The Ghost and the Leprechaun

by Anna J. McIntyre

  “You and your gut feelings.” Thomas lifted the binoculars back to his eyes. “Hey, she’s getting up. Looks like she’s on the move.”

  “Will the bracelet be with the gold?” Danielle asked.

  “Bracelet? What bracelet?” Sean asked Danielle as he followed her back to the parking lot where she had left her car.

  “Didn’t you also take a bracelet from the bank?” Danielle asked.

  Sean frowned. “No.” Sean then laughed and said, “I remember now!”

  Danielle stopped walking for a moment and looked at Sean, who also stopped. “You remember what, that you took the bracelet?”

  He laughed and started walking again, along with Danielle. “No. I don’t know anything about a bracelet. I only moved the gold. But now I know where I saw that necklace before.”

  “What necklace?” Danielle asked.

  “The one in your safe. I was planning to take it.” He laughed again.

  “The Missing Thorndike?”

  “Yes! I saw you remove it from your safe, and I knew it looked familiar. I just couldn’t place it. I’d seen pictures of the necklace before. How did you get it? I remember reading how it went missing after Eva Thorndike died.”

  “It’s a long story. Walt Marlow had it all along, and since the Thorndikes left it to him in their will, I ended up with it.”

  “Very interesting,” Sean murmured.

  A moment later he asked, “Where is this next level exactly? Is it heaven?”

  “I don’t know. I just know there’s something beyond this, and when you’re ready to move on, you’ll be able to.” Danielle smiled and then added, “Well, that’s not entirely accurate.”

  Sean glanced over at Danielle. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you remember about Walt Marlow’s death?” Danielle asked.

  “I remember he killed himself…oh…I understand…is that why Walt Marlow is stuck at Marlow House?”

  Danielle shook her head. “No. Walt was actually murdered by his brother-in-law, Roger.”

  “I knew there was something wrong with Roger!”

  “Walt’s wife, Angela, was involved in the plot, but she was killed before her brother carried through with it.”

  “I knew Marlow’s wife had been hit by a car,” Sean said “I had no idea Walt Marlow had been murdered. I certainly didn’t know his wife was involved in her husband’s death.”

  “So now, as her penance, she’s confined to the graveyard.”

  “Why is Marlow trapped at Marlow House?”

  “He’s not trapped exactly. Oh, at first he was, because he was confused after the murder—just like you were confused. That confusion makes it impossible to move on. I believe a person must first accept his death before taking the next step.”

  “Marlow still hasn’t accepted his death?”

  “Yes, he has. Which is why he can move on if he chooses.”

  “But why did you say we can’t always move on if we choose to?”

  “I was thinking of Walt’s wife, Angela,” Danielle explained. “Had we taken another route to your grave site, you could have met her. Like I mentioned, for her crimes against Walt, her spirit is confined to the cemetery.”

  “So there is no hell? No fire and brimstone?”

  Danielle shrugged. “I suppose hell can mean different things to different people. And just because Angela is doing penance here, I have no idea what waits for her on the other side when she is finally allowed to move over—if she ever is.”

  “I’ll admit I’m getting curious to find out,” Sean said. They had just reached Danielle’s car in the parking lot.

  “Please take me to the gold first,” Danielle asked as she climbed into her driver’s seat.

  “What are you going to do with the gold, take it back to the bank?” Sean asked as Danielle slipped her key into the ignition.

  Instead of turning on her engine, she dropped her hand from the key and sat back in the seat. “That’s a good question. What am I going to do with it?”

  “Don’t you want to take it back to the bank?”

  “I can’t really do that. They’ll wonder why I have it.” Narrowing her eyes, she silently considered her various options. “I suppose I’ll have to call the chief. Explain what’s going on, and let him send someone to find it. He can say he received an anonymous tip.”

  “I hope it’s still there.”

  Danielle looked to Sean. “You mean it might not be?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t say for certain. It’s possible someone moved it.”

