“It’s time you’ve left,” Henry said. “I’ve notified Jed.”
And right on time, Jed appeared over Justin’s shoulder. “Show’s over, Mr. Wheeler.”
Justin Wheeler was a tall man, but standing before Jed, he appeared slight and weak in comparison.
“Now, you know you ain’t supposed to be here,” Jed said. “And I already found your faithful assistant lurkin’ down the hallways out there, up to who-knows-what. Now, don’t make me take you both to the station ’cause you know I will.”
“Take me in? For what? What’ve I done besides tell the truth?”
Jed laughed, but there was no humor behind it. “Hm, well, let me see. For starters, how about trespassin’ for one? And if that ain’t enough, how about harassment? Besides, I figured you’d be too busy chasin’ your silly ghosts in the woods to waste time at Briarcliffe.”
Justin scoffed. “Oh, this house is full of ghosts, Sheriff. There’s no doubt about that. That’s what people like the Sutcliffes do. They leave behind ghosts. Lots and lots of ghosts. And I can feel them here now. All around us. And they want their justice.”
Jed rolled his eyes, then grabbed Justin by the elbow. “Get movin’.”
After the two men had exited the library, Harley breathed a mental sigh of relief, and Henry rose from the bar stool. “Well, I better be off. Early day tomorrow.” He met her gaze. “And I hope, at least for your sake, the evening gets better. I think at this point it only can.” He placed his hat on his head and tugged the rim down over his forehead, smiling at her as he did so. “Thanks for the drink, my dear, and I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.”
He waved goodbye over his shoulder, and Harley watched him exit the library.
Henry Trainor was a living anachronism, she thought, representing the simpler, kinder days of ole when people wore suits and dresses each day, called on their neighbors, sent hand-written letters, and made calls on rotary phones.
She sometimes wondered if she, too, had been born in the wrong time, if she would have fit in better in an earlier decade without the distractions of the internet, cell phones, and social media, which she rarely used. Her friend, Tina, often told her, “Being off grid ain’t cool,” but she thought it was, at least for her.
The grandfather clock in the corner chimed, and Harley realized it was time to report to the kitchen. Meeting attendees would be arriving soon, and Tina would be needing her assistance with the hors d’oeuvres.
24
Petie’s Diner
“Oh my gosh, Harley, I’m so glad you’re here.”
In the kitchen, Tina stood before an immense Wolf stove, whisking away at a pan sauce, her peroxide blond curls bouncing about her head. In her miniskirt, apron, and stilettos, she almost appeared diminutive, dwarfed by the ceiling-high white cabinets and stainless-steel appliances.
At the center island, Grandma Ziegler and Petie snacked on open tins of crackers and gourmet mixed nuts. Grandma sprayed a cracker with Easy Cheese and popped it in her mouth.
“I could do a strip dance on this island,” she said. “It’s so big.”
Tina turned back to the stove, batting at the pan sauce with her whisk. “Meeting’s startin’ in a half-hour, yinz. And we still gotta serve up and arrange that last pan of hors d’oeuvres.”
“What can I do to help?” Harley asked.
“Get the canapés ready.”
She pointed to a silver tray on the island, lined with rows of crostini. “We still need to add the caviar and dill on top.”
Harley took a seat and commenced the work, adding dollops of black caviar to the layers of smoked salmon and crème fraîche. She’d nearly completed the last row when Petie took flight from Grandma Ziegler’s shoulder, dropping bird poop on the canapés.
“Oh, Petie, now look at what ya done,” Grandma Ziegler said.
“Make a poo,” Petie said.
A stunned Harley stared down at the platter. To make matters worse, she could not differentiate the caviar and crème fraîche from the bird droppings.
Just then Marcus sauntered into the kitchen and propped his weight against the island beside Harley. He stood a bit too close for comfort, she thought, his chest grazing her arm.
“Deliverance,” he said.
Harley didn’t engage, keeping her focus on finishing the canapés.
