Christmas Spirit

by Rebecca York

  Minutes ticked by as Chelsea waited, sure she was going to hear the cops come splashing back to her with disgusted expressions on their faces.

  Chapter Two

  “I’ve got a body,” one of the men shouted.

  Chelsea gasped as the impact of the statement hit her like a blow to the chest. She had been prepared for something bad. But, to her own chagrin, she’d seen it in personal terms. She’d assumed that they weren’t going to find anything real—and that once again she’d be ridiculed. Instead, someone was dead.

  As she stared toward the swamp, a male figure came looming out of the fog. She dragged in a breath, holding it until she saw he was wearing a police officer’s cap.

  Seconds later, Draper was beside the cruiser.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “A woman.”

  “Did you find any identification?”

  “This is a crime scene. We haven’t searched her.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “Not yet.”

  Before she could ask more questions, another beam of light came out of the darkness. From the bulky shape that approached, she knew it was Hammer.

  Draper moved deferentially out of the way so the chief could step up to the window of the cruiser.

  “I understand you found a woman’s body,” Chelsea said.

  “Yeah. I’m going to call in the state police. Since this is going to be a murder investigation.”

  As he pulled out his cell phone, he walked several yards up the road. She could hear him talking in a low voice, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  “They’ll be here soon,” he said when he returned, then shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’d like to know if it was the female you saw.”

  Chelsea sucked in a sharp breath. “You mean you want me to look at the body?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that standard police procedure?”

  “That’s my procedure,” he growled, and she knew he wasn’t pleased that she’d questioned his judgment.

  “This way,” Hammer said when she’d climbed out of the cruiser. “Best take my arm. It’s slippery in the bog.”

  She didn’t want to touch anyone right now. But she knew it was prudent to accept the chief’s offer, particularly since her too-large boots were already making it hard to walk. Grasping his arm, she let him lead her into the bog, with Draper splashing along behind them.

  Benson was waiting for them in the gloom. When they approached, he shone his flashlight onto a black shape on the ground. The beam illuminated a young woman lying on her side, her body half in and half out of a puddle of water. She was wearing a worn navy-blue or black coat and a shapeless gray dress that looked several sizes too big for her. Her eyes were closed and her dark hair stretched out in back of her as though she were still running through the bog, trying to escape. A bloodstain spread out from below her body.

  “I think that’s the woman I saw,” Chelsea whispered. “At least the hair and the coat are similar. I didn’t get a good look at her face.”

  “Do you know who she is?”

  “No.” The wind had started to blow, and she had to clamp her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

  “We’ll want you to make a statement.”

  “I understand.”

  “And the state police will need to question you.”

  She looked back toward the road, sorry that she hadn’t brought her own car. “Do I have to stay here?”

  “When the state police get here, we’ll take you back to the station where you can make your statement.”

  Chelsea gave up the battle to keep her teeth from chattering.

  “Yeah, it’s cold out here,” Hammer agreed. “You can wait in the patrol car.”

  Of course, she wasn’t only reacting to the cold. Seeing the woman up close had affected her deeply.

  The victim looked so lost and alone out in the swamp. She’d been running from a man. Who was it? Her husband? Her lover? A guy she’d met in a bar?

  No, she didn’t look like the bar type. In fact, she looked oddly out of place in any context Chelsea could think of—except maybe a movie about displaced persons.

  That was a strange thought. But she simply couldn’t imagine this woman’s life.

  Chelsea and the cops started back across the muddy ground. When they reached the cruiser, she climbed into the passenger seat again. Draper slid behind the wheel, while Hammer went back to join Benson at the crime scene.

  “Is it okay if I call my aunt?” Chelsea asked. “She’s probably wondering why I’m not home yet.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She pulled out her cell phone—then remembered why she’d driven to the police station in the first place.

  “Can I borrow your phone?” she asked Draper. “Mine’s dead.”

  “Sure.”

  Aunt Sophie answered on the first ring. And her voice sounded worried.

  “Chelsea, where are you? I was expecting you back an hour ago.”

  She’d wanted to reassure her aunt; now she realized she should have planned what she was going to say. Certainly not that she’d led the cops to a dead body outside town.

  “I ran into a little delay,” she temporized.

  “A traffic accident?” her aunt asked immediately.

  “Nothing like that. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Please don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  She could have added that she was with the police. But she decided that would be going too far.

  How long was she going to have to sit here before they drove her back to town? Damn. If she’d taken her own car, she could have gone home and explained this to Aunt Sophie.

  That thought didn’t exactly calm her nerves. She didn’t want to talk to her aunt about ghosts. She’d ignored the subject since coming back to Jenkins Cove. Now she was going to have to face the inevitable. And the worst part was that she hadn’t chosen the time and place. This situation had been thrust upon her by circumstances.

  ***

  MICHAEL BRYANT SWIVELED his desk chair toward the French doors and stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles as he looked out the window of his comfortable office into the paved courtyard between the back of his two-story brick house and the detached garage. The large patio was surrounded by raised beds with small shrubs and perennial flowers that had gone underground for the winter.

