The Murder of Shakespeare's Ghost

by Anna Celeste Burke

“My pleasure, although I’m not sure what I can tell you that can add any clarity to Robyn’s puzzling situation.”

  “Oh, let’s not get down to business quite yet. I’m dying to see what Miriam has brought us. She’s such a great cook, and I’ve never met a better baker in my life. Why don’t we set out the goodies you brought, and then make sure we take care of Neely and Robyn who are holding down the fort inside. Robyn’s there to answer questions while Neely works on a project with a deadline she’s trying to meet.” As she made that last comment, Marty gave me a little wink.

  “Neely always has some new project, doesn’t she?” I said in a lighthearted tone.

  “Our appetizer,” I said as I removed foil from a platter that contained slices of beef tenderloin on a bed of arugula drizzled with an herby red wine sauce. The aroma swirled around us. George Pierson, who’d stood during the introductions, sat back down.

  “That does look good. I thought we might be eating nothing but salads since this wasn’t a cookout and women seem to survive on weeds and grass.” He guffawed.

  A man who appreciates his own humor, I thought, making eye contact for a second with Marty. With her back to George, she rolled her eyes. When I placed the baked ziti casserole next to the appetizer, his eyes widened.

  “Main course,” I said. “And, dessert! I hope you’re not one of those people who shies away from sugar.”

  “Not me. Marty can tell you that I’ve ordered more than one dessert, on occasion, when I couldn’t make up my mind which one sounded best. Is it okay to dig in?”

  “Please, go ahead. I’m going to take food to Neely and Robyn, and then I’ll join you. Will you pour me a glass of wine, George?”

  “Gladly! I’ve died and gone to heaven lunching with two gorgeous women who eat meat and sugar and drink wine.” I smiled as if basking in the compliment as I let myself into the kitchen using the sliding doors. I spotted Neely and Robyn, who were seated at a table in a formal dining room. I caught a whiff of paint, but otherwise it wasn’t bad inside at all. Somewhere toward the front of the house I heard men talking.

  “I ‘ve got food for you.” I placed containers of food I’d packed for them on the table in front of them. They looked tiny against the backdrop of the large dining table. “If it’s not enough maybe George will share.”

  “We’ve already been eating chips and seven-layer dip Marty gave us,” Neely said pointing to chips and dip alongside a small bowl of potato salad. When I opened the containers, Neely looked over her shoulder. “We’d better eat before the workmen in the foyer get a look at this or we may be outside begging for leftovers.” Robyn nodded.

  “I’m taking no chances.” She began filling a plate as I turned to leave.

  “By the way, I’ve also been following up on the information you sent to Charly and me. So far, I’ve only found a little more about the woman you were looking for, and I’ve found nothing to suggest she ever turned up again.” I glanced at Robyn who seemed to be oblivious to what we were talking about. “Charly’s following up using her special relationships, so maybe she’ll get the scoop.” I nodded.

  “That would be great,” I said.

  “Joe and Carl stopped by and told us they didn’t find anything on the videos they recorded, but maybe Shakespeare is waiting for things to quiet down a little before he returns.” I wasn’t quite sure what Robyn meant. Staying away while the place you’d burgled was still crawling with people seemed like a no-brainer. Could she possibly still imagine the place was haunted? Neely and I both appeared to be at a loss for words.

  “Don’t worry, you two, I’m not still insisting there’s a real ghost roaming around. On the other hand, I’m trying to keep an open mind. People are tricky, but ghosts are trickier.” She shrugged. “Thanks for bringing us food. I fixed us a big breakfast in case we got stranded here all day, so a late lunch is perfect.”

  “Enjoy!” I said as I left. When I returned to the back yard, I seated myself across from the man who was refilling his empty plate. Marty was doing the same with his wine glass. The eating and drinking were well underway. To borrow a phrase that was around long before Shakespeare, would our ‘friend’ give up the ghost if he’d been holding out on us?”