“Yeah,” he said in a smug tone, “so I’m supposed to tell you all it’s time to serve up the drinks and appetizers.” He was obviously insulted by having been reduced to an errand boy by Jed.
He reached past Harley and removed a canapé from the tray, eyeing her as he did so.
“What’s this?” he asked. “Something you picked up on clearance in the frozen food aisle?”
Luckily, over the noise of her whisk beating the sizzling pan, Tina hadn’t heard the insult. Otherwise, Marcus would have gotten a face full of hot oil.
Marcus raised the canapé to his lips, and before Harley could warn him about the bird droppings, he placed it in his mouth, smiling at her mischievously as he chewed.
Grandma Zeigler howled with laughter.
“What?” he asked.
“How’d that taste to ya?”
“It was all right.”
“You’re quite the cook there, Petie,” she said, looking at the parrot now perched on the window sill above the sink. She turned back to Marcus. “Taste like matzo balls?”
“What are you talkin’ about, you silly old bag?”
Grandma grabbed the can of cheese spray from the island and pointed it at him.
“What?” he said, an incredulous look on his face. “Easy Cheese?” He swallowed the remainder of the canapé and made a face. “And I’ll tell you somethin’ else, too, old bag. The Steelers suck.”
Orange cheese product shot across the island, smacking Marcus in the eye.
“Ow!” he said, cupping his hand over his eye.
“Mess with me again, Ken Doll, and you’ll get more where that came from.”
When Marcus had fled the kitchen, presumably in search of a sink and washcloth, Tina turned from the stove and pointed her whisk at Grandma Ziegler.
“Grandma! Are you tryin’ to ruin the evening for me? Tryin’ to ruin my business?”
“Guy’s a jagoff. Nobody talks about the Stillers.” She dismissed Tina with a wave of her right hand. “Besides, I didn’t like how he was talkin’ to Harley.”
“Well, my canapés is ruined, I can tell ya that. And goodness knows how much poor Beau paid for all that wasted caviar.”
“He can afford it.”
Tina grabbed the tray and dumped the crostini in the trash bin. “All right,” she said, slamming the tray down on the counter. “I want all of yinz, and I mean it, to behave for the rest of the night, you hear me?”
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” Grandma said.
Tina groaned. “Really, Grandma? I mean, really?”
“I can take her,” Harley said, rising from her seat. “It’s no problem.”
“Thanks, Harley.” Tina pointed a finger at Grandma. “And no funny business, you got it? Go to the bathroom and come straight back. No stops and no gettin’ into trouble.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it, I got it.”
Petie flew from the sink and landed on Grandma’s shoulder.
“You’re not takin’ that bird with you, are you?” Tina said.
“’Course I am. He gets the separation anxiety. Trust me, you don’t want me to leave ’im behind.”
Tina sighed with exasperation, and Grandma said, “Come on, Petie, we can tell when we’re not wanted.”
“And keep an eye on that bird,” Tina said, as the three of them exited the kitchen.
The hallway was dim and cool, a quiet respite from the bright bustle of the kitchen. The meeting attendees had yet to arrive, and only Jed’s and Mayor Ruby Montgomery’s voices echoed from the library’s open doors. It sounded like Ruby was telling Jed they needed to add more chairs, and Jed was disagreeing.
&nbs
p; Keeping her promise to Tina, Harley escorted Grandma Ziegler straight to the guest bathroom, stopping outside the door.
“I’ll just wait for you right here.”
“Sure.” Grandma moved to close the door, and Harley stopped her.
“Grandma,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you’re here with us. In Notchey Creek. I really hope you can stay.”
Grandma looked up, and her face lightened with a smile of appreciation. She cupped Harley’s chin with her hand. “You’re a good girl, Harley Henrickson, you know that? And you’re good to my Tina.”
With Grandma finally situated in the restroom, Harley escaped back to the hallway, pulling the door to a close behind her.
Down the hall, light shone from the music room, and with it the sound of a tinkling piano. She followed the trail of light and music down the corridor and peeked inside the open doorway.
