The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus

by Clarke, Alexandria

  It was Bodhi’s turn to cough into his drink. “Uh. Right. Ahem. Sounds like he didn’t make it up the bluff though.”

  “You think?” Ava rested her elbows on the counter.

  “He certainly wasn’t at the house,” I supplied firmly before I could lose my nerve. “I spent most of my afternoon in the bathroom. I would’ve heard if Ethan stopped by.”

  Ava made a face. “Shame. I think we were all holding on to a shred of hope that Ethan might be somewhere in your area.”

  “Nope.”

  “Not a sign—”

  The door to the Sanctuary opened again, and I looked over my shoulder to see a svelte older woman wearing a sophisticated, plum-colored pant suit enter the café. She had secured her hair—a perfect shade of auburn only available to those with enough cash to visit an out-of-town salon—in a neat bun near the top of her head and painted her nails to match her outfit.

  “Doctor Marx!” I waved, grateful for the distraction.

  “Morning, Bailey.” Doctor Marx strolled over, her heels clicking across the tile floor, and lit upon the stool beside me, hanging her designer handbag over the back of it. “Ava, may I have an Americano please?”

  “You got it.”

  As Ava drifted away, Doctor Marx reached over me to offer her hand to Bodhi. “Hello there. You must be Bailey’s husband. I’ve heard all about you.”

  Bodhi shook Doctor Marx’s hand. “Not all bad, I hope.”

  Doctor Marx smiled slyly. “Doctor-patient confidentiality, Mr. Taylor.”

  I whacked Bodhi lightly across his shoulder. “It’s not all bad.”

  “Good,” he said, sipping his tea. “Actually, Doctor Marx, what’s your availability like as of late? Bailey and I were thinking about attending a session together.”

  Ava returned with Doctor Marx’s order. Doctor Marx blew delicately across the surface of her coffee and sighed. “I’m afraid we’re a little swamped this week. Someone broke into the office last week and tampered with the patient files.”

  Bodhi and I exchanged panicked looks. His fingers trembled on the handle of his teacup as he bounced his leg up and down anxiously. I rested a hand on his knee to stop him.

  “Who would’ve done something like that?” I asked, disguising my jitters behind the lip of my coffee mug.

  Doctor Marx even shrugged in a way that seemed inherently posh. “No idea. And it’s not like we have cameras here to catch things like that. The crime in Black Bay is practically non-existent.”

  Bodhi hawked into his teacup. I rubbed his back. “You all right, babe? Got something in your throat?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Anyway,” Doctor Marx continued as she nursed her Americano. “Lots of paperwork. Lots of trouble. We’re a bit behind schedule. I can pencil you in for next week?”

  “That sounds great,” I told her. I swigged the remainder of my coffee, trying not to wince as the hot liquid coursed down my throat. “We better get going. Got a lot to do today! Right, Bodhi?”

  Bodhi, who’d been rendered momentarily speechless, found his voice again. “Right. The guys will never let me hear the end of it if I’m late again.”

  “Call me later to schedule a session,” said Doctor Marx.

  “We will,” I promised. I set a five dollar bill on the counter and waved to Ava as she washed dishes in the kitchen. “Have a nice day!”

  “You too!”

  And then I grabbed Bodhi’s hand and ushered him out of the Sanctuary. We hurried down the street without direction.

  “Oh my God,” said Bodhi.

  “Don’t panic,” I ordered.

  “Don’t panic?” he repeated incredulously. “Bailey, you do realize that if they find out we were the ones who tampered with those files, we could go to jail, right?”

  “They won’t find out.”

  “We didn’t even wear gloves! Oh, and don’t get me started on Ethan. Pam Lopez. Damn Pam Lopez! Spreading it around town that Ethan was on his way to see you.”

  I pinned Bodhi’s hands to his sides before his gesticulating could get any wilder. “Calm down. I have an idea.”

  “Does it involve fleeing the crime scene?” Bodhi muttered darkly.

  “On the contrary,” I replied, steering Bodhi past the fountain in the town square. “It involves employing a co-conspirator.”

