Leighann Dobbs - Mystic Notch 02 - A Spirited Tail (15 page)

“Oh, that’s Euphoria, she’s a Selkirk Rex.”  Gladys bent down and the cat trotted over to her, submitting to a few scratches behind the ear before she feigned disinterest, turning her attention to the logs of wood. 

Gladys stood and brushed cat hair off her white painter’s pants. “Anyway, what can I help you with?”

“Well, I’ve been commissioned to catalogue the library of Charles Van Dorn and was wondering if I could ask you a few questions. I heard you used to be his housekeeper.” My cheeks burned and my mouth felt dry. I was never good at telling lies. Of course, I wasn’t actually lying; what I’d said was true. I just neglected to add in the part about how Steve was in jail and I probably had no business with the Van Dorn library anymore.

Her eyes sparked at the mention of Charles Van Dorn and she narrowed them at me. “Cataloguing his library? … I thought the contents of the house were held up in some issue with his brother or something.”

“Oh, it was, but the brother died and the estate passed to Charles’ nephew.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t say! When did this happen? I’m afraid I don’t get TV or newspapers here and I don’t go into town much. We’re pretty self-sufficient.”

“The new owner flew in a couple of days ago and opened the house. He’s already sold some of the contents.”

Gladys cheek ticked. She took a red and black bandana out of her back pocket and wiped her brow with shaky hands. 

“I guess you and Mr. Van Dorn must have been very close.”

Her brow creased. “Why do you say that?”

“I found a photo album and you look quite friendly in the pictures. Actually, he had quite a lot of pictures of you in there, which is pretty unusual. I mean, people don’t usually have a lot of photos of their housekeepers in the family photo albums, do they?” I shrugged. “That’s why I figured you guys were so close.”

More sweat beaded on her brow and she swiped at it with the hanky. Her eyes darted around the yard. 

“Yes, I guess you could say we were close. Now if you’ll excuse me, I just realized I’m late for an appointm—.” 

“Hey, Ma—” A tall, thin man with graying hair came careening around the corner, looking from Gladys to me inquisitively. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t realize you had company.”

“This is Willa Chance from the bookstore downtown.” Gladys waved a hand at me. “She was just leaving.”

“Oh? What does she want?” The man looked down at his mother who simply turned him around and pushed him toward the house.

“Sorry, Willa,” she shot over her shoulder. “Maybe we can talk some other time, but right now I’m late.”

And with that, she shut the door just as the curly orange cat slipped inside through the crack.

I walked back to my car feeling somewhat dejected. I hadn’t found out much about her relationship with Van Dorn, but I had discovered one thing.  After Gladys found out Van Dorn’s house was for sale, she was pretty eager to get rid of me, which made me wonder … did Gladys Primble have something to hide?

Chapter Fourteen

I was still thinking about Gladys’s odd behavior as I bent down to put the key in the lock of my bookstore. A swirl of snowy white and pale green material caught my eye, and I looked up in time to see the gauzy skirts of two dresses disappearing around the corner to the alley—Felicity and Claire.

“That’s it, I’ve had enough!” I ran to the mouth of the alley to tell them off, but the alley was empty. They must have run the length of the alley and were already out onto the other street.  If it had just been Felicity, I might have considered that she’d made the quick getaway by flying off on her broomstick, but my jury was still out on Claire. 

“I know you guys are following me and I want you to stop now!” I yelled into the empty alley, then trudged back to open my shop.

Pandora and Ranger eyed me lazily as I unlocked the bookstore and opened for the afternoon’s business.

“I’m glad Steve got arrested, but that means I won’t be able to go to Van Dorn’s to talk to Charles,” I said out loud. “And it makes me wonder what will happen to the house now.”

“Mew.” Pandora stretched in her cat bed, her back humped like a horseshoe.

“Maybe I don’t need to find Charles’ killer at all. I mean, he hasn’t bothered me in a few days and I don’t think he’d venture from the mansion.”

Pandora leapt onto the counter, staring at me with her greenish-gold eyes as if she was hanging on my every word.

“And really, who cares about a fifty-year-old murder, anyway?  The important thing is that I helped find Bruce Norton’s killer.”

