Her chest rising and falling with a heavy sigh, she thought of Phillip Rondo next.
It seemed like far too convenient that a man, who was a London native, just happened to be in Haunted Falls on the same day as his daughter’s murder. Sonja just couldn’t believe that this was a coincidence.
All the urgent messages from Tabatha came to mind, and Sonja gasped in realization. Perhaps she’d known her father was around, had worried that he would find her. That had to be the reason she practically begged to come up to the estate early.
On the other hand, maybe she’d be excited to see her father. Perhaps Tabatha was trying to escape her ex-boyfriend?
However, none of this explained the footprints in the snow. Why should a man sneak around, kill his own daughter or ex-girlfriend, and then return to the scene of the crime only a short while later?
Was it all just to cover up the murder?
Sonja just didn’t know.
Throwing herself back onto the comforter, she groaned wearily.
Why did her holiday’s always have to turn out this way? Ghosts and murder seemed to follow her everywhere.
“I thought we were past all of this,” Frank snapped, waltzing into cottage’s master bedroom with his arms outstretched, his eyes fixed on his girlfriend.
Sonja sat up and looked at him, surprised to see him. “Frank?”
“How could you do that, after all the times you promised me you wouldn’t go off and do any investigating on your own? How many times do we have to discuss this before you listen to reason? You’re not a cop, you’re not a private detective, you’re a diner owner and my girlfriend.”
Sonja slouched into herself, feeling ashamed. On other occasions, she would have likely argued with him, defended herself. Today, however, she didn’t have the energy for it. “I’m sorry, Frank.”
He began pacing the floor at an accelerated rate, and Sonja wondered if he would wear a hole through the carpet. “Sorry doesn’t cut it, Sonja. You say sorry every time you do this, and then whenever the next investigation crops up, you forget your promises and go off on your own. I thought this time, at the very least, it would be simple enough for you to stay here in the cottage with your family while I worked this whole thing out. But no, the first thing I find you doing is sneaking around the manor looking for clues.”
“I’m sorry, Frank. I really am. I thought I could be helpful.”
He stopped and pointed an accusatory finger at her. “Don’t you see? If Gram is the murderer, you could have almost helped him to delete evidence.”
“But he isn’t the murderer, Frank,” she retorted.
“That isn’t for you to decide. This is a police matter, and the police will handle it.”
Sonja slumped down, crouching in on herself. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Sometimes, it seems like you don’t even trust me, don’t believe I’m capable of doing my own job,” he said, his voice slightly quieter than before.
Sonja knew that everyone downstairs had probably heard him yelling. It wasn’t very professional of him, but he was clearly beyond caring at that point.
Taking a seat on the bed next to her, an oddly shaped bulge in his left jeans pocket pressed against her leg. He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do about you anymore Sonja. If this happens again, I’m going to have to charge you with interfering with a police investigation.”
“I see,” she whispered.
“It’s something I probably should have done before, but I’ve been lenient with you because . . . you were my girlfriend.”
“And I helped you catch multiple criminals,” she pointed out, using a mouse’s voice.
Frank ignored this comment, and instead reached out and grabbed her hand. “Sonj’, you know I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she replied. There was a painful pause and Sonja licked her lips nervously. Somehow, she knew there was something else Frank wanted to say. “But?”
He shrugged dis-heartedly, his hand fingering the item in his pocket. “But, if this dynamic of behavior doesn’t change, I’m not so sure we can go on with this relationship.”
Sonja’s jaw dropped open and her heart sank into her stomach. Had Frank really said that out loud?
“I better go. I have a distraught father waiting for me back in the manor.”
CHAPTER 15
* * *
As darkness fell, so did their party disintegrate. Their meal, although good tasting, felt a little hollow with everything that had happened. While they’d all tried to remain in a festive mood earlier, after overhearing Frank and Sonja’s argument, any joy that had remained in the day deflated.
The table had been set and prepared in silence. Frank never showed up to eat, seeing as he was preoccupied with the murder investigation. Everyone else was solemn as they picked about their plates.
Finally, after a painful hour of sitting around the table, everyone began to head home. Sonja’s parents were the last to leave. As her mother pulled on her coat in the entry hall, her father stood nearby. His hands rested on his daughter’s shoulders from behind. “You okay, honey?”
“Y-Yeah. I think so,” she lied.
“If you need to talk to someone, about anything—ghosts, murder, boyfriends—just give me a call.”
“I will,” she promised.
Leaning in, her father kissed her forehead. Moments later, they were gone, leaving Sonja alone in the cottage with Gram. Since he wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the manor that evening like he usually did, he was going to be staying in the guest bedroom upstairs.
He’d been hiding in there with the door closed most of the evening, and Sonja left him that way.
She felt that she’d gotten him into enough trouble as it was without trying to talk to him. Besides that, she had enough on her mind as it was and didn’t want to discuss it.
