Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2) (19 page)

Thirty-Seven

Mac clutched the bag of coffee filters. “What?”

Giulia returned the can of coffee to the pantry. “I found the hidden speaker in the bookcase yesterday, after the séance.”

“I—I—”

“Right about now, I’d say you’ve been playing me for publicity.” Giulia opened the refrigerator and brought out one of the new gallons of milk. “A private investigator who found evidence of an actual Stone’s Throw ghost would be great for business.”

Mac dropped the coffee filters and clutched Giulia’s hands. “No, no, it’s not like that. I swear I had nothing to do with the possession or their accident.” She glanced out toward the antique kitchen and pulled Giulia around the corner of the L, out of sight of the doorway. “I use the speaker on Halloween night when the costume party is in full swing. That’s the only time, it really is. I promise.” Her eyes shifted to the counter and the wall, but didn’t meet Giulia’s.

“And last night?”

“What do you mean?” More eye acrobatics.

“Mac, if you want to stick to that story, it’s your choice. Driscoll Investigations doesn’t work this way. We’ll pack up and be out of here before breakfast.”

Mac’s hands clutched tighter. Giulia wished her nails weren’t quite so long.

“No! Please don’t leave. I need your help.”

Giulia inclined her head toward the doorway and Mac lowered her voice.

“This is the truth, I promise. I did turn on the speaker last night. The opportunity dropped into my lap; how could I not use it? Solana with all her eerie atmospheric trappings was good, but I knew a little boost of weeping ghost would put it over the top.” Mac’s words tumbled over each other. “I had just turned the switch off when she pointed at me and spoke in that otherworldly voice.” She finally looked Giulia in the eyes. “All the other séances this summer got us a big fat nothing. The guests got itchy after half an hour. I was thinking about dropping Solana’s act, but I never told her. Never. Now all of a sudden, just when you’re here, she goes full-on
Exorcist
. Rowan was right about you. The Veiled Woman brought the other world into contact with Solana. I admit it; the whole thing scared the shit out of me.”

The perking noises from the coffeepot slowed to an occasional
blip
.

Giulia said, “And the white nightgown she said she followed?”

Mac released Giulia, whose willpower kept herself from rubbing the fingernail-shaped dents in her skin.

“That wasn’t my doing, I swear. I have a gauze dress on wires in the attic that I use on Halloween, but it’s up there now, all packed away. I’ll show you. I don’t know what Solana and Cedar expected to happen in my lighthouse in the middle of the night. Too many weed-laced brownies frying their essential brain cells would be my guess. But I swear on my great-great-great-grandfather’s unhallowed grave that I was asleep in my bed when all this happened. Ask Marion. It took her pounding on my door and ringing my doorbell for more than a minute to wake me.”

The desperation in her hazel eyes clung to Giulia like steam from the coffeepot. Giulia would get nothing useful from Mac in this state. “All right. When this impromptu breakfast breaks up, you and I will take a trip to the attic.”

Mac plunged forward as though to kiss Giulia, but Giulia’s body language must have conveyed “Don’t go there,” because Mac did a one-eighty and started a second pot of coffee. She picked up the first carafe. Giulia poured milk into a cow-shaped creamer and followed her out to the living room.

Not one person spoke until the coffee was poured and whiskey added and the first drinks taken. Giulia and Marion shivered. Gino and Roy sighed.

“That’s better,” Frank said.

Joel handed the cookies around. “All the guys at work who think B&Bs are girly vacation spots will eat their hearts out when I tell them this story.”

“Ghoul,” Gino said.

“What? Nobody’s dead. Broken bones and crazy psychics do not a morbid story make.”

“My grandfather used to add Black Velvet to his coffee,” Mac said. “I tried it once when I was a teenager. This is much better.”

“At least there are enough clouds to give us a really good sunrise,” Marion said. “Look at those colors.”

The men glanced out the bay window and returned to their coffee. CeCe snapped a picture with her phone. Giulia walked to the side of the couch and held the curtain aside to watch the brilliant oranges and reds unimpeded.

“Would anyone like more coffee?” Mac said.

“I would,” Anthony said.

“Me too,” Roy said.

“These are quite possibly the best cookies I’ve ever eaten,” CeCe said.

“That’s the sleep deprivation talking,” Joel said, “but thank you.”

Ten minutes later and without any further conversation, Giulia, Mac, and CeCe gathered cups and napkins. Joel swept up the cookie crumbs.

“I’ll push breakfast back to eleven,” Mac said.

“Works for us,” Gino said.

Marion and Anthony returned to their room, followed up the stairs by the others in twos.

Giulia said to Mac, “Would you like help with the dishes before we head to the attic?”

“No, thanks,” Mac said. “I’ll load these into the dishwasher to give all of them time to get into their rooms.”

