Christmas Spirit

by Rebecca York

  He’d been in his room for about an hour when he heard voices down the hall. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was about time for the wine and cheese hour.

  When he walked into the front hall, he saw a thin, sallow-skinned woman standing by the stairs with Aunt Sophie, looking uncertain.

  “There’s nothing to be nervous about, dear,” Aunt Sophie was saying.

  “I’ve never done anything like this before,” the woman said softly.

  “Well, you’re very brave to take this step. It’s always a big decision to try and reach across the great divide to a loved one.”

  Michael stared from Sophie to the older woman. “Contacting the dead?” he said, hearing the rough quality of his own voice.

  “Why, yes.”

  “You have people coming here for séances?” he asked, struggling not to make his voice sound accusing.

  Aunt Sophie laughed. “Séances? No, no. They can be faked, of course. But I have built a psychomanteum in the attic.”

  “A psychomanteum?” he asked, as he rolled the pretentious-sounding word around in his mouth. “What’s that?”

  She smiled serenely. “You look alarmed. But it’s nothing to worry about. It’s just a room where the dead can contact the living—if they so choose.”

  Chapter Four

  From the corner of his eye, Michael saw that Chelsea had stepped into the hall and gone stock-still when she realized that the subject had turned to ghosts—again.

  Funny how they kept coming up.

  “That sounds very interesting. I’d like to hear about this psychomanteum,” he said, looking from niece to aunt.

  Sophie gave him a bright smile. “I read about it on the Web. You can pick up so much information on the Web, don’t you know? I started doing research on psychic phenomena after…” She glanced at Chelsea and stopped short.

  “After what?” Michael prompted, pretty sure what she had stopped herself from saying. After Chelsea had said she’d seen a ghost. Of course, the question was—which time? Fifteen years ago, or last week?

  Ignoring the question, the older woman went on. “I found a Web site that told all about it. It’s a very ancient concept. Long ago, people might go into the forest, kneel down by a pool of water and peer into it as they asked the spirit of a dead relative to come to them. Today we’re more likely to use a darkened room, hung with heavy curtains. My psychomanteum has a chair and a mirror, and candles for light. You sit in the chair, stare into the mirror and invite a spirit to come to you.”

  Michael wanted to tell her she was out of her mind. Either that or she’d found some way to make the psychomanteum pay big-time. Instead he settled for a noncommittal “I see,” before turning toward Chelsea. “Have you ever tried it?”

  “No!” she said sharply, then looked at her aunt. “And I don’t intend to.”

  “It might help you,” Sophie said softly, and Michael waited to see what Chelsea would say.

  “I don’t need that kind of help,” she answered, and Michael gathered that he’d stepped into the middle of an old argument.

  Chelsea looked from her aunt to Michael, then seemed to realize that there was a fourth person in the room.

  “Mrs…. Albright?”

  “Yes, dear,” her aunt answered. “Mrs. Albright and I were talking in church about her dear departed husband, Norbert. She said she wished she could speak to him again, and I suggested she try the psychomanteum.”

  Chelsea answered with a tight nod.

  “How much do you charge to use the psychomanteum?” Michael asked Sophie.

  She looked startled. “Why, nothing. It’s just…” She shrugged. “Just something I do for the community.” Turning to Mrs. Albright, she said, “I’ll take you up, dear, and get you settled.” Then she asked her niece, “Can you get out the wine and cheese?”

  “Yes.”

  “And don’t forget those brownies and lemon bars I made this afternoon. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  Sophie and her guest started up the stairs.

  When the two women had reached the second floor and started down the hall, Michael leaned toward Chelsea. “Do you believe that? That people can contact the dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you ever done it?”

  “Have you?” she shot back.

  “No.”

  “At least you’re sure of what you believe.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Instead of answering, she turned on her heel and headed for the dining room, where she exited through a door at the far end of the room.

  Michael thought about waiting for her in the living room, since it might not be appropriate for the guests to go into the working part of the B & B.

  The heck with it. He followed her through the doorway and found himself in the kitchen.

  Chelsea was just setting wineglasses on a silver tray when the back door of the house opened, and a nattily dressed man in his mid-thirties walked in. He was of medium height with medium brown hair carefully combed to the side.

  Chelsea’s head jerked up. “Ned, what are you doing here?”

  “Have you talked to your aunt about my offer?” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his gray slacks.

  “No. And I’m not going to.”

  “The market could go down.”

  “That won’t make any difference to Aunt Sophie. She’s not interested in selling.”

  Michael cleared his throat. “Am I interrupting something? I was in a hurry to get here, so I didn’t stop for lunch on the way down from D.C., and I was hoping for a head start on the wine and cheese.”

  “Of course,” Chelsea answered, apparently glad that he was in the kitchen. She went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of white Chablis, along with a tray that held crackers and small slices of cheese. “White or red wine?” she asked.

  The brown-haired man gave Michael an annoyed look.

  He could have cut the tension in Chelsea’s voice with one of the knives in the rack under the window. “Red.”

