by Bobbi Holmes
“Please, it’s Beau and Francine,” Beau told her. “I’d like you to meet our son and daughter, Brad and Kathy.”
“Nice to meet you,” Danielle said. She guessed they were about her age and found it interesting how both son and daughter favored the mother. They exchanged a few words, and Danielle turned to introduce them to Brian, but he was no longer there. Glancing around, she didn’t see him and assumed he had gone into the house.
Turning back to the family, she gave them a smile and motioned to the food on the table. “Please help yourself to any of the food. You’ll find beverages in the tubs of ice around the yard. We have a croquet set over there…” Danielle briefly pointed the way. “And if you would like a tour of the house, my husband and Ian are giving tours.”
“That wouldn’t be Ian, as in Jon Altar?” Francine asked excitedly.
When Brian entered the kitchen, he found Heather helping Joanne fill pitchers of ice with freshly brewed tea. He said hello to the women and continued on through the house. Once in the entry hall, he spied Ian heading upstairs with a group of people, including Pearl. He didn’t see anyone else on the first floor. All the guests inside appeared to be going with Ian on a tour.
Brian glanced in the library, dining room, and then the living room. They were empty, as was the downstairs bedroom. He imagined more people would come inside shortly. He continued on to the parlor and noticed they had rearranged the furniture since the last time he had been in the house. Stepping into the parlor, he glanced around. He spied Danielle’s cat, Max, napping soundly on the windowsill. If the cat rolled over, he would fall off.
They had moved the small sofa to the opposite side of the room, now facing the inside wall. Behind the sofa was a collage of framed black-and-white photographs. One frame tilted to the right. He walked to the sofa, stepped behind it, and reached out his hand to straighten the picture. To his annoyance, the framed picture and the nail it had been hanging on fell to the floor. He reached down to pick it up and search for the nail when he heard a male voice say, “Max, here you are.”
Brian peeked around the sofa, concealed from view, and watched as Walt stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, as if he wanted privacy. He was about to stand up and reveal himself but stopped when he heard Walt say, “Max, wake up. I need to talk to you.”
Crouched behind the furniture, Brian watched as the cat lifted his head and meowed at Walt.
“Come here, Max,” Walt ordered. Max jumped down from the windowsill, walked to the desk, leapt up on it, sat down, and faced Walt, his tail swishing.
“Yes, I know you wanted to sleep,” he heard Walt say. “We need your help.”
Still crouching behind the sofa, Brian frowned and listened.
“According to the ghost, they’re supposed to be here today. You need to listen. See if you can recognize their voices.”
Max meowed again.
“I know all human voices sound the same to you. But that’s not entirely true.”
Another meow.
“If you recognize them, tell me or Marie. Whoever you see first. Do you understand?”
Max meowed and jumped off the desk. Walt walked to the parlor door and opened it. Together Walt and Max left the room.
Brian slumped down on the floor behind the sofa, the framed photograph he had been holding moments earlier abandoned on the floor. He sat in silence, thinking. After a few moments, he laughed.
“That son of a bitch saw me come in here. He’s messing with me.” Brian’s laughter stopped a moment later, and he remained sitting on the floor. “At least I sure as hell hope he was messing with me.”
The Stewart family helped themselves to refreshments before going inside to take a tour. As they filled their plates, Heather came outside from the kitchen, carrying several pitchers of iced tea. Kathy Stewart moved out of the way, allowing Heather to set the pitchers on the table. As she stepped aside, she curiously looked Heather up and down. When Heather left and returned to the house, Kathy asked her father, “Who was that?”
Beau glanced to the kitchen door Heather had just entered and back to his daughter. “I’ve met her. I think her name is Heather. She works for the Glandon Foundation.”
“Does she think she’s a witch or something?” Kathy asked with a snort.
Beau laughed. “She dresses like it.”
“Think she’s part of that witches’ coven in Frederickport?” Kathy asked seriously.
“I told you, don’t be silly. There is no such thing as witches,” Beau told his daughter.
“I didn’t say I believe they’re really witches. But some people imagine they’re all sorts of things, like Elvis, Napoleon, Jesus, and even witches. By the way that woman dresses, I’d say it’s a good bet she thinks she’s a witch.” Kathy finished filling her plate, unaware that Marie had come outside minutes earlier and had overheard the conversation.
Finding the speculation amusing, Marie hurried back inside to share what she had overheard with Heather.
Tours of Marlow House continued to attract curious guests well into the late afternoon. To Danielle’s surprise, Pearl hadn’t left after her tour with Ian, but lingered outside, chatting with townspeople and munching on food from Pearl Cove. While she appeared to be enjoying herself, she didn’t spare Danielle a smile, even when given one. When Danielle stopped by Pearl’s group, she asked, “I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves.” Most assured Danielle they were and complimented the food and lovely surroundings, while Pearl suggested the iced tea might be rancid.
The others in their tour had just followed Walt into the closet off the second-floor master bedroom, to explore the hidden staircase. They stayed behind, lingering in the bedroom. There was no reason to go in the secret staircase. They had seen enough of that when breaking into the house.
