“What?”
“I’m still cold,” Vickie told him.
“I’ll fix that!” he swore.
He was already in the bed, patting the spot for her to join him.
She did so. He held her, and pulled her close. The warmth of his body seeped into her.
Warmth...that grew and grew...
She relished the simple feel of him beside her; but they were both tense, lying awake.
Listening.
They heard Adam in the hall bidding Monica Verne and others a good-night. They heard Alice telling her father to go to bed—and not worry about her and Jon.
They heard Hallie and Sven heading up to their room in the attic, and they heard Lacey and Alistair arguing about Poe’s life and death in the hallway—before they, too, split up to go to their own rooms.
They lay there, listening as the house grew silent first, and then as the old floorboards creaked and settled.
It felt like only moments after they’d finally closed their eyes when they heard a scream.
Vickie bolted out of bed, raced to the French doors and threw it open. The scream had come from below, from the sculpture garden.
She looked out.
A woman in a white gown was racing down the trail, heading into the cemetery.
“Griffin!” she gasped.
He was already by her side, pulling his jeans on. He dived across the bed again, gathering up his shirt and the holster that held his Glock.
Vickie grabbed her clothing and went racing after him.
The hall was suddenly filled with people.
“What was it? Who... What’s going on? I heard a scream... I heard... Oh, my God!” Gary exclaimed, looking around. “Alice! Where is Alice?”
Jon Skye was just coming out of a room, rubbing his eyes. He was shirtless, in jeans.
Gary Frampton rushed over to him, taking him by the shoulders, shoving him roughly. “Where is she? Where the hell is Alice?” he demanded.
“Alice? She’s out here somewhere... She got up. She’s not in bed,” he said, as confused as a man who had just woken up might be. “I don’t know when she left. I just realized she was gone. I was coming out to look for her when I heard...”
“Alice!” Gary screamed.
Griffin cut through the group crowding in the hallway, racing down the stairs.
Vickie followed close behind him.
Griffin was on his phone, she realized, calling Jackson Crow. Wherever Jackson and Angela were, they would be on the chase, too.
Because it was Alice who had run into the cemetery.
Griffin burst through the gate; Vickie followed. They rushed around to the newest of the Frampton-family mausoleums.
Alice was standing in front of the art nouveau mausoleum where her mother had been interred.
“Alice!” Griffin said gently.
She didn’t hear him. She just stood there, ethereal in a long white gown.
Gary Frampton burst upon them. But then he froze, calling out a different name.
“Elyssa!” he said. “Oh, my God, Elyssa!”
“His wife? Is that his dead wife’s name?” Vickie murmured.
“Has to be,” Griffin said.
He swirled around quickly to speak to Gary.
“No, Gary. No, it’s Alice.”
“My wife... It looks like Elyssa. We buried her...we buried her in white!”
The man had to know better, Vickie thought. But out here, in the moonlight, in the cemetery, it was easy to see where shock and fear had played with his mind.
Alice didn’t appear to notice them at all. She just stood in front of the mausoleum, moving from side to side, staring out. She looked like a trapped animal, terrified and unaware at the same time. Her hair streamed down her back in long blond locks. She appeared ghostly in the white gown, and her behavior was both erratic and somehow gracefully eerie.
“Elyssa?” Gary said again, but it sounded more like a question.
“No, sir, it’s not your dead wife, it’s your daughter,” Vickie said softly. She hurried to him, catching him by the shoulders, making him see her. “It’s Alice. We’ll call paramedics. We’ll get her to the house.”
“My God!” Gary breathed. “Yes, yes, all right.”
But then Alice suddenly shrieked again; she threw her arms up to the heavens...and seemed to pose, like one of the marble Shakespeare characters in the sculpture garden.
And then she collapsed.
Just as she did, another scream, shrill and piercing, sounded from the house.
13
Griffin pulled his phone out and dialed 9-1-1.
Gary Frampton hadn’t seemed to have heard the scream that came from the house.
He raced toward his fallen daughter.
Vickie did the same, sliding to her knees by Alice before her father could reach her, feeling for her pulse.
The girl was alive.
Vickie nodded an okay to Griffin. He turned his attention to his call, asking for paramedics and police out at Frampton Manor. He left Vickie with Alice and Gary and turned to head back to the manor, almost crashing into Lacey Shaw.
“Police and medics are on the way,” he said curtly.
As he made his way through the statuary trail, he was stopped by Hallie and Sven—both looking worried and addled. “Which way?” Hallie asked him. “We want to help, but there was a scream in the cemetery and a scream back at the house!”
“House!” Griffin said. “Help is coming.”
He raced through the back door of the house to find that Jackson and Angela were in there already; Angela was urging Monica Verne into the parlor along with Adam and Jon Skye and Alistair Malcolm. Jackson was headed for the stairs.
“What room?” Griffin asked him. “The scream?”
“I only know that it came from upstairs,” Jackson told him. “We saw you with Gary and Alice and hurried in here as we heard the scream. I’m pretty sure it came from upstairs. But I don’t believe anyone is still in their room, sleeping.”
