“Me-ow!” Trouble threw in.
“I’ll set up whatever room you’d like.” She stood up holding the book.
Together they walked up the stairs with Trouble right at their heels.
* * *
Tommie slipped between the cold sheets, too tired to start a fire in her bedroom. All she wanted to do was sleep. As she settled into the bed, she realized her brain was still spinning with thoughts and worries. Harley had taken the room next to hers for the night, and she spent a few minutes thinking about him, settling into a strange room when he could have easily been at his home. He’d stayed in the manor for her. That wasn’t a small thing.
She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but she couldn’t drift off. Trouble seemed to sense her unrest, and he curled up beside her hip and purred loudly. At any other time the delicious purr would have sent her to visit the Sandman, but the events of the last two days had her keyed up. She shifted in the bed and tried to focus on an image of the Pacific Ocean crashing against some rocks. Nothing relaxed her.
She picked up the book she’d brought into her room and turned on the bedside light. If she couldn’t sleep, at least she could read.
Sam Willis was the author and she noted it was published in 1975. To her surprise, the book was copywritten to Samuel Loftus. She’d had no idea he was an author. The pen name Sam Willis—she would never have assumed it was her uncle.
She dug into the first pages, instantly caught up in the story. To her amazement, it was almost as if she could hear her uncle’s voice, or at least his voice as she imagined it, reading the story to her. He had a clear, distinct presentation, and the book was crafted toward the young adult age, as best she could tell. From what little she knew, it was the perfect age for a good, creepy ghost story.
The story followed Ada Carter, a young girl who lived in a big manor house in the middle of nowhere. Her fondest dream was to have a friend, another girl her age. One night very late, Ada was in her bed sleeping when she heard someone sobbing outside her door. Little Ada, braver than she was smart, put on her slippers and crept to the door.
When she jerked it open, a child was sitting on the carpet runner just outside her door.
“Hello,” the girl said. “I’ve come to be your friend. My name is Jacquelyn but you can call me Jix. I’ve been so lonely without a friend. Now you’re here.” And thus a friendship was born.
Jix never appeared when there were other people about, but as time passed, Ada accepted her friend’s strange behavior. Jix wasn’t like other young girls. She wasn’t like other people. Ada knew she was different, but she never questioned how or why.
The two young girls developed a bond and friendship as the summer months passed. When it came time for school, Ada went, but Jix did not. As Ada grew older, so did Jix. But inside she was still the lonely little girl who’d first appeared outside Ada’s bedroom door. And in the way of life and growth and change, Ada found many friends at school. The pull of the outside world became stronger than the pull of Jix and the manor.
In her teens, Ada developed a special relationship with a young boy named Mark. Ada had less and less time to daydream, talk, and play with Jix.
High school graduation came and Ada was accepted into a university. Mark would be going to the same university and they were so excited, planning their classes, their future. Now, after school, Ada stayed in town to be with her friends. Jix was left behind.
The day Ada accepted the keys to her spanking new car, a high school graduation gift, Jix waited for her in the woods behind the gardens. When she called to Ada to join her, the teen reluctantly came. Ada wanted to drive to town, to show off her car. She was ready for a new adventure, a new life, and Jix made her feel guilty. Ada had come to realize that Jix was bound to Loftus Manor. That she would never leave the premises. Would never have a real life with boys and college and a future. The childhood friend of summer days and fall walks in the woods was too limited for a flesh and blood girl. The manor was no longer Ada’s whole world.
For Jix, her role at the big house was the past, the present, and the future. It was all she had now or could even remember. She would never leave. Never have another friend, if Ada left. After Ada died, Jix would still be there. All alone.
All alone.
All alone.
All alone.
The words repeated down the page, and Tommie heard them as they echoed around the room.
Tommie paused in her reading, aware that something was off. Her watch showed two a.m. The bedside lamp spilled light around her, and in the glow she could see the cat standing on the footboard of the bed, back arched, tail fluffed. A low growl came from his throat.
She sensed it then, someone else in the room. She couldn’t see anyone or hear anything odd, but there was someone watching in the shadows. She knew it.
She exhaled a deep breath, and to her horror she saw that the air around her was so cold it condensed. Classic sign of a ghostly presence. She felt paralyzed, as if she couldn’t move though she wanted to get up, to scream, to call for Harley who was, after all, only forty feet away, just on the other side of her bedroom wall. But nothing came out of her mouth, not even a whisper, and her arms and legs were too heavy to lift.
The cat leaped up to the hand-carved foot of the bed, faced the sitting room that was part of the suite and the door to the hallway and hissed again, an angry sound that promised violence.
Then she heard it, a voice so lonely it penetrated her heart. “I’m so lonely. Will you be my friend?”
The child’s voice came from the shadows in a corner of the room.
Tommie couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t speak or move. She was trapped.
“All you have to do is say you’ll be my friend. I won’t hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”
Tommie struggled against the fear, reaching for courage and her voice. If this was the ghost, the prankster who was haunting Loftus Manor, this was her chance to solve that mystery once and for all.
“Who are you?” she asked. Saying the words took all her strength.
“You know who I am. You found my book. You know the secret Samuel kept.”
