Thirty-two
Once she knew I was going ghost hunting with Misty, Annica wanted to be part of the team. In truth, I’d hoped to recruit her. Even with Misty I didn’t feel brave enough to challenge the house on Loosestrife Lane on my own. We agreed to meet tomorrow on Annica’s day off.
Brent wouldn’t be with us. He’d reclaimed his enthusiasm and made appointments with two prospective caretakers. August was rapidly approaching. He hoped to move his collies into the house before the fundraiser for the animal shelter.
I took a sip of my lime cooler. Heavenly. “The basement,” I said. “We never thoroughly explored it.”
“We didn’t explore it at all,” Annica reminded me. “We concentrated on the attic. That’s where all good secrets hide out. Basements are cold and damp.”
“And I want to take Misty to the pond,” I said.
“Are you still looking for the phantom dog?”
“Yes, especially since I learned that Holly Wickersham had a collie.”
I imagined Holly trying to outrace the tornado. Grasping her dog’s leash in a death grip, Holly would have been determined to hold on to her, come what may. But they’d be trapped. The two of them sharing a watery grave.
Whoa! Where did the image of water originate?
Most likely in my intent to lead Misty to the pond.
Annica said, “I wish Lucy would go with us.”
“We could ask her. She doesn’t have to set foot on that landing.”
“Which one of us will do it?”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll stop at Dark Gables on the way home.”
Having Lucy accompany us would be an enormous bonus. Perhaps another part of the house would reveal a secret, and it wouldn’t have a traumatic effect on her.
“I want to find out what caused that scratching noise,” Annica said. “Even though I have yet to hear it.”
“I was thinking. Could it have been part of the past that somehow lives on, like the disturbance on the landing?”
“If we haven’t found evidence of rats or some other creature, then, maybe yes.”
And the siren I’d heard. Perhaps that sound also originated in Holly’s time, a warning she’d heard that had maintained its wail across the years.
What had Brent’s contractor and his workers experienced that had driven them away from the house and a lucrative job? That they didn’t even want to talk about?
We would never know.
“I’m glad you’re taking Misty along,” Annica said. “I think we’re finally on the right track.”
~ * ~
I was surprised when Lucy readily agreed to join our expedition.
“My curiosity won out in the end,” she confessed. “I was afraid when it happened. Now I want to know more.” As she laid her hand on Sky’s head, the gold charms on her bracelet jangled. “I was hoping you’d invite me to accompany you again.”
“I was hoping you’d accept.”
I turned my teacup around, watching the patterns form. Would one of them give Lucy a preview of what waited for us in Brent’s house?
“I want to help Brent,” Lucy said. “He was so disappointed when his contractor quit, and no one seems interested in the caretaker job. He had a good and generous idea, but it looks like the fates are conspiring against him.”
“It can all change in the blink of an eye. We can make it happen.”
I made my wish, this time for Brent’s house to be up and running soon, and gave Lucy my cup.
After a single glance, she said, “Uh oh.”
“What?
“I see an initial ‘V’.”
Oh, no.
That symbol could only refer to Veronica the Viper, the glamorous female deputy sheriff who had set her sights on Crane.
My husband, I thought. Don’t you forget that.
Veronica had conspired to cross Crane’s path as often as possible. She even resorted to lying about the time she’d spent with him. Wounded in the line of duty, Veronica had decided to leave the force, but her fellow officers had talked her into giving law enforcement another chance. That meant she was bound to run into Crane.
“V is heading toward your home,” Lucy said. “There’s good news, too, though. I see an overflowing basket.”
Overflowing with flowers, I thought. That symbol represented all good things. As for Veronica the Viper, I didn’t need another complication in my life.
“Here’s a successful undertaking,” Lucy said.
“A solution to the mystery, I hope.”
“But a large boulder stands in the way.” She pointed to a large tannish tealeaf. “You’ll have an obstacle to surmount.”
When did an obstacle not stand between me and any goal I wanted to achieve. “I’ll take the basket,” I said.
“That’s all I see today.” Lucy set my cup on the wicker coffee table next to the dessert plate. “That was a good cup.”
“Except for Veronica.”
I reached for another vanilla wafer. “I really don’t want to deal with her, but I guess I’ll have to take the bad along with the good.”
~ * ~
The house brooded, waited in silence for a human to breach its defenses. It rose against a dull gray sky filled with floating dark clouds. A light wind carried a medley of floral scents across the grass along with a sound of water.
“It’s supposed to rain,” Lucy said, looping the ribbon of a black umbrella over her wrist.
“This is perfect haunted house weather,” I said.
I took Misty’s leash and led her out of the back seat. She was excited, tail wagging, eyes bright in anticipation of a new adventure with me.
“She remembers being here before,” Annica said.
“She remembers the pond. Let’s check it out first.”
I recalled my first sight of the fishpond. Befouled water, weeds interspersed with dead plants in the rock garden, missing boulders, flamingoes lying on their sides. What a change a little tender loving care had wrought.
We stood at the rock border, gazing into the clear surface. Would the phantom collie rise from the depths?
Be still. Wait… Maybe.
