House of Whispers (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 5)

by JL Bryan

  “Go on,” I said.

  “It was awful. One of their men was on a stepladder, up high near the ceiling—some of the wires look like they haven't been redone up there since the hotel was first electrified—and he fell right over. The whole ladder came down. He broke his neck and died on the spot.”

  “That's horrible!” Stacey said, and I nodded.

  “The others said it looked like he was pushed,” Madeline continued. “Like something invisible came along and shoved that ladder over.”

  “It couldn't have just toppled over?” I asked, looking at the debris on the floor. “There's a chance it wasn't perfectly balanced, and he leaned over too far, something like that. It's a spooky environment, which might make the accident seem like something supernatural.”

  “These men were terrified,” Madeline said. “They all refused to come back, even when I offered to pay them more. I tell you, if I don't get this place in shape and bring in more revenue, the bigwigs are going to nail my hide to the smokehouse door.”

  “I certainly hope that's a metaphor,” I said. “We just need to consider other, less paranormal possibilities in these situations.”

  “This place is haunted,” Madeline said. “Everybody knows it. Shoot, I saw a Travel Channel show about it.”

  “That's another reason people might tend to interpret events as ghost-related,” I said. “But I'm not dismissing what the workers said. It's going to take some investigation. Can you give me any specific details? Things they heard or saw? Male, female, anything that could give us a lead on the ghost's identity?”

  Madeline shook her head. “They didn't tell me much.”

  “Can you give me the contractor's contact information?”

  “I surely will. It's important you keep it quiet about the poor fella dying. The bigwigs want the whole situation sealed up tighter than a Ziploc full of caviar.”

  “Understood,” I said. “We'll be happy to look into this for you. Our usual process is to identify the ghost first, because that makes it much easier to trap it. In this case, we could be elbow-deep in ghosts at this hotel, so it might take a while.”

  “Don't you think Abigail Bowen did it?” Madeline asked.

  “Stabby Abby is obviously a clear suspect, given what she did in life,” I said. “But we don't want to jump to conclusions. From what I understand, people have been seeing her in this hotel for decades without being harmed by those encounters.”

  “Isn't she the one that grabs people's arms while they sleep?” Stacey asked.

  “Hotel guests sometimes wake up with an arm extended away from the bed, held by cold fingers they can't see. Like a nurse checking their pulse,” I said.

  “Y'all seem to know more about it than I do,” Madeline said. “I'm just catching up.”

  “Abigail worked as a nurse for Dr. Lathrop during the war,” I told her. “They say he treated Northern and Southern soldiers equally, but apparently Abigail was a devout Confederate. One night, she murdered a number of recovering soldiers in their hospital beds. She cut their throats with a scalpel. I think it was seventeen men she killed.”

  “My word!” Madeline said. “I didn't realize it was so many.”

  “Kind of makes that whole checking-your-pulse-in-your-sleep thing a little scarier,” Stacey said. “Maybe she's checking whether she needs to kill you.”

  “This is just awful,” Madeline said.

  “She hasn't hurt anyone before,” I reminded them. “Something has changed. Maybe it's the attempted renovations on the fourth floor.”

  “I can't give up on four,” Madeline said. “The bigwigs would drench me in honey and throw me to the wolverines.”

  “You can assure them we're on the case,” I said.

  “Yeah...that brings me to another point. I need you to avoid speaking to anyone else about this. You see...my bosses back at the head office...”

  “They don't know you're hiring us?” I offered.

  “Exactly.” Her shoulders slumped a little, and her smile wavered under her thick lipstick. “I know the problem is related to the haunting...or I think it is...but just try convincing those old men. I didn't even want to bring it up. I'm expensing your detective agency as 'security consultants.' Checking how secure our guests are against intruders and such. So maybe y'all could stick with that little story if it comes up somehow?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “But we'll need to speak with some of the hotel staff. Preferably long-timers who can give us some insight on what's normal around here and what isn't.”

