. The book was there, on the shelf just above his desk. It was halfway sticking out when Trouble pulled at it. The question is, who else knew about this legend and was it someone who might have set Samuel’s murder up to mimic this tale?”
* * *
Tommie found comfort in the cup of hot tea that Harley made for her. She had to put the shock of the drawing of the cloaked woman and the possible sordid past of the manor out of her mind. Loftus Manor was not haunted by the ghost of Leeanne or anyone else. Loftus Manor was the focus of a very sophisticated grift by two women who would stoop to anything to run her off. Tommie knew she had to keep her thoughts focused in that direction or she’d run screaming out of the manor and never return. To that end, she smiled at Harley, who hovered over her.
“I’m okay. I swear it. The drawing did startle me, but don’t you see? It’s evidence that Nina and Odell knew about this and they’re using it for their own ends.” She didn’t wait for him to agree or disagree. “Did you find anything upstairs?”
“Nothing. The doors and windows are all locked from the inside. There’s no way someone could get out of here. At the lawyer’s request, I changed all of the locks and you have all the keys. No one should be able to open the door.”
“Except the front door was open,” Tommie reminded him. “Maybe the intruder was inside for a time and left the open door.”
“That’s a possibility.” Harley’s concession was half-hearted. “Tommie, let’s get those renovators out here tomorrow and measure these rooms. There’s something going on behind the walls. I’m serious. It has to be stopped. If you’re going to live here in peace, we have to end this.”
Tommie nodded. What he said was true. There was just one little thing—money. She had enough of a nest egg saved to renovate the kitchen in Loftus Manor. She could do that and still survive if she was actually up and running by Christmas and had some gues
ts. Knocking out walls looking for secret passages would be expensive and time consuming.
Trouble let out a low meow.
“What’s wrong?” Tommie asked him.
The cat shuffled some papers around on the desk, knocking several things to the floor. At last he uncovered a mahogany box at the back of the desk almost covered in papers.
Tommie picked it up. It was not heavy. She opened it up and stopped. Game cameras were tucked in the box. She bent down and kissed the cat’s head with a little squee of joy. “Perfect. The perfect solution. Game cameras! We can set them up outside and record where our intruder is coming and going from.”
Harley’s grin was ear to ear. “That’s one smart cat.”
“Why did Uncle Samuel have these cameras?” Tommie asked. “He didn’t hunt, did he?”
“Oh, heavens no. Samuel wouldn’t harm a fly. And I sure don’t hunt. In fact, the land here is posted against hunting. Samuel enjoyed the wildlife, and I suspect that’s why he had the cameras. He probably was intending to put them out so he could watch the wild creatures. He was proud of the fact they had a safe haven here at Loftus Manor.”
“Well, they can serve a dual purpose. We can enjoy the wildlife and possibly catch an intruder.” The drawing of the cloaked woman and the old family history—true or tall tale—only made Tommie more determined to get to the bottom of what was happening at the manor.
Chapter Sixteen
By the time Harley had finished installing the game cameras outside the lodge, Tommie had gone through a handwritten account of the Loftus Manor history. Leeanne was not mentioned.
Together, she and Harley continued to look through the library shelves. She found a few more interesting tidbits, but it was the drawing that she went back to again and again.
Leanne Prestwood. Tommie studied her face. She was a compelling woman with dark eyes and lips painted red. “What’s your story?” Tommie asked her, not expecting an answer but feeling the need to vocalize her question.
“Meow.” Trouble rubbed against her wrist.
She stroked the cat. He was pretty darn perceptive—even though it was hard to admit it.
“Meow.” Trouble lifted his front paws to the shelf where the book had been stored. He began to claw at the wood.
“Hey, don’t do that.” She stood up, but the cat clawed and dug. Before she could stop him, he pulled something down onto the desktop. She picked up the tiny notebook that had been crammed in the back, behind several other books. It contained a list of dates with numbers written beside them. They began in June of the current year and stopped the day before Samuel died.
“Harley!” She called him over from where he was searching a cabinet on the other side of the room. “What’s this?”
He took the booklet looking a little sheepish. “Samuel and I sometimes played chess or backgammon for money. Samuel had a habit of claiming he won when he didn’t. It was more of a joke than anything serious, but the dates look like he was keeping a record of his ‘debt.’ Money never really changed hands, but it looks like he was actually keeping track of it.”
Tommie almost laughed—in some ways Harley and her uncle seemed like young boys. It was delightful. She checked her watch. The dinner hour had passed, but it wasn’t too late to take action on solving the mysteries of the manor. “The lawyer mentioned Odell was staying at the Hilton. I’ll call her and ask her to meet us for drinks this evening.”
“Good idea. Your uncle kept a fully stocked bar, and I can mix a mean drink, if you want me to be here.”
“Please. I really want you here.” She wasn’t pretending, and even though it scared her to be so open, she was determined to explore the feelings Harley aroused.
“I’ll run down to the cottage for some lemons and limes. Anything you want me to check on the computer while I’m down there?”