“You need to come see this,” she whispered to her brother. They were the only two people in the bedroom. He walked over to her and watched as she pushed aside a painting from the wall. It concealed a safe.
“How did you find that?” he asked.
“Pure chance. I was looking at the painting. I don’t think Marlow saw me touching it,” she said, arranging the painting as it had been before she moved it to one side.
“You think that’s where it is?” he asked.
“It could be. But burning the house down is a really stupid idea now. Can you imagine, we torch the freaking house, and that stupid safe remains, they get in it and see what’s written in the diary? We risk going to prison, and we don’t even destroy the damn thing.”
He glanced toward the closet where everyone had gone. “Let’s check the rest of this room until they come back.”
Twenty-One
Someone might mistake Brian Henderson for a marine—albeit an older one—as opposed to a member of the Frederickport police force. He stood at the refreshment table, filling a paper plate with food, his gray hair shorter than he normally wore it, after a recent trip to the barber. His husky physique stretched out the snug-fitting golf shirt. Brian wasn’t trying to show off his abs, the ones he cultivated by regular trips to the gym, but he was single, and when doing laundry the last time, he had shrunk a load of clothes, and he had no other clean shirt to wear today. Plus, it was blue, a fitting color for a July Fourth party.
He had stepped away from the table and took a bite, still standing, when he heard Joe Morelli’s voice say, “I think the chief’s anonymous source was off this time.” Brian turned to the fellow officer now standing by his side. He glanced briefly over Joe’s shoulder and spied Kelly, Joe’s girlfriend, some distance away, holding her nephew, Connor, while talking to her sister-in-law, Lily.
After swallowing his bite of food, Brian said, “I think you’re right. I haven’t noticed anyone straying away from the tours inside. And it’s mostly familiar faces. Except for her.” He nodded to a black woman about to go into the house.
“Adam introduced us earlier,” Joe said. “She and her cousins are renting a house here for t
he summer.”
They chatted for a few minutes about the crowd before Brian nodded toward Kelly in the distance. “Kelly looks natural holding a baby.”
Joe glanced over to his girlfriend. “Connor’s not really a baby anymore. He’s been walking for a few weeks now.”
“When are you going to give her one of her own to hold?” Brian teased.
“It would probably be a good thing if we got married first,” Joe said.
“No one waits anymore,” Brian said.
Joe let out a snort and said, “Have you met my mom? She’s not thrilled we’re living together. If I told her we were having a baby out of wedlock, I don’t even want to imagine her reaction.”
“So you don’t want kids?” Brian asked.
“I didn’t say that. Just said Kelly and I need to get married first.”
With a plate of food in one hand and a plastic fork in the other, Brian arched his brow. “So you two getting married?”
Joe glanced over to Kelly but said nothing.
Marie had spent the last thirty minutes following a couple around who had wandered away from Walt’s tour. A nosey couple, they peeked in drawers and opened cabinets, but by their conversation, Marie doubted they were the couple contemplating arson. After following them downstairs, she watched as they finally left the house for the side yard. She was about to go upstairs when she spied a black couple coming down the staircase. She had seen them earlier taking a tour with Walt. As they reached the first-floor landing, they paused a moment and looked toward the doorway leading to the kitchen. Today everyone had been coming and going via the kitchen, entering and exiting through the back door into the side yard.
A moment later a young woman stepped out from the kitchen into the hallway and hurried in the couple’s direction; they met her halfway.
“Did you find anything?” the new arrival asked in a whisper.
Marie barely heard what she had said and moved closer.
“Where have you been, Raven?” the man asked.
“I was talking to the woman who’s married to Jon Altar, or whatever his name is,” Raven said. “According to her, he wrote no part of Moon Runners. Did you guys find anything?”
“We looked everywhere upstairs. We even found a safe in one bedroom. It’s locked, so if it’s in there, we can’t get to it,” the man said.
“I think we have a winner!” Marie announced.
“Did you check the library yet?” Raven asked.
“We tried to earlier, but there were people in there,” the other woman said. “So we took the tour with Walt Marlow instead.”
“Let’s go see if anyone is in there now,” Raven suggested.
Marie followed the three down the entry hall and to the library. When they arrived in the room, there were two people checking out the portraits while Max sat nearby on the sofa, watching them. The three people Marie had followed into the room said hello to the couple and assumed the pretext of checking out the titles on the shelves.
When the couple left, the three began hurrying around the room, opening drawers, looking on the shelves, and examining books. After about ten minutes of looking, the one named Raven took a seat on the sofa and began petting Max.
“Raven, come on,” the man urged.
“We’re not going to find anything,” Raven said, reaching out and picking up Max, setting him on her lap. “This is stupid.”
The other woman looked to Raven and said, “You’ll get cat hair all over your pants.”
Raven shrugged. “He’s a sweet cat. Can you hear that purr?” She laughed.
Marie went upstairs to tell Walt what she had overheard. When she found him, he was with a group of people, and while she could convey her message, he could not respond. Not unless he wanted to look crazy.
