by Bobbi Holmes
“He lied about what he does for a living.”
“Or so you say the dog said…or didn’t say. Whatever. He seems harmless enough.” Danielle glanced uneasily at Walt. She was not looking forward to telling him how he died.
“The plumber said he probably couldn’t get here for at least an hour. Why don’t we talk while I wait for him?”
“You found out something?” Walt looked hopeful.
“Yeah…I did.” Danielle pulled up a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. Walt joined her.
“I went to the newspaper office first. I learned that years ago there was a fire that destroyed all their past copies of the paper. But the lady suggested I check with the museum, because they’ve collected old issues from subscribers. So that’s what I did.”
“You found an article on my death?”
“Yes. The first article written in the local paper. Unfortunately, Lily called in a panic about the broken water pipe so I didn’t get a chance to read any of the other articles.”
“What did it say?”
“Mr. Marlow, I don’t think you’re gong to like this.”
“Well, I don’t imagine I would be thrilled with any news of my death. And please, call me Walt.”
“Okay…Walt.” Danielle paused a moment before continuing. “This probably explains why you’re still here. Why you can’t seem to leave.”
“Go on.”
“You killed yourself.”
He didn’t respond immediately—just looked blankly at Danielle. Abruptly he stood up; the chair he had been sitting in crashed to the floor.
“I did not kill myself!”
“You hung yourself in the attic. Your neighbor—George Hemming found you. He looked out his window and saw you hanging in your attic window.”
“George found me?”
“He’s the one who stopped over here after Angela left for Portland?”
“Yes. We were good friends. But this is impossible. There is no way in hell I hung myself. There must be something in the other articles—the ones written after the first one—the ones you haven’t read yet—that say it was all a mistake.”
“I don’t think so, Walt. The museum docent knew all about your story. Claimed to have read all the articles regarding your death and said it was suicide.”
“What did it say about Angela?”
“Just that she was in Portland, visiting her brother. According to the docent this wasn’t long after you returned from your honeymoon.”
“I remember Angela leaving for that trip. We argued before she left, but I certainly wasn’t depressed and suicidal. No. There has been some mistake.”
Danielle watched as Walt paced the kitchen in a fit of agitation. Suddenly he stopped pacing and faced Danielle.
“I know why I’m still here.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to prove I didn’t commit suicide. You have to help me. I can’t leave while people believe I killed myself.”
Chapter Nine
Ian and Lily had just walked into Pier Café when they heard a man ask the waitress: “Do you think they’ll change the name or call it Marlow House?”
Lily stopped abruptly and stared at the man. He was less than four feet away, his back to her as he sat at the lunch counter. She couldn’t see his face, just the back of his gray dress shirt and his head of shortly cut dark hair. His breakfast companion, a second man sitting next to him at the counter, noticed Lily staring and turned around to face her, a cup of coffee in his hand. The waitress standing behind the counter, refilling the coffee cup of the man who’d mentioned Marlow House, glanced up at Lily.
“Sit anywhere,” the waitress told Ian and Lily. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“Did you say Marlow House?” Lily asked the man in the gray shirt. He turned around to face her. Lily found herself staring into a pair of arresting black eyes. Both he and his companion looked to be in their early thirties. The attractive dark eyed man looked as if he was dressed to go to the office, while his companion, an average looking fellow with forgettable features, dull brown hair and pale blue eyes, looked like a construction worker, dressed in worn denims and a stained blue work shirt.
“Yes, why?” the man asked.
“Well...ahhh…” Lily stammered. A wave of embarrassment washed over her as the man boldly moved his gaze up and down her body before looking her in the eyes. The fact she was with Ian did not curb his blatant perusal.
“My friend owns Marlow House.” Lily almost said, I’m staying at Marlow House, but quickly changed her mind because of how he was looking at her.
“Really? So when does it open for business?” the man in the gray shirt asked as he turned around completely, now facing Ian and Lily as he leaned back against the counter. Briefly he glanced over at Ian, before looking back at Lily.
“Open for business? What do you mean?” Lily frowned.
“I was just telling them how Marlow House is going to be a B and B,” the waitress behind the counter explained. “So you’re a friend of the new owner?”
“Yes, but how do you know anything about a B and B?” Lily asked.
“Small town,” the waitress said with a shrug.
“So it’s true?” the man in the gray shirt asked.
“Umm….well…” Lily suddenly wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “It’s one possibility, yes.” Without saying another word, Lily grabbed Ian’s hand and pulled him across the diner to a booth. They sat down, sitting across from each other.
“What was that about?” Ian asked. Lily glanced over at the counter; the man in the gray shirt was still staring at her.
“I just felt funny talking about Danielle’s business with strangers. She gets a little annoyed with me sometimes when I blurt things out without thinking.” Lily picked up two menus from the end of the table and handed one to Ian.
“So how do you think they knew?” Ian glanced over at the two men and waitress. The man wearing the gray shirt gave him a nod and then turned back around to the counter.
