by Etta Faire
But nothing was ever that easy, and even when you fulfilled your end of the bargain, there was always some sort of ceremony about things at the end. Even the little things in life had to have boring formality attached to them.
“I hate to admit it,” Caleb said with a long inhale that included a nose whistle. “But you did a good job.”
I smiled. I was not expecting that from a Bowman. Maybe formalities weren’t so bad.
“Thanks,” I said, adjusting the strap of my cute sundress around the bra strap that was poking out. I hadn’t felt the need to dress professionally today, yet I felt pretty confident.
Taking on Mandy’s case made me realize I didn’t need to pretend to be something I wasn’t. My life choices were just as good as anyone else’s, even when those choices didn’t mean getting all fancied up every day in slacks and itchy blouses to go to meetings.
I turned my attention to the scrapbook. We still hadn’t discussed how long I would have with it. I wondered if now was a good time to go over the details, while we were on this “Carly did a good job” kick.
He leaned back in his cushy office chair. It creaked under his weight. “You know,” he said. “It kind of feels like Jackson is right here with us.”
“Do tell,” my ex said, appearing by his side.
Caleb went on. “Now, Jackson and I have never really gotten along. I always thought he was kind of a pompous jerk. He was older than me and my sister, and he let us know he was too good for us. He thought he was too good for everything, even the country club…”
“We’re too good for this, Carly doll,” Jackson said. “Just take the scrapbook and tell the little man goodbye.”
I relaxed into my uncomfortable metal chair and smiled at my ex. I was enjoying this.
Caleb went on. “Jackson was a rich snob who’d rather go to strip clubs and drink his life away than go to the country club and play a round of golf with his family. And, I always thought, ‘Man, what a jerk. He has this inheritance, and he doesn’t do squat with it.’ But maybe, it was more than that.” He played with the cover of the scrapbook as he said that last part, tracing the letters with the edge of his finger. “Maybe he was running away from something, avoiding life, hiding like a coward.”
“And perhaps it was a healthy dose of both coward and jerk,” Jackson suggested.
Caleb scratched at his goatee’s dye job and looked around. “I’m not saying I believe in this curse, or that you solved this case with actual ghosts because that is a level of insanity I do not care for, Carly Mae.” He paused to lean forward in his chair so his face was halfway across the desk, so I would know for sure that he was the one who liked tacos around here and had had them again today. He lowered his voice. “But I swear, I saw a picture of you in that scrapbook,” he said.
I gasped. Another Eliza picture. I really wanted to grab the scrapbook and tell the little man goodbye now. But I took a deep breath and went on with the formalities of things.
“It wasn’t me, obviously,” I replied. “I know who you’re talking about. She’s just someone who looks a lot like me.”
Caleb’s eyes bugged a little. “Honestly, it freaked me out a little. As soon as I saw it, I closed the book and told myself that you could have the damn scrapbook. Not forever, don’t get your crazy thinking-cap on or anything. You can have it just until… you know.”
“Until the curse is over,” I said.
He shook his head. “Keep your voice down. People will think I’m crazy by association for talking to a crazy person.” He lowered his voice. “Now, I don’t know who that lady was in the scrapbook, but I did think, ‘This is a sign or something’ when I saw her. And, I am not one who thinks that way.”
“She’s in another scrapbook too,” I said, not bothering to tell him my doppelgänger had been naked in that photo. That might take this conversation down a road that should not be traveled down. “Her name’s Eliza.”
“Well, whatever. Sparrow. Eliza. Whatever they’re calling her in the scrapbooks. I do not care.”
Sparrow?
It felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I reached for the scrapbook that was sitting between us and slid it closer to me, my hand trembling just a little.
“Hold your horses,” Caleb said, like this formal ceremony wasn’t over yet. “We have not gone over the terms. I wasn’t even going to give you this in the first place after you went and told everyone…”
I was no longer listening or holding a horse. I flipped through the scrapbook, the old black-and-white photos a jumbled mix in my brain as I searched for the one he had described. The scrapbook was mostly full of the same-old, same-olds.
Crows. Back-of-head shots. The Dead Forest. A plague doctor mask. The Harptons. There was some new stuff too. It looked like there was more about Gate House in this one. A detailed look at a few rooms. The old classroom upstairs. The taxidermy room in the turret. Probably prophecy stuff. I’d need to check the details later.
I stopped when I saw the photo Caleb had described. Thank God she had clothes on this time. Eliza was in a dark tailored dress, not usually seen in the early 1900s when the photo had likely been taken. Henry was standing with her, staring at her while she looked in a mirror, which made her look exactly like me because we were more mirror images of each other than exact copies, moles in similar spots.
There was only one word underneath her, handwritten in ink right on the photo itself. It said, “SPARROW.”
I could hear Caleb’s voice talking in the background, but it was really only an annoying baritone kind of white noise at this point to me. I couldn’t understand a word of it. I only stared at the photo. Mrs. Harpton had told me to start at the sparrow when searching for the prophecy. I thought she’d meant the etching in the basement of a sparrow looking at its reflection.
But, had she really meant to start with myself? Was Eliza the sparrow? One of the signs of the prophecy was the sparrow returning. I briefly wondered if that was me.
