A Valentine Wish

by Gina Wilkins

  “Who was Ian supposed to have murdered?” Mae asked.

  “A Prohibition officer from Little Rock. The officer was found dead only a mile from the inn. Two weeks later, Ian and Mary Anna were killed after being caught meeting with a bootlegger.”

  “And when was that?”

  “February 14, 1921,” Sharyn recited promptly. “Valentine’s Day. Their twenty-fifth birthday.”

  “The day they were supposed to have taken over the inn?” Dean asked, following the story despite himself.

  Sharyn nodded, obviously pleased that he was paying attention. “Their mother had left the inn to them in her will, naming their stepfather as executor of the estate until their twenty-fifth birthday. Some folks thought that the provision was his idea, that he persuaded her he had the inn’s best interests at heart by making sure the twins were mature enough to run it successfully before turning it over to them. Maybe she thought she’d live longer than she did, and put the provision in her will to appease her second husband. But, anyway, he took over after she died and it’s rumored that he and the twins had a lot of arguments about his management of the place. After they died, he automatically inherited the inn.”

  Dean cocked his head, thinking of all the murder mysteries he’d read. “Wasn’t there any suspicion that Gaylon Peavy might have been responsible for the twins’ deaths? After all, he conveniently inherited their inn...”

  Sharyn shook her head. “Of course there were a few rumors to that effect—rumors Margaret and the mayor still take very personally—but it’s highly unlikely. The twins were killed in a gun battle with a local police officer, a deputy named Tagert. He had been watching the place since the murder of the Prohibition officer, and he caught Ian and Mary Anna meeting with a known criminal, a man named Buck somebody.”

  She waved that point off with one hand. “Anyway, Ian and Buck reportedly opened fire, and Tagert shot back to defend himself. Tagert killed Buck. Mary Anna supposedly died in the crossfire. Some say Ian shot himself after he saw his sister fall. They were very close.”

  “How horrible,” Mae murmured, her eyes dreamy as she seemed to be picturing the tragic scene.

  Dean squirmed again in his chair, wondering if anyone else noticed how cold the room had become. Almost frigid.

  He’d left instructions for the central-heating unit to be checked for safety reasons, but he suspected it would have to be replaced soon. Obviously it wasn’t working properly.

  Sharyn had turned back to face him. “You know the little shack at the back of your property? It was a caretaker’s cottage. That’s where the twins were meeting with Buck, the place where they died. Crates of booze were found there in the investigation that followed the shootings.”

  Dean’s stomach tightened as he remembered that cold spot near the old shack. He visualized again the dark-haired woman on the path, looking at him so beseechingly. So... hauntedly.

  A projection, he reminded himself curtly. What else could it have been? He wished to hell the culprit would present himself soon so Dean could put the incident out of his mind.

  And still he heard himself asking, “You said people claim to have seen the twins here at the inn since their deaths?”

  “Only a very few over the years,” Sharyn admitted. “You know how these legends go—someone claims to know someone who claims to have seen them. Usually on Valentine’s Day, of course, the day of their births and deaths. Of course, no one really even knows what they looked like. There are no surviving photographs of them. Some said Gaylon Peavy was so grief-stricken, he ordered all photos of his stepchildren destroyed.”

  “They died seventy-five years ago next month,” Mae mused aloud. “Maybe Dean and I will see them, yet. Maybe they’ll drift through the hallways at midnight on Valentine’s Day or something equally dramatic.”

  Sharyn shivered visibly. “Don’t even joke about that.”

  Mae laughed. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m as prosaic as my nephew when it comes to ghosts. I don’t really expect to see them, even though it might be an interesting experience.”

  “A terrifying experience, I would think,” Sharyn said.

  “I just hope no local jokesters decide to ‘help’ us see the ghosts on Valentine’s Day,” Dean muttered.

  Both Sharyn and Mae looked confused by his words.