  28

  Bonding

  When we arrived at Lido’s restaurant, we stood on the curb for a solid minute as I tried to decide whether or not it was a good idea to go inside. Thankfully, there weren’t many people around to watch us deliberate. It was too early in the morning for any kind of lunch rush. The neon open sign mocked us. It seemed to grow brighter the longer we waited.

  “What are we doing here?” Bodhi asked, one arm around my shoulders.

  “Like I said, we need an ally.”

  “And you think golden boy Alex Lido is the best person to recruit?” Bodhi looked at me like I was crazy. “He’s one of most high-profile town members.”

  “He was also Patrick’s best friend and completely in love with Caroline,” I reminded him. “He already knows Ethan was up to something that night. Besides, I promised to fill him in.”

  Bodhi’s arm dropped from my shoulder as he stared at me in disbelief. “You did what?”

  “You don’t think he deserves that much?”

  “I think if we tell anyone that Patrick and Caroline’s ghosts asked us to round up a murderer so that they can enact their revenge, we’ll be committed to a psych ward faster than you can say Doctor Marx’s full name,” Bodhi bit back.

  A young woman crossed the street, cooing as she pushed a baby stroller. I hushed Bodhi as she passed by, and she eyed us nervously.

  “Nice day, isn’t it?” I said to her with what I hoped was a convincing smile.

  “Sure is,” she replied, but she gave us a wide berth as she continued on her walk.

  Bodhi dropped his head into his hands. “This is all going to hell.”

  “And so are we if we don’t find a way to help Patrick and Caroline.” I yanked open the door to Lido’s. “Get in here, Bodhi, and activate that undeniable charisma of yours.”

  A bell chimed over the door. The restaurant was empty. I could see all the way to the back of the long room, where the pretty patio opened up to the bay. One random employee wiped table tops down with a wet rag. Bodhi looked green as he joined me at Lido’s host stand, where we waited patiently for someone to notice us.

  “On second thought, let me do the talking,” I muttered to him under my breath. Doctor Marx’s revelation had caused Bodhi to pitch his confident deception skills right out the window. I shook my head. Sure, the undead didn’t bother him, but the thought of spending any time at all in a jail cell chilled him to the core.

  At last, the pretty hostess emerged from the kitchen with a look of confusion on her face. She checked her watch. “You guys here for brunch or something? We don’t serve pancakes.”

  “Actually, we were wondering if Alex was around,” I told her.

  She deflated with visible relief at not having to work before expected. “Oh, sure.” She pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen. “Alex! Bailey’s here to see you.”

  Bodhi shifted his weight, the length of his arm pressed against my mine. He was sweating, but not because the summer day was so hot. It was a cold, clammy sweat. He was that nervous about involving anyone else in our paranormal shenanigans.

  Alex pushed through the swinging door with a thud, ducking his head to avoid bumping into the low frame. When he straightened to his full height, he looked slightly surprised by our presence. “Bailey. Bodhi. I figured you guys would be working hard on the Winchester house by this time.”

  “We are usually,” I replied. “Do you have a minute?”

  He gestured to the vacant restaurant. “I’m swimming in time. What can I do for you?”

  I pointed to the patio. “Can we sit?”

  Alex arched a wary eyebrow before ducking und
er the bar top to join us on the other side. “I have to sit down for this, do I?”

  “Trust me,” Bodhi grumbled. “It’s better that way.”

  We followed him out to the patio where the three of us took seats at one of the freshly cleaned tables. Alex patted his employee on the back. “Thanks, Ryan. Can you bring us three waters?” As Ryan scurried off, Alex tilted back in his plastic chair and kicked his feet up on the adjacent table. “Does this have to do with the last time Bailey and I talked out here?”

  I looked out across the water. The bay was calm. Sunshine glinted off the ripples like little stars that dared to grace the light of day. Boats floated languidly at the docks of the marina. A seagull cawed, passing by overhead. I longed for the day Bodhi and I could sit at Lido’s and enjoy the weather, but Bodhi jolted me quickly out of my daydream with an elbow to my side.