  “I'll see what I can do, but you'll have to be discreet and keep all that to a minimum,” she said. “The staff say things have gotten much worse since we took over the hotel. Certainly a lot of complaints from guests, too. Whispers in their ears, scary things walking down the halls. Mirrors and drinking glasses just up and shattering right in front of them. The staff said it was never so bad before. I've had three people quit in the last three weeks.”

  “I understand. We'll have to figure out what kicked things up so much, but I'm betting the renovations have something to do with it,” I said. “Our first step would be an overnight observation. We'd like to have some thermal cameras watching the haunted hotspots around the building.”

  “The hauntspots,” Stacey said, nodding. I don't particularly like that term she coined, but I have to admit it saves a couple of syllables.

  “You can do what you like up here on four, but we need to keep things calm and quiet for the guests on the other floors,” Madeline said.

  “Any chance we could investigate Room 208?” I asked. It was the most famous room in the hotel. “If we're trying to see what Abigail is up to...”

  “I'm afraid we have guests there now,” Madeline said. “People reserve that room months in advance hoping to see her ghost. I'll let you know if they leave early or switch rooms in the middle of the night. I hear guests in that room do it all the time.”

  “Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll run away screaming, then,” I said. “I promise we'll keep things low-key. We'll need to set up a nerve center to monitor all our audio and video feeds. Usually we just park our van outside, but with this level of possible danger, I'd rather have Stacey somewhere inside the hotel in case I need help. That will help with the discretion aspect, too. Plus, your parking situation is not great here...”

  Madeline nodded. “All right. How about I give y'all a couple of rooms on the third floor, maybe by the stairs?”

  “That would be perfect,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Madeline pushed open the wall panel, but I remained, looking around the room for a moment. Despite its size, it was hard to imagine it as a functioning ballroom. Those two rows of columns kept the room cluttered and claustrophobic. They were wide and built closely together, reminding me of the columns in ancient Egyptian temples whose architects hadn't yet discovered the magical power of the arch to help create open, airy spaces. Not that I've ever been to Egypt, but I do read National Geographic.

  I couldn't picture a crowd of people dancing in this space, not without constantly bouncing like pinballs between the tightly clustered columns. The area at the center was long and narrow, terminating at the huge raised altar, big enough for a three-piece band, flanked by more of the thick columns. The wall behind the altar was intricately sculpted, but I couldn't see any details from where I stood.

  “Ellie?” Stacey nudged me with her elbow, in a let's-not-space-out-in-front-of-the-client sort of way. Madeline, for her part, stood in the service hallway beyond the jib door, holding it open for us and giving me a puzzled look.

  “I don't think this is really a ballroom,” I said to Stacey as we walked out.

  “What is it, then?” Stacey asked. “A skating rink? Bowling alley?”

  “I'm not sure, but we need to figure it out.”

  After we left, the concealed door creaked its way shut, as though something unseen had lurked in the shadows, watching us, waiting for us to depart.

  Chapter Thre
e

  “Score!” Stacey said, just after opening the door to our hotel room on the third floor. As promised, it was close to a hidden service stairwell, giving us quick and discreet access to the closed fourth floor. We'd already gone to our office to stock up on gear, plus I'd fed and watered my cat. Now the sun had gone down and the sky was deep purple.

  Stacey was clearly responding to the sight of the room—vases stuffed with flowers on the mantel over the brick fireplace, fine rugs on the hardwood floor, a four-poster bed dripping with lace curtains. An antique rosewood armoire stood in the corner, next to a matching writing desk with a deeply upholstered chair. Wrought-iron French doors soaked the room in orange late-afternoon sunlight and offered access to a veranda outside, which had a matching railing of spiraling, curling black iron. The open bathroom door revealed a clawfoot tub on a tiled granite floor. A connecting door led to another hotel room that Madeline had provided for me.

  “Looks nice,” I said.