“Probably because it is a small town. Danielle had her attorney do all the legwork already—checking into the legalities, lining up necessary permits and licenses. Figuring out what she needed to do to comply with the local laws. I guess when you start doing stuff like that it’s kind of hard to keep it a secret.”
“So she’s got everything in place, ready to go?”
“Not exactly. She wanted to check out the property personally before making the final commitment. Unless the contractor she’s hiring to check out the house comes up with a ridiculous list of needed repairs, it’s possible she could be ready to open within a month. That’s of course if we work our butts off.”
“That soon?”
Before Lily could respond, the waitress came to their table with coffee and took their order. When she left, Lily answered Ian’s question.
“If last week someone had asked me when Danielle would be opening the B and B, I would tell them not until next summer.”
“A year? Now you say a month?” Ian sipped his coffee.
“I expected the house to be a wreck—after all, it’s been vacant for almost ninety years.”
“So that is true?” Ian set his coffee cup on the table and looked up at Lily. “It’s really been vacant that long?”
“No one’s lived in it since 1925.”
“I’d heard that,” Ian mumbled.
“You have? I didn’t realize you were familiar with the house’s history.”
“I’m not really,” Ian shrugged. “When I rented my house for the summer I was curious about the neighborhood. Marlow House is in good shape, but by the condition of the yard, I didn’t think anyone lived there. I asked around about it.”
“Danielle’s great-aunt—that’s who left her the property—she hired a housekeeper to come once a week.”
Joanne Johnson, Ian said to himself. Lily chatted away, her conversation wandered from Marlow House to teaching. Ian smiled and nodded, yet his min
d kept drifting back to his real reason for being at Frederickport. Lily asked him about his teaching job, jolting him back to the present. Before answering, he looked up into Lily’s green eyes.
She was definitely his type, he thought—at least her physical attributes—busty yet petite. Tall women never appealed to him. He wasn’t sure what it said about him that he preferred a woman to look up to him, rather than standing at eye level. “I’m on vacation, so I’d rather not talk about my work. I’m here to get away from work,” he lied.
“That must mean you don’t like teaching.” Lily sounded a little disappointed.
“It’s not that, exactly.” Ian took a sip of his coffee, trying to silently frame his next sentence. “But don’t you ever feel you spend the entire school year focused on nothing but work? Don’t you ever want to take the summer off and explore new things?”
“I guess you’re right,” Lily agreed. “That’s why I’m here.”
“So tell me about that,” Ian said.
“What do you mean?” Lily set her coffee cup down and looked into Ian’s eyes. God he is handsome, she thought. I bet all those high school girls have crushes on him.
“It sounds interesting—your friend inheriting Marlow House. Her plans to turn it into a bed and breakfast. What do you know about its history?”
“History? Not much really. I know her great aunt left her the property. Not a blood relative. She was married to Danielle’s great-uncle, her grandfather’s brother. She didn’t even know the house existed when her aunt died.”
“So she never knew anything about the house until then?”
“Nope, nothing.” Lily shook her head. “Her great-aunt and uncle lived in Europe for as long as she could remember. She didn’t even know they had property in the states.”
“Interesting,” Ian murmured. He glanced to the lunch counter where the two men still sat. Frowning, he turned his attention back to Lily. “Does she know how her aunt came to own the property?”
“From what I understand she inherited it from her mother. But beyond that, Danielle doesn’t know much.” Lily paused for a moment, and then added, “Except about the curse.”
“The curse?” Ian arched his brows.
“They say there’s a curse on the property. People who own it have bad luck, or something like that. I don’t think Danielle believes there really is a curse.”
“Do you know if the house has been repaired a lot over the years?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…” Ian paused for a moment, again looking for the right words. How can I get the information I want without it sounding like a strange question? “If Danielle intends to turn the place into an inn, I wondered how many repairs have been done over the years. How many walls torn down, that sort of thing. It might reflect on how sturdy the house is.” That sounded lame even to me, Ian cursed himself.
“From what I understand the house has pretty much remained untouched over the years—aside from a weekly cleaning from a housekeeper. Of course, it has been almost ninety years, so I imagine there were repairs over the years. Even when someone doesn’t live in a house things can break. An unmaintained vacant house seems to deteriorate quicker than a maintained house that suffers the daily wear and tear of people living in it. In fact, Danielle and I had a discussion about this last night.”
“You know, I’m pretty handy around the house.”
“I noticed that this morning.” Lily grinned.
“My dad was a general contractor. I worked for him during high school and through college. You mentioned Danielle was going to hire a contractor to check out the house. I would be happy to go through it for her, no charge. It would be fun.”
“Fun? You have a strange idea of fun.” Lily laughed.
“It would give me something to do, and I always enjoyed the work.”
“Then why did you go into teaching and not construction, like your dad?”
“It’s one thing to do something as a hobby and another to turn it into a fulltime career—working for other people. I’d rather do my own thing.”
“I’ve a friend who buys old houses and fixes them up to flip. He makes good money, and he pretty much works for himself.”
