“Hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh!” A deep throaty laugh that sounded decidedly evil interrupted her thoughts. It also made her jump.
Okay, special effects, she thought, steadying herself. This is a haunted house, after all.
She stepped inside and found herself in a dark hallway. Even though a tremendous crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, its hundreds of tiny bulbs emitted only the dimmest light. Looming up in front of her was a grand staircase, its dark red carpeting badly faded. The elegant wooden banister that ran up along both sides had more than a few broken balusters, and cobwebs were draped everywhere.
They’re fake cobwebs, Mallory reminded herself, nervously clutching her purse against her side. Everything in this place is fake. It was created for tourists. It’s supposed to look creepy.
Hanging on the walls were half a dozen huge portraits, imposing oil paintings of stern-looking men and women. They were all dressed in severe Victorian garb with high necklines and somber colors. She took a few steps into the room and discovered that as she moved, their eyes moved, too, as if the subjects of the portraits were watching her.
Clever, she thought, hoping that taking an analytical approach would diminish her uneasiness.
She was beginning to wonder where everybody else was—or if the others had already arrived and were gathering in some other part of the building.
“Hello?” Mallory called. “Is anybody—e-e-ek!”
She let out the screech as a female cadaver with long, wild gray hair suddenly careened toward her from out of the darkness. The dead woman’s clothes had rotted to tatters that flew from side to side. The ersatz corpse came to a standstill inches from where Mallory stood, so that its decaying face was right in front of her. Its crooked grin revealed brown, uneven teeth and its dark, unseeing eyes bulged out of their sockets.
“Ugh!” Mallory cried, jumping backward.
It’s not real, she reminded herself, pushing it out of her way. The only reason you got scared is that it came flying out of nowhere.
You’d think that at least they’d turn off the special effects until we all get inside, she thought, taking a few deep breaths to calm the jackhammer pounding of her heart.
Through the silence of the house, she heard the sound of a woman weeping.
So there is somebody else in here, she thought.
She listened more closely, trying to figure out who it could be. Annabelle? Frieda? Maybe even Courtney?
She followed the sound, wandering down a long corridor, toward the partially open door at the end.
“Frieda?” she called. “Is that you?”
As she neared the end of the hallway, she saw that the room up ahead was furnished with Victorian-style furniture. A gold brocade couch stood in the center and an ornate writing table with carved legs was pushed into one corner. Heavy dark green velvet drapes smothered the windows, preventing even the faintest ray of light from penetrating the darkness. An elaborately decorated tiered wedding cake sat on a small round table covered in white linen.
She stepped inside the room, then froze when she saw where the sound was coming from. It was a woman, all right. The hologram of a woman, to be more precise, dressed in a lace wedding gown that was splattered with red. Lying on the ground beside her was a man wearing a tuxedo, presumably the groom. A huge knife was stuck in his chest, and what looked like real blood gushed from the wound.
“Agh-h-h!” Mallory cried involuntarily.
It’s fake, she told herself again. Everything in this place is fake.
She knew that reminding herself of that simple fact should have gone a long way in calming her down. But for some reason, taking a commonsense approach wasn’t helping as much as it should have.
She backtracked, wanting to get away from the macabre scene. This time, she tried a different route, still hoping to stumble upon a cheerful party room where she’d find Wade and the other travel writers sipping champagne.
Heading in the other direction required going up a wooden staircase.
At least this one doesn’t have cobwebs all over it, she thought.
Instead, right in front was a big sign that read HOLD ON TO THE HANDRAIL! THESE STEPS ARE ALIVE!
What on earth could that mean? she wondered.
Still, she did as she was told. Clutching the wooden handrail, she began to climb, surprised by how creaky the stairs were.
Special effects, she reminded herself once again. The creepy noise must be what the sign refers to.
Yet she’d gone up only two steps when they all started to move, the right side of each step moving backward, the left side moving forward, as if they were all split in half.
“Yikes!” she cried, grasping the handrail more tightly to keep from falling.
They’ve got to be kidding! Mallory thought, struggling to keep her balance. Who ever came up with this idea? Aren’t there any lawyers in this state?
She was getting tired of navigating her way through a house whose special effects were not only getting irritating but had also started to get downright dangerous.
Besides, she still hadn’t seen any other signs of life.
The uneasy feeling that had first crept up on her when she’d driven into the parking lot had escalated.
Something is very wrong, she thought.
She turned, planning to backtrack out of the house, when a sudden movement caught her eye. Glancing to the right, she saw that someone had lurched into the doorway.
Courtney.
Mallory’s first reaction was relief. So there was someone else here in the house with her.
But her relief faded fast when she saw that Courtney was holding a gun. Unlike the other frightening effects in this haunted house, it looked very, very real.
And it was pointed right at her.
21
“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.”
—Paul Theroux
Hello, Courtney,” Mallory said, trying to sound as if chatting with someone who was pointing a gun at her was something that happened every day. “I was beginning to wonder if anyone else was going to show up for the reception you were nice enough to plan—”
“Don’t try to sweet-talk me,” Courtney shot back angrily. She held the gun a little higher, as if wanting to make sure Mallory had noticed it.
