The Legend of Sleepy Harlow (17 page)

“A pencil won’t work. The lead wouldn’t be fat enough.” Levi jumped to his feet and headed to his car. He was back in a flash, a few sheets of paper in one hand and a box of crayons in the other. He popped open the lid on the crayon box, took out a black crayon and peeled back the paper.

“Halloween,” he said, as if it were enough of an explanation. Then, because he knew it wasn’t, he grinned. “I figure there will be a lot of families coming to the island for the big costume party on Friday. So I ordered a few dozen boxes of crayons. You know, so I can put them out on the tables in the restaurant along with paper to keep the kids busy while families are waiting for their orders. The morning ferry brought the stuff and I was just over at the dock picking it all up.” He finished with the black crayon, stuffed the tiny shreds of its former paper wrapping in his pocket and held up the gleaming, naked crayon for me to see. “What do you think? Will it work?”

I laid the piece of blank paper over the vandalized portion of the headstone and held out my hand for the crayon. “Let’s find out.”

Holding the crayon on either end, I swiped it lengthwise over the paper. The paper moved. I cursed. Levi leaned over so he could hold either side of the paper and keep it in place.

Good idea.

At least it would have been if it didn’t mean we were suddenly in very close proximity. I reached around him to try and rub the crayon across the paper again, and when that didn’t work, I laid aside my pride and ducked under his arm. He was kneeling behind me now, one arm on either side of me. Rather than consider how if I moved just a fraction of an inch, our truce would turn out to be the shortest one in history, I got to work on the rubbing.

Done, I sat back.

Or at least I would have if Levi—solid and oh-so-tempting—weren’t there.

He jumped to his feet.

I followed.

I don’t think I imagined it; he was as breathless as I was. He covered better than I would have been able to, looking over my shoulder at the rubbing, a smear of black against the white paper. “I can still see the gashes in the stone.” He pointed to those lines. “And the other parts you pointed out . . .” His finger traced the pattern. “It’s just like you said. It looks like there was something else carved into the stone. Something somebody didn’t want anyone else to see.”

I stared at the fat, black pattern, at the delicate tracery at the bottom and that smooth, round curve at the top that reminded me of—

“It’s an oil lamp.”

“All right.” The way he dragged out the words added to the skepticism that rang through his voice. “I can see the bottom of it and I guess it could be an—”

“An oil lamp.” I clutched the rubbing in suddenly trembling fingers. “Just like at the winery.”

This, of course, he didn’t know, and with my words vibrating with an excitement I didn’t quite understand, I gave Levi the
Reader’s Digest
condensed version of the story.

When I was finished, he took the paper out of my hands and examined the picture again. “So every day when Kate goes to the winery, she sets an oil lamp on the windowsill.”

“Just like her parents did, and their parents did, and their parents did,” I explained.

“And you think—”

“I don’t know what to think. Except that it’s a mighty strange coincidence. Sleepy’s ghost has been seen at the winery and—”

“And I thought we don’t believe in ghosts.”

“We don’t. Only if we did, Sleepy’s ghost has been seen at the winery. And the oil lamp is always put out at the winery. Do the math, Levi.” I did, very quickly, and I came to the conclusion I knew he’d arrive at once he thought about it. “It was Kate’s great-grandma Carrie who started the tradition with the oil lamp. The timing is right. I’d bet anything that she was working at Wilder’s in the twenties and thirties. It’s exactly Sleepy’s time period.”

“And it means?”

“I have no idea what it means! Maybe there was some sort of tradition in town about oil lamps back then. I’ll check with the historical society. Or maybe . . .”

A thought floated through my head, and as foolish as it felt to put it into words, I figured I owed it to Levi. If he was game enough to go through these theories with me, I might as well speak my mind.

“Sleepy worked at Wilder’s. He and Carrie Wilder must have known each other.” Again, I studied the rubbing. “What if they more than knew each other? What if she put out that oil lamp to signal to Sleepy?”

Levi chuckled. “Maybe what you really should be writing is romance novels,” he suggested.

My head shot up and I stared at him. If there weren’t a lump that blocked my throat, I might have asked why he was suddenly so pale.

I swallowed the sand in my mouth. “Romance novels instead of—”

“Instead of the book you’re doing about Sleepy on Marianne’s behalf, of course.” Levi’s smile came and went. Or maybe I just thought it did because of the way the tree branches above our heads swayed with the next breeze that blew through, spilling sunlight over us, then disappeared, leaving behind a shower of leaves. “Sleepy was a gangster. You know, one of the bad guys. And Kate’s great-grandmother . . . well, I’m new to the island, just like you. But even I know the Wilders would never pass the time of day with the likes of Sleepy.”