“That can be pretty risky,” Ian said.
“I used to think teaching was a dependable job. Class sizes went down in California and teachers were in demand. They went up again, and there were layoffs.”
Ian didn’t comment, so Lily asked, “So why did you decide to be an English teacher?”
“Well…I like to write. It seemed to fit.”
“Have you ever considered writing a book?” Lily asked.
“Doesn’t every English teacher?” Ian grinned.
“I admire writers. I couldn’t do it.” Lily shook her head at the idea.
“Why do you say that?”
“For one thing, I don’t think I’d have enough patience to sit in front of a computer or typewriter that long.”
“I hear some people still write with a pen and paper.”
“No way. I definitely couldn’t do that. Sounds even more grueling than writing a book using a word processor.”
Across the diner at the lunch counter, the two men sat alone finishing their breakfast. Adam Nichols, the man wearing the gray shirt briefly glanced over to Lily, before turning his attention back to his companion, Bill Jones.
“The friend. She’s hot,” Adam chuckled.
“Looks like Ian agrees with you. He sure gave you a dirty look when you were checking her out.”
“I wonder what the other one looks like.” Adam popped the last bite of toast in his mouth.
“You following Ian’s lead?” Bill glanced over at Ian and Lily.
“It’s a good guess he’s already made it in the house.”
“We wouldn’t have to deal with this crap if Renton knew what the hell he was talking about. We were supposed to have a week to get it done.” Bill picked up his mug and downed the remainder of his coffee.
“And we better figure out how we’re going to do that before Ian beats us to it.”
Chapter Ten
Weary from the long day, Danielle snuggled under a pile of blankets and closed her eyes. She’d brought fresh linens and blankets with her to Frederickport. She couldn’t imagine sleeping in whatever dusty bedding she might find in the old house. It was her second night in her new home. The day had been busy, beginning with her visit to the newspaper office and museum, and then dealing with the plumber. Fortunately the leak was an easy fix, yet she was grateful it hadn’t occurred last week, between visits from the housekeeper. The possible water damage could have racked up a serious repair bill.
One positive about the day’s events was that the plumber had time to go through the house and see what needed to be done to help her bring the building into the twenty-first century. She wanted to order new, modern appliances and wanted to make sure she could hook up a washing machine and dishwasher, not to mention an icemaker on whatever refrigerator she ended up buying.
When Lily and Ian returned from breakfast, the plumber had already completed the repairs and was inspecting the rest of the house. Ian offered to go through the property looking for other needed repairs after explaining his construction background. Danielle thanked him and lied, saying she’d already made arrangements with a contractor. While Ian seemed like a nice enough guy, she didn’t feel comfortable knowing he was not being truthful regarding his state of employment. That was, of course, she reminded herself, if she could believe a golden retriever.
Danielle assumed Ian was interested in Lily, considering the way he hung around for a good hour after returning from breakfast. It wasn’t until Lily gently nudged him out the door, saying she needed to get some work done, that he finally took the hint and left. Danielle could tell Lily was a little sad to see him go.
After a closer inspection of the home’s furnishings, Danielle realized it would be necessary to either reupholster or replace some of the pieces. In th
e room Lily was using, the fabric covering the small sofa crumbled when Lily set her suitcase on its cushion. While that was the only piece of upholstered furniture she found where the fabric had totally deteriorated, she noticed thinning and tearing upholstery on other chairs and sofas throughout the house.
Danielle hadn’t seen Walt since that morning. He’d vanished moments after announcing she had to prove he hadn’t committed suicide. She’d been so busy dealing with the plumber that she hadn’t had time to consider his request or, more accurately, his demand.
Yawning, Danielle rolled over on her left side and then smelled something—cigar smoke. Opening her eyes, she was startled to find Walt Marlow lounging casually next to her on the bed, leisurely smoking a cigar as he leaned against the headboard. Still wearing the same vintage suit and polished leather dress shoes, he looked as if he was ready to go out on the town.
Sitting up abruptly, pulling the top edge of the blanket up to cover her chest, she glared at Walt. Under the blanket she wore plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a tank top.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed.
“It’s my bedroom.” Walt let out a smoke ring and watched it curl and disappear.
“It was your bedroom,” she corrected. “Get out of my bed!”
“You’re in my bed, Danielle. I am willing to share. You are a selfish girl, aren’t you?” He turned his head toward her and smiled.
“Technically speaking, this was never your bed. My aunt replaced the beds in this house about five years ago.” Danielle scooted up a little straighter and then leaned back on the headboard, her hands still clutching the top of her blanket as she watched Walt.
“She did?” Walt arched his brows thoughtfully as if considering her words. “Hmm, that explains things.”
“Explains what?”
“I thought Angela had ordered new beds. I wondered why at the time. I asked the delivery men what they were doing. Where they were taking my beds. But they just ignored me.”
“You were a ghost. They couldn’t see you.”
“I understand that now. Why did she buy new beds if she never came here?”