A few minutes later, Giulia and Frank followed Mac upstairs, skipping the creaking and cracking steps. They all trod with care up the uncarpeted attic stairs at the end of the third floor so as not to alert CeCe and Roy. Mac unlocked the door.

The sun still lurked behind the pine trees across the lake, but it had risen enough to brighten the end of the attic with the cracked window.

Mac pulled a chain next to the stairs and a long fluorescent bulb lit the near side of the attic. Giulia went directly to the cracked window, kicking up dust that danced in the natural and artificial light.

“Does that say ‘Mine’?” Frank said.

Giulia nodded. She brought her face right up to the glass, but didn’t touch it. The sharp edges glittered in the morning sun. Her opinion remained the same: An artist had crafted this message. The lighthouse ghost was not real.

“I keep the Halloween props in this corner, out of direct sunlight,” Mac said.

Giulia turned back, blinking to adjust to the dimmer light. Mac stood at a metal shelving unit behind one of the eaves. She pulled a long box off the bottom shelf and removed the lid.

“See? Everything’s right where it should be.”

She lifted a thin metal framework looped from end to end with fishing line.

An old-fashioned white nightgown hung from two ends of the fishing line. “The box is covered with dust because I don’t touch this shelf until the last week of September. You see? I didn’t have anything to do with Solana’s dead of night excursion.”

Giulia rubbed the material between her fingers and inspected the mechanism. This could have been the white gown she’d followed on her first night here. “How does it work?”

“See how one of the rods is painted to look like two bricks separated by mortar? I hook that one ten feet up on the lighthouse wall. The other end screws into the catwalk around the light itself.” She lifted a remote switch out from under the folds of material. “I set up a small black light and use this switch to make the nightgown fly up the lighthouse stairs about an hour before midnight on Halloween, depending on how the party’s going. Lucy dresses all in black and hides on the catwalk to roll the nightgown up right away. One or two guests always follow it partway up the stairs. Then I wait for a break between songs on the CD player and turn on the speaker.” She turned the remote over in her hands. “It’s harmless. Everyone always says how entertaining the week is. Then they recommend us to their friends.”

Giulia replaced the dress and Mac fitted the rods and fishing line back into the box.

“What else is up here?” Giulia said, thinking of the footstep-like sounds she’d heard on her Friday exploration.

“Garlands of imitation fall leaves.” Mac touched the boxes as she named their contents. “Victorian dolls in costumes, ghosts and witches, crêpe paper pumpkins, costumes for the cats and the dog.”

Giulia walked through the attic, listening for creaking boards and assessing the shrouded furniture and shelves of seasonal decorations for noise potential. Mac followed her like a fretting shadow. Frank stayed out of the way by the staircase.

“Look,” Mac said when Giulia ended her explorations at the splintered window. “Even if I have an ancestral ghost who carved this message and the scratches on the lighthouse wall, why would she play along with a stranger’s games after all this time? Besides, Solana’s ‘possession’ seems phonier the longer I think about it. I’d bet the utility money those two are complete frauds. I didn’t need them to be genuine to be entertaining.”

Giulia let the silence lengthen after Mac stopped talking. Not ten seconds later, Mac started again.

“It’s all because of that newspaper article. I’ve been telling the story of my stagecoach-robbing ancestor for years. Suddenly my ghost is obsessed with the nonexistent Stone gold hoard? I don’t believe it.”

Giulia said, “If you have a ghost.”

“It’s easier to believe those two Ouija board performers have been secretly messing with my business all month. She changed her face so little during that séance, yet she looked like an entirely different person. She must have amateur theater experience. Plus it’d be easy to sneak in here at night or when I’m busy.”

“Speaking of that, Cedar picked the lock on either the lake door or the porch door to get inside. I advise deadbolts on both doors.”

“He what? Of course he did. I should’ve figured that out. Well, they’re fired as of right now.” Mac stomped toward the stairs. “Deadbolts won’t blend with the restoration décor.”

Giulia mimed swatting the back of Mac’s head.

Thirty-Eight

When Frank came out of the shower a little before ten that same morning, Giulia had been waiting eight minutes for the first fingerprint picture to upload.

“What’s that face for?” he said.

“The Wi-Fi here doesn’t like photo attachments.” She wriggled her mouth and nose. “My face is going to freeze in this expression if this blasted picture doesn’t send. I have eleven more after that.”

“Come with me, fair lady, and I will lead you to the promised land of stronger Wi-Fi signals.”

Giulia hopped off the bed. “You’re a lifesaver. Where?”

“There’s a hot spot on the beach near the boat rental place. I figure it’s the confluence of all the stores. Or something. Zane would probably know.”

“Not probably. Definitely. Let’s go.”

They walked out through the sunroom onto the already populated beach.

When they got within twenty feet of the boat dock, all the bars on Giulia’s phone lit. She plopped herself onto the nearest bench and opened her email. The first attached photo was in her sent folder at last.

