The Ghosts of Cragera Bay

by Dawn Brown

  Meyers rolled his eyes and took a swig from his coffee. “See that right there, that’s what you need to stop.”

  “Mr. Meyers, if you would just let me bring in a team to investigate—”

  He snorted. “That’s never going to happen. Not alone. Not with a team. Not in a box. Not with a fox.”

  “I see you’re a fan of the classics.”

  “I need to sell that house. What I don’t need is some new-age flake asking questions about ghosts and murder cults and magic energy.”

  She wrapped her hands tightly around her teacup, half-surprised the thin china didn’t shatter in her grip. Narrow-minded ignoramuses really shouldn’t be able to get under her skin after so many years working in a field few people took seriously, but they did. He did.

  “Mr. Meyers, several reliable witnesses experienced phenomena inside your home, at the bog, your own sisters among them.”

  He drew in a deep breath and released it slowly as if struggling with his own battle for control. “These women, my sisters, are strangers. I don’t care what they experienced, and if they think sending you to slow down my chances of unloading the estate will get them anything—”

  Laughter bubbled up her throat before she could stop it. “Believe me, your sisters want no part of Stonecliff.”

  “Lucky for them, no part is what they got.”

  She blinked at his animosity. He hadn’t even met these women.

  “It’s not my intention to hinder the sale of Stonecliff,” she told him.

  “Maybe not, but that’s the result.”

  “You don’t think the dead men they hauled out of the bog might be the reason that you’re not having to beat off a long line of potential buyers? How many bodies have they found now? At least twelve, but I thought there’d been three more since the arrests.” She squinted as if struggling to remember.

  “Pieces of three,” he admitted, grudgingly. “Look, the murders are hard enough to get past, but you running around claiming the place is haunted makes everything harder.”

  “I’m not claiming anything. Are you telling me you haven’t experienced anything unusual at Stonecliff? No voices? No strange smells? No shadows with red eyes?”

  “No such thing.” His gaze held hers. His expression remained inscrutable, but the muscle at his jaw flicked.

  He’d seen something at Stonecliff, even if he didn’t want to believe it himself.

  “You can’t stop me from asking questions.”

  “No, I can’t, but I’m asking you to. Think about it this way—the sooner I sell the place, the sooner you can hassle some other poor sucker into letting you onto the property to hunt for ghosts.”

  She really was beginning to dislike the man. The throb in her ankle flared as if to drive home that point. “That’s not what I’m doing. I can help you.”

  “I doubt it,” he said, shaking his head. He pushed back his chair, legs scraping the tile floor and stood.

  “Wait,” she called when he started to turn away. He faced her, his expression impatient. “Your sister, Eleri, asked me to tell you to be careful of Hugh Warlow and not to trust him.”

  Meyers chuckled humorlessly. “He said the same thing about her.”

  * * *

  Declan left the café shaking his head. He’d given it his best shot, but he didn’t believe for a second he’d seen the last of Carly Evans. Gauging the glint in the woman’s stormy gray eyes, she’d be back.

  So not what he needed.

  He sighed, shoved his windblown hair back from his face and started for his car. Despite all attempts to appear nonchalant, meeting with the woman had unnerved him. He’d expected Carly Evans, parapsychologist, to be different—pale skin and dressed in black, rings glittering on every finger or maybe some time-displaced hippie—rather than the very attractive woman in tweed pants and a white blouse beneath her blazer. His imagined version would have been much easier to dismiss.

  Tall, slender, caramel-colored hair pulled back from the soft lines of her face, she’d been more attractive than he’d expected, too. Not that it mattered. She could have been a Victoria’s Secret model and he still wouldn’t let her hunt for ghosts on his land.

  His land. The idea that Stonecliff was his still caught him like a kick to the gut. That he was here, in this place he’d sworn he’d never come to, was surreal. It was amazing what greed could make him do. Not greed. Desperation.

  Once he reached the battered Land Rover he’d left parked in the lot near the water, he climbed in behind the wheel. There was only one other car, a silver Ford Focus. Probably Carly’s.

  “Shit,” he whispered, through his teeth. She’d twisted her ankle pretty good on the jetty, even if she hadn’t wanted to admit it. He should drive back to the café and offer her a ride to her car.

  He was in no hurry to spend more time with the woman. Her questions had left him cold—especially the ones about shadows and red eyes—and he didn’t want her to confuse an act of common decency as a chance to change his mind. But he wasn’t enough of a prick to leave her to limp all the way to her car.

  He drove back to the café, following the route he’d walked. There was no sign of Carly on the empty sidewalks. When he reached the restaurant, he pulled up to the curb, hopped out and stuck his head in the door.

  The woman behind the counter set down her book and looked at him above her pink-framed glasses, eyebrows lifting. “Is there something I can help you with, love?”

  He glanced at the table where he and Carly had been sitting. Empty now, their cups cleared away, there was no evidence they’d been there at all.

  Unease settled over him. “The woman I was with, did she say where she was going?”

  “Not to me. If I see her again, should I tell her you were looking for her?”

  He shook his head. “It’s fine. Was she limping when she left?”

  The woman’s thin brows knitted together. “I didn’t notice.”

