A Haunting at Hensley Hall (A Ravynne Sisters Paranormal Mystery) (14 page)

“Which produces unfortunate consequences in felines,” Charlie found herself replying.

“Fortunately for me, I am not of that species,” he returned with a sardonic smile.

“I won’t fence with you, Zack Mallory. If that really is your name.”

“I gave you my bona fides and you checked every one. I know you did because I checked on you.”

Charlie found herself laughing, “Touche!”

“My name is Zack Mallory and I write under a pseudonym which I won’t tell you for personal reasons. I write thrillers. Right now, I am writing a book about serial killers and this house, with it history, is the perfect place to stimulate me. For several reasons, actually, which I won’t elaborate on just yet,” he told them.

Charlie couldn’t help but agree. This would be the perfect spot for him. And if he intended to include the mystery of Breanna’s disappearance and presumed death, as well as the murders of the other girls, how could it do anything other than further their own goal of setting things right in their home? “Okay, let’s strike a bargain. We are interested in anything you turn up for our own reasons, which
we
won’t elaborate on. You can poke around all you want, but you
will
share your findings with us.”

“I see. You have an interest in finding out about Breanna Hensely and the other girls. And Devon. The so very mysterious Devon,” he returned smoothly with a wry twist to his mouth that struck the wrong cord in Meg.

Heatedly, she replied, “We don’t just
rent
a room. We live here and it’s only natural we would want to know those things. If you listened to the…”

“Come on, Meg, before you say something we’ll both regret, if you know what I mean?” Charlie told her, as she flung a steely glance in Zack’s direction, and dragged her sister from the room. Meg jerked free and hurried down the stairs with Charlie close behind.

When they reached the kitchen, Charlie grabbed Meg’s arm and spun her around. “I’m sorry for dragging you out of there like that, but I don’t want Zack Mallory to know any more than he has to. Okay?”

Meg sniffed loudly. “You are forgiven this once. I’m not so sure about the next time. And there will be
one
. You can’t help yourself.”

“What are you two quarreling about? Was he robbin’ you blind?” Annie asked as she came in from outside, where she had taken Freddie “to relieve his wee self”.

“No, he’s writing a book on serial killers and is doing some ‘research’ up in the attics. Now, it’s
with
our permission,” Charlie told her.

“Humph!” she replied with a snort. “He’ll be havin’ you two believin’ anything his handsome devil mouth be sayin’! Anyone who’d be writing such grisly stuff would have to be a real nutter!”

Leaving Annie to mull things over, Charlie and Meg returned to the library with Freddie prancing between them. Settling into a pair of wingback chairs, they were both thoughtful for a long moment and then Meg said, “Maybe he is the devil! Maybe he is Devon! He’s dark like Devon, though he looks a lot younger, but with botox and cosmetic surgery he could manage that easily enough.”

“I checked his references and called the college to confirm his employment, but of course Devon would have had forty years to establish a new identity. He could be anyone by now!” Charlie said.

“Devon was never arrested for the murders and they wouldn’t have fingerprinted him just because they were having a slow day,” Meg replied. “So there are no prints on file for comparison…even if the local police would check them for us…which they probably wouldn’t.”

Charlie raised one brow, then said, “Well, looks like we’re stuck with whatever he tells us.”

“But if we
did
get a set of prints, maybe we could get someone to run them for us, then we’d be able to find out if he’s ever been arrested for anything under the name Zack Mallory, wouldn’t we?” Meg asked, frowning in concentration.”

“But Zack’s prints wouldn’t prove he’s not Devon, if we don’t have Devon’s prints for comparison, and that’s what we’re really worried about,” Charlie added with a frown of her own.

“But it wouldn’t
hurt
to know if there’s any skeletons rattling around in Zack Mallory’s cupboards, though the college wouldn’t have hired him if he had a felony on his record, would they,” Meg asked.

“No, they wouldn’t, but perhaps with the right connections he had his record expunged,” Charlie replied. “At this point, what do we really know about any of this? We know Breanna is probably dead, because her ghost is here.”