Tiny living things, bits of shining gold, rippled through the water, the finishing touch to Brent’s pond restoration.
“Look!” I said. “Brent bought his goldfish.”
“I hope they’ll be safe,” Annica murmured.
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Feral cats,” she said.
I hadn’t thought about that grim complication.
“I hope Brent didn’t create a buffet for felines,” she added.
“When the dogs move in, if there are any cats in the area, they’ll keep their distance,” I said. “I hope.”
The wind rose. Low hanging willow strands swept across the pond’s surface, but the water lay still like a giant’s mirror set down in the grass. Misty swiped the water with her paw and withdrew it. She shook herself.
“This has to be the most peaceful place on the planet,” Annica said. “I’d like to bring a lawn chair out here and sit and read or just dream.”
Splash!
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“What?”
I knelt on the ground and trailed my hand through the water.
“That splashing.”
“I do now. Take your hand out of the water, Jennet. You’ll scare the fish.”
She hadn’t heard what I had. Something untoward was going to happen today. I felt certain of it.
Thirty-three
When I opened the door, Misty pulled on her leash, eager to investigate all the new scents suddenly available for her sniffing pleasure. I freed her from her restraint, and she lost no time in rushing across the room and burying her nose in a pile of discarded rags.
Only a dog can find wondrous scents in an empty house.
“Ugh,” Lucy said. “You’d think the workers could have taken their dirty clothes with them.” She sidestepped a red shirt torn
and stained with a mystery substance.
“Brent will have to build a bonfire,” Annica said.
I called Misty, who looked up from the jumble of rags. “I want you to turn your sixth sense on, girl. Find something. We’re counting on you. Go!”
“Do you honestly believe she understood all those words?” Annica asked.
“Yes.”
Misty bolted into the kitchen, and we followed her.
“Let’s see how bad it is in here,” Lucy said.
It was, as Brent had claimed, torn apart, looking half its size with wood and cabinet parts strewn everywhere. The coffeemaker had vanished, and I didn’t see a box of doughnuts. Still, Misty had ample scents to follow.
“Leaving this kind of mess is unconscionable,” Lucy said. “I hope Brent didn’t pay a deposit.”
“I think he did. Maybe they gave him a refund. Well—”
Fortunately the flashlights were where we’d left them on the table. The kitchen had two exits. One door led to the back porch and the outside, the other to the basement. I opened the second door and turned on the light. Shadows fell across the staircase that curved down to unseen darkness below. Luckily a bannister provided a handhold.
Misty paused at the head of the staircase as if to contemplate her chances of descending a new set of steps safely, then she moved with ease down the stairs.
“Be careful,” I told my companions, as I switched on the flashlight. The lighting in the basement was inadequate, perhaps three or four sixty-watt bulbs. Brent would need more brightness in this cavernous space.
“I don’t like basements,” Annica said. “This one is especially spooky.”
“It’s just darker than most.”
“How many people spend time in a basement?” Lucy asked.
This one was fairly ordinary. It contained a washer and dryer, an old furnace, and a large pantry with its own door, obviously homemade. Empty quart and pint jars shared space with an old pressure cooker and boxes marked with such labels as ‘extra utensils’ and ‘Christmas dishes.’ A stove and refrigerator suggested that some past homemaker had enjoyed cooking in the house’s lowest level, perhaps for large gatherings.
Annica pulled open the refrigerator door. It gave an ungodly squeak.
“Empty,” she said.
The western wall had been designated as a storage area for gardening tools, brooms, snow shovels, and a dusty set of luggage.
Were the suitcases Holly’s property?
“Let’s open them,” I said.
The luggage was definitely a relic of another age. Each one bore a tag: Holly Wickersham, 7 Loosestrife Lane, Foxglove Corners, Mich. The pieces probably had different names.
“Train case,” I murmured. “Hat box… How vintage.”
“Who wears hats anymore?” Annica asked.
“English women,” Lucy said. “But you could carry anything in that box. It doesn’t have to be a hat.”
I opened the largest suitcase and examined all the inner pockets. It was empty. Holly had obviously been meticulous about clearing out and cleaning her luggage. The hat box looked as if it had never been used. Maybe it hadn’t.
“This proves that Holly didn’t plan to leave on a trip the day she vanished,” I said.
Not if she was caught in a tornado, I told myself.
I couldn’t stop connecting the tornado with Holly’s disappearance, even without evidence to back it up. But wait! Wasn’t Lucy’s experience on the landing evidence? For me it was.
I scanned the rest of the basement, looking in all the corners. My next and last discovery was a long-sleeved pink blouse, silk, I’d guess, and very elegant. It had fallen behind the dryer.
Did Holly realize the blouse was missing? Did she ever wonder what had happened to it?
“I think we’ve seen everything there is to see down here,” Annica said. “I’m cold. I hate basements. Or did I say that already?”
“It’ll be more comfortable upstairs.”
I was cold, too, but the icy waves I felt had nothing to do with the chill, unmoving air. It originated in the unsettling atmosphere that hung over this lowest level of the house. In a sense, the basement was like the landing.