  “That was a stroke of genius, Ellie, getting us rooms here.” She flopped back on the ornate bed, spreading out her arms. “It's so nice. Do you think we get room service? Spa privileges? I saw a sign offering mud masks and pedicures.”

  “I doubt those are included,” I said, setting my armload of gear onto the nearest rug. Madeline had given us staff access cards so we could use the hidden freight elevator and windowless service hallways at the core of the building. She obviously wanted us to stay as invisible as the hotel's custodians and room-service waiters—probably even more so.

  “How long do you think this case will take to solve? Please say months.” Stacey hopped to her feet, then unlatched and opened the French doors to let in the cool evening air. The smell of roses wafted in from outside, probably from the window boxes elsewhere around the hotel.

  “Close it up,” I said. “We share that veranda with several other rooms. Madeline wants us to keep a lid on things, remember?”

  “Or the bigwigs at the head office will whup her with an ugly stick and tie her to a wagon, or some other folksy form of torture.” Stacey drawled out her soft Alabama accent into a deep Texas one. She closed the veranda doors again. “Okay, so where are you going to sleep? I call this room.”

  “We aren't being paid to sleep.”

  “If you think I'm not crashing on that sweet down mattress as soon as the sun comes up, you're crazy,” she said. “I'm staying right here for the whole investigation, thanks.”

  “You might change your mind after Stabby Abby tries to slash your throat.”

  Stacey went a little pale, the color seeping away from her suntanned cheeks. “You just took, like, ninety percent of the fun out of this, Ellie.”

  “If we run into a murderous ghost, that other ten percent won't last long, either. Come on, let's go grab the rest of our gear.”

  Even with the rolling luggage rack we'd borrowed, it took a few trips to carry everything upstairs, and I was grateful for the freight elevator. By the time we were done, the pleasant, antique-filled hotel room looked more like a Radio Shack storage room, cluttered with video cameras, microphones, monitors, and spools of black cable.

  Madeline had provided Stacey access codes to the hotel's system of tiny security cameras mounted in the corridors and stairwells, so we had plenty of basic black and white video to monitor. None of those cameras had ever been installed on the fourth floor, though. They'd only been installed in the most public areas of the lower floors, so naturally we didn't get views of any guest rooms or the spa that Stacey was so eager to try out.

  “I'd like to get a couple thermals or something into the second and third floors, just the hallways,” I said. “Do you think we can rig that up in a way nobody will notice?”

  “No problem,” Stacey said. She was already getting to work, opening up the armoire and setting up little monitors on the shelves. “I'll just have to grab a stepladder, my drill, and my secret undercover electrician's coveralls.”

  “You actually have those?”

  “Nah, but it would be neat if I did, right? Let's go.”

  A few minutes later, after borrowing a stepladder from the custodial staff, we emerged through another jib door on the second floor into a spacious corridor with a hardwood floor and red carpet runner, softly illuminated by high sconces in the walls. Guest room doors ran along the wall across from us. Every floor seemed to be laid out this way—guest rooms and other guest areas along the outside of the building, where they could enjoy windows and light, while the hotel staff moved in the cramped hidden rooms and hallways at the center of the building.

  “There it is,” I said to Stacey, nodding as we passed the infamous Room 208, where Stabby Abby was seen most often. “That was Abigail's room when she was alive and working as a nurse here.”I pointed to the hotel's small black ball of a security camera mounted high in the corner of the hallway, just below the ceiling, tucked away where most people wouldn't even notice it. “Here you go. Step right up.”

  Stacey climbed the stepladder, holding our smallest thermal camera. She set about attaching it to the mount for the existing security camera.

  The guest elevator dinged softly, and a moment later a middle-aged man in a Brooks Brothers suit emerged from around the corner, accompanied by a young woman in a peach sundress. He paused to frown at Stacey and me, and I gave him an apologetic smile as Stacey's drill bit whined overhead.

  He said nothing, just led the woman into a room—216, not the infamous 208—and slammed the door as if annoyed.