25
“As Time Goes By”
Dr. Jeremy Griggs sat at the grand piano, his head moving in time with a soft concerto, his fingers touching, then rolling across the keys with delicate precision.
Throughout the region, Jeremy was known, not only as a prominent psychiatrist, but also a talented pianist. When he was not seeing patients at his practice on Main Street, he played show tunes at local restaurants and town functions—all for free. Beau had learned of Jeremy’s musical talent, and had invited him to play the piano at Briarcliffe any time he pleased.
He and his wife, Rebecca, had arrived early to the meeting, and were presumably killing time before it started.
Rebecca leaned against the piano, her purple dress draping against the ebony finish like a sash. Firelight danced across her delicate features, igniting her silver-white hair, and she admired him as he played, as she likely often did, with reverence and love.
Rebecca was an artist, specializing in watercolor portraits of the Smokies, which she sold at her gallery downtown. Her family, auto industrialists from the Midwest, had built Meadowgate in Briarwood as a vacation home back in the 1930s. When Rebecca’s parents passed away several years prior, they had left the home to her, where she now lived full-time, finding the perfect artistic muse in the surrounding mountains.
Jeremy, too, had grown up in Briarwood. His father, a rags-to-riches copper baron, had wanted Jeremy to earn his own living, learn the value of hard work. To pay for his college education, he had mowed lawns and delivered newspapers. It was only after he had graduated from medical school and residency and had married the very acceptable Rebecca Meadows did his parents loosen the purse strings.
Rebecca was ten years his senior, as was evident by their faces. Her skin, pale to the point of translucency, had not held up well to an outdoor lifestyle, presumably spent atop mountain vistas, catching the last blaze of afternoon sun as it washed over the Smokies in a golden sheen, seeping down into the dark crevices of hollows and river beds. Being a woman attuned with nature, who sought meaning beyond the superficial, she did not seem vain, and had not ventured down the avenues of plastic surgery and injections.
Harley respected this, and found great beauty in Rebecca’s face that had aged naturally, showing the signs of a life well-lived, with all its range of emotions and expressions.
Jeremy, however, still possessed the boyish quality of his youth, his wavy dark locks still more pepper than salt, and his features, which in adolescence, had made him appear infantile beside his peers, had sharpened into an approachable handsomeness in middle age.
And with his back turned, his features dim in the firelight, his fingers dancing across the piano with an easy command, he appeared no more than a college student.
“Why are you so distant?” Rebecca asked him. “Where have you gone?”
When he did not answer, she shook her head and said, “Is it her? Are you thinking about her?”
But Jeremy, still lost in his music, his thoughts, did not raise his eyes to meet hers, acknowledge her questions, or even her presence.
Harley wondered how often this happened in their relationship, how often Rebecca felt shut out of her husband’s inner thoughts. As a psychiatrist, his mind absorbed a lot of other people’s problems, ones he could not share with anyone, not even his wife. It was a lonely life for both of them. And who was the woman of whom Rebecca had spoken? Who was the woman who held Jeremy’s thoughts?
“She’s different somehow, isn’t she?” Rebecca said. “Different from the rest?”
Harley wondered who “she” could possibly be. Was it one of his patients, and if so, which one? She knew Jennifer had been under his care since her husband’s and mother’s deaths. Was Rebecca referring to Jennifer, a different patient, or perhaps someone who was not a patient at all, like a lost love?
She shivered in the open doorway. A draft had seeped in from somewhere, and a chill crawled up the sleeve of her tuxedo jacket, igniting the skin on her arms with goose flesh. She made her way back down the hallway, where Grandma Ziegler and Petie were emerging from the bathroom.
“I’m all done, Harley.” She rubbed her hands together. “Kinda cold in this hallway, ain’t it?”
“It is cold all of a sudden,” Harley said.
“Beau’s got some serious drafts in this place. Maybe he needs to check his insulation. Or maybe … maybe it’s a ghost.”