“And we know Devon is probably alive because his ghost isn’t,” Meg continued.

“We strongly suspect Devon is a murderer of at least three young women,” Charlie added, “and we don’t know where he is.”

“We’re hoping
where
is someplace far from here, but he could be Zack,” Meg said pointedly. “So, we’re going to try and get his prints which probably…”

“Won’t prove or disprove a blessed thing,” Charlie finished for her.

“You know this whole thing is probably a wild goose chase.

“Yes…but let’s get the prints and see what we can find out about our new boarder. I rather like chasing this goose…wild and or not!” Charlie told her with a laugh.

***

They waited the next morning until they heard his car start up and head down the drive. If he kept to his usual pattern, he would be gone for more than an hour, which was enough time to do what they had to do.

Leaving Freddie with Annie, the sisters headed up the stairs towards Zack’s rooms. Feeling like spies in their own house, they were silent as they crept down the hall to the carved panel door at the end. Meg laughed nervously, “Here we are creeping about and he’s long gone with nobody to hear us.”

“As to that, who knows? Doesn’t your skin crawl whenever you pass the Hensley suite?”

“Yes, but I thought I wouldn’t mention it. It’s been kind of quiet for weeks and I didn’t want to jinx it. Got the key, I hope, the one you said you didn’t have?” Meg asked brightly.

Charlie fished it from her pocket and waved it under Meg’s nose. “Right here.” She opened the door and they slipped inside. It smelled faintly of an expensive men’s cologne, and pipe smoke. .Books and more books were piled here and there. His laptop sat on the desk in front of the window in the exact same position as Charlie’s own laptop at the opposite end of the house “We’ll need something he won’t miss till we lift the prints. You look around, Meg, while I take a look at his computer. I want to find out what his pseudonym is…the one he wouldn’t tell us… and any other bits of personal stuff I can glean.”

Meg poked about. He was orderly: she gave him that. Opening the armoire, she looked inside. He liked nice labels…something their sister Rayne would appreciate. She picked up a brandy bottle and studied the label. Probably expensive, too, though she was no judge. “Do you think we could take this glass and get it back here before he comes home?” she asked Charlie, who was swearing under her breath as she tried to crack the laptop’s password.

“If we knew more about him, I would have some chance at this, but as things stand, it’s hopeless. Read me some of his book titles, Meg, maybe that will give me a clue.”

They both looked up as a too familiar male voice said silkily, “It seems I forgot to mail a letter and what do I find? If you wanted my fingerprints, all you had to do was ask. But, as far as my computer goes, that’s something else entirely. Believe me, Charlie, you will never guess the password in whatever is left of your lifetime.”

To their dismay, they both colored guiltily like schoolgirls caught in some prank. Charlie was the first to recover a bit of her composure. “I know this looks like snooping.” He quirked one dark brow and she was forced to continue since the ground, despite her fervent wish, refused to swallow her up. “And we
are
snooping. We aren’t entirely comfortable with what we know about you.” He raised both brows and smiled, then waited for her to go on. “Yes, I checked what you gave me, but it’s not unknown for someone to steal someone else’s identity and start a new life.”

“And I would do that because my own identity ceased to amuse me? What’s your real reason for invading the privacy I so adamantly insisted on?”

Meg answered for her. “We think you may be Devon?”

He appeared to be considering that and then he spoke. “You don’t think Devon is dead as previously reported? How very interesting. May I ask why?”

Charlie smiled despite herself. “If we told you, you would never believe us. Besides, there seems to be more than one mystery, where you are concerned, that you choose not to enlighten us on, so ‘touche’.”

“Then we appear to be at an impasse. Should you choose to share, you know where to find me. The other key, please!”

Charlie handed it to him. “You know I could have just picked the lock,” she told him loftily, as she swept out of the room, pulling Meg behind her. They both heard his laugh all the way down the hall.