“Meow!” Pandora shot her paw out, knocking several pens to the floor.

“Okay, well, if you
were
giving me hints about the pen—which I’m not convinced you were—you can stop now because we caught the guy.”

She swatted more pens to the floor.

“Sure, I get it. You want me to keep investigating Charles’ murder.” I bent down and picked up the pens. “I do have to admit, I am curious as to who did it. My money is on Gladys.”

“Meow!” Pandora head butted my chin.

“You, too?  But what I really want to know is what is in that journal everyone seems to be looking for.” 

“Brrill.” Pandora made a vibrating meowing noise.

“But I guess that will probably stay locked away at the Van Dorn Mansion for another fifty years. If only Charles was here so I could ask him.”

“You rang?”

The voice startled me and I dropped the pens, whirling around to see none other than Charles Van Dorn’s ghost proving that he did, in fact, leave the mansion, which probably didn’t bode well for me.

“So there you are. Where were you when I had questions?” I bent to retrieve the pens again.

“Sorry, I was off in the nethers.  But don’t you worry. I’m going to be close by your side from now on … at least until you solve my murder. I have a very good reason now to pass to the other side.”

“Oh? And what might that be?”

He wagged his finger at me. “Never you mind. You just focus on finding out who killed me. Do you have any leads?”

Pandora jumped to the floor, batting at the swirling mist flowing around Charles’ feet. He glanced down with a smile, then bent down to pet her, his hand passing right through her and causing her to shiver. Ranger seemed oblivious to the whole interaction, making me wonder if other animals could see ghosts, or if it was a talent only Pandora possessed.

I watched him pet the cat and wondered if he was the type to have two lovers. Maybe he had been having a fling with both Lily and Gladys and Gladys had found out and killed them both. 

“I might have a couple of leads,” I said. “Like maybe it was a jealous lover.”

Charles bolted up from his crouched position, looking rather indignant. “What? I never!”

“I found the love letters.”

His face, usually an opaque swirly white color, turned pink. 

“Those are not what you think,” he sputtered.

“You don’t think your secret lover could have killed you?”

“No.”

“Was there some sort of lover’s triangle with you, Lily and someone else?”

“Certainly not!” Charles boomed. “Lily did have someone interested in
her,
though … a secret admirer of sorts, but not the kind anyone would want to have. This one sent her creepy letters and notes. 
That’s
who I think killed her. In fact, I was gathering my evidence when I was killed, probably by the same person!”

“Or maybe someone was jealous of your attention to her and killed you both,” I interjected.  “A spurned lover, perhaps?”

“What? I didn’t have any spurned lover.”

“What about Gladys Primble?”

“Gladys? She was married, for goodness sake.”

“All the more reason to keep it hush, hush,” I pointed out.

“You think I had an affair with Gladys and she killed me?”

I shrugged. It was a good theory and there were several reasons that Gladys fit the bill. They could have had a lover’s quarrel. Maybe he paid too much attention to Lily and she got mad? 

I remembered Gladys’ son. He would be in his early fifties—just about the right age to be Charles’ son.  Maybe she got pregnant, Charles spurned her, and she killed him in a fit of rage.

But that didn’t fit because Charles’ murder was premeditated and set up to look like a suicide on purpose. Maybe they weren’t even having an affair and she killed him simply because she knew he was going to leave her money when he died.

But
why
would he leave her money in the first place?

“If you weren’t having an affair, then why did you leave her money?”

“Harumph.” Van Dorn’s bushy eyebrows pinched and wiggled together, like two caterpillars fighting. “That’s none of your concern. Gladys was a valued employee and she did me a great service while I was alive and some of that extended after I died.”

“What? What do you mean she did you a service
after you died
?”

“Never mind, it has nothing to do with my death. Aren’t you going to follow the trail I was already on?”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What evidence did you find?”

“Lily was found murdered with one of my favorite cufflinks in her hand. That was a setup. My cufflinks had gone missing earlier that weekend. Of course, the police didn’t believe me, but you can ask anyone who was at the house. Anyway, there was one other thing that the police never thought was important, and I think that’s the clue to the real killer.”

“And what was that?”

Van Dorn leaned toward me. “There was talcum powder in her hair.”

“Talcum powder?”

