Jessie Delacroix and the Sanctum of Shadows (Whispering Pines Mystery Series Book 2)

by Constance Barker

  Jessie Delacroix

  and the

  Sanctum of Shadows

  by

  Constance Barker

  &

  A.J. DeBellis

  Copyright 2015 Barker/DeBellis

  All rights reserved.

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

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  Chapter One

  Breakfast was a busy time at the Nirvana Tea Room, especially since Ginny Vandersnoop came to Whispering Pines last month with her Volkswagen van and great breakfast recipes. The big-city guests in our little B&B loved her crepes and Eggs Benedict, but the locals in our small southern Georgia town preferred the biscuits and gravy, flapjacks, chicken and waffles, and our other southern delicacies.

  “I think I finally got my Cheesy Grits recipe figured out,” Ginny said as she emerged from the kitchen’s double doors. “I’ve been trying to get them to taste like Grandma Addy’s, and I’m getting pretty close.”

  The early rush was over, so we just had Ralphie and his “swampbilly” buddies at the counter sipping on coffee and giving us girls a hard time whenever they could. I was sitting in the corner booth with Maddy and Lexi, my managers of the Inn and the Tea Room.

  “It’s about time you got grits on your menu, Ginny,” Ralphie teased with his ever-present half-toothless smile. “I was fixin’ to go over to Joe Bob’s café in Stony Point tomorrow if you didn’t start having a real breakfast around this place pretty soon.”

  “Is that a promise, Ralphie? Because I might just take them right off the menu right now if that what it takes to get rid of you!” Ginny snorted twice with her usual rural charm. “And don’t forget to take Joey and Elmer with you!”

  Elmer didn’t speak much and was a little slow on the uptake in the sarcasm department. He looked worried about her threat while Joey and Ralphie snickered. The path from the kitchen led right through the opening in the middle of the counter, and Ginny just leaned over and grabbed Elmer’s whiskered cheek. Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Privit. I’ll never get rid of you guys. You’re the sunshine in my morning!”

  Ginny tromped over to our booth in her not-so-delicate manner. She was only five-feet five-inches tall, but her long arms and lanky frame made her look much taller. She was wearing her trademark striped stockings, unlaced red high-top sneakers, and a knee-length restaurant smock with an apron.

  “That’s a good one you got there, Jessie!” Ralphie hollered over to us. “She’s even feistier than your Granny when she was around here. Well…almost. Nobody could top our Aggie.” I’m not sure, but he might have gotten a little misty-eyed when he remembered Granny, who passed away about nine years ago. But her spirit lives on…in more ways than one.

  The good ol’ boys really loved the earthy, in-your-face style of our unabashed country gal, and everyone loved her cooking and baking. She really was just what we needed to complete the cast and crew of L’Auberge Hantée, and the ideal foil for our pompous but magnificent master chef, Carlo. He really put our little Inn and Tea Room on the map with his world-class finger sandwiches and dinner specialties. He’ll be in for lunch and dinner.

  Ginny pushed a few wild strands of her curly red locks back into the bun, which was wrapped in a hairnet and sat almost directly on top of her head, and joined us in our booth. She plopped down in a less-than lady-like manner and sat with her knees a foot-and-a-half apart and both elbows on the table propping up her freckled face.

  Next to her was Maddy Warren, the manager of the Inn. To her right was my best friend, Lexi Carnigan, who was Ginny’s boss in the Tea Room. I guess I was the general manager of our slightly dysfunctional little oasis on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. I’m Jessie Delacroix.

  The Inn sat regally at the end of Carlisle Boulevard facing down the street lined with antique shops of every kind. They drew a steady stream of tourists to our little haunted paradise. In case you haven’t visited us before, we have a few ghosts around here. You’ll meet some of them soon enough.

