by Etta Faire
“If I remember correctly, there was a lengthy article about the mutant birds…”
“Only after so many people were outraged there wasn’t any coverage about them,” Delilah said. “I’m pretty sure the growling I’ve been hearing is the same one we all heard back then with those birds. So, you see, I doubt this is what ransacked the Purple Pony.”
I chill ran up my arm. I looked at my phone. It was getting late and I needed to meet Rosalie at the bed and breakfast soon. “Can I have a printout of this article, please?” I asked, getting up to leave.
I knew it must just have been a coincidence. A lot of dogs looked like my dog, a golden Labrador with especially dark sensitive eyes and a bandage where my dog now had a scar…
“Twenty-five cents a copy,” Mrs. Nebitt replied.
I opened my purse and searched the bottom for some change, which reminded me just how desperately I needed to get paid for that seance.
Chapter 20
Just a Rumor
I couldn’t help but picture the parking lot at the bed and breakfast just as it had been the night of Bessie’s party. The horses and carriages. The motor cars that didn’t look too different from their horse-drawn counterparts. A large part of me needed to go back. I needed to feel the solid wooden floorboards clunking under my narrow 1906 boots. The itchy, stifling clothing, the bowler hats on the men. I was going to talk Martha into doing a channeling with me. I wasn’t sure how. But I needed to do another one. And not just for clues.
The evening air was still hot enough to be summer even though the trees were changing into their yellow and orange autumn hues; the full moon seemed extra large this evening. A gentle breeze blew through my hair, bringing with it the smell of Paula’s garden, the sounds of rustling leaves… and a soft growling. I looked up at the branches overhead, searching for whatever animal had made the sound, wishing I’d actually bought that helmet.
I was pretty sure the noise had come from the opposite side of the house and, even though I knew I shouldn’t go after it, something also told me I had to. This was where I’d heard the same noise a few weeks ago, when Paula suddenly appeared carrying wood.
Clinging to the side of the house, ready to bolt at any moment, I peeked around the corner. Across the yard, over by the begonias, stood what looked like a large brown bear twitching wildly in the bushes, hunching over like it was in pain, flailing its neck back and forth. It turned and our eyes met. Its face wasn’t a bear’s face. It had the delicate features of a human’s mixed with a bear’s.
Gasping, I pulled my head back toward the wall, but it was too late. Whatever that was, and I was pretty sure I knew what that was, had seen me. I peeked back over. It was gone, making me wonder, once again, if I’d been hallucinating.
My heart raced. The face had seemed familiar, but I wasn’t sure at all who it was. I rushed back to leave, almost plowing right into my boss who was limping behind me. “There you are,” she said when she saw me. “You ready?” she asked.
My mind still raced a little from the thing I’d just seen on the side of the house, but I managed to nod out a yes.
“You sure? You don’t look so good.”
“I’m sure.”
Do I tell her?
We walked toward the house, and I kept looking around the yard, wondering where the shapeshifter went. Some things, even after you’ve heard they exist and are fully expecting to see them someday, still almost make you pee your pants when you actually see them.
“Just so you know, I’m not being nice to Paula,” Rosalie said as we approached the front door. She was dressed in her black pantsuit, the one she called her power suit because it gave her instant confidence. I almost offered her a pair of shoulder pads from the box I had in the back of my car.
“Just stick to the script,” I said. Somehow I had talked Rosalie into negotiating with the dreadful woman while I tried to find Martha and talk her into going back to Gate House for a channeling.
Paula answered the door with a smile that quickly faded when she saw it was us standing there. “I heard you were ready to compromise.”
“I heard you were ready to compromise,” Rosalie shot back.
I elbowed my boss and she forced her mouth into something that showed teeth. “Yes, we’re ready.”
“Good. Because I’ve already ironed out the details. Ninety percent of the windows here at the bed and breakfast are original to the house itself. Replacing the glass is not a cheap endeavor…”
I moved toward the door. “And while you two look over the numbers from our seance and negotiate, I want to take some photos of the display cases… for my book, if you don’t mind me including the bed and breakfast in there.”
