“Have you seen Chloe? You have to help me find Chloe.”
The cold slide up the back of her neck tells Alexis this isn’t just a teenager lost in the cemetery. His clothes are torn, bloodied, and faded. In fact, his image is completely faded.
She faces the ghost and stammers, “I think you’ve been in an accident. You need to really look at where you are.”
He blinks around slowly, taking in the uneven grass, the occasional bunch of flowers, the undulating rows of headstones, “Oh yeah, I know.”
Alexis sees the forlorn slump of his shoulders. “Who’s Chloe?”
“She was with me in the car. She died too, at least I think she did.”
“Where were you heading?”
The boy smiles sadly. “Spring break road trip, back to see her mother in New Mexico.”
Alexis has an idea. “Was Chloe from New Mexico? Would she be buried there?”
His smile widens and he’s gone in a smear of misty light.
She lets herself sink to the grass and takes a few minutes to pull all her energy back in. She concentrates on the gold chain of her necklace as a wall between her and the spirits. Just as she feels the black onyx working as a pulsing deflector, she stifles a scream.
Striding out from the headstone behind her, Maxwell says, “Psychic or not, this place is not friendly at night. Let’s find Willow and get this over with. You okay?”
Alexis lets him pull her to her feet, glad for his strength and size. She allows herself to lean into him for a few seconds, breathing his aftershave, “You’re still here.”
Maxwell smiles and gives her a squeeze. “Yeah, I must be the crazy one.”
She laughs and pushes him away before heading toward the oldest section of the cemetery. “So, does that mean you’re ready to hear my theory?”
“You think Otto caught my grandmother and that jewel thief, Collin Fenton, meeting here. Fenton told Delia to meet him under the willow tree, where he let her know the location of his hidden jewel stash. And you think that stash is in the grave marked with the Willow headstone.”
Alexis steps into the darker shadows of the oaks that grow in the oldest section of Lakeview Cemetery. As her eyes adjust, she stops, frozen by what she sees ahead.
“What I don’t get is how you think this will lead you to your mother.” Maxwell bumps into her.
“Because she’s here.” Alexis points with a shaky finger.
She inches forward, her eyes riveted to the woman kneeling in front of the Willow headstone. “Amelia? Mom?”
“I’m sorry, Al,” Amelia says and suddenly she is gone.
“Alexis”—Maxwell takes her arm—“there’s no one here.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“LEAVE ME ALONE, MAXWELL!” ALEXIS kneels down in front of the headstone marked Willow.
He kneels down behind her, pulling her into his arms. “Maybe it wasn’t your mother.”
“Come on, you don’t believe I saw anything.”
“No,” he says gently, “I didn’t see anything except you. What happened?”
She fights the urge to bury her face in his chest. “I saw my mother. What if she’s already dead?”
Maxwell is at a loss. “If you saw her ghost then she’s gone?”
Alexis straightens her back, taking a deep breath, “Or it could have been her wraith. Either way it means I might never find her.”
He has to let her go as she starts to claw at the grave in front of her. “No, we’ll find her. What are you doing?”
“Whatever is buried here is the reason she’s … she’s in the state she’s in.”
Maxwell catches Alexis under the arm and hauls her to her feet. “I’m going to stop you before you outdo your mother’s legacy by adding grave robbing to your arrest report.”
“I need to know if it’s here. If Fenton’s stolen jewels are here then we can stop him from hurting anyone else.”
Maxwell pulls her back again. “Fine. If I’m going to be your accomplice, we’re at least going to be smart about this. Otto has a metal detector. We swing by his place and borrow it.”
Alexis swipes the hair out of her face. “Okay, fine. You go get it. I’ll wait here.”
“Alexis, please, come with me.” He tugs her gently away from the headstone.
“But what if she comes back?” She blinks tearfully.
“We’ll come back, I promise.”
The drive to Otto’s house is quick and silent. As they turn the corner to his house, Maxwell tightens his grip on the steering wheel. The garage door of the craftsman is wide open and the dusty retired Crown Victoria is gone. Alexis opens her door just as Maxwell throws the car into park. Johnny is barking inside the house, scrabbling at the interior door of the garage.
“He’s gone. Where would Otto go in the middle of the night?”
Alexis’ eyes go wide. “Oh God, what night is it?”
“Thursday, why?”
She grabs his arm and pulls him urgently towards the car, “Tonight is the anniversary of Delia’s death. He’s at Blackvine Manor!”
Maxwell’s car squeals up to the curb outside Blackvine Manor just as lights start coming on in all the upstairs apartments.
Alexis’ phone starts ringing. “George? George, what’s going on?”
“Someone is in the penthouse, he’s yelling loud enough to wake the dead!”
Maxwell sprints into the apartment building and up the stairs with Alexis right behind him. He shoos the residents back inside their apartments, telling him his grandfather is suffering from dementia and he can handle him. George grabs Alexis by the arm as Maxwell heads up the stairs to the penthouse.
“I think he’s going through it again,” George tries to explain.
“What?”
“Just come on.” George pulls her down the back staircase just as she hears Otto coming down from the penthouse. “He’s yelling at Delia just like the night she died. If you’re right, he follows her to the laundry room.”