I laughed to myself. That couldn’t be me. I didn’t feel like a sparrow. I wasn’t a bird shifter. Was Eliza one? Once again, I had more questions than answers. More to figure out. And I needed to start with myself or Eliza, or us both. I was going to figure out who I was, though, and who my birth parents were. I was going back to Indianapolis.
The tip of my lip stung, and I noticed I was biting it. I sucked it in, realizing that maybe I shouldn’t mention this scrapbook to my bear-shifting boyfriend.
“Freaky, huh,” Caleb said, probably watching as the color drained from my face.
“I’d say this curse is enough to turn even the best of men into cowardly jerks,” Jackson said, like he was ever the best of men.
I closed the scrapbook, stood up, and stuck out my hand for Caleb to shake. “Thank you so much. It was a pleasure doing business with you. I will give everything back when I feel like the thing-we-talked-about is over.”
I could tell by the way his face dropped that he was expecting more formality, more of a ceremony here. I took a deep breath. I knew he was really only looking for more gushing gratitude. He wasn’t going to get it.
“Don’t worry,” I said, tucking the scrapbook securely in the crook of my arm. “I’ll be extra careful with it. I know these scrapbooks are your family’s heirlooms…”
“So’s the house,” Caleb snapped, making me shake my head.
Things could never end on a good note for me.
He went on. “You gonna give that up too when this thing-we-talked-about is over? It’s not like your great grandfather designed and paid for it. It’s not like your last name is Bow-man.”
I had always felt like an outsider at Gate House. And Caleb was right. These weren’t my family’s possessions. My great grandfather hadn’t designed the building and had it built. None of my money had gone into this place.
He stared at me, his nose whistling just a little as it flared.
“I’m just going to be honest here,” I said, going for the door. “I’m st
arting to feel like I’m meant to be in Landover, and that I’ve always been meant to live in a little crooked house. More than you or Jackson or anyone else. But we’ll see how I feel when this is over.”
I could tell Caleb was not expecting that one. He stood there, leaning over his desk, taco smell wafting up from his open mouth, as Jackson and I left.
“Carly doll, it’s refreshing to hear you finally admit it. I always knew you loved Gate House,” Jackson said. “And cowardly jerks… oh how you love us too. And creepy scrapbooks…”
“Nope,” I said, but I knew I was only saying it to be annoying. I not only loved them, I knew I was a part of them. And that was the scariest part of all.
Hi. Etta here. Thanks for reading my book. I hope you liked it. If you did, read on for a sneak peek of the next in the series titled Around the Ring of Thieves.
From the back of the book:
Sometimes in Landover, the puzzles fight to stay unsolved.
In 1962, the Landover History Museum was quietly robbed in the dead of night. Thieves made off with precious jewels worth millions of dollars including ones loaned to the museum by some of Landover’s richest residents.
As police began tracking down leads, they discovered the body of Wyatt Mills in an abandoned building they believed the missing jewels were hidden in.
The young man had a stolen engagement ring in his pocket, but no other jewels were found in the building. And the case was never solved.
Now, Wyatt’s family has come to Carly for help solving his murder and uncovering the story. They say they want to clear his name, but Carly knows they’d really like her to use her mediumship abilities to find out information about where the stolen jewels are.
There’s a reward for their return, and many in Landover believe they’re hidden somewhere in town and that a puzzle was left behind about their whereabouts, involving the room Wyatt was found in.
But when Carly meets Wyatt’s ghost, she knows there’s much more to the puzzle than that.
And it involves Landover’s curse, the scrapbooks, and the ring itself.
Can Carly figure out where she fits into this puzzle and solve Wyatt’s murder, even as the pieces start falling apart around her?
Around the Ring of Thieves
Chapter One: Getting the Word Out
The main turret at Gate House was a triple-scoop of creepiness, minus the sprinkles. Three layers of wonder-why-this-exists fun. The first room at the bottom held all the vintage portraits of the Bowman family, children in white christening gowns with blank stares, mentally asking me if I had their skinny toes. Women with wild eyes and dark, corseted dresses, beckoning me to come take a look at the hatchet they’d found.
Then, if you dared to climb the narrow, winding staircase up a level, there was the “trophy room,” which was even creepier. It was full of stuffed bears and birds staring you down, even though you had nothing to do with their taxidermied state.
But the top room was the creepiest of the triple scoop. It was Henry Bowman’s personal library.
I kept my head down, watching my sandals slap along the wooden stairs up the turret to the top floor.
It was my creepy library now. And today, I was finally going to get into the biggest secret in there. The desk drawers.
The drawers had always been locked, except for the one time when my house helped me get rid of a murderer. All the drawers had popped open then. It was how I’d found the first scrapbook. And now, it was how I knew those drawers and those scrapbooks were the key to lifting the curse on Landover.
Maybe.
I actually had no idea. I was just spitballing here.
The desk was just like I’d left it the other day. I had four scrapbooks now: A Crooked Man, A Crooked Stile, A Crooked Mouse, and most recently A Little Crooked House.
