“Hello, fellow sleuths. Fancy meeting you here,” Carl said as he and Joe pulled up and stopped alongside Marty’s cart, facing us driver-to-driver. When Carl used the sleuth word, Marty and I both glanced toward the house. I thought I saw the wood blinds move on the window closest to us.
“Keep it down, will you? We were just leaving,” Marty replied. “What’s up?”
“We’re going to go in and make sure our surveillance cameras are reset and ready to go once this place clears out for the day. I don’t see any ladders or trucks. The repair guys must have left.”
“You won’t go in there until that little roadster is gone if you know what’s good for you.” Marty nodded her head in the direction of the Porsche sitting at the curb a couple of car lengths behind us. Then she explained what had happened. I had the uncomfortable feeling that we were being watched.
“She may not be done with us yet, if we don’t get out of here,” I added. “Maybe we should finish catching up when we meet at Midge’s house this evening.”
“Yeah. You’ll have time to come back later to check on the cameras. Just don’t break the terms of your deal with Hank.” Marty checked the side mirrors and scanned the street, poised to drive off.
“Don’t worry we’ll have this golf cart back to the clubhouse before dark. We’re don’t want trouble with the detective. That wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do to Miriam now that she’s got him hooked on her cookies.” Joe burst out laughing and Carl whooped it up with him.
“Cookies, yeah right!”
“Stop it you guys, or she’ll put you under a cookie ban. Then we’ll see who’s hooked on her cookies, won’t we?”
Just then, a car turned onto the street. The driver honked as the car came around the corner. I’m not sure why because even though Joe had parked in an odd way there was plenty of room to get by. The guy behind the wheel got our attention.
“What’s up with that jerk,” Joe asked as the driver drove by slowly and gestured in a most impolite way. As he did that, the movement of his arm rippled the dark fabric of his windbreaker.
“It must have something to do with the two black eyes and his bandaged nose.” Carl replied.
“Okay, so he had a rough night, that’s no reason to be a nasty neighbor,” Joe added.
“A rough night thanks to Neely Conrad, I bet,” I said. “Can you see his license plate number?”
“I sure can,” Carl replied. I’d whipped out my phone and typed in the numbers as he recited them. “I never dreamed I’d have a chance to say it, but follow that car! Don’t let him get away.”
“Great idea! We promised Hank we wouldn’t go out on another ghost patrol or chase the undead. That guy didn’t look dead to me.” Joe, who was already parked facing the right way to pursue the guy, hit the accelerator pedal.
“Don’t worry, we won’t pull a Neely on him,” Carl added. “We need to see where he’s going.”
“Yeah, what if the scumbag who attacked Neely is living right under our noses?” Joe called out as he sped off.
“I’m not bailing them out,” Marty said. “Not until morning anyway. Spending a night in jail might put a little salt on their tails before they’re the ones with the black eyes and broken noses.”
“Who should I call first—Hank or Charly?”
“Charly,” we said in unison as I hit the quick-dial button for her. When Marty got to the corner, I checked behind us as a car that had been parked across the street slowly pulled away from the curb. Whoever was in that car appeared to be following Joe and Carl.
“Hello.”
“Charly, it’s Miriam. I think Joe and Carl might be in trouble.”
11 Dead as a Doornail
“yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.” – Henry VI
∞
“He’s dead! Shakespeare’s ghost is dead!” I hadn’t been home long when Robyn called. I’d answered the call, hoping it was Charly with news about Joe and Carl.
“I don’t understand. Where are you? Where’s Neely?”
“We’re back at my cottage. Neely’s in the pantry, watching the dead ghost until the police get here. We don’t want to lose Shakespeare the way you lost Diana Durand on Fitzgerald’s Bluff.”
“Okay, so if you’ve called the police, that’s good. What can I do?”
“Come back over here, please. I’m afraid George and that crazy De Voss woman will come back. She’s scarier than a ghost or a burglar. When she came in and saw us eating in the dining room, she asked what we were doing. I told her we were having lunch while the repairmen finished, and I could be sure they did things the way they were supposed to do them. Instead of treating me like I was a responsible tenant, she told me that was her job, not mine. Then she ordered us out. It got a little tense after that.”
“I can believe it. Marty and I went through something like that, too.”
“Please, come over here, will you? Neely says you ought to have a good look before the police throw us all out. Charly, too!”
“I’m on my way. Domino, leash!” I turned around and the sweet, clever girl was standing there already carrying her leash. “Well aren’t you the savvy pooch?” I grabbed a jacket and took off on foot.
“Charly?” I asked when she answered my call.
“Yes?”
“Here we go again.”
“Are you telling me Joe and Carl are in more trouble? I told them to go home. I had to do some fast talking to get Hank to stop detective who was following them in that car from arresting them.”
“No. What did they do?”
“They almost blew a cop’s cover who’s working on the smuggling investigation.”
“Are you saying the guy they were following—the one Neely beat up—is an undercover cop?”
“No, but Eddie Vargas, the driver of the car you saw following them, was trying to hook up with the guy Neely head-butted. The two men were supposed to meet at the clubhouse. Apparently, Carl and Joe spooked him, and he bolted. When the police officer tried to pursue the guy, they got in the way, asking him what his business was in Seaview Cottages. That’s when he showed them his badge and called for backup.”