  “What do you mean?” Sharyn asked. “No one around here would do anything like that. Oh, sure, there have been a few school kids who’ve done things over the years—boys trying to scare their girlfriends, practical jokers, you know the type. But it’s unlikely something will happen to you.”

  “Whatever made you say that, Dean?” Mae asked, puzzled. “Has something already happened?”

  He shook his head, uncertain why he was so reluctant to discuss the incident in the attic, and afterward on the garden path. “Forget it. It wouldn’t work, anyway. I’d never fall for it.”

  Smiling, Mae glanced at Sharyn. In unison, they recited, “He doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “I think he’s made that clear enough,” Sharyn added wryly as Mae laughed.

  Sharyn didn’t stay much longer, nor did Dean encourage her to. He walked her to the door, bade her a polite, if brief, good-night and locked the door behind her with a sense of relief that he and his aunt were finally alone again in their new home. He was tired, and he had a long day of manual labor ahead of him tomorrow. He wanted to turn in early.

  “Good night, dear,” Mae said a short while later, rising on tiptoe in the doorway to her bedroom to kiss her nephew’s cheek.

  “Good night, Aunt Mae. Sleep well.”

  She smiled. “Are you worried that the ghost stories over the dinner table will make me have nightmares? Or is it your dreams that concern you?”

  He smiled chidingly. “Hardly I’m too tired to dream tonight, anyway.”

  “Is that it?” she murmured, suddenly looking a bit sad. “Or have you simply forgotten how to dream, Dean?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know what you—”

  She brushed off his words with a shake of her head. “Never mind. I’m just tired, myself. Good night.”

  She closed her door politely in his face.

  Still a bit bewildered by her comment, Dean headed for his own bed. He really needed some sleep.

  SOMETHING WOKE HIM in the middle of the night. Not quite a noise. Not quite a feeling. But something...

  She was standing in the corner of his bedroom, among the shadows created by the soft glow of a night-light through the open bathroom doorway. Shewas still wearing the long white dress. And she still looked at him as though she desperately needed something from him.

  Her lips moved. This time, he thought he heard her. Her voice was a soft, faint whisper, little more than a musical breeze.

  “Lies,” she said, the word shivering down his bare spine. “Everything she told you ...lies. We didn’t—it wasn’t—oh, damnation.”

  Her form shimmered. Still groggy and disbelieving, Dean rubbed his eyes.

  Her voice dropped even softer, a hint of sound at the very edge of his hearing. “Help us,” she whispered with more than a touch of demand in the plea. “Please...help us...”

  And she was gone.

  Dean shook his head slowly, as though to clear it. Then he looked back at that now-unoccupied, shadowfilled corner.

  A straight-backed chair sat there. The white shirt he’d worn earlier lay over it. A dream, he told himself.

  He thought he knew what had happened. Despite his smugness with his aunt earlier, he had allowed his dreams to be influenced by Sharyn’s fanciful stories. Still mostly asleep, he’d sat up in bed, spotted the white shirt and transformed it in his sleep-dazed mind into the beautiful woman he’d seen earlier.

  Shaking his head in self-disgust, he fell back on the bed, staring at the ceiling with eyes now fully alert. What a first day he’d had here! He sincerely hoped it wasn’t an omen.

  He scowled. He believed in omens no more than he believed in ghos
ts. He refused to allow his new life to be marred by silly superstitions. Everyone dreamed. Daylight would dawn, and life would go on. And soon this episode, like the others, would be forgotten.

  But even as he closed his eyes and tried to force himself back to sleep, he thought he heard that soft, floating whisper. “Please...help us.”

  ANNA STAMPED her foot as she glared at the man lying in the bed, pretending to be asleep. He didn’t hear her, just as he hadn’t heard anything she’d been trying to say to him since he’d lain back down.

  “Give it up, Anna. He doesn’t even know you’re here,” her brother advised from her side.

  She knew he was right, but it infuriated her that the man—Dean, she knew now—lay so close, yet so oblivious.

  There had to be a reason he kept seeing her. She didn’t know what it was, but she was becoming more certain each time she tried to contact him that this man was special.

