by Joanne Pence
Running Spirit interrupted, telling Moira why she was wrong in everything she said. He bored Paavo. The man was like a barking dog, so pleased with the sound of his own voice he’d cock his head to listen, not realizing it was nothing more than noise.
Paavo put down his empty glass. There’d be no more tarot tonight. He was wasting time here. They were all too aware of his being a cop to open up any.
When he reached the stairs, instead of going up to bed, he crossed the dark living room and stepped out onto the porch. Standing under the shelter of the roof, he watched the rain. There was no breeze and the crisp air felt good after the stuffiness of the library.
He enjoyed the soothing sound the rain made and tried hard to let the peace it offered wash over him.
But the jolt that had hit him when he first arrived at the inn and saw Moira still prickled whenever he looked at her. Not because of her, but someone else. It’d been years since Sybil’s name or anything about her had crossed his mind.
Seeing Moira, though, brought it all back again.
Sybil. A strange name for one of his generation. But then Sybil wasn’t like others of his generation. Maybe that was why he’d been so taken with her.
They’d met after his discharge from the army. He’d gone back to San Francisco to look for a job and an apartment, and was staying with Aulis Kokkonen, the elderly Finnish man who took him and his sister in after their mother abandoned them.
Sybil was a couple of years older than he. Tall like Moira, with long, straight blond hair and gray eyes that looked into your soul and beyond, her features were beautiful, delicate, and her body close to perfection. She was interested in the occult and spirits, and fascinated him, especially since she was more than a little fey. She seemed to always call just a second after he thought of her, or to show up at his house whenever he felt the need to see her. They were young and, he thought, in love.
Then he decided to join the police force. Something about the rough time he’d had as a youth, and the discipline and order he’d enjoyed in the army, made the police attractive to him. He liked what the force stood for and what it meant to do the job well.
Sybil said she understood, that she approved. But she moved deeper into the occult, to the dark side, while his days and nights were taken up by the police academy and his studies. He tried to convince her that many of the people she was spending time with could be dangerous. She didn’t listen.
He grew tired of their arguments and stopped calling. Twice she tried to see him, but he was too busy for her and her problems.
Eventually there was no more contact between them. He’d heard she fell in with a group that called themselves witches and warlocks, but in fact were no more than street people, wandering the city slums. He saw her once, about four years later. She was on a street corner begging for money as he rode by, a uniform in a squad car. Her beautiful hair had been shaved off and she wore a ring through one eyebrow and another through her bottom lip. Her skin had a sickly pallor and she’d aged so much it was frightening.
He didn’t even stop.
Some months later he went back to that area a few times and cruised around trying to find her, but he never saw her again.
Over the years, he often thought that if he had spent time with her when she had tried to contact him, or had stopped and spoken to her on the street that night, he might have made a difference. He might have been able to help her.
Guilt…that was the feeling he carried over Sybil, and that was the feeling that struck him when he looked at Moira. He’d turned his back on Sybil, but he’d been close enough to her, close enough to her type, that he could see and understand that Moira Tay was also a woman who was hurting and alone.
He wouldn’t turn his back on her. If she needed help, he’d do what he could. As a cop. No more—but also, no less.
Paavo stood over the bed and watched Angie sleep. He’d gone out with a number of women after Sybil and before he met Angie, but not for very long, and never with much emotional involvement.
Why should he? After a mother who left him, a sister who died, and a girlfriend who decided she was a witch, he’d written off women in his life. His was not a sterling track record.
Angelina was clearly too young and too naïve to know what a bad bargain she’d made with him. Not that he hadn’t told her often enough. But she was too stubborn to listen. Someday she’d figure it out. Of that he had no doubt.
In the meantime, though, to be able to simply stand here and watch someone as beautiful and good-natured as she sleep in his bed was a kind of wholesome pleasure he never expected to have in his life. To know that, if he’d ask her, she’d say she loved him, and would open her arms to him, was more than he’d ever believed could be his.
