Booked for Trouble (12 page)

The word “ordinary” might have been what caught my mom's attention. She stopped. “Oh, right. History.”

“Sounds fascinating. Lead on, Louise Jane,” I said.

She gave me her circling-barracuda smile. “The most . . .
intense . . . ghostly activity is at the lighthouse, Suzanne. In Lucy's own apartment, as a matter of fact. People have been driven to leap from her window by the force of the haunted presence.”

“What?” Mom said, her bored, yet polite, disinterest disappearing with the speed of a barracuda snatching up a minnow.

“Nonsense,” I said. “That story you told me about someone killing themselves back in the nineties? Bertie says no such thing ever happened.”

“Bertie would, wouldn't she?” Louise Jane put a hand on Mom's arm. “No need to worry about Lucy, Suzanne. My mother and grandmother have a lifelong interest in the spiritual happenings of the Outer Banks. They gave me some . . . instruments to use to keep Lucy safe in her apartment.” Her voice trailed off. “Of course, spells lose their strength over time. But that shouldn't matter. As long as she doesn't stay too long.”

Wasn't that a direct hit?
Mom was nodding in agreement. She might not believe in ghosts or in talismans against them, but she did like the sound of me not staying too long. Shortly after my arrival, Louise Jane had laid a row of herbs that she called her grandmother's spells across my door. I don't know whether they got rid of any spooks, but they'd proved highly ineffective when I was attacked by a mad killer in the lighthouse and had to defend myself with the help of Charles the cat and a classic work of literature.

Louise Jane held the door to the deck open. Simultaneously the three of us reached into our bags and pulled out sunglasses. Children splashed and shouted in the pool while parents relaxed under sun umbrellas with colorful drinks at their side. The wooden boardwalk, gray with age
and covered with windblown sand, curved through the sea oats and beach grass, over the dunes and to the beach. The pool area was surrounded by a tall fence, but as we were standing on the steps, I could see over it to a line of parked cars. As I watched, a woman dressed in the hotel's housekeeping uniform, climbed out of a rusty Impala.

“First stop,” Louie Jane said, lowering her voice. Mom leaned closer to hear. Despite myself, I did also. “The swimming pool was built over a graveyard.”

I snorted.

“Did you know, Suzanne,” Louise Jane said, “that this coast is called the Graveyard of the Atlantic?”

Of course Mom knew that. She'd been raised on the Outer Banks. Her father had been a fisherman, for heaven's sake. Louise Jane didn't wait for a reply. “Because of the number of shipwrecks. Many went down near here.” She lifted a hand and pointed out to sea. I was reminded of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come pointing Ebenezer Scrooge toward his doom. “So many bodies washed up over the centuries. So many of them nameless and unclaimed. Many of them were buried here. When time came to build the hotel, the bones were dug up and the pool was put in that very spot.”

“I didn't read that in the hotel information brochure,” Mom said.

“My grandmother tells me that spirits usually move with their bones. But some do not. They're bound to the place in which they were laid to rest. In some cases”—Louise Jane lowered her voice still further—“they may have been laid to rest without actually being dead.”

“Surely not,” Mom said.

“Prolonged immersion in cold water can lead to a state that appears like death. An unknown body and a quick
burial, all during a time of few doctors and no advanced medical equipment.” Louise Jane shivered in delight. “I can't imagine a worse fate than to be buried alive. When they awoke, the unfortunate souls would have tried to claw their way out. Even now, centuries later, they are still trying to get out.”

Louise Jane was good—I had to give her that. In the brilliant sunshine and the damp heat, surrounded by laughing, swimming children and sunbathing, rum-punch-swigging adults, I saw Mom shiver and rub her arms. I have to confess to feeling a sudden chill myself.

I doubted very much that I'd find this story in any of the ghost legends of the Outer Banks. Louise Jane liked to make them up—or, as she said, tell the hidden ones. I suspect she chose her subjects so as to have maximum impact on her listeners, to make it personal.

“Does your room overlook the pool, Suzanne?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Be sure to keep your balcony door closed at night.”

