“Pretty good detective skills, huh?” Spinning on the bar stool, Belle smiled and leaned back on the counter with her elbows.
“More like wild imaginings of a horror obsessed fiend.”
“You’re no fun, you know,” Belle pouted.
“And what about the daughter, Candy? You didn’t include her in your theory.”
Belle shrugged. “Maybe she caught wind of what’s going on and is hoping to get the doll for herself before someone else does.”
Anna stood up. “If you ask me, it’s just a bunch of people bothering a poor old woman who just wants to be left alone. That doll doesn’t even exist.”
Belle stood up as well walking around to the other side of the counter. “Hey, wait a second. Maybe Cora does have the doll, but it’s related to voodoo or something.”
“We are not going there.”
“To scare Don off, she puts a dead crow in his truck.”
“Now that is ridiculous. Coraline wouldn’t do that.”
“You were just saying earlier that you think she, and her house, are creepy. Why wouldn’t she be into voodoo and creepy dolls?”
“You should be a writer,” Anna pointed out in a tone that was none too flattering.
“Sounds boring,” Belle noted.
“Either way, that’s the end of it. There is no doll, and I don’t want to hear anything else about it.”
“But what if the doll does exist,” a male voice interrupted.
Both women jumped, each letting out a little squeak as Harlem—their resident ghost—materialized behind the bar.
He had the same black-and-white look of an old movie, his image flickering as if being projected onto a screen. He wore a nineteen-fifties style party suit, a pencil mustache, and had his hair slicked back. He was almost an exact copy of famous horror actor Vincent Price in his prime, minus the smooth voice.
“I hate it when you do that,” Anna complained.
“Hey, if I stay visible all the time I waste all the energy I’ve stored up.”
“So, instead it’s easier to stand around and eavesdrop on us?” Belle scolded him.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I just heard something about haunted dolls and was interested in what you had to say. After all, I am a ghost. Any other clues about other ghosts or supernatural entities are helpful to me.”
“We never said it was haunted,” Anna said.
“I could have sworn I heard someone say it.”
“Well, you’re out of luck. There is no haunted doll. That’s only in the movie that Shelly Waite’s nephew made.”
“How do you know there isn’t a haunted doll?” he pointed out.
“Because Cora said so,” Belle replied.
Harlem looked from one sister to the other. “Maybe the reason that this woman, Coraline Danvers, claims she doesn’t own any other dolls is because she doesn’t want anyone to know it’s haunted.”
“What?” the sister’s blurted in unison.
He leaned in. “Maybe she’s keeping this haunted doll secret so it won’t hurt anyone,” he whispered in an ominous voice.
CHAPTER 6
* * *
“Coffee, on the house,” Val joked as she brought in a tray with three mugs filled with hot steaming coffee and set them on the counter. She looked at the girls and noticed them staring off, seemingly at nothing. “What are you two girls looking at?”
“Thanks. I think I’ll drink mine upstairs,” Belle noted, picking up the mug and sipping from it. She winked at Harlem to meet her in the apartment above the restaurant.
“Who are you winking at?” Val insisted.
Besides the two sisters, no one else could see the drive-in’s ghostly specter.
“Me, too,” Anna added, picking up a mug.
“Hey, you’re just going to leave me down here alone? Don’t you want to spend time with old Val anymore?” she asked.
“Maybe later. I’ve got some work to do on the film projector,” Belle answered, already on the stairway.
“And I have to help,” Anna noted.
Belle knew that Val was probably a little disappointed not to sit and chat, but she was too invested in what Harlem had to say about ghosts and dolls. After all, if anyone knew about paranormal activity going on in Sunken Grove, it was a ghost. For Belle, thinking about potential scandals happening behind closed doors enthused her.
She wasn’t sure if it was just her plain curiosity at work or if these types of stories reminded her of the crime and horror flicks she so loved.
Anna, on the other hand, was deathly afraid of the paranormal. Harlem’s presence alone spooked her. Still, if anything was happening around the small Louisiana town, she wanted to know about it. She figured, better to be prepared for the strange and demented than have it tap you on the shoulder unexpectedly.
Reaching the top of the stairs, the trio headed down a thin black hallway and entered the projection booth—located just outside the apartment where the sisters lived.
Harlem slept inside the projector, if you could call it sleeping, because it seemed to charge him and give him more energy to do things like materialize for the girls to see him or move objects on the plane of the living.
“Maybe you two should tell Val about me,” Harlem offered once they were all crowded into the booth.
“She can’t see you, Harlem. Only we can,” Belle pointed out.
“Still, it may make these abrupt secret conferences easier for her to understand,” he offered.
“I doubt she would believe us,” Anna said, taking a seat near the computer desk.
“How do you know? Don’t Val and Dan both believe in voodoo magic?” Valerie, as well as her husband Dan Bronson, had lived on the misty bayou of Sunken Grove for many years. From experience, both knew that anything was possible.
Voodoo was prevalent in the area and it was hard to completely discount strange happenings as coincidence.
“I’d say that they are open minded about paranormal occurrences, but not believers,” Belle responded.
