The Haunting of Riley Watson

by Alexandria Clarke

  My stomach threatened to surge again. “Stop talking. Why don’t we leave Tyler outside? It’s cold enough out there.”

  Daniel clicked his tongue. “Don’t think I didn’t consider it, but we have to have some respect for this kid.”

  “Are you going to tell Oliver what we’re doing with him?”

  “No,” he replied. “Not yet anyway. Oliver’s too fragile to deal with this. He needs to process Tyler’s death. When this is over and the force shows up, we can handle Tyler’s body. Wait here, okay? I’m going to tape him up.”

  As Daniel wrapped the body, I reviewed the pictures from the crime scene. Instead of clarifying what happened, the details blended together and confused me more. The slash wounds in Tyler’s stomach were reminiscent of a scene from the Scream movies, but who would carry a dagger at a ski resort? I squinted at a wide shot of the room. A blurry beam of white light hovered in the upper corner of the photo, but it wasn’t there when I took the picture.

  “Ready?” Daniel said, popping his head out of the room. “I’ve got him all packed up.”

  “Just the words every girl wants to hear.” I put the camera around my neck and under my sweater for safekeeping, not wanting to leave it in the room while we hauled Tyler’s body through the hotel. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Though Tyler had been reduced to a misshapen body bag secured with silver duct tape, the absence of his corpse didn’t make the room any less horrifying. The blood on the floor and splattered across the bed linens was evidence enough of what had happened there. Once more, Daniel and I took either side of Tyler’s body and lifted.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as we shuffled out of the room.

  “As much as I can be. What about you?”

  It felt better to talk. That way, I could focus on the conversation rather than the body between us.

  “Not so hot, actually,” Daniel admitted. “I feel like this is my fault.”

  The plastic slipped in my hands. I changed my grip. “What do you mean? Why would it be your fault?”

  “I fell asleep after I locked Tyler in his room last night,” he said, walking backward so I wouldn’t have to. “I meant to stay awake, mostly to make sure he wouldn’t come out, but I dozed off. I don’t remember anyone going into the room.”

  “The rooms have back doors that open up to the mountain,” I said. “The killer probably came in through there.”

  “The carpet was wet from snow earlier,” he said. “So you might be right. But if I’d been awake, I would’ve heard whatever was happening inside. I can’t believe I fell asleep. I’ve been dealing with so much lately.”

  “Take it easy,” I said as we emerged from the hallway and into the lobby. It was empty. Everyone stayed in the Eagle’s View per Daniel’s instructions. “None of this is your fault. You can’t take the blame for a murderer.”

  “You don’t get it. You don’t work in law enforcement.”

  “No, but I get this.” I glanced up the stairs, where everyone else sat in the lounge waiting for us to return. “Have you got an alternate route in mind? Because I doubt it’s a good idea to waltz through the lounge with Tyler in tow.”

  “Employee staircase. Opposite hallway.”

  The other hallway led to the half of the hotel that wasn’t often occupied. Oliver’s suite was this way, along with the resort’s original lobby and rooms, hidden beyond a retired restaurant and a desolate ballroom. I shuddered to remember the time I spent in those rooms. First, Tyler’s mean prank, where he and his friends screamed and chased me through the old wing, pretending to be villainous spirits. Then, when I found Riley yelling at the top of her lungs in the middle of the ruined library, her eyes rolling back in her skull. She didn’t stop until I’d carried her out of the burnt sector, and when she did, she told me someone had set her on fire. Just like Odette.

  We didn’t go as far as the old wing. The employee stairs were at the front of the hallway. Getting Tyler through the small doorway and up the narrow steps was a bit tricky, but we managed. In blatant honesty, it wasn’t much different from when me and Jazmin hauled a second-hand satin sofa up the stairs to my apartment. The kitchen level was one floor up, and the staircase opened into a hallway not privy to guests of the resort. We carried Tyler beneath the flickering fluorescents into the kitchen. The cook’s assistant, Matisse, had been hard at work that morning before Tyler’s body was discovered. Fresh loaves of French bread, English muffins, and bagels cooled on the counter top. I wondered what King and Queens did with the extra food considering there were less than twenty people staying at the resort at the present time. The scent of rising yeast made my stomach rumble, but the deed at hand ruined my appetite.

