The Realm of the Shadows (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 2)

by Mary Bowers

  She nodded as soon as I mentioned the dog. “Toby. His name was Toby. I remember that dog. Little black terrier with white paws. It jumped onto the seawall after a stick Vesta was throwing, and went into the river. Vesta was hysterical. The creature was able to tread water well enough, but it couldn’t get back over the seawall again. It would’ve dog-paddled in the water until it got exhausted and drowned, the foolish thing, but Betsy went in after it, with half of St. Augustine having juleps on the veranda and knocking their drinks over as they stood up. They talked about it for the rest of the season! How she set the little dog back onto the seawall and then hauled herself up with the help of about four of the men, who got soaked themselves, all of them laughing themselves into a fit and Betsy calmly telling the servants to bring towels.”

  I had a good laugh myself, and forgot all about Edson being present. It was just Miss Frieda and me, having a visit and enjoying old gossip.

  But when the laughter died away, I looked back at her and saw that she’d drawn into herself again, and she was eyeing me craftily.

  “And now,” she said, “what’s going on in the barn?”

  I quickly ran the events of the previous days through my mind, realizing that I was mentally running all my chips through my fingers, and with this tough old lady, I’d better not spend them all at once. She was only curious; once I’d satisfied her curiosity, she might clam up on me.

  “There seems to be a lady,” I began. Then I waited.

  After a pause, Frieda said, “A lady? Or a girl?”

  “A lady. A young lady. I suppose in the early days of the Cadburys, she might have been thought of as a girl.”

  “You’ve seen her?” A tilt of the head.

  I composed my thoughts carefully, very aware that whatever I said next would make Miss Frieda decide whether or not I was a fool. Or a fake.

  “No. One of the workmen has. He had a very definite impression of a young woman passing near him – or through him. I believe he really did have some kind of a strange experience. He was genuinely shocked by it.”

  Frieda withdrew her gaze and looked to the ocean. After a few moments of quiet reflection, she said, “Did he get the impression of a name?”

  Ed stirred beside me, and I suppose I must have, too. It was the last thing I’d expected her to say. Ed and I both realized at the same time that there actually was something to the haunting, and Frieda Strawbridge knew it.

  “No,” I told her. “He didn’t mention a name. But even though he was shocked and frightened, he actually seems to feel sympathy for her. Do you know who she is?”

  A slight lift of the old grey head gave me the impression of great stubbornness.

  “Miss Frieda?” I prodded. “What does it matter now? The Cadburys are no longer at Cadbury House. Vesta is dead. Her parents are dead. Old Kingsley Cadbury is long dead. Or should I say Waffles?”

  She laughed. “What idiotic nicknames they had in those days,” she mused. “Yes, that’s what they used to call him, though I can’t remember why, if I ever knew. My own father was Topsy. I can only remember him as a dignified old man with a top hat and a silver-headed walking stick, but when he was young, his friends called him Topsy. When they were young. I suppose we were all young once.” Then, without warning, she looked directly into my eyes. “Ask your workman what he thinks of the name Ellen.”

  I was startled, but Ed and I both had the presence of mind not to react in any big way.

  “Ellen? Was that one of the Cadburys?”

  “No.”

  “A servant?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t remember their servants’ names. Why should I? I barely remember my own family’s servants, except for my nannies, and I’d like to forget them.”

  And yet, she had remembered the name of the Cadbury’s chauffeur. “Why Ellen?”

  “Ask your workman. And when you do, I want you to come back here and tell me what he says. Then we may talk again. Maybe it’s nothing. In that case, we won’t talk again.” As an afterthought, she tossed a glance at Ed. “You can bring him with you.”

  I tried a few more questions, but she was through. We had been dismissed. She called for Dolores and we were escorted out.

  Once we were on the hot asphalt of the drive running between the houses of Santorini, Ed and I stopped and faced one another.

  “Ellen,” he said. “Ellen who? I’ve been researching the Cadbury family, and there’s nobody named Ellen. Frieda knows something, but she won’t tell us. Why?”