  10 Doth Protest Too Much

  “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” – Hamlet

  ∞

  “You’d better hurry up and help yourself to lunch before I make my way back to the appetizer. Marty did not exaggerate when she praised your cooking.”

  “Thank you,” I replied as I put food on a plate. “I’m glad the trouble here hasn’t spoiled your appetite. It must be more than an inconvenience for a man as busy as you are. Marty says you manage rental properties all over the area—including properties at the Blue Haven Resort.”

  Marty glanced at me sideways since she hadn’t said anything about managing resort properties. I was fishing for any connection he might have to the nearby resort. It worked. I paid careful attention to every word he said as I ate heartily.

  “Marty thinks I work too hard. She could be right. I’m thinking about scaling back and maybe even taking a little time off to travel. I don’t let the job get to me and I’ve managed properties where the guests have done lots worse damage than the intruders did here. The Blue Haven realty folks know better than to blame me for it, although they do expect a quick turnaround t0 get the property back into rentable condition. I have almost zero contact with the homeowners there since most of the properties are time shares rather than private residences like this one.”

  “George is being polite, Miriam. The De Voss family aren’t always the easiest people to work for. They want the work done fast, just like at the resort, but they call the shots about who can do the repair work.”

  “Hey, no sweat! Why not hire people who are already familiar with the property? Who wants to worry about some lowlife taking unauthorized photos of the interior or selling stories to the tabloids about cleaning up after a ghost? The family has always been high profile. They’ve learned to take precautions. I do careful screening before accepting someone as a tenant. Why wouldn’t they do the same with the maintenance personnel they hire?”

  “I can’t imagine all the properties you manage have errant ghosts as troublemakers, do they?” I asked. He laughed and swigged down the wine in his glass. The wine was excellent, but I’d almost done a spit take when I saw the label. At sixty dollars a bottle, George Pierson’s good taste costs a pretty penny.

  “Fortunately, no! One haunted house is more than enough.” He said as he filled his glass and then paused to gaze at me. “You’re not serious, are you? I’m afraid I set off the ghost thing when Robyn first called me insisting that someone had been in the cottage even though nothing had been taken. She wanted to call the police, but to report what crime? Eventually, she tried, and they scoffed at her.”

  “When was that?” Marty asked.

  “I’m not sure, but it came up before she renewed her lease almost a year ago. Who renews a lease on a house if they seriously believe someone’s breaking in and going through their stuff?” He shrugged. That time frame jived with what Robyn had told us. I helped myself to a cookie and shoved the plate closer to him as I spoke.

  “Have previous tenants complained about ghosts? I’m doing a little scrapbooking for the HOA, and I’ve come across a few things about the property that suggest the ghost stories aren’t new.”

  “That’s true. The family has been haunted by them—the stories, I mean, not the ghosts. That’s not too funny, is it?” Marty skillfully changed the subject as George inhaled a cookie and then reached for another one.

  “I remember you told me that one reason the owners don’t live here is that the wife’s uncomfortable about the ghost stories. I suppose if you’re in this big house and you’ve heard all the stories, it’s easy to start imagining things. Shame on you for putting such an idea into Robyn’s head.”

  “I regret it now.” He picked up a another cookie and waved it at
us for emphasis. “No one needs to put anything into a De Voss family member’s head. They’ve lived through the incidents that created the stories. So, if Bernadette De Voss doesn’t want to live here, who could blame her.” For a minute, George stopped eating and talking and grew pensive. “Guilt does wicked things to the imagination,” he muttered almost to himself.

  Whose guilt? I wondered. Marty had a puzzled expression on her face and shrugged ever so slightly when we made eye contact.

  “To answer your earlier question, yes, other tenants have raised concerns about items being moved around. Like Robyn’s situation, nothing ever went missing which made it hard to get worked up about their concerns. The house is big. Both the heat and AC are powerful, so I figured that accounted for some of the stuff people found on the floor.” Then he smiled at Marty. “If they had that big, spoiled cat of yours around they’d know who was responsible, wouldn’t they?”

