The Legend of Sleepy Harlow (10 page)

I waited until Kate sat down at the end of a table. Rather than taking the seat across from hers, I pulled a chair over and sat down next to her.

I made sure to keep my voice down when I said, “You came back here last night.”

Her eyes went wide, but she recovered as best she could. There was a paper napkin on the table, and she grabbed it and twisted. “No. I didn’t. I told you—”

“You told me that after you dropped me off, you went home and stayed home.”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

“You told me you didn’t work today, that the winery was closed so your employees could get ready for the crowds tomorrow.”

Kate lifted her chin. “That’s right. Ask anybody. It’s a tradition. We always close the day before the wake.”

“So you didn’t work today.”

“Not here.” Impatient—or maybe she was just royally pissed that someone who was supposed to be a friend had the nerve to question her the way the police had—she tossed the napkin on the table. “I did some paperwork at home. I took a nice, long bubble bath. I went for a walk. And I ended up under a microscope at the police station. You know all that, Bea.”

“Yeah, I do. But I also know that you came back here after we left last night.”

Kate frowned. “So you’re telling me I’m lying?”

“I’m telling you . . .” There was no way anyone else in the lunchroom could hear us, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I scooted my chair closer to Kate’s and bent my head. “I was just up in your office, Kate. The oil lamp is on the windowsill.”

As if she’d been sucker punched, she sank back in her chair. It took her a moment to catch her breath, and another second before she had the nerve to say, “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means plenty.” I drummed my fingers against the table. “You told me yourself, Kate. The first thing you do when you get to your office every day is put the oil lamp on the windowsill. Just like Great-Grandma Carrie used to do. The last thing you do when you leave is put it away, just like you did last night when I was up in the office with you. I can’t imagine why you didn’t put it away this time. Maybe you were in a hurry. Or maybe you were preoccupied. Or maybe you just plain forgot. That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I know what it means, that oil lamp being out. It means you came back here, Kate. And since you swear it wasn’t today, then it has to have been last night. After you and I left here, you came back to the winery.”

Kate’s gaze shot to the young policeman near the door. “Did you tell them?”

“You’re kidding me, right? You don’t think I wouldn’t give you a chance to explain first?”

She let go a long, unsteady breath. “Yes, of course you would. You’re a good friend, Bea. Of course you would.”

“So . . ?” I caught her gaze and held it.

She dared another look at the cop. “They won’t understand.”

“I don’t care about them.”

“But they’re only going to hear what they want to hear. They’re only going to believe what they think they already know. They know I had a fight with Noreen. And they know they found the murder weapon here. When they find out . . .”

Her gaze drifted to the doorway just as another officer ran by and called out to Hank, “We found a camera! It’s down in a pool of some kind of liquid. It’s probably ruined. But come on, Chief, take a look.”

Kate brushed her hands over her cheeks. “If they find out the truth, it’s going to make me look more guilty.”

“Not telling the truth is what’s going to make you look guilty,” I told her.

“You’re right.” Kate nodded, confirming the thought to herself. “Lies will only make things worse. But the truth . . .” She glanced my way. “Will you believe me?”

“Try me.”

She hauled in a breath and let it out slowly. “I dropped you at home. Then I . . . You’re right. I came back, Bea. I came back to the winery.”

“And you went to your office and you put the oil lamp on the windowsill.”

She nodded. “Force of habit. I never even thought about it.”

“But why—”

Kate dropped her head in her hands. “It was stupid,” she said, her voice muffled. She raised her head. “I see that now. I see that it’s going to get me in trouble. Maybe if we don’t tell anyone—”

I put a hand on her arm. “You have to tell Hank. You know that. So try out the truth on me first. Why did you come back to the winery?”

She sniffed. “Because I knew that b—” She swallowed the rest of the word. “All right, I know it’s not good to speak ill of the dead. I won’t say it. But let’s face it, we both know what kind of person Noreen was. Sneaky and lying and shifty and nasty and—”

“And we’re not going to speak ill of the dead, right?”

She shredded the paper napkin to smithereens. “I knew Noreen was going to come back,” she said. “As sure as I’m sitting here, Bea, I knew she would come back to the winery after I tossed her out. All she cared about was getting more video of that ghost of hers.” Kate’s laugh wasn’t as filled with amusement as it was with derision. “You’d think a grown woman would know there’s no such things as ghosts!”

“You’d think so.” I wonder if my smile convinced her. It sure didn’t convince me.