  “Only one reason I can think of. It’s embarrassing to the Cadbury family.”

  “Or to her own family.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Will you talk to Charlie, or shall I?”

  I considered, then said, “Let’s do it together.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. Then, grudgingly, “You seem to have the right touch. I think she actually likes you.”

  We walked slowly back down the street toward Ed’s house, and before I drove away, Ed leaned into the driver’s side window of my car.

  “I’m coming over in a few hours. I have some feelers out, and I want to go back to my office and make a call or two. Let’s have a meeting when I get to Cadbury House. Is Teddy still there?”

  “Probably. They’re supposed to be wrapping it up today, but that’s not official. By the way, how well do you know Walter? The one they call Wizard.”

  “Not at all. Why?”

  “He seems like a nice guy. In fact, he seems like the only normal one in the whole crew.”

  He gave me a cynical look. “Don’t go soft on me, Taylor. Keep your guard up. He’s still a member of their crew – not ours.”

  I drove back to Cadbury House under a gloriously blue sky, going bridge to bridge, island to island, and not seeing any of it.

  Chapter 10

  Bernie usually puts out The Beach Buzz on Friday, and it was only Thursday, so I wasn’t expecting what I saw when I got back to Cadbury House: the crew of Realm of the Shadows, including Teddy Force, standing around reading a special edition of the paper. I had underestimated Bernie, but damn it, we had a deal – I was supposed to be able to review any articles she published about what was going on at Cadbury House.

  Teddy came running up to me waving around a copy of the newspaper, but I blew by him, let myself into the house and slammed the door in his face, making sure I locked it behind me. Myrtle got in front of me, also waving a copy of The Beach Buzz around, wearing her scoldy face, and I blasted past her, too. In my office I slammed the door behind me, grabbed my cell phone and got ready to send a sheet of flame over the cell tower and into Bernie’s ear.

  “Now just a darned minute, little missy,” she said when I stopped to breathe. “I know we had a deal. When you didn’t get back to me, I went ahead and published. I gave you a 12-hour head start. In the newspaper world, that’s years.”

  “Just when did you give me a 12-hour head start?”

  Pause. “Don’t you ever check your e-mail?”

  The light dawned, and I grabbed my forehead. “I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to look.”

  “I e-mailed my article to you as soon as I wrote it, and as I am sure you realize, I was in my office writing like a madwoman the moment you were out the door. Then I gave you a few hours to talk to Ed, then called and interviewed him over the phone. If I must say so myself, I was inspired. I finally had some real, meaty news, not just the weather, the tides, and the hours of the farmer’s market. The article practically wrote itself.”

  While I’d been listening, I was booting up my computer. I was using a small bedroom for my office, and while my computer came to life I gazed out the windows at the beautiful view of the river. It didn’t help. As soon as I got on-line, there it was in my mailbox – an e-mail from Bernie.

  “Oh,” I said into the phone. “Okay. I see it here. You sent it yesterday.”

  “Apology accepted,” she said. Then she waited, obvious
ly expecting me to say I was sorry.

  “Next time, send a text or give me a call to let me know you sent the article by e-mail,” I told her. “You know what it’s been like around here. I haven’t had my computer up.”

  She snorted. “Even I know how to check my e-mail on my smart phone.”

  I fought to hold onto my temper. I really wanted to explode, but there were two reasons why I couldn’t: (1) she was right, and (2) nobody ever wins, battling the press. Their megaphone is bigger.

  “Bernie, let’s not fight. You may have stuck to the letter of the law on our deal, but when you didn’t hear from me, you should have called. Will you do that for me next time? And what did you say in your article, anyway? Teddy Force is doing hand-stands out there, trying to get my attention.”

  “You’re on your computer now, right? Read the darned e-mail. Better yet, check the on-line edition of the paper. You can look up the hours of the farmer’s market at the same time,” she said, and hung up.

