“You’re doing okay,” Sara called back above the wind. “Just keep heading straight. In another mile or so, fork to the right past the lake and then we’ll be there.”
“Do you think Miss Mamie will be at home to callers this afternoon?”
“It’s not as though she has anywhere else to go, Michael,” Sara replied dryly.
Mike’s smile widened into a grin. He was humoring her about her belief in the ghost. Sara realized it, but his teasing had a more gentle edge to it than yesterday.
All the same, she couldn’t help wondering what was going to happen when Mike Parker, skeptic extraordinaire, crossed the threshold into Mamie Patrick’s domain. Sara had to admit she was anticipating the encounter with something approaching an unholy glee.
The fork in the road appeared and Mike steered toward the right, smooth macadam giving way to gravel. When a spray of pebbles chunked off the side of the Mustang, he swore under his breath and slowed the car down.
A forest of straggly pines closed in about them. Between the dark, weathered trunks, Sara caught glimpses of shimmering blue-green water. On the far side of the lake, echoed the laughter and squeals of summer day camp children swimming on the west shore.
But on this side all was shadows and silence. Even the calls of the bobolinks and chittering squirrels seemed more subdued here.
Mike eased the car almost to a crawl as the road narrowed to little more than a dirt track with a tall sign post pointing the way. A wooden placard hung from the rusted pole, looking like something that should be perpetually creaking in the wind or illuminated by jagged flashes of lightning. Ye Old Pine Top Inn, it proclaimed in well-worn letters.
It was the perfect herald for the deserted building set back amongst the stand of pines. The old clapboard inn was a large, rambling structure with as many turrets and towers as a medieval fortress. Paint cracked and peeling, shutters hanging askew, the broad veranda appeared neglected and unwelcoming.
Braking the car to a halt in front of the porch steps, Mike shut off the ignition. He peeked over the rims of his glasses at the inn and let out a long low whistle.
“So this is it, huh? Ye Old Pine Top Inn. I’ll have to put it on my list of favorite overnight stops, right up there with the Bates Motel.”
“The present owner, the Jorgensen Realty Co., is trying to fix the place up a bit,” Sara said. “They’re hoping to restore it into one of those quaint little out-of-the-way places that would attract the better class of tourist trade.”
“Sounds a little like trying to turn Dracula’s castle into a cozy bed and breakfast. But what the hey.” Mike shrugged. “It’s not my money.”
He made no move to get out of the car, fishing out a pen and small notebook from his inner breast pocket instead. “You probably better tell me where to find this Jorgensen. I might need to talk to—”
“No!” Sara blurted out in alarm. When Mike glanced toward her, clearly surprised, she struggled to speak more calmly, “I—I mean, no, that won’t be necessary. They would be of no help at all. They haven’t owned the inn long. Mamie lived here way before their time, when the inn was more of an old boardinghouse. The Jorgensens don’t know anything. Nothing at all.”
She must have still sounded too vehement because Mike removed his sunglasses and continued to stare at her.
Sara realized she’d never hold up well under an intense police grilling. Mike didn’t even have to question her. One long silent stare and she was ready to spill her guts.
Pleating her hands nervously in the folds of her dress, Sara sighed and confessed, “All right. Mrs. Jorgensen doesn’t even know that I’ve been coming out here to communicate with Mamie. We’re not on the best of terms. Me and Ralph and Elaine Jorgensen, that is. Their development company has been one of the prime movers behind the program to refurbish Aurora Falls, turn it into something a little more upmarket. And—and—”
“They don’t exactly appreciate the ambience of your little shop?” Mike filled in when Sara floundered.
Sara nodded unhappily. “I would have never dreamed of coming near their inn under normal circumstances. But I kept hearing the rumors about it being haunted and I just couldn’t resist stopping by for a peek. Then I discovered Mamie and—well, you know the rest.”
“So in other words, we’re trespassing,” Mike said flatly.
“Yes.”