“Oh, geez. That’s not good.” I was starting to huff and puff again. I was hoofing it at top speed, but the increasingly bizarre turn of events didn’t help me breathe any easier. Even the undercover meeting seemed odd to me. Why set up a meeting in the vicinity of Shakespeare’s Cottage so soon after the incident in which Eddie Vargas’ contact came close to being caught as an intruder?
“Even Hank was ready to say, ‘off with their heads,’ but I reasoned with him that the way those two flap their gums, it would be a bigger risk to put them in jail than to let them go. Anyone within earshot would have quite a story to repeat. I assured Hank that if he told his colleague to release them, I’d keep them from causing another disturbance.”
“Uh-oh. That’s even more reason to get a move on! Can you grab Emily and come with me to Shakespeare’s Cottage?”
“Right now? I was just getting ready to order pizza so we could get to work as soon as you all arrived. What is it?”
“A dead ghost. According to Robyn, Shakespeare’s ghost roams no more.”
“Good grief. I’ll meet you outside in a minute.” When she said a minute, she must have meant it. She and Emily were at the gate by the time Domino and I arrived. During the short walk from the Bronte Cottage to the Shakespeare Cottage, I talked as fast I could. I wanted Charly to know what had gone on today with Bernie De Voss, including the possibility that she was carrying on with George Pierson and the weird interactions several of us had with her.
“It doesn’t surprise me that she reacted badly to your question about Cookie De Voss. They’re related—cousins who grew up together and met the De Voss men, they later married, while they were still children.”
“How can that be?”
“According to the background
I dug up from the police archives, they were all sent to the same private boarding school in Santa Barbara. Well off, financially, they were still four kids from the hinterlands without social ties to anyone in the Santa Barbara area. The four became friends. Constance and Daniel married not long after graduating from high school. Ted and Bernadette went their separate ways for a few years. In fact, Ted was married for a short time to someone else. When Constance went missing and Daniel died, it brought Ted and Bernadette together again. They married a few months later.”
“What a sad story that is. It’s too bad they didn’t get their happily ever after once they married, even if their reunion was brought about by an awful tragedy. She didn’t speak fondly of her husband or his family. From her rant today, I gather the police never solved the mystery of Constance De Voss’s disappearance.”
“That seems to be the case. In addition to reading what’s in the written record about Daniel’s death and Cookie’s disappearance, I talked to a retired cop, Larry O’Reilly, who joined the force near the end of the investigation into her whereabouts. The County Sheriff’s Department was a small unit back then without much training or support from forensics. He recalls that they’d had very few leads and they went nowhere. The entire De Voss family was considered flakey—especially Cookie and Daniel who’d become involved in the drug culture and occult practices. Daniel wasn’t just a drug user, but a would-be guru who proclaimed the benefits of mind-altering substances.”
“Like Timothy Leary,” I said.
“Yes, although when it comes to a member of the De Voss clan, apparently it’s never easy to rule out money as the real motive behind anything they do.”
“Are you saying Daniel De Voss was dealing in drugs?”
“That’s what my old friend, Larry, heard. In keeping with the family rum-running tradition, Daniel De Voss was rumored to be smuggling drugs in from Mexico. Once the man was dead, no one pursued the matter further, so the rumors weren’t ever confirmed or denied.”
“Bernie De Voss may want to blame the police for the case going cold, but I can’t imagine the De Voss family members were much help.”
“They weren’t. In fact, they did all they could to get Daniel’s death ruled an accidental overdose and suggested that Cookie De Voss had taken off to join some cult. There was gossip, though, that she and her husband weren’t getting along. One story about what happened was she asked for a divorce, Daniel killed her, and then committed suicide.”
“Since no one ever heard from her again, that seems entirely possible, doesn’t it? Even if she was done with her husband and his family, given how close she and Bernie De Voss were, it’s surprising Cookie never contacted her if she was still alive.”
“My thoughts, exactly. Although if she was fleeing form a domestic abuse situation, women are often advised not to contact anyone who’s close to their spouse.” Charly shrugged.
“I get it. It’s like going into Witness Protection.”
“Given the resources at their disposal, that might have been particularly good advice for anyone trying to evade the reach of the De Voss family. Cookie De Voss may never even have known that her husband died so soon after she was reported missing.”
“Or maybe her husband wasn’t the only member of the family causing Cookie problems.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me, either. Dottie was in the area at the time, and she remembers everyone being surprised when Daniel married Cookie instead of Bernie. It’s too bad Bernie De Voss isn’t willing to be more forthcoming. If she’s having an affair with George Pierson, that’s risky business. I’ll bet Ted De Voss takes the ‘til death do us part’ marriage vow seriously.”
When we reached the corner across from Shakespeare’s Cottage, there was no police presence. Once we were inside the front gate, Robyn stepped out onto the porch to greet us. There was a wild look in her eyes that made me feel bad for her.
“What’s that?” I asked. Robyn looked at the smudges of white on her pants leg as she went back into the house and we followed her.