If he lived to be a hundred—although he often doubted he’d make it to forty—he’d hold these few months with Angie forever in his memory. These few months when Angie loved him.
He sat on the bed and lightly touched her hand. “Time for you to get up, Angel.”
She opened her eyes.
“Time for breakfast. We already did our morning exercises.”
“What time is it?” She sat up. The alarm clock read 7:30. “Haven’t you been to bed?”
“Not yet.”
“You stayed up all night with those people?”
“So it seems.”
She threw back the covers, got up, marched to the dressing room, grabbed an armful of his clothes, then went to the door to their room and threw the clothes out into the hallway. He followed her from one place to the other. “What are you doing?” he asked.
At that point, she grabbed him and shoved him out the door as well. “Angie!”
“You like being with Moira Tay so much, you can just room with her!” As he took a step toward her, she slammed the door in his face.
So much for his gentle, good-natured Angie, he thought.
Angie cooked soy cheese omelets. She was too irritated with Paavo and with being here to take the trouble to come up with anything more imaginative. She served light, airy muffins on the side.
Breakfast was a snap. Moira and Reginald Vane were the only ones who showed up. Did the woman ever sleep? Angie wondered. She wasn’t surprised that Martin wasn’t there. He must have been nursing a hangover. Bethel, she learned, rarely rose before ten each day. She figured Running Spirit and Patsy were out having their OBE, rain or no. And Chelsea, after last night’s tarot session, was probably sitting in her room waiting for Jack Sempler to show up.
Since breakfast was so lightly attended, Angie decided to prepare a good-sized lunch.
Quickly she searched through the cupboard and shelves of the kitchen and pantry, trying to figure out what to cook.
Finley’s larder was running low. For sure, he hadn’t planned on eight guests being stranded on this hilltop.
Behind a door in the kitchen a staircase led to the cellar where Paavo had moved Miss Greer’s body. The last thing Angie wanted to do was go down there—she’d read too many mysteries with gory descriptions of days-old dead bodies not to know the horror that must be down in that cellar. But she also knew that many people put preserves or other foodstuffs in cellars.
She opened the cellar door, then flicked on the light over the stairs. “Hello, down there,” she called, feeling foolish. If Miss Greer had answered, she would have fainted dead away.
She tiptoed down the long, straight flight, expecting to see the sheet-covered body lying on the floor. Cold chills raced up and down her back. She wouldn’t look at it. One glance, that’s all. But if that sheet started to move…She never did like Casper the Friendly Ghost.
The body wasn’t there. What was there, back in a corner, was a big freezer chest. Had Paavo and Running Spirit folded Miss Greer up and put her in there? How horrible! She guessed it was better than having the body liquefying on the floor…but not by much.
A small, ancient refrigerator stood against a wall near the stairs. She could tell by the hum that it w
as plugged in and running. Curious, she opened it. Inside were cheeses—cheddar, jack, provolone, even a wedge of Brie. Most packages had been opened, but some weren’t. There was a cube of real butter, a quart of plain old-fashioned fattening milk, and in the tiny freezer compartment, a pound each of bacon and hamburger and a half-gallon of Dreyers Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. “Finley Tay, you old fraud,” she whispered.
She piled all the food she could hold into her arms—she didn’t want to come down here again—and ran back up the stairs as fast as her quivering legs would carry her. Her one regret was leaving behind the ice cream.
The thought of Miss Greer down there was too creepy to deal with, and she didn’t want to stay another minute alone in the kitchen. After stuffing the food in the upstairs refrigerator, she grabbed a yellow rain slicker and went outdoors to the garden.
She took deep breaths of the crisp air, trying to concentrate on the one thing she could understand in this wretched inn with these strange people—food and its preparation.
In the garden she found ripe artichokes and asparagus. Some old places like this had root cellars where dried vegetables and such were kept. She’d have to ask Moira.