She found Ian by the stairwell leading to the attic bedroom, chatting with several people, but there was no reason to tell him what she had overheard. He could neither see nor hear her. By the closed bathroom door and the light slipping out, Marie suspected Chris was using the bathroom, and she didn’t imagine he would appreciate her barging in the room with him.
Marie headed back downstairs and found Heather in the kitchen, helping Joanne. She almost shared with Heather what she had overheard but decided to find Danielle instead. Earlier, Heather hadn’t found Marie’s witch story amusing, and she seemed a tad annoyed with her for sharing.
A moment later, Marie stood outside on the back patio, looking for Danielle. More people crowded in the yard than in the house. She credited the sunny weather for keeping the guests outside. Those who ventured inside took one of the tours and then returned to the patio for another trip around the refreshment table.
Toward the rear of the yard, where Heather had set up the vintage croquet set that morning, a number of guests gathered, some playing the game, others watching. By the gate entrance, Adam and Melony sat at the table, chatting with Susan Mitchell from the bank and her husband. But still Marie did not see Danielle.
The sound of the back door opening caught Marie’s attention, and she turned around. The three people from the library stepped outside.
“Let’s get out of here,” the one called Raven said.
“I want to get something to eat,” the man said.
“Okay, then we leave,” Raven said.
“Oh dear,” Marie muttered. “I need to tell someone before they leave.”
Marie looked around again. While she couldn’t find Danielle, she spied Police Chief MacDonald standing in the yard under a shade tree, talking with Brian Henderson. Taking another quick glance around the patio and yard, she spied the chief’s youngest son, Evan MacDonald, standing alone by the refreshment table.
She suspected Evan was getting ready to snatch a chocolate cupcake, the way his long-lashed big brown eyes stared at one, and the tip of his tongue absently licked a corner of his mouth. Marie didn’t imagine a cupcake would hurt him. He looked thinner than she remembered, yet she assumed that had something to do with how fast he had grown, shooting up in height. Was he eight now? she wondered. He looked much older.
Evan was the only medium in sight, the only one who could tell the chief what she had learned about the three people.
“I need your help, Evan,” Marie said when she materialized next to the boy a moment later.
He looked up at her and grinned but said nothing.
“I need you to tell your father something for me,” she explained, glancing over to where the police chief stood talking to Brian Henderson.
Evan nodded and turned, running to his father.
“Dad—” Evan began when he reached the chief a moment later.
The chief glanced down at his son and said, “I told you, no more cupcakes.”
“But, Dad,” Evan continued.
“Evan, no,” the chief snapped.
“I need to talk to you,” Evan said.
“What is it?” Edward asked, looking at his son.
“Can we go over there?” Evan asked, pointing some distance away where he could have privacy to talk to his father.
“In a minute, Evan, you interrupted a conversation.”
“But, Dad—” Evan said. Again, the chief silenced his son.
“Edward, you can be so stubborn sometimes!” Marie snapped. She reached over and grabbed hold of the police chief’s right earlobe, giving it a firm tug.
Evan’s eyes widened as he watched the ghost tweak his father’s ear. He failed to suppress a giggle when the chief made a yelping sound and grabbed his sore lobe.
Edward frowned down at his smiling son, who only shrugged, while Brian asked, “What’s wrong, Chief?”
“I think something bit me,” Edward grumbled, still rubbing his ear. “Excuse me. I need to talk to my son.” He reached down, grabbed hold of Evan’s hand, and led him away to a private section of the yard while his other hand rubbed the injured ear.
“Marie is trying to get my attention, isn’t she?” the chief asked.
Evan nodde
d.
“If you weren’t so doggone stubborn, I wouldn’t have to take such harsh measures,” Marie snapped.
“What is she trying to tell me?” the chief asked.
“She said if you weren’t so doggone stubborn, she wouldn’t have to take such harsh measures,” Evan repeated.
The chief couldn’t help but smile. “I suppose she’s right. What else did she want to tell me?”
Marie had finished relaying the message to Evan, who repeated it to his father, when Danielle came walking outside with Walt. MacDonald asked Marie if she would bring the couple to him while he waited with Evan.
A few minutes later, Danielle and Walt joined the chief and his son. The four stood in the middle of the yard, whispering amongst themselves. Five, if you counted Marie. After Marie filled them in, they looked toward the three suspects, who now sat at a picnic table on the side patio, finishing their food.
They silently watched the suspects, deciding how to handle the situation, when Max suddenly appeared, jumping up on the picnic table and trying to sniff the food on one plate. The woman whose plate Max inspected did not seem overly concerned and gently pushed him away while scratching under his chin.
“I have an idea,” Walt told his small group. “Stay here.”
Silently Danielle, MacDonald, Marie and Evan watched as Walt walked over to the picnic table.
When Walt reached the table, he snatched up Max, holding him in his arms. He smiled down at the three. “Sorry about Max.”
The woman who had been petting Max returned the smile. “It’s okay. I love cats.”
Still holding Max firmly in his arms, Walt looked down at him.
Everyone else is eating, Max conveyed.
I don’t care about that, Walt silently returned. Their voices? Are any of them the same as the ones who broke in the other night?
Max looked up to Walt and meowed.