Madison Johns - Agnes Barton Paranormal 01 - Haunted Hijinks (9 page)

“Where were you when I was in trouble?”

“I was there, but I was too scared to appear to you. I hate guns,” Caroline said.

“Thanks for nothing, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. I just wish I knew what Stuart is really doing.”

“Don’t you already have an important case to figure out?”

I sighed. Now I had two partners to answer to. “Yes, if I can get Eleanor off the beach.”

“Who are you talking to?” Eleanor asked walking up.

“Just talking out loud, is all,” I said, more quickly than I had intended.

Her arms folded across her chest. “Did you know Dr. Thomas was at the beach today?”

Oh, no. “Oh, so that’s why he wasn’t at the hospital when I got there.”

“Don’t you dare give me a line of malarkey like that, Agnes. What’s really going on?”

I pulled at the neck of my shirt. “Oh, well … you see, I just had to find Stuart. He’s up to something and I just don’t know what.”

“You lied to me once today already, Agnes. Do you really think I’ll buy some lame story about Stuart now? I suppose the next thing you’ll come up with is that you were kidnapped by some goon that Stuart was watching.”

The ghost Caroline chuckled. “She got you there, Agnes,”

“No, of course not! That sounds ludicrous.” Not any more than what really had happened.

I gazed over at the ghost and for a moment and I almost spilled my guts, but I just wasn’t ready for
that
conversation yet. “Okay, fine then. All I know is that we had better get back to the Butler Mansion before Sara Knoxville finds out we’re not there.” I bit my pinkie finger, and then added, “I sure hope Bernice is making sure the cleaners are doing their work. Halloween is coming up pretty fast now.”

“Fine, I’ll let this drop for now, but I’m going to get to the bottom of what’s really going on with you or my name isn’t Eleanor Mason.” Eleanor stomped over to the car and I climbed behind the wheel as the ghost faded away in the bright sunlight. It’s just as well, since I couldn’t very well talk to the ghost, Caroline, and Eleanor at the same time.

I tooled back to the Butler Mansion at last, lowering myself in my seat when I passed what I thought were Andrew and Sara coming toward us on US 23. “Oh, drat,” I said.

Eleanor was equally low in her seat. “That was Andrew and Sara, wasn’t it?”

“Yup. I’m fairly certain it was.”

“Then you had better floor it, Aggie, before they find out we skipped out of the mansion when we were supposed to stay there.”

I jerked the wheel, barely making the turn, and skidded to a stop at the mansion—my eyes about popped outta my head at the felines that now strutted across the yard. “Strange, I don’t remember that many cats being here when we left.”

Eleanor chuckled. “Well, it certainly looks like there’s plenty here now.”

I climbed out of the car, feeling my nagging hip even more since Stuart had pushed me out of a moving van. There were certainly more cats here than there were before we left earlier. “That Bernice sure has some explaining to do.”

We climbed the few steps and when we stomped through the door, Bernice said, “Don’t blame me. I tried to tell them to get back to work.” She was trying to explain why the cleaners were lounging around drinking lemonade, noticeable from the tart lemon fragrance in the air.

“I don’t care about that. Why are there so many blasted cats here?”

“Yeah, like way more than when we left,” Eleanor added. “There have to be, like, twenty cats outside.”

Bernice began to rub her hands. “I suspect my cats followed me here. It’s not all that far away.”

“Well, please get them out of here before Sara finds out.”

“Before Sara finds out what?” Sara asked from the doorway with Andrew standing next to her, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Just that cats seem to be all over the place outside,” I explained.

“Nothing wrong with a few cats, I suppose, but we don’t need quite so many roaming the property,” Sara said.

Andrew cleared his throat. “How is the cleaning going, Agnes?”

“I-I’m not sure.”

“And would that be because you weren’t here?”

“We left for a few hours. Bernice was left in charge.”

Sara stared up toward the ceiling. “It looks like there’s still quite a bit of cleaning to be done. Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked you and Eleanor to oversee things.”

“Not at all. We just had to—”

“Buy more lemonade,” Bernice added. “Just in time for their break.”

“From the looks of it, they’ve been on break all day,” Eleanor said. “Get moving boys,” she clapped her hands. “Chop, chop.”

The men dashed off with huge smiles on their faces, obviously star struck from being in the same room with an actress of Sara Knoxville’s caliber.

