Opposition

by Eliza Lainn

  “Maybe…” he let out a disgusted, but resigned, snort, “maybe we should ask Sebastian again. He does seem well versed on the subject. After the case is solved, perhaps Rose could breach the subject?”

  “No.”

  “No? Why? I don’t like the man, but we should use him for whatever information we can, right?”

  I thought of last night. The way he’d only given information in exchange. How he’d worked the conversation so that it felt like I’d given him everything he wanted and all I was left with were crumbs.

  Granted, Rose was the best one when it came to handling people. For that to work though, for him to open up, it would have to be one-on-one. Last night, he’d shut down surrounded but he’d at least talked when I charged after him. But I didn’t like the thought of her alone with him.

  Especially not after he’d pushed me up against the wall.

  “Stella?” Cyril asked, a cool hand touching my arm. “Are you ok?”

  “I don’t want her alone with him.”

  I could hear the frown in his voice. “Wait. Why would you…”

  The hotel room slammed open. Bronte, Rose, and Noah came into the room, juggling to-go Starbucks cups and brown take-out bags.

  “Oh good,” Bronte smiled, seeing me sitting up in bed. “You’re awake. We brought breakfast.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Now that you mention it,” Noah mused as he collected the discarded trash from breakfast and put it into the brown bag, “my wards have gotten stronger. Larger.”

  “Do you think your increased perceptions are the cause of it?” I asked, setting my Starbucks tea aside.

  “Maybe,” he shrugged.

  Since Rose was seated closest to the trashcan in her desk chair, she reached out a hand for the brown bag. Noah passed it to her before leaning back against the wall. “And that’s all you two talked about last night?” she asked, dropping the bag into the small can.

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing about the case?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “It’s not a problem,” she sighed. “I’m just…after finding Ida Bailey’s body last night, I’m a little worried about Cyril and Oliver being here.”

  “Ida Bailey?” Bronte asked.

  “When we did our research, her name kept coming up,” Rose explained. She paused, looking over at Noah to see if he would pick up the thread, but he didn’t. He just leaned against the wall, staring down at the ground.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Ida Bailey owned the brothel that used to be where the restaurant is now. The Canary Cottage was the name of it. This area used to be known as the Stingaree District, a not too pleasant part of town. A den of iniquity, as it were.”

  “Iniquity,” Oliver chuckled. “I gave her that word.”

  “What happened?”

  “The more respectable women of the time insisted on cleaning up Stingaree. And they did. Ida Bailey was livid about it—hers was probably the most popular brothel in the district at the time. The Canary Cottage shut down. And when the Horton was moved from its original location, it was put here.”

  “Did she die here or something?” Bronte asked.

  “No, not that I could find out. But she single-handedly ran the Canary Cottage. She was its madam, it’s boss, and to have that taken away would be very emotional. I could understand how some remnant of her spirit would linger here because of it.”

  “That would make sense,” Cyril mused. “She didn’t look particularly formed when I saw her. A vague shape of a woman, not as full as Oliver or myself.”

  I repeated Cyril’s words and Bronte nodded excitedly. “Yes, I thought the same thing when we went to look at the body this morning. She was much more see-through than Oliver and Cyril are.”

  “So, what did you find out about Roger Whitaker?” I asked.

  Rose shrugged. “Pretty much exactly what Mackenzie told us at dinner. He was a gambler and he died after a game, shot by his creditors. He made it back to his room, climbed into his armoire, and that’s where his body was found. I think it’s a safe bet to assume Roger Whitaker is the one haunting the hotel, considering the stories seem centered around Room 309.”

  “Could Roger Whitaker become a monster?”

  Bronte bounced her head from side to side. “Or a Type 2, you mean?”

  “Yeah. If he killed Ida Bailey, wouldn’t that be a logical conclusion?”

  “We’re dealing with ghosts here, Stella,” Rose snorted. “Nothing about this is going to be logical.”

  “Fair enough,” I allowed, “but we don’t really have evidence of other ghosts in the property, right? So, it makes sense that Whitaker would have been the only one to kill Ida Bailey. The question is why.”

  “Why he did it,” Bronte nodded in agreement. “And why now.”

  Rose stood from her seat. “Both valid questions, but I think our main concern right now should be gathering evidence. I’m all for solving the mystery, but if we’re in agreement that he killed Ida Bailey—well, killed her more than she was—then we need to stop him. And we need to prove to Mackenzie that he exists if we want to get paid for it. So, first off, I think we need to gather evidence.”

  She went over to her room and returned a moment later with a notepad. “Ok. List out the weird activity surrounding the room.”

