No one answered.
Mallory’s stomach tightened as she pushed the door all the way, the hinge creaked like a sound effect from a bad horror movie.
“It’s Mallory Vianu?” She said into the house. “Anyone home?” Mallory ventured.
Still no response.
She crept further into the foyer where there was an antique piano beneath the stairs. She was struck by a strange sensation. Straight ahead was a hallway and to the right there was a small living room that merged into the dining room. Something felt off. Elsa had said to come over immediately. Why would she not answer the door? Mallory headed down the hallway that led to the back of the house, following along until she came to the opening that led into what must have been Elsa’s study. She crossed through a carved archway where she was greeted with a breathtaking painting, depicting a cozy ski lodge set in the Swiss Alps over the fireplace. It fit the room with its earth tones and leather—there was even a roaring fire in the hearth below, so where in the world was Elsa.
“Mrs. Dustfeather?”
When Mallory stepped further into the room, she was struck by a strange sensation—the same prickly feeling she’d encountered before, only now it was stronger.
Mallory’s heart jolted as she walked around the oversized club chair. No wonder Elsa hadn’t answered. Her body was crumpled on the braided rug. Her arm outstretched like she’d been trying to roast it in the fire.
6
M ALLORY closed the giant double doors and leaned against them with a sigh. The manor had a calming influence on her psyche. For some reason, just walking through the door always seemed to wash away the stresses of the day. And today she needed that, especially after finding Elsa’s dead body.
Lise sat behind the reception desk with a mirror and a bag of makeup while her computer blared obnoxious music. There were huge triangles of white baby powder under her eyes and on her chin and dark lines drawn all over her face like some surgeon was mapping out a skin graft.
“Lise! What the heck are you doing?”
“Oh, sorry, Ms. Vianu. It was quiet, and I was all caught up on my work so I thought I’d catch up with my favorite Youtuber.”
“What’s on your face?”
“Make-up. I’m contouring.”
“And this is where you do your makeup now?”
Lise blushed. “No, of course not. Youtuber-Shae Glows does makeup tutorials. She’s demonstrating this new technique and so I thought I’d try to mimic it, you know, and maybe snap some pics for my blog.”
“I see.” Mallory said, taking a peek at the screen and thinking Lise’s side job was becoming a problem. Sure enough, the girl on the screen had done the same thing to her pretty face. So, the look was intentional, go figure? “Hey! That room looks familiar and so does the girl. She was part of the group who checked in yesterday for the conference, right?”
“Yeah, that’s Shae Viel she’s staying here right now with her friends. That’s also kind of what prompted me to catch up on her videos. Isn’t that so cool? The manor is in Shae’s video. She’s got way more followers than me, so the manor is like famous now.”
Mallory bit her lip to keep from laughing. Lise was clearly being serious. “Yep, great news for us.” She started to walk away when Lise spoke again.
“By the way, your uncle called for you, right after you left. I told him you’d call him back, but he said he was in town and he’d just pop by.”
“Uncle?” Mal said as she took off her leather jacket and ballet flats.
Lise nodded.
“I don’t have an uncle. Must have been a friend of my parents.” Her parents were musicians, and when she was a kid, she travelled quite a bit with them. There had been many aunts and uncles then—friends of the family. She’d practically been raised by the community of the traveling band. What a strange day she was having. “I have no idea why one of them would be calling now. My parents have been dead since I was seven.”
Lise was already back to her video.
Mallory shook her head and made her way down the corridor on the right side of the manor to the main kitchen. Unlike many of the rooms on the first floor of the manor, the kitchen had been renovated to suit the resort’s dinner parties. It still had Victorian cabinets, but they were updated with white countertops, multiple convection ovens, warming drawers, stainless steel appliances and a massive island with double sinks at the center.
Mallory breezed past the island to a thick, wooden door on the far wall.
Bakalo, the family cat, weaved figure eights between her ankles and Mallory bent down to pet his silky black fur and scooped him up.
“What are you doing outside of the apartment, you little walking health violation?”
Bakalo just stared at her with sharp green eyes and flicked his tail.
“Hey!”
Mallory jerked her head in the direction of the voice, and dropped the cat on the floor, her heart beating wildly in her chest.
“What’s going on?” Danior stood in the kitchen, her dark brows arched over her mostly ice-blue eyes.
Mallory relaxed. “Sorry, you spooked me.”
“What took so long? I thought you were just headed to that translator’s house?” Danior’s question interrupted Mallory’s thoughts, and she frowned.
“Yeah, about that.” Mallory set her purse on the island along with two sheets of paper and reached in the cupboard for a bottle of red wine.
“That good, huh?” Danior handed her a wine glass and Mallory got to pouring. “Bad news? I thought she said the findings could have historical significance … And be worth a lot of money.”
“She did say that.”
Danior’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s great. You just look so glum. Are these the translated pages?”
Mallory nodded, taking a large sip. “Those are the first two entries.”
“So, this is celebratory wine?”
Mallory looked up from her wine glass. “Not quite. She’s dead.”
7
D ANIOR’S eyes widened. “Dead.”
Mallory nodded. “The coroner said it could be cardiac arrest.”