“Hey, she seems like a nice lady. It could be worth a shot,” Harlem offered his final opinion on the matter.
“Enough talk about Val for the moment. Tell us why you think Cora has a haunted doll?” Anna butted in, growing impatient.
“I don’t have any hard evidence. I’m just pointing out that maybe Coraline Danvers has an expensive doll and isn’t telling anyone. Perhaps it’s because she knows it’s haunted.”
Anna did a little spin in the desk chair. “Honestly, if the doll exists, she could have any reason not to share that news with people, Harlem.”
“Or it could be because the doll is haunted, possessed.”
“Come on, really? Maybe she just doesn’t want greedy people like Shelly Waite or Don Delta knowing she has an expensive antique tucked away somewhere in that house. Perhaps she just doesn’t remember owning the doll?”
“If Don Delta seems to think she has it, and someone else tipped him off, that makes two witnesses who believe in this doll’s existence,” Belle added, going over the thoughts in her mind.
“Belle, you were the one who said you believed Mrs. Danvers.”
“I do. I’m just saying that I agree it’s possible she forgot she owns it.”
Shaking her head, Anna made a shameful clicking noise with her tongue. She looked at Harlem. “When we came up here, I thought you—being a ghost, and all—might have had some sort of supernatural proof that a haunted doll existed. Instead, you’re just openly speculating like Belle always does.”
“Hey, I resent that,” Belle defended.
“It’s true. This is basically idle gossip based on little more than an idea that popped into one of our heads.”
“And on the word of Don Delta.”
“But it is a possibility.” Harlem folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. “It’s a mystery.”
“The mystery of the missing doll,” Belle proclaimed, as if giving their real-life story a book title.
&nb
sp; “No, no, no. There is no mystery and there is no doll,” Anna argued, pointing at both of them. While she’d been interested in what Harlem had to say, without proof or evidence, she refused to believe in any of it. It was ridiculous that they were even discussing it. “The point is, doll or no doll, it’s none of our business.”
Belle put her fist down on the desk. “If someone is harassing or trying to take advantage of Cora, I feel like it is my business. Sometimes, these elderly people become targets.”
“If Cora feels harassed, she can call Chief Bronson. That’s his job, after all. Besides, we only witnessed one incident with Don Delta, we have no idea that anything else has happened. Shelly may have nothing to do with the situation and Candy may be in town for a surprise visit.”
Belle folded her arms and grunted angrily at her sister’s callous way of addressing the situation. “If it were Val or Dan in the same situation, you’d be all over it.”
“That’s different. They’re family.”
“And Cora is my friend, Anna. Just because you left two years ago to go live a responsible life doesn’t mean my life stopped going.”
The comment cut Anna to the core. Her face flushed from embarrassment about the way she’d been forced to come back home when her bank account ran dry.
“I’ve had tea with Cora at least once a month over the last year and a half.”
Anna stood up, hands balled into fists. “And what about me, huh? Are we even friends, or am I just your judgmental, overbearing sister who is always getting in the way of your fun?”
The sisters went silent, unable to look one another in the eye. Harlem stood looking on, wondering what exactly had just happened. Finally, he chimed in. “I think I know how to settle this. There is one way we can find out if this doll exists.”
Anna’s jaw dropped. Already, she wasn’t happy with where this was going.
“We go have a look in that house.”
CHAPTER 7
* * *
“If we do this, how are we any better than Don Delta?” Anna argued for probably the fifth time since they’d climbed in the car. The sky had grown cloudy in the afternoon, and it looked as if it might rain. “We’re just being nosy snoops at this point. It isn’t like we have any real investment in finding out if this doll is real.”
Belle shook her head. “It’s not the same at all. We’re not even going to bring up the doll, Don, Shelly, or any of the rest of it. You and I are just bringing our dear friend some delicious butter chess pie to thank her for giving us those posters.”
The yellow pie, still fresh from the oven, was steaming hot. The aroma of molasses sugar and browned butter filled the car. Anna, wearing oven mitts and a towel over her lap, held it steady in as her sister drove.
“Yeah, we’re friends with ulterior motives and a snooping invisible man.”
“He’s a ghost. Ghosts wander old spooky places. Why not the plantation?”
“I don’t like it,” she said again, but still went along for the ride.
They were nearly to the wooden bridge that crossed onto Cora’s property.
“I’m telling you, ladies, I wish I were alive to have a piece of that pie right now. The smell of it is killing me back here,” Harlem admitted.
“Killing you?” Belle teased.
“You know what I mean.”
“What I mean is, that we shouldn’t be doing this,” Anna protested again.
“Are you done?” Belle snapped, still agitated by the earlier disagreement.
Anna shook her head and turned away from her sister. “I’m only coming along so you don’t end up making a fool out of yourself.”
“And how would I do that?”
“Maybe by snooping around where—”
“Look out,” Harlem screamed as loud as he could, interrupting Anna before she could deliver her full sentence.
Belle intuitively slammed her foot onto the brake and turned the wheel to one side, bringing the whole car to an abrupt halt.
