The Ghosts of Peppernell Manor

by Amy Reade

  He swallowed. “Odeile, you know why we divorced. You didn’t want children and I did. You were abusive.”

  “How could you want children? They’re awful.”

  “I love Lucy just as if she were my own child,” he explained. “She’s a bright, sweet, kind little girl.”

  Odeile scoffed.

  “Can I go to her, please?” I asked. Odeile sat and studied me for several endless moments.

  “No!” she finally shouted.

  “Odeile, the police are on their way. You have to put the gun down and let Carleigh go to Lucy,” Heath told her gently.

  “I said no!” she screamed.

  I stood still, searching frantically for something that would distract Odeile so I could get to Lucy. But there was nothing.

  Heath and Odeile and I stood staring at each other for what seemed like hours. Then she spoke again. She was talking to me.

  “I shoulda run you over when I had the chance.”

  “That was you?” I asked.

  “What are you two talking about?” Heath looked at both of us, his brow furrowed.

  “She tried to hit me with her car one night on the main road,” I replied.

  “Odeile, what were you thinking?” he asked. “Why would you want to hurt Carleigh?”

  “I just happened to be driving by when I saw her out walking with your sister and your parents and that miserable kid and it was my chance to keep you from falling for her!” she shouted. “So I went back and tried to hit her! But she hid like a frightened animal!” She turned to me.

  “He should be married to me!” And in an instant, she had raised the gun and was pointing it at my head. Tears started to roll down my cheeks. Heath moved toward Odeile suddenly and a shot rang out. I didn’t know what was happening.

  “Carleigh, are you all right?” he yelled.

  “Yes.” I could only muster a whisper.

  The room suddenly became slightly darker. I instinctively looked toward the door and was stunned to see Ruby standing there, a vision of pink chiffon with a confused look on her face.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked.

  “Get out of here!” Odeile shrieked. But Ruby didn’t move. She must have processed the scene before her and figured out what was happening. Odeile still held the gun, but it was pointed toward the floor. I couldn’t believe she had missed me the first time. I was shaking, and Lucy hadn’t moved. We could hear sirens close by.

  “Odeile, the police will be here any second,” Heath warned. His eyes flicked toward mine.

  I don’t know how I summoned the courage, but I took a step toward Lucy. Everything was happening in slow motion. As I moved, Ruby rushed into the cabin and put herself between me and Odeile.

  A second shot rang out.

  Ruby fell to the floor in a gauzy pink heap as I reached Lucy. I spun around to look at Ruby and watched in horror as the blood spurted from her stomach. Even Odeile seemed surprised by what she had done. She stared at the gun and took a step backward, tripping over the chair. Heath whipped off his suit jacket and tried pressing it into Ruby’s stomach. Odeile, who had landed on her hands and knees, was scrabbling for the gun, which had skittered across the floor. Heath tried to beat her to the gun, but she grabbed it first.

  Hands trembling, she raised the gun again.

  Then for the third time, we heard a gunshot. I screamed and flung my body over Lucy’s. Ruby lay motionless on the floor and Heath covered his head with his arms.

  Three police officers stood in the doorway. When I looked up, one was lowering his gun and another was pushing into the cabin and heading toward Odeile, who was lying in a slowly spreading pool of blood. It covered the dark stains left behind when Sarah’s father killed himself all those long years ago. The officer bent and held her wrist, feeling for a pulse. He looked at the other officers and shook his head.

  “Over here!” I cried. Sobbing, I heaved myself off Lucy’s small body, which still lay on the mattress. One officer ran over to her and another went to Ruby. He radioed for the ambulance to drive over the lawn to the border with the woods. He looked up at us.

  “This woman is still alive, but we need to get her to the hospital immediately.”

  The other officer, the one with Lucy, was holding her tiny wrist in his big hand. He looked down at her and concentrated on finding her pulse. Finally he looked at me and nodded.

  Lucy was alive. I had never in my life felt a relief like the feeling that flooded my body. Heath came over to me and wrapped me in his arms as I wept like a baby, so thankful that my child was alive.