  No one else had ever seen them more than once, no one else had seemed so affected by their appearance—even though Dean wouldn’t admit even to himself that he was seeing them. But she’d known from the first moment their eyes met that the key to her freedom was within this man’s grasp.

  She’d been there in the dining room, heard the horrible lies that woman ... that bleached-blond scandal-monger... had told. She and Ian had heard the stories before, of course. Unseen, unheard, they had listened as others during the years had talked about the tragedy that had taken place here, reinforcing the lies that Stanley Tagert had apparently told that night.

  Each time, Anna had reacted with fury and disbelief that no one had ever learned the truth. But tonight, hearing that woman telling her lies to Dean, Anna had been angrier than ever. Had she been able, she would have thrown the woman’s peach cobbler right into her overpainted face.

  Somehow, she had to reach Dean. She had to convince him that none of the tales were true. That she and Ian had been murdered and their reputations maligned for all the years since.

  If Dean could help them, if he could find some way to clear their names, identify their killer, then they could be free. It made such sense to her, despite her brother’s cynicism. It sounded exactly like something that would have happened in one of the novels Anna had so enjoyed reading in her youth.

  If only she could make him understand.

  Anna drifted closer to the bed, looking down at the bare-chested man beneath the covers. His eyes were closed, his breathing deep and even. He really was a very attractive man. His shoulders were broad, his chest solid, strong looking. He reminded her more of her brother than of her former fiancé, who had been fair-skinned and a bit soft. But Jeffrey had been very sweet and kind, she reminded herself quickly, feeling a little disloyal at her comparison. He would have made her an excellent husband.

  That, too, had been denied her.

  She reached out to the man in the bed. “Dean? Dean, can you hear me?”

  Her fingertips brushed his face. An odd ripple of sensation went through her, reminding her of her childhood, when she and Ian had scuffed their shoes against the carpets and touched each other for the resulting static shock.

  Dean frowned, brushed clumsily at his face, and rolled over onto his side without waking.

  “He doesn’t know you’re here,” Ian repeated gently. “We have to go, Anna.”

  She, too, felt the pull, the inexorable force that would take them away from the inn, to that silent, gray, empty place where they would drift with only each other for company until they could return again—whenever that might be.

  She looked one last time at the man in the bed, wondering if he would still be here when she came back, or if he, too, would be part of the inn’s history by then.

  Somehow, she thought he’d be here.

  3

  A spirit, yet a woman too!

  —William Wordsworth

  TO DEAN’S RELIEF, he didn’t see the ghostly woman again during the next few days. Work began in earnest on renovations, and the inn became a madhouse of activity, with carpenters, plumbers, electricians and decorators swarming through the place like hyperactive ants.

  Amazing, Dean thought cynically, how the promise of a generous bonus could serve as an incentive for quick and efficient work.

  He was using every penny of his life savings on this project. The financial risk he was taking would be staggering if he allowed himself to dwell on it—which he didn’t. Even bankruptcy would be better than the dull, grim, joyless routine he’d found himself living in Chicago.

  The townspeople welcomed him quite warmly, on the whole. He was invited to join the chamber of commerce, the Rotarians, the Optimist Club, several local churches, and was even scouted out as a potential coach for Little League baseball, though he had to admit that he hadn’t had much experience with sports. Hunters and fishermen inquired about his prowess with a gun and a rod, but those sports had never appealed to him, either.

  When asked what he did enjoy doing in his leisure time, he was sorely stumped for an answer. Truth was, he’d never had much leisure time, having spent most of his adult life determinedly working his way up the corporate ladder.

  He was good-naturedly teased about his northern accent and mannerisms, indicating that the local residents liked a good joke. Well enough to have concocted his ghostly visitor lady? Dean couldn’t help wondering, though he still didn’t understand why no one had yet claimed credit for the gag.