“It’s ghost dust, I guess. I’m sure I brushed against him before I realized the great white heap on the floor in my pantry was Shakespeare’s ghostly body.” She responded with the wild look in her eyes growing wilder by the second. “The police are going to blame me, aren’t they?”
“For what?” A voice said. We all turned to see Carl and Joe peering in from the porch.
“For killing Shakespeare’s ghost since he’s in my cottage and I’m the one who has complained endlessly about him.”
“You can’t be charged for killing a guy who’s already been dead for a few hundred years. Besides, could you have murdered a ghost even if you wanted to do it?” Joe asked. Charly shook her head as she motioned for the two men to come inside.
“We thought you were in police custody,” I said. “Get in here and stand watch so no one else walks in the way you two did just now.” They shut the door and turned on the porch light as the low light of dusk cast its long shadows everywhere. “The police are on their way and ought to be here any minute now.”
“Don’t worry about them hauling us off. We didn’t escape or do anything like that. Charly must have made a very strong case about our good character after Carl called her for help. Devers, and this Vargas guy who stopped us in the first place, turned us loose a few minutes later.” Charly raised an eyebrow as she made eye contact with me. We must have been thinking the same thing. I’m certain Hank had plenty to say about what characters they were. Poor Eddie Vargas must have already heard an earful from the deputy about his take on their “character” before Hank weighed in on the matter.
“How long ago was that? Please don’t tell me Deputy Devers is close enough that’s he’s the one who’s going to show up. Hurry, please.” Robyn dashed down the hallway with Charly and me trying to catch up with her. I braced myself when Robyn stepped through the archway leading into the kitchen. There was no dead ghost lying on the floor.
“In here,” Neely called. We moved toward the door of the pantry and both dogs started whining and barking. Then I saw him. The body on the ground was dressed as we’d seen him a couple of nights ago. Costumed to resemble Shakespeare, he was covered from head-to-toe in a white substance. He looked ghoulish, but the blood pooling beneath him made it clear he was no ghost.
“Is it okay to put the dogs outside?” Robyn asked as they strained to get into the pantry.
“Sure,” I replied rather absent-mindedly. “Domino was out there earlier today. She can show Emily around.”
“There’s no chance he’s still alive, is there?” Charly asked.
“No. He’s dead as a doornail.” Neely stood over him and motioned for us to join her. “This is what I wanted you to see.”
A note lay on the floor near the fingers on one hand. It was upside down, so we had to twist our necks to read the words. Written in a flowery script on a weathered piece of parchment paper, I read the words aloud as quickly as I could make them out.
“If great walls could talk and gave up their secrets,
Darkness would no longer conceal the family vault
Or deny the finder’s right by default,
To keep its stolen treasures without regrets”
“Family vault. What family vault?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I guess that proves it, doesn’t it?” Robyn asked from where she stood now that she’d rejoined us.
“Proves what?”
“That’s no ghost lying on the floor. What would Shakespeare do with a treasure?”
12 Stony-Hearted Villains
“Eight yards of uneven ground is threescore and ten miles afoot me, and the stony-hearted villains know it well enough. A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true to one another! – Henry IV
∞
“Is there a built-in safe in the cottage somewhere?”
“No one said anything about it when I moved in. If it’s the De Voss family vault, there’s no reason they’d want
me to know about it, is there?”
“If George told Marty the truth, the family had removed all their valuables before renting the cottage,” Charly noted. “Maybe Shakespeare didn’t get that update and believed the message he was toting around.”
“What if this is related to the smuggling and they want to use the vault to store pricy items?” Charly shrugged. “Vault sounds sturdy, doesn’t it? In my mind that means it’s much bigger than a wall-safe so there could be room to store loot. If it’s about a hidden vault loaded with treasure, why has it taken so long to locate it?”
“The note is a little short on details about how to find the vault or open it if you do find it. Maybe those are the secrets the walls would give up if they could talk—a map to the vault and a key or code to unlock it.” I nodded in agreement with Neely’s suggestions.
“I wonder who wrote the note, don’t you? The script and paper look old, but how old? Is it calligraphy or is it written in someone’s hand that Bernie or her husband might recognize?”
“Those are all good questions, Miriam. I hope Hank and his colleagues get cracking and try to answer them before there’s more carnage. A break-in, a confrontation between two intruders, and an assault was bad enough. Now, two days later, the stony-hearted villains are at it again and there’s a dead body.”
“If the villains who are responsible for the crime spree you’re talking about are associated with the smuggling ring, this isn’t the first murder to occur in connection with their operation. Maybe they’ve turned on each other. Hank must have some idea if that’s happened.”
“Or we’re dealing with rival gangs of thieves. Shakespeare and the guy in the windbreaker didn’t seem to be working together. What if there’s more than one faction out to get to the vault and whatever is in it—or believed to be in it even if it’s empty?” Neely asked.
“People have done worse to get their hands on a treasure that doesn’t exist or an artifact like the Holy Grail that turns out to be a fake,” Charly suggested. “Here’s another question for you? How did Shakespeare get in here? I don’t see a drop or streak of blood anywhere.”
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