Castle Moon

by Mary Bowers

He gave me a sour smile. “Somebody threw a suit of armor over the orchestra balcony at about two in the morning, pretty much waking the dead – and scaring off Santa Claus.”

  In my memory, I asked him an intelligent question about this, but on Ed’s recording my voice just says, “Huh?”

  “Perhaps you should start at the beginning,” Ed suggested.

  “I did. I heard all the bells of hell going off at once and came running out of my room along with everybody else, flipped on the lights – such as they are in this cavern – and looked over the gallery railing into the great hall. There used to be a suit of armor standing on the other side of the railing from my room, outside Maxine’s and Fawn’s bedrooms. Somebody had pitched it over the balcony, and when I looked down I saw pieces of it scattered all over the place in the great hall.”

  “Why would anybody do that?” Ed asked.

  “To wake us all up, get us all frightened, and get us all out to the gallery railing so somebody could be pushed over and it would look like an accident, because we were all shocked and half-asleep and tripping over our own feet, that’s why.”

  “And you think it was Ryan?” I asked.

  “I know it was Ryan. I saw him, just like I’m looking at you now. He must have thrown the thing over, then run back to this side of the gallery and waited in his room for us all to come out. When he saw me at the railing, he ran out and cannoned into me as I stood looking down into the great hall. Only the fact that I’m not nearly as feeble as I look and the kid Horace grabbed me from the other side kept me from pitching over, just like the suit of armor did.”

  “Horace saved you?” I asked, reflecting that though elderly, Oliver did not look feeble to me.

  “I saved myself, and Horace steadied me while I did. But the fact that Ryan ran right into me was the whole reason I started to pitch over in the first place, and he didn’t try to save me.”

  “He does tend to wake up stupid,” I said, remembering his previous performance.

  “Stupid my ass. He tried to kill me. For obvious reasons. Now my only question is, why would he want to kill his own mother – because you have to admit, his method of murder hasn’t varied much.”

  A reason came to me immediately, but I didn’t say it out loud. I still wanted to defend Ryan. He’d become the romantic hero of the story, and I just couldn’t let him turn into a villain.

  Oliver had no problem saying it out loud, though. “If his mother told him to stay away from that bimbo he’s in love with, maybe that’s the reason.”

  “Oh, come on!” I said before thinking. “People don’t stand in the way of their children making disastrous marriages these days. They just let them go ahead and then they take them back in when the divorce papers are filed. Regardless of the fact that your family seat is a castle, these are not the Dark Ages. Nobody cares what their parents think of their fiancées anymore. Certainly not enough to kill them.”

  “Wait – what?” Ed said. He understands nothing of human passions. “I thought Jeralyn was Ryan’s girlfriend.”

  Nobody tried to catch him up.

  “Okay, so you had a close call last Christmas,” I said. “How does that bring Ed and me into the picture? Why hire us?”

  “I needed witnesses, and I needed you with me throughout the nighttime. I knew that this birthday celebration was going to be the target date for my murder. I knew it.”

  “So now you’re psychic? And how did ghosts get into the mix?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know. I wasn’t lying about that feeling I’ve been having – the shadow people –Clarice. I guess that’s what made me think of hiring you in the first place. And I’d been traveling a lot, and taking ghost walks, because I like a good story. My family has always thought I was nuts anyway. I don’t know . . . it all came together in my mind as a good plan. I figured ghost hunters were gullible, and always after a fast buck. And overpaying you for the project would infuriate Maxine. That’s always money well-spent.”

  “Why didn’t you just hire bodyguards?” I asked.

  “Too obvious. I didn’t want Ryan to know I was onto him. No, I reasoned that you two would be harmless cranks, dedicated to a cause, which would keep you focused, and while there were strangers running around the castle all night, Ryan would back off. During the day,” he added darkly, “I can take care of myself.”

  “And you thought Maxine needed her head examined,” I muttered. I turned to Ed. “I thought you did your due diligence on this project.”