“You’re Jix.” She said it flatly. “You’re the ghost of Loftus Manor.”
“I knew you were smart. And you’ll stay with me. You won’t leave me alone. I’ve been so alone.”
“I intend to stay here and make Loftus Manor my home,” Tommie said. “Perhaps we can be friends.” The idea was terrifying, but she couldn’t help but feel pity for the lonely child, ghost or not.
“I need a good friend. They always leave me, but you won’t leave me, will you?”
“Not by choice,” Tommie said. She was aware of Trouble pacing on the footboard, growling. The cat was very unhappy, but the ghostly child seemed so desperate. Lonely and harmless. She’d begun to relax and see the intruder as someone she might be able to help. The cat was over-reacting.
She reached for Trouble to comfort him, but the cat swatted her hand, claws extended, and jumped to the floor, hissing at her.
“Trouble?” She’d never seen the feline behave in such an aggressive way. “Trouble?”
“Don’t leave me,” the little ghost voice said again.
“Come into the light,” Tommie said. She swung her feet to the floor. She wanted Harley to see this. He’d never believe her unless he saw it with his own eyes. “Come here.”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. How can we be friends if I can’t see you?”
“No.”
Tommie felt another whisper of apprehension. Something wasn’t right. “Jix, please, I want to see you. I want you to tell me about this house. There’re so many secrets here.”
“So many secrets,” Jix repeated. “And I’ll tell you all of them!” She rushed toward the bed, and when the light fell on her, she was hideous. There was little human left of her. She was mostly bones in the clothes of a nineteenth century female child. She snapp
ed the air with her teeth.
Tommie screamed and fell back in the bed. She felt the thud of the cat beside her, and she screamed again and again. There was the sound of her bedroom door crashing open and Harley was at the bedside, grabbing her shoulders to keep her from thrashing.
“Tommie! Tommie! Wake up.” He held her tightly and pulled her against him so he could hold and simultaneously restrain her as she struggled. “Tommie, you’re having a nightmare, wake up!”
At last his voice penetrated the terror and she stopped fighting him. Trouble headbutted her, giving his own version of comfort. When she finally looked around, the room was flooded with light—Harley had flipped on the overhead in the bedroom and the parlor as he came in. There was nothing else in the room. Nothing at all.
“She was here,” Tommie said. “She wanted to be my friend. It’s the ghost from Uncle Samuel’s book. Jix. She was here.” Her voice lost assertiveness the more she talked, and she knew she’d suffered one of the most real nightmares she’d ever had.
“Uncle Samuel’s book?” Harley was puzzled.
“Samuel wrote the book, back in 1975. A young adult ghost story.” She handed him the book. “He was quite the storyteller,” she said. “It certainly provoked a nightmare for me.” She glanced into the corners of the room. The idea that she’d been visited by a ghost was still with her, even though rationally she knew it was a dream.
“He never mentioned being an author,” Harley said. “But that doesn’t surprise me. Samuel loved telling his stories.”
“This one scared me senseless,” Tommie said, remembering with panic the sense of helplessness and paralysis.
“You’re okay now,” Harley said. He held her in his arms. “You’re okay. It was just a bad dream.”
“It’s a good thing Uncle Samuel is dead or I’d be tempted to kill him,” Tommie said, taking a stab at humor. Safe against Harley, she felt the cobwebs of the dream slip away from her. She wasn’t normally prone to being such a fraidy-cat, but the ghost story had really worked on her.
“Think you can sleep?” Harley asked.
Incredibly, she felt her body relaxing. “I think so.”
“I’ll stay until I’m sure you won’t have another nightmare.”
She didn’t argue. Harley’s presence was comforting. She reached for the cat to bring him to snuggle against her. “Thank you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Harley watched Tommie sleep for a long time. He wanted to be there in case she had another nightmare. The weeks of stress—from the notification of Samuel’s death and her inheritance to loading up her old life, moving to a new one, and then confronting imposters and ghosts—it had been a hard journey for her. No wonder she was having nightmares.
As he sat with her, he leafed through Samuel’s book. It was a classic ghost story and one he’d heard Samuel tell in various forms. When he felt his own eyelids drooping, he got a blanket from his room and settled into a chair beside Tommie’s bed. Tomorrow they’d deal with ghosts and grifters and everything else.
He awoke before Tommie and folded his blanket and returned it to the guest room. Then he went downstairs to make coffee. The manor was chilly—not nearly as snug as the cottage where he lived. While he was waiting for the coffee to brew, he stepped into Samuel’s small office. Odell had talked about hidden money, a stash of some kind. If Harley had ever foreseen the troubles that would come from Samuel’s love of telling stories, he would have warned him not to list Loftus Manor as a site for hidden treasures. How many other people suffered under the delusion that great wealth could be found in the manor? One more would be too many. While Tommie was sleeping, he’d take a quick look around the room. And he’d mention it to the renovators when they arrived. Hank would have a lot better idea if there were hidden spaces for some special use of the room.