Alexis leads the way down the back staircase and through the basement hallway of storage stalls. She waves George back from the laundry room door as he wheezes up behind her.
Maxwell has just caught up to his grandfather and is standing, speechless, in the other doorway as Otto continues to yell, “You knew I was after him. How dare you help him! You betray our marriage and make a fool out of me in front of the whole department. What do you have to say for yourself, you whore?!”
“Please, I love you.” Alexis can see Delia drop to her knees before her enraged husband.
Otto’s eyes are black as his hands reach out, fingers flexing. Maxwell leaps from the door to pull him back before Otto’s hands start choking the air. “Stop! What are you doing?”
Alexis rushes in to help and in the struggle Otto swivels to face her. “You!”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Maxwell grunts as Otto punches him in the stomach and lunges towards Alexis.
“Always hiding and watching. I see you, Amelia!” Otto charges across the laundry room.
“Run!” George yells and pushes her past him into the hallway of storage stalls.
Alexis stumbles and when she gets up everything looks different. The names on the storage stall doors have changed. As she sprints up the stairs, the carpet is shaggier. The light fixture hanging above the mailboxes in the foyer has a different shade.
Feeling dizzy with the encompassing vision, Alexis stops to shake her head. Otto shoves George out of the way and runs after her, still ranting.
“You didn’t see anything. Remember that, Amelia. Otherwise you’ll never see anything again!”
“50 years ago,” Alexis pants, “this is over 50 years ago.”
She turns to the front door and sees a lime green car screech up to the curb. Her father, complete with shaggy hair and the thick mustache she laughed at in old pictures, kicks open the passenger side door.
Otto thumps the stairwell wall, “Not this time, girl!”
; Alexis rips through the front doors and heads towards her father’s old car.
“No!” Maxwell slams into her, knocking her out of the way of an oncoming minivan.
The vision of her young father dissipates but not before she sees her mother jump into the passenger seat and kiss him as they drive away. Alexis is left, scuffed, on the pavement of the street. Slowly she feels Maxwell cradling her gently, pushing the hair out of her eyes.
“What happened?”
He kisses her forehead. “George stopped Otto, you ran into the street. Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see them anymore. I think they’re gone.”
“Who? What?”
Alexis starts to cry. “My abilities. I think they’re gone.”
Part IV
Prologue
ALEXIS BREATHES DEEPLY, WAITING AT the corner for the light to change. Despite being downtown, the avenue is unhurried and quiet. She looks around and frowns. There is no one on the street: not a person, not a spirit, not a flicker from her former extrasensory abilities.
She shakes her head and runs across the street in defiance of the flashing red light. In the back of her mind she hopes for the rush of oncoming headlights, the screech of skidding brakes, anything to jolt her back to the way she was just days ago. She slows down, shuffling on the sidewalk as she remembers the anniversary of Delia’s death at Blackvine Manor Apartments.
Otto Charles was there, in a trance that had him seeing the same night nearly 50 years earlier. Alexis saw it too, in the unsettling way she could clearly see Delia’s ghost pleading for her husband to stop. Otto had stopped when he spotted Alexis. In his residual rage he mistook her for her mother, Amelia. Racing to escape him, Alexis had seen the entire night as it played out all those years ago. She had seen through her mother’s eyes as she ran from the apartment building into her father’s waiting car.
Except Alexis had dodged across the sidewalk only to narrowly miss being hit by a modern day car. Maxwell had thrown himself in the way to stop her. He’d saved her life. Her heart warms at the thought though there is an ache with every beat. When she’d fallen she felt it all knock out of her: the vision, the clairvoyance, the ability to hear the whispers coming from the notoriously haunted Blackvine Manor.
“Good evening, Ms. Cole.” The doorman tips his cap to her.
“Hi, Darren. How’s your Tuesday?” She shifts the bag of groceries to her hip as she stops to chat.
“Quiet, everyone’s working hard. Is that what Mr. Charles is doing?”
“I hope so; he’s supposed to be studying.”
Darren looks out at the gathering storm clouds and smiles mischievously, “You’re brave to hang out in his condo all alone. Don’t you know it’s haunted?”
Alexis brightens up. “Oh, really? Do tell!”
“Back when this place was a real working warehouse, not frou-frou lofts, there was a horrible accident.” Darren rubs his hands together, getting into the story. “One of the workers was using the freight elevator. His team was running late for a deadline and they decided to add a few more loads before he took it down. It was too much weight and the elevator plunged all the way to the basement. Folks say that worker is still up on the top floor, your floor, trying to finish his work so he can go home.”
“I don’t know, Darren,” Alexis shrugs. “Not very scary.”
He smiles. “Just think about it on your way up.”
She laughs as he holds the elevator doors open for her. Once they close she puts down her bag of groceries and hits every button so the ride will take longer. Taking a few deep breaths, Alexis swings her hands in a circle, trying to open up a channel of communication like the psychic taught her.
There’s nothing, not even a whisper and she can feel tears stinging her eyes. The elevator doors open on the top floor and she can hear music coming from Maxwell’s condo. He swings open his door and smiles broadly at her, coming out to take the groceries and give her a kiss.