  “How big is the house, by the way? I’m just curious because the numbers in the HOA materials bounce around so much.”

  “I’ve seen the blueprints and the cottage is almost three thousand square feet. Nothing close to the estate home that was torn down which was huge. Eight bedrooms rather than four like this one. Most of them had their own bathrooms which was still unusual when the house was built at the turn of the century. Indoor plumbing, electricity, and a thermal ventilation system using cellars or a crawl space under the house. The place ought to have been preserved rather than demolished.”

  “How did Shakespeare get mixed up in this?” I wondered aloud.

  “That’s new, as far as I can tell. Maybe that’s my fault, too—the power of suggestion to a susceptible tenant renting a cottage bearing his name. Being in Shakespeare’s Cottage meant a lot to her.”

  “It’s more than the power of suggestion now, isn’t it?” I asked. “Robyn’s not the only one who’s seen a ghostly white figure that bears a striking resemblance to the cottage’s namesake.”

  “He glows in the dark, too,” Marty added explaining what Charly and I had seen on our way to Robyn’s cottage when she’d called us for help. “According to Robyn, he brought along a sparring partner on his last visit.”

  “So, I’ve heard,” George said.

  “What do you make of the break in. How did the intruders get in?”

  “The police detective asked me the same thing and I’ll tell you what I told him—I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say Robyn is so stressed out she doesn’t know if she’s coming or going. Maybe she thought she set the alarm and forgot. Or put in the wrong code and didn’t notice. The system gives you an error message, but it doesn’t bleep at you like your car does if you leave the keys in the ignition.”

  “Did she leave the front door unlocked, too?” I asked.

  “It’s possible, but it’s more likely someone got a copy of a key. Before you get upset because you think I’m blaming your friend, it could have been my key. We’ve had a few trusted repair people in since we last rekeyed the place, so it’s possible one of them wasn’t as trustworthy as we thought and made a copy.” I nodded, letting go of some of the animosity that had welled up in me toward him.

  “That’s always a problem isn’t it?” Marty asked. “You put up gates, bolt the doors, set alarms, but you’ve still got to let strangers in to do all the maintenance and repair work.”

  “Tell me about it,” George said. “I lose rental prospects sometimes because they don’t like the idea that the golf course and club house are open to the public. I know the community needs the revenue, but it’s another problem for security here.”

  “Whoever was in Shakespeare’s Cottage left a huge mess behind, so maybe the police will figure out the identity of one or both of the burglars,” Marty said.

  “The detective I spoke to yesterday seemed sharp. He’s motivated to find the culprit since, as he explained it to me, this wasn’t just a burglary, but an assault. Neely’s a tough cookie. The guy she head-butted got more than he bargained for, didn’t he?” That made me smile.

  “That’ll teach him to diss his elders,” Marty added and laughed. “Although I guess we don’t know how old he was do we?” Domino and Cookie stopped playing and walked over to where we sat on the patio. George’s reference a moment ago to Neely being a tough cookie already had my mind headed down the track to the death of Daniel De Voss and the disappearance of Constance De Voss. The soulful eyes of the cocker spaniel somehow triggered the image of the beautiful young woman who’d vanished years ago.

  “So, what happened to Cookie De Voss? Did anyone ever find her?” I asked just as someone opened the sliders behind me. The dogs ran to greet the visitor as I turned in my seat to see who it was.

  “What business is that of yours?” A woman asked. “Who are you and what are you doing in my house asking nosy questions?” I expected George to react in a more negative way than he did. His employer was obviously ticked off. I couldn’t blame her, but why wasn’t he more afraid she was going to fire him right then and there?

  “Bernie, this is Marty Monroe, a woman I used to date. The curious one is Miriam Webster—like the dictionary—if that’s her real name.” Bernie De Voss stepped outside onto the patio, as Domino woofed and then invited her to play.