“I wish you’d told me sooner.”
“I’m sorry. I should have warned you that what we are doing is illegal. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to turn around and go back.”
To her chagrin, Mike seemed prepared to do just that. Without another word, he tossed his sunglasses on the dash and turned on the motor. A look of deep concentration on his face, he put the car in gear. But not in Reverse.
He guided the Mustang carefully along the rutted drive, around the side of the inn, easing the car deep within a stand of pines as gently as a mother tucking her baby in bed.
“There,” he said, switching off the ignition again. “Not exactly hidden. But at least the car won’t be sitting out front like a flaming red flag.”
When he realized she was staring at him in astonishment, a deep bark of laughter rumbled from his chest.
“Honey, you really couldn’t have imagined I’d go off into a dither at the thought of doing something a teeny bit illegal, did you? I played hookey from the time I was in grade school. The one sure way of getting me to class would have been to tell me it was off-limits.”
Sara felt her cheeks flame with an embarrassment as red as Mike’s car. Of course. She might have known he’d be the sort of man used to taking risks and bending the rules. He’d probably done far worse and more dangerous things in his life than mere trespassing. But she still felt daring and guilty over the time she sneaked a cigarette in junior high.
“You must find me incredibly naive,” she said in disgruntled accents.
“No, merely adorable.”
He still looked amused, but the light in his eyes was tender as he bent down and brushed his lips against hers. It was a chaste kiss, quick and almost brotherly. But it was enough to remind her of the far more passionate embrace they’d shared yesterday and leave her feeling completely flustered.
She still hadn’t fully recovered by the time Mike eased himself out of the car and came around to open her door.
“Take it easy,” she told her madly thumping heart. It was just a friendly gesture and meant nothing. Mike obviously went around kissing women right, left and center without a second thought. And most of those women were probably as casual about it as he was. Sometimes Sara thought she was the only female left in this century who regarded kissing as something special, a highly personal and intimate contact.
Mike offered her a hand and Sara clambered out of the car, somewhat unsteadily, bringing with her a paper trail of envelopes that Mike had left scattered about. A few days’ worth of mail, he hadn’t had a chance to go through, Mike had explained before blithely shoving the whole stack onto the floor mat.
Now as she straightened, several of the envelopes tumbled to the grass beside the car. She and Mike nearly bumped heads, swooping to retrieve them. While Mike chased down several that had fluttered near the front tire, Sara went after the one that had landed at her feet.
It was a business-size envelope, thickly padded as though it contained several pages worth of letter. As soon as her fingers closed around it, an odd feeling swept through Sara, as disturbing and powerful as though some sort of dark mist seeped from beneath the seal of the envelope.
She had discovered long ago that she had limited psychosometric powers. Not as strong as some psychics she’d read about but enough to sometimes divine details about the owner of an item or to guess the contents of package. It was an ability that had frequently gotten her into trouble as a child, left her open to accusations of having peeked at Christmas presents early.
But this letter was no Christmas present. It was something black and empty. It felt heavy in h
er hands, almost threatening. The return address was a little smudged, but still partly readable. Trenton State... Sara became aware of Mike beside her, tossing the envelopes he had chased down back into the car.
“Nothing but bills,” he said with a cheerful grimace. “I should have just let them blow away. What have you got there—” he began, then broke off as he focused in on the envelope she held. He tensed as though he’d taken a fist to the gut and then snatched the letter from her. She felt strangely relieved to have it out of her hand.
“I—I’m sorry,” she faltered. “I didn’t mean to pry into your mail. I just picked it up and then—”
“Don’t sweat it, sugar. It’s nothing important,” Mike said, but the edge in his voice told her otherwise. His mouth set in a hard line, an odd look stealing into his eyes. If it had been any other man, Sara would have thought it was fear.
And suddenly, inexplicably, she felt afraid for him.
“It—it’s not any kind of bad news, I hope?” she asked.
