by Maddy Hunter
“You’re looking immensely pleased with yourself this morning,” Etienne said as he opened the door. He wore a bath towel knotted around his waist and a silky slate gray shirt that he’d probably bought in some expensive little boutique in Zurich. I gave his bare legs the once-over. They were long and lean and muscled, as if they’d been chiseled by some famous Italian sculptor. Unh.
“No trousers today?” I licked my lips in appreciation. “I like this look on you.” He yanked me into the room and shut the door behind him.
“Please tell me you still have the buttons you popped off my trousers.”
“Buttons? I…I…” I replayed the incident in my head. Ping ping ping. Off flew the buttons. Tap tap tap. George Farkas at the door. Chirp chirp chirp. Etienne’s cell phone. That’s when I’d picked up the buttons, walked across the room, and dropped them into…“Oops.”
“Why do I always cringe when I hear you say that?”
“They’re—uh—they’re in the ashtray that’s sitting on top of the writing desk, that’s in my room…back in Dublin. I’m sorry! I’ll call the hotel. I’ll have them overnighted to you.”
He waved off my suggestion, looking a little distracted. “I’ll ring up the front desk. They might have an emergency sewing kit with a few stray buttons for guest use.”
“Can’t you wear the pants you wore yesterday?”
“They’re gone.”
“Gone where?”
He shrugged. “I hung them up last night. Now I can’t find them. They’ve disappeared.”
“How can trousers just disappear?”
“Check the closet. If you can find them, I’ll eat them.”
I slid open the closet door to find one article of clothing hanging up. A black suede sportcoat. I peeked left and right and scanned the floor. No trousers in sight. “You’re right. They’re not here. Did you try the dresser drawer?”
“I never put trousers in a drawer.” He sighed his disgust. “I suppose this means I’ll need to find a men’s clothing store.”
Clothing store? The gravity of the situation hit me like a twenty-ton brick. “Are you saying you packed only two pairs of trousers?”
“I packed one pair. I was wearing the other.”
This was such a guy thing. Pack light. Anticipate no fashion emergency. End up wearing a towel. To avoid this problem, women packed everything in sight, had stickers labeled HEAVY slapped onto their suitcases at check-in, and developed rotator cuff problems lugging the things around. Women usually ended up having to undergo months of physical therapy when they arrived home, but at least they had the satisfaction of knowing they’d looked really good on vacation. It was purely a matter of priorities.
I looked Etienne up and down. “Do men wear kilts in Ireland? A little fringe, a fancy pin, you’d be right in fashion. But you’d better decide what you’re going to wear pretty quickly because the bus will be leaving before long.”
“I need to investigate some things here at the castle today, darling, so I’m afraid I’ll have to miss today’s outing.”
My good humor spiraled downward into my shoes. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?” His mouth was set in his police inspector’s mode, however, so I knew he was serious. “But why?”
“Did you sleep well last night, Emily?”
“Like a log.”
“You weren’t disturbed by noises?”
“Snoring.” I emptied the contents of my jacket pocket into my hand. “But I stuck these in my ears.”
He peered into my open palm. “Erasers?”
“Earplugs. They really work. I didn’t hear a thing the rest of the night.”
“No moaning? No crying?”
“You heard moaning and crying? Someone else heard the moaning, but she thought it was a couple of the guests high on Viagra.” I paused as reality set in. I wheezed in panic. “Moaning and crying? I told you this place is haunted! The ghosts must have been crying out to each other last night. You heard it with your own ears! This is so creepy.”
“There are any number of explanations for what I heard last night, Emily. The wind. Faulty pipes.”
“Ghosts.”
“I’m not willing to admit that yet.” But I saw a glimmer of unease in his eyes that indicated everything he knew of the world was being severely tested. “That’s why I’m staying behind to snoop around the castle today. Something caused those noises last night. I intend to find out what.” He shivered suddenly, then strode across the room to check the setting on the thermostat. “One thing is definite. The management needs to check the heating system. It was so cold in here last night, I could see my breath.”
I frowned. “That’s funny. The person I ate breakfast with complained about the cold too. I’ll stop at the front desk on my way out to see what the problem is.” I sighed with resignation and gave him a puppy dog look. “I’m going to miss you today, but we’re on for dinner tonight, right?”
He opened his arms and gathered me tightly against his chest. “I wouldn’t miss it.” He buried his lips in my hair, then worked his way lower, kissing my face with soft touches of his mouth. But despite his show of affection, he still seemed distracted.
“What’s bothering you?” I asked gently.
“I think you’d be better served by being left in the dark about this one, Emily.”
“I hate the dark. Please tell me. I’m not a wuss. I lived through the reformulation of the old Coca-Cola to the New Coke. I can handle anything.”
He smiled at that and hesitated long enough to make a decision. “I suppose you have a right to know, but I’d prefer you keep the information to yourself.”
“Okay.” Considering what I knew already, what was one more secret?