A spate of high-pitched barking drifted down from one of the upper floors. At some point Misty had gone upstairs. And found something?
“Let’s see why Misty’s barking,” I said.
She lay in the kitchen securing a bone with one paw while she indulged in one of her favorite past times.
“Don’t let her have that, Jennet,” Lucy said. “You don’t know how old it is or where it came from.”
“Where did you find it, Misty?”
“Why was she barking?” Annica asked.
Both were good questions, but I had no hope of getting answers from Misty. I wondered if the bone had belonged to Holly’s collie or to the pet of some tenant who came after her.
“That wasn’t what I meant when I told you to find something,” I said, taking it from her. I placed it on the counter, and she stared at it wistfully.
“Let’s find something else,” I said.
~ * ~
“Oh dear.” Lucy leaned against the wall. “Suddenly I don’t feel well.”
“Here, sit down,” I said.
All of the kitchen chairs were in use as table extensions, heaped high with various parts. I moved a box of hardware and pushed the chair closer to her.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Annica asked, then searched the counter for the electric teakettle that had been there on our last visit. “What did those jerks do with Brent’s stuff?”
“Just rest, Lucy,” I said. “Is it your stomach? Your head?”
“Both.”
She didn’t look well. She was pale and kept rubbing her throat. Misty had given up watching her bone and lay beside Lucy, whimpering softly.
“It just came on,” Lucy said. “A pain in my head. A weakness. For a moment I felt as if I were going to faint.”
“You’re not, are you?” Annica asked.
Lucy didn’t answer but rested her head on her palm.
“Let’s get Lucy home,” I said, knowing we’d lost our enthusiasm for the day’s adventure. Lucy hadn’t gone near the landing, although she had intended to accompany us up to the second story. Did the kitchen also hold echoes of Holly’s terror or was Lucy suffering from another, natural malady like vertigo?
“Could we wait a little while?” she asked. A brief half smile brought a faint tinge of color back to her face. “Just a few minutes. I’d like to get my sea legs back. I feel so foolish.”
“There’s no hurry,” I said.
Misty laid her paw on Lucy’s lap.
No hurry, I thought. That isn’t right. We have to hurry and get out of this house before something happens.
Annica was still searching for the teakettle and the bag of tea bags she’d left in the kitchen weeks ago.
“Did Brent’s workers steal his stuff?” she demanded.
“I don’t want any tea, Annica,” Lucy said. “That is, I do, but I’ll wait till I’m home.”
“Try to stand,” I said, holding on to her arm.
She did; she took three steps. “But I’m a little unsteady on my feet.”
Misty abandoned her role of canine nurse and, reverting to madcap puppy mode, crossed in front of Lucy. She faltered.
“Misty! Sit and stay.”
Misty looked puzzled and rightly so. Sit and stay when we were leaving? When Annica was already at the door?
“I’ll help Lucy to the car,” Annica said as I approached Misty, leash in hand. She danced gleefully away from me, training tossed to the winds. Her dark eyes glittered with mischief.
I grabbed her collar and attached it to the leash. “Misty is bad,” I told her, “and I’m the alpha dog,” I added for my own benefit.
As we went through the door, Misty lunged forward and dragged me toward the pond. I hadn’t anticipated her choosing her own direction over the one I’d
decided on. Sometimes she was so like Candy.
“I don’t want to see the goldfish,” I shouted.
Laughter reached me from the lane. It’s always amusing to see somebody else’s dog cause a commotion.
She came to a sudden stop at the pond’s edge and stood frozen, staring down at the surface.
A collie, a dark sable with one pricked ear, stared back at her.
Thirty-four
The apparition didn’t last long. I blinked, and it was gone, replaced by graceful ripples and tiny streaks of gold shimmering in the sunlight. Misty swiped her paw through the water and turned to me for an explanation.
Where did the other dog go?
“Are you coming, Jennet?” Annica called.
The phantom had vanished, having timed its appearance well. Only Misty and I had seen him.
A rustle in a stand of loosestrife and giant ferns drew my attention away from the pond. It then moved to two tall, bushy lilac trees that grew beyond the weeping willow. A creature, probably, whose instinct was to hide from an intrusive canine and the human.
Could it be a real dog who had somehow exited the pond in that blink of an eye? Unlikely; still I walked quietly around the lilacs, with Misty who wasn’t as quiet. By then nothing was there. Woodland creatures need to be fast in order to survive.
“Jennet!”
Annica had settled Lucy in the passenger seat of the Focus and was advancing toward me through the tall grass.
As I came back to the pond, I looked again. Nothing was there either.
“What’s so fascinating?” Annica asked as she reached my side. “Did you see the phantom dog?”
“I did. For a moment.”
Misty gave a little yip. That’s what we saw. The ghost. She stared down into the pond as if waiting for it to reappear.
“It took off,” Annica said.
“Yes, in the manner of spirits everywhere.”
A cool breeze wound itself around me, a pleasant sensation and a welcome one on the hot morning.
“Could you have seen a goldfish?” she asked.
I smiled at the notion. Annica and I often played a game of devil’s advocate, taking turns as the advocate.
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