“My hero.” She kissed Frank and attached the next photo to a new email. Ten minutes later, all the fingerprint photos had finished sending and she called Zane.

“I sent you a dozen fingerprint pictures.”

“The last upload is almost finished.” Zane’s voice sounded even more Bogart-esque with waves hitting sand in Giulia’s other ear. “What did you use to lift them?”

“Cornstarch, thanks to the internet. Could you run those through our usual processing place as a rush with my apologies?”

“Will do. What if they want to charge extra because of the reverse image?”

“Agree to anything up to thirty percent more than their usual fee. Call me if they try to go higher.” She thought a moment. “If you guys want to keep the door locked while you’re there, do it. Tell Sidney I don’t want her walking to the parking lot by herself even though it’s still light out when she leaves.”

“Yes, Mom.” Sidney’s voice from across the room.

Giulia made a face at the phone. “I’m serious. Can Olivier meet you or even drive you to work for the next week or two?”

Zane said, “Ms. D., I was thinking that if Sidney drives to my house in the morning, I can drive us both here and home again at night.”

“Perfect. Sidney, you know better than to dismiss any threat offhand. Will you please change your schedule to make Zane’s plan work?” Giulia sat up. “What about Jane?”

“Jane says,” Jane’s voice came from close to the phone, “that if pencil-dick comes in here again I’ll shove his head so far up his ass he’ll have to punch a hole in his navel to breathe.”

“Awesome,” Sidney said.

“You rule,” Zane said.

“Jane, I applaud your attitude but do not under any circumstances put yourself in danger. If he shows up again, call 911. Remember, we should be getting the order of protection today or tomorrow.”

Sidney said, “So if we can’t punch his lights out the courts will.”

“Bingo. Zane, email me when you have fingerprint answers. If we’re lucky, they won’t all be the owner’s.”

Breakfast didn’t make it to the table until eleven fifteen, which wasn’t a problem since no one came downstairs before eleven. Fruit-filled crêpes and bacon and egg popovers were a good excuse for lack of table conversation. Yawns and requests to pass the milk or sugar or whipped cream did not count in Miss Manners’ rules as table conversation.

Cedar and Solana appeared in the dining room doorway when Mac began collecting plates an hour later. Frank and Joel grabbed chairs for them and helped them sit. Cedar’s cast stretched from mid-thigh to ankle and he would’ve fallen over his crutches if Frank hadn’t steadied him. Solana had no visible injuries.

“We checked ourselves out of the hospital,” Cedar said. “They weren’t happy. Like I care. I refused to let them put me under to set my leg. Don’t trust any doctors anywhere. My leg’s still numb from the Novocain or whatever they used. I quit counting at ten shots.”

“What did the doctors say?” Mac said.

“My leg’s broken in two places. Cast for six weeks; physical therapy for another six. They gave me a prescription for some controlled substance or other. Stupid drones. All-natural is the way to go.” He winked at the room. “Solana makes these terrific brownies, you see.”

Mac hid her hands beneath her gingham apron. “Solana, did you have a concussion?”

“Not at all.” Her serene smile took in everyone around her. “Temporary inhabitation of the body by a spirit causes certain physical changes, one of which is dilated eyes.”

“But we heard you scream when you fell,” Giulia said.

“That wasn’t me. It was Dorothea Stone reliving her fall from the Widow’s Walk through me.”

Mac said after a long silence, “I see.”

Cedar said, “Any breakfast left?”

Mac returned to the kitchen. A minute later a microwave
beeped
and she returned with two full plates.

Lucy followed with coffee and orange juice.

They ate like two starving people forcing themselves to a sensible pace. Everyone watched. Marion brought out her moleskin notebook and began writing. Giulia sneaked a glimpse and caught the name “Dorothea.” More fodder for their copycat haunted bed and breakfast, perhaps.

“You should’ve seen the glop they tried to feed us at the hospital,” Cedar said around a mouthful of crêpe. “If that mound of yellow paste they called eggs had even one natural ingredient in it I’m Harry Houdini.”

“Mac,” Solana said after dabbing her mouth with a napkin, “your stress is filling the air with blacks and reds. We are not going to sue you. The accident in the lighthouse was my doing because I didn’t properly integrate Dorothea’s spirit into my own.”

Cedar pushed away his empty plate. “That was delicious. We’re heading home to a well-deserved nap.”

Solana, still serene, smiled at Mac again. “You have to keep working on those colors. You have too many reds.”

Giulia wondered if it really was serenity. Detachment, perhaps, from the head injury? From her own supply of pain pills? Probably not from weed-laced brownies if their stash was back home.

Solana floated to her feet. “Would you mind if I took a few photographs of the lighthouse? I’ll send you a link to the story when I publish it on my website.”