  Maybe Carly’s ankle was better. If she’d hobbled out of the café, surely the woman would have noticed. Though, maybe not, depending on how engrossed she was in her book.

  “Thanks, anyway,” he muttered, and stepped back outside. The sun had dipped behind the buildings, casting long shadows over the narrow road. He glanced up and down the empty sidewalk. No sign of Carly.

  Again that tickle of apprehension.

  For God’s sake, she was a grown woman. She’d survived so far without any help from him. No doubt she would continue to—twisted ankle or not. Still, that she’d just vanished in the past fifteen minutes gnawed at him.

  He might not have given it another thought anywhere else, but here, in Cragera Bay, someone disappearing was reason to worry.

  Chapter Two

  “Stella Bahl called while you were out.”

  Declan stiffened at the mention of his real estate agent, especially by Hugh Warlow. A flicker of guilt lit inside him.

  “Did she leave a message?” Declan asked, shrugging off his jacket and draping it over the newel post at the bottom of the stairs in Stonecliff’s front hall.

  Warlow plucked up the coat and folded it over his arm. “Just for you to ring her when you get in.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” Declan slid his hands into his jeans’ pockets. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to people waiting on him the way the butler and housekeeper had since he’d arrived. “I can take it up to my room when I go.”

  “Of course,” Warlow said, smiling, but he didn’t relinquish Declan’s jacket. “I’ve gathered all the records of updates and renovations to Stonecliff and left them for you on the desk.”

  “Thanks. I guess I’ll call Stella back, then.” Maybe she already had someone interested in buying this dump. Declan crossed the hall to the study.

  “I’d assumed you’d gone to see Ms. Bahl just now,” Warlow said, following him into the room.

  The butler was fishing for information, not that Declan blamed him. Warlow had worked in this house for more years
than Declan had been alive, and when Declan sold the estate there was a good chance that Hugh Warlow would be out of a job and a place to live.

  Declan would pay him a severance, of course. He’d even put in a good word with whoever bought this heap for Warlow and Mrs. Voyle both. But it did little to ease the feeling that he was somehow letting the butler down.

  He thought back to when he’d first met the man in front of his building in Seattle two months ago, that weird exchange that had left him creeped out for days later. The Hugh Warlow he’d dealt with since the man had met him at the airport in Manchester was a completely different person than the one he’d met back in August.

  Declan chalked up the strange encounter to exhaustion and overall discomfort at having anything to do with his father on his end, and to the stress of Warlow’s employer passing while, according to the butler, Declan’s grasping sisters tried to get their hands on anything that hadn’t been nailed down on his.

  Since coming to the Isle of Anglesey in northern Wales, Declan didn’t know what he would have done without the other man’s help. He’d had no idea what went into managing an estate this size, or dealing with the investment properties his father had owned and left to him. Warlow had been a patient teacher. He’d taken Declan around the estate, showing him the grounds and filling him in on its dark history—or at least most of it.

  When Declan returned to Seattle at the end of the week, Warlow would continue to manage the property until he found a buyer.

  “I went to the village to meet with Carly Evans.”

  The butler lifted his straight brows. “The ghost lady?”

  Declan’s jaw tensed. Was there anyone in Cragera Bay who hadn’t heard of this woman? “I thought if I made it clear that there was no way in hell I would let her onto the estate or anywhere near The Devil’s Eye, she might go away.”

  Images of empty cobblestone streets, no sign of Carly Evans anywhere popped into his head. He wished he’d chosen his words differently.

  Warlow chuckled. “Are you sure that was for the best? What’s that old saying? There’s no such thing as bad publicity?”

  “I don’t think that applies when trying to unload a property where fifteen people were murdered.”

  The humor vanished from Warlow’s face, and again Declan wished he’d stopped to think before opening his mouth.

  “Your father had hoped you would take his place at Stonecliff. He wouldn’t want you to sell it like this.”

  The words then he should have left it to someone else danced on the tip of his tongue, but he bit back on them. He didn’t know why his father had left him Stonecliff. He’d never met the man. His mother had left Arthur James when she was pregnant, moved a continent away and spent the first nine years of Declan’s life moving from state to state and changing her name. That had stopped when she’d met and married Allen, his stepfather, though Declan still wasn’t sure why. All he knew was his mother married Allen and Meyers had been Declan’s last name ever since.

  When he’d received a call last month informing him of his inheritance, he’d been secretly thrilled. Not by his father’s death, of course. He still wasn’t certain how he felt that he’d never met him, and now he never would. But inheriting an estate in Wales—he’d seen dollar signs and the chance to finally dig his way out of the hole his brother had landed him in.

  That, of course, was before he’d seen the crumbling stone house that looked like something from a horror movie. Before he’d learned of the murders, the bodies and the cloud of bad luck that hovered over the entire village.

  Before he’d spotted glowing red eyes watching him from the shadows.

  A chill washed over him, but he did his best to ignore it.

  “My life is back in Seattle,” Declan said. He had his family, his business, and he wouldn’t have stayed at Stonecliff if someone paid him to.

