by Kylie Logan
Dimitri’s dark eyes lit and he gave the phone a little waggle. “There were some weird things that happened when the first lighthouse keeper moved in, and now it’s haunted. So is”—he flipped through more pictures—“the hotel over near the park. And this bar.” He found that picture and flashed it our way. “There’s plenty here for us to investigate,” he said, his eyes on Noreen. “We don’t need the winery.”
Noreen crinkled her nose. “Are you that stupid, Dimitri? Of course we need the winery if we’re going to deliver what we promised. And we need the winery”—when she stomped her foot, the Waterford vase on the fireplace mantel protested with a high-pitched ring—“we need the winery because I don’t care about the lighthouse or the bar or the hotel. I don’t care about anything, not anything except the ghost of Sleepy Harlow.”
3
I like to think that I am nothing if not true to my word.
That didn’t make it any easier for me to talk myself into going to see Marianne Littlejohn the next day.
What I had to tell her, I hoped, would be easier to say in person than it would be on the phone, where the full impact of those infamous words, “peed on by a nasty cat,” might not have been conveyed with all the solemnity—or all the contrition—I felt they deserved.
Thus armed with nothing but my good intentions and a box of really expensive chocolates I’d gone all the way over to the mainland to get the evening before, I headed out in the direction of downtown, toward the school that housed our local library. Since it was another warm and glorious fall afternoon, I decided to walk. Talk about symbolism! Yes, I was dragging my feet when it came to seeing Marianne, and I knew it.
I’d gotten exactly as far as Kate’s house when I stopped cold. It was that or get flattened by Kate’s BMW when she raced out of her driveway.
“Sorry!” She slammed on the brakes and stopped long enough to roll down her window. “I didn’t see you.”
“Good thing I saw you, or I’d be roadkill!”
She didn’t take this personally, which was a good thing, because I didn’t, either. Kate was usually a good driver, so in addition to this aberration, what struck me as odd was that it was four in the afternoon.
“Why aren’t you working?” I asked her.
“I am working.” Kate checked the time on her phone, then tossed the phone down on the front seat next to her. “I’m on my way to the ferry right now. Jayce is holding it for me.”
“You don’t work on the ferry.”
I was going for funny; Kate didn’t laugh. She tilted the rearview mirror and checked her lipstick. “I need to get to the mainland. ASAP. I got a call, Bea. From Deidra Mannington, you know, the reporter for Wine! It’s the hottest new magazine about the business. She’s over on the mainland in Vermilion, doing an article about some of the wineries there, and she wants to have dinner at six and talk about Wilder’s. She’s going to feature us in an upcoming issue. I zipped home to change.” She glanced down and I saw that Kate was wearing a black dress with a nipped waist and short sleeves. It was just chichi enough for a special occasion and still businesslike enough that the reporter was bound to take her seriously. “But now I’ve got to go. I’ve got to hurry. I don’t want to be late.”
It really was terrific, and Kate might actually have heard me say so if she didn’t burn rubber, race down the street, and disappear in the direction of the ferry dock.
Truth be told, I was glad for this distraction and thrilled that Wilder’s—and Kate—was finally getting the recognition it deserved. For too long, Ohio wineries were pooh-poohed by the snooty oenophiles of the world. From what Kate told me, that perception was finally changing, and having Wilder’s featured in a prominent magazine was bound to help. Besides, thinking about Kate’s good fortune kept me from thinking about what I had to say to Marianne.
Fifteen minutes later, my speech (mostly) prepared and the box of chocolates at the ready, I walked into the library and stopped short.
Marianne wasn’t behind the front desk. Her husband, Alvin, was.
I’d met Alvin Littlejohn soon after I first moved to the island at a potluck dinner; and later, I’d appeared before him in magistrate’s court more than just a couple times. Believe me when I say I no longer hold this against Kate or Chandra, the ones who’d dragged me into court in the first place with their petty complaints about the construction traffic at the B and B. They were just as guilty as I was of letting our neighborhood squabbles escalate, and they were just as outraged as I was (and I was plenty outraged) when Alvin told us we needed to stop fighting and start talking. He’s the one who sentenced us to attend a year’s worth of book discussion groups.