  I recalled what I’d heard from the front desk agent, counting them off on my fingers as I did. “Ok, there were banging doors. Things disappearing. Footsteps in the hallway. The bed being jerked. And then you have the more violent ones with the blood seeping from the armoire and the gunshot.”

  Rose wrote them all down. “Ok then. Bronte, Noah, I want you to come at this list from the ghost angle. Get me evidence that these things aren’t occurring naturally. Stella, you and I will come at it from the opposite direction. If there are natural reasons behind these things happening, we’ll find them. That way, we can present a two-sided argument to Mackenzie when the time’s up. Agreed?”

  We all nodded.

  “Bronte, Noah, I’d get footage of the room and the hallway. Take Cyril and Oliver with you—see how they’d be able to make these things happen, so you know the best method for capturing evidence on film, ok?”

  Noah peeled off from the wall and headed for his room. Bronte watched him pass, and when he was out of eyeshot, she gave me and Rose a wide-eyed look. Then she slid from the bed and followed him.

  “Be careful, please,” Cyril said, a chill touching my arm.

  “You too.”

  Rose came over to sit beside me on the bed. “Ok then. If these things are happening naturally, we need to figure out what’s causing them. I think we should start with items disappearing—it seems the easiest. My first thought is the housekeeping staff is taking items and blaming it on the ghost.”

  “Agreed.”

  She marked it on her notebook and moved on to the next one. “Blood oozing from the armoire could be a bad dream. Banging doors could be a draft. Footsteps in the hallway could just be other guests. The bed being jerked…” she trailed off, thinking.

  “Also a dream?”

  She put a question mark next to that one. “We’ll have to see on that one. I bet it was just a dream but I want to see if anyone recorded how much the bed moved too. And that leaves us with a gunshot.”

  “The front desk guy said the man who reported hearing the gunshot wouldn’t have made it up. No one else reported hearing it either.”

  Rose retraced the words on the page as she thought. “Could be a dream, but that’s a lot of dreams piling up. A door banging from the end of the hall, maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  She wrote that out. “We’ll try it and see if a door banging at the end of the hall could be mistaken for a gunshot. But let’s do the items disappearing first.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  A knock came from the door.

  Frowning, Rose set aside her notebook and went to open it. I rose from the bed too, mental
ly preparing myself for Sebastian or his brother.

  But Madame Amara stood in the doorway.

  “Madame Amara,” Rose said, extending a hand. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” the woman smiled pleasantly. She was dressed in a similar fashion as last night, though with different colored wrappings. Her eyes darted behind Rose and to me. “Good morning.”

  I came up to stand with Rose. “Hello.”

  Madame Amara gave a slight bow. “I was hoping Apparition Investigations could assist me with a séance tonight. To draw out the spirit of Roger Whitaker and help understand what keeps him tethered to this realm. So that we might assist him in moving on.”

  Rose glanced at me, unsure. And I wondered if she was about to ask my opinion. But the uncertainty was gone in a moment and she turned back to Madam Amara, all confidence and professionalism. “Of course. We’d be delighted to assist in any way we can.”

  My eyes flitted back and forth between the two.

  Madame Amara brightened. “Wonderful. You were the last—it seems all groups will be in attendance tonight. Including Mackenzie.”

  “Wonderful. What time?”

  “Dusk. We shall be in the restaurant again. I felt a presence there last night and I thought it might be a large enough space to accommodate all of us. Much better than 309, though if tonight fails, I might consider moving it there.”

  Ida Bailey. She must have felt Ida Bailey.

  Too bad Ida Bailey was floating in the kitchen with a bullet hole in her head.

  “We’ll be there,” Rose assured her.

  Madame Amara turned to go, stopped, then glanced at Rose once more. “My dear, you have a particularly powerful aura. Have you ever considered having a psychic look into your future?”

  Rose blinked, startled. Then checked to make sure Amara was looking at her, not me. “Um, no. Not really.”

  “Something to consider,” she said, then walked away.

  Rose shut the door then turned toward me. “Think she can see ghosts?”

  “I don’t know. But we probably shouldn’t bring them to the séance tonight, just to be safe.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Bronte, Noah, and the ghosts took the equipment to set up at the hot spots throughout the hotel. Rose and I, on the other hand, decided to meet with May, the head housekeeper.

  We both put on jeans, black shirts, and our jackets, figuring it was more professional looking. And a good call too, considering May brightened when we pushed through a door marked ‘Employees Only,’ on the heels of the front desk agent.

  May stood in front of a row of heavy-duty washers and dryers. It was like a laundromat on steroids, with the machines rumbling and growling as fresh white linens went around and around behind her. She had a massive yellow cart in front of her, filling up the behemoth machines with the linens collected throughout the day.

