“That’s true. We said no more ghost patrol, but no one said anything about no stakeouts,” Carl replied.
“You’re more likely to stay out of trouble if we set up surveillance cameras and spy on the cottage—inside and out that way. If Robyn will agree to stay out of there, we won’t violate her privacy.”
“I can do that,” Joe said. “One nanny cam, coming up!”
“If we leave, now, we’ll have time to get to more than one store to find what we need. Robyn will have to let us in, but I can have the inside camera installed in no time at all.” Carl leaned forward as if he was ready to leave.
“You should set up several of them,” Charly said with growing enthusiasm. “How about 0ne in the foyer, if you can find a place to hide it? Our not too friendly ghost appears to like to hang out in the hallway so a good view of the hallway would be great. You should also set up a second one in the kitchen, and a third one in the den or the great room.”
“How about the master suite?” I asked. “She’s hardly ever been out of there. If the ghost returns and finds the house empty, and the door to her suite wide open, maybe that’ll entice him into that room. You could set up a camera on her dresser with a direct view of anyone entering through her doorway.”
“This all assumes Shakespeare didn’t find what he was looking for in the pantry today.” Marty was deep in thought. “It can’t hurt, though, can it? Do you need me to kick in on the cost? I’ve never bought them, but they can’t be cheap?”
“Hey, I’m rolling in it now that Edgar paid all our annual assessments for us—for next year, too!” That had been a wonderful surprise. That news, in addition to the decision by the HOA’s Executive Committee to approve the 80-20 provision allowing some Seaview Cottages residents to be younger than fifty-five, had given me a new lease on life.
“In a way, that’s our first fee for sleuthing, so I’m happy to contribute to the costs, too. We also have the small retainer Robyn insisted on paying. I don’t want security to pick you up for loitering after dark, but you also need to come up with a spot to mount a camera outside.”
“I know those guys. We’ll stay out of trouble by getting security help us. How about that?”
“If they’re willing to do it, why not? They might like the idea of having a camera that also covers the gate leading onto the footbridge since this isn’t the first time a nonresident has used the bridge in a way the developers never intended.”
“You haven’t had dessert yet,” I said. “Let’s eat and then you can go.”
“Hold on. I want to show you something, and then we can eat,” Neely responded. “If Robyn’s up for it, and we can both keep our eyes open, I’ll get her to work on the timeline. She might even find it interesting to help us organize events in that way. I don’t mind if she stays with me until we get a better handle on what’s going on.”
“That’s great, if she’ll agree to do it. I don’t believe Robyn’s a target or knows anything that will help our increasingly impatient sneakthief find what he, and last night’s new burglar, want to find.” Charly yawned. “I guess, technically, it was this morning not last night, wasn’t it?”
“You’re right about that. We ought to keep this short tonight, hoping we can all get home and catch up on our sleep. I’m sure you’re also right that Robyn’s in trouble just because she’s in the wrong place. The ghost has done his best to scare her out of there, but what if Shakespeare misunderstands her unwillingness to leave?” A little ripple of uneasiness swept around the room.
“It is odd, isn’t it? If I were her, especially after the latest fiasco, I’d be asking to get out of my lease. Does her landlord manage any other properties in the community?”
“That’s a good question. I can talk to the landlord if you think it’s appropriate. I already know him. He may have been joking when he told Robyn it might be a ghost, but I’ll bet there’s more to it than that. He manages lots of properties and I don’t believe he’d enter a tenant’s cottage without permission. I could have it all wrong…” We all eyed Marty wondering what to make of the hesitation in her voice.
“Stop with the penetrating gazes. I should have realized I’d get you snoops going. Robyn’s landlord and I dated for a while and I don’t want to mix business and personal matters if you consider it a bad idea. Should I call George Pierson or not?” Scheherazade did not hesitate to make her opinion known. At the mention of George Pierson’s name, she hissed and then took off. “Oh, Princess, please don’t go. I won’t bring him home, I promise.”