  “I’ll have to be more careful in the future,” he said. “It’s getting harder to weed out people who have a hidden agenda.”

  “The weird thing is, deep down inside, I didn’t really expect the two of you to get results. And you did,” Oliver said in a changed voice.

  “We have, haven’t we?” Ed said. “I suppose that’s worth something.”

  “We have?” I asked.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Oliver said. For the first time he looked like a man who had had no sleep since his nap the afternoon before. “She doesn’t remember. You were electrifying last night. There was no way you could have known all the things you described. My plan had been to give you two a good thrill down in the dungeon in the middle of the night, then take you around the house to draw Ryan out. If he had any kind of plan to attack me, he would’ve done it last night, on the night of Horace’s birthday. I’ve been talking it up, as if I believed that a vengeful ghost was going to choose last night to come after me, and I was going to make myself available while I had you two witnesses. But then you started taking my family’s things, holding them, talking about them . . . I forgot all about Ryan, and everything else. I just wanted to hear more of what you had to say. So we never got out of the dungeon.”

  “You’ve never seen a psychic at work before, have you?” Ed said wisely.

  “Not a real one. Fawn hired a fortune teller one time, for Halloween. She gave readings to everybody in the family. The woman fed us all kinds of information about the Moon family’s history – all of it available on the Internet, including all the misinformation that’s out there. But not you. You talked about all kinds of things I haven’t thought about in years. Little things. Things nobody would really care about, but things. And you didn’t get anything wrong.”

  “You’ll see on the video,” Ed told me.

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to see the video, for some reason.

  “But what I want to know,” Oliver said, looking at me earnestly, “is . . . my father. Orion. You have . . . a connection with him. I . . . loved my father. Can you tell me . . . ?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I can’t. Honestly, Oliver, I don’t remember anything. Anything at all. I’m sorry.”

  “I see.”

  We were silent for a while, and finally, Ed stood up.

  “I think we should let Mr. Moon rest. He looks very tired.”

  Before I left his room, I turned to Oliver and said, “The cops want to see you. They want to ask about what Fawn told you yesterday.”

  He looked blank. “What Fawn told me?”

  “You remember. She said at breakfast that she had an announcement to make, but she’d tell you about it first, since you’re the head of the family. What was it, by the way? She didn’t say anything at dinner. Did you tell her not to?”

  He was still looking blank, and he lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know what it was. She never came to see me. Or maybe she did, and I wasn’t in my office. Remember? I was showing you two the murder room. Then I took a nap. She never came to my office, and she wouldn’t have awakened me while I was sleeping.”

  “And before that she was talking to Maxine, then reprimanding Julie,” I said, remembering. “That’s why she was delayed in coming to you, I guess. It’s a shame. It might have helped us understand her state of mind. Well, before you lay down for a nap, you’d better go tell the cops that, or they’ll be up here banging on your door.”

  “Wait,” he said. We were out in the
gallery by then, and he came out of his bedroom and looked at me. “What was that about, calling my grand-nephew ‘Daniel?’”

  “Oh, that. It’s a secret. Sorry.” I gave him a bland, steady stare. He could find out when the rest of the family did.

  “He’s going to change his name the first chance he gets, eh?”

  I said nothing.

  “Sensible kid,” he said. “Elizabeth only named him Horace because she hoped I’d be impressed and bypass her brother and leave everything to her son. This family! It’s all about the money. Might not be a bad idea at that, if Ryan is trying to kill me. I’ll have to rethink my will. So Horace wants to change his name to Daniel? Good name. I’ll have to give that kid more credit in the future. After all, he did save me when Ryan tried to push me over the railing.”

  He went off along the aisle to the other side of the gallery, heading for the northeast staircase.

  Ed turned to me and said, “What was that?”

  I lifted a hand and let it drop. “Life is complicated enough. Let it go.”

  “Happily.”