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. De Voss,” I said as I stood to greet her. “We’re Robyn Chappell’s friends and are trying to understand what’s going on here before she moves back in. I’m also going through old clippings, trying to organize them so they can be scanned into the community archive as part of online scrapbooks. I stumbled across the story and wondered what happened to her. I apologize if I triggered unpleasant memories for you, although you can’t be old enough to have been around when she went missing in 1971.” She might be old enough. I didn’t want to irritate her any further by suggesting she was older than she was, so I quickly calculated that it was better to err by assuming she was younger than she was.

  “That’s not any of your business, either.” She was well-dressed with every hair in place, but she was anxious. Her eyes scanned me and Marty and then darted around the yard.

  Why is she so jumpy? I wondered.

  “Pull up a chair and I’ll pour you a glass of wine. You should have arrived a few minutes ago before I polished off the last of the beef tenderloin. The casserole is delicious, too. If you’ve already had lunch, there are cookies…” George stopped speaking. Bernie De Voss’s eyes darkened and she shook her head in exasperation.

  “No, no, no! What is your problem? I didn’t come here to eat and blab with the neighbors. That’s not what you’re being paid to do, either!” Then she glared at me before she spoke again.

  “I hope the police are more successful in their pursuit of the intruders who ransacked my house than they were when it came to locating Constance De Voss!”

  “By intruders do you mean people?” I asked before I could stop myself. “I thought you were a believer in ghosts.” She balled up her fists on her hands dangling at her sides and stepped closer to me.

  “This property is a waste bin of uneasy spirits—most of them my disturbed husband’s disturbed ancestors. You have no idea what’s gone on here and why just being here makes my skin crawl!” When she took another step toward me, Domino stepped in between us. Domino didn’t growl or bare her teeth, but the jumpy auburn-haired woman shook with rage.

  “Get these people out of here before I call Ted and tell him to hire a new property manager!”

  “Time to go, ladies,” George said as he cleaned up the disposable plates Marty had brought along.

  “What about Robyn and Neely?” Marty asked. “Do you want me to get them?”

  “I already told them there was no reason to stick around. They left before I realized you two were out here bugging our soon to be ex property manager.” Instead of looking worried, George shook his head and smiled.

  “Calm down, Bernie. You know getting this worked up isn’t good for your nerves.” She stomped around, but didn’t say anything
. In minutes, we’d packed up and headed out through the gate Domino and I had entered earlier.

  “Well, well, well. Will you look at that! ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’” I glanced back over my shoulder and saw George and Bernie in an embrace.

  “How do you like that? What are those two up to?”

  “Besides playing her husband for a fool, you mean? That old coot has landed a big fish this time. I’ll bet he’s about to reel her in, too. No wonder he’s thinking about giving up his gig as a property manager to travel!”

  “Maybe they’re behind all the searching that’s going on,” I muttered as we walked to the curb where Marty had parked her golf cart. I’d taken her up on the offer to drive us home.

  “Then why not just kick Robyn out and go to it? Bernie owns the place. If she doesn’t want hubby to know what she’s doing lover boy would search it for her.” I nodded.

  “If she and George have plans, they’ll have to get past Ted. I can’t imagine a De Voss marrying without an airtight prenup. Even if she agrees to the terms of a divorce, Ted may try to fight it. Maybe they’re planning to run for it and forget about a divorce.”

  “In that case, they’d need cash or other things they could turn into cash fast. What if they’ve been slipping in here to hide money or stock certificates or the family jewels rather than trying to find things?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s run this by Charly and see what she has to say. These days, I thought clever thieves just siphoned money into an offshore account. When they had what they thought was enough, they’d hop on a plane or a ship, and head for the Cayman Islands or Thailand.” I shrugged.

  “Get in, Domino! We’re going for a ride.” I had no problem getting her to agree to that proposition. Marty opened a small storage area on the back and loaded our stuff into it. Then, she folded my cart and wedged it in behind the back seat. Marty climbed into the driver’s seat as I got slipped into the passenger’s seat. Domino who was hunkered down on the floor in the seats behind us, stood up and barked, wagging her tail wildly.