“Nah,” he said tersely. “Just a little fan mail from Trenton State.”
“The university?”
“No, the prison.”
“Oh.” Sara flinched.
Noticing her reaction, Mike angled a sarcastic glance in her direction. “Beg your pardon. I guess prison is too blunt for most people these days. The correctional facility. Bet you’ve never known anyone who’s had to be corrected, have you, angel?”
“My uncle Louie once spent a night in jail for shooting a pellet gun at the neighbor’s cat. But he was always quarreling with somebody. Sometimes he could be a—a very unpleasant man and—and...” Sara trailed off, fearing she was sounding hopelessly naive again.
“Yeah, well, my life has been full of people who weren’t pleasant.” Something bleak and bitter surfaced in Mike’s eyes.
Sara’s fingers still tingled from her brief contact with the letter. She stared at the envelope with growing uneasiness. Even though she feared Mike would resent the intrusion, she couldn’t help asking, “This—this person in prison. He’s not writing to threaten you, is he?”
“You mean something like ‘I’ll get you, when I get out, Lefty.’ Good thing my name’s not Lefty, isn’t it?” A ghost of a smile touched Mike’s lips.
When Sara was unable to return the expression, he chucked her lightly under the chin. “Thanks for the concern, angel, but this is nothing for you to get all puckered up about unless you want to find yourself kissed again.”
Which, Sara sensed, was Mike’s playful way of telling her to mind her own business. He tossed the envelope onto the floor of the car. Then he said briskly, “C’mon, we’d better not keep Miss Mamie waiting. After all, you’re paying me by the day. Don’t want this spook of yours to end up costing you a fortune.”
Giving her no chance to reply, he seized her hand and tugged her along after him around the side of the inn. Sara stumbled in her efforts to keep up with his longer stride, her head still full of the letter he seemed to have dismissed.
But the disturbing vibes she’d picked up from the envelope continued to ripple through her like a handful of pebbles tossed into the serene lake waters of her mind. For a few brief seconds there, she felt as though she’d drawn once more too close to the edge of Mike Parker’s world. It was a world where a man could get a knife thrust through his shoulder and be grateful it wasn’t his heart. A place where Mike clearly didn’t want her probing around and she didn’t want to go, fearing what she might find.
It was almost a relief to give herself up to the inn’s chilling, but far more familiar aura instead.
As she trailed Mike up the veranda steps, Sara sensed a slight drop in temperature that was a sure sign of a supernatural presence. She marveled that Mike didn’t feel it, too, but he tramped heedlessly along the porch, peering in windows. “So which one of these do we have to force open to get inside?” he called out to her.
“None of them. We can go through the front door. It’s not locked.”
“You people are trusting little souls around here, aren’t you?” he drawled.
“No. The Jorgensens have tried to install locks on the doors, but Mamie keeps removing them. She has her own way of dealing with unwanted intruders.”
“No kidding? Well, if she ever gets tired of this gig, I could get her a job at Boom Boom’s. They’re looking for a good bouncer.”
Although Sara wasn’t proof against his teasing grin, it irritated her that he could be cheerfully oblivious to the inn’s brooding presence that was already beginning to weigh so heavy upon her own spirit
Well, just wait until she got him inside.
Ducking past Mike, she approached the front door, the once-elegant tracery of the oval glass insert now begrimed and cracked. Turning the ornate handle, she thrust the door open. It pushed inward with a loud and eerie creak.
“Great special effects,” Mike said.
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Sara muttered.
“After you.” He waved her inside with a mock gallant bow.
“Nervous, Mr. Parker?” she asked.
“Shaking in my shoes, Miss Holyfield,” he replied.
Sara thought she would have dressed up in a bed sheet and yelled “Boo” herself if it would have driven that confident smirk off Mike’s face. But she was going to have to leave it up to Mamie to do that.