  The storage freezers were at the far end of the kitchen, set away from the other appliances. There were two of them. Daniel set down his end of Tyler to check which one had more room. The first was full of frozen meats and other exposed foods. The second was home to boxes and crates of whatever else the hotel needed. We cleared a spot in the second freezer and heaved Tyler into place. He fell into the shadows as we closed the door on him. Unless you were stuck inside the freezer, you might never discover the body from the first glance. Daniel discarded his mask and gloves in a fresh trash bag and motioned for me to do the same. We washed our hands and arms vigorously.

  “Thank you,” he said. “That would have been a lot harder on my own.”

  “Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t ever mention it again.”

  Daniel wiped his brow with a kitchen towel. The head cook, Xavier, would have yelled at him for such a blight. “Most people wouldn’t have had the stomach for that kind of thing. I owe you.”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve moved a dead body.”

  He froze, the towel halfway across his forehead. “Excuse me?”

  I sucked on my teeth. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “But you did.”

  “It’s not what it sounds like.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No,” I said.

  Daniel tossed the towel into a hamper of cloth napkins. “Does this have to do with the psychic business scam you’ve got going on?”

  “It’s not a scam,” I said hotly. “Well, it was, but it’s not now. Forget I said anything. It was a long time ago, and I’m not obligated to tell you anything.”

  “Keeping secrets from a detective investigating a murder is the worst thing you can do.”

  “My secret doesn’t have anything to do with this investigation,” I countered. “All you need to know is I didn’t kill Tyler, so why don’t you worry about your own secrets, Detective Hawkins?”

  I didn’t mean for the comment to sound so mean-spirited, but it got the job done. Daniel went quiet, pondering the implication of my statement. He gave me a curt nod.

  “I’ll do that, Miss Star.”

  12

  When I returned to the Eagle’s View, Jazmin noticed my sullen face from across the room. She stood up, abandoning Oliver without preamble, and met me in the middle of the lounge.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I wish everyone would stop asking me that,” I mumbled. “It’s fine. Daniel and I moved Tyler into the kitchen.”

  “Fine?” Jazmin repeated, aghast. “You moved a body! A murdered body! The last time—”

  “Keep your voice down,” I said. “I don’t want to tote that information all over the resort. Daniel’s in over his head already. I want to keep mine down as much as possible. What’s going on here? How are Riley and Oliver?”

  She gestured over her shoulder at Oliver, who appeared not to have moved the entire time I was gone. He remained slumped over in his chair, head between his knees. Were it not for the slow rise and fall of his shoulders, I would have questioned whether or not he was breathing.

  “Oliver’s practically catatonic,” Jazmin said. “He keeps saying this is his fault. Riley’s okay, which worries me more. She seems relieved.”

&n
bsp; “Can you blame her?” I looked over Jazmin’s shoulder. Riley propped her feet on the table next to hers. She leaned back in her chair with her arms behind her neck like she was sunbathing outside. “Tyler terrified her for her entire life, and she’s free from that. Besides, she’s not afraid of death as the rest of us are. She’s been hearing ghosts all this time.”

  “Does that mean you’re not afraid either?” Jazmin said. “Because I’m scared, Lucia. I don’t want to be here. I want you and me to go home as soon as possible.”

  “So do I,” I said. “I’m terrified too. You should have seen Tyler’s body. Whoever killed him wasn’t holding back. It was gruesome, like they were wanted to make it as bad as possible. I don’t think he died quickly.”

  “What did Daniel think?”

  “He wasn’t in the mood to share,” I said. “He wants to keep everything as hushed as possible, but I have the pictures on my memory card. Let’s dump them on my computer before he confiscates them from me.”