She handed him the drawing of the young woman in the cloak. “Could you see if there are any likenesses of this woman or this cloak on the internet? Something isn’t right about this.”
“I don’t have the image recognition software to really do that, but I’ll see what I can find. If push comes to shove, there’s a lovely woman in Wetumpka, Patricia Murphy. She was a runway model back in the 1970s and she studied fashion and design. The cloak is distinctive. Maybe she can offer some clues.”
* * *
The Loftus Lass found the drawing, a shockingly good clue. If I were a biped with opposable thumbs and had a car, I’d drive to the nearest art studio and learn what I could about that picture. The woman is beautiful. Was she married to Reynard Loftus and then cheated of her rightful inheritance? Did she have his child? Is all of this some foolishness Samuel cooked up? He was known to love a good yarn, and he was deeply into the bloodlines of the Loftus family. It’s possible he could have managed to find old paper and ink—the volume is hand-stitched so he could have added pages or composed the entire thing. It’s only thirty pages or so. There’s so much to consider, and I hope my fellow detectives use their noggins to work through the multitude of clues I’ve now provided for them. But why would he do this to Tommie? He went to a great deal of effort to find her so she could inherit it. Why would he pull a prank that might jeopardize her inheritance?
There was no one else in the house but Nina Ahearn and, on occasion, Harley. Did Samuel suspect Nina of plotting against him? And if he did, why wouldn’t he send her packing? The picture Harley paints of Samuel is certainly not a helpless man, someone who would be a victim of a caregiver.
There are answers here at Loftus Manor, but there are other sources that must be properly investigated. Tommie is following the bloodlines of Loftus relatives to see how an event from the 1800s has suddenly happened again, while the button of a cloak has also appeared. As if by magic—that’s the part that has me befuddled. I’m into Harry Potter as much as the next black cat, but I have to say, something is rotten in Denmark here. It will just take persistence to figure it out.
On the plus side of this situation, I detected a certain spark ignite between the two bipeds. They are so cautious, so caught up in their patterns from the past. They have much to learn from the Sherlock of cat detectives. In sleuthing and the heart department.
* * *
Harley wasn’t particularly fond of modern technology, but he used it when necessary, and now was the time. He scanned in the drawing of the woman in the cloak. It didn’t take long. He was anxious about leaving Tommie alone in the manor. He kept telling himself it wasn’t his place to worry, but that didn’t stop him. The things that he liked about Tommie—her desire to do the right thing—were the very things that also made her vulnerable to scam artists, and that’s exactly what he’d come to view Nina as, with her ridiculously timed marriage. The magical appearance of the illegitimate daughter, Odell, was equally suspicious. Both were opportunists. Had either of them had a legitimate claim they would have spoken out about it long before now.
He pulled the drawing of the woman in the cloak up on his computer and tried for a search that would find similar images. There was software that might have done it, but he didn’t own it. He’d look into it in the morning in town. There were several computer whizzes in Wetumpka who would know exactly the program that would do the trick.
He searched for cloaks, and though he found hundreds of images, none looked like the one in the photograph. He hoped his friend the fashion designer, Patricia Murphy, would know something about the cut and fabric.
Before he left, he found the online portal to check for a marriage license in Elmore County. There was no record of Samuel and Nina marrying—and interestingly enough, a marriage certificate was no longer required, merely notarized forms of the marriage. While he was there, he searched to see if the marriage was legal if it hadn’t been filed with the proper authorities.
There he struck gold. If the notarized application for marriage had not been filed, then the marriage was not legal, no matter who performed the ceremony. He searched for information on an unfiled ma
rriage form and a deceased partner. No luck there. He’d have to talk to a lawyer about that one, but he felt more hopeful than he had. That still left trouble from Odell, who’d clearly shown she was a dangerous person. Tommie hadn’t wanted to prosecute Odell for a near assault with a car, but Harley wasn’t that compassionate. He’d be more than happy to put the imposter in jail if he could.
Still stewing about Nina and Odell, Harley did a simple google search on Odell Loftus and Odell Rains and came up with three people, none of which were the Odell in Wetumpka. He picked up his cell phone to call Aiden Rivers—as a law officer Aiden had all the equipment necessary to check out Odell and see who she really was and where she came from. But Tommie had been adamant about not contacting the authorities. He put the cell phone back on his desk. Maybe he could convince Tommie to talk to Aiden, but right now she would only get angry if Harley stepped over her request.
Next he checked Nina Ahearn’s background. He wasn’t surprised to find that she had a Facebook page—something he hadn’t thought of because he didn’t use social media. But he joined Facebook so he could explore her posts. Nothing exciting popped up, but there were a number of photos of Loftus Manor, going back months, that she called “her home.” The clear implication was that she owned Loftus Manor.
“So, Nina, you’ve been working toward this for some time,” Harley mumbled as he continued. He was deep in his tracking when he saw the black cat at the window. The cat was obviously crying, and he opened the window to let him in. Trouble had other plans. He rushed back to the driveway and cried again.
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