“What book?” she asked. “I don’t know anything about a book.”
“I’m writing a book about all the spirits I encounter from my seances. I’m calling it The Ghosts of Landover. I was hoping to feature the bed and breakfast in it. Give it a whole chapter with a detailed account of the seance too.”
Free publicity seemed to soften the woman up a little, just as I’d hoped it would. She motioned around the room. “Take as many photos as you’d like. Now’s actually a good time. Most the guests are off at dinner or watching the sunset at the lake.” She motioned for Rosalie to follow her into the small office behind the front desk. “But if you think that chapter means you don’t have to pay for windows, you’re sadly mistaken.”
Jackson appeared beside me when they left, and I almost jumped like I saw a shapeshifter. “Awww, I still take your breath away,” he said. “That’s sweet. You would do that for me too, if I had breath anymore.”
I lowered my voice. “Did you ride in with me just now?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must’ve seen the shapeshifter,” I said.
He shook his head. “Like I told you before, Carly doll. Low-energy mode. I haven’t sensed anything until now. But it sounds like I missed something amazing. A shapeshifter, really? But then, it is a full moon.”
I scrunched my face up. “It wasn’t a werewolf.”
“Like they’re the only ones compelled to shift during a full moon.” He looked around. “You should just do the channeling here,” he said. “I’m sure Martha has enough energy. The other ghosts don’t even know she’s around. If a ghost has enough energy to keep herself hidden, she’s got plenty.”
“Yeah, not happening. I don’t think I can do a channeling anywhere but at home.”
“So, you’re prudish about that as well, huh? Do you need the doors locked and the lights out too?”
“Please just go.”
He sat down on the red floral sofa. “I bet a lot of people have done a lot worse than channelings here, probably right here on this very sofa.” He mocked a shocked face.
I ignored the pervert I used to be married to and took a picture of the display case in front of me. “Martha,” I whispered. “You here?” The flash ruined the picture, so I took another one while shooing my ex away. “Go away, Jackson. I think you’re scaring her.”
He disappeared. Maybe he had a point. I could make the channeling a quickie. Tell her to begin right as she was coming up the stairs that night to check on Bessie and end when the police arrived. That couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes. There was no sense in dragging her to Gate House for it.
“Martha,” I said again, taking another photo of the greasy driving glove sitting on the rock. I checked the photo on my cell phone. None of these were book-worthy shots, but I kept snapping away. A faint transparent image of a dark dress with a white apron showed up in the flash when I took my last image, which was something I hadn’t expected. She was here, all right, but afraid to show herself. “Martha,” I said. “I know you’re here.” I took another photo, seeing her again in the flash.
I whispered. “I need to know what you know from the night of Bessie’s murder. I’m still not 100 percent sure about Walter. I’d like to do a channeling with you. A quick one. Fifteen minutes, tops.
”
She was small and transparent when she materialized almost thirty seconds later. Her face was expressionless, same saggy eyes, same sweet, trusting smile. She’d been a good friend to Bessie. Like a mom. I could tell.
“Her parents were never the same after Bessie’s death,” she whispered. “And honestly, neither was I. I came back here after I passed because this feels the most like home for me. But I don’t want the others to know I’m here. They change things too much for me, and I just want to be quiet and comfortable.”
I nodded like I understood, but death was a very different part of life for me. So I could only be understanding to a point.
“You probably heard at the seance that Bessie didn’t commit suicide,” I said. “I need to see through your memories if the murderer was waiting in Bessie’s room for her that night.”
“I don’t think I saw anyone.”
“Bessie didn’t see anyone either, but I… I just want to make sure,” I said. “I need another perspective.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was extra quaky. “If you think my memories will help, I’ll do it but… I’d rather not relive it.”