  Picking up a glass she’d set on the tray, she poured from a bottle of Merlot. As she handed Michael the glass, she said, “Ned just stopped by for his weekly reminder that the House of the Seven Gables is sitting on prime town land and Aunt Sophie could make a fortune if she sold it to a developer.”

  The other man kept his expression neutral.

  “But he’s not going to get Aunt Sophie to sell,” Chelsea finished.

  “I’d like to talk to her,” he said.

  “She’s busy.”

  He might have kept pressing his case. Instead he held up his hands, palms out. “Okay, another time,” he answered with an edge in his voice. Then he exited the kitchen.

  Michael watched him disappear down the walk. “He’s pushy.”

  “Ned Perry never learned how to take no for an answer. With some people, it works. But Aunt Sophie loves this place. She’ll never sell while she’s still alive.”

  “If she sold, wouldn’t she make enough to retire in luxury?”

  Chelsea turned to him, her face set in firm lines. “She doesn’t want to retire. That’s why I came back to Jenkins Cove—to help her take care of this place.” She blinked. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear about our business.”

  “Actually, I do. I find that little drama very interesting.”

  “Well, the drama is over.” She picked up the tray of cheese. “You can help me carry the wine and glasses.”

  “Sure.”

  When they returned to the living room, two more guests were seated on the sofa. Both gray-haired and slightly overweight, they were eating from the plate of cookies on the coffee table. Chelsea set down the tray of cheese, and Michael put the wine and glasses beside it. She took a straight chair by the door, leaving an easy chair for him.

  “I’m Michael Bryant,” he said.

  “Ted Alexander.”

  “And Betty Alexander,” the woman added. “We’ve been here fo
r a few days. You’ll love Jenkins Cove and the House of the Seven Gables.”

  Just as Michael sat down, Aunt Sophie joined them. “Well, it’s nice to see you all.”

  “Where’s Mrs. Albright?” Michael asked.

  “She’s still upstairs.”

  “She came to use the psychomanteum,” Michael said helpfully.

  Chelsea gave him a dark look, but Betty Alexander smiled broadly. “Oh yes. The ghost room upstairs. Ted won’t have anything to do with it, but I tried it, hoping to have a little adventure. Unfortunately, nothing happened. I guess there were no spirits that wanted to contact me.”

  Ted gave his wife an indulgent smile. “It’s a bunch of hooey, you know. But harmless.”

  “Now, now,” Sophie answered. “Don’t dismiss it out of hand. It might work for you—if you believed.” She was about to say something else when the front door opened, and a tall, rangy man wearing dark slacks and a rumpled sports coat walked in.

  Another guest? Come just in time for the afternoon snack.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, looking around at the group seated in the living room.

  “Oh, Detective McClellan,” Aunt Sophie answered. “How nice to see you. Would you like a cookie or some wine and cheese?”

  “No, thanks, ma’am. I came to talk to Ms. Caldwell,” he said, glancing at the niece.

  “Yes, right.” She stood up and looked around at the faces turned in her direction. “Let’s go into the den.”

  The cop nodded.

  When he and Chelsea had left the room, Michael asked, “That was a police detective?”

  Mrs. Alexander leaned forward. “She saw a murder in the swamp. Along the highway, you know.”

  “No!” Michael answered, feigning ignorance and surprise.

  “Yes. And she saw a ghost, too.”

  “You don’t know that,” Mr. Alexander interjected. “I think she was just scared and overreacting, you know. Anyway, the local cops called in the state police.”

  Michael inclined his head toward the hallway. “Is that where he’s from?”

  “Yes,” Sophie answered. She sighed. “Chelsea doesn’t like to talk about what happened. It’s too bad that ghost story got around town.”

  “You mean the ghost she saw when she was a little girl?” Betty Alexander asked.

  “Both,” her husband said. “The ghost she saw when she was a little girl and the one she saw on the road before she spotted the man and woman struggling in the swamp.”

  Michael sat back and listened. He hadn’t picked up any new facts about the case. But he had found out something interesting. Apparently, everyone in town knew about the two incidents. And they were willing to talk to tourists about it.

  As he’d assumed, Chelsea had turned herself into a local celebrity.

  ***

  DETECTIVE RAND MCCLELLAN of the state police waited while Chelsea Caldwell closed the door to the den, then turned toward him, a set look on her face.

  He’d first interviewed her at the Jenkins Cove Police Station. The witness who discovered a body was always one of the murder suspects. And he’d investigated her pretty thoroughly. He was almost certain that she wasn’t involved in the murder, although he still had to keep that option open.

  He was here now to show her some pictures of known criminals. “Could you look at some photos and tell me if any of the men might be the man you saw attacking the woman?”

  He laid a stack of photos on the table, and she paged through them, stopping several times.

  When she finally looked up, she shook her head. “I don’t think it’s any of them. Who are they?”

  “Men who were involved in crimes against women in various locations in Maryland.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you. It was pretty dark that night. And the man was…too far away for me to get a good look at him.”

  “But you’re sure it was none of these guys.”

  “I can’t be absolutely sure. But I don’t think so.”

  “We may have some more pictures later.”

