The Haunting of Riley Watson

by Alexandria Clarke

  “Odette?” I ventured. “I sort of need you to show up. God, I feel like an idiot. Hello? Ghost girl? It’s Scooby Doo, come to unmask you.” I shook out the jitters. The hallway remained empty of spirits. “This is ridiculous. Odette, seriously. Show your face. If you want me to get the upper hand in this investigation, I’m going to need your help.”

  No reply. The corridor was quiet. The hair remained flat on the back of my neck. No prickle or tingling.

  “Odette!” I hissed. “Show yourself right now!”

  She popped into existence two inches from my face, startling me so much that I fell over in my haste to get away and slammed against the door to the suite.

  Jazmin called from the inside, “Everything okay out there?”

  “It’s fine,” I said, teeth chattering as the familiar sting began in my bones. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Odette crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. Why she had to lean was beyond me. It’s not like ghosts got tired enough to have to prop themselves up.

  “You rang?” she drawled.

  I struggled to my feet. It was like trying to get the blood flowing after one of your limbs had fallen asleep, except in this case, it was my entire body. “I need your help.”

  “I already told you I can’t give you any information,” Odette said. “The others will punish me for it.”

  “I’m familiar with the others’ form of punishment now.” I lifted my bandaged arm for show. “So I can’t say I blame you.”

  Her eyes widened as she dropped her arms. “You went to the old wing? After I explicitly told you not to? Are you an idiot?”

  “You’re the second person to note my stupidity regarding that decision so probably,” I replied. “And I’m not asking for information. I’m asking for backup while I go hunting for information.”

  “What do you need me for?”

  “I have to question someone. You’re going to make sure they tell me the truth.”

  Karli and Matisse were still in the kitchen when Odette and I arrived. It felt strange to have her floating along beside me, and not just because of the occasional zaps to my spine that reminded me of my energy imbalance. I kept forgetting other people couldn’t see her. We passed a stony-faced Liam in the lobby on our way to the kitchen, but he paid us no mind. His eyes slipped right past the preteen ghost. He shivered when Odette brushed by him though, as if he could feel the draft of her presence. We paused outside the swinging kitchen doors to get an idea of the situation. Karli paced in front of the storage freezer while Matisse manned frying pans on the stove.

  “I can’t believe he’s in there,” Karli said. “Just right there! On the other side of that door. What if we needed more ice for the soda machine? It’s in that freezer. We can’t get to it.”

  Matisse flipped hashbrowns at lightning speed, each potato pancake perfectly browned. “Karli, we can’t do anything about it. Stop thinking about it.”

  “I can’t!” she said. “I don’t understand how you’re cooking. There’s a dead body in our freezer.”

  “If I don’t cook, everyone here starves, and then we’ll all be murdering each other out of hunger,” he answered. “Besides, these vegetables will go bad if we don’t use them. Do you want to help me? It might take your mind off things.”

  Karli shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. Matisse, busy with his hashbrowns, didn’t notice she was shaking like a leaf. “I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t be in here anymore. I’ll catch up with you later, Matisse.”

  “Karli, wait—”

  I dove to the side and hid under the bar as Karli pushed through the swinging doors. Matisse came out, armed with a spatula, but Karli was gone, disappearing down the steps of the Eagle’s View.

  “Way to go, idiot,” he muttered to himself before returning to the kitchen. “One kiss, and you’ve already messed things up with the girl of your dreams.”

  I gave him a minute to gather his thoughts then joined him in the kitchen. When he heard the hinges swing, he turned around with a smile on his face.

  “I knew you’d come back—oh.” His happy expression fell when he saw I wasn’t Karli. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

  “No problem.”

  “Do you need something?” Matisse asked. “Are you hungry? It’s early for lunch. I don’t have everything ready yet, but I could whip up a snack if you like.”

  “I’m not here for food, Matisse,” I said. “I want to talk to you.”

  He turned his back to me, focusing on his dishes instead. “About what?”

  “About the night Tyler died.”

  His spine stiffened, and his shoulders rose up toward his ears. Odette floated over to him so she could read his expression and motioned for me to keep going.

  “Riley told me you and Tyler didn’t get along,” I said. “I was wondering if you could tell me what you were doing the night he was murdered.”

  The metal spatula tapped against the frying pan with more force than necessary. Matisse refused to look at me. “Did the detective put you up to this?”

  “No, I’m asking for my own purposes.”

  Matisse snorted like a bull. I hoped nothing from his nose ended up in the food.

  “Yeah, right,” he said. “You think I haven’t noticed your connection with that guy? It was clear from that first night the two of you spent at the bar. He’s into you. He trusts you. That’s why you weren’t questioned yesterday, and I bet if you hadn’t volunteered, he wouldn’t have questioned you this morning.”

  “Daniel is not into me.”

  Matisse threw a disparaging glance over his shoulder. “Really? Because as far as I know, you’re the only person who’s on a first name basis with the detective in charge of a homicide investigation.”