Don’t tell Alvin, but the way things turned out, we were all grateful.
Even if it did mean reading this month’s selection, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and even if thinking about that Sleepy made me think about the other Sleepy, and—
When I gulped, Alvin didn’t look up. He was a tall, skinny guy whose thinning hair was the color of a field mouse, and like a mouse, he was busy rooting through a desk drawer and making a little pile of things nearby: an address book, a lipstick, a desk calendar.
“Hey, Alvin. I was hoping to see your better half.”
Startled, he stood and blinked at me for a couple moments while he tugged at his left earlobe. “Oh, Bea. It’s you. You haven’t heard.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Marianne? Something’s happened to–”
“In Cleveland. In the hospital. She’s got a detached retina, Bea. She’s having surgery first thing tomorrow morning. She asked me to stop in and pick up some things for her before I head over to the mainland this evening.”
“I’m so sorry.” I handed the box of chocolates across the desk to him. “When you go to see her, give her this.”
“Well, it looks like you did know about Marianne!” He took the chocolates out of my hands. “How else would you have known to bring candy?!”
“Actually . . .” I pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The candy is sort of an apology.”
“Because you haven’t finished reading that book of hers yet!” Alvin had prominent ears and a long, thin mouth. When he smiled, he reminded me of a ventriloquist’s dummy. “It was so nice of you to agree to do that for her, Bea! Marianne, she’s just as proud as punch of that little book of hers. Imagine, her being a published author! I swear, knowing you had the book and were giving it a last look, that’s the only thing that’s made these few days bearable for her, because what with her eye problems, there’s no way she could read it herself. She’s so excited to see her book in print, she can’t wait to get through the surgery and get the manuscript to her publisher.”
“Well, that’s just it, Alvin, see—”
“That’s the only thing that kept me from telling her, of course.” Alvin’s expression fell like the soufflé I’d once been foolish enough to try and serve at a dinner party back in New York. “I mean, about the computer.”
My stomach swooped. “Computer?”
We were the only ones in the library: one small room with a children’s section along the windows to my right and the rest of the books—fiction and nonfiction—in two rows of shelves on my left. Still, Alvin leaned closer and lowered his voice as if, even though she was all the way across the lake and in Cleveland, Marianne might catch wind of our conversation.
“Crashed,” he said.
My swooping stomach froze somewhere right between where it was supposed to be and my heart. I pressed a fist to the painful lump. “You’re not talking about Marianne’s computer?”
He nodded. “Last night. I came back from Cleveland to wrap up some work today and collect these things for her and I promised her I’d be back at the hospital this evening. She said as long as I was coming home . . . she said she knew it was silly of her to be nervous, that it was foolish and superstitious . . . but she asked if I’d please make a backup of her manuscript. And then—”
“No back
up?” The words were sand in my mouth.
“I can’t worry her. Not before the surgery. I’ll tell her once it’s all over and she’s on the road to recovering. For now, it’s our little secret, Bea.” He emphasized this with a wink. “But you know . . .” Alvin’s smile blossomed. “I guess as it turns out, with everything that’s happened, Marianne will be really grateful. She’ll see how lucky it was that she gave you a copy of that manuscript of hers! Otherwise, it would be completely lost!” He slipped the box of chocolates in a plastic grocery bag along with the other things he’d collected. “So, what was it you wanted me to tell her?” Alvin asked.
My smile wasn’t nearly as bright as his. Or as genuine. In fact, it was so wide and so stiff, the corners of my mouth hurt. “I just had a couple questions. About the manuscript. Tell her not to worry. In fact, don’t tell her anything at all. Whatever I have to ask her, it can wait until she’s feeling better again.”
“Thanks, Bea. You’re a lifesaver.” Alvin slipped out from behind the desk and headed for the door. “If it wasn’t for the fact that you have the only copy of that book of hers . . . Well, I don’t even want to think how poor Marianne would be feeling right about now.”