He was right, and I admitted it.

But it didn’t explain the carving. Or the fact that someone had tried to eradicate it.

I’d just given up on trying to figure it out and had turned to head back to my car when something in the grove of trees at the far end of the cemetery caught my eye.

I stopped and squinted for a better look. “Did you see that?” I asked Levi.

He looked where my finger was pointing. Looked again. Leaned forward.

“Something’s moving over there,” he agreed, and since we both knew it was probably something no more threatening than a squirrel, he really didn’t need to take my arm and tug me to the side so he could step in front of me. “There!” It was his turn to point.

Since Levi’s so much taller than me, I had to step around him to get a better look at the shadow that glided behind the trees.

Not a squirrel. It was too tall to be an animal. Too quiet to be a person. It stepped from sunlight to shadow and again into sunlight, too far into the brush to be clearly seen. It walked like a person, and if I watched it carefully . . .

I’d already moved forward for a better look when a gust of wind whipped through the cemetery. It snaked across my shoulders and whizzed over my head, and when it got to the place just beyond the perimeter of the cemetery where the grass was taller and the brush was thicker, it shivered over a sumac bush, bending its branches with their red leaves toward the ground.

That’s when I got a better glimpse of the shadow.

It was man-high and for what couldn’t have been more than a second or two I saw clearly that it had two arms, two legs.

And no head.

“Levi!” My fingers were already pressed into his arm before I even realized I’d reached for him. I dared to look away long enough to see that Levi was looking exactly where I was looking.

“I see it,” he said, his voice breathless, as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “Come on!” He took off like a shot, taking me along with him.

We zigzagged around headstones and kicked through tall grass, and in less than a minute, we were standing at the spot where we’d seen the shadow.

There was nothing there.

“And no place for anyone to go,” Levi said, glancing to his right, where there was a road that led to the state park. If there was someone out there, surely we would have seen him. To our left, another road led to the other side of the island, but there, too, there was no sign of life.

I’m afraid that when I asked, “What the hell just happened?” my voice shook just a little bit.

But then, when he answered, “I don’t have the slightest idea,” Levi’s did, too.

“You don’t think—”

He didn’t let me finish. Keeping a firm hold on my hand, Levi tugged me back into the cemetery and over to the spot where we’d first seen the shadow: Sleepy Harlow’s grave.

He tried to make it look as casual as can be, but I couldn’t help noticing the way he looked back into the shady grove when he said, “I’ve got to get over to the restaurant and work on tonight’s dinner menu. Don’t forget your flowers.”

I picked up the bouquet of carnations, then thought better of it. Don’t ask me what gave me the idea, because honestly, I don’t know. I only know that when we left Crown Hill Cemetery, the flowers were right where I thought they belonged.

On Charlie Harlow’s grave.

  16  

H
ank called that afternoon. “Can you get over here to the station, Bea? There’s something I want you to see.”

He didn’t need to ask me twice.

Hank, see, is one cool, calm, collected dude. I mean, he has to be, in his line of work, right? Yet when he called, there was a tiny burr of excitement in his voice. Oh, he tried to hide it under that hard-as-rocks exterior that served him so well when he was keeping the peace on the island. But I was intrigued.

Not to mention grateful.

See, if there was something Hank needed to see me about, it probably had something to do with Noreen’s murder.

And if I was thinking about Noreen’s murder, I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.

Like what Levi and I saw out at Crown Hill Cemetery that morning.

I kept my mind on the case, and headed for the police station.

“Come on back to my office.” The Put-in-Bay Police Department is housed in the basement of the town hall building, and Hank intercepted me as soon as I was down the steps and inside the door. He put a hand on my elbow to guide me, and once we were in his small, tidy office, he closed the door behind us.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

He pointed me to a chair opposite his gray metal desk.

“I figured I owed you,” he said. “I asked you to poke around to see what you could find out.”

“Unfortunately, that hasn’t been much.”

Hank plunked his little spiral notebook on the desk, but he didn’t open it. Apparently, the details of the case were firm in his mind. Just as apparently, he didn’t like them. That would explain his frown. “I thought you should know that we checked into that coffin. You know, the one Noreen’s body was in. As far as that goes, nobody remembers anything. Nobody saw anything. The coffin had been in the park for a couple days along with everything else they needed for the wake. No one remembers seeing anyone near it.”

