The Ghost of Marlow House (Haunting Danielle Book 1) (22 page)

On Monday morning Danielle entered the Frederickport
Police Department. A glass wall and counter separated the front lobby from the
officers and staff. Danielle walked up to the front counter and waited for
someone to open the window.

“Can I help you?” a woman asked as she
slid the glass pane to one side.

“I have an appointment with…” Danielle
glanced down at the business card in her hand and read the name, “
Joe
Morelli
.”

“Your name please?” the woman asked.

“Danielle Boatman.”

“I’ll be right back,” the woman said
before sliding the window shut. Danielle stood at the counter, glancing around.
According to the clock on the wall it was 9:02 a.m., and her meeting with
Morelli was for 9:00 a.m.

A few minutes later a door leading to
the inner offices opened and an officer extended his hand in greeting.  “Ms.
Boatman?” he asked, shaking her hand briefly. “I’m Sargent Morelli.”

She guessed he was at least 6-feet tall,
in his mid-thirties, and if his surname hadn’t been Italian, she still would
have been able to determine his ethnicity by his dark good looks alone.
Damn,
Lily is going to regret not coming with me,
Danielle thought as she shook
the handsome officer’s hand and looked into his friendly brown eyes. Most of
the cops she knew wore their hair buzzed short to the scalp, whereas Officer
Morelli’s neatly trimmed thick dark hair couldn’t conceal his hair’s propensity
to turn into soft curls.

“Please call me Danielle, or Dani. Sargent
Morelli, I wanted to thank you for your help on Saturday.”

“Hey, no problem, that’s my job. And
I’ll call you Dani, if you call me Joe.”

“Deal,” Danielle said with a grin.

“Craig tells me nothing was taken.”

“We were lucky.”

“I appreciate you coming in.”

“It’s the least I can do.” Danielle
smiled.

“My office is this way.” Joe walked over
to the doorway he had just come through. The woman behind the counter pushed a
button to unlock the door. Joe opened it for Danielle before saying, “Just
follow me.”

• • • •

“I was wondering if I could ask you a
question,” Danielle said after they finished discussing the break in.

“Sure.” Joe sat behind his desk and
leaned back, looking at Danielle, who sat in a chair facing him.

“How long does the police department
keep old files?”

“Are you talking about case files?” Joe
leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desktop.

“Yes, and any autopsy reports.”

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“If possible, I’d like to look at Walt
Marlow’s case file.”

“Walt Marlow?” Joe frowned.

“His grandfather built Marlow House,”
Danielle explained. “You know, where I live.”

“Ahh, Marlow—it didn’t register. His
grandfather, you say? Is your Walt the one who hung himself in the attic?”

“I don’t think he committed suicide. I
believe he was murdered.”

“Wasn’t that back in the twenties?” Joe
asked.

“Yes. So I guess that means you wouldn’t
have files that old?” Danielle looked disappointed.

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s back there.
And if you have a few minutes, I’ll be happy to get it for you. But you’ll have
to look at it here. I can’t let you take it from the office.”

“Seriously? You would do that?” Danielle
sat up straighter and smiled.

“Sure, I’ll be right back.” Joe stood up
and tossed his ink pen on his desktop before stepping from the office. He was
gone for less than ten minutes when he returned carrying a manila folder.

“Found it.” He waved the file before
tossing it on his desk and sitting down.

“I can’t believe you were able to find
it that quick.”

“The truth is, we’re in the process of
digitalizing these old files. Had you asked me last month, it probably would
have taken me days to track it down.” Instead of handing the file to Danielle,
he opened it and thumbed through its pages.

“As far as an autopsy goes, his body was
checked out by a…Doctor Clemens.” Joe looked up from the folder.

“Clemens? That was the local doctor at
the time,” Danielle explained.

“Really? How did you know that?”

“Umm…I’ve been doing some research.”

“Doctor Clemens wrote a lot of notes on
the condition of the body.” Joe studied the report while Danielle sat
anxiously, waiting for her turn to inspect the file.

“There were no defensive wounds, which
is why the doctor ruled a suicide. There weren’t any rope marks on his wrists indicating
he was restrained, no sign of a struggle. He felt Marlow wasn’t forced into
that noose, but went willingly.”

“I can’t believe that.” Danielle sounded
disappointed.