Charlie tucked into her own writing and Meg tackled the tangle of climbing roses that had invaded a large section of her ‘some day’ garden space. She wasn’t entirely sure it was the best time of year to be pruning, but decided to go for it. Freddie romped beside her, as she wielded the pruning shears with a vengeance. She stopped and took a deep breath, then flexed her shoulders to relieve the strain. This is way more work than she had imagined it would be, she thought, as she brushed back a strand of hair from her eyes with the back of her canvas gloved hand. “And hot!”

At that moment, Freddie scared up a rabbit that had been hiding under the roses and took off like an arrow. “Not that you’d know what to do with it if you should catch it, Freddie, but, just in case, I don’t want a dead rabbit on your conscience or mine,” she muttered as she gave chase. She cornered him next to the potting shed, eyeing a hole where the rabbit had made good his escape. She scooped him up in her arms. “You are a willful bundle of fur,” she said with a smile, as his pink tongue found the tip of her nose. “Let me just finish that one corner, then we’ll go inside out of the sun and get us both a nice cold drink.”

She carried him back and sat him in the shade. Squinting up at the sun, she saw it was almost noon and the hottest time of the day. Why hadn’t she thought to wear her hat? Might as well go in now and come back later, she thought. “Freddie, let’s go. Freddie?”

She stopped and looked around, then spotted him up to his elbows under the roses she’d just pruned. He was digging furiously, dirt flying in all directions…a lot of it landing on top of him.

“Oh, Freddie. Look at you! You’re a mess.” She bent down next to him and tried brushing some of the dirt out of his long white fur. A flash of something metallic caught her eye. “What have you found?” she asked him. Moving him to one side, she looked into his crater. “What the?” She reached down and pulled out a locket.

It was yellow gold…old fashioned in design…with the initials ‘BH’ worked in small diamonds. “It’s lovely,” she murmured. Opening the catch, she looked inside. A lock of black hair lay coiled within. “This must have belonged to Breanna, Freddie. Let’s go show Charlie!”

She took off at a run with Freddie giving chase, barking excitedly. She had forgotten entirely about Freddie’s state of dishevelment, when she charged through the kitchen door and sped past Annie. “May the saints presarve us, what’s all the commotion about and what is that wee beast doin’ trackin’ up me fresh mopped floor?”

“Can’t stop now, Annie. I’ll explain later,” she called over her shoulder, as she hurried down the hall to the servants’ stairs. Climbing them two at a time, she arrived out of breath at Charlie’s tower room. Without bothering to knock, she burst inside.

Charlie had been chasing a plot point around in her head, when Freddie and Meg burst in on her. Pivoting in her chair, she turned to face them, her brow creased in irritation, “What the?”

“Look what we found under the rose bushes,” Meg cried, dangling the locket under Charlie’s astonished nose.

Charlie took it from her and studied it carefully. “I’d say there’s every chance the ‘BH’ is for Breanna Hensley, but the lock of black hair? It could be Devon’s. If it’s her’s, why would she keep a lock of her own hair in her locket? Show me where you found this?”

Meg and Charlie hurried downstairs with Freddie racing on ahead. He wouldn’t have been in such a hurry had he known his fate. Annie was waiting for him. “Not a second time you don’t,” she scolded, as she grabbed him by his harness. “I don’t know what has put everyone in such a flap, but this wee beastie is going to be getting’ a bathing before he puts foot to ground again.”

But Meg and Charlie weren’t listening. Abandoning Freddie to his fate, they hurried outside and around the house. “It’s right over here,” Meg told her, leading her to Freddie’s hole.

Kneeling down, Charlie, carefully, brushed the dirt aside. “Look, Meg, there’s a skeleton down here!”

“Oh my God! Tell me it isn’t Breanna,” Meg cried, her blue eyes rounding in alarm.

“No, it’s an animal of some kind. Here, help me dig it out. I want to see the whole thing.”

“Gross!” Meg muttered with a grimace, as she knelt beside her and helped uncover the complete skeleton.

“Looks like a cat to me. A cat with a nasty dent in its skull,” Charlie told her.

“You don’t think it’s Cloud, do you?” Meg whispered.