  “Then we better make sure it’s there, and then I can call the chief and have him send someone to pick it up.” Danielle reached for the key and then turned on the ignition. She pulled out into the street.

  “Keep going down this way,” Sean told her. “And then turn left. I’ll show you where it was.”

  Danielle didn’t notice the black sedan following her car, several car lengths behind her. When she did glance up into her rearview mirror, it was to see a white Jeep pull into the street, between her car and the one following her. She didn’t for a moment imagine she was being followed.

  The summer meant more traffic on the streets of Frederickport, and since it was a Friday, it was busier than midweek. Danielle followed Sean’s directions and found herself parking in a residential area adjacent to the beach. She had been here before.

  “It’s here?” Danielle asked after she turned off her ignition, not making a move to get out of her car. A couple sporting swimwear and carrying beach towels walked by the front of her car and gave her a wave as they headed down to the beach.

  “We have to go down that path,” Sean explained as he pointed in the direction where the couple had just gone. “There are some shacks down there. The gold’s in one of them.”

  “I know what’s down there. That’s where I found my cousin, Cheryl, last year.”

  Sean turned to Danielle and frowned. “What do you mean you found your cousin there?”

  “Last year, around this same time, my cousin disappeared after a party. I found her body in one of those huts. She had been murdered.”

  “Is her spirit still down there?” he asked.

  “No. She’s moved on. But going to those huts…” Danielle cringed.

  As she discussed the beach huts with Sean, she failed to notice the dark sedan drive by her parked car, traveling down the road and turning left onto another street. It parked around the corner. Had she thought to look in that direction, she would not have seen it because of the other cars parked along the street.

  “The beach hut where the gold is, is it locked?” Danielle asked.

  “Yes. But locks aren’t a problem,” Sean boasted. “Moving a tumbler is a snap.”

  Danielle looked over at Sean and considered the energy he had been able to harness. It was obvious to her he could move small objects—like gold coins and tumblers inside a lock—yet she had seen no indication he had any of the powers Walt had mastered, which didn’t surprise her considering Sean obviously utilized most of his energy to allow him to move from one location to the next, something Walt couldn’t do.

  “Okay. Let’s go down there. I want to see if the gold coins are where you say they are, and then I’ll call the chief.”

  No houses lined the west side of the street where Danielle had parked her car. The sidewalk there butted up to the sandy ground leading to the beach. While there were no houses along this ocean-side section of the road, a short distance down, both north and south, there were beachfront houses, yet any possible ocean view was obscured by an uncooperative elevation and excessive foliage.

  Wild grass grew randomly along the sandy trail leading down to the beach. Ahead, Danielle spied a worn wooden bench situated along the side of the trail. She remembered waiting there for the police with Bill Jones after finding her cousin’s body. Beyond that, the row of six beach shacks, each painted with a different red number, one through six, came clearly into view.

  The coup
le who had passed by her car and waved when she had parked were nowhere in sight. There were some people on the beach, but they were a considerable distance from her and she couldn’t see their faces, nor could she imagine they could identify her.

  When she reached the beach shacks, she was grateful there was no one milling around. She knew the huts were used to store items like beach chairs and surfboards for some of the rental houses in Adam Nichols’s rental program. When she remembered that, she couldn’t help but grin. Adam would absolutely flip if he knew the gold was in one of his beach huts!

  Sean pointed to hut six, where the gold was being kept. For a brief moment Danielle considered returning to her car and simply calling the chief and telling him to send someone down to find the gold. However, if the gold had been moved, she didn’t want to send the chief off on some wild-goose chase. First, she would make sure the gold was still there, and then she would call him.

  Glancing around the beach, checking to make sure no one was close by, Danielle stepped closer to hut six and patiently waited for Sean to open the lock. With relative ease, the lock clicked open.

  After a final look around the general vicinity to make sure she was alone, Danielle slipped into the shack, not quite closing the door all the way shut behind her. Light coming in through a window illuminated the small space.