Mac turned on her business side. “Of course you may, and thank you. I’ll be interested to read it. Cedar, could I see you in my office for a minute?”

Giulia rose from her chair. “Would you like me to go with you up the lighthouse stairs, Solana, in case you need help balancing?”

“That may be a good idea,” Solana said. “We’ll be back next week, Mac. We want to talk to you about keeping the sessions through the end of October.”

Cedar hauled himself upright. “Damned cement shoe.”

Solana crouched in front of the model in the souvenir room. “Yes…yes…up and down those winding stairs. Night after night, year after year. Circling the gallery and staring out at the lake. So many nights…they blend into each other after so long…”

Giulia wanted to kick her. This dreamy shtick was as bad as a cheesy Saturday night horror movie. Then Giulia wanted to kick herself. The detective business wreaked havoc on her Franciscan values of peace and forgiveness. She supposed there was a slim chance Solana wasn’t showing off her Stanislavski acting skills.

Speaking of the Franciscan mindset, cynicism was not one of the attitudes to cultivate.

Solana patted the lighthouse model and stood. “I’m not wholly back in this century yet. Would you mind taking pictures for me as I point things out?”

“Not at all.” Giulia gave her Bright Smile Number Two, reserved for medium-sized annoyances.

She followed Solana to the base of the spiral stairs and took photos at her direction. The stairs. The windows. The light. They climbed halfway up, Giulia behind Solana in case she got dizzy, and Giulia took the same photos from that angle. They climbed to the top and captured the Widow’s Walk and the view out to the lake.

Giulia went first down the stairs to continue as dizziness fall blocker if needed. Solana didn’t converse. Giulia’s newfound cynic put the odds of Solana in deep thought at twenty percent, Solana communing with the spirits at ten percent, and Solana calculating her next move to fool the rubes at a solid seventy percent.

Giulia’s conclusion: She herself needed a refresher course in how to compartmentalize work and spirituality.

Frank and Roy hovered outside Mac’s office. Raised voices behind the closed door warned Giulia in time.

She led still-floating Solana past the office and out onto the porch, talking in her ear all the way about the experience of being inhabited by Dorothea Stone. Solana sat in the basket chair. Giulia hurried back into the house.

The voices grew loud enough for Giulia to hear the exit interview.

“You can’t blame us for your lack of security,” Cedar said.

“I can completely blame you for breaking and entering. Do you treat all your clients’ property as your personal playground?”

“We did nothing of the sort.” Cedar’s voice cracked when he got defensive. “You hired us to contact your family ghost.”

“Read your contract,” Mac said. “I hired you to conduct a weekly séance to entertain my guests.”

“Now you’re objecting to our success?”

“What success? Your wife gave a convincing performance Sunday night. I admit that. Don’t try to claim she contacted a ghost that doesn’t exist.”

“What?” His voice cracked again.

“Now you’re claiming selective amnesia? I told you and your wife about my family legends so you could use them effectively in your performances. You—”

“You liar! Your friend Rowan told us you were a true believer. You sure believe everything she tells you. What’s so different about us?”

“Rowan never broke into my house in the middle of the night. Lucy’s inventorying the heirloom case as we speak.”

Cedar abandoned complete sentences for disjointed excuses and profane accusations. Frank and Roy reached for the door handle at the same instant, but it opened before either of them touched it.

Mac held the door wide and pointed to the porch. “You’re fired. Get out and don’t come back.”

Giulia opened the screen door. Cedar crutched out by himself. Tweedledum and Tweedledee eyed the crutches and flexed their claws. Roy, CeCe, Marion, and Anthony crowded onto the porch. Mac blocked the doorway.

Cedar gave the cats a threatening grimace and said to Mac. “Thanks for nothing. Let’s go, Sol.”

Solana had apparently heard none of the argument, since she and Mac air-kissed. She pressed Giulia’s hands with deep sincerity, and Cedar hobbled down the porch with his wife at his side.

“He’s not going to drive, is he?” Roy said in a stage whisper.

“I think she is,” CeCe said in the same tone of voice.

“She told me in the lighthouse that she couldn’t operate her camera phone because she wasn’t fully in the twenty-first century yet,” Giulia said.

“This won’t end well,” Frank said.

“Should we warn the police?” Marion said.

Anthony shrugged. “What would we say?”

“A psychic channeling a nineteenth-century ghost is driving a Prius down South Lake Road. The ghost does not have a valid driver’s license.” Frank chuckled. “They’ll tell us to stop drinking at breakfast.”

The group watched the slate blue car navigate the oval driveway.

“She avoided the grass.”

“Good thing the gate is still open.”

“She’s turning without a signal.”

“Holy cripes, she almost sideswiped that garbage truck.”

No one moved until the Prius was out of sight. As they filed inside, Giulia’s ears were anticipating the
screech-crash
of Solana/Dorothea’s inattention, but only the usual traffic noises reached them.