  We headed for the southwest stairs, two tired, overstrained, unsuspicious people, totally focused on food. All I’d had that morning was a cup of coffee, and I wanted some breakfast, and then some more sleep. We didn’t even look around to see if anybody had overheard us – from the gallery or the great hall.

  Chapter 16

  I assumed the ghost-hunting portion of the program was over. After all, Oliver had admitted that the whole thing had been a hoax on his family, so he could surround himself with warm bodies while his killer went after him. I never thanked him for that, now that I think of it. He knew there was no guarantee Ed and I wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire if anybody did try to kill him. That’s the thing about these wealthy dudes. It’s all about them.

  So imagine my surprise when, after a heavy, sweaty nap, dragging a headache along the floor behind me, I came down to the kitchen to scratch up something to eat and found Ed talking over the coming night’s program with Oliver. I heard the word “Sensitainer,” when I came in and nearly turned myself right around and marched back out of the room. If there hadn’t been several huge, open pizza boxes on the worktable, I would have.

  They both stopped talking and looked at me when I came in.

  “No,” I said.

  I went on past them, grabbing a slice of cheese pizza as I walked by. The sun was still up; I was dining on the terrace. Hopefully alone.

  “We still have work to do,” Ed called after me.

  The pizza was stone cold, of course, and I hadn’t stopped to grab something to drink, but that wasn’t the depressing part. What got me even more depressed was what I saw when I got out onto the terrace. With a glorious balcony from which to view the ocean all the way to Morocco on a clear day, Maxine Moon had decided to join the family on the terrace and put her back to the ocean. Her beady eyes smote me.

  The rest of the family didn’t bother me, although they were there. I could handle them. There was a deflated air about everyone, and what talk there was came in muted, disinterested tones. Bastet was there, daintily eating cat food from a pretty green glass bowl, and she didn’t even look up as I came out.

  Ryan was busy putting the lie to everything I’d been hearing about him. He wasn’t trying to murder Uncle Oliver. He wasn’t trying to marry Julie Lang. He hadn’t killed his own mother, for reasons nobody could sensibly explain. His shock and sadness showed, but the slightly drawn look on his face and the dark circles under his eyes only gave him a sort of romantic, Heathcliff look that made him more attractive than ever. And without caring what Julie or anybody else saw or thought, he was at the far side of the pavilion, leaning forward and talking earnestly to Jeralyn.

  She looked very reserved, making eye contact with him, but not saying anything. She was being forced into a delicate balancing act between giving comfort to a man who had just lost his mother and going off on him about the naked ladies in his bedroom. Naked ladies who weren’t her.

  I decided not to get tangled up with them just yet. This was a man in love. Not a man bent on murder, matricide, or matrimonial suicide.

  Besides, Bastet liked Jeralyn, and she wasn’t trying to interfere. Not that that really made any sense, but I took comfort from it anyway. My head was too bleary to work it out.

  Julie threw them a cool glance from time to time, looking bored and blowing a thin stream of cigarette smoke. She handled a cigarette like a film-noir vamp. This was the first time I had seen her smoking. It suited her. Smoking people can achieve a level of languidness that people with nothing in their hands simply cannot.

  As I seated myself beside young Horace, Elizabeth coldly requested that Julie not smoke in front of her child. Julie gave Elizabeth a distant look, then stood up and vamped across to the terrace railing. She posed herself against it, looking lean and feline, and continued to stare at Ryan as if he were alone on the other side of the terrace.

  Finding myself between Horace and Maxine, I concentrated on the boy.

  “How are you tonight, um, Horace?” I decided not to use his nom de guerre in front of his family any more, especially not this bunch.

  “Okay.”

  “Naturally my son is shocked,” his mother said coolly. “But he’s a strong young man. He’ll endure.”

  Horace’s eyes woggled at the word “endure,” but he said nothing.

  I looked at Maxine. “Nice day,” I said.

  “How insensitive of you,” she said, very precisely. “We’ve just had a death in the family.”

