by Morgana Best
I froze. The rush to prepare had prevented me from being nervous, but now a terrible bout of nervousness hit me all at once. My heart raced out of my chest. Butterflies churned horribly in my stomach.
I adjusted my dress, glanced at my reflection for the last time, and walked toward the door. I took a deep breath before opening the door.
Blake spoke before I could. “Wow, Sibyl, you look stunning,” he exclaimed. “You look beautiful.”
I felt myself blush horribly. “Err, thanks,” I stammered. “You don’t look so bad yourself.” I then silently scolded myself for saying something so lame.
Blake led the way to his car. He held the door open for me, before making his way around to the driver’s seat.
There was silence in the car. My nerves had left me well and truly mute, and Blake appeared to be focused intently on the road. I suddenly felt over dressed, shy, and uncomfortable. Did I think the date was more than what he had in mind? Did I overdo my clothes? Was Blake stunned by the fact that I was so dolled up, that it left him speechless? Was he thinking it was only a thank-you dinner after all?
We barely exchanged a word in the twenty minutes into Pharmidale, and so I was relieved when Blake turned his car off the highway. My relief was short-lived when I saw that we were heading for Three Orchards, the most expensive restaurant in Pharmidale.
When the hostess led us across the floor of the lavish restaurant, I held my breath with every step. I had never been there before, but I had heard of its reputation. Long, crystal chandeliers provided a muted light. The tables were set with wine glasses, plates and cutlery of the highest quality. Soft jazz music played in the background, and the restaurant was abuzz with Pharmidale’s wealthiest. I could not help but feel out of place.
“Have you ever been here before?” Blake asked, finally breaking the ice, after we were seated at an intimate, corner table.
I chuckled. “No, I haven’t. I’ve heard quite a bit about the place, though. I must admit, I’ve always wanted to come here, so thank you for bringing me.”
“Not a problem.” He smiled. “I really wanted to thank you for taking care of Tiny. I could tell he had a great time at your place. He and Sandy make quite a pair.”
I smiled, but my stomach churned yet again. Was this Blake’s way of making it clear that this was not a date—that he was only taking me to dinner to thank me for minding Tiny?”
“And it was good of you to take Tiny to dog training, too,” he added.
“That was Mr. Buttons,” I said. “Perhaps you should’ve brought him to dinner, too.” And next time, Sibyl, think before you speak, I added silently.
I need not have been concerned, as Blake clearly considered my remark quite funny. When he finished laughing, he said, “I don’t find Mr. Buttons nearly as attractive as I find you, Sibyl.”
I didn’t know where to look. Perhaps this was a date, after all. I really needed Patti Stanger here to explain it all to me. All I could do was stare at my wine glass and hope my face wasn’t as beet red as it felt.
After that initial fright, the rest of the evening went by smoothly. We talked about everything from sports to the local wilderness area. The conversation flowed easily, and both of us avoided any mention of the poisonings. At times, Blake had me in tears of laughter with his witty sense of humor while at the same time, making me feel relaxed and comfortable. I could be myself with him, and by dessert, I felt as if I had discovered a whole new side of Blake.
Of course, I still had my reservations. I was still reeling from a painful divorce—I mean, divorces are bad enough, but not everyone’s ex-husband tries to kill them—and I wasn’t ready to fall in love again. I had a bad track record with men, and I had no intention of making the same mistake, and falling for a man who seemed ideal at the time, only to find out years later that it was all a big blunder.
“I really enjoyed your company tonight, Sibyl,” Blake said, as we headed back down the highway to Little Tatterford.
I muttered, “Yes, likewise,” in reply. I really did need dating help. For a start, I needed to know whether or not this was actually a date.
When we arrived at my cottage, Blake again opened my door. We walked together the short distance to the cottage, and I took out my key.
“Good night, Sibyl,” Blake said.