  “Ooooohhh, you girls should’ve been on Carson Yates’ Ghost Walk tour of the town last night.” Ginny was new to the town, so all the ghost talk was still new and exciting for her. “It was led by the Grim Reaper himself. He wore a long black robe and had red glowing eyes under his hood. Did you know that Wally and Molly’s bakery just a block down has some ghosts from the civil war? I live right upstairs there, and you know, I think I’ve heard them chattering a few times.”

  “So, do you believe all those stories, Ginny?” Maddy, our resident skeptic, asked with a wincing smile.

  “They all got plenty of true facts and eye witnesses to back them up, Maddy…and it does explain a lot of the mysterious things that happen around here. And – oh, Madame Irene’s fortune telling house is the gateway to the world of the dark spirits. But I guess she keeps them in check.”

  “Well, at least we’re safe for now, I guess.” I gave her a patronizing smile as Ashley, our pretty blonde teenaged waitress, filled our cups.

  “Oh, don’t be so sure,” Ginny said, leaning in and lowering her voice to tell us what promised to be big news. “This place right here is Ghost Central for the whole town, Jessie.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that. That’s why we call it The Haunted Inn.”

  Ginny furrowed her eyebrows quizzically. “But I thought it was called L’Auberge Hantée…oh…yeah. I see now. I guess that’s French or something. But at least they say you’ve got mostly good spirits here, except maybe for those dead kids in the attic.”

  Ummm…I don’t think Ginny is going to be writing any of our promotional material for brochures or our website any time soon. Our old Victorian Mansion had been the Carlisle estate up until the Civil War. The town’s wealthy founder is said to have killed his three children in the attic then, and their ghosts are still sometimes seen up there in our beautifully renovated Spectral Suite, which is popular among visiting paranormal enthusiasts. Fortunately, the mischievous apparitions haven’t reared their ghostly heads since I’ve been back home. Maybe they’re on sabbatical, haunting a nice vacation spot in the Caribbean.

  “Yes, we knew that too, Ginny. We’re the home of the good ghosts…”

  “…and this Inn has the portals to the past, the future, and the far side of the universe.”

  Okay, that I didn’t know. It must just be a thing the new ghost tour company made up to boost sales. But there are those three doors in the back of the basement that always made me feel creepy, and Granny always told me to stay away from them.

  “But you know what the best part was?” Ginny went on with the wonder of a child in her wide green eyes, “It was those pirate stories. Buried treasure, ghosts of buccaneers, and Captain Gentry Olivant’s curse on anyone who disturbs his treasure or the bones of his crew.”

  “I haven’t heard those old pirate stories for years,” Maddy said, “But my dad swore there had been pirates around these parts, complete with buried treasure and descendants still living among us.”

  “It’s all true. My grandpappy used to tell me the story of the how the Wenches of the Swamp saved his grandpappy, thirteen times removed, from certain death at the hands of Olivant himself. Those pirates snatched the young Thaddeus Vandersnoop right out of his own backyard and meant to feed him to the alligators. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for those brave wenches.”

  Lexi and I looked at Maddy, who was the
oldest of the bunch at 39 and kind of our mother figure. She was not one to buy into legends and stories – she even remained skeptical of the ghosts of my mother and grandmother, who I visited with every day. Still, she was afraid of ghosts, even if she didn’t believe in them.

  “So you believe in your dad’s pirates, but not my…” I caught myself before I let word of my family ghosts slip out in front of Ginny. Only Lexi, Maddy, and Carlo knew about them, and I was the only one who could see them – although Carlo could hear them and had daily fights with Granny over his cooking methods.

  “Don’t worry,” Ginny said with a snort. “I met your mom and Granny. I don’t think Granny likes me too much, but Kat is a real sweetie.”

  We were all a little stunned. “You…can see them?”

  “Oh, heck, no, Jessie. Can’t hear ’em either, like Carlo. But the man is always talking to them, so of course I know about ’em. And I can feel when they’re around, which is almost all the time…although I haven’t felt Granny for a few hours now.”

  “So…” Lexi was still curious about the curse. “…I don’t usually get interested in pirate stories, Ginny, but what kind of curse did this Captain brew up? I haven’t heard that part of the story before.”