“Neither do I,” Joe said, shuffling
through the pages.

“What do you mean?”

“The condition of his neck and body, and
a head wound, tell a different story.”

“How so?”

“When you hang yourself, you want to be
high enough so that the drop snaps your neck, a clean kill. Otherwise, you are
strangled to death, which can be slow and painful. By the condition of Marlow’s
larynx and the rope burns described in Clemens’ report, I’d say he died by
strangulation.”

“What does that mean in regards to it
being a murder or suicide?”

“During strangulation, the natural
tendency of the body—even for a suicide victim—is to try and get air. Unless
his hands were bound—which according to the report they weren’t—he would
frantically be grabbing at the noose, leaving behind scratch marks or broken
fingernails. But he didn’t. Plus, when someone hangs themselves, they normally
bite through their tongues—I’ve seen these types of suicide victims bite their
tongues almost all the way off.”

“Oh please, that is a visual I could do
without.” Danielle felt a little sick.

“Sorry,” Joe said with a sheepish grin.

“You mentioned a head wound?” Danielle
asked.

“Yes. According to Clemens there was a
slight head wound at the back of Marlow’s skull. The doctor claims the head
injury most likely occurred after the police cut him down. But he mentioned
swelling, and it wouldn’t swell if postmortem.”

“What do you think happened?”

“If I was to just go by the doctor’s
notes, I’d suspect Marlow was unconscious when he was put in the noose. Drugged,
or maybe he was knocked out, which would explain the head wound.”

“So he really didn’t kill himself…”

“I don’t think so.” Joe closed the file
and pushed it across his desk to Danielle. She picked it up and began looking
through its pages.

“I wonder how the killer got Marlow up
in the noose. I’d imagine it would take more than one person,” Danielle said.

“Not necessarily. A likely scenario,
consistent with the doctor’s report on the neck injuries, is that Marlow was
unconscious when the killer put the noose around his neck, and then threw the
rope over the rafter in the attic and hauled him up, which probably killed him
before he was dropped.”

“Sounds so gruesome.” Danielle
shuddered.

“Murder tends to be gruesome.”

“How did the doctor miss all that?”
Danielle asked.

“He was probably a little country
doctor—this wasn’t a very big town back then. It’s not that big now. I imagine
he didn’t have the experience or training. It was probably his first hanging.”

“If this was a recent case would you
re-open it based on what’s in this report?”

“I would definitely take another look.”
Joe studied Danielle as she flipped through the file. “I tell you what, while I
can’t let you take the file home, I can make a copy of it for you.”

“You can?” Danielle looked up hopefully.

“Sure.” Joe stood up and gathered up the
file, taking it from Danielle’s hands. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”  Joe
flashed Danielle a smile, before stepping from the room.

Sitting alone at the desk, Danielle
tapped her feet nervously. Glancing down, she smoothed the hem of her summer
dress down past her knees, keeping her sandaled feet together.

What now?
She
asked herself. Had she sufficiently looked into Walt’s death?  Would the
information she gathered be enough to convince people Walt Marlow had not taken
his own life? If so—
would it matter?
Would it liberate Walt and allow
him to move onto the next level—wherever and whatever that might be? The
thought of Walt leaving made Danielle a little sad. She had never gotten
attached to a spirit before—not even during her grandmother’s postmortem visit
so many years ago.

While she might be able to prove Walt
had been murdered, she saw little possibility of proving who had killed him.
Roger was the most likely suspect, and yet…Danielle frowned at the thought.
Roger…

Danielle glanced at the office door,
anxious to have another look at the case file. When reading through it she saw
no mention of interviews with Roger Calvert, which according to the newspaper
had taken place, especially in regards to his discrepancies involving Angela’s
whereabouts during and immediately following Walt’s death.

 Joe returned to the office a few
minutes later and handed Danielle her own file.

“Here you go,” Joe said with a smile.
Danielle immediately opened the folder and began shuffling through it.

“You know, you can take it with you.”

“I know, but I remembered something and
I have another question for you.” She continued to look through the file.

Joe sat on the edge of his desk, his
arms crossed over his chest as he silently watched Danielle. After a few
minutes she closed the file and looked up at him.

“There’s nothing in here about any
interviews with Roger Calvert. If they interviewed him, wouldn’t that be in the
case file?”