Too late! The princess stopped, looked over her shoulder, and meowed. She grumbled as she flounced away with her big tail switching.
“As you can probably tell, they didn’t get along. I’m sure he won’t mind talking to us about the situation at Robyn’s cottage. I just don’t want to give him any reason to believe I’m trying to rekindle our relationship.”
“If it would be less awkward for you, I’d be happy to go with you to have lunch with him at the club. Or if you don’t want to stir up gossip by being seen with him, even with me along as a chaperone, we could have lunch at my house,” I offered.
“I’m not worried about gossip, but if we meet at your cottage, he’s more likely to see it as a visit you initiated than me. When?”
“Tomorrow, if that works for him, or the next day. He doesn’t have a problem with dogs, does he?”
“No. He owns the cutest little cocker spaniel—or he did. It’s been more than a year since we dated. I’ve run into him a couple of times in Duneville Downs, but never with Cookie. I hope that doesn’t mean she’s gone to the Rainbow Bridge.”
“I won’t bring it up unless he does. At least, he won’t be uncomfortable with Domino.”
“She won’t mind, either. Domino likes everybody,” Joe said. Then he shut up.
“Princess is picky and so am I. George is a nice-looking man, polite, well-traveled, and still working as a property manager even though he’s a retired mining engineer. A little too obsessed with dirt and rocks for my taste.” We were staring at her again. “What? I’m sure he was good at his job, I’m just not interested how you know what dirt tells you about where to dig for oil or sink a shaft to mine for ore. I tried. I even went with him to one of those rock shows. Not my thing, I’m afraid. I don’t want to understand dirt. I just need to keep it out of my house!”
“Let’s see what he has to say about where that ghost story came from if he didn’t just make it up to get Robyn to back off.”
“Oh, he didn’t make it up. George mentioned the haunting of Shakespeare’s Cottage to me in passing, but not in any detail and I didn’t ask. All I recall is that the man who inherited the property prefers to live in Santa Barbara, and his wife insists the cottage is haunted. I’m not sure if she ever claimed it was Shakespeare prowling around.” Marty shrugged.
“Let’s ask him. We’ll also see if he’ll give us information about how to contact the owners. I’d love to hear what the wife has to say. Her encounters with a ghost would have occurred long before Robyn’s did.”
“I’m a mining engineer of sorts, too! Cyber mining is a compulsion when it comes to unsolved mysteries. I’ve already started digging into the background on the story of Shakespeare’s Cottage, and I already dug up some dirt.” That got our attention.
“Shakespeare’s Cottage was one of the first residences built in Seaview Cottages. It was built by members of a family that owned all the acreage on which our community was eventually built. Apparently, when the property was sold back in the late 1950s, special provisions were made for the sellers to continue to live on the property where their old had been built. That’s still the biggest lot in here. The original home was a much larger structure and wasn’t torn down until Seaview Cottages went into development in the sixties.” Neely pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Charly who was sitting next to her. “Here’s what I wanted to show you.”
“Oh my, that is gorgeously creepy,” Charly commented as sh
e passed the photo on. “It’s a larger version of Norman Bate’s house in Psycho.”
“Or a set for one of those old Hammer Studios Gothic horror pictures starring Christopher Lee,” Carl added, holding the photo so Joe could see it too.
“I only vant to suck your blood,” Joe clowned in a ridiculous accent, throwing his head back, and curling his upper lip to expose his front teeth.
“Dracula never said that, but if you were trying to creep me out, you succeeded.” Neely’s mane of silver-tinged curls bounced wildly as she shook her head vigorously in response to his antics.
“Then my work here is done.” Joe stood, bowed, and sat down again. “Maybe we should diversify, Carl, and become the first members of the neighborhood ghost and vampire patrol.”
“Charly’s Angels, at your service—on the lookout for all things undead. How about that?”