  “Oh, it’s just some kind of pirate resurrection I guess. You know, all the pirates around here will rise from their watery graves and make any people who messed with their stuff walk the plank or hang ’em from the yardarm.”

  “Yardarm?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You know, that cross-piece timber on the mast that holds up the top of one of those square sails on those old wooden ships.”

  “Seems like you know a lot about pirate ships, Ginny.”

  “Of course. My grandpappy, Elroy Sabersooth, says we’re descended from pirates, and the Vandersnoops on my daddy’s side come from a long line of pirate fighters. He passed down all kinds of sailing stories to me that have been in his family for generations. And he says the Elvira River was a popular place for pirates because they could sail their big ships upstream from the ocean through its wide mouth. It was plenty deep enough for them to get almost all the way to the ’Fenokee Swamp.”

  With Ginny, it was hard to tell what was a tall tale and what was reality. She was always full of stories, although Ralphie and the boys claimed she was full of something else. Still, this had a ring of truth to it, based on the little history I knew of the area. The Elvira River made a kind of horseshoe run around three sides of our little town, and the western leg of that “U” flowed not far behind the Inn, beyond our big courtyard, the tall Whispering Pines, and a hundred yards of swampland.

  “What else did your grandpappy tell you, Ginny?”

  “A lot of buried treasure around here, Jess, and some of the hearties got run aground, high and dry when they went too close to the edge of the swamp. They just decided to settle in and raise families with the booty they already had stolen from the high seas. The tribal folk were no match for their gunpowder and swords, so they ran ’em off, except for the pretty Indian ladies. Maybe I got a little Pocahontas in me.”

  Ginny snorted again just as my little beagle, Arthur, came strutting into the Tea Room like he owned the place. He came in through the French doors open to the wide porch and seating area on the side, and he was covered with mud from muzzle to tail. Something was in his mouth.

  “Whatcha got there, little pooch?” Ginny asked, patting him on the top of his head – the only clean part of his body.

  “Arthur!” This was no place for an animal, especially a filthy one. “What are you doing in here? You know you’re not allowed in the restaurant.”

  He started wiggling his body like he was going to shake off the wet mud off.

  “No! Do not shake. You’ll get us all dirty.”

  He stopped, dropped the mud-drenched object in his mouth, and sat and looked at me. That seemed a little too obedient for my little stinker, who was not much over a year old and still not quite fully-grown. This could only mean one thing.

  “Arthur, I need to talk to you in the lobby.” The girls marveled at how well-trained the little dog was as he followed me out the door to the empty lobby.

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  Chapter Two

  I went behind the front desk, but Arthur just walked across to the open door of the storefront on the other side of the lobby and sat. Anika waved to me from her…well, Gus’s…well, their antique pawnshop. That’s another story.

  I raised my eyebrows at Arthur and pointed to the floor in front of me. He reluctantly walked over.

  “Granny, you get out of Arthur right now! You can’t keep doing this!”

  “I don’t want to get out. We haven’t eaten yet, and I kind of enjoy a little kibble in the morning after almost a decade without a body. It’s kind of nice, Jessie.” Granny gave me Arthur’s best puppy dog eyes.

  I squatted down and got my face right up to hers…er, his, and stared for a minute. “Now.”

  “Come on now, Mother.” A ghostly figure came out through the lobby door from the kitchen. It was my mother, Kat Delacroix. She had died suddenly and inexplicably four years ago. Carlo found her lying peacefully on the floor of the solarium, and her death and possible murder have never been solved. Always the spirit of reason and calm, she floated over to us with her comforting smile and gentleness.

  “Mom, would you get Granny out my Arthur, please?” Now, for some reason, with my mom here, I reverted to my little girl persona. I folded my arms and almost started to tear up over my not-so-serious predicament.

  “Mother,” Mom said to Granny.