  It was only a minute before the EMTs were at the door with three stretchers. One medic knelt by Lucy and helped his partner slide a board under her. They carried her gingerly through the door and onto a stretcher that they wheeled toward a waiting ambulance. I followed closely behind them. As I stood at the cabin’s door, though, I looked back at the scene behind me.

  The medics with Ruby were performing CPR. Heath watched, silent and still, as they worked to revive his aunt. Part of me wanted to stay and make sure Ruby was going to be all right, but I knew I needed to be with Lucy. I ran to catch up with the medics wheeling my little girl to the ambulance.

  We left Peppernell Manor, driving into the darkening evening with sirens blaring. Pretty soon I heard the sound of another siren somewhere behind us. That was a good sign—if Ruby had died, there would be no siren necessary. When we got to the hospital, the emergency room doctors took over immediately and I stayed as close to Lucy as they would allow.

  It was a long time before they finally were able to stabilize her and determine exactly what had happened. She had been poisoned with a prescription medication. Odeile must have given her something to eat or drink with the medication in it and taken her outside onto the veranda. When Lucy was unconscious, it would have been easy for Odeile to carry her to the slave cabin.

  When she awoke a long while later in a hospital room, Lucy was scared. She didn’t seem to remember what had happened to her, and thankfully she had no recollection of being in the cabin. She apparently hadn’t heard the screaming or the gunshots or the sirens.

  I sat up in a chair all that long night while she drifted in and out of sleep. In the small hours of the morning, there was a knock at the door. Heath came in; he looked haggard and exhausted. I went to him and put my arms around his neck.

  “How’s Ruby?” I whispered.

  “She’s asking for you. The doctors say she’s not going to survive. Mom and Dad and Evie are there. You’d better hurry. I’ll stay with Lucy.”

  I ran the entire way to Ruby’s room. Her eyes were fluttering open when I arrived, breathless. I took her hand in mine as Graydon and Vivian and Evie stood by, watching.

  “You saved Lucy’s life, Ruby. And mine. Thank you.”

  Her lips parted. She was trying to say something.

  “No, Ruby. Don’t talk.”

  “I killed Harlan.”

  Graydon and the others stepped quickly to her bedside. I spoke to her soothingly.

  “No, Ruby. Someone else killed Harlan.”

  “It was me. There was no peace in our family. He was a bad person.”

  She was struggling to get the words out. Vivian held her hand to her mouth, looking at Graydon.

  “She’s hallucinating, Graydon.”

  “Let her talk, Viv.”

  “No. I’m not. I couldn’t stand the fighting anymore.”

  “Harlan wasn’t bad!” Vivian cried.

  “He killed Mother. He told me so,” Ruby whispered. We had to lean in close to hear her.

  Right then I knew Ruby was telling the truth. A business associate hadn’t killed Harlan; his aunt had killed him. She killed him because he killed her mother.

  “You rest now, Ruby,” I told her softly. “Thank you for telling us.”

  I left the room and returned to Lucy. Heath went back to see Ruby. I thought I would see her again, but I was wrong.

  Heath came to Lucy’s
room a short time later. “She’s gone,” he whispered, tears beginning to well up in his eyes. He rubbed them impatiently and blinked several times, gathering himself. “Dad told me what Ruby said.”

  “About Harlan?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t want to tell Heath that I had known all along about Harlan and Cora-Camille, but I knew I had to. I couldn’t allow our marriage to start off with such a secret.

  “Heath, I have to tell you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Harlan was the one who tried to poison your grandmother, so she would die before being able to change her will to leave the management of Peppernell Manor to the state of South Carolina. At the same time, he was trying to get her to sign on with the investors that he brought to the manor, and she refused.

  “When the poison didn’t seem to be working fast enough, he dressed up as your grandfather and tried to talk to her in the middle of the night one night. She had a heart attack. I knew that Harlan had killed your grandmother.