“And I was right, wasn’t I?” Kate asked. “From what you said . . . from the look of things around here and all the commotion and all the cops . . . Noreen did come back here. She was murdered here.”

“Yes, she was. And you say you were in the building?”

Kate’s gaze snapped to mine. “That doesn’t mean I killed her.”

“It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. But why were you here, Kate?”

“To catch her, of course.” If Kate were feeling more on her game, I had no doubt an eye roll and a tongue click would have gone along with the comment. “I figured she’d sneak back in, and I was going to teach her a lesson. I was waiting for her and I thought when I saw her, then I’d call the cops. This time, I wasn’t planning on giving her a break. I was going to file charges and have Noreen and all those other crazy ghost kooks arrested.”

“So you were here. In your office. But you didn’t see anything? You didn’t hear anything?”

“I don’t know how I didn’t.” Kate’s shrug spoke to her confusion. “I didn’t fall asleep. I mean, I couldn’t, could I? Not when I was waiting for Noreen and her buddies to show up. I was in my office, watching the feed from the security cameras. I swear, Bea, I never saw a thing. Did Hank tell you where exactly Noreen was killed?”

“Hank didn’t have to tell me. I’m the one who found the scene of the crime.” Because I didn’t want Kate to get any more upset than she already was, I pretended this was no big deal. “I was just looking around, just checking to see if I could find any evidence that might explain what happened to Noreen, and—”

Kate squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Really.” It wasn’t, but that’s not what mattered. “She was beaten to death with that wacky piece of equipment EGG had with them last night, that plasmometer. It was in the back room. Beyond the warehouse.”

“Really?” Kate sat up. “Well, that explains why I never heard anything or saw anything. That’s the old storage area that we don’t use anymore. There aren’t any security cameras in there.”

“But how did Noreen get in there?”

Kate’s brow furrowed. “She didn’t come through the front door, that’s for sure. There are cameras there. She didn’t come through the back, either. There are stories . . .” She glanced my way, and I had no doubt she was trying to judge if I’d believe her or not. “They say that back during the twenties, the bootleggers used to bring liquor over from Canada and smuggle it through a series of nearby caves. I’ve heard people say that one of those caves leads into our old storage area—that when Sleepy Harlow worked here, that’s where he hid his liquor.”

“Sleepy Harlow.” I grumbled and folded my hands into fists. “I’m tired of hearing about the man.”

“Yeah, but if it’s true . . .” Thinking, Kate chewed her lower lip. “Noreen would have had to do research about Sleepy, right? I mean, if she had any intention of finding his ghost. She might have heard about the caves. That would explain how they got in.”

“Why isn’t the area secured?”

“Well, it is. Sort of.” Kate swept the tiny pieces of paper napkin into a pile. “The warehouse door is one of those that can only be opened from the inside. Nobody can get into the warehouse from the old storage room, and we don’t keep anything in there anyway, so there’s really no reason to worry about anybody stealing anything.”

“But it can’t be easy to find that way in.”

“You’re right. I’ve never tried it myself. I mean, why would I? But my mom and dad talked about it. And my grandparents. They said it was tricky, but it could be done. They said they used to play hide-and-seek there when they were kids.”

“And if Noreen was determined to make her way back inside . . .” I considered the possibility. “It explains how you didn’t know she was here.”

Kate turned around. There were windows on the far wall, and they looked out over the Wilder vineyards and the lake beyond. “I can’t believe I screwed up this bad,” she moaned. “If only I’d been paying more attention. Maybe I would have noticed something. If I had called the cops, maybe Noreen wouldn’t be . . .” She couldn’t make herself say the word.

“Don’t beat yourself up.” I squeezed her arm. “Everybody knows you would have helped if you could.”

“No, they don’t.” A fresh cascade of tears started down Kate’s freckled cheeks. “Everybody thinks I killed her, Bea. And once they find out I was here . . .”

“It doesn’t prove a thing.” Another thought hit. “It’s not at all relevant, but Kate, why didn’t you put the oil lamp away?”

She reached for another napkin from the holder at the center of the table and dabbed her cheeks. “I never left here until four this morning,” she said. “By that time, I figured I’d just wasted a perfectly good night when I could have been home and snug in my bed. I was so tired I couldn’t see straight. I guess . . .” She sniffed. “I guess I just forgot. And if I hadn’t, if I put the lamp away, you never would have known, Bea. No one ever would have known that I came back here.”

