by Dawn Eastman
“Let’s all join hands,” Vi said. Rustling and shifting noises spread around the table. A gust of wind pelted snow against the window and we all jumped. I heard nervous giggling from the end where Tina, Heather, and Amy sat.
“We ask to be joined by the spirits of Carlisle Castle,” Vi intoned in her fortune-teller voice. “Be guided by the light and join us.”
The room was silent except for the howling of the wind and people shifting in their seats.
“Did you hear that?” Seth whispered next to me.
I shook my head.
“It sounds like someone walking around upstairs.”
“Maybe it’s Linda or one of the staff,” I said out of the side of my mouth.
Another gust hit the window and then I heard a whistling noise start up—it sounded like a police siren but quiet and continuous. I could tell other people heard it as well—eyes were large and scanned the ceiling and the walls for the source of the noise.
“That’s just the window whistling,” Jessica said. “It does that when the wind hits it just right.”
Mac let out a breath of air.
“Everyone please focus on our intention to commune with the spirits of Carlisle Castle,” Vi said.
The quiet was broken only by the occasional gust of wind or snow hitting the windows.
I heard sounds overhead. I glanced at Seth, who stared at the ceiling. The rest of the group must have heard it, too. We all looked upward, the group wearing expressions ranging from excitement to fear. It sounded like someone pacing on creaky floorboards. Creak! Creak! Creak! Silence, then the same sounds going back the other way.
“Is there someone here with us?” Vi asked the ceiling.
A loud thunk and the sound of shattering glass came from the hallway. The candles snuffed out. Several people screamed, chairs fell over, and Lucille said, “Don’t break the circle!”
But it was too late. Mac stood and scanned the room. Seth gripped my hand while I tried to make out where everyone was in the dim light from the hallway.
The overhead lights clicked on and I looked to the wall switch where Wally stood. He nodded at Jessica and went out into the hall. I heard voices and then he returned.
He held his hands up to get the group’s attention. “It’s nothing. It was just an accident. It looks like the cat knocked a vase off a table in the hall.”
“Did you see the cat?” Vi asked.
Wally shook his head.
“So, you don’t know for sure it was the cat,” Vi said.
Wally shook his head. “What else could it be?”
“Exactly,” said Vi. “Everyone likes to blame the cat, but they aren’t always as mischievous as they seem.”
I noticed Amy staring at Vi with her mouth open. I’ve seen this before; it’s a pretty common response before you get to know her.
Mavis cleared her throat and held her hands tightly clasped together. “Do you think we should try again?” She motioned for everyone to sit back down.
Mom shook her head. “It’s not likely we’ll have any success now.”
I sighed in relief. I’d sat through many unsuccessful séances in my time and I still wasn’t sure which was worse—one where nothing happened or one where something did.
Seth pulled his hand away finally and acted like I had been the one clutching him. By the way he rubbed his hand, you’d think I had crushed his fingers.
Isabel took control. “We have an early workshop tomorrow. I hope to get through the instructions for the decreases and bind off of our projects. I had planned to end around two, but if we’re stuck here due to the weather, I can give some of you individual instruction on any trouble spots.” She made a show of looking at her watch and Mavis backed her up by yawning. It only took about two minutes for the lounge to clear out.
Amy, Tina, and Heather left first, heading for the stairs as quickly as possible. Mavis conferred with Isabel and followed the first group out the door. Jessica and René stood off to the side, in deep conversation. Emmett, grinning and congratulating Vi on a “great show,” helped Wally move the tables back to the dining room.
Mac walked me upstairs to my room. I felt a bit like a teenager being dropped off in time for curfew.
“Thanks for coming to the séance,” I said.
He pulled me into his arms. “It wasn’t that bad. I’m glad you were with me though—that kind of thing gives me the willies.”
I chuckled. “The willies?”
He leaned back to look at me. “It’s a well-known phrase indicating a sense of the heebie-jeebies.”
I laughed. “I know what it means. It’s just funny to hear you say it.”
He kissed me then and I forgot all about séances, murders, and black-market intrigue.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.
I shut the door quietly, and got into bed with a grin on my face. I was asleep before Vi returned to the room.
31
I am in a room that is so cold I am shivering. It is plain and white and there is nothing there but a wooden door. I walk to the door and feel the rough texture under my fingertips. There is a cool metal handle and I reach out to pull the door open. A strange scene greets me. Tables adorned with white tablecloths and white plates languish in the grass. The cloths billow gently in the wind and the trees rustle softly. It looks like a summer garden party.
As I take a step forward, Duchess appears and begins to walk next to me. I see Vi sitting at a table. She is wearing a long white gown and her hair is loose around her shoulders. I call to her, but no sound comes out. When I try to approach her, the cat stops me. She blocks my progress and then Vi is gone.
René is there in his white chef’s coat and tall white hat. He is looking out over the garden toward the woods. Again, the cat stops me from approaching. But, René comes toward me. He smiles and holds out a silver tray with a ball of white yarn sitting on it. I reach out to take it, but he passes me and approaches Clarissa, who sits in a tall white wicker chair with a wide curved back. She laughs when she takes the yarn and it turns a deep blood red in her hands.
