The Haunted Valentine (A Lin Coffin Mystery Book 7)

by J A Whiting

  “What would we say?” Lin folded her hands on the table. “A ghost told us to dig in the shells?”

  “The authorities don’t have the workforce or the funds to go off investigating without some evidence or probable cause,” Anton explained. “People would be sending law enforcement out on endless wild goose chases. Nothing would get done. It would be misuse of police time and money. Even finding the name of a missing person somehow associated with G. W. Weeks won’t be enough to have them look into it.”

  “Then why are we doing this?” Viv pouted.

  Anton said, “Because it will be a piece of evidence gathered to advance our investigation. Tonight won’t be the end of our work, it will only be the start. In fact, we may never get enough information to convince the police to dig.”

  “Could we dig ourselves?” Viv asked.

  “That would be a monumental task,” Anton said shaking his head. “We would also need the permission of the lot’s owner to access the shell piles.”

  Lin added, “The owner would probably think we were crazy if we proposed a digging expedition in the discarded shells.”

  Anton gestured to his laptop and the books scattered over the table. “Let’s see what we can find and then we’ll plan our next step.”

  With a reluctant sigh, Viv followed Lin’s and Anton’s lead and returned to scanning through the book in front of her.

  It was approaching midnight when Viv threw in the towel and she and Queenie headed home. Nicky was on his back snoring in the chair when Anton suggested that they give up for the evening.

  As soon as he’d made the suggestion, Lin sat up and nearly shouted, “Look here!” She pointed to a page in the book collection of old Nantucket newspapers.

  Nicky startled, jumped to his feet blinking, and let out a bark as Anton rushed from his seat to look over Lin’s shoulder.

  “Here.” Lin ran her finger down the short article. “The story from 1835 reports a man who has gone missing. His wife went to the police after her husband did not return home from visiting a friend the previous evening. She contacted the friend and the man told her that he and her husband had enjoyed some dinner and whiskey, had a chat, and then the man left to walk home about 11pm. He had not heard from him since that time.”

  Lin looked up. “The friend of the missing man was G. W. Weeks.”

  Anton’s face was serious. “This is part of what your ghost wants us to find. What was the missing man’s name?”

  “Robert Ward.” The name bounced around in Lin’s head and sent a chill down both of her arms. “What happened to him?” her voice was almost a whisper. “What happened to Mr. Weeks’ friend?”

  “Flip to the next pages,” Anton suggested. “See if there are any follow-up stories.”

  Lin turned a few pages. “Here it is. Here’s another article.” Lin read and paraphrased the information. “Robert Ward, missing since leaving the home of his friend, G. W. Weeks, is assumed dead by Nantucket Police. Ward disappeared after spending an evening at the home of Mr. Weeks. Police believe that Ward, after having several drinks, may have lost his way in the darkness and fell into a nearby marsh where he drowned. The search for the man has been suspended.”

  “If Mr. Ward fell into the marsh and drowned,” Anton asked, “how did he end up buried under the scallop shells?”

  “A very good question,” Lin said. “I’d bet that Mr. Ward never fell into any marsh. I’d put my money on murder.”

  Anton asked, “If someone murdered the man, how did G. W. Weeks know where the body was buried? Was he a witness?”

  Lin made eye contact with Anton and said the words she hoped were not true. “Maybe Weeks killed Ward himself.” Her heart clenched and a moment of dizziness engulfed her. Could her ghost be a murderer? Did G. W. Weeks kill his friend? Are guilt and grief tormenting his soul and keeping him from crossing over? Is that why he came to Lin for help?

  Lin bolted out of her chair. “I need to go home. I need to see the valentine.”

  “I’ll drive you.” Anton hurried to the sideboard to get his keys.

  Looking off across the cozy kitchen focusing on nothing, Lin imagined the pieces of clues and information that had been gathered over the past several days arranging themselves like the letters in a sentence coming together to form a message. Although she couldn’t yet read the words, she had an idea of what they might be telling her.