  Warlow nodded. “I understand, but I think your father hoped you’d feel a sense of duty and accept your legacy to this land, to the village.”

  From what he’d seen of the boarded-up shops and restaurants, there wasn’t much of the village left. Another strike against the house when he tried to sell it.

  A faint smothering wrapped around him. Warlow meant well, but all his talk of duty and legacy left Declan ready to bolt.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t stay.”

  “Of course.” A wide smile lifted the man’s mouth, but never reached his chilly blue eyes. “I’ll leave you to make your call.”

  Once the butler had gone, Declan sank into the large leather chair behind the desk and let out a sigh. He shouldn’t feel guilty about not wanting Stonecliff. He really hadn’t needed to come here at all. He could have had the lawyer arrange the sale, but he’d been curious about this house that had sent his mother running and also about his father, despite his every effort not to be. A part of him couldn’t shake the sensation that he was somehow betraying his mother’s memory by coming here.

  What did it matter? In less than a week he would be home.

  Declan lifted the phone and returned Stella’s call, agreeing to see her the following day. When he hung up, he leaned back in the chair and glanced at the dark screen of his father’s computer. He toyed again with packing the ancient beast away and setting up his own laptop in its place. Declan had tried to keep up with his PI firm’s clients over the past weeks while he was here. He specialized in background checks and tracking down missing people. He had a knack for finding people who didn’t want to be found—maybe a result of spending his formative years trying to stay hidden. Working at the large, ornately carved desk would certainly be more comfortable than the small writing table in his room, but the idea made his chest tighten.

  Setting up a workspace felt like commitment, like accepting his place here the way Warlow wanted him to. No thanks. He could go on checking his email and making calls from his room for the days he had left.

  Declan stood, left the study and meandered into the kitchen. He’d fix himself something to eat, head up to his room and check those emails—doing his best to avoid thinking about unloading this house and Carly Evans.

  As much as he hated to admit it, the woman had flitted at the peripheral of his mind’s eye since he left her in the café. He might not particularly like her, and he certainly didn’t think much of her work, but he hated to think something had happened to her.

  Why would it? Sure, people had vanished from Cragera Bay, and apparently wound up dead in the bog on his property, but that couldn’t happen now. All three suspects were dead. The first, before police could take him into custody, and according to rumor, by his sister Eleri’s hand—though the rumors regarding that particular sister were extensive. The other man had apparently succumbed in hospital to injuries he’d suffered—also rumored to have been caused by Eleri. His sister must be a veritable Amazon. The only one of the three to have seen the inside of a jail cell—and the only woman—had taken her own life a few weeks after her arrest.

  So, twisted ankle or not, Carly Evans had no reason not to be safe and sound in her hotel room.

  Yet all his rationalizations couldn’t ease the cold knots squeezing his insides.

  He could call her, set his mind at ease. And say what? Just checking in? He wanted to discourage her, convince her she didn’t have a hope at getting to The Devil’s Eye. Calling her to see she got back to her hotel okay wouldn’t exactly drive home that particular message.

  In the kitchen, the housekeeper was pulling on her coat, finished for the day. Iola Voyle stopped moving with only one arm through the sleeve when she spotted him. “I wrapped your dinner and left it in the refrigerator for you since you weren’t here when I served.”

  The faint recrimination in her voice made his mouth twitch. The woman did not like to have her schedules interfered with. When he’d first arrived, he’d instructed the woman not to cook for him. It was ridiculous for her to prepare an entire meal just for him, when he could cook for himself just as easily. But she’d pursed her t
hin lips the way she did whenever something displeased her, informing him that she also cooked for Hugh Warlow, so Declan had relented. But he still wasn’t comfortable with the situation.

  He pulled open the fridge door. “Thank you. Have a good night.”

  She nodded, her gaze shifting uneasily about the room. “Has there been any interest in the estate?”

  Maybe she’d heard that Stella had called, or like Warlow assumed he’d gone to the village to meet with her earlier. He closed the fridge and turned to the women. Her narrow face was pale and combined with her dull, brown hair tied in a severe knot at the base of her skull made her sharp, thin features more prominent somehow. She’d pulled her coat all the way on and held the lapels closed with white-knuckled fists.

  Of course, she’d be anxious. Her job was on the line.

  “Nothing yet,” he told her, shooting her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “If there is, I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  The anxiety tightening her features didn’t ease. She glanced at the door. “You shouldn’t stay too long. Even if the estate doesn’t sell right away, you should go home.”

  That was the plan. Still, Mrs. Voyle’s words caught him by surprise. He’d been easy to get along with, making few demands on the woman. Why would she be so eager to see him leave?

  He forced a rueful grin. “Am I that hard to work for?”

  “It’s not that,” she said, lowering her voice to barely above a whisper and stepping toward him. “There’s something wrong with this place, and the sooner you’re away from it the better.”

  The soft urgency of her words combined with Carly Evans’s questions sent a chill scuttling down his spine. It was all bullshit, of course.

  How had Carly known about the red eyes?

  “More than one thing’s wrong with this place,” Declan said, playing dumb. “But nothing a good contractor can’t fix.”

  Mrs. Voyle stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. “Good night, Mr. Meyers.”