* * *
By six that evening, I had a roaring fire going in the parlor and I’d taken it upon myself to restack (alphabet be damned!) the ghost getters’ equipment out in the hallway to get it out of the way. The painters and plasterers, wood finishers and roofers who’d refurbished the house the year before and returned it to its full Victorian glory had left tarps neatly stacked in the basement, and I’d retrieved them and lined the floor near the table I’d set within arm’s reach of the fire. I adjusted the screen on my laptop until it was just right, took a deep breath, and reached down to the floor near my feet and the white kitchen garbage bag where, the day before, Luella had tossed Marianne’s manuscript. Thank goodness it wasn’t garbage day or I would have already thrown out the bag! I undid the twist tie and held my breath, but of course, that plan was doomed right from the start. The coughing wasn’t too bad. Nor was the wheezing. The face I made . . . well, there was nobody around to see it, so I didn’t care.
With thumb and forefingers, I plucked the first soggy page of the manuscript off the even soggier pile and held it up to the light to read it, then started typing.
By the time I was done with the page and consigned it to the fire, the computer screen in front of me read:
Charles Sleep_ Har___
The Stud_ of an Island Leg____
by
Mari____ ______john
This method of decoding was obviously not going to work.
My shoulders drooped, but I refused to be discouraged. It was like a game, wasn’t it? Like playing hangman. All I needed to do was fill in the blanks. Lucky for me, it wasn’t too tough; not for that first page, anyway. But by the time I’d transcribed what I could and thrown the next three pages of Marianne’s soggy tome into the flames, my eyes were spinning and my head was woozy.
Then again, breathing in ammonia will do that to you.
I yanked off my glasses and scrubbed my eyes with my fists, looking back over those first four pages and what I’d been able to decipher.
It was pitifully little.
A word here, a word there.
A full sentence on page two. Hallelujah! Except that it didn’t make the least bit of sense with what I could read of the sentences before and after it.
I considered the possibility that Marianne was simply a really bad writer, but honestly, that theory just didn’t hold water. As Luella had mentioned the day of the latest unfortunate incident with Jerry, Marianne wasn’t exactly the most imaginative person in the world. What she was, though, was thorough. And capable. Like most librarians I’d met, Marianne could rule the world if she chose to. She was that organized, that energetic. She might not be a ball of innovative fire, but she was plenty intelligent and dedicated to both her job and this book about Sleepy. She saw the book as her contribution to island history, her legacy, and I knew she’d never allow herself to be sloppy. She was too proud of what she’d produced.
I owed it to Marianne to give it my best. I needed to try and read the sodden words more carefully and (hopefully) fill in the blanks, and I’d just picked another wet page from the garbage bag when I heard the bang of footsteps on the hallway stairs.
“What the hell?”
Noreen’s high-pitched keening preceded her into the parlor.
“You messed with our equipment.”
I was in the middle of trying to determine if a word smeared across the middle of page five was robust or rosebush and I didn’t spare her a look. “It’s all there,” I said, typing out rosebush and immediately deciding it should have been robust. I glanced over my shoulder at Noreen. “I needed the fireplace. And your equipment was in the way. It’s an emergency.”
She sniffed the air. “I’ll say. No! Not that case, Fiona!” she yelled when she caught sight of something in the hallway and whirled around that way. “Take that other one first. It’s bigger.”
Apparently, Fiona did, because when Noreen looked back at me, she was smug. “It makes more sense for the bigger equipment cases to go into the trucks first,” she said.
“And it would make even more sense,” I suggested, “if you kept all the equipment out in the trucks when you got back. That way, you wouldn’t have to load and unload.”
I’m pretty sure she would have admitted this was actually a good idea if she’d thought of it herself. The way it was, Noreen’s lips puckered like she’d sucked on a lemon. “It’s expensive equipment,” she said.
“We have a very low crime rate here on South Bass. You don’t have a thing to worry about.”