“Roger Calvert?”

“He was Walt Marlow’s brother-in-law. I
think he’s the one who murdered Walt.”

“Walt?” Joe smiled. “You’ve become
pretty invested in this old case, haven’t you?”

“I suppose. I just want the truth.”

“If Roger Calvert was a suspect, there
should be something in there. I don’t remember seeing anything, but maybe I
missed it.”

“I came across some old newspaper
articles about the case. At the time of Walt’s death his wife Angela was in
Portland, supposedly visiting her twin brother, Roger. Walt’s body was found on
a Thursday, and Roger showed up unexpectedly in Frederickport that night. He
led everyone to believe Angela was still back in Portland, but the fact was,
she had been hit by a car the day before and had died in the hospital. It was a
week before she was identified. Roger didn’t know she had been killed—not until
her body was identified a week later. But in the mean time, local authorities
were trying to locate her and Roger couldn’t come up with a clear reason for
where she was. In the beginning he led people to believe he was with Angela on
Wednesday night, before he came to Frederickport. But in fact, she was already
dead, and I believe the reason he didn’t know was because he was in
Frederickport at the time.”

“It would have been a priority to locate
the victim’s spouse. Let me see that…” Joe picked up the file he’d given
Danielle and started thumbing through it. After a few minutes he shook his head
and handed it back to Danielle. “No, there is nothing in there about that—about
any of it. Odd.”

“There was a witness who saw Roger
returning from Frederickport Wednesday night.”

“There wasn’t anything about that in the
report,” Joe said. Danielle went on to tell him about Emma Jackson, and how she
had met her over the weekend.

“You have one hell of a mystery there,”
Joe said. “The officer you mentioned, Tucker, I came across his name when going
through those old files to digitalize. As I recall, he left Frederickport in
1928. I remember the date because that’s the year they built the old
courthouse. If Tucker intimidated Emma Jackson to suppress evidence, my guess
is that anything regarding Roger Calvert went with Tucker.”

If only I didn’t have to think about
that damn necklace, I’d be pretty content right now,
Danielle told herself as she drove from the Frederickport Police Department back
to Marlow House. Turning on the radio, she listened to music while recapping in
her mind the events since coming to Frederickport.

    When Danielle first pulled into town
with Lily a week earlier, she imagined they would be spending their time
working on Marlow House, doing what was necessary to open for business. Instead
she spent a significant amount of her energy and focus investigating a
decades-old mystery. Unraveling the mystery was for the sake of her new
business—at least initially. Unshackling Walt Marlow from the weight of false
accusations might free him to move on; a friendly exorcism of sorts.
Who
needs a haunted B and B?

Somewhere along the way it was no longer
about getting rid of Marlow, and all about helping him as she would any friend.
Fact was, she would miss him when he decided to move on.

Unfortunately the necklace disrupted
everything. It made her vulnerable, a target for unethical treasure hunters
like Nichols and Jones. She didn’t understand why Walt was being so stubborn.
She just hoped it was resolved before he moved on.

Danielle’s train of thought was
interrupted when she was forced to slow down due to road work ahead. Not
wanting to wait in a line of cars, she decided to turn right and take an alternate
route home. She hadn’t been this way before, but she was fairly confident she
could find her way back to Marlow House.

Before she got half way down the street
she saw it:
Frederickport Cemetery
. Holding her breath for a moment she
drove alongside the green lawns and old fashioned standing markers. She tried
not to look, but cemeteries always had the power to draw her in, something she
desperately tried to resist. Where there were graves, there were typically a
few lingering souls who either refused to or were unable to move onto the next
level. They sought her out, sensing her gifts.

She almost made it past the cemetery
when her car’s engine made a thumping sound and then stalled. Cursing, she
steered the vehicle to the side of the road. Once the car came to a complete
stop, she tried turning on the engine, but nothing. She hadn’t passed another
car on this road and there didn’t seem to be anyone walking around in the
cemetery.

Taking out her cellphone she tried to
turn it on. The battery was dead.

“I can’t believe this!” Danielle said
aloud. “I put this damn thing on the charger last night!”