  Some people would have called it a charming little retreat. He called it low maintenance—the perfect balance in his life. An outdoor space he could enjoy when he wanted to get some fresh air, but at the same time, a garden he could maintain with very little effort.

  Though born and raised in Chicago, he now lived in Washington, D.C., in the same house he’d rented a few years ago while working on a book about behind-the-scenes life in the White House. He liked the quiet, tree-lined street off Connecticut Avenue so much that when he’d gotten a chance to buy the property during a slump in the housing market, he’d jumped at it.

  He shuffled through the stack of newspaper clippings on his desk, until he found the piece from the Jenkins Cove Gazette, a weekly paper published in a small town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. His dark eyes narrowed, he reread the story that his clipping service had sent him.

  ***

  Local Woman Leads Police to Mystery Body

  By Helen Graham

  The body of an unidentified woman was found three days ago in a bog along the highway between Jenkins Cove and Tilghman Island. Police got the tip from Jenkins Cove resident Chelsea Caldwell, who recently moved to town to help run the House of the Seven Gables Bed-and-Breakfast. She led police to the body late in the evening.

  Ms. Caldwell said she was returning from an evening trip when she saw a man and a woman struggling in a boggy area near the highway. When standing water prevented her from investigating, she alerted Police Chief Charles Hammer, who returned to the highway with her, accompanied by two patrol officers, Samuel Draper
and Tommy Benson. After Ms. Caldwell showed them the location of the incident she had witnessed, the officers investigated and discovered the body of a woman about fifty feet from the road.

  Upon finding the body, Chief Hammer turned the investigation over to the state police.

  The unidentified victim is described as a young woman or a teenager, possibly a runaway.

  ***

  Michael looked up from the text and slicked back the lock of dark hair that had fallen over his forehead while he’d been reading.

  He’d wondered at first why the clipping service had sent him the article. Then he’d gotten to the next paragraph and figured it out.

  ***

  Sources close to the police department note that when Ms. Caldwell made her report of the incident, she mentioned seeing a woman’s body on the road prior to witnessing the assault. According to her statement, she got out of the car to look for the body, but it had vanished. A few hundred feet down the road, she witnessed the man and woman struggling in the bog.

  Longtime local residents remember that, as a child, Ms. Caldwell frequently spent summer vacations with her aunt, Sophie Caldwell, in Jenkins Cove. On one of those visits, she claimed to have seen a ghost near a playmate’s house, but no one else could turn up any evidence of the visitation.

  When asked if the long-ago ghost sighting might have any relationship to the current case, Ms. Caldwell refused to comment. Several witnesses report hearing Ms. Caldwell discuss the possibility that the victim on the road could have been a ghost.

  ***

  Michael studied the picture that accompanied the article.

  Chelsea Caldwell looked petite, with a face he’d call appealing. She had large light-colored eyes, a small upturned nose and chin-length wheat-colored hair. Not the sort of woman he’d think of as a liar. She looked too cute.

  But Michael had learned that you couldn’t make such assessments from a photograph. Sometimes it was even hard to do in person.

  From where he sat, the case was a perfect example of the kind of story he was looking for in his research. It was about a woman who needed to feel she was important, so she was making up ghost stories.

  The body she’d found had obviously been real. But had she portrayed her part in the incident accurately? Why would she have said she’d seen a body on the road that conveniently vanished? To deflect attention from what had really happened?

  He got up and stretched his long, lean frame, then strode to the French doors, picking up the basketball in the corner of the office on the way out.

  After crossing the patio, he stepped into the alley, where he’d installed a hoop over the garage door. The air was nippy, but the alley was sheltered from the wind. He bounced the ball several times, then tossed it toward the hoop, made the shot and dribbled again.

  Fifteen years ago, he’d been recruited out of high school by several colleges, but he’d turned down the basketball scholarships in favor of focusing on academics. He’d played for fun in college, and he still did some of his best thinking when he was on the court.

  He thought about Chelsea Caldwell as he shot some more, then went back inside and sat at his desk again.

  He’d started working on this ghost project several months ago, after Jeff Patterson had called him in a panic. Michael had grown up with Jeff, and they’d kept in touch over the years. Jeff worked for an investment firm, and he’d become alarmed when he’d found out several of his customers were taking financial advice from a medium—and losing a great deal of money in the process.

  Michael had never believed in ghosts or anything else supernatural. In fact, Jeff’s call had brought his own childhood experiences slamming back to him.

  Apparently, he’d been so traumatized that he’d repressed some very unpleasant memories. After talking to Jeff, however, he’d recalled that his mom had often spent the grocery money on psychic readings while trying to contact his dead father.

  Michael had gone to bed hungry and gone to school in clothing from the Salvation Army store because a series of psychics had gotten their hooks into his mother. Back then he’d vowed never to let himself be taken in by supernatural nonsense. His mom’s mania had made him test everything—and believe in only what he could learn from his own senses.