  “Were you and Fawn close?”

  She didn’t deign to answer, and sat in freezing silence while I consumed my rubber pizza. Elizabeth began paying elaborate attention to her son, almost pawing at him, and I wondered if she was positioning herself to pry big chunks of the family fortune out of him when he inherited. She seemed to have forgotten one heir, though, and that one stood between Horace and the bulk of the money while he lived. I looked over at Ryan and Jeralyn. They were sitting together silently now, Jeralyn staring out to sea, Ryan staring at her.

  When Charlotte came up behind me and touched my arm I nearly screamed.

  “I’m sorry I startled you,” she murmured in her soothing voice. “Could I talk to you?”

  I looked around for a place for us to withdraw, and saw Julie gather herself up regally and make a stagey exit. All eyes on the terrace followed her as she walked away.

  “Over here,” Charlotte said, indicating the place at the railing where Julie had been. It was equidistant from the table and the place where Ryan and Jeralyn were sitting.

  She began by asking me if Ed and I would be staying on now.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve already started to pack.”

  “Oliver has given up on his project?”

  “Actually, I’m not sure. I saw him with Ed in the kitchen just now. But I don’t see how we can go on with it now. The family will have to prepare for a funeral.”

  “That’s going to fall to me, I’m afraid.”

  “Wasn’t Julie her assistant? Oh, how stupid of me. Maxine has fired her.”

  “She will. She hasn’t yet, but she will. And little Jeralyn is distraught. She’s so young.”

  I thought ‘distraught’ was a nice word for Jeralyn’s current state of mind. It didn’t come out and flatly state the obvious: that life and love didn’t hesitate for a moment when somebody died.

  Charlotte went on, examining the situation. “Maxine won’t contribute anything useful, and will criticize everything I do when the time comes. Elizabeth and Ryan will deal with the undertakers and the lawyers, but they don’t know how to be practical. Her things need to be packed and transported back to New York, and that’s going to fall to me. I want to do it when Elizabeth isn’t around to make things even harder. She’s the kind of person who will watch you carefully fold and pack something, then tell you you’ve done it wrong and make you do it again. And then there are her person
al things that she leaves here in her room between visits. Toiletries and decorative items. Will you help me?”

  “Of course. It’s getting kind of late today . . . .”

  “In the morning. I’ll find you after breakfast and we can begin. If things change, I’ll let you know. I imagine Julie will be gone by then.”

  But she wasn’t. In fact, after years of having Charlotte as her personal assistant, while typing out her own books, Maxine suddenly decided she needed a literary secretary.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. The night was coming, and in spite of everything, we were still hunting ghosts.

  * * * * *

  Oliver came out onto the terrace when I was still off to the side with Charlotte and peremptorily summoned Ryan. Once Ryan had preceded him into the house, he caught my eye and said, “Ms. Verone, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  “Here we go,” I muttered to Charlotte.

  She gave me a sympathetic smile.

  I found Ed, Oliver and Ryan in the kitchen, and again I caught the word “Sensitainer.”

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding,” I said.

  After a glance at me, Ed told Ryan, “Your uncle feels the best place would be at the gallery railing, outside his bedroom door. It’s where he nearly died last Christmas.”

  “He didn’t nearly die,” Ryan said. “I just bumped into him. I would’ve caught him.”

  “I know,” Oliver said, making me blink and stare. Not seven hours before, the old bugger had been claiming without a doubt that Ryan had tried to murder him. Now he was – I didn’t know just what he was trying to do. Set Ryan up somehow?

  “If you’ll just help me carry it down. You handled it beautifully when you helped me carry it up. The spiral stairs are challenging with an awkward piece like the Sensitainer.”

  “Whatever you want,” Ryan said, and the two of them pushed off.

  “Okay, what are you up to now?” I asked Oliver.

  “Last night in the dungeon, you made something clear to me that I hadn’t understood before. I realize now that this is the best way to deal with – it. Will you do something for me?”