  “I’m not here to discuss my relationship or lack thereof with Detective Hawkins,” I said shortly. “My friend might be in danger, and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Your friend? The leggy redhead? Why would she be a target for the killer?”

  “No, not Jazmin. Riley.”

  That got him to turn around. “What do you know about Riley?”

  “Not as much as you,” I said. “She told me you’ve been looking out for her since she was a baby.”

  “Yeah, I have.”

  “You look out for Karli too.”

  He banged the spatula against the pan to get the extra potato shreds off of it. “What’s your point? Am I not allowed to worry about the people I like?”

  “You can worry about them,” I said. “You can protect them. But you can’t kill the people who pose a threat to them.”

  Matisse dropped the spatula. It clattered to the floor, splashing oil across the baseboard of the cabinets. “You think I killed Tyler?”

  “You have a motive.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I don’t have to prove anything to you,” he said. “You’re not the law. You’re not anybody. Get out of my kitchen.”

  I did the opposite. Instead of retreating, I cornered him near the hot stove top. “Listen, Matisse. Either you tell me where you were that night, or things are going to get unpleasant. Don’t forget I speak to the dead.”

  Matisse scoffed. “Come on. Do you really expect me to believe that you’re going to get some ghost to threaten me? Your performance in the lounge yesterday was fun, but I’m not an idiot. You guys faked that pitcher falling. Your friend was standing right by that table.”

  “One more chance,” I said. “Tell me your side of the story.”

  “No. Sick your little ghost on me.”

  I smiled with only my mouth. My eyes remained hard and cold. The expression drained the color out of Matisse’s cheeks, despite him standing so close to the hot stove. I signaled to Odette. She didn’t move or touch anything, but a butcher’s knife dislodged itself from the magnet on the wall and flung itself across the room. It whizzed past Matisse�
�s head and lodged itself in the cabinet behind him, vibrating like an arrow.

  Matisse swore in French and clapped a hand to the side of his head. The knife had knicked the top of his ear. It wasn’t enough to warrant permanent damage, but when he pulled his hand away, it was covered in blood. He tried to get past me, but I moved into his route. As big as he was compared to me, he didn’t make a second attempt to escape.

  “Okay, okay!” he said, raising his hands above his head. Blood streamed from his ear and down his neck. “I’ll tell you what I know. Just get the freakin’ ghost out of here.”

  Odette was already gone, her job done, but Matisse didn’t need to know that.

  “She stays as long as I want her to,” I told him. “Just to make sure you’re telling me the truth. Now tell me the truth, Matisse.”

  “I can’t,” he said, trembling. “Seriously, it’s too embarrassing, but I can promise you I was in my room that night.”

  “I’m supposed to believe you?”

  “Do you want to see my Internet history from that night?” he offered. “Because I’m sure it’s timestamped. I have to warn you though, it’s not family friendly.”

  I suddenly understood what he was doing in his room that he didn’t want to talk about. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then what are you hiding?” I demanded. “I can tell when someone knows more than they should. You were the first one to get agitated with Detective Hawkins’s interrogations. At first, I blamed it on the situation, but now I’m not so sure. What do you know, Matisse?”

  “Nothing.”

  His voice cracked. I raised my hand as if to summon Odette again.

  “No, wait!” he pleaded, covering his head to protect it from any incoming flying knives. “I’ll tell you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He heaved for breath, cowering under his meaty forearms. “I’m not the killer, okay? I don’t know who is, but if you want more information, you should check with Ari and Imani. If anyone has secrets, it’s those two.”

  “What kind of secrets?”

  Matisse shook his head and came out of his defensive crouch. “No way. I’m not telling you, no matter how much you threaten me. They’re not my secrets to tell. I gave you what you wanted. Get out of my kitchen.”

  Since Odette was no longer playing bad cop to my good cop, I left Matisse to finish preparing lunch, but I couldn’t fathom what he thought Ari and Imani could get up to together. The pair was known to get into petty trouble together, but not to the level of Tyler’s activities. Ari was a barista for the café near the slopes, and Imani worked as a ski instructor. Since the best friends were in such close proximity to each other during work hours, they were usually caught goofing off instead of paying attention to their duties. I couldn’t say I blamed them since the café and the slopes were bereft of guests. What else was there to do but hang out with the other employees?

  I ran into Daniel on my way to the elevators. He was coming from the hallway to the left of the lobby that led to Oliver’s suite, the older guest rooms, and the original haunted wing of the resort. He eyed the thick bandage on my arm.

  “What happened to your arm?” he asked.

  “Freak accident,” I said. “The kettle and I weren’t seeing eye to eye. Not sure why it had such an attitude problem. All I wanted was some tea, not to murder the teacups.”

  “I have to remember to stop asking you questions,” Daniel grumbled. “The answers are always so bizarre. It’s been mere hours since I’ve seen you last. I can’t believe you managed to injure yourself already.”

  “I’m prone to accidents.” This wasn’t entirely false. Before my arrival at King and Queens, Jazmin and I kept a running count of how many stitches I’d acquired during the filming of Madame Lucia’s Parlour for the Dead and the Departed. If I recalled correctly, we were at a collective fifty-six. In any sense, I had pretty decent pain tolerance. I pointed to the notebook sticking out of his back pocket. “Any leads?”