“Somebody would have found out. Somehow. The truth has a way of coming out. Especially when it comes to murder investigations.” Hank walked by outside the lunchroom door and I waved him inside. “It needs to come from you,” I told Kate.

She looked at Hank and swallowed hard. “You mean I need to tell him—”

I got up to leave. “Kate needs to talk to you,” I told Hank, and since I figured my part in the conversation was done, I left the lunchroom.

I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going, but I knew I had to get out of there, at least for a few minutes. What with the emotion that was vibrating through the lunchroom (from Kate, and from Chandra, who was still crying her eyes out, and, yes, from Luella, who, even though she was stone-faced and calm, had to be as upset as the rest of us), I needed to give Kate and Hank some privacy—and I needed to clear my head.

I remembered what I’d heard the cop say a little while earlier: They’d found a camera. I wondered if it was Noreen’s and what it might show. I wondered where they’d found it, and I retraced my steps back to the warehouse. The heavy metal door between the warehouse and the old storage room was open, but there was no one around. I took the opportunity to step inside.

It was chilly in the old room. The brick in the walls held in the dampness of years of disuse. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself, then stepped carefully around the plasmometer and the stains on the floor, peering farther into the shadows thrown by the light of the single bulb that hung from the center of the ceiling.

The room was maybe twenty feet wide and half again as long. There were wooden shelves built into the wall on my left, and on the far wall . . .

I peered into the shadows.

There was a deeper shadow in the center of the wall, one that looked like it might be a doorway.

Not that I was about to check it out!

Once Hank talked to Kate, she’d tell him about the caves and he’d get his guys to investigate. Better cops in boots with flashlights and radios poking around in the underbelly of the winery than me in my sneakers and no one around to call for help.

My mind made up, I backed up to head out of the old storage room.

That’s when something on the floor along the far wall caught my eye.

Carefully, I made my way over there, and what I found was a magazine.

A
Life
magazine. The cover had a yellow background and showed two stylized and stylish men taking a look at a very little red car.

But it wasn’t their old-fashioned clothing that caught my eye and made my breath wedge in my throat.

It wasn’t the vintage two-seater car, either.

It was the date up in the left-hand corner of the cover, directly opposite the words that said the magazine cost ten cents.

“October third, nineteen thirty.” My voice bumped over the date.

October 3, 1930.

The day Charles Sleepy Harlow was murdered.

  9  

M
ake no mistake, I saw the gleam in Hank’s eyes when he closed in on Kate in the lunchroom. And I saw him later, too, after he’d talked to Kate and she told him how she’d returned to the winery. By then, that gleam was a full-blown conflagration.

Hank thought he had his murderer.

He didn’t arrest Kate. Not right then and there. I knew that for certain, because when I got home, I sat by my parlor window and waited, my heart beating double-time and my stomach in my throat, until Kate’s car pulled into her driveway. Only then did I breathe easier. But that doesn’t mean I thought Kate’s troubles were over.

That’s why I didn’t get much sleep that night, and that’s why, by Friday morning, I was groggy and foggy—not to mention more than a tad cranky. The sun was just coming up over the horizon when I finally drifted off. What seemed like only minutes later, I was startled awake by the sounds of a crash from out in the hallway.

I grabbed the plaid flannel robe I’d once bought in Maine, poked my feet into my fuzzy bunny slippers, and raced out of my suite, only to find Dimitri and Jacklyn in the hallway, righting an equipment case that had toppled over.

“Sorry.” Dimitri didn’t look especially sorry. In fact, his eyes sparked with excitement and he looked pumped and (my editorial opinion here, of course) completely delicious, what with a shadow of dark whiskers outlining the planes and angles of his face, his hair mussed, and his tight-fitting jeans and an equally close-fitting T-shirt that showed off the tattoo of an angel on his left forearm and the Greek-god muscles that were a perfect match to his Mediterranean good looks. It wasn’t nearly as early as I had thought it was when I’d jumped out of bed. In fact, the antique tall case clock in the hallway showed that it was just past eight. Still, in spite of the hour, Dimitri didn’t look the least bit tired. He zipped over to one side of the equipment case and told Jacklyn to get over on the other side, and they hoisted it.

It didn’t take them long to finish, but by the time they did, I had brushed some of the cobwebs out of my brain.

“You’re not staying here,” I said to Jacklyn.

She had the good sense to look contrite. Or at least to try. There was a little too much twinkle in Jacklyn’s dark eyes, a little too much spring in her step, to officially qualify as contrite. “Dimitri, he thought—”

“My decision. I’ll take all the blame. Or the credit, if someone’s willing to give it to me.” Righting that fallen case was a lot of work. He pressed a hand to his chest at the same time he flashed Jacklyn a smile. “I figured no harm, no foul, since Noreen isn’t using her room anymore.”