“Oh, the poor woman.”
“I know. The weird part is that I couldn’t find our diary or her notes and I found this piece of burned paper on the hearth. It must have blown back out of the fire.”
“What does it say?”
“Find the card that shimmers with hope. Hold it up to the mirror… the rest of the page is burned.”
“Strange.”
“Yeah, I wish I hadn’t missed her call. I just had the strangest dream last night about a man looking for a mirror. I can’t help but feel like this is all connected.” Mallory pulled a wedge of whisky-aged cheddar from the fridge and placed it on the cutting board with two knives, mini baguettes and a jar of olive tapenade. “Help yourself.”
Danior sliced off a hunk and lifted it to her mouth. “Well, you know what Nana will say. Trust your intuition. If you think it’s connected, then it is. So, we need to find someone else to translate the journal then?”
“Why would we need to do that?” Nana asked from the kitchen doorway where she leaned against the opening in her usual calm manner.
“The lady we hired is dead,” Danior said.
“Who’s dead?” Eve appeared behind Nana, her long reddish-brown hair and tense stance matching her feisty personality.
“Elsa Dustfeather.” Mallory bit into a cheese slice, her mouth-watering with the smoky, peat flavor.
“Yikes. She did have heart problems, but I thought they were under control. She took medication. When did the old bird fly away?” Eve took a seat at the kitchen island and grabbed a hunk of bread, slathering the tapenade on it.
“Tonight,” Danior said.
“You were with her when she passed?” Nana turned to Mallory.
“No. I found her though. She called me to tell me that she’d found something important. She sounded breathless on the phone. I thought it was to do with the diary b
ut the police said it might have had something to do with the onset of her heart attack.”
“Really? That’s too bad. I’ll have to send her cousin, Hatti some flowers.” Nana turned from the cabinet with the homemade herbal tea bag she’d apparently been searching for.
“Yeah, I was just telling Danior that she said she may have found something significant in the journal.”
“Worth a lot of money,” Danior added.
“And something to do with Mom. Which is why we need to get someone else,” Mallory said.
“So there really is something to that journal, then?” Nana looked down into her steaming cup of tea.
“What exactly do you mean by that, Nana?”
“Nothing, dear. It’s just the cards told me the journal was special—that it would lead us to our greatest treasure.”
Mallory shivered as she gazed out the window toward the woods where a dead body had been dug up the past summer. “Great,” She whispered. “So, we can expect more thieves to crawl out of the woodwork.”
Last year, a travel magazine had written a story on the manor and, more importantly, on one of its famous guests who’d lost a rare nickel while vacationing in the sixties. This article had prompted the town council to hold a fake treasure hunt for tourism purposes. Unfortunately, the article had resulted in two incidents at the Manor involving thieves, murder and the theft of the coin.
“But I thought this book was just a diary of one of Nana’s old relatives. What’s the big deal? It’s probably just junk filled with boring day-to-day things,” Danior said.
Nana shot Danior a look. “Watch yourself there, girlie.”
Mallory shrugged. “All I know is that Elsa said she made an important find and I want to know what it is. Oh, and I found this.”
She handed the singed torn scrap of paper to Nana, who read it.
“How curious, considering your dream about the mirror.”
“Right?!” Mallory nodded her agreement and then paused at the sound of the door. They heard Lise chatting to someone in the front foyer. Probably just one of the manor’s guests.
“So, what do we do now?” Danior asked.
“You said Elsa called you because she’d finished the translation, right? Problem solved. The police must have found it or the journal. Just ask Cody,” Eve said.
Mallory shook her head. “It wasn’t there—at least not in plain sight. Her desk was a mess like someone had gone through it.”
“So, you think she was murdered?”
“Not according to the police. They said she could have made a mess of her desk when the attack first came on, looking for her phone… to call me.”
“That makes no sense. Why would she have called you instead of an ambulance? And do you think she burned the journal like she did that paper?” Eve asked.
“No, I checked the ashes before the police arrived, but I didn’t see any scraps of it.”
“I would hate to think that it’s somewhere where just anyone could take it.” Nana bobbed her tea bag up and down in her mug. “If we can’t find the diary on our own, maybe we can talk to Hatti … someone must be in charge of Elsa’s estate now. We could tell them she was working on a project for us and has a valuable book.” Nana sipped her tea.
As if on cue, local investigative reporter Penny Trubble came strolling into the manor’s large kitchen. “Well, if you do tell Hatti, you might be signing a death warrant,” she said, pulling up a stool at the island.
“You sure as hell know how to make an entrance, don’t you, Trubble?” Eve said to her boss with a smirk.
“Death warrant? What are you talking about?” Mallory scrunched up her face.
“I just spoke to my source in the police department—which was code for her hot boyfriend Detective Cody Lumos—and Elsa didn’t die of a heart attack,” Penny said. “She was murdered.”
8
M ALLORY’S brows knit together. “I knew there was something fishy about that messy desk but why did they tell me it was a heart attack.”
Penny accepted a glass of wine from Nana. “It might have looked that way, but the medical examiner found poison in her blood. The symptoms looked like she had a heart attack, but it was the poison in her drink that killed her.”
