by Madelyn Alt
"Have you told her about what happened?" he asked, jerking his head in my direction.
Felicity's glance flicked to me. "Not yet."
"I think you should."
"I'm not sure where to begin."
I reached out a hand in encouragement. "I know that your sister was killed. What I don't know is how or why. Why don't we just go over what happened. Step by step. How did you get mixed up in all of this?"
Felicity sighed and stared down into the glass of tea she held with both hands. "Goddess if I know. Isabella and I… we didn't have what one would consider a close relationship. It pains me to say, but it's true. We'd scarcely exchanged two words since…" She paused, a pained frown marring her brow. "Since Gerald—my husband—left this world for the next."
I thought of Mel and her picture-perfect life, and the way my mother never let an opportunity pass by to draw my attention to it. "Sisters aren't always close. Sometimes water is thicker than blood. Sometimes blood gets infected. Poisoned by outside influences that are difficult to overcome."
Felicity nodded, lost in thought. "When she called this morning, however, none of that mattered."
The phone call. Of course. "What did she want?"
Felicity exchanged a glance with Marcus. "Maggie, do you believe in ghosts?"
I blinked. "You… you mean…"
"I mean precisely that. Ghosts. Spirits. Entities from another dimension or time."
"I don't know how to answer that."
"Yes or no would be a good beginning."
"Well… I suppose I've never really thought much about it. I mean, certainly I believe it's possible for there to exist things we cannot hear or see."
I was reaching here, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. Besides, I hadn't completely written off the possibility of an omniscient, omnipresent force in the universe, and if one believed in God, then angels, devils, and ghosts weren't too much of a stretch.
"Isabella phoned me because she had been having trouble of the paranormal persuasion."
The ultimate in domestic disturbances. "What kind of experiences are we talking about here?"
"I'm not quite sure. All I know is that she was very much afraid this morning."
"Did she elaborate?"
"Not much. Sounds. A sense of being watched, of not being alone. What came into play in this particular instance, I have no idea, but I fear it very well could have killed my sister."
I was trying to keep an open mind, really I was, but it was all just a bit too far out for me. This was the twenty-first century, fergoshsakes. "Do you really believe that?"
"Yes. No. I'm not sure. I suppose it's too much to hope for. The thought that someone might have wanted her dead…" Frowning, she traced her fingertip thoughtfully around the rim of her glass. "I found her, you know. Lying crumpled and broken at the base of the stairs, her eyes open and glassy. A pool of blood spreading beneath her head." She lifted her eyes to mine. "Her body was still warm. You have no idea how… how difficult that was."
My heart clenched suddenly and I had to lower my eyes. If this was an act for my benefit, it was a very good one.
Marcus rose and went behind her, his hands strong and supportive on her slender shoulders. She reached up and covered one of his hands with her own.
"Liss… it may become necessary to create a sequence of events," he told her gently. "Did the cops give you any information? Any at all?"
She shook her head. "Only that they believed Isabella had been… dead… a very short time. And that the injuries to her head were not solely the result of the fall."
Marcus went still, his eyes shuttered. He cleared his throat. "They're sure?"
She almost smiled. "I assume they know what they're talking about."
"It seems awfully early to be making that kind of judgment call."
"They're the experts."
I wasn't so sure. Having lived in this town my whole life, I knew what kind of experts we had on our small police force.
Most were greenhorn young men, with little life experience and even less understanding of the world beyond Stony Mill. The rest were tired middle-aged men, a little soft around the middle, who'd escaped their killer nine-to-five origins for a lower-stress job passing out speeding tickets and busting high schoolers for being stupid enough to keep drugs in their lockers. They were not up to the challenge of a murder.
Not even the intense Deputy Fielding.
I cleared my throat. "So Isabella asked you to come out, then?"
"Yes. No—I can hardly remember." Her brow creased as she tried to sharpen the details in her mind. "She didn't ask me, I don't think. But she must have known I'd come. Ghosts, the paranormal. She needed no reminder that the supernatural is my area of expertise. Why else would she call?"