  “It’s in there,” Sean said, pointing to a red ice chest.

  Hastily kneeling down on the floor by the container, Danielle used her elbow to knock its lid onto the floor, unwilling to leave behind her fingerprints.

  She stared at the gold coins a few moments and then whispered, “It’s still here,”

  “Yes, it is,” came a voice from behind.

  With a jerk, Danielle turned to the now open doorway. Standing there were Special Agents Wilson and Thomas.

  Thirty-Three

  “What has she gotten herself into now?” Officer Brian Henderson asked as he stood in the small office adjacent to the interrogation room, looking through the two-way mirror at Danielle, who sat alone at the table, absently tapping her fingers against the desktop. The chief was out in the hallway, talking to Wilson, while Joe Morelli was in the room with Brian.

  “They seem to think the bank robbery was a hoax,” Joe told Brian as they watched Danielle.

  In the other room, Danielle turned to the mirror and smiled. The next moment she waved.

  “She knows we’re watching her,” Brian said with a chuckle.

  “There is no way Danielle lied about putting those coins in there,” Joe insisted.

  “Even Susan claims the box was heavy when it was put back into the vault,” Brian added.

  “Wilson seems to think Susan is in on it. Thomas went to get her and bring her in for questioning. I think they’re going to try to get her to flip on Danielle,” Joe said.

  “What is Danielle saying about finding the coins?” Brian asked.

  “She said she only went down to the beach huts because she was thinking about Cheryl.”

  “Ahh, that’s right. It’s been almost a year.”

  “Next week,” Joe said.

  Brian let out a sigh. “Back then, I really thought Danielle was responsible for her cousin’s death. I’ve rather gotten used to her.”

  “I’m not sure what Wilson and Thomas can do if Susan sticks to her story,” Joe said. “It will be difficult to prove a motive. Wilson thinks Danielle intended to claim the missing coins on her taxes, but since she obviously hasn’t filed her taxes yet, it’s just a theory.”

  “Not to mention, Danielle hasn’t really earned the reputation of being greedy, considering she keeps giving her money away.”

  “True. But Wilson and Thomas think she’s guilty,” Joe said.

  “I get it. I’ve been there, done that. Wanted to send that girl to jail.”

  “I better call Lily. Wilson took Danielle’s phone away, and I don’t think he’s let her make a call yet.”

  Dave Sterling was sitting in the living room at Marlow House, reading, when his cellphone rang. Tossing the magazine aside, he looked at his phone to see who was calling: Alan Kissinger.

  “Hey, Alan, what’s up?” Dave asked when he answered the phone.

  “This might be your chance to get the necklace and get out of there. Have those other guests left yet?”

  Dave glanced at the open doorway leading to the hallway. “Yeah, they took off about thirty minutes ago. I don’t know where Danielle is. She left after breakfast and hasn’t been back. Lily flew out of here about ten minutes ago.”

  “Boatman is down at the police station, and I bet money her friend Lily is on her way there. Those two are going to be gone all afternoon. Now’s the chance to get the necklace and get out of there.”

  “The housekeeper is still here. She’s up cleaning the room the Hortons were staying in. What’s Boatman doing down at the police station?”

  “The FBI found her with the missing gold. She’s down there being interrogated. They just left the bank with one of my employees, who I think they believe was in on it with her.”

  “The one you were telling me about, Susan Mitchell?”

  “That’s the one,” Alan said.

  “Okay. As soon as the housekeeper leaves, we’ll take care of business.”

  Brian Henderson drove directly to Frederickport Vacation Properties without calling first. When questioning witnesses or suspects, he preferred not to give them advance notice he would be arriving. He found Adam Nichols in his office.

  “Hey, Brian, what brings you over this way?” Adam asked as he tossed his pen on his desk and leaned back in his office chair.

  “I need to ask you a few questions about those beach huts you own, the ones where we found Cheryl’s body.”

  Adam arched his brows and leaned back even farther in his chair. “Yeah, what about them?”