I went into the next room and Andrew followed closely behind. He leaned a hand on the back of a chair, and asked, “Where did you go?”

“We’re looking into the investigation of Katherine Clark’s death, of course. Eleanor and I found letters from Jack Winston to her.”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed slightly, “Oh, really? This I have to hear.”

I gave Andrew the rundown about how Katherine had scammed Jack, and how he still had hoped he’d get his money back.

“Sure sounds like Katherine was up to no good. Scams on the elderly are nothing new, either. It seems like Jack would be smart enough not to take financial advice from a complete stranger.”

“That’s what I thought, but his son, Henry, kept him on a short leash financially.”

“That’s understandable, since Jack is known to drop quite the amount of cash.”

I then told Andrew how it had been agreed upon and how Jack had cashed a check for twenty thousand.

“Do you think Jack is responsible for Katherine’s murder?”

“Not really, but I can’t say for positive. He did seem awfully upset when we told him Katherine had been murdered. At the time, it never occurred to me that they hadn’t released her name on the news yet.”

“So what about the letters? Are you planning to turn them over to the sheriff?”

“Actually, not just yet. I want to figure out what really happened to Katherine first.”

Andrew nodded. “Okay, but make sure this place is cleaned from top to bottom. I’ll keep Sara busy while you conduct your investigation, but remember, Halloween is tomorrow. Sara has visitors coming from Hollywood for the grand opening.”

Duchess skidded into the dining room, staring at the wall like something was there—something unseen by me. I picked her up and gave her a good petting until a black mist formed in the corner of the room. It was then that I squeezed poor Duchess hard enough to cause her to meow loudly. I backed away as a man formed in the mist, placed a finger against his lips, and disappeared through the opposite wall.

Caroline appeared, darting hastily after the mist, shouting, “Don’t you dare walk away from me,” and disappearing through the wall in pursuit.

I shook my head in disbelief. The house was much more haunted that I had thought. First, there was a woman Eleanor and I had followed up the stairs and now a man that was sneaking around. Caroline’s pursuit of the man seemed even more peculiar. Had she known this man when she was alive? Finding out the truth about Caroline took center stage now. I had hoped I’d be able to gain more information, but why did I have the sneaking suspicion that there was more to Caroline’s death than met the eye, and that it was directly related to this mansion?

Chapter Eight

Sara hung around for a half-hour longer, and the cleaners did more work in that half-hour than they probably had the entire day. She was standing in the yard when a truck rumbled up the drive and Eleanor swept the porch in a hurry. We then watched while pumpkins were unloaded and stacked around the porch.

“I hope you don’t mind carving pumpkins,” Sara said with a smile.

“Of course not,” I said, but my insides just cringed as I realized just how many pumpkins were arranged on the porch.

Sara waved as Andrew led her to his SUV, and I sunk onto a wicker rocking chair on the porch. “I can’t believe she expects us to carve pumpkins.”

Eleanor’s brow rose. “What’s wrong with that?”

 “Nothing, if there weren’t, like, fifty of them.”

“Just imagine all of those pumpkins lit up on Halloween night, Agnes. It will look so great when the trick or treater’s show up.”

“If we ever get this mansion ready in time.”

“We will. The cleaners have been working much harder since Sara came.”

A stream of cars came up the drive next, and Mr. Wilson was helped out of one, his rolling walker handed to him by his granddaughter, Millicent. When she carried plastic bags that swayed as she walked, I dreaded the obvious. Mr. Wilson had bought groceries that would most likely be ingredients for his tuna casserole. Not a bad dish if you cared for tuna fish, but not all that good since I had already eaten it hundreds of times before.

I smiled weakly. “Hello, Wilson. Fancy seeing you here.”

Millicent smiled in greeting. “I tried to tell grandpa that we’d probably get in your way since you’re responsible for readying the mansion for the opening, but he insisted we help you out. I think he misses Eleanor,” she whispered in my ear as she passed from the porch into the mansion.

Millicent looked around, and instead of pointing out what needed to be cleaned, she waltzed over to the fireplace that had grotesque figurines and faces carved into the mantle. “Wow,” she began. “This looks like something you’d see in some Boris Karloff movie.”

“My thoughts exactly, and I can’t help but wonder if this place is haunted for real,” I added.