“I suspect you may be right about what killed the maid yesterday.”
I gasped at his words. “You do? You saw the look on her face? The fear in her eyes? I knew it. She had to have died of fright. Did the coroner agree?”
“The coroner suspected she died from a heart condition…until he moved her body.”
I gasped alarm. “Did he find evidence of foul play? A stab wound to the back? A pool of blood we didn’t see?”
“There was blood, but not from a stab wound. On the carpet beneath the maid’s body we found a set of footprints. Bloody footprints.”
A tingling sensation slithered down my spine. My mouth went dry. “What kind of footprints?”
“They show bare feet that manifest an unusual physical anomaly. There are no separations between the toes. They’re all conjoined. In essence, the footprints belong to someone with webbed feet.”
This was a real shocker. “You think the maid was frightened to death by a duck?”
“I think the maid was frightened by something in that room, Emily, but I doubt it was either fowl or beast. From the configuration of the footprints, I’d say she was frightened to death by a woman.”
“Were either one of you cold last night?” I was back in my room, pitching odds and ends into my shoulder bag for our day trip to the Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge and the Old Bushmills Distillery in North Antrim. Nana and Tilly had finished breakfast and were making up the beds, but my question caused each of them to straighten up and stare at me.
“People at breakfast were complaining about the cold,” Tilly volunteered, “but I didn’t offer an explanation. I didn’t want to upset anyone.”
Uh-oh. “Don’t tell me. You checked at the front desk and they told you the furnace is broken and they don’t expect the new spare parts to arrive until next week.” Like we really needed heating problems in addition to a dead maid, eerie cries, and a ghost with feet like a duck. I gave my jaw a vigorous scratch.
“The cold air in the castle has nothing to do with the heating system,” Tilly announced. “It indicates the presence of malevolent spirits.”
Great. Not only was the ghost saddled with foot problems, it had a bad disposition as well. I lowered my gaze to my own feet, wondering what it would be like to have webbed t
oes. It couldn’t be much fun. It would really limit your choice of stylish summer sandals. And you could forget about toe socks altogether.
But that led me to another thought. What if the ghost was in a bad mood because of the foot problem? Hmm. Maybe Ballybantry Castle didn’t need an exorcist. Maybe what it needed was a podiatrist.
Tilly continued. “Paranormalists have documented that rooms haunted by hostile ghosts are subject to temperature shifts, cold spots, and icy breezes.”
“That can’t be good for people with circulatory problems,” I said.
“Bernice has poor circulation,” said Nana. “And I bet you anything she forgot to pack her support hose.”
“Wait’ll I get my hands on that Ashley,” I seethed, mindlessly scratching my neck and jaw. “This is some great place she booked us into. If the ghost doesn’t get us, the frostbite will.”
“Are the police suspicious the maid might have died from a ghost-related incident?” asked Tilly. “She did have a frightful expression on her face.”
“I bet she ate one a them black puddin’ things they served us at breakfast,” Nana said. “The taste probably killed her. It nearly killed me.”
“It’s pretty early in the investigation. I don’t think the police have drawn any conclusions yet.” The ladies didn’t need to know about the bloody footprints under the maid’s body. At least, not yet. I zipped up my bag and threw it over my shoulder. “Is there any chance you could search the Net for more information about Ballybantry Castle and its ghosts, Nana? I could use more details about sightings through the centuries, attempted exorcisms, related deaths. Anything you can find would be helpful.” Nana was second to none when it came to Internet searches on her laptop, so I knew she’d be able to shed further light on the subject. I had to be prepared, but I needed to know what to be prepared for.
“You want I should do that right now?” Nana asked.
“No-no. You and Tilly get ready to board the bus. Tonight will be soon enough.”
“Are you plannin’ to touch up your face before you go out, dear?”
“I hadn’t planned on it. Why?”
“Remember that problem you was fussin’ over yesterday?”
I fingered my jaw to feel a fresh crop of welts snaking across my skin.
“From the looks a things, it’s back.”
After spending ten minutes in the bathroom with my anti-itch cream, I headed for the front desk. The morning desk clerk was a big-boned brunette in her thirties with a broad face, a warm smile, and hands the size of catcher’s mitts. Her name tag identified her as Nessa O’Conor.
“Excuse me,” I said by way of greeting, “but I’ve had several complaints about the temperature in the rooms last night.”
“Too cold for them, is it?” she inquired. “We’re always fielding complaints about the cold spots in the rooms at this time of year.”
Aha! I leaned over the desk and lowered my voice to a no-nonsense whisper. “And we all know why that is, don’t we? But I’d like to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
The clerk leaned close to me and replied in an equally no-nonsense whisper, “We shut the furnace down in May and don’t turn it on again until September.”
Right. Like I was going to believe such a logical explanation. “How convenient. Blaming the cold on the furnace.”
“It’s hotel policy, miss.”
Enough pussyfooting around. “What about the ghosts?”