  Less than a minute later, a portion of the wall paneling opened and a tall, broad-shouldered, borderline albino man in a dark blue suit stepped out, looking us over, his thin lips bent into a deep frown. The name CONRAD was displayed on a brass name tag at his lapel.

  “Security.” He squinted up at Stacey, then pointed at the big luggage cart full of electronics. “What's all this?”

  “Ah...” Stacey said, unhelpfully, then looked at me.

  “We're security consultants from Eckhart Investigations.” I opened my purse and passed him a card. “Madeline Colt hired us.”

  He nodded, but his facial expression didn't lighten up. “She mentioned you would be here. I was just expecting...”

  “Males?” I asked.

  “I assumed.” He placed the card carefully inside his coat pocket, as if he meant to study it later. “What exactly are you doing?”

  “Testing a few enhanced digital security measures,” I said. “Just trying to make your job easier.”

  I meant for the comment to please him a bit, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. He narrowed his eyes, and a muscle in his jaw flexed as if he were biting down on some anger issues.

  “Finish quickly,” he said. “You must stay out of the guests' way at all times.” Then he turned and stepped back through the door. The section of wood paneling closed, leaving the jib door all but invisible again.

  “He's a friendly type,” Stacey said. “Like Lurch from The Munsters.”

  “You mean The Addams Family.”

  “Pretty sure it was The Munsters.” Stacey stepped off the ladder. No ghost had showed up to give her a shove. She checked her tablet, and there we were, two glowing red forms in the cool blue air-conditioned hallway. “So when do we bring Jacob in?” she asked.

  “Whenever we have some idea of what's going on,” I said. “Come on, let's wire the hallways approaching our room. I don't want any nasties sneaking up on us late at night.”

  After setting up a couple of cameras and a microphone on the third floor, it was time to head up to the fourth. Night had just fallen, but it was probably too early for any major ghostly activity yet. Then again, the workman had been killed during the daytime, so all bets were off as far as that went.

  The freight elevator shuddered, almost making me lose my footing, then stopped with a metallic bang as it hit the fourth floor. The elevator hadn't given us any trouble on the lower floors, but it seemed to react poorly to being sent up to four. The lights sputtered as
the metal doors screeched open.

  “It's hard to imagine they want to turn this into luxury suites,” Stacey said, her voice low as we emerged into the dark, chaotic construction zone.

  “This is just the service area,” I reminded her.

  “It must have been miserable working here back in the day, without sunlight or fresh air...”

  “Or air conditioning. It was probably boiling hot in the summers.”

  “So where do we start?”

  “Let's try the Ballroom of Darkness.” I led the way through the jib door we'd used earlier, into the strange dark-marble room with far too many columns. It felt much colder than it had during the daytime. All the light came from those two bulbs hanging from missing panels of the pressed-tin ceiling. Darkness shrouded every wall and corner. I clicked on my flashlight, but the gloom remained. I noticed some deep, rusty holes in the floor, like some kinds of poles or supports had once been mounted in a large circle at the center of the room.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Stacey whispered.

  “A disembodied murderer may have killed a man here last week. You should have a bad feeling.”

  “Thanks for the reassurance, Coach.”

  Moving quietly, we set up thermal and night vision cameras on opposite ends of the room, as well as a high-powered microphone in the center. We wanted to keep close watch for any entities hanging around the possible murder scene. I had the feeling that something was there in the shadows around the room, watching us as we prepared to watch the room, but it could have been nerves.

  “Now what?” Stacey asked, still whispering.

  “We'd better poke around,” I said. “See if we find any other creepy rooms up here.”

  “I don't think that will take very long...” Stacey turned a slow circle, her flashlight playing along the dark wood and marble of the walls. “Um, I'm not seeing any other doors out of here.”

  “There must be another jib door somewhere. I'll feel my way blindly along this wall, you feel your way blindly along that one.” I indicated the two long walls, largely concealed from us by the densely packed columns. “If something grabs you, scream.”