I didn’t tell her that I wanted access to her memories for more than Bessie and her murder, that I also had my own selfish reasons. The Henry and Eliza bathroom moment. The fact I was drawn to channelings now…
Martha squeezed the tip of her almost invisible apron with her faded hands, wrapping it around each of her fingers. “Missy’s been so angry, and I can’t bear to see her like this. She needs to move on, stop holding in the hate from her life.”
“That’s where you can help. We have to hurry. Paula thinks we’re here to negotiate, so fifteen minutes is about all we have. They’ll be finishing their meeting soon.”
The lobby smelled like autumn, mostly from the cinnamon and apple scent coming from the aroma diffuser on the mantle. Paula had already begun adding gourd displays here and there even though it wasn’t October yet. I sat down on one of the flowered couches and leaned back into a red velvet throw pillow. “I’d like you to take me to the night of Bessilyn’s death, the part when you went up to check on her.”
I closed my eyes and tried to look like I was sleeping. That way, if anyone came in, I wouldn’t look too strange. Not that I cared too much anyway. The only people who stayed at the bed and breakfast were vacationers I’d never see again.
She hovered nervously next to me, her voice was like a whisper carried on wind. “I didn’t know what was happening downstairs. I was told by Mrs. Hind to straighten the upstairs bathroom and spare rooms where some of the guests would be spending the night. That’s what I was doing when I saw Miss Bessilyn run to her room in a tizzy. And I knew that girl. When she got like that, the only thing she wanted was some warm milk and her pills.”
My eyes bulged. “Perfect. That’s right where I want you to start. Right then, when you saw Bessie running up the stairs.”
“If you think it’ll help,” she said, looking around.
I nodded even though my heart raced too. I’d never done a channeling in public before. “Whenever you’re ready,” I said, trying to relax and let my mind think of anything but the shapeshifter I just saw or the negotiations being shouted out in Paula’s office.
After a minute, the smell of apples and cinnamon from the bed and breakfast was replaced with some sort of lemon cleaner, and I felt myself humming. Voices rose in the background and they weren’t Paula and Rosalie’s. A man yelled, “At least Pleasant’s married.”
“You can open your eyes now,” Martha said to me. We were in a room I didn’t recognize, dusting under a lamp, humming as we went. A full-sized bed of dark mahogany with a white quilt beautifully accented the dark green leafed wallpaper pattern, making me wonder just how much canned yams cost in the early 1900s.
I could tell Martha was drowning out the sounds of the party. And she was good at it. She poured some more cleaner onto her rag and dusted along the bed rails. I concentrated on the sounds from downstairs while Martha tucked in the bedspread and fluffed up the pillow. I knew Bessie would be heading up the stairs soon. .
“Folks, let’s hear it for my wife’s pathetic, spinster sister,” a muffled, slurred voice said from downstairs, followed by the loud sounds of plates hitting the floor, along with gasps, giggles, and screams of horror. I knew it was more than plates, an entire three-tiered cake.
Martha rushed to the door and peeked out into the hallway just as Bessilyn flew up the stairs in a beautiful champagne-colored blur, and I got to see just how strikingly gorgeous the woman had been, her high cheekbones and pointed little nose, soft light brown hair. I caught a glimpse of Eliza addressing Bessilyn as Martha closed the door again.
Martha’s voice was calm as she spoke to me. “I didn’t want her to see me. She was very upset. This is ‘round about the time when I thought I should go downstairs and get her some milk and her pills. Miss Bessilyn had had a rough year. And now she was having a rough birthday too.”
She stepped back and examined the room before she left, scanning over the dresser, the bed, and mirror. The Oriental rug was bunched up along one of its corners and she hustled over and straightened it up then darted swiftly out of the room and down the stairs.
Martha didn’t even glance over at the living room and the party as she passed through. She scurried into the kitchen and went for the kettle. She whispered to me inside her head, commenting on the action. “That kettle. It was already full of warmed milk. I remember thinking that was odd ‘cause usually I’m the one warming it, but it was the perfect temperature, and everything.”