She looked around again, still no other
vehicles on the street
. Don’t be a baby Danielle, get out of the damn car
and walk home; it is only a couple blocks.
Cursing her bad luck, Danielle
grabbed her purse and got out of the car. Walking on the sidewalk along the
cemetery’s perimeter, she calculated the time it would take to reach Marlow
House by cutting through the cemetery verses staying on the sidewalk. Her
appliances were being delivered in the afternoon and she had a few things to do
before they arrived. Taking a deep breath she mustered her courage and stepped
off the sidewalk onto the manicured lawn.

Determined to block out anything
paranormal, Danielle hurriedly made her way through the cemetery. It was quiet,
just the sound of a few birds chirping in a nearby tree and wind moving through
the overhead branches. Relaxing a bit, she slowed her pace and breathed in the
clean ocean scent.

“She said you would come,” a female
voice called out. Danielle stopped and turned toward the caller. Not six feet
away a young woman sat atop a massive headstone, her bare legs crossed casually,
the fringed hem of her dress falling mid-thigh. Danielle instantly knew who it
was. The portrait artist had captured her likeness perfectly—Angela Marlow.

Walking toward the woman, Danielle
glanced down at the headstone and read the inscription. It was Angela’s.
Danielle imagined Roger had chosen it for her. To the right she noticed the
neighboring grave’s more discrete marker—it was Walt’s.

Turning back to Angela she asked, “Who
said I would come?”

“She was right. She told me you wouldn’t
run away in fear if you were able to see me.” Preening, Angela’s right hand
touched the sides of her blonde curls while shifting her body slightly to
strike a more flattering pose.

“Who told you? And how do you know who I
am?” Danielle asked.

“You know who I am.”

“Yes, you’re Angela Marlow.”

“I prefer to be remembered as Angela
Calvert. Walt brought me nothing but bad luck.”

“I know who you are because I saw your
portrait. How do you know who I am?”

“Because she told me you would come,”
Angela said with a sigh, sounding bored.

“Who?” Angela snapped impatiently.

“Kathrine O’Malley, of course!” Angela
laughed.

“Kathrine O’Malley is here?” Danielle
looked around.

“She was. Said something about her time,
off to meet her daughter. Left me all alone.”

“You’re the only one here?”

“Of course not, look at all these
graves!” Angela laughed again.

“And you know who I am?” Danielle asked.

“You’re the one who inherited Marlow
House. Kathrine saw to that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Kathrine became quite tedious. Fretted
so about people thinking poor Walt killed himself. When she’d visit her
daughter she learned about a step niece who had a special gift. Kathrine
believed it was her mission for you to inherit the house so you could help
Walt.”

“How did Kathrine visit her daughter?”
The moment she asked the question she knew the answer.

“In her dreams, of course. We can’t all
do, it you know. It takes practice and it’s not like we can just pop into
anyone’s dream.”

“How did Kathrine know about me?”

“I suppose Brianna must have told her,
during one of their visits.”

Brianna didn’t know about my ability—or
did she?
Danielle thought back to when she was just a young
girl and had told her parents about the encounters. Their answer was to send
her into therapy. Had they discussed Danielle with her great-uncle and his wife
during that time?

“How did
you
know who I was?”
Danielle asked Angela.

“I don’t know,” Angela said with a
shrug. “I just had a hunch when I saw your car, decided to see if you were the
one Kathrine was talking about.”

“You did something to my car and phone,
didn’t you?”

In reply Angela smiled.

“Why? Why did you bring me here?”
Danielle demanded.

“Because I don’t want to be here
anymore!” Angela jumped down off the headstone, landing on her feet. She faced
Danielle.

“Are you stuck here like Walt?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Do you really think
I would choose to spend my eternity in a place like this? You might say I’m
under house arrest.”

“Was Kathrine stuck here too?”

“Not in the same way. She insisted on
sticking around until she felt things were set right. That woman could be so
damn annoying!”

“You’re stuck here because of the role
you played in Walt’s death, aren’t you?”

“It isn’t as if I was the one who put
the noose around his neck. In all fairness, I tried to stop Roger.”

“So you didn’t conspire with your
brother to kill your husband?”

Angela didn’t answer immediately.
Finally she let out a deep sigh and sat on the grass, leaning against her
headstone. “I didn’t know it would be this difficult.”

“What do you mean?” Danielle sat on the
grass next to her.

“To be honest, I would rather be less
than truthful and cast a more favorable light on my past behavior. But alas, if
I do that I will be forever shackled to this dismal place.”