  “Please forgive me for not telling you. I felt it wasn’t my place to tell anyone, since I’m not part of the family. I felt it was up to Evie to tell people what Harlan had done, since she was aware of the facts. And when he died, there seemed to be no reason to tell anyone.”

  There. I’d told him. And I felt an overwhelming relief at being able to share what Evie and I had heard on her phone the day Harlan was shot.

  Heath was quiet for a moment, then he took one of my hands in his. “Of course I forgive you. You were in a very awkward spot. I wish Evie had told someone, though I don’t know what I would have done with the information, either.”

  He looked over at Lucy. “I’m glad she’s okay. Have you told Brad that she’s here?”

  “Not yet. I’ll call him in the morning.”

  And that’s what I did. He was upset and angry, blaming me for Lucy’s disappearance from the party.

  “I told you, Brad, she was with me every minute except for the few minutes when Evie had her. I just let go of her hand for a second. I will live with it the rest of my life. It could have happened to anyone. Even you.”

  “I want to see her.”

  I told him her room number. Even with the charges pending against him, this was a situation in which I couldn’t deny him seeing her. He had to see with his own eyes that she was okay and I understood that feeling.

  I learned later that the police had gone through Odeile’s purse. Apparently she, like me, had a penchant for before-and-after pictures. They had found such photos on her cell phone of the ruined wallpaper in the slave cabins. So Odeile had been the culprit. I had been so sure it was Brad. I apologized to him and he accepted my apology graciously.

  Lucy was in the hospital for several days, and I stayed by her side the entire time. I let Brad visit as often as he wanted, and my parents even came from Florida to see her.

  Not long after she got out of the hospital I got back to work restoring Peppernell Manor. My work took me through the spring, but I finally finished the manor house and the barn and the privy. Everyone was thrilled with my work, and the family loved to entertain in it and show off their new—old—house. I earned a solid reputation in Charleston, and my restoration work was featured in a national architecture magazine.

  Most importantly, Sarah loved the renovated manor house and slave cabins. Phyllis came to talk to me one day as I was working upstairs in Evie’s bedroom.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I spoke to Sarah again. She said you got the cabins just right. That’s just how they looked when she lived there.”

  I smiled. “Thank you, Phyllis. I’m really happy to hear that. Did Sarah have anything else to say?”

  “She loves the fiddle.”

  “I’m thrilled!”

  “Thank you for doing the cabins justice,” she said shyly.

  “I wouldn’t have restored them if I couldn’t do it right,” I told her.

  Just then Addie came bounding into the room. Heath had taken to leaving her at the manor house during the day so she would have company and stop chewing all the furniture in the carriage house while he was at work.

  “Things around here have been so peaceful lately, and nothing bad has happened since the day of the open house,” I noted pointedly. “Do you still think Addie is bad luck?”

  Phyllis smiled and dodged the question. “I’m getting used to her being around,” she said, as she reached down and fluffed the dog’s ears.

  Shortly after I finished the restoration of Peppernell Manor, I moved my business permanently from Chicago to South Carolina and never looked back. My assistants, though they had done a great job in my absence, were only too happy to hand the reins back to me. When I opened my business in Charleston, I asked Phyllis to come to work for me as an interior designer. She kept her job at Peppernell Manor, but agreed to work with me part-time.

  Vivian finally agreed that there had been enough sadness, enough grief and violence, over the future management of Peppernell Manor. She let go all of her talk of investors and tourists. I’m sure the topic will be revisited someday, but for now, life at the manor has become quieter.

  Ruby was missed at Peppernell Manor. Though she had made some poor choices during the last months of her life, her family forgave her, too. It was strange to think that not so long ago, I had been angry with Ruby for taking Lucy without my permission. Now she was gone, giving her own life to save mine and Lucy’s.

  Going through Ruby’s things shortly after her death, Evie found a gallon of black paint in the back of Ruby’s closet.

  So she had been the one.

  We could only guess at the reason. Though we’ll never know for sure, we suspect she did it to slow down the restoration and scare off the investors.