And, all four of them were opened on Henry Bowman’s desk, crammed in between the framed photo of Gate House during its construction and Henry’s fountain pen still resting in its antique silver holder.
Henry probably would have hated this mess. He also didn’t particularly like women up in his private library.
I plopped into his desk chair. “Too bad you’re dead and no longer have a say here,” I said, barely loud enough for my own ears.
I looked up at the trapdoor that had been built into the conical ceiling so that Henry could sneak onto the balcony and check for vehicles coming up Gate Hill if he wanted to. Some say he wanted to all day, every day.
And that made me think there was more to this library than the leftovers of a paranoid man who needed to hide his past and feel important.
Reaching into the pocket of my skinny jeans, I pulled out the two paperclips I’d already straightened into more of a straight-pin shape.
I learned this trick in one of my channelings. All I had to do was jab two paperclips into the lock at the same time, one on the top, one on the bottom. Then, I needed to move the paperclips around while trying to turn the lock. Eventually the right spot would be located, and the lock would turn.
But, I had to be fast. Justin was coming over in an hour and a half to take me to Bobby Junior’s birthday party. And that one-year-old’s party was the talk of the town. Everyone was going.
My breath bounced off the desk as I bent over the locked drawer. The smell of 120-year-old aged varnish took over my senses. Picking locks had been much easier in the channeling…
A bearded face appeared in my peripheral vision. I screamed and dropped both pins, jumping so my head hit the edge of the desk. Even though I was used to ghosts popping into my life, I didn’t like it. It was Jackson, of course. My ex.
“You look busy, Carly doll,” he said.
“This is my library now, and I can open these drawers if I want to,” I said.
“Which is why you’re up here, mumbling to yourself with some paperclips instead of calling a locksmith,” he replied in that smug tone he knew I hated. He motioned toward the books lining the walls. “What are you looking for, anyway? Perhaps, I can help.”
“Doubt it, unless you know where the key is for these drawers.”
He didn’t answer. He motioned to the scrapbooks. “This reminds me of the first time I came up to this library. I wasn’t allowed up here as a child, mind you. But once, when I was about six, my favorite aunt brought me up to spy on my parents. You remember my great aunt Laura, right?”
I nodded. Jackson’s great aunt Laura was unforgettable. The only relative of his that I actually liked. She was the youngest of Henry Bowman’s daughters, who I’d briefly done a channeling with when I helped solve her best friend’s murder. She was as delightful as she was scary, and I adored her for it.
And whenever Jackson talked about her, he did his raspy-voiced impression of her that I also adored.
Jackson was still talking. “While my aunt was visiting one time, my father was up here in the library, snooping around, much like you’re pretending not to do right now. He was obsessed with the curse and finding things out about it.
“My mother was furious that he’d left her alone with my aunt. She didn’t believe in the curse. She thought he was up here avoiding his own family while forcing her to make small talk with them. My mother didn’t really care for the Bowmans.”
I nodded. I was right there with her about most of the family.
He continued. “My aunt pulled me by the arm with one of her scary blue-veined hands. She said, “Come on, Jackie. You don’t want to miss this. Remember when I told you about the curse? How it’s got a hold of this family, how it takes over your life, sucks you of your every last breath, your every good moment. It ruins lives and marriages and children. Here’s where I prove it. Your parents are both up in the library. Let’s go.”
Jackson pointed to the door where the stairs were. “I reluctantly let the woman sneak me up the turret stairs where I heard my parents talking right here. The door was ajar and I could see my father sitting at my great grandfather’s desk, same as you, with what I now know we
re the scrapbooks in front of him. As a child, I had no idea what the books were. My mother stood next to him, arms folded, same as I’m doing right now.”
Just like with every story that involved Jackson’s aunt Laura, I realized I was holding my breath while sitting at the edge of my seat. I took a deep breath.
Jackson went on. “All of the sudden, my mother started throwing books around the room. She said the curse wasn’t the thing ruining their marriage. It was my father’s obsession with the curse.
“My aunt turned to me and said, ‘See? See how it works, Jackie? Lurking in the background, like a killer you can’t hear or see, or even recognize as a killer. You think, ‘It’s just some bad things happening.’ Don’t ever think that way. Killers rarely look like killers. It’s always the curse…’”
Jackson continued. “Of course, my aunt isn’t known for talking quietly. And my mother heard us at the door. She insisted we come in and be a part of the conversation that was really less of a conversation and more of her just throwing books around a library. My aunt told my mother the curse was real, and to let my father do his research whenever he felt he needed to.”
I stared at the scrapbooks in front of me. “I get it. You’re here to tell me I’m obsessing over the curse, same as your father had, unnecessarily losing my life to it.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “I think you’re not obsessing enough. My father quit his job and obsessed around the clock. Are you really about to leave to go to a child’s birthday party?”
“You have got to be kidding me. You’re the one slacking off on your one curse-related job in the afterlife,” I snapped.
Jackson was in charge of finding and vetting my clients, the ghosts whose murder cases had grown cold and needed my help solving them. They were all supposed to have something to do with the curse and how to lift it.
And, it had been a little more than a week since our last client, a client I’d had to find and vet myself.