  He shoved the notebook deeper, wrinkling the paper. “Not yet. I don’t know what I expected. That my hunch would be correct maybe.”

  “What’s your hunch?”

  He rolled up the sleeves of his navy-blue thermal. I wondered if he owned several shirts in the same color. I hadn’t seen him wear anything else for most of the trip. He sported his usual leather shoulder holster, the straps of which accentuated his strong, broad shoulders. No woman would ask for a divorce from his strapping figure, thick hair, and piercing eyes without good reason. Daniel once confessed to me that he and his wife had married too hastily, that they weren’t really meant to be, but was there more to the story than unfortunate timing and poor decisions?

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” he said.

  “Right. Official police business.”

  “Mm-hmm. Did you press the button?”

  “No, I forgot.”

  He pushed it with his thumb. “Have you seen Oliver around?”

  “I think he’s in his room,” I said. “That’s what Riley said anyway.”

  “He’s not,” Daniel said while we waited for one of the elevators to land on the ground floor. All three were occupied elsewhere, strange considering there weren’t enough people in the resort to use all three at once. “He’s going around the resort, working like it’s a regular day. I found him in his office, filing guest records from thirty years ago. When the rest of my team shows up, I’m going to request a psychological assessment for him. I think these deaths are getting to him.”

  “They’d get to anyone,” I said. “If you knew where he was, why’d you ask me?”

  “Just wanted a second opinion on his behavior,” he answered. “You’re one of the few people here who knew Oliver before he lost it, and you’re not one of his employees, so you’re more likely to give me a solid, unbiased opinion.”

  “I haven’t seen him since this morning.”

  “If you say so. What the hell is wrong with this thing?” Daniel jammed the button again and again. It lit up and went dark each time, but no elevator came to pick us up in the lobby. He slammed his hand against the panel.

  “Relax!” I grabbed his wrist to stop him from punching the panel again. “What is going on with you? You’ve been getting progressively angrier in the past two days. I get you’re in trouble, but you need to keep your head in the game.”

  He slipped out of my grasp. “What do you mean, I’m in trouble?”

  I backpedaled, trying to escape the offended look on his face. “Just that you’re the only person here who works for the law. You’re on your own with this investigation. That can’t be easy, especially when you’re used to having an entire team to back you up. What did you think I meant?”

  Daniel smoothed his already smooth hair. “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “Daniel, what’s going on with you?”

  He opened his mouth, and I thought he might actually reply with an honest answer, but Nick Porter rushed into the lobby, his cane tapping a rapid, unsteady beat against the marble floor.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But Mr. Watson and one of the employees are having a bit of a tiff near the gift shop. It appears he’s trying to force the young man to get back to work. I left to get help when they started yelling. Well, what are you waiting for? Come quick!”

  As if to mock us, the elevator finally arrived as Daniel and I jogged away from it, following Nick to the gift shop. Nick could move when the situation called for it, though his bad leg buckled and swayed like a tree in a hurricane. The gift shop was set off from the lobby, in a separate corridor that also led to the library, café, and rental shop. Oliver stood at the door to the gift shop, facing off with Liam.

  “I’m the ski lift operator,” Liam hollered, red in the face. It was strange to see him so worked up. Liam was the epitome of laid back under less stressful circumstances. “Not a damn cashier.”

  “You’ll be a damn cashier if I tell you to be a damn cashier,” Oliver shouted back.
He’d changed his clothes. He wore a plum-colored suit—like he had tried to take a leaf out of Nick’s book—but it didn’t fit him properly, and he looked more like wrinkly grape than the owner of a fancy ski resort.

  “No,” Liam said. “It wasn’t in my job description.”

  “Your job description includes other duties as assigned,” Oliver sneered. “If you don’t start taking stock, you’re fired.”

  “Oh, I’m fired?” Liam said. “Where the hell are you going to find a brand new ski operator in the middle of the season? That is if the police even let you reopen King and Queens after two of your family members ended up dead here.”

  Oliver smacked Liam across the face. The younger man’s head whipped around, his lion-like mane flying through the air like golden silk. Daniel pinned Oliver against the wall as Liam pressed his palm to his reddening face.

  “I’m going to sue you when all of this is over,” Liam spluttered. “Ari told me what you’ve been saying to her. We were afraid to bring it up because we needed these jobs, but I’m done with you, Mr. Watson. I won’t work here anymore, not under your management. Not in these conditions. You deserve everything that’s happened to you.” He spun away from the scene and ran into Nick. “Sorry, Mr. Porter. While I have you here, you wouldn’t happen to need a ski lift operator and a barista, would you? I’ve just resigned from my job.”

  Nick looked from Liam to Oliver’s enraged expression and stuttered, “Anyone is welcome to apply to White Oak, son. We’re always looking for honest, dedicated employees.”

  “You—!” Oliver spluttered, his face a fantastic shade of violet. “Get the hell out of my hotel, Porter!”