Marcus nodded in agreement. "Right. What next?"
"That must have been around nine-ten, I suppose. I called you then, Marcus. What time would you say that we left here?"
"Ten minutes to cross town. Nine-twenty, nine-twenty-five at the outside."
"We arrived at Isabella's no more than ten minutes after that. Nine-thirty-five or so. Marcus, you said that you saw something in the woods that separates the properties. I parked by the house, and you went to check that out."
I looked up at Marcus. "What did you see?"
He tipped his head back, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. "A flash of movement. Quick. There one moment, gone the next."
"And did you find anything?" I pressed.
"Nothing."
"Mmm." I tried to think of the most diplomatic phrasing. "So, really, it might have been the wind. A squirrel, or maybe even a deer."
"You might think that," he replied equably. "If you didn't feel what I felt."
"And what was that?"
He locked his gaze with mine. "Energy signature."
My eyebrows shot up. "I beg your pardon?"
"Someone had been there. Someone with very strong emotions."
Energy signature. Yeah. "I see."
"Marcus is quite correct." Felicity rose to her feet and began to scrape the contents of her plate into the garbage disposal. "When I went up to the house, I felt it, too."
I took a deep breath, trying to still the sudden snap of my nerves. "All right. All that aside, what happened next?"
"While Marcus investigated the movement, I rang the bell. No one answered, which seemed odd. I could hear the bell ringing inside, but nothing else. I tried calling on my cell phone, but that, too, went unanswered. I wondered whether she might have left after all. She had sounded very frightened; it seemed a distinct possibility.
"Something told me to try the doorknob. It was unlocked, so I thought… well… I could just check. I thought it couldn't hurt to do a quick walk-through and make sure nothing was wrong. She'd asked me to come because of the disturbances; even if she'd left, there might have been residual energies lurking about."
More woo-woo. It was all Greek to me, but Marcus seemed to understand perfectly. "So you opened the door…" he prompted.
"I opened the door and stepped inside." Her eyes fixed on Marcus's face, but no light gave life to them, only a haze of memory. "I didn't sense anything… specific … but my fear level had begun to rise. The shades were drawn; it was like twilight inside. Silent as the grave. I went to the kitchen. It was empty, but I could see she'd been having tea and biscuits. There was a wrung-out teabag and a rinsed cup in the sink; a saucer with a biscuit on the table. Her laptop was open next to it, but it had shut down." She took a breath. "I went down the hall. Past the laundry. The butler's pantry. Nothing seemed out of place, really, but it was so… bloody… quiet. The hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck were standing on end. The air, it felt… wrong. And then I began to hear the whispers."
Shock and fear spurted through me. "Someone was there?"
Marcus shook his head, his eyes locked on Felicity. "Spirits," he muttered. "Trying to guide her. It's what she does."
She nodded. "I
tried to focus on them, but it was all too chaotic. I couldn't pinpoint… they were all so insistent." She paused and we waited for her to continue, not wanting to disturb the process that seemed to be taking her on a physical path through her memories of the morning. At length she went on. "I closed my eyes, trying to feel. Where to go. What to do. Upstairs? Outside? I remember asking my guides to help me. At that point I think I knew something was very, very wrong. I went down the hall to the foyer and…" Her voice trailed away.
"And that's where you found her," Marcus finished for her.
She nodded. "I stepped into the foyer and my eyes dazzled from the sudden glare of sunlight coming through the windows on the landing above. It was so bright that I had to squint and hold my hand out against the light until my eyes adjusted. And then I saw her, lying at the foot of the marble staircase. Not fifteen feet from where I stood. Her legs were twisted beneath her, blood pooled under her head. There were great smears of it here and there along the steps."
I placed my hand over hers, felt it quiver oh-so-slightly beneath mine before she regained control. Across the table, a muscle worked in Marcus's temple, but his face remained expressionless.