  “We need your help,” I told Alex.

  “With what?”

  I looked at Bodhi, who nodded in encouragement. “We have a problem with the Winchester house.”

  “Uh-huh. What kind of problem?”

  “An infestation of sorts,” Bodhi cut in.

  “What, like bugs?”

  “No, not bugs,” I said, rolling my eyes at Bodhi. “It’s more that someone’s still living there.”

  Alex opened his mouth to reply, but Ryan returned with our waters. Alex waited until he set the glasses down on the table and went back inside. “Did you find squatters?” he asked us, tapping a straw on the table to rid it off its paper wrapper. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you just call the police? What am I supposed to do?”

  “It’s not squatters,” said Bodhi.

  “Then what is it?”

  I looked Alex over, wondering if he could handle what we were about to tell him. There was no point in beating around the bush. Alex was the only person we could remotely begin to trust with this information, and considering how lost we were on our own, we desperately needed his help. I inhaled heavily.

  “It’s Patrick and Caroline.”

  Alex stared at me. Then his eyes shifted to Bodhi as if asking for a clue. He looked back at me. “Are you messing with me?”

  “No, we—”

  “Because if you are, you should know how cruel it is of you to do something like this,” Alex interrupted, his inflection sharpening. “Especially so soon after the Winchester Celebration.”

  Bodhi held up his hand to stop Alex. “Calm down. We’re not trying to mess with you at all.”

  “Then what is this?”

  “A call for help,” I answered. Droplets of condensation rolled down my water glass. I traced them with the tips of my finger, avoiding Alex’s gaze. “Here’s the thing, Alex. If we tell you what’s really happening up at the Winchester house, you have to promise to keep an open mind.”

  Alex took his feet off the table and rubbed his temples as if he was suddenly hit with a tension headache. “I’m not sure I’m following along, so I’m going to have to ask again. Does this have anything to do with what you were talking about the night of the storm, Bailey?”

  “Do you remember what we spoke about?”

  “Yeah, you asked me about the night Patrick and Caroline died.”

  I glanced at the door of the restaurant to make sure no one else was listening in and lowered my voice. “I also asked you if you’d seen Ethan Powell.”

  “Right. And I told you that he took his boat out.”

  “What if I told you the reason you didn’t see Ethan come back into the marina was because he was the one who ran the Winchesters into the rocks?”

  There was a beat of silence between the three of us during which Alex’s eyes ping-ponged from me to Bodhi and back again. Then, calmly, he replied, “I would ask if you had any proof.”

  “We did,” Bodhi answered. He licked his lips, as if his mouth had gone dry in anticipation of filling Alex in, and took a long draw from his water glass. “We found the boat Ethan used to do it, among other things. Unfortunately, once Ethan realized we’d figured him out, he relocated all of it.”

  Alex crushed the straw’s paper wrapper in his fist. “So let me get this straight. You came here to tell me that you think Ethan Powell caused the Winchesters’ deaths, that you had evidence but you don’t now, and that for some inexplicable reason, you need my help?”

  “There’s more actually,” I said.

  “This ought to be good.”

  “Like I said, something is still living in the Winchester house,” I told Alex, trying to see past his angry expression. “Someone, more accurately. Two someones. Patrick and Caroline never got on the boat that night, Alex. Ethan killed them in their own home. And now they’re haunting the Winchester house.”

  Alex burst out laughing, his shoulders shaking as he chuckled from deep in his belly. He wiped his watering eyes with the collar of his shirt. “Oh, man,” he said with a sigh. “You two really had me going there. You guys always do something like this to the locals? Is this for that blog of yours?”

  “We’re not kidding,” I insisted. In some sense, I should’ve known that Alex wouldn’t take us seriously at first. After all, Bodhi and I didn’t believe something supernatural was going on at the Winchester house until Caroline wrecked several rooms. Even so, time was of the essence, and the more we wasted trying to convince Alex of the Winchesters’ continued existence, the less we had to save Patrick and Caroline from eternal purgatory. “Caroline reached out to us almost as soon as we arrived. Patrick, too.”

