An Isle of Man Ghostly Cozy Collection - ABC

by Diana Xarissa

  “It was nice to see you again,” Peter said as he walked past her. “Maybe you’d like to get dinner one night, soon?”

  “I would,” Fenella told him.

  “Let me check my calendar and see what I can manage,” he said.

  Fenella nodded. Her social calendar was empty, aside from her Saturday plans with Donald. “I’d like that,” she said.

  “I’ll ring you in a day or two,” he told her before he let himself into his apartment.

  Fenella opened her door and switched on the lights. She should have left a few lights on for Katie, she thought guiltily. Katie was in the middle of Fenella’s bed, fast asleep.

  “It’s nice to know I was missed,” Fenella muttered as she checked the kitchen and refilled Katie’s water bowl. The cat didn’t move a few minutes later as Fenella carefully climbed into bed. It was only as she was falling asleep that Fenella realized that she hadn’t seen Mona in over twenty-four hours. It seemed foolish to worry about a ghost. Surely nothing bad could have happened to a woman who was already dead?

  9

  Fenella’s nose twitched. Someone was patting her on the nose, steadily and repeatedly. As she struggled out of a deep sleep, her heart began to race. Keeping her eyes tightly shut, she tried to think. Why would someone be tapping on her nose? She hadn’t heard anyone moving around the apartment. Surely she would have heard the door open or footsteps. Could Mona make physical contact? It didn’t seem likely. She turned her head an inch to the left. After a moment, the tapping continued.

  “Meerrrooowwwww,” Katie said, sounding impatient.

  Fenella opened her eyes and then laughed. “I forgot all about you,” she told the kitten. “I was afraid I was being burgled.”

  “What sort of burglar would come in and start patting you on the nose?” Mona asked.

  Fenella sat up and looked at her aunt, who was standing at the end of the bed. “I thought maybe you’d decided to move on,” she said.

  Mona shook her head. “I’ll let you know when I decide to do that,” she said. “I was just busy yesterday.”

  “Busy?”

  “Yes.”

  A hundred different questions rushed into Fenella mind, but she didn’t ask any of them. Instead she looked at the clock and then groaned. “Katie, it’s only six o’clock,” she told the animal. “I don’t have to get up for hours yet.”

  Katie jumped down off the bed and ran out the door. Fenella could hear her run into the kitchen, where she began to make a tremendous amount of noise.

  “Yelling for your breakfast is just rude,” Fenella shouted.

  The caterwauling stopped and a moment later Katie reappeared in the doorway.

  “Merrow,” she said, sounding cross.

  “Okay, I’ll get you some breakfast, but then I’m going back to sleep,” Fenella announced. She got up and pulled on her bathrobe. After sliding her feet into slippers, she stomped into the kitchen and opened a can of food. Katie’s water bowl was empty again, so Fenella refilled that before she headed back to her nice warm bed.

  She’d only just settled herself under the covers when Mona sat down next to her. “So, did you enjoy the Tale and Tail?” she asked.

  “It was very nice,” Fenella replied before she rolled over.

  “I used to go there nearly every night, after they changed this building over to flats,” Mona said. “When it was a hotel, there was a wonderful little bar on the ground floor, but they turned it into offices for the management when they converted everything.”

  “The Tale and Tail must more than make up for that,” Fenella suggested.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Moan replied. “Anyway, it’s a nice enough place and you’ll get to meet many people there.”

  “I think everyone I’ve met on the island was there last night,” Fenella replied.

  “Really?”

  “No, I’m exaggerating. But I went with Shelly, and Peter Cannell and Donald Donaldson were both there. Oh, and Inspector Robinson as well.”

  “And today you’re off to Castle Rushen with Donald,” Mona said. “Do be careful.”

  “What do you mean?” Fenella asked.

  “But I’m keeping you from getting some extra sleep,” Mona said. “I’ll come back later. You sleep for now.”

  Before Fenella could argue, Mona disappeared into the other room. Fenella plumped up her pillow and turned it over, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t get comfortable. Throwing back the covers, she plodded into the bathroom and took a shower. She didn’t want to be up, but as she couldn’t sleep, she may as well get moving.

  After her shower, she set a pot of coffee brewing in the shiny new coffee maker she’d finally remembered to purchase, and then looked down at Katie who was playing with one of the small balls that Fenella had given her.

  “You aren’t going to wake me at six every day, are you?” she asked.

  Katie didn’t reply; instead she batted the ball into the next room and then chased after it. Fenella walked over to the windows and watched the waves on the beach and the cars on the road outside for a while. It was too early for there to be much traffic, but a few people were walking dogs along the sand.

  “Maybe I should get a dog,” Fenella said after a moment.

  “Mmmmmeerrrrroooooooooowwwwww,” Katie told her.

  “Maybe not,” Fenella laughed.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” Mona added.

  Fenella frowned as she jumped at the sound of Mona’s voice. She should be used to the woman appearing without notice by now, she thought.

  “I hope you don’t mind Katie,” Fenella said. “I’m only keeping her until her real owners turn up.”

  “I suspect she’ll be around for a long time, then,” Mona said.