“Don’t know and don’t care,” Griffin said. “He was ahead of Jackson by about two steps; they reached the second-floor landing. Griffin indicated he’d take the left side of the hall; Jackson took the right.
One by one, they tore into the rooms.
They were hasty at first, anxious to find someone who might be in trouble.
But the rooms were empty.
“No one? Nothing?” Griffin asked Jackson.
He shook his head.
“Who is unaccounted for?” Jackson asked Griffin.
“Gary and Alice are out in the cemetery. I passed Lacey while I was racing back to the house, and then Hallie and Sven. The people still in the house should be Adam and Monica, Alistair Malcolm, Liza Harcourt and Jon Skye. I think that’s everyone. Including you and Angela, Vickie and myself and Adam and Monica, there should be twelve people here all told.”
They heard sirens; help was arriving.
“I’ll get the EMTs out to Alice,” Griffin said.
“And I’ll make a head count again. Let’s corral everyone back into the house.”
“Yes, and we need to see that Detective Carl Morris has been personally notified.”
“On it already,” Jackson assured him.
Griffin didn’t pause to pay much attention to those seated in the parlor; leaving Jackson to explain the situation to the local police, Griffin met the paramedics at the door and hurried them out to the graveyard. Gary was on the ground next to his daughter.
Vickie had Alice’s head in her lap; she was checking her breathing. She looked up as Griffin led help through, telling him, “Her pulse is steady but weak. She’s breathing fine on her own. She hasn’t opened her eyes
yet.”
The two emergency medical technicians immediately went to work. They’d brought a portable gurney out, and they opened it smoothly while learning that their patient had just collapsed inexplicably a few minutes ago. They secured her on the gurney while starting an IV and reporting her condition to the hospital where they’d be taking her.
They headed back through the cemetery and the garden trail, and then through the house. The medical technicians were talking, explaining where they’d be going.
Gary said he was Alice’s father, and that he had to be with his daughter.
That was all right. Gary was going to go in the ambulance; Vickie would follow right behind, accompanied by Angela. Jackson and Griffin and Adam would stay at the house.
They hurried through the back door into the hallway and straight out the front.
They reached the yard when Jon Skye came bursting out of the house. “Take me, please, you have to take me!” he begged Vickie.
Gary was getting into the ambulance, but he crawled out.
Griffin was pretty sure he intended to give Jon Skye a right hook to the jaw. He stepped quickly between the two men.
“Alice needs help,” he said simply.
“You! You did this!” Gary screamed. “You stay away from my daughter. You get the hell out of my house and don’t you come near me or my daughter again. Do you hear me?”
“I did nothing!” Jon shrieked back. “I woke up and she was gone. Don’t lay this on me. I love Alice, too. This is the doing of one of your sick Poe-fanatic friends! Don’t blame me, Gary!”
“Get out—get away!” Gary screamed.
“The ambulance is going to leave,” Vickie pointed out. She set a hand on Jon Skye’s shoulder. “Go in. Go back in the house. Let them get Alice to the hospital. Then we’ll all find out what happened.”
Gary turned and jumped into the ambulance.
Angela came hurrying out of the house and Vickie excused herself to Jon, looking at Griffin to take over.
Griffin set his hands firmly on Jon Skye’s shoulders. “Let them go,” he said.
“I love Alice. I love her,” Jon said.
“Then let them tend to her,” Griffin said. “And come in and answer some questions with everyone else. That’s the best we can do for her now.”
Griffin watched the ambulance and the car go, then he physically steered Jon Skye back toward the house.
The sun, he saw, was just beginning to rise.
* * *
Vickie and Angela sat close together in the waiting room, Angela explaining to Vickie just where she and Jackson had been during the past hours. She spoke softly; they were both keeping an eye on Gary Frampton.
He had been forced out of the emergency room as the doctors had worked over Alice, trying to ascertain just what was wrong with her.
Gary had been so miserable and desperate that they’d given him a sedative; now he leaned against the wall in his chair, his eyes closed.
“The weather was horrible. You stayed out in the back all that time?”
“We were in the car some of the time, but it also seemed prudent to explore the cemetery. The family mausoleums are very interesting. They all have gates, and you can actually go inside all of them, including the small ones. They aren’t well kept, but they aren’t falling apart, either. The last interment in the cemetery was Elyssa Frampton, Alice’s mother. I assume that Alice must be a spitting image of her. It’s a really fascinating place, and I think that the preservation of the cemetery and that great statuary garden has to do with the fact that it has remained in one family.”
“Did you find anything—unusual?” Vickie asked her.
Angela shook her head. “No ghosts seemed to be wandering around. We didn’t find anything out of place that might suggest someone intended to play games out there.”
“But something was planned—and somehow, what happened to Alice Frampton was set in motion,” Vickie said.
“And, obviously, Jon Skye comes up as the main suspect,” Angela said.
“He said that he was sound asleep and she left him.”
“Do you believe him?” Angela asked.