“Well, the body would have had to have been moved at night. But there was a lot of blood. If you checked—”

“Your ghost hunters’ vehicles?” Hank grimaced. “We’d need a warrant, and we don’t have enough evidence to get one. I did, however . . .” He sat back, and to tell the truth, Hank didn’t do prevarication very well. There was a tinge of pink in his cheeks when he said, “I may have glanced in their trucks when I saw them parked around town.”

“And . . . ?”

“And nothing. Nothing I could see, anyway. Whoever moved that body was smart enough to wrap it in plastic first. I guarantee that, just like I guarantee that plastic is long gone. Even had the guys check the landfill. In fact, the only even semi-interesting thing we’ve found . . .” There was a TV nearby on a stand and, without a word, Hank took a DVD off his desk and slipped it into the player at the front of the TV.

“Remember back at the winery the day you found the body? One of my officers came across a camera.”

“One of the ghost getters’ cameras?” I sat up like a shot.

“Don’t get too excited.” Hank sank down in the chair behind his desk. “It’s one of theirs, all right, but if you’re looking for a smoking gun—”

“I’m not.” I wasn’t any better a liar than Hank. Of course I was looking for a smoking gun. A smoking gun (or in this case, a battered plasmometer) in someone else’s hand would exonerate Kate.

“The camera slid under some old boxes in that back room where you found the body and landed in a stagnant puddle of water. It looked like it would be pretty useless, but we sent it off to the state crime lab and they were able to get something off of it. I want you to take a look at it,” Hank said, grabbing the remote. “See if it makes any sense to you.”

I couldn’t help myself. In spite of Hank’s suggestion that I shouldn’t get excited, a funny cha-cha rhythm started up inside my chest. With sweaty palms, I clutched the arms of the chair. Better that than letting Hank see that my hands were trembling.

It took only a few more seconds, but by the time he got the video going, I was about to burst.

There was nothing to see on the TV screen in front of me except blackness. I heard a crackle, and a zigzag of gray shot across the screen.

“What the hell do you mean you’re not going to do it?”

The voice belonged to Noreen.

The picture bounced, and a second later, Noreen’s face filled the screen, then was gone again.

“You can’t—” Static crackled and blocked out Noreen’s words. “—told me you would. How dare you—”

The screen went black and my spine accordioned and I plopped back in my chair. “Well, I can see why you said I shouldn’t get too excited.”

“Shhh!” Hank pointed to the TV.

A blob of gray lightened the screen, and a second later, it once again filled with a picture of Noreen’s face. No doubt she’d set down her camera and was standing in front of it. The picture went out of, then back into, focus. As she had been the last time I’d seen her—both alive and dead—Noreen was dressed in her ghost-hunting gear: camouflage pants, heavy sweatshirt, fishing vest. The light was terrible and the colors of her clothing were washed out on the video, like an old-fashioned tintype that had been hand-colored. Against the rest of the anemic colors, her cheeks looked too pink.

“Are you finally ready?” Noreen asked.

Like Noreen, I waited for the answer. With my breath caught behind a ball of tension in my throat, I leaned forward in my chair, waiting to see who she was with and what would happen next at the same time I searched the picture for anything that might provide a clue.

“She’s in that back room,” I said, more to myself than to Hank. “The room where I found her body. You can see the basket-weave pattern of the brickwork behind her.”

Hank, no doubt, had already noticed that. He caressed his chin with one hand.

Though Noreen was still the only person in the picture, it was clear someone had joined her. Her head snapped around. Like me, she’d heard the faint shuffle of feet.

“I’m going to switch the plasmometer on,” Noreen said. “You better be ready to go as soon as I do. Walk in from back there.” She looked over her shoulder into the deeper shadows at the far end of the storeroom. “I’ll be scanning the room and I’m going to say that it feels suddenly colder. That’s your cue. That’s your cue to walk in and leave that old magazine. You know, to prove who you are.”

“Cue?” I remembered everything Jacklyn had told me about how she merely acted her way through each investigation. Still, the enormity of what I saw playing out in front of me on the screen felt like a fist to the solar plexus. I sucked in a breath. “Is Noreen saying what I think she’s saying?”

“Shh,” was Hank’s answer.

I gulped back my excitement and propped my elbows on Hank’s desk, the better not to miss the flicker of even one shadow on the screen.

“All right. All set.” Whoever Noreen was waiting for,now was the time. “I’m switching on the plasmometer, so you’d better step lively. We both know this piece of junk isn’t going to stay on for long.”

When she leaned over to flip the switch on the plasmometer, Noreen disappeared from the picture. A second later, the screen filled with a flash of chartreuse light and Noreen was back. This close to the plasmometer, her face looked like a caricature of itself, her eye sockets too deep and black, her mouth too much of a slash, her doughy cheeks the texture and color of moldy white bread.