Shooting across the wooden bridge and swerving to miss their car at the last second, was a lumbering truck painted like an antique shop. The side of the truck said Delta’s Fine Antiques.
Within seconds, the truck had disappeared around the bend and behind the trees.
Belle sat breathing with some difficulty, parked at an angle on the side of the road, her front tires touching the edge of the water running under the bridge.
“Did we seriously just get pushed off the road by a cheap traveling salesman?” Anna asked.
“Seems so,” Harlem noted.
“Sheesh, I thought we were dead,” Belle whispered, finally catching her breath.
The sister’s looked at each other. Meeting each other’s eyes, there was a silent apology for the way each of them had been acting that day toward one another.
“You okay?” Belle asked.
“Yeah, you?” Anna replied.
“Perfect.”
Both took a deep breath.
“Maybe you’re right, Belle. She already told him no this morning. He has no right to keep showing up and pestering her,” Anna admitted.
“More reason for us to go check on her.” Shifting the car into reverse, they pulled backward onto the road.
“Hey, the pie made it through all right, too,” Anna smiled, holding up the still perfect steaming dish.
* * *
Approaching the front door of the plantation home, the girls were both surprised to see the door was slightly ajar.
“Uh-oh,” Belle whispered.
“Do you think she just forgot to close and lock it?” Anna asked.
“Are you kidding? Do you remember how many locks she has on that thing?”
“At least three.”
“Cora didn’t just leave her door open or unlocked. She was nervous about intruders, burglars, stuff like that.”
“We better check it out then,” Anna said, knocking firmly on the door. “Cora? It’s Anna and Belle. Are you in there?”
They waited for a few seconds in silence for an answer. None came.
“Try again,” Harlem urged them.
Belle grabbed the knocker and used it, moving the door slightly further open. “Cora. It’s Belle. Are you in there?”
Again, they were only answered with silence from inside the house.
“Better go in,” Harlem encouraged them.
“You’re right,” Belle agreed, using the flat of her palm to push the door open. The cluttered darkness of the house greeted them like a cave.
“Cora? Are you in here?” Anna called.
They paused, waiting. Only the hushed breeze answered them.
“Come on,” Belle said. The sisters squeezed down the skinny hallways past the stairs and toward the study door which was firmly shut. Harlem followed, just letting his shoulders and legs pass through the added walls of junk.
“Cora?” Belle asked, opening the study door.
The room, and the chair where Cora usually sat to watch her soaps, were empty. The tea tray and cookies from earlier that day were still sitting on the coffee table.
“Is that a bad sign?” Anna whispered, wondering just what could have happened. One thing caught her eye. In the chair was a little black, burlap doll. The way it’s hair was made up and the features drawn on made it look like the traveling salesman.
Maybe Belle had been right. Maybe Coraline really was into voodoo.
“Let’s split up and find her. I’ll finish searching this floor. Harlem, you see if you can find anything upstairs,” Belle figured it would be easiest for him to squeeze through any small pockets or pathways up there.
“And me?” Anna asked in a mouse’s voice.
“You see if you can find a basement or a cellar.”
“A cellar?”
“Yep. That’s right.”
“Oooh, I don’t like this. Not one bit,” Anna moaned, wringing her hands. It was like the beginning to a horror movie, and the person assigned to check the cellar was doomed to
die first. She did not want to go down there.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find her,” Belle patted her sister’s arm.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Anna whispered as Harlem and Belle dispersed to other portions of the house.
* * *
Entering the kitchen, one of the more likely places to find a cellar door, Anna turned around in a circle.
Every wall in the room was covered with either cabinets or shelves, giving it a cluttered and claustrophobic atmosphere—although less so than most of the rooms in the house. At first glance, it appeared there was no cellar door in this room.
Anna was prepared to leave and check under the stairs when she noticed some red spots on the tile. It looked like drips of tomato juice . . . or blood. Her heart sped up as her eyes followed the small trail of them, leading to a small pile of some pre-packed foods—cans of soup, boxes of macaroni, and even a bag of flour—sitting on the floor in front of a slightly crooked floor-to-ceiling shelf.
At first, she wanted to pay it no mind and get out of there. After all, the whole place had random junk scattered everywhere. However, in the kitchen, which was kept cleaner than the rest of the rooms, the items on the floor felt out of place.
Groaning inwardly, Anna couldn’t help but check it out.
Crouching down and grabbing one of the cans, she noticed something odd. The shelf had wheels on the bottom of it. Why would it need wheels? Was Cora moving it often?
Leaning her face down until it was almost touching the tile, the cool air coming off on her cheek, she looked underneath. It was dark and hard to see, but she was certain there was something back there.
Picking up all the items and setting them on the table out of the way, Anna gripped the shelf. Carefully and slowly, she pulled backward, swinging the large piece of furniture aside.
What she found behind it made her gasp.
A door in the wall was left slightly cracked, the little trail of blood droplets disappeared inside.
“Oh, gosh,” she whispered. This was looking more and more like a horror movie. She didn’t like it at all.
Stepping forward, she gently pushed on the door with her fingertips. It creaked open, revealing a wooden stairway leading down into the darkness.
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