Linda gasps from behind me and I see that she, Jessica, Tina, Isabel, and Mavis are all here at this strange party. They wear white and carry red knitting needles. The cat jumps onto Clarissa’s lap and watches me with its gold eyes.
A sudden wind blows the tables over and the napkins and tablecloths flap in the wind and fly up over the castle. I watch them drift away and when one floats up to the turret window, I see a white filmy face in the window. It is trying to speak, but I can’t hear it. The wind grows stronger and all I can hear is the howling of the wind as the white table linens form a tornado and pick up all the furniture in its swirling chaos. The tornado heads toward me and just as I think I will be swept up in it, it collapses in front of Duchess, who has placed herself between me and the incoming storm.
My eyes flew open and I was glad for the blue numbers on the electric clock by my bed. The howling wind noise still filled my ears and I realized the blizzard that the weather people had predicted had arrived. I hoped the generator wouldn’t fail again and pulled the covers up over my ears to try to go back to sleep.
It was no use. The dream continued to haunt me and every time I closed my eyes, it started up again as if I had merely paused a DVD. I got out of bed and went to the window. It was such a strange dream. Often, the predictive dreams show me events that will happen, but not in the weird, surreal way of this one. I felt like I had been watching a strange art film with symbols and references I didn’t understand. But, the underlying feeling was that this dream meant something. I was often frustrated by my own lack of ability to understand these messages, but never more so than when I felt that there was true danger lurking.
Looking down, I saw a small patch of light on the ground below me. I could hardly make it out with all the swirling sno
w, but because everything was so dark, it stood out. Someone else couldn’t sleep and he or she was in the kitchen.
Thinking this was probably a very bad idea, I tossed on my sweatpants and Vi’s sweater over my T-shirt and sleep shorts and quietly slipped out of the room. I was thankful for the electricity once again as the hallway was at least dimly lit by the sconces along the wall. I walked quietly down the stairs trying to decide whether to announce myself or sneak up on the person in the kitchen.
I decided stealth would be best and quietly approached the kitchen door once I reached the main floor. Cracking the door open, I wasn’t surprised to see Linda there in her pale gray robe again, but this time Emmett joined her. They sat at the small table, sipping something out of mugs and talking quietly.
I hesitated. While I was surprised to see them together, they weren’t doing anything wrong and Linda had certainly had a rough enough couple of days. I turned to go back to the staircase and just as I put my foot down, an angry yowl came from the white cat. I threw my hands over my mouth to stifle my reaction. She had snuck up on me and must have been sitting with her tail right where my foot had landed. I bent down to calm her, but she backed away from me with her hair puffed up, hissing and spitting.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to step on you,” I said to the cat. “You’re very sneaky.”
“Yes, she is,” Emmett said from the door. “I can’t keep track of her. She’s always trying to trick her way into the kitchen to steal food. And after the last time, René might lose his mind if he sees her in here again.”
I sucked in air and decided to play through—I hadn’t planned on revealing myself to these two, but sneaky cat had taken care of that.
“Emmett, I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said. “I couldn’t sleep and just came down to find a magazine or something to read in the lounge.”
“Come in,” he said. “Lin—Mrs. Garrett makes the best hot chocolate ever. It will be sure to help you sleep.”
After my bizarre dream, I wasn’t sure I wanted to sit in a dimly lit castle kitchen in the middle of a stormy night. But I couldn’t think of two more unlikely companions for a midnight hot chocolate run and figured I had been handed an opportunity to do some more investigating.
“Who is it, Emmett?” Mrs. Garrett asked.
“It’s Clyde Fortune,” Emmett said. “A fellow insomniac.”
“I can never sleep on a windy night,” Linda said. She got up from the small table, poured cocoa into a mug, and placed it in front of me. “I find the warm milk helps.”
Emmett picked up a bottle of Baileys and waved it in my direction. “I find this helps even more.”
I nodded at the offer and he poured a glug into the cocoa. As he tilted the bottle, I noticed an angry red scratch across the back of his hand. Duchess?
“If I’d known there was hot chocolate and Baileys, I would have roamed the halls earlier,” I said.
They both chuckled. “It’s mostly on the windy nights that I’m here,” Linda said. “Emmett caught me here messing up René’s kitchen a while back, so it’s become our little secret.”
“I guess neither one of you is afraid of the ghost,” I said.
They exchanged a quick glance that made me think they wondered if I was joking.
“As long as it stays away from my Baileys, I don’t care what that ghost gets up to,” Emmett said.
“I’m more afraid of the cat than the ghost,” Linda said. “I don’t know what we’ll do with her now. Ever since Clarissa . . . died, I haven’t been able to figure out what she’s up to. She used to seek me out for cuddles and now it’s like she’s gone feral.”
“She’ll calm down after a while,” Emmett said. He put his left hand over the scratch on his right.