  As he put the photos back into a folder, she cleared her throat.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “You saw the newspaper story about the murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you happen to know who read my police report and gave the information to the newspapers?” she asked. Perhaps the question came out more sharply than she’d intended, because a flush came into her cheeks.

  “Sorry. Yeah, I did notice that. But a lot of people had access to the report. I’d say it was from the Jenkins Cove PD, but I know that would sound self-serving.”

  She sighed. “I think it’s more likely them than the state police. My guess is that one of the patrol officers wanted to make himself look like a big shot.”

  Rand made a disgusted sound. “Yeah. They were both young. I can talk to Chief Hammer about making sure his men maintain the confidentiality of police information.”

  He watched her work through the implications.

  Apparently, her thoughts were running along the same track. “I hope you won’t tell him you spoke to me about it.”

  “Of course not.”

  Changing the subject, she asked, “Are you making any progress in finding out who the dead woman is?”

  He could tell her that he couldn’t give out information about the investigation. Instead, he said, “We think she might be a runaway from Baltimore or some other part of the country.”

  As he spoke, he watched her closely. Maybe she wasn’t involved in the murder, but she was certainly on edge.

  “Because she matches the description of a missing person?” Chelsea asked.

  “No, because we simply don’t know who she is. One couple thought it might be their daughter and came down here to look at the body. But it wasn’t her.”

  “I’m glad, for their sake,” Chelsea answered softly. “You’ll tell me if you find out her name?”

  “Yes.” He hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’d better be going.”

  “Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

  “No,” he denied, then opened the door of the den. “I can let myself out. You go back to your guests.”

  Rand walked out the front door, closing it behind him. He’d toyed with the idea of getting Ms. Caldwell’s reaction to a piece of information from the autopsy. But he’d decided that there were enough leaks in the case.

  The interview had given him another opportunity to observe her. She’d told a story about a ghost that would have most cops shaking their heads. Rand, however, had found out a couple of years ago that there could be more to a case than you could verify through your own senses or the usual police work. When he’d been investigating an explosion and multiple murders at the Cranebrook Labs in St. Stephens, some of the facts simply hadn’t added up. In fact, he’d been sure the wrong guy had murdered his partner, until the suspect had convinced Rand that he was the fall guy, not the perp.

  This case had some similar aspects. Was someone setting up Chelsea Caldwell? Or was she an innocent bystander who’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time?

  ***

  TO CHELSEA’S DISGUST, when she returned to the living room, the group was still taking about ghosts. Aunt Sophie was telling a story that Chelsea had heard dozens of times before—about a boat that had come sailing into the Jenkins Cove Harbor and bumped up against the dock.

  “People thought they saw a young man on the deck,” Sophie whispered. “Working the sails and manning the tiller. But when they investigated, the only person they’d found on the boat was downstairs in the main cabin.”

  She looked around, making her audience wait for the punch line. “It was a very sick young woman who claimed that she and her husband had been out sailing. Both of them had gotten food poisoning, and he put her to bed, then came up to sail the boat into port. The woman was taken right to the hospital, where she recovered. Nobody ever found a trace of the man, and a lot of people think his ghost sailed
the boat to Jenkins Cove as his last loving act before crossing over.”

  The Alexanders were listening wide-eyed. Michael Bryant was sitting back in his chair with a skeptical look plastered on his face. When he saw Chelsea standing in the doorway, he said, “What do you think?”

  “I think he sailed the boat into the harbor and then tumbled overboard.”

  “Did they ever find his body?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Because it wasn’t there. It was somewhere out in the bay,” Aunt Sophie said.

  Chelsea shrugged. She looked as though she was about to say something, when a noise in the hall made her turn. It was Mrs. Albright.

  Aunt Sophie jumped up. “Did you speak to your husband?” she asked.

  Mrs. Albright’s eyes brimmed. “No.”

  “I’m so sorry. But we can’t always count on the spirits being available,” Aunt Sophie said. She got up and the two women walked across the hall, talking in low tones. When they stepped outside, Michael lost sight of them.

  “This is all so fascinating,” Mrs. Alexander said.

  “It’s good party conversation,” her husband answered.

  Chelsea gestured stiffly toward the trays on the table. “Feel free to help yourselves. I’ll be back later for the trays.” She looked at Michael. “We lock the door in the evenings, so please take the key when you go out.” Addressing the room in general, she added, “I’ll see you all at breakfast. Can you give me some idea when you’d like to eat?”

  “Eight-thirty,” Mrs. Alexander said. “We’d like to get an early start in the morning.”

  “I’d like to sleep in. So nine would be good,” Michael said, figuring he could avoid eating most of the meal with the couple, since he didn’t particularly like them.

  Mrs. Alexander looked disappointed. Her husband gave him a little shrug.

  It was already getting dark as Michael turned and walked down the hall, thinking he should take another look at the list of area restaurants he’d gotten when he checked in.

  But his mind was on Chelsea. Initially he’d thought she was a woman who wanted everyone to marvel at the fact that she had seen two ghosts. To the contrary, however, she seemed to want to avoid the subject.