  “Oh,” was all Lin said, but the expression on her face caused Anton to halt in place.

  “What is it?” The historian rushed to Lin’s side. “Do you need to sit down?”

  “Yes.” But instead of taking a seat, Lin began to pace back and forth across the kitchen. “Anton, I don’t understand it, but there’s something about the people I’ve run into recently.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Anton squinted at the young woman trying to make sense of her words.

  “The people I’ve talked to recently. My interactions with those people are similar to something Jeff said to me yesterday about a guy he’d been working with on a project. He told me he never knew which part of who the guy was would show up.” Lin ran her hand over her hair with a look of bewilderment on her face. “Those people. They’re clues. I know it.”

  Anton stared at Lin and shook his head in confusion. “I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying.”

  Lin stepped close and put her hand on Anton’s arm. “Can you pull up G. W. Weeks’ obituary from the online database?”

  “Yes,” Anton said.

  “Hurry,” Lin urged. “Before my idea slips from my grasp.”

  22

  Anton’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Here it is.” He pushed his chair to the left so Lin could squeeze in beside him.

  She read from the screen. “Native Nantucket resident, George W. Weeks, passed away at the age of seventy-eight. A sailor for several years, Weeks went on to work as a farmhand, a handyman, and then owned and operated a store in Nantucket town. Mr. Weeks was a musician who played several instruments. He and his wife, Sara, purchased a house a few miles from town. Sara Weeks and the couple’s infant son predeceased Weeks. Mr. Weeks lived for several years, until his death, in the apartment above the store he had previously owned in Nantucket town.”

  “You read Mr. Weeks’ obituary before,” Anton pointed out. “Why did you want to see it again?”

  “Because suddenly everything clicked.”

  “You know what happened to Weeks’ friend, Robert Ward?”

  “No, but I know that Weeks has been trying to tell me things and I completely missed them.”

  “What things?” Anton asked.

  “G. W. Weeks has been making appearances here and there all over town. He’s shown up more than a few times and talked to me.”

  “The ghost talked to you?” Anton’s eyebrows shot up. “This is something new. A ghost has never talked to you before.”

  “He wasn’t actually a ghost when he talked to me.” Lin scratched her head. “I don’t understand it, really, but he’s shown up as himself from different times of his life and has tried to pass me clues each time we talked.”

  “I don’t understand,” Anton said.

  “The first time I saw him Weeks was a young man. I saw him pass by my living room window. Viv went to answer the door, but no one was there. Then one night, I saw a young man leading a horse up my street. The man was Weeks when he was young and working as a farmhand.”

  Anton frowned in confusion.

  “Keep listening,” Lin encouraged. “Then I met a man named George who was working at the antique Cape house. He told me he was the caretaker. I should have figured it out because I found out later there was no caretaker working there. Later, I met a man who told me he was the owner of the house … it was Weeks, although I didn’t know it at the time. Weeks was the owner of the house once, but that was nearly two hundred years ago.” Lin turned to face Anton. “You see, Weeks kept running into me from different periods of his life … the young sa
ilor returned from a voyage, a farmhand, a handyman, the owner of the Cape house. Each time we talked, he offered me some clues, but I was too dense to pick up on what was going on.”

  “When he showed up, was he a ghost?” Anton asked.

  “No. I never felt cold when I talked to him. He was solid, not a ghost. It’s like he traveled to see me on a river of time. He wasn’t dead those times he talked to me.”

  Anton seemed to pale at Lin’s explanation.

  “I don’t understand it, either, but it’s the only way I can make sense of what he’s been doing.” Lin rubbed at the tension in her neck. “I saw him in town a couple of times. He told me he owned the store we were standing in front of. He told me his wife had passed away and he said he’d lost a dear friend, someone who played music with him, someone he missed terribly.”

  “His friend, Robert Ward,” Anton said.

  “He talked about his friend in such a caring way,” Lin recalled. “How could Weeks have killed his friend?”