  Fortunately, his maternal grandparents had lived twenty miles south of Atlanta and Dean had visited them often during his youth, so he wasn’t totally ignorant of southern customs. He was a big fan of the “redneck” comedian, Jeff Foxworthy, and had been an avid Lewis Grizzard reader—he still mourned the loss of the late writer’s laconic, blunt, often startlingly insightful humor—so Dean could hold his own with the local jokesters. He thought he was going to fit in just fine here once he’d had a chance to get to know everyone, and vice versa.

  He met more people each time he went into town for supplies or on other errands. He found himself scanning faces, surreptitiously studying the shoppers at Groceries-4-Less and the discount store, the customers in line at the Bank of Destiny and the post office and diners in the local fast-food restaurants. So far, he hadn’t caught a glimpse of a woman with dark hair, dark eyes and a face that had made his heart pound faster—and not from fear of ghosts.

  Who was she? Would he ever see her again? He told himself he wondered only from mild curiosity. Certainly not for any more compelling reason.

  He saw Mark Winter several times during that first week. Dean liked the dry-humored newspaper publisher, and thought it possible he’d made his first real friend in town. A good sign—if one believed in that sort of thing, of course.

  On the first Sunday afternoon after arriving at the inn, Dean was kneeling on the front porch, pounding nails into a new board, when his aunt appeared in the doorway, her red hair humorously askew, her face liberally smudged with dust. “Dean, you have a telephone call. It’s Bailey.”

  Setting his hammer aside, Dean climbed to his feet, grinning at his aunt’s appearance. “What have you been doing, Aunt Mae? Wrestling dust bunnies?”

  She smiled. “I was in the attic when the telephone rang.”

  He almost stumbled on his way to the front door. His grin quickly disappeared. “The—er—attic? Why?”

  “Just curiosity,” she answered, apparently surprised by the sharpness of his tone. “Is there some reason I shouldn’t go up there?”

  “No,” Dean said after only a momentary pause. “No reason. Just, um, be careful on the stairs, okay?”

  “Of course.” Mae looked at him a bit oddly as he picked up the telephone in the lobby, but then left him in privacy to take his call.

  Dean’s younger sister. Bailey, was an antiques dealer in Chicago. “Dean, you’ll never believe it,” she said with characteristic enthusiasm. “I’ve found a fantastic buy on a turn-of-the-century sitting-room set for your inn. Sofa, love seat, two wing-back chairs
and a footstool. It will be great for the honeymoon suite we discussed. All you need to add are a couple of tables and a lamp, and the room’s done.”

  “Sounds great, Bailey. Thanks.”

  “I’m still looking for bedroom pieces. Got my eye on a 1914 twin-bed set with a matching bureau and a 1926 full-size maple bed with a triple dresser and a matching nightstand.”

  “Whatever you can get,” he replied, having already discussed his needs and his budget with her.

  “So, how’s it going? Aunt Mae said the renovations are well under way.”

  “There’s a lot to be done, of course, but we’ve made a good start. I hope to be able to open for business sometime around the first of July.”

  “Whew! You’re really pushing it, aren’t you? Considering how much you said had to be done.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted ruefully. “We’re practically tearing out some walls and building new ones. But I’d like to cash in on at least the latter part of the summer tourist season, and be well established by the time horse-racing season begins in Hot Springs in February.”

  “Then I’d better get busy filling your bedrooms, hadn’t I?”

  He smiled at her matter-of-fact tone and agreed.

  They chatted for a few more minutes. Sensing that something was troubling his sister, Dean asked if anything was wrong.

  “Oh, no,” she assured him with an airiness that made him even more concerned. “I’m just tired, I guess. We’ve been pretty busy at the shop.”

  “How’s the new romance coming along?”

  There was a notable pause before she answered. “I really couldn’t say.”

  Dean shook his head.

  His sister would persist in getting involved with guys with emotional problems. She’d earned herself the reputation of “Miss Lonely Hearts” because of her inability to turn away anyone she felt needed her. Dean had been warning her for years that someday she was going to realize that she’d taken care of everyone’s needs except her own—and she would regret it.