I looked up at him to say goodbye, and then caught my breath as Blake leaned in closer. He was so close, I could smell the subtle scent of his aftershave, and his breath tickled my skin. I took a deep breath in anticipation of Blake’s next move. Blake pressed his lips against my cheek in a soft, short kiss.
Then he was gone. I leaned against the door, watching him drive away. “Yes, it was a date, after all,” I said aloud. “I’m sure he wouldn’t kiss Mr. Buttons.”
Chapter 17
It was a few minutes before nine at night, and I was doing a last minute tour through my house, making sure there was no clutter. I had just finished my inspection, when there was a soft knock at the door.
I hurried and pulled the door open, and there stood James, Alex, Michael, and Ken. There were four oversized black bags on the ground at their feet.
I wasn’t sure why I had agreed to this. James had cornered me that afternoon, and had asked if his team could come that night at nine to do an all night vigil in my home.
James smiled now and stepped inside, followed by the other three men. “Sibyl, thanks again for having us,” James said, and I smiled as best I could by way of response. I shut the door behind them and turned around, watching as each man set a black bag on the floor and took out different tools. There were cameras and strange electronics.
“Would anyone like some coffee?” I said. “Or some Cokes or something?”
“I’ll take a Coke,” James said. Tony and Michael nodded as well, so I went into my kitchen and pulled some cold cans from my fridge, and then returned to the living room to pass them out. James and Tony were sitting on the floor by the coffee table, going through the bags. I offered a can to Alex, and he took it and nodded. I sat on the couch, and watched them.
“Have you heard the stories about this place?” James asked me. Without waiting for a response, he continued. “I’m not just talking about the boarding house,” the ghost hunter continued. “This cottage is old, and it must’ve seen its fair share of deaths as well.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, trying to not sound scared. It was one thing to think of ghosts by the sensible light of day, but thinking of such things by night was yet another thing entirely. I most certainly did believe in ghosts, but in the time I had been living in the cottage, I had not sensed so much as a single presence.
“Who ya gonna call?” the cockatoo screeched from behind me. I stood as Michael snickered beside me and James rolled his eyes. I put Max out the back door into the garden room. “It’s night time, Max; birds are supposed to be asleep at night.”
“%&%$,” was Max’s reply, so I put him in his cage, put a cover over the cage, and returned to the living room.
“Sorry,” I said to the group.
James frowned at me. “No problem, but we will need complete silence when we begin.”
I nodded.
“Now, I wanted to let you know who we’re trying to reach. I’ve done as much research as I can on this place, this cottage, the boarding house, and I think if we’re going to reach anyone here, it’s going to be Rebecca Settler.”
I had never heard the name, but I knew James was itching to spill the beans, so I simply waited, and sure enough, he launched into an explanation.
“Rebecca Settler had an Irish father and an Australian mother. She had come to the boarding house in the late 1800’s at the age of seventeen, after both of her parents died of a fever. She got a job as a maid for the wealthy people who then owned what is now the boarding house, and for a while she lived there. The gardener at the time was a man of twenty five years of age named Andrew. He and Rebecca fell in love, and married, and they moved to live here in this
cottage. It was built just for them.”
I yawned, and wished Mr. Buttons had been present, but, as he pointed out, my cottage was simply not big enough for five people.
James was still talking. “Rebecca and Andrew were married for almost a year, when Abraham came to the boarding house. He was a friend of the owners, and he had been injured in some accident. I don’t know, there’s not too much written about it.”
I listened with interest. I found myself taken in by the story, even though I couldn’t be sure it was true.
James went on. “Rebecca was tasked with nursing Abraham back to health. They had spoken a lot, and they had gotten to know each other, and they slowly fell in love. Now Rebecca was torn between the two men, but she decided she wanted to be with Abraham. When he was well, and he was set to return to his own home, Rebecca came to pack her things up, she and Andrew got into a bad argument, and Rebecca ended up dead.”
There was silence in the room. I had to admit it was a good story, and if James had made it up, I was impressed.
