The Haunting of Josie

by Kay Hooper

  A box of kitchen utensils yielded one of her flashlights, and the cellar door opened with a groan when she used a little muscle. She went down the wooden steps and into total blackness; the cellar had no windows to admit even dim light.

  In the beam of her flashlight, she saw an incredible jumble of crates, boxes, and trunks crammed into the dark, earthy-smelling space. Shelves lined one wall and held dozens of sealed jars from the days when canning had been prevalent in “country” households, and another wall was covered with pegs holding items ranging from two shovels and a rake to bits of leather that looked to Josie like something from a horse’s harness.

  Shaking off fascination, she ignored the lure of old steamer trunks and stacked boxes, reminding herself that she was only a tenant here; the Westbrook family might have saved everything they’d ever owned, but that didn’t mean she had any business pawing through their stuff. Her only legitimate business down here was to find—ah, there it was. The switch box.

  The realty company had assured her that the house boasted a completely updated wiring system and a new furnace—a heat pump, actually—but Josie was familiar enough with old houses to check the obvious first. And sure enough, she discovered that something had kicked off the main breaker during the night. If it happened again, she told herself, she would definitely call an electrician out here to find out what was going on.

  She cautiously reset the breaker and was instantly rewarded when a light near the foot of the steps came on. She also heard the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and was pretty sure of the distant thud of the heat pump coming on.

  She picked her way back across the cellar, frowning a bit as she eyed the naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling near the foot of the steps. That was odd. She distinctly remembered opening the cellar door yesterday just long enough to glance into the black maw of steps; there had been no light on down here, and she hadn’t turned one on.

  She went back up the steps and the light went out obediently when she flipped the switch just inside the door.

  “Gremlins,” she murmured to herself. She shut the cellar door firmly, turned off her flashlight, and went about the normal morning business of fixing coffee and trying to wake up.

  Pendragon made his reappearance a few minutes later, and she let him in the back when he rattled the screen door imperiously. He obviously expected breakfast, so she rummaged among boxes until she found a can of tuna, which he was pleased to devour delicately; a big cat, he had a big appetite.

  Mindful that the hot-water heater needed time to get back up to speed, she elected to skip her usual morning shower. She carried her coffee back upstairs, braved the cold water to wash her face and brush her teeth, then dressed in jeans and a comfortable knit sweater.

  By the time she returned to the ground floor, the coffee and warm clothing had made her much more comfortable. She wandered through a few of the downstairs rooms, musing about which ones she would use and ultimately deciding that the house was too nice to have any part of it closed up. She avoided the front parlor, not so much because of the tragic death that had occurred in the room but because all the file boxes containing twenty years of hard work were waiting there for her.

  She wasn’t ready to face that just yet.

  It was barely eight o’clock when Josie went out onto the wide, inviting porch that ran along the front and one side of the house. She strolled toward the rear of the house, sipping her coffee and enjoying the crisp, chilled air of the morning. When she ran out of porch, she leaned against the sturdy railing and stood gazing over the garden. It must have been lovely once, she mused, with neat paths and the heavy and rich scent of flowers. It was a shame it had been let go.

  She’d lived in apartments for most of her life, but Josie had always felt drawn to plants and flowers, and she’d frequently spent a few dollars of her weekly grocery money on houseplants. She had a green thumb, apparently; plants did well for her. She’d had to give all hers away when she left Washington, choosing not to try moving them.

  Maybe, if Marc didn’t mind, she’d work on the garden here this spring. After all, she couldn’t spend every hour in the house, and the physical work out in the fresh air would certainly do her good. She could even do some work before spring, pruning and clearing away brush….

  Her gaze drifted across the garden as a movement caught her attention, and she saw a dark man in jeans and a sweatshirt moving away through the woods beyond the cottage. Marc. He seemed to be following a very faint path, Josie thought. Probably one he followed every morning. The doctor would have suggested walking to strengthen his leg after the cast came off, and the rolling hills around here would provide a good workout for the various muscles.

  She watched him until he disappeared over a rise. She sipped her coffee, then held the cup away and stared at it thoughtfully. After a moment she went back into the house and to the kitchen. Pendragon was sitting on one of the barstools washing a forepaw, but looked up to greet her politely.

  “You’re a responsive cat, aren’t you?” she commented, digging into the last remaining box in the kitchen to be unpacked.

  “Yah,” Pendragon replied, and bent his head to begin chewing on one of his claws.

  “It’s a bad sign to bite your nails,” Josie told him severely. “Still, I’d rather you bit them than ruined Marc’s furniture sharpening them.”

  “Ppprupt,” the cat mumbled, still working on his manicure.

  Josie decided she’d better stop talking to him until he finished; he could bite off something important while trying to answer her. Anyway, she finally found what she’d been looking for. She studied the thermos, checking it for cracks or other damage, then went to the sink to rinse it out. This was probably not a good idea, she told herself. For her to go to all this trouble demonstrated far too much interest in Marc. He could get the wrong idea about her intentions.