I have to get out of here, Mallory thought. She looked around and realized she and Courtney were standing on an ornately carved wooden balcony that overlooked a tremendous room. Peering over the side, she saw that it was a mirrored ballroom that was filled with couples in formal attire waltzing to music that was just out of tune enough to sound eerie.
“Help me!” she called down to them. “Help!”
Not a single one responded. Sheepishly she realized that it wasn’t a case of them being rude—or even of not hearing her. Like everything else in this place, they were fake. Nothing but holograms.
Courtney laughed. “Surely you didn’t think anyone would help you,” she said coldly. “Why would I have arranged to kill you here, of all places, if I thought there’d be somebody around?”
“But someone’s going to show up sooner or later,” Mallory insisted. “What about the other writers? Frieda and Annabelle and…and…”
“Trust me, no one’s coming. I wasn’t stupid enough to tell anyone else to meet us here tonight. It’s just you and me.”
“But what about other tourists?” Mallory asked, her desperation reflected in her breathy voice. “You told me yourself this place was staying open.”
“Ha! I lied!” Courtney replied smugly. “It’s been closed for more than a week. Fortunately, the electricity won’t be turned off until tomorrow and I know where all the switches are, thanks to the fact that I checked this place out earlier today. I got the security guard to let me. It’s amazing what an ID from the tourism board can get you.”
Mallory felt like a fool for having believed the woman who had murdered Phil about anything.
Especially since Courtney clearly had no qualms about killing again.
Mallory realized her best chance for getting out of this situation alive was keeping Courtney talking. She could remember having read that it was important to make an attacker understand that you were a real live person, to decrease the chances of them doing something terrible to you.
“I know who you are, Courtney.” Mallory struggled to sound calm and matter-of-fact, as if explaining herself at gunpoint was something that happened every day. “I know you’re Huck Hollinger’s daughter and that Conover is your married name.”
“You’re a clever lady,” Courtney sneered. “I underestimated you, Mallory, at least at first. To think that when I met you, I thought you were just some boring soccer mom from the suburbs, moonlighting as a travel writer.
“But I’m a clever lady, too. So clever that I know exactly what you’ve been doing.” She tightened her grip on the gun. “In fact, I’ve had my eye on you ever since Des came to me and said you’d been pumping him for information. Of course, it took him a while to figure out what you were up to, so he ended up telling you way too much. When he finally noticed that you seemed unusually interested in Phil Diamond’s history, he tried to throw you off track by telling you Phil’s ex had left Orlando and moved to Chicago. The last thing he wanted was for you to find Patrice, since he knew as well as I did that she was undoubtedly still bitter enough about the divorce to spill her guts to anyone who’d listen.
“Which is exactly what you did,” she continued. “You listened plenty, right? Probably asked lots of questions, too.”
“But…how did you…” Mallory sputtered.
“Don’t think for a minute that the parking lot at McDonald’s isn’t big enough to be a great place to watch somebody’s comings and goings,” Courtney replied, narrowing her eyes. “Especially when they include a clandestine meeting with a blabbermouth like Patrice.”
Mallory wracked her brain for something to say that would explain away what she’d been doing. But Courtney had her cornered. At gunpoint.
And to think that at my interview for this job, my biggest fear about travel writing was that I might have to visit a nudist colony, Mallory thought woefully. A few flopping body parts would be a breeze compared to this.
“But to be honest,” she said, desperate to keep Courtney’s mouth moving so that hopefully her trigger finger wouldn’t, “there’s a lot I didn’t find out. I’m wondering if you’d be willing to indulge me by filling in the blanks.”
When Courtney remained silent, simply staring at her with the same cold look in her eyes, Mallory added, “You know, Courtney, I never doubted for a moment that Phil Diamond deserved to die. He was a crude, nasty, despicable man. Everyone who knew him seems to agree that it’s amazing one of his countless enemies didn’t bump him off sooner.”
“My sentiments exactly.” Courtney tossed her head triumphantly. “I’m fully aware that I actually did everyone a favor.”
“You definitely did,” Mallory agreed. “And I’m sure any jury in the world that hears about all the horrible things Phil did will agree. But they might not feel the same way about the death of an innocent bystander like me. If I were you, I’d stop at one murder. Any decent lawyer will be able to get you off by arguing that killing Phil was a public service. But two murders…now you’re talking about a pattern. I don’t think a jury would be quite as forgiving—”
“Quiet!” Courtney barked. Narrowing her eyes, she added, “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?” Mallory asked, all innocence.
“You’re trying to distract me. And…and you’re trying to talk me out of killing you. But it’s too late, Mallory. I can’t let you go free. Not when you’re the only person who’s figured out what I’ve done.”
“Okay, I understand,” Mallory said, holding out her hands with her palms toward Courtney. “But I still think I deserve an explanation. In the past few days, I found out about all the nasty things Phil did to everyone on this trip. He strung poor Annabelle along for years, having a secret affair with her and from the looks of things breaking her heart when she told him she wanted more. He spoiled a book deal for Frieda that would have been her ticket to a comfortable retirement. He nearly ruined a magazine Wade was working at.” She was exaggerating, at least in terms of that last claim, but she hoped Courtney wouldn’t figure it out. “And Desmond. He ripped him off and ruined his chances to be an entrepreneur….”