“I don’t know. And, of course, here’s the other thing. Where the hell did that second scream come from?” Vickie asked.
“Hopefully, they’ll figure that out while we’re here,” Angela said. She stood suddenly, and Vickie did the same. The doctor was coming out of the emergency room doors to the waiting area. He was a somber middle-aged man with a pleasant and controlled manner.
Vickie noted that Gary Frampton had apparently sank into a deep sleep or passed out from the sedative he had been given.
He didn’t see the doctor, and he didn’t rise.
“Her father is sleeping?” the doctor asked. “And you are?”
Angela produced her FBI badge. The doctor glanced at Gary; he knew they had all come in together.
“She’s going to be fine. She’s sleeping right now.”
“What happened to her? She was delirious...running into a cemetery at night and then collapsing,” Vickie said.
“Drug overdose,” the doctor said. “Not lethal, thankfully. We’ve done blood tests. I don’t have everything back from the lab yet, but I believe she was soaring on a comparatively new drug that’s hit the streets lately.”
“Would the street name for it be baby-baby?” Vickie asked him.
“Yes, exactly,” the doctor said. “It can cause hallucinations. It leaves a person entirely pliable to what others want. It’s definitely a date-rape drug, but I consider it even more dangerous than most. It puts extreme pressure on the heart. And the person taking it becomes prone to suggestion. Almost like a hypnotic. It also causes memory loss—really a dangerous concoction,” he said, shaking his head. “The good news is that she’s going to be all right. I’d like to keep her in the hospital today and overnight for observation.”
“Of course,” Angela said.
“May we see her yet?” Vickie asked.
“She’s in a deep sleep, but yes, you may come in.” The doctor cleared his throat, indicating Gary Frampton.
“We’ll get him up and in to see her,” Vickie assured him.
The doctor nodded and waited politely. Vickie and Angela walked over to Gary Frampton. “I’ll stay here and watch over her,” Angela said.
“You think she’s in danger?” Vickie asked.
“I don’t think she dosed herself with this baby-baby stuff,” Angela said.
“No, I guess not. Gary Frampton is ready to rip Jon Skye apart, but Jon Skye claims that she was just gone—that she left the room while he was sleeping.”
They’d reached Gary; the doctor was waiting. They woke him and explained what the doctor had said.
“That bastard, Jon. He did this. He did this to my girl.”
“Gary, it might have been someone else. At the moment, let’s just worry about Alice, okay? They’re going to keep her overnight.”
“Then, I will be here overnight, too,” Gary said. “And when I’m out...that bastard better be out of my house and he’d better plan on staying away from my girl!”
“I’ll keep you posted if she wakes,” Angela told Vickie. “And I’ll want to know as soon as you know about anything at the house.”
The scream...
Who had screamed?
Why?
Where were they...?
And suddenly she knew.
What had happened with Alice Frampton had been a diversion, nothing more.
Vickie fumbled for her phone as she hurried to the car. She dialed Griffin’s number; he answered tersely.
“I think I know what’s going on!” she told him.
* * *
“‘Ligeia,’” Alistair said sadly. �
�Alice running around in a white gown like that, looking just like her mother, and nearly giving her poor old dad a heart attack, I say,” he added.
“But she wasn’t killed,” Lacey said. “Thank God! She wasn’t killed. She was just... She is going to be okay?” she asked Griffin, who had hung up after speaking with Vickie.
“Yes, Alice is going to be okay,” he said.
“What about Liza Harcourt?” Jon Skye asked dully. “She’s gone. She’s just gone. And there was that horrible scream we heard.”
Griffin had begun to figure that what had been done to Alice Frampton had been a ruse—something to distract them all as Liza was taken.
She was still missing.
Everyone else was present and accounted for.
But Liza was not.
She wasn’t in the guest room she’d been given. The room she had apparently seen as a haven when she’d been angry with everyone after the séance.
And there was still no answer to the scream they’d all heard, though the police had come—with Detective Morris quickly following the patrolmen—and all of them searching the house high and low.
Could the sound have come from outside the house? they’d all wondered.
Had it been some kind of a recording?
Had a feral cat let out that horrible piercing shriek?
“I feel terrible,” Lacey Shaw said, shaking her head. “I mean...Liza can be such a witch! I’m sure I’ve said things about her, but...I wouldn’t want anything happening to her.”
“The thing is, she went upstairs a long time before the rest of us. She could have been angry enough to slip out and go home last night,” Alistair said.
“That doesn’t sound like Liza,” Monica Verne said. “She would have been very dramatic about the way she left. But the point is, she’s just not here. The police searched the house, we’ve searched the house... Where is she?”
“Her suitcase is upstairs,” Griffin said. “But I didn’t see any kind of a purse or a handbag up there.”
“Oh, my God!” Alistair said. “The cemetery! Do you think that someone dragged her out to the cemetery and locked her in a mausoleum? ‘The Premature Burial’! ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’!”
Before Griffin could answer, Jackson and Carl Morris came back down the stairs to the parlor, followed by Hallie and Sven.
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