“I’m listening,” Danielle said, waiting
for Angela to tell her whatever she needed to say.

“Men marry women all the time who they
don’t love—and they don’t care if the woman loves them. We are after all,
nothing more than a man’s possession. Something they can show off like a new
motor car—the prettier, the better.”

“It isn’t like that anymore.” Danielle
reconsidered her words and then added, “Well, it doesn’t have to be that way.
But yes, back when you married Walt women were second-class citizens.”

 “Roger convinced me that if I had to
marry someone, I should find the richest and most manageable man possible. When
I met Walt, I knew he was the one. Not only was he the sole heir to the Marlow
fortune, it was a well-known fact that he had been pining away for years over
that cheap actress. It wasn’t as they were in a relationship when she died—she
had married another man, for heaven’s sake!”

 “Had you always planned to kill him?”

“Oh my, you are blunt. But no, not in
the beginning. But when I read that damn will and saw he would rather leave his
money to our housekeeper than my brother if we both died, I wondered, what
next? Would he get angry and write me out of his will? Divorce me and leave me
penniless? He would, you know.”

“So you and your brother conspired to
kill him?”

“I must admit, it doesn’t sound very
nice when you say it,” Angela said with a pout.

“No, no it doesn’t.”

“But I tried to stop Roger, honestly!”

“Go on.”

“The plan was simple. I was to go spend
some time with Roger in Portland and establish an alibi for the two of us. I
stopped by Walt’s lawyer, told him I was staying in Portland with Roger.”

“You also told him Walt was acting
strange, maybe even suicidal.”

“I never said suicidal. But yes, I
wanted to establish a reason for why he was drinking excessively, to make the
accident more believable.”

“Accident? How can a hanging be an
accident?”

“Roger was not going to hang Walt. I
told you I tried to stop him!”

“I must be missing something…” Danielle
shook her head.

“I knew Walt would be drinking brandy
before he went to bed. The plan was for Roger to sneak into Frederickport on
Wednesday. I gave him my key, so he could easily get into the house without
being detected. The plan was for Roger to simply sneak up behind him when he
went up to go to bed and push him off the top landing. The fall would certainly
kill him—or so we thought, and it would look like he’d had too much to drink
and stumbled to his death.”

 “So what happened?”

“I was hit by that damn car, and the
next thing I know I’m back in Marlow House.”

“You mean your spirit?”

“Obviously,” Angela said impatiently.
“There was my brother getting ready to kill Walt and I knew in that instant my
soul would be damned for eternity if I didn’t do something to stop it. I had no
idea how to make my presence known—I had only been dead for such a short time.
But I managed to give my brother a little shove.”

“What happened?”

“My intent was to push him out of the
way before he hurled Walt to his death. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out like
I had hoped. Roger managed to shove Walt, but instead of Walt falling down the
landing he was just thrown against the wall, hit his head and was unconscious.”

“The wound on the back of his head,”
Danielle murmured.

“I tried to convince Roger to leave him
there, but he couldn’t hear me. In fact, Roger was in a rage, talking out loud
to himself, trying to figure out how to kill Walt. Since Walt was only
unconscious, Roger began to wonder if being tossed off the landing would kill
him. What then, bash in his head with a mallet, and leave no doubt it was
murder? That’s when Roger decided to drag his body upstairs and make it look
like suicide.”

“So he didn’t have an accomplice, other
than you?”

“No. Roger was the only one there that
night—other than me and Walt.”

“After he killed Walt, what happened?”
Danielle asked.

“Things became very…unsettled for me…I’m
not really sure where I was…it was all very confusing…like a dream. And then
one day I was at the cemetery, watching my funeral. Roger was there. My first
thought was, why did he bury me in Frederickport? I wanted to go back to
Portland. I have been here ever since.”

“I imagined you were buried here because
you were married to Walt Marlow.”

“I should have never have listened to my
brother.”

“Did you see Roger again?”

“You mean after he killed Walt?” Angela
asked.

“Yes.”

“Only at my funeral, but he couldn’t
hear me. Couldn’t see me. I tried to talk to him. Warn him that he needed to
make some sort of restitution or he would end up in a worse place than me. I
may be stuck here, but had I not tried to prevent Roger from killing Walt, I’m
certain I would be someplace much worse.”