“That’s nothing,” Courtney insisted sharply. “None of it compares with what that bastard did to me and my family.”
Keep her talking, Mallory thought. As long as she’s talking, she’s not shooting.
“What did he do, exactly?” she asked. “Tell me everything.”
“Phil Diamond ruined my father,” Courtney hissed. “He wrote an article in that stupid column of his in the Observer. He did it because my father was a competitor. And the next thing anyone knew, Monster Mansion was forced to close. My father was so distraught he killed himself. He killed himself, Mallory! Do you have any idea what that does to a little girl? And then my mother went into a deep depression. She couldn’t even take care of me. I had to go live with her sister, Beth, and my aunt’s husband, Desmond.”
Mallory gasped. “Desmond raised you?”
“That’s right. He’s my uncle. But for the past twenty years, he’s played the role of my father. A role he never wanted, by the way, but which he took on because he was responsible and caring and…and even though he and my real father had had a bitter split over the business, he knew what he had a moral obligation to do.
“I never got to know either of my parents,” Courtney said bitterly. “And while Beth and Desmond did the best they could, they hadn’t planned on having any kids. For one thing, they didn’t have the money to give me the things I needed. When I went to college, I had to pay my own way. I was completely on my own financially, which meant I had to work all four years. While the other kids had time to study and even do fun things like going to parties and football games, I had to work—sometimes two jobs. That’s why I worked at that radio station and that public relations firm I told you about. It wasn’t because I wanted the experience. It was because I needed a way to feed myself!
“When I learned that Phil was coming back to Florida for the press trip, I begged to be put in charge of it,” Courtney continued. “I hoped that once and for all, being in the same place as that monster would give me a chance to get the revenge I’ve always longed for. I told Des that I planned to kill Phil, and he tried to talk me out of it. When he saw he couldn’t, he agreed to help me however he could, without getting directly involved.”
That explains why he was trying to clean up the crime scene, Mallory thought. He used the fact that he was the general manager of the hotel as an excuse, saying he didn’t want to upset his guests. But in reality, his main concern was protecting Courtney, the niece he had raised since she was five years old.
“I’ve had to live with what Phil did to my entire family since I was just a little girl,” Courtney concluded, spitting out her words. “I was only five years old, but I knew exactly what happened.”
“But that’s the point!” Mallory cried. “Courtney, you were just a little girl—a little girl who was too small to be told the truth. The fact is, Phil didn’t ruin your father’s business. Your father’s accountant did. He’s the one responsible for your father’s business going under.”
“You’re lying!” Courtney exclaimed. “You’re just saying anything you can think of because you want to keep me from using this gun!”
“That’s not true!” Mallory shot back. “I mean, you’re right that I don’t want you to use that gun. But I’m not lying, Courtney. Phil’s ex-wife, Patrice, told me everything.”
“I’ll never believe you, Mallory,” Courtney declared.
“But you have to! It’s the truth! Look, if you’d like, I can put you in touch with Patrice. She has no reason to lie
. Besides, she was there! She was still married to Phil back then!”
“It’s too late for all that.”
Courtney took a step closer, a cruel glint in her eyes. Mallory glanced from side to side, desperately searching for something to throw in Courtney’s path.
Without hesitation, she reached for the suit of armor standing in the corner and pushed it toward Courtney.
“Wha-a-a!” Courtney yelled in surprise.
The unexpected attack by Sir Lancelot gave Mallory the few seconds she needed to escape. She rushed past Courtney as the younger woman wrestled with the tin man, who, from the looks of things, was a lot heavier than Mallory had realized.
She raced across the balcony and down the flight of stairs, this time holding the handrail tightly to keep from teetering. She reached the bottom safely, then looked around, trying to guess which way was out.
But the interior of the house was so dark and there were so many hallways and doors that she didn’t know which way to go. She chose a corridor that she thought looked familiar. She’d gone only a few feet before she realized she hadn’t been here before. But she could hear footsteps hurrying down the stairs, a sign that Courtney wasn’t far behind.
At the end of the corridor, she found herself in a room containing more than twenty funhouse mirrors arranged in a big circle. Rather than being fastened to the walls, they were freestanding, each one in its own Victorian frame. One mirror made her arms and legs look wavy, another made her look short and fat. But what concerned her most was that the room was a dead end.
The footsteps were getting closer. Mallory slid behind one of the mirrors, trying to stifle her gasping breaths.
She heard Courtney run into the room, then stop dead in her tracks.
“I know you’re in here!” she shrieked.
I have to distract her, Mallory thought desperately.
She flung her purse into the middle of the room, knowing it would be reflected in every one of the mirrors. But what she didn’t expect was the deafening, horrifying blast of a gunshot.
Then more noises followed: the tinkling of glass being shattered, then sliding onto the floor with a shushing that almost sounded like a waterfall, followed by a loud crash.
Murder Packs a Suitcase Page 24