  “Oh, all right, all right.” Granny slipped out of her favorite vehicle for adventure and floated up toward the ceiling. “Geez, can’t a girl go out for a little exercise without you all getting your panties in a bundle? You know it’s the only way I can get out of this darn house.”

  “Well, if you would just cross over, Mother, you could go wherever you wanted.”

  “No way, Kat. I’d be one more step removed from my Tea Room, and I might not be able to keep Carlo in line, always making up his own recipes and taking shortcuts. He might not be able to hear me anymore – and Jessie maybe couldn’t see me…or you either for that matter. You just go on ahead if you like. I’m staying here.”

  Mom just smiled. “I’ll stay with you as long as you choose to remain here, Mother. And Carlo’s recipes and shortcuts have won a lot of awards and recognition for your Nirvana Tea Room.”

  “That’s right, Granny. Carlo is terrific. You just like fighting with him.”

  “Well…”

  It always amazed me how my mother could be the daughter of this crusty old woman – whom I loved dearly. But I guess they had just reversed roles in the afterlife.

  Arthur was lapping up water from his bowl, which we kept near the door to the kitchen, when Lionel came up from his room downstairs. He was our all-around handyman, caretaker, valet, bellman, mechanic – well, you get the idea. The basement door was right next to the double doors leading to the solarium in the back of the mansion and under the grand staircase to the rooms above.

  “Talking to yourself again, ma’am?” he asked with a smile. He often caught me talking to Mom and Granny.

  “Uh…I was on my phone.” That doesn’t count as a lie, does it?

  “Uh oh,” he said, “somebody got into a little mischief and needs a bath, it looks like. I’ll take him out back and hose him off, Miss Jessie.”

  “Thank you, Lionel – and good morning!”

  “Likewise to you, ma’am. I’ll feed him when he’s cleaned up too.”

  “Hmmm…” Granny let out a low moan, knowing that she was going to miss out on one of Lionel’s special treats he would give Arthur after he ate his dog food.

  Rather than letting him track mud through the solarium and out through the courtyard, Lionel had my little guy follow him downstairs past his room and then up and out to the outdoor spigot and hose
in back.

  “Well, I’m going to get back to the table,” I told Mom and Granny. “We need to talk about the food order, with this new menu, and Maddy said some weekend guests just canceled.”

  “Jessie…”

  “Yes, Granny?” Is she really going to apologize for hijacking my beagle?

  “I need to go in there with you too.”

  I guess not. “What? Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Jessie! Come here and take a look at this.” Lexi waved me over to the booth where they were all looking at something in the middle of the table.

  Ashley was just arriving at the booth with a round waitress’s beverage tray and a pitcher of water. Ginny lifted the muddy object that Arthur had brought inside and set it on the tray, and then Ashley doused it with some water. It looked like a hook of some kind.

  “What is that?” I leaned in close to see as Lexi used her napkin to clean off more of the mud. It looked like a big meat hook with a copper cuff around the end of it. It couldn’t be…

  “Yep,” Ginny said with certainty. “That’s a hook hand from a pirate. He must’ve been kind of important too, because the swabbies never got fine things like this bronze hook. They would fashion their own wooden peg legs sometimes, but things like this were reserved for captains and top mates.”

  “It’s probably something from an old block-and-tackle pulley system.” Maddy dismissed the notion that it was a pirate artifact. “Happy Doyle uses hooks like that to lift engines out of cars he’s working on.”

  “Not a big old bronze hook like this one,” Ginny responded, in no uncertain terms.

  Lexi rubbed on the cuff with her napkin a little harder. “It has some writing on it…”

  “What does it say?” Even Maddy was curious about this old piece of hardware.

  “Looks like ‘GO’ to me,” I said, “and then there are some numbers… one…six…eight…nine.”

  “It’s not ‘GO,’ Jess,” Ginny said. “Those are initials…G-O, 1689. Looks like your pup done dug up the hook hand of Captain Gentry Olivant.” She looked a little concerned. “I wouldn’t touch that thing, if I were you, ladies. Remember his curse.”