She turned, looking around. A younger housekeeper in a bonnet held Troy junior, the three-year-old sailor, along her hip while Troy’s older brother ran around her, pulling at her apron strings. Martha ducked down while she poured the milk.
“That’s Esther,” she said, pointing to the other housekeeper. “I didn’t want her to see me. Poor thing was given the children to watch that night once their grandparents left, probably why there was already warm milk,” she chuckled. “I’m sure she was trying to get them to calm down, go to sleep, already. If she saw me, she would’ve wanted me to take a turn watching those monsters, and that wasn’t neither of our jobs.”
After pouring just a little milk in a cup, she hurried back upstairs again. She looked over at Bessie’s room. “I don’t go in yet,” she said. “I remembered Mrs. Hind specifically told me to check the bathroom every half an hour and put fresh towels in there, and I hadn’t done it even once yet, the whole night. Wish I hadn’t checked it now. This part’s a little embarrassing.”
Martha set the milk on one of the linen closet’s shelves, just under a wooden box on the top shelf with medicine bottles of varying sizes and colors. I wondered if one of them was chloroform.
“What are those little bottles on the top shelf?” I asked her.
“Oh, I never messed with those. They were Mr. Hind’s, leftover from when he used to practice medicine.”
“He was a doctor?”
“Until his father got too old and talked him into taking over the cannery.”
Martha grabbed a stack of stiff white towels then headed down the hall toward the bathroom.
This was it, the part I personally couldn’t wait for. Opening the door, I saw them only briefly. Henry Bowman had Eliza pinned up against one of the walls. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t moving to get away either.
“I want you gone,” he said. “You’re no longer welcome here. You’re a curse.”
Her voice sounded just like mine. “This did not come without warning. Surely you remember me telling you to change your path or it would be the worse for you. Now, it’s too late. You’re knee deep in it. This deed of thine shall cost thee all thou art worth. You, your children, your children’s children and all who aid you on your quest…”
They looked up and saw Martha. “Sorry,” Martha said, putting her head down and closing the door.
“I couldn’t w
ait to tell missy about that one,” she said to me, as she shuffled over to the linen closet to put the towels back. She took the milk and shut the cabinet door. “Most people in town had a story or two about Henry Bowman and the lady he sent for from New York, and now we did too. He wanted that lady gone. She was refusing. And threatening his children. Who’d of thought that of a nanny?” Her voice lowered. “I didn’t get a chance to tell missy the story, though.”
She knocked lightly on Bessie’s door. “You okay, missy?” she asked. “You want some warm milk? And your special pills for sleeping?”
The door creaked when she opened it. “I can’t tell you,” she said to me, “how many times I wished that I’d have stayed in this room with Bessie. That I’d have taken that gun. That maybe I’d have noticed more.”
Chapter 21
The Other Side
Martha went on and on, chattering to me in her head nervously. “I took care of Bessie ever since that girl was a baby, just a round little pudgy thing with rolls up and down her legs and a smile that reached from one ear to the other. I felt like she was my own kid. She wanted to leave her parents many times, live on her own. I was glad they talked her into staying time and time again. I would’ve hated living here without her. She was the only thing good about the house.” She paused, her voice lowered. “I know that’s silly to think that way. I was just the housekeeper.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what a hard memory this is for you to relive,” I told her.
Martha peeked into the room. “Oh honey,” she said, immediately running to the suffragette when she saw her eyes were red and swollen.
I looked around the room while Martha talked to Bessie about Sir Walter and the break-up. The armoire was open, the gun sitting on the top shelf, the window closed. I didn’t see any signs of a person lurking in the shadows, waiting to kill Bessie as soon as her pills had set in.
But then, the bedroom was pretty messy, not nearly as spotless as it probably should have been with a housekeeper around, something I hadn’t noticed as Bessie, but now, as Martha, I was noticing. Big time. You could hardly see the chair by the vanity because a heap of dresses had been strewn over the back, and they were not tiny dresses. Long billowy fabric that seemed to ball into a mess of fluff and lace.