When James spoke again his voice was soft, haunting. “So, if someone is in this cottage, it’s going to be Rebecca. I’d like to try to speak with her. She’s stuck here,” he added.
“Maybe she has unfinished business,” Michael said, and Ken and Alex nodded.
“I’ve never seen her,” I said.
“You can’t always see ghosts,” James said, his tone condescending. “Have you felt her?”
“No,” I said truthfully. I was increasingly annoyed with James. It was now becoming obvious to me that he was lying, and I didn’t appreciate it. If he believed in spirits, that was certainly fine with me—after all, I did too. If James wanted to find proof of ghosts—well, he was welcome to do whatever he wanted. But to come here, and to tell me a story I suspected was completely fabricated, was really rubbing me the wrong way. I had had enough; I stood up. I intended to say something rude, by was sidetracked by James taking up a theatrical pose in the center of my living room, with Alex training a large camera on him.
“This is going to be a difficult investigation,” he said in a voice deeper than usual. “At this location we have two buildings, a boarding house and a cottage, and the resident spirits travel freely between them.”
And then it was over. He stopped speaking, and Alex put down the large camera, and set up a smaller camera on a tripod. “Is it okay if we set up a camera, some REM pods and an EMF meter in your bedroom?” James asked.
“Sure,” I said. I figured I might as well put up with it. After all, if one of these guys was the murderer, then I might get some clues after an all-night vigil with them in the close confines of my cottage.
“I need everyone to be silent, please,” James said. “I’m going to speak into this recorder, and then leave it in Sibyl’s bedroom for the night. Tomorrow, we’ll listen to it and see anyone has responded to me.” He motioned for us to be quiet, and for Alex to film him. “We’ve come a long way to talk to you,” he said into the recorder. “Is anyone in here, in this cottage? Are you here, Rebecca? Are you here, Andrew? Please give us a sign that you’re here.”
He walked into my bedroom, with Alex following him, still filming.
The two returned moments later. “Now, that’s set up,” James said.
“Did you get any readings from the vigil at the boarding house?” I asked.
All four men nodded enthusiastically. “When we played back the audio, we heard all sorts of phenomena,” Ken said. “Voices, a violin playing, a scream, and there was a threatening spirit who kept telling us to leave. Plus, we had a camera in James’s room, and a small table in there rocked from side to side.”
I tried to recall all the ghost hunting shows I had seen on TV—Haunting Australia, Ghost Hunters, reruns of Most Haunted. “Do other ghost hunting shows get so much data?” I asked. “I mean, that sounds like a lot of stuff—more than I can remember seeing on TV.”
“Oh, that’s why the network wanted me to sign the deal,” James gushed. “We have better equipment. I’ve tweaked all the equipment and we get much better results than anyone else.” He smiled broadly, and I couldn’t help but notice that Alex, Michael, and Ken stared at him with admiration plainly stamped all over their faces.
“We’ll have to do it differently, as your cottage is so small,” James said to me. “We’ll all stay in this room with the cameras on and the voice recorders going. First of all, we have to walk around the room to make sure our readings won’t be influenced by anything electrical.”
I sat on the old, antique French chair and watched the four of them walk around with various forms of equipment. I was already having trouble staying awake, and the night was yet young. I suppressed a yawn, and wondered what James would say if I asked him if I could go to bed. I shook myself and reminded myself that I was here to catch a murderer. Cressida had very nearly fallen victim. Sure, Blake was back in town, but the bungling detectives were no doubt doing everything they could to shut the case down.
I looked around at the four men, James, Ken, Michael, and Alex. The fifth suspect was Dorothy. It was likely that one of the five was the murderer, so there were four out of five chances that the murderer was in my living room right now, and I was looking right at him. Of the four men, there was just something about James. Since meeting him, I had disliked him, then liked him, then tolerated him, and so on, back and forth. Something about him tonight, watching him with his lies, had made me uneasy. You either liked someone, or you didn’t. I sat for a few more minutes, and then I fell asleep.