Warming up some of the left-over pumpkin waffle sticks in the convection oven, she drizzled her pumpkin sauce over the top and took them with her. Moving into the living room, she took a seat in the chair near the fire, set the plate on the side table, and pulled out her laptop. She needed to take her mind off Frank for a few moments, her original intention to work on her mystery novel. However, as the screen booted up, the internet icon caught her eye instead.
There was something she’d been meaning to check on, and now was as good a time as any to do it. Since she’d practically been banned from doing anything related to the murder, she thought she could at least consider the chilling nightmares she’d been having and see if they were real.
Hoping onto the internet, she began with some generic searches about murders in the area from the turn of the century. When that didn’t produce any helpful information, she narrowed her search terms to involve only the estate.
She let out a grumble of complaint when that, again, didn’t produce anything of value.
She thought for a moment that perhaps she’d been right in her original assumption. No murder had taken place. Her dream was just a horrifying premonition.
Deciding to try something else, she hoped on the local library website and pulled up the digital archive of newspapers. She knew the chief librarian had been working tirelessly to digitize all their most important materials, but was still in the process of doing it.
With any luck, however, the newspapers would be updated enough to include stories from the time period Sonja was looking into.
She was beginning to be grateful for the few library science courses she had taken in college, since they offered her the tools of how to search a digital archive properly. Adding the correct words into the search bar and filling out the advanced form of preliminaries, Sonja hit the search button.
After scrolling through a few results, a surge of energy sent her heart beating as she found what she was looking for. “Young Maid Strangled, Murderer Being Sought,” the title said. Eagerly clicking the file, a full scan of the front page of the newspaper appeared.
Scanning the story, she
wasn’t surprised to find that it matched her dream almost exactly. The house’s scullery maid had been found dead. Meanwhile, the footman who was presumed responsible for the murder was nowhere to be found. There had been no sign of his flight from the manor, no footprints of any kind, in the freshly fallen snow.
How was the possible? Had a second snowfall covered up his tracks?
Flipping through future newspaper scans, it didn’t appear that the man had ever been caught. There had been a full-on man hunt as a posse of men from the town had gone out searching the entire surrounding area for the footman. However, he’d never been located and they all eventually gave up the search.
“So, he was never brought to justice,” Sonja whispered. In her experience with ghosts, she often found that victims and their murderers hung around the scene of the crime, potentially reliving the horrors of the event over and over.
This tended to happen until there was some sort of justice brought forward.
Sonja understood there was always some way to put a ghost to rest, finding the method for doing it was the key.
“So, why come to me?” Sonja whispered, thinking there wasn’t much she could do herself at this point.
A low pop from the fire drew her attention to the flames. Eyes widening, she watched as the light in the room diminished, the orange, yellow, and blue wisps dying down into nothing more than a glow.
At the same time, the screen of her computer flickered and went black.
A cold sensation hung on the air, and Sonja instantly knew that she was being visited by Agatha again.
“Hello?” she spoke, barely above a whisper.
The loud and unexpected noise of the curtains parting, the metal hangers scrapping against the rod, caused Sonja to jump. Turning to face the window situated just behind her chair, she looked out into the chilly dark night.
There was something she needed to see, and she was paying close attention for it.
Then it appeared, moving in the distance like a blue flame against the night. At first, it appeared as nothing more than an orb of bouncing light. Slowly, moving across the snow, it materialized into the figure of a human.
Sonja gasped. It was the footman walking out into the darkness, making his escape from the very manor he had committed murder in. He seemed to be moving with a strange gate, lifting his legs extra high as if to compensate for something on his feet.
“Snowshoes?” she whispered to herself, noting the large flat wicker items.
Her mouth slowly opening with realization, Sonja stood up from the chair.
She had an idea about how to figure out who Tabatha’s murderer was.
CHAPTER 16
* * *
Sonja’s original plan was to go have a look at the snowshoes in the manor which she’d seen that same day. However, knowing that Frank was still around on the premises, and thinking of the argument from earlier, she decided it was a bad idea.
The snowshoes themselves weren’t necessary for her to find what she was looking for.
Stepping outside, she walked toward the footprints she had found earlier. Frank had had one of the deputies put up metal posts and police tape to mark off the prints, so they were less likely to be disturbed. As everyone had left earlier, they had gone around the tape to get to their cars and head home.
Now, as Sonja headed outside, she did the same thing.
Taking a quick moment to look at the prints, she was glad to see that they were still there. The snow and wind had stopped sometime that afternoon, preventing the evidence from being completely covered up.
This was a good sign, meaning Sonja could test her theory.
Heading toward the front gate, she used her own key to unlock and step through the doorway to the side of the electrical mechanism. Once outside the estate, she walked along the outer perimeter, turning on the flashlight she’d tucked away in her pocket before leaving the cottage.