  I’d been standing at my desk, and when I set the cell phone down, I made myself sit quietly for a moment, compose myself, and enjoy ignoring Teddy, who had gone to stare morosely over the seawall. Myrtle was deep in the house somewhere, brooding, and as long as she stayed out of my hair I didn’t care. After about thirty seconds, Teddy noticed me in my office and come over to bang on the French door to the veranda.

  “Go away,” I shouted over my shoulder. I got into Bernie’s website and read her article.

  Then I sat back and closed my eyes. She’d told the real story of Betsy-in-the-water. We were busted.

  “We need to talk,” I heard Teddy’s voice say through the panes of glass. He rattled the door handle, but Michael and I had been extra careful about keeping every portal locked. Finally he must have given up and walked away, but I didn’t look to see. It was too much to hope he and his gang would just pack up and go away.

  I shut the computer down before getting up. It was password protected, but I wasn’t taking any chances with Teddy around. When I turned, I saw him still standing at the French doors, waiting. As soon as he saw me look at him, he gave me his Hollywood smile, then his voice came muzzily through the glass. In case I couldn’t hear, he spoke slowly and formed the words with his lips carefully.

  “It’s in the barn,” he said. “In the barn!”

  I walked out of the room and left him standing on the other side of the door.

  I had something or other for lunch. Don’t know what. I could hear Myrtle stomping around in her room upstairs, and I sincerely hoped she would stay up there for a while. I ate standing up at the kitchen counter while staring off into space and literally thinking of nothing. Any time something tried to poke itself into my consciousness (“but you have to get the workmen together and get them going on the cattery,” or “Ed said something about coming over; you’d better figure out how to keep him busy and away from Teddy,”) I managed to make my mind blank again, not by an act of will but through a sheer lack of energy.

  When I left the house, Teddy came charging over, babbling. I just nodded my head and kept on going. I wanted to find Charlie and see what the crew was doing. Only when Teddy said, “Orphans in the Rain,” did I stop in my tracks and look him in the eye.

  “What did you say?”

  “Finally,” he said, turning on the star power and nailing me with the alien-green eyes. He was cranking up every dial in his personal magnetism machine, and I realized he was about to ask me for yet another favor of some kind.

  “Okay, what is it this time, Teddy?” I said, looking around for Charlie.

  “Your shelter place. Orphans Under the Bridge.”

  “Orphans of the Storm,” I corrected.

  “Yeah. Your Orphan place. I have a great idea! You’re gonna love this. Hey,” he said as my eyes continued to scan the yard for Charlie. He pointed at his own eyes and said, “Over here.”

  I let out a huge sigh, turned to look at him, then recoiled when I realized how captivating he was trying to be.

  “We want to include a two-minute spot in the show about the shelter that’s going to be moving in here, and we want to showcase a needy animal. You know – heartstrings and hankies – that kind of thing. And of course, we’d like you to appear in the spot personally.”

  I guess that was supposed to thrill me. My fifteen minutes of fame, boiled down to a two minute “spot.” Well yippee.

  Then I blinked and gave it some actual thought, wavering out of the tractor beam of his gaze.

  This could actually be a good thing.

  “Eh?” he said in a broad, wiseguy way. “Getting it now? You see the picture? We’ve got all this space here, and a beautiful view of the river, we let little Rover off the leash and let him bound around being free – jumping for joy – do you have a Frisbee we could throw? – that’d be great – a slow-mo shot of this happy doggie going up for a Frisbee. And the voice-over giving statistics of euthanasia rates. Stuff like that. Oh, man, I can see it already.”

  “Hold on there a minute, Teddy,” I said. “I think I finally figured out the subtext, as you showbiz people call it. You’re going ahead with the episode featuring Cadbury House, after what happened? And you want to sweeten me up and get me to go along quietly by promising me a little free publicity, is that it?”

  His shift from visionary cinematographer painting scenarios across the sky to a grief-stricken man, broken by the death of a friend, was startling.