“If it’s ghosts you’re after, miss, you might want to ring up Castle Leslie in County Monaghan. They have a popular ghost who appears in the Red Room. Quite friendly, he is. They’ve even documented it on the Travel Channel.”
“What about the malevolent ghosts in Ballybantry Castle?” I demanded.
“Ghosts? In Ballybantry?” Her laughter trilled outward. “Ballybantry is famous for its moat, not its ghosts. Someone’s been pulling your leg, miss. Ballybantry’s not haunted. I wouldn’t be working here if it was. Excuse me for a moment.”
She left to answer the phone, leaving me more confused than enlightened. If she was telling the truth about the furnace, that would explain the cold, but it did nothing to explain the cries in the hall or the bloody footprints under the maid’s body. And how could she miss the rumors about the castle being haunted? Tilly and Ashley lived an ocean away and they knew. Were the employees in denial? Or was someone paying them to play dumb?
Figuring I wouldn’t be getting any more answers out of the desk clerk, I wandered into the lobby and made the rounds to greet some of the Iowans who had gathered to await the commencement of the day’s activities. We were scheduled to depart at eight o’clock, so I wasn’t surprised when, at seven-thirty on the dot, my group moved en masse to form a sudden line at the door. Same old thing. By Iowa standards, with only a half hour left before departure, we were already late.
“You don’t have to stand there,” I called to Nana from the comfort of a plush velvet chair. “The bus is right outside the door. It’s not going to leave without you.”
“What did she say?” asked Osmond Chelsvig, who was eight-eight and wore hearing aids in both ears.
A ripple of panic. A scuffle of feet. “She said the bus is leaving without us,” Bernice yelled.
“The bus is leaving,” confirmed Alice Tjarks from the back of the line. Alice had been the voice of radio station KORN’s early morning farm report for years, so she was used to announcing things. “Okay, folks! Let’s move it!”
I shook my head as they shuffled out the door on each other’s heels. No sense trying to reason with them. Once they were in motion, there was no turning them back. I waved to the last person out the door, then reviewed the passenger list and the day’s itinerary while I waited for everyone else to show up.
I waited five minutes. Ten minutes. I watched a custodian maneuver a carpet sweeper like an unwilling dance partner around the furniture in the lobby. He was a tall, gangly limbed man who probably fancied himself as Fred Astaire with all the rapid quicksteps he was executing. He wore his thick salt-and-pepper hair tied back in a short ponytail, and I could see the sparkle of a rhinestone stud in his ear. He was dressed in forest green coveralls that were etched, front and back, with what must have been the castle’s coat of arms: two really big fish emblazoned on a white background with the head of a warthog sandwiched between them. Kind of like a seventeenth-century advertisement for surf and turf.
I heard them before I saw them.
“What do you mean I woke you up? It’s ten of eight here. What time is it there?”
I immediately recognized the voice of the Mercurochrome-haired woman who had sat in front of me on the bus yesterday. Ethel Minch. She wandered into the lobby with her husband at her side and a cell phone attached to her ear, outfitted like Gloria Swanson in a scene from Sunset Boulevard— white turban, flowy tunic and pants, fifty pounds of costume jewelry around her throat and wrists. Ernie was the same diminutive height as his wife, and, like many men his age, wore his trousers jacked up to his armpits, which is where his waist began. He had a weak chin, a head like a hard-boiled egg, and ears like satellite dishes.
“It’s WHAT time?” Ethel yelled into the phone. “SPEAK UP! WE HAVE A BAD CONNECTION!”
Ernie looked around the lobby. “I told you we were too early. You see this, Ethel? Nobody’s here. We’re the first ones. What’d I tell you?”
Ethel punched her antenna back into her phone and stuffed it into her pocketbook. “So go back to the room already. Who’s stopping you?”
“What’d Ernie Junior have to say?”
“KRRRRRRKKKKK.”
“Piece-a-crap phone. I don’t care how many trillion countries it can connect with, it’s still a piece of crap.”
Okay. That was my cue. I was out of here. I stuffed my papers back into my shoulder bag and stood up.
“Hey, doll!” Ernie swaggered over to me. “You’re on the tour. Where’s everybody?”
I pointed toward the front door. “Outsi
de.”
He swiveled his head in that direction. “What’re they doing out there?”
“Surrounding the bus.” I figured that might need further explanation. “They’re worried it might leave without them. They’re from Iowa.”
“I was in Iowa once. Selling shoes outta the trunk of my Edsel. Those were the days, when a trunk was a trunk, before people started filling ’em up with sound systems the size a refrigerator-freezers.” He held his hand out to me. “Ernie Minch.”
“Emily Andrew,” I replied, shaking his hand.
“I’m Ethel,” said his wife. “I could be in Venice, but Ernie had to visit Ireland to find his roots. I ask him, what’s so important about finding your roots? All those ancestors you’re looking for? They’re dead! What good are they to you dead?”