  Jeff’s phone call had done more than bring back Michael’s unpleasant memories. He wasn’t a powerless kid anymore. He was a journalist with a national reputation. He’d come back to Chicago, investigated the scam and exposed it in a major piece for a national magazine. The heady feeling of evening the score had made him want to do more. Now he was expanding his research into a book proposal.

  His gaze came back to little Ms. Caldwell. She intrigued him. He’d already dug into her background and found that she’d been selling paintings in Baltimore. Did she think her ghost stories would add to her cachet as an artist? Or had she tapped out artistically and was looking for another way to get some attention?

  He wondered if the aunt was in on it. Were they using the ghost nonsense to get more customers for the B & B?

  Well, finding out what made Ms. Caldwell tick wasn’t going to be difficult. All he had to do was call up and make a reservation at the House of the Seven Gables.

  He’d written exposés of the mob and helped get some wise guys put away in jail where they belonged. He’d accompanied an expedition down the Amazon and survived a very nasty spider bite in the process. He’d gotten in and out of a major African civil war without getting either of his arms lopped off.

  Compared to that, investigating ghost stories on Maryland’s Eastern Shore was going to be a piece of cake.

  When he dialed the number of the B & B, a female voice answered, “House of the Seven Gables.”

  She sounded pleasant and professional—and just a little bit guarded. Odd for someone who made her living dealing with the public.

  Was it her? The voice seemed too young to be the aunt, but he wasn’t going to ask her name, because that might tip her off that he had more than a casual interest in meeting the woman who had been written up in the paper.

  Assuming that she wouldn’t recognize his own name, he said, “This is Michael Bryant. I’m hoping I can book a room for some time in the next few days.”

  “Have you looked at our Web site?”

  “Yes.”

  “What room are you interested in?”

  He hadn’t made a thorough study of the photographs, so he said, “I don’t really care. They all look nice. I’d just like to get away for a few days.”

  “The Preston Room is one of our best, and it’s available starting December second.”

  “Just a moment.” He looked at his calendar. December second was the day after tomorrow. Well, he was anxious to get this started, and the timing was perfect.

  “That date works for me,” he said, keeping his voice bland though he felt an unexpected jolt of excitement.

  “The room has a private bath with a tub and shower combination. And it’s in the front of the house, with a view of the harbor.”

  He leaned back in his chair, a smile flickering on his lips. “It sounds very appealing.” Of course, he wasn’t simply talking about the room, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.

  “Do you have any special dietary needs?” she asked.

  She was efficient. For a moment he toyed with the idea of giving her something to worry about—then decided that telling her he needed a gluten-free diet would only make his stay at the inn less enjoyable.

  So he answered, “No.”

  “How long will you be with us?”

  “Let’s say … a week.”

  “Fine,” she said again. “We like to keep things quiet during the Christmas season, so you may be the only guest by the end of the week.”

  “That’s perfect.”

  They transacted the rest of their business, and he hung up with the smile still on his face. If he was lucky, Chelsea Caldwell would end up as a chapter in his book—whether she liked it or not.

 
Chapter Three

  Chelsea woke with a start, every muscle in her body instantly tense. Lying in the dark, she strained her ears. She’d thought she heard the sound of a voice whispering urgently to her.

  Reaching for the bedside lamp, she pushed the switch, flooding the side of the bed with a pool of yellow light.

  As she huddled under the covers, she scanned the room with her anxious gaze. There was no one in here. Had she dreamed someone was calling her?

  She’d wakened like this more than once since the incident on the road.

  The incident! That’s what she’d been calling it, because she didn’t want to think about murder. Or about ghosts.

  Or discuss them, either. It wasn’t like what that horrible newspaper article had said. She hadn’t been blabbing to anyone. It was everyone else who was talking. But what was she supposed to do, write a letter to the editor in protest? That would only make things worse. Instead, she’d gone about her business and hoped the town would stop talking about her.

  When she heard the sound of something clattering outside, she breathed out a sigh of relief. It wasn’t a voice at all. It was real. But what was it?

  Simply a raccoon trying to get into the trash cans? Or was somebody sneaking around the house?

  “Stop jumping to the worst possible conclusions,” she muttered. When she’d come back to Jenkins Cove, she’d convinced herself that life here was going to be normal and uneventful. Ever since she’d seen the woman lying in the road, nothing had felt normal.

  If she’d been free to leave, she would have gone back to Baltimore. But she’d given up her apartment. And she’d made a commitment to stay and help Aunt Sophie.

  Now she hoped she wasn’t making things worse for her aunt. Sometimes Chelsea would turn her head and catch Aunt Sophie staring at her. But then she would quickly look away.

  Chelsea was pretty sure her aunt was worried about her. So, she was doing her best to make it seem as though everything was okay. She could manage that during the day, but at night she couldn’t control where her unconscious mind took her. Apparently now she was translating sounds outside into nightmare whispers.