"I thought… I thought she'd cracked her head open when she'd fallen," Felicity continued, "but the police believe she was struck with something before she fell. 'Localized blunt force trauma,' I believe is what they called it. Pending the results of the forensic review, I'm sure. That doesn't exactly spell accidental death, now, does it."
I had begun to tremble with a slow swell of sympathetic adrenaline. Try as I might, I couldn't rid my mind of the image of Isabella Harding, broken and twisted at the base of the stairs.
A murder. Right here in Stony Mill.
Marcus got to his feet and crossed to the French doors. Despite his languid cowboy-slouch and hands jammed in the back pockets of his low-riding leather pants he looked like he might slam his fist against the glass in frustration at any moment. He stared out at the dark, his gaze darting restlessly back and forth. "There was someone there in the woods. I know it. They could be out there right now. Watching us."
"Oh, Marcus." Felicity shook her head.
"Um," I said, all senses on high alert as my gaze was drawn to the blackness beyond the glass panes, "what makes you think they'd be watching us here?"
"Didn't you know?" Marcus turned away from the window long enough to cast me a curious glance. "The trees—you can't see them very well at the moment, but—they connect with the Harding property."
My mouth went dry. That would mean—
That would mean Isabella Harding was the second half of Dueling Banjos.
Which also meant that her murder took place right… next… door.
Chapter Four
If I lingered over thoughts like that, I'd give myself a serious case of the heebie-jeebies.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, willing away the fear that had billowed up inside me.
"I don't think I feel comfortable with you being out here alone," Marcus was saying.
Felicity patted his hand. "I'll be fine."
He turned his hand palm up abruptly and captured hers. "You shouldn't be alone tonight." His chin jutted stubbornly.
"Well…" Felicity looked at me. "Perhaps Maggie would be willing to stay the night. I have plenty of room. If you don't mind, of course," she hurried to amend. "Please don't feel obligated if you have other plans."
I gazed back and forth between them, wondering how I'd managed to get myself into this kind of predicament. I didn't know whether I should feel honored by the invitation or maneuvered. Spending the night in a secluded mansion, miles away from town and police and other signs of civilization, alone with someone I wanted to trust but who had recently been questioned in an as-yet unsolved murder… well, let's just say it wasn't what I'd expected to be on my itinerary for the evening. But I had no real reason yet to mistrust Felicity, despite her professed dabbling in the Arts. I rather liked her and her nonconformist ways, and I doubted that I was in any kind of danger by staying. Still…
What to do, what to do.
In the end, good manners won out. It's just not nice to turn away the request of a friend in need. My grandmother, dead though she may be, would never let me live it down.
Marcus waited downstairs while Felicity showed me to the bedroom nearest the stairs, dimming the lights as we went along. I watched her movements a little nervously. Amazing how a house can take on a menacing quality when cast into shadow.
"The bedding was freshened just yesterday," she said, bustling around the room with a stack of fresh towels and a carafe of water. "I'll just grab something for you to sleep in, and you should have everything you need."
I looked skeptically at her slender figure. "I don't think you have anything that will fit."
"Oh, I think we can find something to suit." She paused, fluffing an already full pillow. "I hope you don't mind if I turn in straightaway. It has been quite a long day."
"Not at all."
She came back with a high-necked flannel gown that would have made my grandmother's heart go pitter-pat. Old-fashioned, but she was right, it could have fit two of me. We said our good nights and I closed the door behind her. As an afterthought, I reached down and turned the key in the lock. Better safe than sorry.
I sat on the edge of the bed a moment, listening to her footsteps echo down the flight of stairs. Going down to say good night to Marcus, no doubt.
I picked up the gown, fingering the soft flannel as I looked around the room. Crocheted lace dripped from the massive bed's lintels, while on the mattress itself a soft chenille duvet cradled me in goosedown comfort. An eight-foot secretary towered next to the window, while a three-way mirror and a dressing table with a chintz skirt completed the ensemble near the door. The room lacked nothing in the way of amenities, but I felt anything but comfortable as I found my gaze drawn toward the window and the darkness beyond.