Mallory stared at her, trying to process the information.
Could Penny be wrong?
A long-time Bohemian resident, the girls had grown up with Penny. She’d been instrumental when those coin-hunting degenerates had descended on them… both times.
Penny had been a good detective, which was probably why she and Cody Lumos got along. She’d quit the city force—but Mallory knew Penny’s instincts were good and she wouldn’t pass along information like that unless she was sure.
“But why would someone want to kill her?” she asked.
“Could it have been accidental?” Nana raised an eyebrow at Penny while she swirled the wine in her glass.
“No. That was what I thought, too, but they said there’s no way she could have taken that poison by accident,” Penny answered.
“I don’t get it. She was such a nice woman. Why would anyone do that to her?”
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” Danior peered at Mallory over her fake hipster glasses. “She told you on the phone that the journal held some information with historical and financial importance. Obviously, someone didn’t want her telling you exactly what that was.”
“But who even knew she was working with us?” Mallory argued.
“Who, indeed. We need that journal back.”
“Maybe it’s in her office at the historical society. She called me from her house but maybe she’d made the discovery at work and only called me once she arrived home. I’ll go check it out tomorrow.” Mallory said.
“I’ll come. I don’t have any readings tomorrow.” Nana glanced at Mallory. “I think it would be smart to keep this to ourselves, aside from Penny, Eve and Cody, of course. There was one other thing the cards warned me of: danger.”
9
N ANA and Mallory had just stepped out the Manor’s front door to wait for Emilion when a big black pickup truck came barreling down the dirt driveway, screeching to a halt on the paved circular patch in front of them. Eve rolled down the passenger side window and gestured for them to climb in. “Hurry up,” she said.
“We’re waiting for Emilion,” Nana stated.
“No time. Get in,” Eve replied.
Mallory had no idea what they were hurrying for, but she helped Nana into the front seat and opened up the rear door. She’d barely climbed in when Eve set off down the drive, warm dishes with lids rattling away on the backseat as they barrelled down the backroad to town.
“We were headed to the historical society,” Nana said. “What’s the emergency and why does your truck smell deliciously gross?”
“Pulled Pork and roadkill,”
“Do you have a recipe for that?”
Eve turned her head to give Nana a dirty look, “and you can go to the hysterical society tomorrow.” Eve made sure to put an emphasis on the word hysterical, before she snorted at her own joke. Then she swerved to miss a dead skunk, almost ditching the truck.
“You bloody maniac! That thing was already dead. You weren’t going to save its life by ending ours,” Nana shouted.
“I know that! But I can’t have Black Beauty smelling like skunk.”
All conversation stopped after that. Mallory assumed Nana thought much the same way she did—that it was better for Eve to concentrate on the road.
Twelve miles later, they turned down one of Boho’s side streets and pulled to a stop in front of a small white farmhouse with shutters and a wall of rosebushes.
“Are we here for an emergency pot luck, or something?” Mallory asked, sneaking a peek at the pulled pork under the lid.
“Oh no, but we have had a bit of luck,” Eve said with a chortle. “Pike’s been keeping Hatti company but she needs to get back to the café. You said you wanted to talk to Hatti, right? I
figured you’d be better off talking to her before hitting up the historical society—you know, in case she knows where you need to look—and of course food helps to grease the wheels.”
“She’s a woman in mourning, Eve, not a bicycle,” Nana sniped.
“Jokes on you, you don’t grease the wheels of a bicycle.”
Nana rolled her eyes and climbed down out of the beastly truck Eve affectionately called Black Beauty.
“This is Hatti’s house? I thought she lived closer to the corner,” Mallory asked as she snagged the pulled pork off the back seat. She handed Nana the bowl of coleslaw and a bag of buns, and the three of them walked up the sidewalk to Hatti’s house.
“Her house is closer to the corner, but I didn’t want to pull in the driveway and announce our visit to the world. Don’t you see the yellow crime scene tape a flutterin’?”
Mallory could just barely see a hint of yellow behind the giant oak trees that decorated the neighborhood.
“So, Elsa lives, or rather lived… next door to her cousin?”
“You got it, Pontiac!” Eve retorted.
“What does that even mean?” Mallory questioned.
“Quit yappin’ and take these buns too, would you? You’re young and fit.” Nana snapped.
Mallory didn’t bother to point out Nana’s age was all the more reason for her to get some exercise. That remark wouldn’t have gone over well.
Cody’s truck was parked in Hatti’s driveway. “Are you sure this is a good idea? It looks like the BLPD is here.”
“Well if Pike needs to get back to the café then what choice do we have?” Nana said. “Besides, if Elsa had died of natural causes, we’d be doing the same thing.”
“Yeah, the BLPD can suck it.”
Nana grimaced in Eve’s direction, “Cody and his fellow officers might not like it, but they can’t argue. When people die in this town, we bring food and insert our nosy selves into their grief, that’s just what we do.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Mallory whispered sarcastically under her breath.
“I think so,” Eve agreed as she opened the screen door and knocked on the blue wooden door behind it.
Make-Believes & Lost Memories Page 4