  “A fight between them? Did the friend wrong Weeks in some way?” Anton asked. “Robert Ward must be buried under the shells. That’s why Weeks asked the young boy to tell you to dig under the shells.”

  “The last time I saw Weeks,” Lin said, “I was with Viv in town. Weeks was an old man. He walked with a cane. He told us he lived in the second floor apartment above the store he used to own. Weeks knew Viv and I owned businesses.”

  “Mr. Weeks worked hard to pass clues to you,” Anton said, amazed by the experiences.

  “Yes, he did,” Lin said wistfully and then sighed. “I don’t believe I’ll see Mr. Weeks again. Not as a living man anyway. I think he’s given me all the information that he can. Now I have to figure out how to find what’s buried under the scallop shells.”

  “Most likely it’s Robert Ward,” Anton said.

  The weight of the task pressed heavily on Lin. “Weeks also wants me to find out something else. He wants me to know how and why Robert Ward died and how he ended up buried under a pile of discarded scallop shells. I’m afraid my ghost is a murderer.”

  Lin slumped in the chair. It was after 1am. “Would you drive me home, Anton? I’m exhausted.”

  Anton picked up the keys from the table and drove the tired young woman and her dog back to her cottage at the outskirts of town.

  Lin, Jeff, and Viv stood at the edge of the lot in front of the huge piles of white shells. The night before, Lin had brought her cousin and boyfriend up to speed on the latest information.

  “Every time Weeks showed up, he was alive?” Viv shook her head. “He visited you from different times in his life? How did he do that?”

  Lin gave Viv a look. “I don’t know how any of this works. I don’t know how ghosts show up and I sure don’t know how Weeks managed to appear from different time periods of his life. All I know is they do and he did.”

  “For Pete’s sake.” Viv shook her head slowly. “I just got used to ghosts and now this new twist. Is anything else going to happen that I don’t understand?”

  Jeff and Lin said simultaneously, “Probably.”

  The hot sun beat down on them while the three stared at the mounds of shells.

  “So, what do you think?” Lin asked.

  “I think we could get some heavy equipment from my buddy,” Jeff said. “But isn’t digging up a body delicate work?”

  “It is on TV crime shows,” Viv said. “You can’t just take a big digging machine and plow into the shell piles. That would break the skeleton apart. You need a crime scene investigator. You need a medical examiner.”

  “We don’t have any of those.” Lin stood with her arms hanging down by her sides. “Any ideas?”

  “We could get shovels and screens and dig ourselves,” Viv said.

  “That could take quite a while,” Jeff warned. “And we really don’t know what we’re doing. Besides that, we need to get permission to do any digging. That could be difficult. What will we say? A man from two hundred years ago visited Lin and gave her clues about someone buried here? We could also bring up the ten-year-old boy who gave Lin a message from a ghost.”

  “I think that would work,” Viv chuckled.

  Despite the smile on her face, Lin forced her tone to be serious. “I need to figure out a way to do this.”

  Jeff put his arm around Lin’s shoulders. “The body under the shells has been here for almost two hundred years. Waiting another week or so to give us time to figure out what to do won’t make any difference.”

  Lin gave a reluctant nod and they started to walk back to their vehicles. Half-way to her truck, a cold whoosh of air blew over Lin’s skin and she turned slowly to look at the shell piles.

  At the top of the highest mound, Lin’s sailor’s valentine balanced on the shells. A bright light glowed from the object and the tiny patterned shells under the glass of the wooden box began to light up in an organized, sequential manner as if someone had connected the valentine to electric circuits that controlled the brightening and dimming of the colored shells. In a moment, the valentine faded and was gone.

  Lin’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she removed it to read the incoming text. It was from Leonard.

  Where are you, Coffin? I thought you were picking me up to go take a look at that new project.

  Lin tapped out a return text as she and Nicky hurried to the truck.

  I got held up. I’m on my way.

  Lin placed her phone on the center console and was about to turn the key in the ignition, when she glanced down at it.

  Leonard.