  Alex’s humor subsided as he realized we weren’t pulling his leg. “Whatever stunt you’re trying to pull—”

  “We already told you,” Bodhi interjected. “It’s not a stunt.”

  The door to the patio swung open again and Bodhi shut his mouth as Ryan stepped out again. “Hey boss? We need you in the kitchen. Something’s wrong with the fryer.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s not frying.”

  “Go figure.” As Ryan went back inside, Alex stood up and pushed his chair in. “I’d say it’s been a pleasure, but I would be lying. Could the two of you do me a favor? The next time you come to my restaurant, would you mind actually ordering some food?”

  I rose to my feet, kicking over the plastic furniture in my haste to delay Alex. “Come up to the house when you close the restaurant,” I pleaded with him, my fingers closing around his wrist. “And we’ll prove it to you. I swear, Alex.”

  He looked down at my grip. “What makes you think that even if you were telling the truth that I’d want to go and have a conversation with my dead best friends from high school?”

  “Because they need our help,” I replied softly. “Please.”

  Alex lingered in the doorway. Then he gently removed my hand from his arm. “I’ll think about it. You can see yourselves out.”

  He held the patio door open for us. Reluctantly, Bodhi and I let him guide us through it. As Alex disappeared into the kitchen, we made our way to the front of the restaurant with the acrid scent of burning oil in our nostrils. When we emerged in the sunlight outside and turned toward the high street to make our way back up to the bluff, Bodhi slipped his hand into mine.

  “So,” he said, kissing the back of my hand. “Now what?”

  I sighed, gazing wistfully over my shoulder at Lido’s Restaurant. “Now we wait. See if he shows up.”

  There was nothing more to do with the rest of our day other than work on the house. When we arrived home with several boxes of donuts as an apology to the rest of the construction crew for ducking out that morning, the guys had already started renovating the rest of the backyard’s decking. After a bear claw and some teasing, I convinced Bodhi to let me get in on the labor. It had been too long since I’d contributed physically to the Winchester house—my multitude of injuries had set me back on that one—but I couldn’t sit around the entire day and let my thoughts fester. It was better to distract myself with hard work.

  After a few hours of securing the ne
w decking, the back of my neck and the tips of my ears were starting to crisp from the effects of the summer sun. Sweat dripped down my back, soaking my T-shirt, and the cast around my ankle made it feel like I’d stepped into a shin-high puddle of hot mud. I straightened, groaning as my knees protested, and wiped my forehead.

  “Anyone need a bottle of water?” I asked the guys around me. “Or an extra donut?”

  A few hands went up, so I wiped my one dirty sneaker on the tarp we were using as a welcome mat and stepped into the kitchen. I washed my hands and grabbed another donut, holding it between my teeth as I plucked cold water bottles from the fridge. When I shut the refrigerator door though, the face behind it made me jump and the bottles careened from my arms.

  “Patrick!” I put a hand to my heart, which was working overtime. “God, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked, leaning against the fridge.

  I checked that the guys outside were concentrating on the decking rather than my conversation with a dead boy. “Fixing the deck. What does it look like?”

  “Shouldn’t you be working on a plan to get us out of here?” Patrick demanded. There were the slightest shadows under his eyes, as if he’d missed a couple hours of sleep. It looked like Ethan’s involuntary energy donation was starting to wear off.

  “I am.”

  “Really?” he snapped. “Because to me it looks like you’re more concerned with the content for your blog.”

  In the hallway, a door slammed of its own accord, but I didn’t know if it was Caroline’s doing or a result of the frustration that boiled off of Patrick.

  “Watch your tone, Pat,” I warned, keeping my voice low and even. “I know you’re worried about running out of time, but Bodhi and I are doing our best.”

  “And what have you done today that constitutes doing your best?”

  I knelt to pick up some of the fallen water bottles. “We went to see Alex.”