  But she could stick a note on the thermos when she hung it from the cottage’s doorknob to greet him when he came back home, explaining this as being no more than a neighborly gesture. After all, anyone would appreciate hot—and good—coffee waiting for them upon their return from a long walk on a chilly morning. She was just being a good neighbor.

  That was all.

  She had the last of her things out of the van by ten that morning, and it didn’t take long to get everything put away. The morning had warmed enough so that she elected to turn off the heat and open a few windows; airing out the house for a few hours seemed like a good idea, since it had stood empty for so long, and all the activity had her warm enough.

  By lunchtime, the dustcovers were off all the furniture, the kitchen was spotless, and the den was well on its way. Josie took a break to make herself a light meal, and that was when she discovered she had no bread—but all the fixings to make several loaves as well as a few batches of muffins. Though she couldn’t remember buying the stuff, she wasn’t surprised; she frequently made her own bread because it was one of the things her mother had taught her as a child.

  Perked coffee and fresh-baked bread? The man would probably think she was aiming for his heart by way of his stomach. Great. She’d insisted on cleaning the house herself, and even if he didn’t know it yet, she had designs on his garden. And she taught school to little kids.

  Just your typical tough-minded career woman.

  Josie sighed and began making bread. She had to eat, after all. Maybe he wouldn’t notice that the bread she brought for their meal tonight was homemade. And if he did…well, it wouldn’t matter. She felt far too wary of him to relax in his presence, so her prickly attitude would doubtless counteract whatever domestic points he might have tallied up in her favor.

  She caught herself giggling as she kneaded dough. What on earth was wrong with her? Even if matrimony had been a goal of hers—which it definitely wasn’t—Marc hadn’t given so much as a dim sign that he was looking for a wife, domesticated or otherwise. In fact, common sense suggested that would be the last thing on his mind. All he wa
nted was something—anything—to relieve his boredom while he finished healing. A little harmless flirting was probably as far as he would go.

  And that was fine with her. They could enjoy occasional wary companionship over a meal, fence verbally to amuse each other—and in a few weeks he’d return to Richmond.

  Josie found that unaccountably depressing, and the realization bothered her. After all, she was accustomed to being alone, and she’d always been content with her own company. She had learned, by necessity, to be independent and self-sufficient at a very young age. Her father had been too busy and preoccupied to be much of a companion at any time, and she’d been completely on her own for the ten years since his death. Before that, she had always taken care of him, especially during the last five years of his life after her mother had gone.

  So the prospect of being alone again, even way out here, shouldn’t have made her feel so low. Especially considering the fact that she had met Marc Westbrook only yesterday. He was too new to her life to be having any kind of effect on it.

  “Yaaah?”

  Wiping her hands on a dishtowel, Josie turned from the counter and her bread making to find Pendragon sitting pointedly by the cellar door. “I gather you want to go down there?”

  “Yah.”

  “It looked awfully clean for a cellar; I bet you won’t find any bugs or mice.”

  “Pprupp.”

  “You don’t say.” She caught herself smiling as she went to pull the door open for the cat. He stood there looking down at the stairs, then looked up at her and spoke sternly.

  “Forgive me,” she murmured, and leaned over to flip the switch on the wall. The light at the foot of the stairs came on, obedient to her touch.

  The black cat murmured something in his throat and descended regally.

  Chuckling, Josie left the cellar door open just a few inches and went back to her bread making. She liked cats very much, but she’d never shared her home with one. Even though many felines were apparently perfectly content with apartment life, Josie had elected not to have a pet because she spent so many hours away from home.

  But she thought now that might have been a mistake. A pet might have helped her feel more…connected these last few years. Certainly less alone. She’d read somewhere that people with pets tended to be healthier as well as happier, and God knew there was something especially cheerless about coming home to an empty, silent apartment.

  Deciding that she was depressing herself for no good reason, Josie turned on her portable radio and found some music she liked, and listened to that while she ate her lunch. She cleaned up afterward, checked on the progress of the bread, then took her radio into the den to finish cleaning in there.

  It was about an hour later that she looked up from polishing a small table near a window and saw that Pendragon had emerged from the cellar. And he’d brought her a gift.

  “All right, what is it?” she asked, approaching warily.

  The big black cat made a soft, curiously contented sound and reached out a paw to bat at his offering. He looked up at her, obviously awaiting praise.

  Josie’s misgivings about dead or mortally wounded victims faded as she knelt before the cat. Lying on the polished wooden floor near glossy forepaws was a tarnished brass key. It looked old-fashioned and plain except for the loop of red satin ribbon, faded and threadbare, that might have been used to hang the key on a hook somewhere.

  She held the key up and studied it. For a door somewhere in the house? She didn’t think so. The doors here were big, paneled things with ornate knobs, and took keys much bigger than this one. She supposed it might have been designed for some kind of small box, perhaps a jewelry box belonging to one of the Westbrook ladies who had lived or stayed here during the past fifty years or so. The cat must have found it in the cellar—possibly still inserted into its lock—and was attracted by the dangling ribbon.