  Something floated on the air. Something important.

  23

  Lin pulled into the driveway of Leonard’s carefully tended home and cut the engine. With his tail wiggling back and forth, Nicky had his paws on the dashboard looking eagerly out the front window waiting for the man to emerge from the house.

  Lin didn’t know why she felt so antsy, but her nerves fired out of sync making her want to get out of the truck and go for a run to rid herself of the unsettling excess energy. She absent-mindedly tapped her finger on the steering wheel thinking that her agitation came from the problem of how to dig at the scallop shells.

  After five minutes had passed without Leonard coming out of the house, the dog looked at Lin and whined.

  “I know,” she said. “He was in such a hurry and now he’s dawdling.” Lin lightly tapped the horn to alert Leonard to their arrival.

  “What’s he doing in there?” Lin’s voice held a tone of irritation.

  When Nicky barked, a zap of adrenaline pulsed through Lin’s veins and she pushed the driver’s side door open and strode to the front of the house with the dog running ahead of her. When she pushed on the doorbell button, Lin heard the tinkling chimes sound inside the house. Just as she raised her hand to knock, Leonard opened the door, his face looking drawn and tight.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Lin asked concerned at the man’s pale appearance. “Are you feeling sick?”

  “No.” Leonard stood unmoving on the other side of the screen door.

  A few moments of awkwardness lingered between them until Lin asked, “Are you ready to go?”

  Nicky whined, not understanding why Leonard wouldn’t come out.

  “I forgot my lunchbox in the kitchen.” The man didn’t move to go and retrieve it.

  “Okay,” Lin said through the screen. She waited and then said, “Are you going to go get it?”

  Without saying a word, Leonard lifted his hand and opened the door so that Lin and Nicky could enter.

  Lin’s eyes went wide and her mouth opened. The dog looked up at his owner, unsure of what to do.

  Leonard gestured for them to come inside.

  Gingerly, Lin stepped over the threshold into the small entryway and Nicky followed with hesitation.

  The entry opened into a large living room with cream-colored walls, a fireplace on the far wall, a model of a sailing ship on the mantle, a patterned rug of soft blues, rose and cream on the f
loor, and a sofa and chairs in shades of muted blues and white placed in a grouping near the fireplace. Light flooded into the room through big windows and a few vases of fresh flowers had been set on the coffee table and side tables. The space was elegant, welcoming, and cozy all at the same time.

  “This is the living room,” Leonard muttered, his voice sounding tense.

  “It’s beautiful.” Lin smiled softly, shocked and surprised that she’d been invited in.

  “The dining room is over there.” Leonard pointed to the room open to the living area that was furnished with period antiques, a long wooden table, chairs, a sideboard, and a buffet. Nautical paintings hung on the walls and huge windows looked out over the perfectly manicured lawn, shade trees, and flower gardens.

  “I’ll show you the kitchen.” Leonard led the way to the back of the house where the kitchen stretched nearly the width of the home. French doors opened to the outside patio and high-end appliances, gleaming wood floors, polished countertops, and expensive cherrywood cabinets completed the chef’s dream of a work space.

  “Wow,” was all Lin could say when she stepped into the room. A few moments later, she said as she ran her hand over the countertop of the kitchen island, “This is like something out of a magazine.”

  Wondering why Leonard had invited her and Nicky inside, Lin lifted her eyes to the man, but didn’t know how to ask the question that was foremost in her mind so the two of them stood awkwardly staring at one another.

  “Where’s your lunchbox?” Lin looked around the kitchen for it.

  “Maybe I forgot to make my lunch.” Leonard gestured with his hand and stammered, “Why don’t you wait in the living room and I’ll hurry up and make my sandwich.”

  Lin looked at her friend with an odd expression, but gave a nod and headed into the room to wait. Everything was so pretty and perfect that she didn’t want to sit, so she wandered around admiring the original paintings on the walls. A side table by the window held a collection of photographs in pewter frames set around a crystal flower vase. Lin leaned closer to look at them.