“Well . . .” She pretended to consider my plan. “We’ll see. For now—”
Dimitri came down the steps so fast, he was huffing and puffing by the time he got to the bottom. “Everything’s set,” he said, stopping to catch his breath. “Liam, get the cameras into the truck and—”
Noreen cleared her throat. “I’ve got everything under control,” she told Dimitri, then turned to Liam. “Get the cameras into the truck, and Dimitri”—she gave him a rattlesnake smile—“don’t worry about it.”
Without a word, he elbowed his way past her and into the parlor, checking to see that all the equipment that had been in there had already been moved. Tonight, Dimitri was dressed much like Noreen was, in a heavy jacket emblazoned with the blue EGG lettering. Like Noreen, he wore a fisherman’s vest over his jacket and, just like hers, his was crammed with wires and batteries and what I could only imagine were bits and pieces of ghost-finding gear.
“Good luck,” I told them when they went to the door, then wondered if that was the proper parlance in the woo-woo world. If these were theater people, I’d say, “Break a leg.” If they were sailors, I’d wish them “Bon voyage.”
I called after Noreen and Dimitri, “Or should I say I hope you’ve got a ghost of a chance of finding something!”
When she grimaced, Noreen was not especially attractive. “Yeah,” she grumbled, “like we’ve never heard that one before.”
They tumbled out of the house and took their equipment with them, and I got back to work.
“Charles Harlow was born on South Beach in ____,” I typed, then figured that should actually say South Bass and made the correction even as I reminded myself that I’d have to double-check county records to make sure this was true.
And so it went. At one point, I had to come up for air, and stepped out on the front porch for a minute or two. At another, I did an Internet search to find the proper spellings of some places Marianne mentioned that I couldn’t quite make out.
The next time I looked at the antique mahogany clock on the mantel, it was nearly nine and my eyes felt as if they were about to ooze right out of my head. My temples pounded and the fire that had been fed by the soggy pages was nearly out. I was getting nowhere fast, and in the hopes of tomorrow being anoth
er (and better) day, I twist-tied the garbage bag with Marianne’s manuscript in it closed and looked over the pitifully few pages I’d transcribed. There were more blank spaces than words on them, and the words that were there hardly made sense. There was no way I could re-create Marianne’s manuscript, not like this, and the realization settled inside me like a lead weight.
I massaged the bridge of my nose with the tips of my fingers. “I’m doomed,” I groaned, and dropped my head into my hands when I realized the project wasn’t going to get any easier. The longer Marianne’s manuscript marinated, the soggier it got, and the soggier it got, the more difficult it was for me to read.
Doomed, indeed.
I would have gone right on feeling by turns either sorry for myself or in a complete panic if I didn’t hear the sounds of a car out on the road. Not so unusual, except that its brakes squealed against the pavement and the reflection of headlights skimmed the parlor walls when the car turned into my driveway.
“Ghost getters,” I grumbled, closing my laptop. “Back from the hunt. I hope they found something they’re excited about so they don’t spend the rest of the night bickering.”
“Bea!” My front door slammed open. “You’ve got to come. Now!”
I spun around and found Kate standing in the hallway, one hand pressed to her heart. She was pale, and breathing fast.
I popped out of my chair. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Her voice shook, just like her hands did. Her teeth clenched around the word. She took one wobbly step into the parlor and put a hand against the wall to steady herself. “I just got back from the mainland,” Kate growled. “It was . . .” Kate is the most practical and levelheaded person I know. I guess that’s why it felt like a fist to the gut when I saw that she had tears in her eyes. “It was a wild goose chase,” she said. “A big ol’ waste of time.”
This, of course, made no sense. Unless . . .
I closed in on Kate. “Your wine reporter never showed.”
“My wine reporter . . .” She folded her fingers against her palms and tucked her thumbs over them, anger simmering in her every clipped word. “I waited at the restaurant for an hour. Then I decided to give her another half hour. You know, as a professional courtesy. Still no Deidre. That’s when I called the magazine office in Chicago, just to make sure I hadn’t gotten the time or the place mixed up. And that’s when I found out”—the color in Kate’s cheeks was the same flaming red as her hair—“that’s when I found out Deidre Mannington wouldn’t be joining me for dinner. See, she’s on assignment. In Hong Kong.”