  Fenella shrugged. “I’ve never had a pet before. She doesn’t seem like too much work, at least not yet.”

  “Let’s try to limit the cat population to one, shall we?” Mona asked. “I often thought about getting myself a cat, but it’s such a cliché that I never gave into the temptation.”

  “Well, this one has rather been thrust upon me,” Fenella replied. “I don’t plan on adding to the family again, under any circumstances.”

  “Very good,” Mona said.

  Fenella drank more coffee than she should have. She always made a full pot and Jack used to drink more than half of it. Now that Jack wasn’t around, she’d have to learn to make less, she thought.

  With some time on her hands, she checked her emails and found nothing but junk. Then she searched for information on Castle Rushen. What she read had her even more excited about the day ahead. The castle was a very fine medieval one, originally built in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. Fenella was amazed that it couldn’t be dated more accurately than that. The original occupants had been the early Viking kings of the island, who had eventually given way to Scottish and then English rulers. Its later life as a prison was no less fascinating to Fenella, and by the time Donald arrived, she couldn’t wait to see the building in person.

  “Good morning,” she said when she opened the door to the man. “How are you this morning?”

  “I’m very well, thank you,” he replied.

  Katie stopped chasing her ball around to investigate the new arrival. She walked over and sniffed his shoes before allowing him to pat her gently.

  “She’s lovely,” Donald said. “I can see why you want to keep her.”

  “I won’t, though, if her previous owner comes forward.” Fenella tried to sound matter-of-fact, but she couldn’t keep her voice steady.

  Donald smiled at her. “If someone else does come forward to claim her, I’ll take you out to one of the shelters and help you pick out another kitten,” he said. “The shelters always have animals that need a good home.”

  Fenella nodded.

  “You left food out for Shelly to give her, didn’t you?” Donald asked after Fenella had slipped on a jacket and picked up her handbag.

  “I did,” Fenella re
plied. “You be good,” she said to the kitten who had gone back to playing with her ball.

  Donald held the door for her and then waited while Fenella locked it behind them. As they headed for the elevator, he offered his arm. After a moment, Fenella took it. She was surprised when he escorted her to an expensive-looking black sports car. As he held the passenger door open for her, he chuckled.

  Once he was behind the driver’s seat, he grinned at her. “Welcome to my midlife crisis,” he said. “I never thought I’d be the sort to do it, but when I hit fifty last year, I went a little crazy. Buying this car was actually one of the better decisions I made around my birthday.”

  Fenella laughed. “It’s a beautiful car, but I know nothing about them, really.”

  “I won’t bore you with the details, then,” he said. “I’ll just tell you that it was a huge extravagance. If I didn’t love driving it so much, I’d have sold it once I came back to my senses, well, more or less back to my senses.”

  Fenella laughed as he switched on the engine. The responding purr reminded her of Katie, and as the car roared away from the curb, Fenella could see why Donald was so fond of it. The drive to Castletown seemed to take no time at all. Donald parked near Castle Rushen. When he turned off the ignition, Fenella smiled at him.

  “It’s a wonderful car,” she said.

  “You can drive home, if you want,” he told her.

  “Oh, goodness, I’ve never driven a stick shift,” she said. “And I wouldn’t feel safe driving such an expensive car, either. I’ll happily stick to being a passenger, at least for now.”

  “The offer stands,” he replied. “Any time you want to drive her, just let me know.”

  He glanced at his watch and then shrugged.

  “We’re a little bit too early,” he said. “My third wife was always late for everything, so I got into the habit of telling her to be ready long before we needed to leave. Clearly I don’t need to do the same with you.”

  “Third wife?” Fenella repeated.

  Donald shrugged. “As the castle doesn’t open for half an hour, I suppose I may as well confess to all of my faults while we wait.”

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Fenella said hastily.

  “If I thought you were prying, I wouldn’t say a thing,” he said. “I met my first wife at university. We had a lot of fun together and got married right after graduation. I started my own business in London and things went well for a long time. Eventually we had the requisite children, one of each, exactly as planned. When my son was four and my daughter was about a year old, Claire was taking the children to visit her mother and suffered a massive spontaneous brain hemorrhage. Luckily she’d developed a headache first and had pulled over to the side of the road. A good Samaritan came along in time for her to tell him who to ring but the ambulance didn’t get there in time to save her life.”

  “I’m sorry,” Fenella said.

  “Thank you,” Donald replied. “It was a difficult time but it was a long time ago, twenty years or more. After Claire died, I moved back to the island and began to buy up different companies here. I hired a nanny for the children and, in the time-honored tradition, fell in love with her. We were married for six months before I found out that she was also sleeping with my driver.”

  “Oh, dear,” Fenella gasped.

  Donald smiled sheepishly. “You might have thought I would have learned something from that experience, but some lessons take longer than others. I stayed away from women for a few years, and then, as I approached fifty, I started to feel as if I needed companionship. My son was gone to London and my daughter was already planning to leave. I suppose I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when I met Brandy.”

  “Brandy?”