“Or what?” I said.

Louise Jane's barracuda smile turned into her circling-shark one. “Your skepticism does you credit, Lucy. But I wouldn't want your mom to have a—shall we say—fright because you mocked my precautions.”

That put me neatly in my place.

“Now, let's go back inside. What floor are you on, Suzanne?”

“The second.”

“Really? That is interesting.”

We trooped back into the hotel and up the steps, arriving on the second floor by the back stairs. In the stairwell, paint was peeling from the walls, the concrete was
cracking from one corner to the other, and patches of rust spotted the railing. On the landing, a housekeeping cart stood abandoned, piled high with dirty laundry. I've never understood why in public buildings elevators are kept all shiny and polished, yet stairs are allowed to be dirty and unadorned. Is there a universal plot to discourage people from getting a bit of exercise?

We emerged onto the second floor. No one else was in sight. “I heard about that necklace being found in your bag,” Louise Jane said.

“Who told you that?” I said.

She waved her hand. “Word gets around.”

“I did not steal it,” Mom said. “I explained that to the police. A minor misunderstanding.”

“Exactly my point. When I heard your room's on the second floor, then everything became clear.”

When she heard . . . about two minutes ago. I let that one slide.

“What became clear?” Mom said.

“We think of ghosts as Civil War soldiers or women in long dresses carrying candles through gloomy Scottish castles, but of course, unnatural death didn't end when the modern era began. Ghosts can also be our contemporaries. Case in point, a maid in this very hotel killed herself after being caught stealing from the guest rooms.”

“Imagine that,” I said.

“It was about twenty or so years ago. Of course the hotel hushed the whole thing up.”

“Of course,” I said.

“My grandmother was brought in to help, and things settled down for a while. But it's possible she's come back.”

“Your grandmother's back?” I said.

Louise Jane gave me a glare that would freeze the water in the swimming pool.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I reminded myself not to openly antagonize Louise Jane. Let her have her fun.

“The maid is back. It happened like this. She was a local girl, not well educated. Some say she was simpleminded. She was seduced by a dishwasher in the restaurant. He spun her a story about needing money to pay for an operation for his mother. Only if his mother was well again, and not a burden on him, would he be free to marry.”

This time it was Mom's turn to snort. “Never heard that one before.”

“You are so right, Suzanne. It's a shame what awful fools some women can be.” I thought Louise Jane showed amazing restraint by not looking at me as she said that. “He persuaded her to steal from the rooms. She'd be discovered eventually, of course, but the plan was that they'd be long gone by then.”

“Presumably having forgotten all about the mother,” Mom said.

“Exactly. As could have been predicted, once the dishwasher had the jewelry, he left, without taking the maid or his mother with him. Before the girl could be arrested, she killed herself.”

“Poor thing,” Mom said, her voice full of genuine sympathy.

“She walked into the sea the night of a major storm. It was three days before her body washed up.”

“How awful,” Mom said.

“What's that have to do with the second floor?” I said.

“She was the second-floor housemaid, of course.”

“She didn't kill herself in the hotel.”

“Try to follow along, Lucy, honey. She's haunted by her guilt. Her guilt at the theft, her heartbreak at having been abandoned by her lover. She haunts this hotel, attempting to undo her mistake. She wants to put the stolen items back!”

We said nothing for a few moments. The shadows in the hallway seemed to lengthen. A couple came out of a room at the far end of the corridor. They passed us with vacant smiles and dips of their chins, and went down the stairs.

“I believe,” Louise Jane said, once they were gone, “she took that necklace and put it in your room, Suzanne.”

Mom looked as though she wanted to believe Louise Jane.

I tried to play nicely. “Be that as it may, it's hardly a story we can take to the police. And what about Karen? Dying so soon after the necklace was stolen. I can't believe those two incidents aren't related.”

“The spirit world—so my grandmother tells me—is highly connected. One to the other. That long-ago maid can't leave this hotel. She can't leave this floor. But can she communicate? She must have been furious that the necklace, which she wanted to save, was removed from the hotel. The press are saying Karen was found in the marsh, but we know that's not true, don't we, Lucy?”