She picked some vegetables and carried them into the kitchen, concentrating hard on what to do with them instead of thinking about death.
From her studies of vegetarian cooking, she knew that, for the most part, it was simply a matter of substituting something for meat. The biggest problem was that there were so many different levels of sensitivity. Some vegetarians would eat almost anything short of a T-bone, rare, while others wouldn’t even eat a cheese pizza since cheese was a dairy product. Some ate fish, some didn’t.
Dead fish, each with one eye staring upward from an ice-filled chest…much like the one downstairs…came to mind.
Vegetarianism, she told herself firmly, could stem from religious, moral, or health convictions, and lectures for the unenlightened carnivores differed accordingly. As far as this group went, she had no idea where their sensitivities lay. But something told her they probably weren’t very deep or profound.
And if one of the vegetarians was a murderer…the thought boggled.
Eventually she managed to concentrate on food long enough to hit upon a good luncheon item—crêpes. She would make a stack of thin pancakes and two kinds of fillings. Then it’d be a simple matter to ask each person their choice, and while they were eating their salads, she could assemble the crêpes. If anyone objected to the eggs in the thin pancake batter, they could eat the filling without the crêpes.
She began by figuring out a Finley-fanatic filling, mixing together soy cottage cheese, minced mushrooms, peppers, green onion, thyme, and marjoram. For the sauce she used flour, soy butter, soy milk, pepper, and—she couldn’t resist—a dash of nutmeg.
For the others, she combined jack cheese, chopped spinach, and sliced mushrooms with an egg, green onions, salt, and pepper. To go with this, she decided on a Mornay sauce of flour, butter, milk, grated parmesan, and more jack cheese, since there was no Gruyère. As she cooked it, she added salt and a dash of cayenne.
She had picked an artichoke for each person. She put them on to boil. Instead of salad, she’d serve artichokes with a variation of a sauce moutarde, made with Dijon mustard, mayonnaise, a dash of olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, and her own addition, a hint of curry.
This should make everyone happy, she thought. If not, they were welcome to take over the kitchen anytime.
Chelsea was the first to come into the dining room for lunch. Reginald Vane followed and sat beside her. They were soon lost in a conversation about the existence of angels. Moira and Running Spirit were next, followed by Martin and Bethel. Last, Paavo entered the dining room. Angie felt as if her heart would stop when he sat beside Moira.
Patsy didn’t join the others for lunch.
Angie took their requests for the crêpes. Everyone wanted her recipe, not Finley’s. She went into the kitchen, rolled the crêpes, put sauce over them, and placed them under a moderate broiler just long enough for the top of the crêpes to brown lightly—not quite ten minutes.
When she brought the crêpes out to be served, she discovered the group in a heated discussion over Patsy. Apparently, it had required a lot of questioning before Running Spirit admitted that he hadn’t seen her all morning.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “She’ll turn up.”
Angie had stopped in the doorway when she first heard this bickering, but given Jeffers’s assurances, she proceeded to give out the platters of hot crêpes, then stood back to watch the expressions of pleasant surprise and receive words of admiration as the group tasted some good food for once.
Bethel picked up her fork, then put it down again. “Do I have to remind you, Greg Jeffers,” she said, “that Finley is still missing? If Patsy’s gone too, doesn’t that feeble brain of yours tell you we should know it, and we should worry about it?”
“She’s around.” Running Spirit didn’t even try to hide his exasperation. “Patsy never goes far enough away from me to have anything happen to her. She’s sulking somewhere. That’s all.”
“Sulking?” Bethel said. “Whatever would she be doing that for?”
Running Spirit’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you tell me?” He spoke through gritted teeth. “Or maybe Allakaket can do it? In fact, since you’re such a know-it-all bitch, why don’t you clue us all in on where she is?”
“Martin, are you going to let him talk to me like that?”
Martin had taken a bite, but had to quickly swallow it in order to answer. “He’s got a point, you know.”