  He shrugged. “She was the other half of my midlife crisis,” he explained. “We only went out a few times, but I was totally smitten. We actually eloped to Las Vegas, which was her idea, I must add.”

  “Jack and I talked about doing that once,” Fenella replied. “But neither one of us was ready to make that big of a commitment.”

  “Oh, I was ready for commitment,” Donald said. “Unfortunately, Brandy was only committed to getting her hands on my money.”

  “I am sorry,” Fenella said.

  He shrugged. “I shouldn’t be so trusting. My daughter, Phoebe, said to me, as everything was blowing up around me, that I should never have expected a gorgeous twenty-five-year-old to fall madly in love with me in the first place.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, it hurt, but she was right. As it happened, Brandy forgot to mention to me that she was already married to someone else, so I escaped our little adventure with all of my money, even if I lost nearly all of my pride.”

  “Imagine that just slipping your mind,” Fenella said.

  Donald laughed. “Yeah, well, I suppose I shouldn’t even call her my ex-wife, as we were never legally married, but there you have it. The sum total of my disastrous relationship history. Your turn.”

  Fenella took a deep breath and then sighed. “I didn’t date much in high school or college,” she said. “I was pretty focused on getting through my doctorate and then finding a teaching position. I went out once in a while, usually when a friend needed someone to make up the numbers on a double date or something like that. After college, once I’d landed my first job, I met Ken.”

  She stopped and looked out the side window of the car, watching waves on a beach below them.

  “I’m sorry,” Donald said. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I don’t want to pry, either.”

  Fenella shook her head. “It was a long time ago,” she said. “I should be able to talk about it after all these years. I’ll give you the short version, anyway. He swept me off my feet. I was crazy in love with him and he said he loved me, too. He moved in with me about a month after we’d met. He was still working on his doctorate. He was studying political science. I didn’t mind supporting us both for a year or two.”

  She fell silent again, thinking back to the stupid young woman she’d been.

  “Maybe we should leave this conversation for another day,” Donald said softly.

  “No, it’s okay,” Fenella insisted. It was high time she started telling people about her past. She’d done nothing wrong.

  “Basically, a year or two turned into nearly ten years where Ken kept taking a class here and there and kept saying he was working on his dissertation, but never actually seemed to be writing anything. I started hearing rumors that he was involved with other women, maybe even students, but I ignored them. Who knows, we might still be together, except I got pregnant.”

  “And Ken wasn’t thrilled?” Donald guessed.

  “You could say that,” Fenella said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I wanted to get married and he wanted me to get rid of the baby. At twelve weeks, while we were still fighting about it, I miscarried. Something went badly wrong and it ended with me being told that I won’t ever be able to have children.”

  “I am sorry,” Donald said. He reached across the seat to give her an awkward hug.

  “Thank you,” Fenella replied. “As I said, it was a long time ago. I’ve come to terms with it, and now I suppose I’m too old, anyway. But at the time it was hard to deal with. Ken left me about a month later, and less than a year after that he was married and had a new baby. I think that was the hardest part of the whole ordeal.”

  “I can’t keep saying I’m sorry,” Donald told her. “But I really am.”

  Fenella smiled. “On the plus side, he never did finish his doctorate. He ended up leaving the college and becoming a used car salesman. His wife left him a few years ago for the man who owned the used car lot, as well.”

  “Karma,” Donald said.

  “Maybe,” Fenella replied. “But after all of that, I wasn’t in a hurry to start a new relationship. When I met Jack, we just sort of fell into a friendship that gradually developed into something more, or maybe we
pushed it into something more, I’m not even sure.”

  “And you and Jack were together for how long?” Donald asked.

  “Oh, ten years or so,” Fenella replied. “It was never a great romance, and by the end of it we were more like brother and sister than anything else, but the familiar feels safe, you know?”

  “I know, but life is too short to spend it feeling safe,” Donald told her.

  Fenella smiled. “And here I am, three or four thousand miles away from my old life, starting all over again.”

  “Good for you,” he said. “And in the interest of new adventures, and not feeling safe…” he trailed off and then leaned over and kissed her very gently.

  “Not at all brotherly, I hope,” he whispered as he sat back.

  Fenella didn’t trust herself to speak. The kiss had ignited sparks in her that she hadn’t felt since her first kisses with Ken. After a moment, Donald spoke again.

  “They should be opening the doors to the castle. Ready to go?”

  “Sure,” she muttered, grabbing her handbag and opening her door. The car felt far too small and intimate. It would be good to get out of it.

  Within minutes, Fenella had forgotten all about the conversation and the kiss. She was instantly enchanted with Castle Rushen. As they made their way across the courtyard and through a small room filled with informational boards, she couldn’t resist touching the limestone walls.

  “It just feels old,” she murmured.

  “It’s been here for a long time,” the man working in the room told her.

  “So I see,” Fenella replied. She stopped and read each board in turn, soaking up knowledge about the castle. Donald watched her with an amused smile on his face.

  “What’s so funny?” she demanded as she finally reached the last board.

  “You’re really interested in all of this, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “I’m a historian,” she replied. “And while I specialized in European and British history, I never actually managed to get outside the US to see the historical sites I studied.”