“What of it?”

“You remember I told you about the workers killed when the lighthouse was being built? Crushed by tons of heavy stone. They were standing at the base of the lighthouse, weren't they? In the exact spot Karen was found. I'm not fully convinced, but my grandmother insists that it's possible those nineteenth-century workmen had
been communicating, in some way, with the twentieth-century hotel maid.”

“That's getting to be too much for me,” Mom said.

“I thought you should know, Suzanne. The lighthouse is a highly haunted place. Your daughter's awful brave to want to continue living there.”

“I'm sure it won't be for long,” Mom said. “Now, how about we forget all about ghosts and hauntings and death and have a drink?”

*   *   *

I returned from the ladies' room to find Louise Jane telling Mom that she was prepared to step into the empty position at the library the moment I left. Mom smiled at me as I pulled up my chair. “Isn't that nice, dear, to know you don't have to worry about leaving your colleagues in the lurch?”

Mom had ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio. I was having a hot tea, and Louise Jane had an Outer Banks Brewing Station Ale. No matter how much Louise Jane and Mom might conspire to get me to leave the Outer Banks, I had no intention of going anywhere, so I shouldn't have minded their scheming. But I did, and so I stubbornly insisted on staying to have a drink with them.

“If you're interested in the paranormal history of this area,” Louise Jane said to my mom, who had never before in her entire life shown the least bit of interest in history, paranormal or otherwise, “I'd love to tell you some of my ideas for the haunted exhibit the library's putting on in the fall.”

“Thinking of perhaps putting on. Maybe,” I said pettily. “How's Dad, by the way?”

“I assume your father is well,” Mom replied, an answer that meant absolutely nothing.

“Good afternoon, ladies.” A booming voice sounded
behind me as George, manager, arrived at our table. “I hope you had a pleasant day.”

“Very nice, thank you,” Mom said.

“Why, you have nothing to go with your drinks.” He snapped his fingers and a waiter appeared in a puff of smoke. “A bowl of mixed nuts and a couple plates of whatever's good in the kitchen. Put it on my account.”

The waiter scurried to do the boss's bidding.

“That's very kind of you, George,” Mom said.

Uninvited, he plopped down in the vacant fourth chair. “Nothing's too much for an old friend.” He beamed at Mom. She smiled back.

My head spun.

“Louise Jane was giving Lucy and me a tour of the hotel.”

George blinked in confusion. “If you wanted a tour, Sue, I would've been happy to show you around.”

“Louise Jane's tour was highly individual. Fascinating, too, wasn't it, dear?”

“Fascinating.”

“Gotta run.” Louise Jane swallowed the last of her beer in one gulp. She jumped to her feet. “Are you working tomorrow, Lucy?”

“Yes.”

“That's too bad. You won't be able to come with us. See you tomorrow, Suzanne.” She dashed away before the hotel manager realized she was trying to scare the life out of his guests with stories of undead housemaids lurking on the second floor.

The idea of Louise Jane spending more time with my mom was scaring the life out of me.

“Tomorrow?” I said to Mom. “You're meeting her again?”

“First I've heard of it,” she replied.

The waiter arrived, loaded down with plates piled with appetizers.

I snagged a slice of bruschetta. “I'm off, too. If you, ahem, have to be here longer than you'd planned, why don't you call Dad and ask him to come down?”

“Your father's much too busy.”

“Tell him to make the time. One of his army of lackeys can take his cases. They usually do.”

“I don't want to worry him.”

“Whatever you say, Mom.” I finished off the bruschetta and decided to take a spring roll with me.

Maybe two spring rolls. They were stuffed full of vegetables, weren't they?

As I was crossing the lobby, nibbling on a roll and wondering if I should call my dad myself, I passed the Gray Woman, the one who been hanging around the library. “Hi,” I said.

She raised one eyebrow.

“Lucy Richardson, from the library?” I didn't offer to shake hands. They were, after all, sticky with the remnants of finger foods. Instead I wiped my fingers on a napkin I was still carrying.