Understatement.

I waited for Dimitri to realize it, but he was a little busy. Talking and laughing, David, Liam, and Rick scrambled down the steps, and Dimitri handed out assignments, went over the day’s schedule and asked them—in a nice way that still didn’t brook any debate—to take various and sundry pieces of equipment out to the front porch so they could be cleaned and tested.

“Not tested! Not here!” I hated myself for saying it, but I knew I’d regret it more if I didn’t speak up. (I didn’t believe in ghosts, right? So why did I care?) “This is an old house. I don’t want to find out that there’s something here that I don’t want to be here.”

“No worries! We promise not to tell.” Dimitri gave me a wink that banished any thoughts I’d had about unwanted spooky presences at the same time it made me conscious of the aforementioned plaid robe and bunny slippers. He slipped on his sunglasses, and while he finished moving the equipment case out to the front porch and left Jacklyn in charge of whatever was inside it, I combed my fingers through my hair and automatically reached up to poke my glasses up the bridge of my nose. I would have done it, too, if I hadn’t left my glasses on the table next to my bed.

When Dimitri came back inside, he had Fiona with him. The poor kid didn’t look any better rested than I felt. There were smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes, and her nose was raw and red. Dimitri instructed her to go up to his room and retrieve a full spectrum camera.

“Like I was saying . . .” Dimitri slipped off his sunglasses, poked his hands in his pockets, and rolled back on the heels of his sneakers. No doubt he knew the move emphasized his six-pack. No doubt he knew I’d see it and appreciate it. No doubt he was right. “With a room open, it only made sense for Jacklyn to stay in it.”

I wasn’t so sure Fiona agreed with this; that might explain why she froze, one foot on the bottom step, and shot Dimitri a look.

He was not the type of man who noticed such looks. Not from gawky kids like Fiona, anyway.

“It’s our room, anyway, right?” Dimitri went on, his words accented by the sounds of Fiona’s shoes slapping against the steps and punctuated by the noise of her opening, then slamming shut, the door of his room. “We’ve got the reservation through the weekend; we might as well use it. And speaking of that”—one corner of his mouth pulled tight—“that cop, the big guy . . .”

“Hank.”

“Yeah, Hank. He stopped over here and talked to us yesterday. He said none of us can leave the island. At least not until he gets a handle on what happened to Noreen. If we’ve got to stay into next week . . . ?”

“I’ve got two rooms already booked for Thursday and Friday,” I told him. “Fishermen. You’re good until then. After that if you’re still here, and if you don’t mind doubling up, we can work something out.”

“Terrific.” Rick and David shambled back in with news about electromagnetic something-or-others. Fiona came back down the steps as noisily as she’d gone up, punched the front door open, and disappeared.

I waited until the rest of them were all back outside. I would talk to the entire EGG crew in good time, of course. I had to if I had any hopes of clearing Kate’s name. Since I had Dimitri all to myself for the moment, it was as good a time as any to start.

“I’ll make coffee,” I told him. “And get breakfast out on the table in a few minutes. Until then, I wondered if you could tell me—”

His phone rang and he held up one finger to tell me to wait a sec, then answered the call.

I took the opportunity to duck into the kitchen to get breakfast going. Truth be told, I was so sure the members of EGG would be so upset by everything that had happened the day before, I didn’t think they’d be up to eating. I hadn’t given breakfast much thought except to get some cranberry sour cream muffins out of the freezer.

I checked them and found them nicely thawed, and got some pears and apples out of the fridge to go along with them. That done, I took out a couple dozen eggs to scramble and made the coffee, all the while listening to the burr of Dimitri’s voice right outside the kitchen door.

“That’s perfect, Al,” he told the person on the other end of the phone. “Yeah, my name first, along with that picture we took in Ireland last year. You know, the one of me standing in front of that old castle. That will be a perfect opening shot. Then—”

He paused, listening to whatever it was Al had to say.

“Yeah, that will be fine. But Jacklyn before Rick and the rest of them . . . What?”

Another pause, and Dimitri laughed.