“I’m ready,” she said, glancing over her shoulder toward that dark corner where she’d told her coconspirator to make an appearance. “Are you listening? I said, I’m ready.” She cleared her throat. “I’m here in one of the old storage rooms at the winery,” she said, “and I’ve been trying to catch EVPs for the last ten minutes. I’ve played back what I recorded and so far, no luck. But it’s suddenly gotten a lot colder in here.”

Noreen waited.

Nothing happened.

“It’s suddenly gotten a lot colder in here,” she said, louder this time.

And still, nothing happened.

Noreen grumbled a word that would definitely have been bleeped if the show ever made it to the air. “Where the hell are you? Come on, do what you’re supposed to do and let’s get this over with before the cops come back. Do what you’re being paid to do and quit acting like a prima donna. I told you I’d make it up to you. I told you I’d—”

A shuffling noise brought Noreen spinning around just as the screen filled with the blinding green light of the plasmometer. The light swirled and arced. Right before the plasmometer knocked into the camera and sent it careening under the shelves and into the puddle of water where Hank said they’d found it, I caught a last glimpse of Noreen’s face.

Her eyes were open wide. Her mouth was a gaping hole of terror.

She knew as well as Hank and I did that the plasmometer was about to come down on her head and that in just another second, she’d be dead.

*   *   *

I didn’t ask for anything to drink, but Hank was enough of a professional to recognize the first telltale signs of shock when he saw them. I guess my shallow breaths and clammy skin qualified. The next thing I knew, there was an open can of Pepsi on the desk in front of me, and it wasn’t the diet version I drank when I drank soda (which was hardly ever because I didn’t especially like the way it tasted or the way the bubbles made me feel as if my stomach had been pumped with a tire inflator). This was the high-test stuff, and I knew the sugar and caffeine would pack the punch I needed. I lifted the can with both hands and drank deep.

The bubbles tickled my throat and, yes, my stomach felt as if it had been pumped with a tire inflator. On the upside, the sugar raced through my system like a shot of adrenaline. I may not have been completely coherent by the time I set the empty can back on the desk, but I was getting there.

“Did we just see what I think we just saw?” I asked Hank. Three cheers for me, my voice didn’t tremble. Well, at least not too much.

“A murder? I’m afraid we did.”

“The murderer couldn’t have known Noreen was already filming. If he did, there’s no way he would have left the camera there.”

“Or he did know it was there and he couldn’t find the camera once it was knocked off whatever Ms. Turner had it propped on. I told you, we found it in a puddle of slimy water beneath some very old shelves.”

“Or maybe that’s when Kate got back to the winery. The killer might have heard her come in and then he panicked. He left without the camera because he couldn’t take the chance of sticking around, not once he knew there was someone else on the premises. Either one of those scenarios makes sense. What doesn’t . . .”

Like it or not, my gaze drifted back to the TV screen. Hank had paused the DVD and I found myself staring into Noreen’s terrified face. I swallowed hard.

“In that very first bit we saw, it sounded like she was trying to talk someone into something,” I said.

“I agree with you there.”

“And it sounded like that someone didn’t want to be talked into it.”

“Agreed. Again.”

“But in that second bit . . .” Just thinking about what we’d just seen unfold in front of our very eyes made my insides shimmy. “It’s—”

“Yeah.” Hank sat back in his chair. I was grateful he’d cut me off. I could think of plenty of words to describe Noreen’s murder—brutal, savage, and incredibly disturbing came right to mind—but none of those words was sufficient to describe what we’d just seen, or the emotions that overloaded my senses. Disgust. Outrage. Clinical interest. I’m not sure which disturbed me the most. Maybe it didn’t matter.

A flash of memory swam up through the riot of emotions. “Noreen said the plasmometer was junk.”

“Yeah, I caught that.” Hank had brought over a can of soda for himself, and he popped the top and poured the soda into a paper cup. “You need more?” he asked, and when I shook my head, he finished pouring and sipped. “So you tell me, do your guests think that plasmo-whatever is junk? The way they’ve been pestering me to get that hunk of metal back, you’d think it was God’s gift to mankind.”

“Not God’s. Noreen’s.” When Hank gave me a blank look, I explained. “It’s called the Turner Plasmometer because Noreen designed it. Every single one of the ghost getters I’ve talked to has told me that it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, that it puts them one step ahead of every other ghost-hunting team out there, and that they can’t live without it. Well . . .” I thought about what I’d said. “Maybe not Jacklyn.”