I thought about the woods Marcus had mentioned, silent and secretive beneath the low-lying cloud cover, and the house that stood just beyond them. Was I crazy to stay here, so near to the site of the horrific deed? Now that I'd had a chance to think, it seemed a little too convenient that I was the one to stay rather than Marcus.
Why was I there, really?
It suddenly occurred to me that quite a few minutes had passed, but I hadn't heard the telltale rumble of Marcus's motorcycle dwindling into the distance. Nor had I heard Felicity's return up the stairs.
I couldn't help wondering…
Before I knew it, I found myself stretching my hand out to switch off the lamp, plunging the room into inky blackness. Holding my breath, I crept around the grand bed toward the window, my hands outstretched in the careful reach of a blind person in unfamiliar surroundings. I felt my way around the bench at the foot of the bed, until my fingertips bumped the cold, smooth glass of the window.
When I'd arrived with Felicity, the security lights had been on, flooding light onto the architectural details of the house and casting light here and there around the grounds. Now they had gone out, or been turned out. Why?
I peered out, straining to discern precious details. Dimly, I could make out a glint on the asphalt drive below. Marcus's motorcycle. He'd moved it from the garage, but he'd not left yet. I leaned closer to the window and tried to look straight down.
Was that movement I saw, there below?
It was. What were they doing? Without even the slightest hesitation or stab of conscience, I found myself sliding the window latch to the right and carefully sliding the sash upward, inch by inch.
Cold swept into the room like a marauding invader, invisible and insidious. I shivered and dropped to my knees, resting my hands on the sill. They were down there, all right.
"Do you have everything?" Felicity's voice was pitched low.
"Right here. Hand me the lantern."
A ring of light edged into view, rippling like water. An oil lamp or a flame of some sort. The light moved, a
nd then I could see the two of them, glowing like fairy people in the darkness of night.
They were headed for the woods.
A part of me wanted to throw on warm clothes and follow them, but I was too sensible for something so foolhardy. What could they be doing? Trysting? Or perhaps their presence together had a more ominous portent. Maybe they were burying evidence.
They were together this morning, at the murder scene. What if tonight was just an elaborate sham to get me on their side? What if they were both involved in the murder of Isabella Harding and were out there now, trying to cover up their tracks?
I watched the swinging lantern and shadowy figures disappear into an invisible treeline that I knew must be there. I stayed at the window, despite the fact that I was shivering to beat the devil, and kept scanning the far distance for some sign of what they were doing. I don't know how long I sat there—at some point, I had the wits to grab a soft throw from the end of the bed—but I must have drifted off for a moment. When I lifted my head from my hands, I saw a pale glow lighting the treetops. Not in the south as I had expected, but more toward the northwest.
Fire? And voices, wafting to me on the wind.
Chanting.
They were chanting.
Adrenalin zipped up my spine. I hastily closed the window and climbed into bed, dragging the soft blankets up to my chin. No wonder Marcus and Felicity were an item. They were magical partners. Did they work with others? A coven of witches? Were they out there now?
What had I gotten myself into?
* * * *
The wind continued late into the night, whining against my guestroom window. Wind was not uncommon here in northeastern Indiana, where the wide stretches of flatlands and shortage of forests provided little barrier to the more powerful forces of nature. Normally I found the sound comforting, like a soothing lullaby. Tonight it danced at the edges of my consciousness, taunting me as I lay there, tossing and turning and making a general mess of the bedclothes while I replayed the events of the day and evening in my mind. Over, and over, and over.
My nerves were pulled as tight as my overstretched underwear elastic. I tried to make my mind a blank, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw an attractive, petite woman lying twisted at the base of a vast expanse of marble stairs, her eyes opened wide in sightless horror as she faced her killer in her last moments of life. Between that and the witchy rituals being practiced so near, was it any wonder that I was having trouble relaxing? Usually I considered myself a fairly easygoing person. As politically correct as possible—not because I wanted so much to spare those with the oversensitivity gene, but because tolerance seemed the best way to get through a world where one had so little control. Why try to control things you couldn't change?