  “You wound me, Taylor. Just for the record, you couldn’t stop us if you wanted to. We have your landlord’s permission. But let’s not let that come between us! What happened last night – we’re all devastated. Devastated. After the sacrifice that Seth made, we could hardly abandon the effort. We want something good to come out of this. And in the instance of a ghost who deliberately misdirects us, actually causing a death –“ Words failed him during yet another personality quick-change, this time to strong-and-silent avenger.

  “What are you talking about now?” I asked, almost not wanting to know.

  “The ghost in the barn. That she-devil. She sent us to the river, away from her lair.”

  “What ghost in the barn?”

  He stared at me. “You know very well. You’ve known all along. If you’d told us in the first place, Seth might not have drowned.”

  “Now just a damn minute, Teddy! Do not have the nerve to blame me for what happened last night. The whole thing was staged and you know it.” (He recoiled, and I wondered if he actually didn’t know it.) “If you and your crew are so psychic, why didn’t you zoom in on the barn in the first place?”

  A smile spread slowly over his perfectly capped teeth. “So it’s true. There is a haunting in the barn.”

  About that time Ed pulled up in his little green Geo and saved me from smacking a hard one across Teddy’s face.

  Ed must have realized that violence was about to erupt, because he came across the lawn in a vigorous trot that caught the attention of every workman and TV crewmember (and there were a lot of them) milling around the property. Everybody stopped, turned, and stared.

  “Taylor, in the house,” he commanded, looking nervously from Teddy to me and back again. “We need to talk. Goodbye, Teddy.”

  He sailed on by, catching my arm as he went, and he didn’t stop until we were locked inside the house and looking at one another.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Anytime. You probably didn’t realize it, but he had a cameraman recording you from a distance. He was probably picking up sound, too.”

  I didn’t care. “Ed, he knows about the barn.”

  “I know. I saw the special edition too. You told me I could let Bernie interview me for The Beach Buzz, but I didn’t think she’d publish so soon. I thought these clowns would be gone by the time it came out. But there’s nothing we can do about that now. Like I said, we need to talk. I did some research. Where’s Myrtle?”

  “Upstairs, locked in her room, pouting. She’s read Bernie’s article and she�
�s mad at me. You know how she is about The Family. She probably thinks we’ve besmirched Betsy’s dignity. Also,” I said, looking around as if the walls had ears, “Teddy’s been hanging around at the doors. He’s probably got some high-tech equipment that can hear through walls. Come on, let’s talk in here.”

  I took him into the powder room, closed the door and I turned on the tap. It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.

  “Now,” I said quietly. “What did you find out?”

  “She was a servant girl. Ellen O’Hare was her name. She hung herself in the barn.”

  “Oh.” I stood there with my mouth open, blinking. “It’s real.”

  “I think so.” He was bug-eyed.

  “You didn’t expect this, did you?”

  “It’s just that . . . it’s been so long. So many years, and so many stories that turned out to have a prosaic explanation. You hear about a violent death, a tragedy, disembodied voices and things being moved, and a story that seems like it should have started a haunting, and when you do an honest investigation . . . nothing. That’s how it usually goes. But to have an experience like Charlie’s happen, and then get confirmation that there was a tragic death, and the sighting fits the facts, in my experience, that just doesn’t happen.”

  “So this was on the internet? A story about a servant girl who killed herself here a long time ago?”

  “No. I got it from a local source. There was a brief article and obituary in the regional paper. My source’s great-grandfather once ran The Territorial Courier, and he has the morgue in his attic.”

  “He has the – oh! The back issues of the newspaper. I get it. I’ve heard of that paper. Wasn’t it the local one, before The Beach Buzz?”

  “It was a much more serious operation than Bernie Horning’s little cupcake for the tourists. It was serious journalism, written by a serious man: Barnabas Elgin, III.”

  I was startled. Barnabas Elgin is an old friend of mine. He owns a used book store, right next door to Girlfriend’s. “Barnabas’s family once ran a newspaper? I never knew that. He’s a very private person, though. He wouldn’t necessarily have mentioned it.”