  We hurried to a booth in an empty corner of the lounge. Jazmin brought over my laptop and camera bag. As I put away the DSLR, I noticed my expensive video camera was not where I’d left it. Neither were my little portable digital cameras and GoPros.

  “Where’s everything else?” I asked her.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Jazmin—”

  “I’ll tell you later. Dump the pictures. Daniel’s up to something.”

  I booted up the laptop, inserted the memory card, and copied the photos to my library. As soon as they finished up, I popped the card out of the laptop. Not a minute later, Daniel stopped by.

  “Is that it?” he said, holding his hand out for the memory card. “I’ll take it. You didn’t show anyone, did you?”

  I gave it to him. “No, I get that a murder investigation is confidential.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Jazmin?”

  Jazmin looked up from my laptop screen, which was tilted away from Daniel’s line of sight, wearing her infamous doe eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  Satisfied, Daniel pocketed the card then pulled a chair out from under a table to stand on. “All right, listen up, everybody!”

  The people in the lounge, spread out across the tables and booths in small duos or trios, stopped talking to turn toward Daniel. Other than Oliver, Nick, Riley, and Jazmin, there were an additional five employees of the hotel with us: Matisse the assistant chef; Karli the bartender and server for the Eagle’s View; Ari the barista from the café near the slopes; Liam the ski lift operator; and Imani, one of the ski instructors. Matisse and Karli sat at one table, their heads bent in toward each other. Aria and Imani took the table next to them, holding hands but not speaking. Liam sat in the far corner of the lounge opposite mine and Jazmin’s. He looked green and queasy as Daniel clapped for everybody’s attention.

  “As you might have guessed, this isn’t going to go like a routine investigation,” Daniel announced. “Until the roads are cleared, you're going to have to deal with me. I don’t want anyone leaving this lounge. If you have to use the restroom, use the one next to the bar. If I notice that someone’s left, I’ll automatically assume you have something to hide. Is that understood?”

  A mutter of consent floated through the lounge.

  “Good,” Daniel said. “Let’s catch everyone up. For those of you might be behind, the body of Tyler Watson was found early this morning in his room. Someone here is responsible for his death, and I intend to find out who. It would be a lot easier on everyone if the culprit stepped forward, but I doubt that’s going to happen.”

  He paused to allow the killer time to consider this. Everyone did a subtle sweep of the room, judging each other’s expressions, but no one outed themselves.

  “I assumed as much,” Daniel said. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way. Interrogations. Ready yourselves, people. You’re in for a real life game of Clue. Liam Lavi?”

  Liam’s head bobbed as he looked up. His face was sallow and drawn, like he hadn’t slept all night. Daniel beckoned Liam forward.

  “You’re up,” Daniel said. “Let’s go.”

  Liam got unsteadily to his feet and followed Daniel to a secluded spot at the bar. As they settled on the high stools, it looked as though they were two friends having a drink together. Ari spied on Liam over Imani’s broad shoulders. From the look of their matching golden manes of hair, Ari and Liam were sister and brother. If Ari was so worried about her brother, why didn’t she check on him earlier when he was sitting all by himself? Imani, her usual tan offset by the paleness of stress, nudged Ari with one of her long legs. Ari settled against the booth, giving up her attempt to read Daniel and Liam’s lips.

  Jazmin suppressed a gag, drawing my attention away from Daniel. She studied the laptop, scrolling through the photos of the crime scene. I slid into the booth beside her as she clicked out of a gruesome picture.

  “You saw this stuff in person?” she asked, her nose wrinkled.

  “Let’s just say that Tyler and I are better friends now than we ever would’ve been if he stayed alive,” I said. “Did you see anything weird or unusual in the photos?”

  “Well, I’m not a cop or a crime scene investigator,” Jazmin said. “But I got the gist of things. Tyler was stabbed twelve times with a knife. There are footprints in the blood, but they likely belong to Tyler because you can see all the toes. Did you see these weird marks in the carpet?”

  “What weird marks?”