Chapter 18
I yawned widely as I rinsed the wriggling and squirming beagle puppy. It was an unusually busy day, with lots of last minute call ins. While I was grateful for the extra income, the timing was appalling—I was growing more tired by the minute.
I had known that giving into a ghost vigil would impact my work day. Life was chaotic enough without being part of some sort of supernatural reality television show, but I had hoped to gain some clue as to the identity of the murderer.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the previous night. I was, however, sure of one thing—it would be weeks before I stopped jumping at drafts and shadows. Having the four of them jumping and making a big deal out of every noise for the entire night would no doubt have my imagination working overtime for some time to come.
I had to wonder if they really believed in their work. It was hard to believe when I had seen with my own eyes James’s attempts to sensationalize their work with gasps and whispers to the camera. A greater problem was James’s desire to capitalize on Sue’s death. Even if James sincerely believed he could track signs of ghosts and such, it seemed cruel to hope his friend was now a spirit haunting the place. This surely was an intimate matter—not something to be shared on television.
Then again, to be fair, perhaps James’s passion for his work had momentarily overridden his sense of decency. I remembered seeing a Dr. Phil episode on the strange and socially inappropriate things people did when dealing with grief. As long as it wasn’t hurting anyone, there didn’t seem to be a reason to make a scene of it.
I shook myself from my thoughts. I had to finish grooming all the dogs, drag myself home, and make dinner. I could only hope nothing came up before I got a quick shower and crawled into bed. I could barely stay awake now.
“Well Koda, you should be good to go,” I said to the impatient pup as I took him out of the tub and rubbed him down with a soft towel. He was so excited to be done with his bath that he spun in a tight circle with an excited whimper. I laughed as I dried him with the dryer.
“How are things going in here?” Koda’s owner, Susan, asked as she made her way in with a tray bearing two coffee cups and several cup cakes.
“We’re just finishing up.” I smiled at the woman as I picked up a grooming brush, testing the fur to make sure Koda was dry before brushing him. Susan was a new client, having hired me only recently, within days after getting Koda for her children.
Susan se
t down the tray on a nearby table. “Are you feeling any better? You looked exhausted when you got here.”
“Oh yes. It was just a long day today,” I said, bending down to put Koda on a clean cushion in a crate. As I handed him a treat, I bemoaned the fact that I thought I had hidden my tiredness rather well, but obviously I hadn’t. I needed to work on it before I went to my last two stops of the day.
“It seems like it.” Susan handed me a mug of coffee and a cupcake.
“Thanks Susan. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
“I imagine you’ve had your hands full,” Susan said. “You live on the same property as that boarding house, correct? The one those ghost hunters are staying at?”
I could not help but detect a hint of something—concern or disapproval—in Susan’s voice.
“That’s right,” I said, hoping Susan would say more.
Susan frowned. “I hope they’re better behaved there than they are in town.”
“What happened? What did they do in town?”
Susan shrugged. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not anything really bad. I was just in town getting my prescriptions, and I saw one of them at odds with Dorothy. She and the boy were all but screaming at each other right in the middle of the street.”
“Oh my.” I was at a loss for words. I knew Dorothy had a bad temper, but why would she yell at one of the ghost hunters in the middle of town? “What happened exactly?” I asked. “Which one of the ghost hunters was it?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest. I was too far away to hear what they were arguing about. It was the man with the longer, black hair, if that helps. The others hung back while he and Dorothy were having words with one another.”
James. Why would James argue with Dorothy? “Do you know which one started it?” I asked.
Susan shook her head, “Sorry, I don’t know. It did go on for some time, though. It gave all the locals something to watch.” She laughed.
My mind whirled as I tried to think of a plausible reason those two would have to make a scene out in public. It wasn’t as if they didn’t run into each other often enough at the boarding house. They’d had plenty of opportunity to vent their frustrations in private. I would have thought Dorothy and James would have been professional enough to not take it to the streets.