“Probably might be since Grandpa told me about the history of the place. This old place dates back to 1859, four years after Tawas was founded.”

My brow shot up on account of the fact that Millicent wasn’t from the Tawas area. “Are you some kind of history buff?” I asked.

“Oh, I love history, and I have always loved the Tawas area, but actually the Butler Mansion is really more in the Tadium area.”

Eleanor joined us, volunteering to put the groceries away. Once she was out of sight and Mr. Wilson was settled in a wing back chair near the fireplace, I asked, “I don’t suppose you know, Mr. Wilson, about the goings on around Tawas back in the 30s?”

“I suppose not, since I was born in ‘32.”

“What would you like to know, Agnes?” Millicent asked. “I’d be happy to help out.”

“That would be nice. I’m actually wondering about a woman by the name of Caroline. I don’t have a last name and she died sometime around 1930. She might have been a victim of a crime, or died in a traffic accident in Tawas.”

A notebook appeared in Millicent’s hand and she jotted down the name and year, circling it in red. “I’ll be happy to do some checking. I’ll see if the library has any microfiche lying around.”

“You won’t find any microfiche in the Tawas library,” Eleanor said as she strode back into the room.

Millicent brushed an invisible fleck of dust off her shoulder. “Well, that sure is not what I wanted to hear. Surely, there must be someone who can tell us about the  ‘30s in the Tawas area.”

“I’m afraid we’re all just not that old,” Eleanor said. “I was born in ’32 like your grandfather.”

I led the way into the kitchen where Millicent searched for pans to brown the ground beef she had brought.

“No tuna casserole?” I asked.

Millicent laughed. “Oh, I would have thought that you would have gotten sick of that by now, but if not, I can go back out to Neiman’s Family Market.”

“Don’t be silly. What are you cooking?”

“I figured to make up a batch of chili and corn muffins.”

“Sounds good. Perhaps if we feed the cleaners, they’ll work harder. I can’t seem to get those men to work.”

Millicent added spices she found on the spice rack to the meat. “I’d be happy to give it a try. We’ll have to all pitch in if we hope to have the mansion ready on Halloween.”

I grumbled. “Oh, I know. Sara asked us to carve pumpkins, too. There’s no way we’ll be done in time. Eleanor and I have been trying to solve another case, too.”

“Not to worry. Let me handle the cleaners and the pumpkin carving. You and Eleanor need to find out who killed that woman before opening day.”

No pressure there
. “I’m not sure I can do that. Why, we only have one more full day to do that.”

“It’s about five now. Perhaps you should assemble your local seniors. I’m sure somebody might have some answers.”

“Actually, I had planned to, but perhaps I can ask them to come here instead of leaving. I’d hate for Sara to find us gone again.”

* * *

Eleanor got on the horn and made the necessary calls, and it wasn’t all that long afterward that there was a rap at the door. By now, the smell of chili wafted into the drawing room when Eleanor opened the door. Elsie Bradford strutted in, very much the peacock as she pranced about, waiting for us to say something about her latest ensemble, a powder blue pantsuit like she always wore that matched her eyes. She was the social icon of the Tawas area.

“Wow, did you get a new outfit?” Eleanor said, to which Elsie blushed.

“Why, yes, Eleanor. I have this lovely online store I like to shop at.”

Next through the door were Dorothy and Frank Alton, who were already in a fight. “I told you, Frank, Eleanor wasn’t the one murdered.”

“Murdered?” Eleanor gasped. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“Well, we heard a woman was found dead at the Butler Mansion, and I knew you girls were here. I guess I got the wrong idea.”

“I guess so,” Eleanor said. “I hope you haven’t come here to murder me yourself.”

Dorothy fanned her face with a hand that had razor-sharp nails painted fire engine red, the jewels from her many rings sparkling. “Oh, course not, Eleanor. I thought we buried the hatchet long ago.”

I personally was still waiting for the hatchet to be buried for sure. Eleanor and Dorothy had been getting along much better these days, but one just never knew for how long the peace would last. I suppose just as long as Eleanor didn’t flirt with Dorothy’s husband, it might be okay. Frank Alton was almost completely bald and wore a hearing aid that was almost always turned down from the way he acted when Dorothy spoke to him. They had been married for over fifty years, and if it took turning down a hearing aid to stay married, it was all for the best.