  I scooted closer as she zoomed in on a picture of the floor. Small divots, unnoticeable to a less keen eye, punctured the carpet at random intervals. It wasn’t damaged—a quick vacuum would reset the fibers of the carpet—but it was definitely a trail of some kind.

  “I didn’t see that while I was in there taking the pictures,” I said, studying one of the pockmarks as closely as possible. “What is that?”

  “No idea,” said Jazmin. “Maybe Tyler drags his feet?”

  She clicked through a couple wide shots of the room.

  “Wait, go back,” I said.

  “To this one?”

  It was the same picture I’d noticed on the camera before while waiting for Daniel to finish packing up Tyler’s body.

  “I could’ve sworn I saw something in the upper right hand corner of this shot,” I said, zooming into the spot in question. “I thought it was a light flare, but the shape wasn’t right.”

  Jazmin squinted at the screen. “Are you sure you’re all right? Because there’s nothing there.”

  “Jazmin, it was right there. Maybe something happened when we downloaded everything to the computer.”

  “The picture wouldn’t change because of a download.”

  “Unless it was caused by something supernatural,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  In the aftermath of Tyler’s death, I was the only one who remembered that King and Queens was dealing with more than one dead person at a time.

  Jazmin lowered her voice and leaned in. “You think someone else was in Tyler’s room with you?”

  “I didn’t feel anything,” I said. “If there’s a ghost around, I get this terrible prickling on the back of my neck. That’s the start of it anyway. If the ghost turns up, it’s like my nerves are on fire. Odette said it’s because I never learned to balance my psychic energies.”

  Jazmin puffed her cheeks. “What else did Odette say?”

  “I told you,” I said. “She wants me to figure out the truth about the fire. Oh, and she might’ve mentioned that we’re all going to die.”

  “All of us who?”

  “Everybody in the hotel, I imagine.”

  “You left that part out during your previous summary.”

  I buried my face in Jazmin’s cashmere sweater, taking deep calming breaths of her sweet floral perfume. “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

  “I wasn’t there.” She rested her chin on top of my head. “But she has a motive to lie. The threat on our lives kickstarte
d you to jump headfirst into this investigation, didn’t it?”

  “That and the feeling of being paralyzed by a spirit from the world beyond this one.”

  “She didn’t happen to give you any advice on that front, did she?”

  “No,” I said bitterly. “Other than to breath and focus. I’m an actress, not a yogi. I don’t understand this meditation crap.”

  “You’re a psychic. Maybe you should get on that meditation crap.”

  “Don’t say that. I’m hoping it’s a glitch.”

  “I’ll help you sort it out if I can,” Jazmin promised.

  “It’s not just me,” I said. “It’s Riley too. If I have to work through all of this, so does she.”

  Jazmin opened a new document and typed out a heading on the laptop, reading it aloud as she did so. “Psychic medium lessons.”

  I bumped her shoulder and hit the backspace button until the words were gone. “Don’t joke. What are we supposed to do? It’s not like I can investigate this murder while we’re stuck in the Eagle’s View. I don’t know how to investigate a murder. I’m not Daniel.”

  “Think of it as a puzzle,” Jazmin suggested. “We have all the pieces we need. It’s just a matter of putting them together.”

  “How do we know if the killer is living or dead?”

  “Do you think ghosts can affect the living?”

  “I’m proof of that. Paralysis, remember?”

  Jazmin adjusted so that I rested more comfortably against her side. “You said that was an effect of your psychic connection with Odette. We know ghosts can manipulate inanimate objects. The broken vase in your room is evidence of that. We need to figure out if they can touch living things like humans and animals.”

  “Do you think Riley would know?”

  “It doesn’t hurt to ask,” she said. “We should keep her close for however long this goes on. She hasn’t told anyone else about her ghost stories, right?”

  “Just her dad,” I replied. “Everyone else thinks she’s weird.”

  Jazmin looked at Riley, who was in the middle of a decent nap. “She’s a sweet kid, but I get where they’re coming from.”