  “May, do you have a minute?” Rose asked after the introductions had been made and the front desk agent went back to her post.

  “Of course,” she said, stopping and leaning against one of the machines. Her entire body vibrated from the washer’s movement, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  I glanced around as Rose asked her about the teamwork involved in housekeeping. This looked like back-breaking work. Picking up the piles and piles of sheets, towels, and blankets. Sorting them. Shoving them into the washer. Bending over this cart and bending to shove them into that machine. Lots of work, little respect, I thought, thinking about how maids were generally portrayed in movies and books.

  “We have to be close,” May said, tucking a strand of loose, graying hair back behind her ear, answering a question from Rose that I’d missed. She wiped at her brow with the back of her hand. “We spend all day with each other. Covering shifts. Helping the slow girls, teaching the new ones. We watch out for each other.”

  “And as the woman in charge, I’m sure you keep tabs on all your girls, to make sure they’re working hard,” Rose nodded, almost sympathetically.

  I shot her a look. Like she needed to keep tabs on her employees—we were a freaking delight to work with.

  “Oh yes. I take my job very seriously. But they’re good girls. They work hard.”

  Rose continued to nod conversationally. “I bet. Our room was perfect when we arrived—thank you for that, by the way.”

  May beamed proudly.

  “We’re here investigating what happened to Gina. Did she tell you what happened?”

  Equal parts excitement and fear lit up May’s face. “Oh yes, she told me everything. I’ve had so many girls complain about 309. I’ve asked Mackenzie to do something about it for years—there’s a darkness in that room.”

  Rose shuffled in closer, lowering her head as if they were co-conspirators plotting together. “So, you believe in the ghost then? In Roger Whitaker suddenly turning violent?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why do you think it took him so long to shoot someone? If he’s been here since the 1880s. We haven’t been able to figure that part out yet.”

  May glanced around and then shuffled in even closer. Their shoulders brushed. “It’s because of the green man.”

  “The green man?”

  May nodded seriously. “We had a guest a few weeks back. Complained about his room—a room Gina had cleaned. He went to the front desk and complained. They’re always so nice up there about keeping us out of it, but he was furious, so Amanda came to grab me. I was surprised when she came to get me—I’d never seen her so upset. When I came up there, he was standing still like a statue, not puffing up like some angry people do, but he was just so mean. Not in his words when he spoke—he didn’t use bad language or anything like that—but it was in his eyes. A kind of cold fury. About gave me a heart attack. He’s the one that stirred up Roger to hurt Gina.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because he told me that’s exactly what he’d do.”

  I blinked.

  Rose blinked.

  And we both looked at each other for a moment.

  “What do you…” Rose hesitated as she turned back to May, “what do you mean, exactly? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  May shuddered. Despite the heat coming off the dryers right behind her, I could see goosebumps prickle down her arms. She hugged herself, her eyes falling to the floor. “He looked me straight in the eye and said he wasn’t happy. And that he had half a mind to have the ghost in 309 hurt Gina for her sloppiness.”

  “What happened next?” I asked.

  “He went off after he said his piece; left his keycard and that was the last we saw of him. I didn’t think anything about it until Mrs. Mackenzie told me Gina had been hurt while cleaning 309.”

  Rose and I exchanged another quick look. I could see the same thought in her eyes as was in mine: psychic.

  “Why did you call him the green man?”

  “Because he looked positively green. Like he was sick, about to throw up everywhere. His skin was all clammy, and pale, and tinged this sickly shade of green.”

  Rose opened her mouth to ask something, thought better of it, and changed her tactic. “May, you seem to know more about Roger Whitaker than I ever could, so do you have any idea why he’d be stealing stuff from the room? We heard that things keep going missing there.”

  May shook her head. “I don’t know what a ghost would need things for.”

  “Has he done it long?”

  “Since I’ve been here.”

  “And you’re positive it’s Roger taking these things?”

  She gave us a slightly confused stare. “Who else could it be?”

  Either she was the best actress I’d ever seen, or the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind that her staff could be the ones taking things from 309. I figured we wouldn’t be able to get more out of her about it. And Rose mirrored my thoughts from the way she maneuvered the conversation to its end.

  Once we were back in our room, Rose finally asked. “Do you thin
k a psychic put Roger up to harming Gina?”

  “Absolutely. My name invocation would do just that.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I used it on Nathan Elgin, so we know my abilities could work on ghosts. Why couldn’t another psychic order Roger to harm Gina?”

  “At least we’ve got the why, now.”