He sat down at Samuel’s desk, his fingers running lightly over the burnished wood, and had a sudden wave of loss. He missed the old codger. Samuel could be a devil with his stories and pranks, but he had been Harley’s closest friend for the past five years. Harley realized things had begun to happen so fast that he’d failed to even grieve his loss. Now, Samuel’s death was all too real. Whatever happened in the future, whether Loftus Manor became a successful inn or simply Tommie’s home, Samuel was gone from the premises. He was just a memory now, but Harley vowed to share how special Samuel had been with Tommie so she could know her great-great-uncle, at least a little.
He was deep in melancholy thoughts when the black cat jumped to the desk and began digging and pawing at the center desk drawer. Harley obligingly opened it and the cat demanded that he open it wider, until the drawer slipped out of the desk.
Trouble gave a cry of delight and began pawing at the back side of the drawer. Harley knew before he even looked that he would find something. And he did. A key taped to the back of the drawer. But a key to what?
He pulled it free and put it on the desk. “What now?” he asked Trouble.
Before he or the cat could formulate a plan of action, Harley heard the sound of Tommie stirring, and as he got up to pour them both coffee, he saw the coroner’s report of Samuel’s death on the floor. The form was simple enough, a few places to check and some handwritten notes. He picked it up and stopped as the morning sun coming through a window highlighted an oddity. The coroner had written, “Death by hanging by his own hand. Suicide.” Harley squinted. It was a copy of the official report, which was probably in the coroner’s office in Montgomery. He studied it closely. Something else had been written and changed. He turned on the desk lamp and bent over the paper. Something had been whited out on the original, and the verdict of suicide put in. Because it was a copy, the change was easy to overlook, He sat back from the paper. It might be nothing—or it could be something very significant.
“Harley? Are you still here?”
He put the page in the drawer, slipped the key inside, too, and met Tommie on the way to the kitchen. “I was going to bring you some coffee, but I got distracted.”
Her face brightened. “You found something, didn’t you? What did you find?”
“Maybe Samuel didn’t kill himself after all. I’ll show you once you’ve had something hot to drink and I get a fire going.”
“Sounds like a deal. I’ll pour the coffee and meet you in Samuel’s study.”
* * *
I couldn’t be certain what Odell was looking for when she was in the study, but I knew it had to be small. She wasn’t looking for a large treasure—not in the places she was examining. I figured it was a key, and where do spies always stash the key? Taped to the back or bottom of a drawer. Duh! I wish I could take credit for being brilliant, but I’ll settle for just taking credit for watching the right movies and finding the key.
Let me finesse opening this drawer. Aha! Just as I suspected. This is a key to a safety deposit box. Wetumpka has a number of bank branches, especially out on the highways. But my bet on Samuel is that he used the downtown bank, the Wetumpka National Bank. It’s been a part of the community for many years and that appears to be where he had his checking accounts. I do believe a trip to town is in order right away.
There is much to do, and the renovation team will be out here soon. Then things will really get hectic. Here’s Harley, bringing in an armful of wood for the fireplace. And Tommie will be right behind him. How to make them understand the key is to a safety deposit box. Oh, great! Here’s a check book from the bank. That will do the trick nicely. And yes, they’ve snapped on to the key and the checking account. They’re talking about going to the bank ASAP.
In the past two days, Tommie and Harley have become more and more adept at learning to comprehend me. They’re quite intelligent for bipeds.
* * *
Tommie took the coroner’s report and sat at her great uncle’s desk. Harley snapped on the bright desk light and pointed to the form where cause of death was listed. She saw it instantly. Something had been whited out and then neatly written on top
of. They’d done a skillful job of it, but not skillful enough.
“Which means we need to get a copy of the original report from the state medical examiner,” Harley said.
“I’ll make a call.” Tommie picked up the telephone on the desk and made a face. “The line is dead. I guess Britt Gordon had the land line disconnected. I need to check on the gas service and electricity.” She pulled her cell phone from her pocket.
“You should,” Harley said. “While you’re doing that I’m going to check the game cameras I set up last evening. And we also need to go to the bank to check out that key.”
“Where’s Trouble?” Tommie asked. The black cat had simply disappeared. He was stealthy when he chose to be.
“He’s in the house,” Harley said.
“I’ll keep an eye out. If he hasn’t reappeared, I’ll look for him after I make these calls.”
Half an hour later, Tommie had taken care of her calls. She’d also saved herself a trip to the bank by calling and asking if Samuel had a safety deposit box. The answer was no. There was no box rented by Samuel at any of the other banks around Wetumpka either. The key was a dead end. Like so many other clues, it seemed.
She headed upstairs to look for Trouble. As much as the cat loved food, he wasn’t hanging around waiting for breakfast and she found that a little strange. She’d made it to the second-floor landing when there was a knock at the door. She hurried down the central staircase to open the door to Hank Evans. Behind him was a five-man crew of workers.
“The supplies will be here in half an hour and I thought we’d get started if you’re good with that.” His smile was big and reassuring.
“You know where the kitchen is,” Tommie said. Hopes for a quick breakfast disappeared, but she was too excited to care about food.
“We’re just going to start working. Since you haven’t restocked your kitchen yet, we’ll begin with pulling out the cabinets and so forth. Once the space is cleared, we can talk about the next step.”
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