“How about you both stop it? I don’t need to be creeped out more than I already am. No wonder they tore down that deathtrap and built a cottage on the spot instead.” Marty passed the photo on quickly to Midge.
“Make that health hazard and death trap,” Midge added. “Did someone live in it until it was demolished?”
“It looks rundown, doesn’t it? So far, there’s no record that it was condemned before they tore it down. So, someone could have lived there.”
“Deathtrap is right,” I said when I took the photo from Midge. gazing at the large ornate residence with a rickety-looking verticality that gave me vertigo. Unlike the Psycho house, though, it sat amid overgrown gardens not atop a hill. “The first question that pops into my mind looking at the headless statue lying on the ground isn’t did some live in it, but did someone die in it?”
“Funny you should ask. As it happens, there were several deaths at Hempstead Towers long before it was in such poor condition.”
“Thanks, Miriam and Neely, now I’ve got chill bumps!” Marty rubbed her arms.
“Was it murrrder most foul?” Joe asked, back speaking in the bad Dracula voice, I think.
“That’s not clear.”
“Who died?” Midge asked.
“The house was built at the turn of the century in the Gothic Victorian style. I haven’t had time to track down much background on the original occupant, Stanley R. Hempstead, but it was built during one of those periods when there was lots of buzz about the railroad turning this area into the ‘Atlantic City of the West Coast.’ My guess is I might find his name if I dig deeper into the identities of the entrepreneurs with those ambitions. The first reported death occurred not long after the house was built when poor Stanley ‘shuffled off this mortal coil,’ to steal a few more choice words from Shakespeare.”
“How did he die?” I asked Neely.
“The short account I’ve found refers to his death as a tragic accident, and there aren’t many details. Built in 1906, the house was one of the first private residences to be wired for electricity. Apparently, something went wrong, and Stanley Hempstead was electrocuted. That set off a round of hoopla in the news—not just local news, but in LA and San Francisco. There was huge opposition to the use of electricity and his death fueled the fury. Maybe someone rigged it to fail or he did himself in. Who knows for sure since I don’t know if the death was even investigated.”
“Coroners are still hesitant to rule a death a suicide—even if there’s a formal inquest. I’ll see if I can get anything from the police archives if there are records of the incident from that period. You’re right that there may not have been an investigation depending on how Mr. Hempstead’s family handled his death. Families have always been inclined to keep formal authorities from intruding into personal matters like a suicide. That’s often true about a homicide, too, if he was a victim of foul play that involved family members.”
“Stanley Hempstead was the first to die, but he wasn’t the last. Stanley’s son died in a drowning accident around the anniversary of his father’s death. A year later, a young man who was tending the formal gardens created to give the large home a stately presence, was killed when he fell from a ladder. There’s no reference to ghosts yet, but as you can see in this headline, the deaths earned the place a reputation as cursed.”
Hempstead Towers Curse Strikes Again!
“The property was bought soon after the third death by an early ancestor of the De Voss family who eventually sold it to the Seaview Cottages developers. As soon as they bought it, they changed the name to Seaview Bluffs Manor.”
“As if that mattered,” Midge scoffed. “What’s in a name? We didn’t need Shakespeare to tell us that a rose by any other name smells as sweet. Surely the same can be said for a place that’s cursed.”
“I hope not! We all live here now!” Marty wailed.
“I don’t believe in curses or ghosts. Did the deaths stop?” I asked.
“For a decade or so. In the 1920s trouble erupted again at Seaview Bluffs Manor. I don’t believe in curses or ghosts, either,” Neely asserted. “I’ve just started delving into their past and I’ve already come across a few interesting tidbits to suggest that the descendants of Rupert and Hilda De Voss who bought the property from the Hempstead family, have a few skeletons in their closets.”
6 The Game is Afoot
“Before the game is afoot, thou still let'st slip.” – King Henry IV Part I
∞
“You don’t mean actual skeletons, do you? In a large house like that there must have been plenty of nooks and crannies in which to hide moldy old bones,” Marty said. “Wouldn’t the developers have found them when they tore it down?”