  The day Heath and I and Lucy became a family on the patio of the carriage house, the sky, pink from the setting sun, floated above us softly. It was a warm late-summer evening with the scents of roses and Confederate jasmine and honeysuckle perfuming the air. It was low-key and intimate, with just Lucy, my parents, Heath’s family, and Phyllis present. And Addie, of course, who sat quietly next to Phyllis as she surreptitiously fed her treats throughout the ceremony.

  I never imagined when I first set eyes on the carriage house that it would one day be my home. And in the twilight of that South Carolina evening, we finally had the Lowcountry boil that I had been promised when I first arrived at Peppernell Manor. It was delicious.

  Turn the page for a special excerpt of Amy M. Reade’s

  SECRETS OF HALLSTEAD HOUSE

  “You are not wanted here. Go away from Hallstead Island or you will be very sorry you stayed.”

  Macy Stoddard had hoped to ease the grief of losing her parents in

  a fiery car crash by accepting a job as a private nurse to the wealthy

  and widowed Alexandria Hallstead. But her first sight of Hallstead

  House is of a dark and forbidding home. She quickly finds its

  winding halls and shadowy rooms filled with secrets and suspicions.

  Alex seems happy to have Macy’s help, but others on the island,

  including Alex’s sinister servants and hostile relatives, are far less

  welcoming. Watching eyes, veiled threats . . . slowly, surely, the

  menacing spirit of Hallstead Island closes in around Macy. And she

  can only wonder if her story will become just one of the many

  secrets of Hallstead House . . .

  A Lyrical Press e-book original on sale now!

  CHAPTER 1

  My journey was almost over.

  It was raining, and I looked out through the drizzle across the blue-gray water of the Saint Lawrence River. Only a few boats were out on such a raw and rainy day. From the bench where I sat on the Cape Cartier public dock, I could see several islands. Each was covered with trees—dark green pine trees and leafy maples, oaks, birches, and weeping willows. In the chilly late September air, the leaves were already tinged
with the colors of fall: yellows, reds, oranges, browns. I could glimpse homes on the islands, but I didn’t see any people. It was beautiful here—so different from the city I had just left behind.

  Even though twenty years have come and gone since that day, I can still remember the calm that settled around me as I waited for my ride to Hallstead House in the middle of the Thousand Islands. My nerves were still ragged, but the river had an immediate and peaceful effect on me. I was only twenty then, but I had been through so much. Though I had been traveling for just a few hours, my journey to this place had begun six long weeks earlier.

  As I listened to the raindrops plunk into the river, the sound of the motor from an approaching boat cut into my reverie. It was an older boat of gleaming mahogany with a large white awning covering most of it, protecting the cabin and the pilot from the rain. It puttered up to the dock slowly and in a few moments had pulled alongside, close to where I sat. The pilot moved to the stern and climbed out quickly, securing the boat to the dock with a thick rope. He turned to me with a questioning look and said, “Macy Stoddard?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook my hand curtly. “I’m Pete McHale. I work for Alexandria Hallstead. She sent me here to pick you up. That all the luggage you brought?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  He shot me a disapproving look and said, “I hope you brought some warm stuff to wear. It starts getting cold up here pretty early in the fall. It’s colder here than it is in the big city, you know.” He smirked.

  Determined to stay positive, I ignored his look of reproach and replied that I had plenty of warm clothes. Once he’d stowed my two large suitcases in the boat under the awning, he helped me on board, where I chose a seat in the front so I could see where we were going and stay dry. I had been in a boat once as a child when a furious storm blew up, and I had hated boats ever since. Still, though I was unhappy and nervous to be riding in one, there was absolutely no other way to get to my island destination. Pete untied the boat and we slowly pulled away from the dock. As he scanned the river and began turning the boat to the north, I glanced at his profile. He looked like he was in his mid-thirties—medium height, with light-brown, windblown hair, and green eyes with creases in the corners that made it look like he squinted a lot. He wore faded jeans and a Windbreaker.