  “Do you keep them locked?”

  “Yeah, what’s this about?”

  “Who has keys to number six?”

  “Bill has a set; we keep a set here. Each hut is assigned to a different rental in that neighborhood. Use of the huts are included with the rentals, so we keep the keys in the houses. But the house assigned to hut six isn’t currently rented. We had a broken pipe in there a couple weeks ago, and it did some serious damage. Had to replace the floors and some cabinets. So what is this about?”

  “Is the key to hut six still in the house?”

  Adam shrugged. “It should be.”

  “I assume you’ve had a lot of workers coming and going in that house because of the repairs?”

  “Sure. Probably a dozen or more, why?”

  “Would any of those workers have access to the key where you keep it in the house?”

  “Are you serious?” Adam laughed. “Just an oversized surfboard keychain with the words Beach Hut Six painted in red on it, hanging in the kitchen. Sure. Anyone could grab it. But it’s not like we keep anything of value in those buildings. Now will you tell me, what is this about?”

  “The missing gold coins, they were found this afternoon in an ice chest in hut six.”

  Adam let out a low whistle and sat up in the chair. “No kidding? Who found them?”

  “Danielle Boatman.”

  Adam frowned. “Danielle? What do you mean?”

  Brian then went on to tell Adam about Danielle finding the coins and the FBI agents finding Danielle.

  “Where is she now?” Adam asked.

  “She’s down at the station, being interrogated by Special Agent Wilson. He seems to think Danielle was behind the missing coins—that she never put them in the bank.”

  Adam narrowed his eyes and glared at Brian. “That’s BS.”

  Brian nodded. “I know.”

  Adam’s expression softened. “You don’t think she’s behind it?”

  Brian shook his head. “I don’t know how or why Danielle gets herself in these predicaments, but no. I don’t believe she’d do it.”

  After Brian left Adam’s office a few minute
s later, Adam immediately picked up his phone and placed a call.

  “Hello?” a female voice answered the call.

  “Mel, this is Adam. You need to get down to the police station. I think Danielle might need a lawyer.”

  When Brian Henderson returned to the police station, he learned Danielle was with the chief in his office with Lily, while Susan Mitchell was in the interrogation room with Special Agent Thomas. Instead of barging into the chief’s office, he went directly to the lunchroom to get a cup of coffee. He was alone in the room, pouring himself a cup, when Wilson entered.

  “Did you speak to Nichols?” Wilson asked.

  “Yes. He said they keep the huts locked. But there were probably a dozen or more people who had access to that beach hut.”

  “Boatman didn’t have a key on her,” Wilson explained.

  “Then she has to be telling the truth. She went down there because she was thinking of her cousin, found a hut unlocked, and went inside. It’s a coincidence.”

  “All it proves is she didn’t have a key,” Wilson argued.

  “Come on, you think Boatman put that gold in the hut and then didn’t lock it?” Brian asked.

  “My guess, the last person in the hut—prior to us finding Boatman there—was the person who put the coins in the ice chest. That person obviously didn’t lock the hut. That person could be Boatman.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Brian muttered.

  “What about Nichols? He’s a friend of Boatman’s. He very well could be part of this.”

  Coffee cup in hand, Brian turned to face Wilson. The oldest member of the Frederickport Police Department, Brian was also the most cynical. His cynicism had spilled over onto his feelings for Danielle until he came to realize—he had been wrong. Being wrong tended to annoy Brian, but he dealt with it. Which also meant he didn’t have a problem pointing out when someone else was in the wrong.

  “No way.” Brian took a swig of coffee.

  “Nichols is a friend of yours?” Wilson asked.

  Brian shrugged. “I’ve known him for years. Hauled him in a few times when he was a teenager for minor stuff. You know, underage drinking. Wasn’t a bad kid. He doesn’t always use the best judgment, but, no way. For one thing, I don’t believe Danielle would get involved with something like this. Hell, she keeps giving her money away, why try some tax scam?”