“I’m speaking metaphorically,” Neely said. “Skeletons of the kind to which you’re referring would have been found and laid to rest when they razed the structure in the early sixties. I’ve never heard that, but maybe you can poke around in the community archives, Miriam, and see if anything like that happened.”
“If someone found old bones among debris from a demolition today the authorities would be called in. I’m not sure that would have been true fifty years ago. Besides, there’s no reason to believe they had to hide bodies in the house when the family owned hundreds of acres of land,” Midge pointed out.
“Now I’m curious. I’ll see what I can find in the historical section of the community records. I’m not sure if all that information is online. I know what you’re getting at, though, Neely. What sort of skeletons are you talking about?”
“Give me another day two continue my mining activities before I give you all the details. Why don’t you ask Robyn’s landlord about ghosts and skeletons when you quiz him? Ask him about the curse, too, and whether he’s heard rumors that members of the De Voss family were mixed up with bootlegging or other illicit activities.”
“Here’s another question to ask while you’re at it,” Carl suggest. “If the owners aren’t interested in living in the cottage, why haven’t they sold it? It’s tough to make money on a rental property.”
“I haven’t ever had much interest in real estate, so I’m ignorant about what it takes to make money as a landlord. One day when George was griping that the owners were bugging him about an issue with the cottage, I asked why they didn’t just sell it. He said there was some clause in the Will when the husband inherited the property that prevents him from doing it. Can that be true?” Marty asked.
“Maybe. When we meet him for lunch, let’s see if he can tell us more about what he meant by that. It’s also possible they haven’t been interested in selling the cottage because prices were so depressed for years. Or they might eke out a profit if they own the property outright and don’t have a mortgage. The Shakespeare Cottage is also exempt from the homeowner’s association fees.”
“It is?” Neely asked. “Why?”
“The exemption was written into the contract when the land was purchased by the developers. I can find out more if you think it’s relevant.” I’m not sure why I made that statement because I was going to go have another look at the HOA files whether they thoug
ht it was relevant or not.
“Why not if it’s not that hard to do? Are they exempt from the Special Assessments, too?” Charly asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, well, that’s interesting,” Carl commented. “I doubt any of this means the Shakespeare’s Cottage is a cash cow. If they’re obligated to hang onto it, maybe it’s not a money pit, either.”
“Greta has stepped back from her role as the community realtor, now that she’s up to her neck in legal troubles. Whoever has taken over for her must have been given a little background about why a property on a premium lot can’t be sold. I’ll check with the new realtor tomorrow,” Midge offered. “Right now, I want to try the dessert you brought us.”
“What is it?” Neely asked.
“Strawberry Sheet Cake. Robyn loves strawberries. I baked it for her, hoping she’d be able to join us.”
“Can we take ours to go?” Joe asked, standing up so quickly that he banged the table again. We all scanned the room looking for Scheherazade. Satisfied he wasn’t going to be accosted by an angry cat, Joe continued. “I want to get to the store, buy the cameras, and set up the surveillance. If we can’t figure out how to mount the outside camera, I’m going to use my clout with the security guys to get them to watch the cottage tonight.”
“What clout?” Neely and Charly asked almost simultaneously.
“Don’t underestimate Joe,” Carl said shaking a finger at them. “He’s a mechanical genius. There’s not a vehicle on this property he can’t fix. Members of the security crew not only drop by when the community-owned cars give them grief, but in minutes Joe can figure out what’s wrong with their personal vehicles. That’s a brainstorm, Joe, I’m getting too old for all night stakeouts.” Joe beamed at all the praise.
So much for cake to-go, though. As soon as I’d cut pieces of cake for them, they practically inhaled it and then left. We sat back down in the great room to eat and summarize our efforts before going home. My fifty-year-old body and mind were running on empty. Not Neely, apparently.
The Murder of Shakespeare's Ghost Page 4