A minute or two later she reached the corner where the two fences met and where she had originally found the footprints. She knew Frank probably hadn’t had time to come out here and check this out yet, and she was hoping that she’d be able to figure out the solution to this whole mess.
Looking at the ground, the flashlight glittering of the snow, she expected to see more footprints of the same kind. However, there were none there whatsoever. All that was present was pristine and sparkling snow.
There was no sign that anyone had been out here in the woods at all, and therefore that someone had climbed over the fence. A sick feeling crawled its way into her stomach as she began to piece together her thoughts.
She wanted to check one more thing.
Heading back for the estate, she didn’t enter the gate again. Instead, she began the walk down the mountain road.
It didn’t take long for her to reach the destination in question, where she believed she saw a car pulling off to the side of the road in the security footage. There was a slight alcove in the cliff face there, where a car could have easily pulled in and been hidden from the main road if no one was looking too hard. Flashing the beam of light along the ground, she smiled with satisfaction. Sure enough, there were tire tracks there.
It appeared the vehicle had pulled in, maneuvered around, and then left again.
She continued her little search, casting the light about, but didn’t find the second thing she had been seeking. There were no footprints here either, nothing to indicate that someone had gotten out of the car.
That was her last-ditch effort to prove that someone had, indeed, snuck into the estate. She had originally supposed that the culprit had driven up, parked in the alcove, and snuck in to commit the murder.
However, this looked like nothing more than someone who had come up the wrong road on accident and been forced to turn around.
It was purely coincidence—which meant only one solution.
“Ms. Sonja? What the devil are you doing all the way out here?” came the sudden voice from behind her.
Jumping, Sonja turned to face Gram. He stood wearing his evening robe, his winter coat, and his boots.
“Gram. You scared me.”
“Why are you out here in the freezing cold in the middle of the night?” he pressed.
“Oh, nothing. Just trying to get some fresh air,” she lied.
“I see,” he noted skeptically.
“Well, I better get back inside. Sorry to have worried you,” she said, going to walk past him.
A firm hand on her upper arm stopped her in her tracks.
“Gram, you’re hurting me,” she complained.
“What were you doing out here?” he ordered, his voice growing graver.
Sonja hesitated. She’d hoped that she could bring her new thoughts to Frank without alerting the butler, but she’d clearly failed. “I-I was just seeing if there were any tire tracks out here, you know, like we saw in the video.”
“And what did you find?” he whispered without letting go.
“It looks like someone pulled in, but didn’t get out of their car,” she said truthfully.
His grip tightened, digging into her skin despite the heavy jacket. “Anything else?”
Glancing down at his hand, she couldn’t help but notice a little cut mark on his wrist. She held in any sound of surprise and tried to remain clam. “No, of course not.”
“Somehow, I find that hard to believe,” he growled, his voice changing, almost as if he were another person. It was a familiar voice, and it sent horrifying chills through Sonja’s body.
Instantly, she had a flashback to the nightmare.
Glancing up into his eyes, she watched as his face morphed, changed into the footman, even if just for a split second. Somewhere inside of the butler was the imprint of the age-old murderer who had gotten away.
“It was you,” she finally accused, unable to hold back her voice from speaking the truth. “You killed Tabatha Rondo when she arrived today.”
“What did you say?” he exclaimed.
“You killed her. Then, once you realized what you’d done, you walked to the corner of the fence wearing the snowshoes from inside the manor. It hid your footprints going out so you could make it appear that someone else had snuck onto the estate to kill her.”
The butler’s lip twitched and there was another brief glimpse of the footman’s face.
“Why? Why do it?”
Gram blinked, as if unsure how to answer the question. “Do you have any idea what her family did to my father?”
“And what did they do?”
“You don’t know. They fired my father and then blackballed him, made sure he couldn’t get another job in London. They ruined his reputation, and for what? Because he fell in love with one of their daughters?”
“What, her grandparents? Not Tabatha. Not even her father.”
“Someone had to pay. I would have never gone out of my way to seek one of the Rondo family members. I even made efforts to stay here in the manor as much as possible when I learned Tabatha was in town, just so something like this wouldn’t happen, but when you brought her into the house . . . something came over me. All those years of suffering. My father’s slow descent into madness, finally killing himself.” He paused, his eyes widening like a madman’s. The once reserved man was completely falling apart before her eyes. “It just came over me. I answered the front door and led her down to the kitchen. I grabbed her.”
“She slashed at you with a knife,” Sonja whispered, glancing at the cut mark.
“The next thing I knew, I had a string around her neck. When she stopped moving, and I realized what I had done, I hid her in the large brick oven until I could better find a way to dispose of the body.”
Sonja understood now. The imprint of the old crime on the manor was similar enough to this situation now, that it had somehow influenced Gram to commit murder. He was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to resist the temptation.
“But, now that you know, I can’t let you tell anyone,” he threatened, his grip tightening.
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