“Yes. And quite a bit of it, too. Lily didn’t use it. She didn’t have any in her room. It was as if the killer sprinkled it there on purpose, or it fell from them onto her.”

My brows knit together and I pictured the deep crease that was going to become permanent in between them if I kept frowning like this. This was his big clue? I didn’t want to insult him, but I couldn’t see how talcum powder would help us solve the murder.

“Why would the killer do that?” I asked.

“That’s for you to figure out,” Charles said. “And I’m going to stick to you like glue until you do.”

Great. I could hardly wait to have an annoying ghost tagging along everywhere I went.  I tilted my head and looked at him. He was looking back with his most sincere face, but I had to wonder if he was hiding something or lying to me. I didn’t think so—my investigator’s intuition told me he was telling me what he knew. 

But why wouldn’t he tell me who those love letters were to? I was just about to ask when the bells over the door jingled, pulling my attention away long enough to see Pepper rush in, waving her hands, her face flushed. 

I turned back to Charles, but he was gone.

“Did you hear the news?” Pepper asked. 

I swung my attention back in her direction. “What?”

“Steve Van Dorn has been released.” Pepper’s green eyes looked huge in contrast to her peaches and cream complexion. “He didn’t kill Bruce.”

“What? That can’t be right. He had the pen and a motive.” 

“Mew!” Pandora batted a pen out from under the chair as if to accentuate my words.

I picked up the pen and held it up. “See, even Pandora agrees.”

Pepper frowned at the pen, then at Pandora. “Okay, well, I’m telling you he was released. It turns out he has an air-tight alibi.”

I let that sink in for a few seconds. Steve wasn’t Bruce’s killer? That changed things. 

But, if Steve didn’t kill Bruce, then who did? I thought the motive was the extra money Steve would be making with the renewed interest in the Van Dorn curse because of the marking on Bruce’s forehead.

Who else would have motive? Bruce had argued with the writer, Les Price, but surely a little argument in a diner wouldn’t have amounted to murder. Even if it did, you’d think the murder would have happened in the heat of the argument at the diner.

Maybe there was something from Bruce’s past that had gotten him killed?

The image of Gladys Primble chopping wood flashed into my mind. She had the strength to do it even at her age, and she’d acted strangely when I told her about Van Dorn’s house being for sale. Who better to have talcum powder than the housekeeper?

“I think I might have another suspect.” I told Pepper about my visit to Gladys and Van Dorn’s strange clue. “She was around during the time of Charles’ murder and so was Bruce. Maybe Bruce knew something that she didn’t want him talking about.”

“But, why would she wait all those years to silence Bruce? I don’t think that’s it, but …” Pepper chewed her bottom lip, her eyes narrowed in thought.

“What?”

“Maybe Charles fathered Gladys’ son.”

“Maybe. I could see why she wouldn’t want that discovered, and it could be the reason that Charles left her the money.” I looked over to where Charles ghost had been. “But, Charles swore he wasn’t having an affair with her and I don’t think he was lying.”

“I just hope this hasn’t shaken Jimmy’s confidence. He was pretty pumped up when he brought Steve in.”

As if on cue, the door opened and Jimmy shuffled in. His shoulders were slumped, his face long.

“I guess you guys heard.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Pepper’s face was etched with concern. “What happened?”

“It turns out Steve wasn’t even in town at the time of death.”

“Really?” I scrunched up my face. “But I saw him that morning at the house.”

“Yep.” Jimmy sat down on the couch. “He got in around six thirty a.m., but Bruce was killed around two a.m., so Steve couldn’t have done it. He was on an airplane, and that’s been confirmed.”

“But he had the pen!” 

Jimmy rolled his eyes. “You won’t believe his story. He says he got off the plane and went right to the house. Bruce was already dead. He claims he tried to revive him.  He didn’t want to call it in, being the new guy in town and he’s had a checkered past. Claims to be all rehabilitated and all that, but didn’t want to risk it.  The weird thing is he says he did write on the forehead.”

“What?” Pepper blanched. “Yech.”

“He seemed pretty embarrassed about it,” Jimmy continued. “He said he only wanted to increase the value of his possessions and then had the audacity to claim he wasn’t being greedy!”