Harley Henrickson had heard enough about ghosts for one evening. “We better get back to the kitchen,” she said. “Help Tina.”
26
Preaching to the Hallelujah Chorus
“Bam!”
Mayor Ruby Montgomery banged her gavel against the long mahogany table, her fingernails painted in a perfect French manicure.
A wool pantsuit, popular with Communist dictators throughout the world, covered her statuesque frame. Ruby, the widow of coal magnate, Walter Montgomery, had a wool pantsuit for each day of the year. Only the color or pattern changed based on the weather and season. That night’s selection was a black-and-white houndstooth, a somewhat festive choice for the holidays and appropriate for the cold weather. Seated on either side of her were the neighborhood association board members, including Alveda Hamilton, the current vice president.
“Bam!”
Harley was glad her pet pig Matilda was not in attendance. The pig was sensitive to loud noises and would have crashed the whole room with one more—
Bam!
“I’m now calling this meeting to order.”
Ruby did not need a microphone to be heard by all. Her deep contralto carried easily throughout the library and bellowed over Beau’s holiday music, the crackling fire, and the small talk. Ruby must have been the envy of theater majors everywhere, Harley thought. Even opera singers aspired to have such a diaphragm.
“Quiet! … Please.”
She addressed the group of about thirty people, all of whom Harley knew from having seen them in her shop at one time or another. Seated along the rows of chairs, they sipped Harley’s cocktails and snacked on small plates of Tina’s appetizers. They were a blend of trust fund heirs and highly paid white-collar professionals. Some lived in Briarwood only seasonally: autumn with its leaf-gazing and winter with its skiing were the two most popular times of year.
Jed stood at the back of the room and against the wall, a bored expression on his face. He stood rather than sat because he did not fit comfortably in any of the chairs.
Jennifer Williams had returned from the veranda and was seated in the front row, an easy visual target for the leering Alveda Hamilton. Two rows behind Jennifer were her therapist, Dr. Jeremy Griggs, and his wife, Rebecca, who had returned from the music room.
“Where’s Beau Arson?” one man in the audience asked.
“Yeah,” said another. “We want to see Beau Arson.”
Ruby narrowed her eyes at the two gentlemen, seemingly offended her esteemed presence was not enough to satisfy them.
“Not.” Bam! “Here.” Bam!
“Well, I guess he’s not here then,” one of th
e men said sarcastically to the group, which was then followed by laughter.
Ruby perched her reading glasses on her nose, then tucked a section of her brown pageboy behind her ear.
“Mr. Arson has been called away on unexpected business.”
She focused on the agenda spread before her on the table.
“Before we start the speeches for the upcoming board election, as a courtesy, I’d like to review the line-up of events for Small Town Christmas. As mayor, I do strongly encourage each of you to attend. Then, of course, we’ll discuss our main event as it relates to Briarwood—the holiday home tours.”
And she did so. She reviewed the toy drive, the dog show, the children’s Nativity play, Charles Dickens Night, the parade, and Beau Arson’s performance in the town square gazebo on the final night.
“Which I hope will be G-rated,” she added to the last one.
Satisfied with the line-up, Ruby moved to the next point on the agenda. “Now, as for the home tours. Each home will be responsible for having a greeter stationed at the front door who will welcome guests inside, then a second person to lead the historical tour of the house. If you’re providing refreshments of any kind, you’ll be responsible for those as well. No alcohol, please, due to liability reasons.
“Groups will start at six o’clock at the bottom of the hill, led by a city-appointed volunteer with a lantern. Sheriff Turner will have the street cordoned off, and each group will leave in 30-minute intervals, spending a half-hour at each home. Their tickets will be punched at the entry to Briarwood, and they’ll wear buttons, indicating they’ve paid their entry and are valid attendees. Any questions?”
If anyone had questions, they were either too afraid or too apathetic to ask them.
A satisfied Ruby moved to the third item on the agenda. “It’s that time of year again, as you know, for our board election, in particular the neighborhood association presidency.”
The Ghosts of Notchey Creek Page 8