  Gazing at Pendragon, she said, “I don’t suppose you’d show me where you found this?”

  He yawned.

  “I didn’t think so.” Josie sighed.

  “Homemade bread?”

  Getting defensive about it, Josie decided, would only make matters worse. “Yes, my mother taught me how to make it when I was a kid,” she told Marc casually.

  “It smells great.”

  “So does your spaghetti sauce.” She looked around the surprisingly spacious kitchen of the small cottage. It had that domain-of-a-cook appearance, with plenty of pots, pans, and utensils; a place for everything and everything in its place. He was clearly quite at home in it, and she thought ruefully that he was probably a much better cook than she was despite his inability to make coffee. He had thanked her solemnly for the morning gift of “wonderful” hot coffee the moment she’d arrived at the cottage.

  Returning her gaze to Marc, who was stirring the sauce, she said, “Why do I get the feeling that you’re probably a pretty good cook for a lawyer?”

  He chuckled. “Something my father taught me. He believed in equality between the sexes, so there was no such thing as a ‘traditional’ role in our house. So I can cook, clean, and sew on buttons—and my sister’s a first-rate mechanic. Of course, she can also cook and I can overhaul an engine. Dad was a very thorough man.”

  “And a handy one, from the sound of it.” Josie was smiling. “So what does your sister do now?”

  “She trains racehorses in Kentucky,” Marc replied. “Anne has a veterinarian husband, three kids, and a houseful of pets of various kinds.”

  At the reference to pets, Josie automatically glanced toward the screen door leading from the kitchen to the back porch, but there was no sign of Pendragon. He had asked to be let out a few minutes before she had headed for the cottage, and she hadn’t seen him anywhere in the garden.

  Marc might have been following her thoughts because, without looking at her, he added, “Speaking of which—where’s our feline visitor?”

  “Outside somewhere.” Josie hesitated, then said, “He wanted down in the cellar a few hours ago, and the next time I saw him he had a brass key with a faded ribbon attached to it. Do you have any idea what it might belong to?”

  “Offhand, no, but feel free to look for yourself,” Marc invited amiably. “I haven’t been in the cellar in years, but I seem to remember that the family kept practically everything we ever owned—and most of it down there.”

  “I wouldn’t feel right going through that stuff,” she objected. “It belongs to you—”

  “There’s nothing personal down there, Josie, just the kind of junk families store in cellars and forget about. If you’re curious about the key, you’re welcome to explore; if you like cellars and attics—which some people do—you have my permission to rummage around all you want. Of course, if you do happen to stumble over a lost Rembrandt or something…”

  “Of course,” she agreed dryly.

  He smiled at her, and Josie told herself that the leap in her pulse was merely because she loved exploring cellars and attics. Yeah, right.

  The cottage was too small to have a separate dining room, but it did boast a breakfast nook with a bay window, and a small wooden table with two chairs gave the area a cozy appeal. They ate their meal there, and the food was so good that conversation was desultory until they finished. Afterward Josie helped him clear the table and load the dishwasher, and they ended up on the couch in the living room, where a cheerful fire burned in the fireplace.

  “Why can’t I make it taste this way?” he wondered ruefully, sipping the coffee that Josie had made using his coffee maker.

  “We each have our little talents,” she reminded him in a consoling tone of voice.

  “I guess. But it isn’t logical, you know. I watched you make this, and you did exactly what I do.”

  “Ah—but you didn’t hear me murmur the magic spell.”

  Marc peered into his cup with a frown. “You didn’t sprinkle a little eye of newt or toe of bat while I wasn’t looking, did you?”

  “Of course no
t. Today’s magic spells are much more sophisticated. I used dragon’s teeth.”

  “Which you just happened to find lying by the side of the road, I suppose?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone knows dragons shed their teeth every leap year and pass them out only to redheaded witches with purple eyes and black cats.”

  After a moment’s thought Marc said judiciously, “Your eyes are violet, not purple.”

  Josie had been enjoying the nonsense, but she felt her pulse give another of those peculiar little leaps when he looked at her with a faint smile and an intent gaze. His eyes were like very slightly tarnished silver, she thought, and with his dramatic black hair, widow’s peak, and flying brows, he would have made an excellent warlock.

  More nonsense.

  Making her voice light, she said, “Well, you can’t deny that my hair is red. Very red. And I do have a black cat, even if it’s only temporarily.”

  “True.” With a faint smile still playing about his mouth, he said, “You also have walls about a foot thick.”

  The observation startled her, and she knew he saw it. “We just met yesterday, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Marc shook his head. “That isn’t it, Josie. We’ve been fairly casual with each other, and talked all through dinner, but every time I asked a question about you—especially about your background—you were evasive and guarded.”

  Josie leaned forward to set her cup on the coffee table. She was trying to give herself time to think, but it was difficult when her awareness of him was so strong and when he was so close. There was no more than a foot of space between them, and that was too little for her peace of mind.

  “You’re imagining things,” she managed finally. She leaned back, half turned toward him as before, and met his gaze, trying to keep her own calm and unexpressive.