Bethel turned to Paavo. “Inspector Smith, don’t you think we should be worried about Patsy?”
Paavo glanced at Running Spirit. “If Jeffers really has no idea where she is, then yes, I think we should go out and look for her immediately.”
“Go out?” Running Spirit stood. “Patsy’s in the house, I tell you. She wouldn’t set foot out in nature alone. There’s no way she’s gone off and gotten herself lost. She’s hiding. She just wants to make trouble.”
“A commendable pastime, I’m sure,” Martin said, raising his glass to Running Spirit.
Moira half stood, leaning over the table, her face absolutely devoid of color. Her body shook as she faced Running Spirit. “Tell me you’re sure she’s hiding somewhere in this house. Tell me she hasn’t disappeared like my brother.”
He grabbed her wrist. “She’s all right.”
“Let’s find her so we can be sure.” Moira turned and glided from the room. Running Spirit leaped from his chair and hurried after her.
Martin and Bethel got up to follow, as did Reginald Vane. Chelsea cut the crêpe in half with her fork, picked it up with her fingers, and crammed it into her mouth before running after the others.
Angie slowly walked toward the table. Paavo still sat there watching her. She noticed that he hadn’t taken a bite of his lunch, either.
Disappearing owners, constant bickering, occult noises, Paavo spending his nights with another woman…
She sat down across from him, looked at the crêpes and artichokes she’d so carefully and proudly prepared, then burst into tears.
11
“One of these must be the cliff Elise Sempler jumped off,” Angie said to Paavo as she peeked over the edge of the cliffs near Hill Haven Inn. Jagged rocks, separated by frothy, swirling ocean waves, dotted the cove at the bottom of a long, sheer drop. She stepped away, struck by the image of Elise hurtling three hundred feet to her death, and directed her gaze outward.
Despite the constant fall of rain, the scene before her was beautiful, perhaps made even more so by the dark swirling grays of the sky, the stark gloom that surrounded them. Tall, rough monoliths of dark brown and tan jutted through the surface of the ocean, taking the full brunt of the incoming waves and shooting sprays of mist high into the sky. Up and down the coast, craggy rock formations tumbled into the Pacific.
P
aavo held his hand out to her. She took it, knowing he’d asked her along more as a peace offering than because he needed her assistance in searching for Patsy. He had quietly and gently comforted her after her disappointment at lunch, going around the table to sit by her side and wrap her in his arms. She dampened his shoulder as he told her she was the only one who seemed to be trying to do anything special at the inn. That if the others didn’t appreciate her, it was only because they were too wrapped up in themselves to appreciate anyone else. He appreciated her.
How could she stay angry with a man who said that?
She hadn’t thought of the others that way, but Paavo’s words made sense. Sometime they needed to have a long talk about this place and the strange things happening here, but not now. Not in this quiet, beautiful setting, where she wanted nothing more than to enjoy his nearness and their truce.
They journeyed southward along the edge of the land, searching as they went for any sign of Patsy. Or Finley. Above the cliffs, redwoods stood like sentries protecting the coast.
“What do you think of the Sempler ghost stories?” Paavo asked after a while.
“I love old ghost stories; most are so romantic and thrilling, not scary at all. But I’ve never been able to believe them, not even when I wanted to,” she replied. “I worry about Chelsea’s fascination with the ghost of Jack Sempler. I guess she’s seen Ghost one time too many. Jack Sempler doesn’t exactly have the Patrick Swayze look, though. He’s more The Ghost and Mrs. Muir type, if you ask me.”
“Meaning?”
“Old and black-and-white.”
“But still a romantic figure?”
“Most definitely.”
“From what I’ve heard about the Semplers, they should be the last people any young woman would romanticize.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Angie glanced his way. “I think a lot of women are fascinated by mysterious men—the quiet, hard-to-be-sure-about, dangerous sort.”
He looked puzzled. “I don’t understand it.”