“I think once she realizes she’s still being fed, she’ll adjust,” I said. “Was she very close to Clarissa?”
“That’s the funny thing,” Linda said. “I don’t think she was very attached to her. The cat loves the turret room and tolerated Clarissa.”
“Who does she belong to?” I asked.
“I suppose she belongs to the castle. She’s lived here for about five years. She just showed up one day, we fed her, and she stayed.” Linda sipped her chocolate. “If I ever needed to find her, I’d go up to the turret room and there she’d be, sitting in the window seat in a warm patch of sun.”
“She was a real friendly little thing,” Emmett said.
“Clarissa didn’t mind that the cat lived in her room?”
Linda smiled. “No, they seemed to get along just fine. They mostly ignored each other. Sort of like two cats who had been forced to live together.”
“Cats are very sensitive,” I said. “You should talk to Vi. She’ll tell you all about cats and their emotional lives.”
“Vi has certainly done well for herself as a pet psychic,” Linda said. “Do you really think she can communicate with animals?” She leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand.
That was a tough question. I wasn’t sure how much of Vi’s success had to do with her treat bag and animal-training knowledge and how much had to do with another kind of connection to the animals. I believed Seth could communicate with them—Tuffy and Baxter listened to him and he could get them to do just about anything. But, I didn’t want to betray Vi by questioning her abilities to strangers.
“She seems to be very successful in her pet interventions,” I hedged. “She must be doing something right.”
Linda watched me sip my drink. “Well, I better get back up to bed. It seems we’ll have a full house again tomorrow night. I hope Wallace managed to cancel our Sunday-night reservations.” She rinsed her mug in the sink and I pushed my chair back as well. Suddenly I was bone tired.
I followed Linda up the main staircase to the second floor. She turned toward the hallway that led to her rooms and stopped.
“Ms. Fortune . . . ,” she said. She slowly turned toward me and covered the distance between us. “I didn’t want to say anything before . . .”
“Yes?” I said.
“I heard something that night. The night Clarissa died.” She stopped and looked away from me. “I didn’t say anything before because I wanted to protect my daughter.”
“You heard Jessica?”
Linda shook her head. “No, no. I heard René.” She hesitated again, and studied the floor. I had the sense she was trying to make me believe she was crafting this story right on the spot.
“You heard René? Where?”
“I went up to talk to Clarissa earlier, before the lights went out.” Linda looked up and down the dark and silent hallway and lowered her voice. “We’d had that staff meeting on Wednesday and there were some disagreements about the management of the inn. Anyway, I wanted to talk to her and maybe calm things down a bit, but before I knocked, I heard loud voices in her room and decided not to interrupt.”
“You’re sure it was René?”
She took a deep breath and let it out. Frown lines appeared on her forehead as she wavered.
“His accent is . . . distinctive,” she said.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said. “You should have told us before.”
“I didn’t want to bring it up in front of Jessica. She can get so jealous of Clarissa. Ever since they were little, Clarissa has always wanted everything Jessica had. If Jess had a new doll, Clarissa had to have one. When they got older, Clarissa went after any boy that Jess was foolish enough to show interest in.”
“Do you think there was something going on between René and Clarissa?” I was whispering now as well, even though the whole place was likely asleep.
“Something was up with them, but I don’t know what and I don’t like to think that René would betray Jessica like that. Truly, I don’t know what to think. I just thought you should know.”
She patted my arm and turned
toward her hallway. I stood for a moment watching her and wondering if she was telling the truth.
32
Sunday morning Mac’s four-beat knock sounded on our door at seven thirty. Vi grumbled and pulled the covers over her head. I staggered to the door, pulling on a robe, and stepped into the hall.
I rubbed my eyes and tried not to glare at him for waking me up.
He grinned and pushed my hair out of my eyes. “I have news, are you awake enough to hear it?”
I yawned and nodded.
“I called the police department this morning to see if they got any information back about René Sartin.” Mac glanced up and down the hall and lowered his voice. “He’s dead.”
My stomach dropped and I felt a bit dizzy.
“What? Another murder?” I moved away from the door so Vi wouldn’t hear us. “How can he be dead?”
“The only René Sartin they were able to find in their database was from the Upper Peninsula, went to Paris to attend the Cordon Bleu school, and then died in a car accident when he returned home to Michigan. Eight years ago.”
“So, who has been cooking all our meals?”
Mac shrugged. “The backstory is all just as our René claimed it would be, except for the fact that the real René is dead. He did, however, have a younger brother.”
I met Mac’s eyes. “Do you think the younger brother took over René’s identity? Why would he do that?”
“He could use his brother’s credentials to get a job as a chef.” Mac leaned against the wall. “I’ve asked them to look further into the Sartin family and see what they can dig up. But, it probably has no bearing on the case.”
I crossed my arms and burrowed further into the thick terry robe I had taken from the closet. It was one of the things that I disliked about investigating. When a murder occurred, everyone with even the slightest connection to the victim would have their lives and their secrets exposed.