“Yeah, she’s back, and now that Noreen won’t be around to make sure she doesn’t get too much screen time, Jacklyn will be a great addition to the show. Yeah, so me, then Jacklyn, then Rick, Liam, and David. What’s that? Oh yeah, then Fiona. I almost forgot about her. But remember to list her as an intern in the credits. I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea that somebody with skills that basic could actually be a full-fledged member of the team. Yeah, yeah. Get right on it, Al. We’ll be back in a few days, and we’ll have plenty of video to edit. I promise.”

I waited until I knew he was off the phone, then raised my voice so he was bound to hear. “Jacklyn’s not heading back to Hollywood for that soap opera?”

Dimitri stuck his head into the kitchen.

“Oh. You mean . . .” He gave his phone a look before he put it back in his pocket. “She quit the soap opera. Jacklyn’s back on our team. It’s good news. She’s a good investigator.”

There were people who said I was, too, though I spent my time looking for the truth rather than for errant ectoplasm.

“When I talked to her yesterday, she never mentioned joining the team again. Of course, that was before she knew Noreen was dead.”

Dimitri grinned. “You got that right! There was no love lost between those two. And you can see why, right?”

I couldn’t, and admitted it.

“Well, all you have to do is take one look at Jacklyn.” His grin ratcheted up a notch. “She’s gorgeous. And Noreen . . .” The grin disappeared completely, and Dimitri’s lips puckered like he’d bit into a lemon. “Well, not so much. And don’t think I’m just saying that because ol’ Noreen isn’t here to defend herself. I told her the same thing plenty of times, right to her face.”

“And Noreen didn’t like it when Jacklyn was around. Because Jacklyn’s so pretty.”

Dimitri ventured a few more steps into the kitchen. “It got to the point of being ridiculous. Noreen insisted on cutting Jacklyn out of scenes once the tape was edited for our pilot episode. She’d refuse to show evidence when Jacklyn was the one who found it. You know, all sorts of that crazy, jealous thing women are so good at. No offense intended,” he added.

Since I’d already taken offense, there seemed little point in arguing. “So now Noreen’s gone and Jacklyn’s back. Pretty convenient.”

“Pretty awesome.” Dimitri either didn’t see where I was going with this or he had decided I was as easy to ignore as meek and mild Fiona. “We’re pumped. I just talked to our producer about the opening credits for the show. You know, to get Jacklyn added.”

“And yourself shown first in front of an old Irish castle, the leader of EGG.”

This time, his smile wasn’t as cocky as it was calculating, and as cold as a January morning. “You’re not saying—”

I didn’t give him a chance to finish. I poured a cup of coffee and handed it over the breakfast bar to him. “So tell me, what really went on at the winery the other night?”

“You mean with Noreen?” I hadn’t offered, but he grabbed one of the cranberry muffins and took a bite. “You were there. You heard what I said then. Noreen, she told us we had permission to be there. None of us knew she was lying. Honest, if we knew she bypassed Ms. Wilder, none of us would have gone near the place. We’re not that kind of team. At least we never were before Noreen took over.”

I put out a small crystal pitcher of cream on a tray, then added another pitcher of milk, a sugar bowl, a variety of sweeteners and a jar of wonderful, local honey, the kind I hoped to someday produce from the hives I dreamed of installing in my back garden. “So what happened when you left there?” I asked him.

Dimitri was in mid-chew, and he waited to speak until he swallowed. “After Ms. Wilder kicked us out, we came back here.”

“Was Noreen with you?”

He nodded. “We had three vehicles, and we came back here together. Everybody but Fiona, that is.”

I grabbed a mixing bowl and the eggs and started cracking and whipping. It was better that than looking too eager to hear whatever he had to say. “What happened to Fiona?”

Dimitri shrugged. “She wasn’t inside the winery when you got there, remember. She was getting equipment out of the trucks. We were all in such a hurry to get out of there before that cop changed his mind and hauled us in, we forgot all about her! I don’t know where she was or what she was up to, but she wasn’t anywhere in sight and we didn’t stop to look for her. I hear she hoofed it all the way back here.”

“Poor kid.”

“She’s going to have to learn to suck it up if she plans on being a paranormal investigator.” Dimitri’s shoulders shot back. “It’s not an easy business.”

“I don’t imagine it is, what with the TV contracts and all.”

“Even before we had the TV contract. Old, abandoned buildings. Wet, moldy basements. Deep, dark forests in the middle of the night.” Though I was sure he wanted all this to sound sinister, the glimmer in his dark eyes told me this was what Dimitri lived for. “It’s not easy, and it’s not always safe. Then there are the spirits themselves, of course.”

I controlled a laugh. “You don’t think spirits can actually—”