She can’t complain that everything is so blissfully normal, yet she still feels like crying.
Chapter Twenty-Five
MAXWELL POURS HER ANOTHER GLASS of wine. “I could get used to this.”
“What? Keeping me prisoner?” Alexis flashes him a smile.
“Come on, you can’t tell me you miss that little studio apartment.” He settles down on the leather couch next to her and gestures to the skyline out the wide windows. “I think we have a good thing going here.”
She wants to tell him how much she misses her abilities. Not being able to see or hear spirits has left a tear in her heart. It is strange how just a few months ago she thought she felt the same about being laid off from her job. Now, having felt how fulfilling her true purpose was, she aches without it. Just as she was learning to control and focus her clairvoyance, it all evaporated.
Maxwell jumps up when the oven dings and pulls out a pan of brownies. It may be a pre-made mix that just needed water but he made her brownies for dessert. She watches him as he carefully cuts large pieces, humming happily. His sense of relief emanates like an aura she can’t see.
“How did your studying go?” Alexis has to change the subject.
“Good. A lot of it feels like common sense. Maybe Otto was right; police work is in my blood.”
“Well, you have a long, hard road to go before you make detective.”
He smiles and brings her a warm brownie. “I’ll make it, with a little help.”
She lets him steal a kiss before trying to articulate how she feels. “Doesn’t knowing what you want to do feel good? A sense of purpose makes everything … I don’t know … brighter.”
Maxwell looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, I suppose.”
Alexis shifts to face him. “It makes all the hard work, all the learning and trying, and even the failing feel right.”
The wariness has completely taken over his face and he’s trying to form a careful response when his phone rings. After a brief few minutes he hangs up and leans his head against the back of the couch.
“Otto died. After the heart attack he had that night at Blackvine Manor, they didn’t expect him to recover. The doctor said it was peaceful, while he was sleeping.”
Tears spring to her eyes. “Oh, Maxwell, I’m so sorry!”
He turns to look at her. “I am, too, as strange as that is. He may have murdered my grandmother in a jealous rage; he may have forced your mother to go on the run; and he definitely tried to attack you. But he was still my grandfather.”
Alexis takes his hand. “You could just remember how much he loved Delia. Before everything else, he loved her with all his heart.”
Maxwell leans over and kisses her softly.
He’s still eating toast as he heads for the door. “I’m going to the precinct to tell them the news about Otto.”
Alexis is curled up at Maxwell’s round kitchen table finishing her coffee. “Do you want company?”
“No, it’s alright. While I’m there I can find out about the Willow grave too.”
“Really? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Maxwell turns in the open door, “I can’t abandon my first investigation and I might as well follow up on your hunch. If Fenton hid all those stolen jewels there it might explain why your mother was at Lakeview Cemetery.”
After he closes the door, Alexis considers the round table. She gets up and puts her empty coffee mug in the kitchen sink before returning to stand next to the table.
“Please work,” she whispers before trying her ritual again.
Closing her eyes, she breathes deeply, drawing her energy up. Stretching behind her with both hands, she sweeps them all the way from the left to the right, creating a circle around her. Taking off her black onyx necklace, she opens herself up.
“Otto, come talk to me. If there is anything you want to say, I’m here. Please.”
Alexis breathes and waits, envisioning the circle around her and letting herself be open to com
municate with spirits. “If there is anyone here who wants to speak, I’m listening.”
After a long while, she exhales on a heavy sigh. Sweeping the circle closed, she picks up her black onyx necklace and hangs it back around her neck. Knowing that Maxwell will be gone awhile, she grabs her car keys and heads to Blackvine Manor Apartments.
“He’s not home,” Mrs. DuBois tells Alexis as she pounds one more time on George’s door.
“Hi, how are you? Any more mysterious arguments waking you in the night?”
Mrs. DuBois frowns tightly. “No, nothing. No sounds, no ghosts, no nothing.”
She pats Alexis on the hand then hurries past her down the stairs. Alexis stands, befuddled for a few minutes, before heading down the hallway to her apartment. There she sees Doug, just returning from yet another business trip.
“Hi, Doug. How’s work?”
They chat casually for a few minutes before she asks, “How’s your apartment? Have you had any more incidents with that shadow man?”
Doug’s eyes widen, remembering the shadowy figure he once saw ransacking his apartment before fading without a human trace. “Ah, no. Nothing. Nothing’s been happening around here at all.”
Alexis frowns as he disappears inside his apartment, wondering if the spirits have disappeared for good and taken her abilities with them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
DISAPPOINTED BY HER QUIET MORNING at Blackvine Manor, Alexis goes directly to her father’s house. She’s avoided him for months, ever since her vision showed him helping her mother.
Her anger spills over as soon as he opens the door. “How could you lie to me like that?”
A. J. Cole scrunches up his eyebrows. “Nice to see you too. How’s the job hunting?”
Alexis marches inside the house where she grew up. “You knew Amelia had gone back to live at Blackvine Manor Apartments. You helped her run away. All these years I’ve been asking what happened and you told me you didn’t know where she went. You drove her away!”
Blackvine Manor Mystery Page 9