Preceding Mike across the threshold, Sara stepped into the chamber that in its heyday had been the inn’s bustling front lobby. The room stood still and silent, from the great chandelier with its dusty glass globes to the front desk with its pigeonholes filled with rusting keys.
Sara picked her way carefully past a drop cloth, overturned ladder and some paint cans abruptly abandoned by the last work crew Mamie had sent fleeing in terror. The temperature seemed to have dropped several more degrees and Sara could feel the full force of the inn’s aura beating down upon her.
The oak-paneled walls seemed steeped with voices long since silenced. Given the inn’s troubled history, Sara marveled that Mamie was the only ghost to walk these halls. From the first time she’d set eyes on the place, Sara had sensed that the Pine Top Inn had always been a refuge for lost and tormented souls.
Glancing back at Mike, she saw that he had closed the door and was picking his way carefully past the painters’ debris, peering curiously about him. Was it her imagination or was his cocksure manner already a bit subdued?
“Can you feel it?” she asked in hushed tones.
“Feel what?”
“The inn’s atmosphere. The air is thick with the aura of broken hearts and broken dreams.”
“That’s dust, honey,” Mike said, and promptly sneezed as if to prove his point. “And stale paint fumes.”
He bent down to inspect an overturned paint can that had left a dried crust on the inn’s battered wood flooring. “What the hell is this? Eggshell cream,” he said, reading the paint label. “Yecch! Looks more the color of baby puke.”
“Mamie didn’t like it, either. When the painters tried to paint over that lovely old oak wainscoting, she started slapping them with their own paintbrushes. The realty company hasn’t been able to get another work crew near the place ever since.”
“Sounds like your Mamie has a lot better decorating taste than the Jorgensens.” Mike straightened, dusting off his hands and giving her a challenging smile. “So when do I get to meet the old gal?”
Sara frowned at him. “I usually can sense Mamie’s whereabouts right away when everything is quiet and still.”
“Well, go ahead.”
Sara folded her hands, took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. But to her annoyance, she could sense nothing but Mike’s overwhelmingly masculine presence.
The word still didn’t seem to be in the man’s vocabulary. He prowled about like a hunting panther, poking into everything. Ducking down behind the front desk, he snooped through all the drawers, then proceeded to rattle his way through the pigeonholes.
“Micha
el,” Sara said at last with an exasperated sigh.
“What?” he asked, glancing back at her.
“I can’t sense anything with you being so—so twitchy.”
“Sorry.” But he didn’t even pause as he continued his inspection, yanking open a door, brushing cobwebs aside as he peeked into a broom closet. “Why don’t you just call the old girl and see if she answers you?”
He was being facetious of course, but that was what Sara usually did when she visited the inn alone. Feeling a little embarrassed to do so in Mike’s cynical presence, nonetheless, she turned her back on him and called out, “Mamie? Mamie, it’s Sara. I’ve come back and I’ve brought Mr. Parker with me. You know. The detective I told you might be able to find your son.”
“Sure, Mamie,” Mike added in a loud voice. “Come on out and we’ll chew the old ectoplasm.”
Sara whipped around and glared at him.
“Hey,” Mike protested with a twinkle in his eye, “I was only trying to help.”
“You’re going to make her mad. She doesn’t like ghost jokes.”
“A sensitive spook, huh?”
“And when Mamie’s temper is really aroused, she has a tendency to throw furniture at people’s heads.”
“So did my ex-wife.”
He’d been married? Sara was momentarily distracted, wondering if the ex Mrs. Parker was the one responsible for putting that jaded look in his eyes? No, she sensed that Mike’s cynical shell had begun forming years ago when—
“Stop it, Sara,” she chided herself fiercely. “It’s none of your business.”
She should be worrying more about what the reckless Mr. Parker was doing right now. Sauntering over to the stairs that angled upward to the shadowy landing above, he called out playfully, “Hey, Mamie, if you want to meet me, you better get down here or I’m going to start painting the wainscoting again.”
“Oh, Mike,” Sara groaned. “I really wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
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