The Legend of Sleepy Harlow (5 page)

Apparently, Fiona did, because when Noreen looked back at me, she was smug. “It makes more sense for the bigger equipment cases to go into the trucks first,” she said.

“And it would make even more sense,” I suggested, “if you kept all the equipment out in the trucks when you got back. That way, you wouldn’t have to load and unload.”

I’m pretty sure she would have admitted this was actually a good idea if she’d thought of it herself. The way it was, Noreen’s lips puckered like she’d sucked on a lemon. “It’s expensive equipment,” she said.

“We have a very low crime rate here on South Bass. You don’t have a thing to worry about.”

“Well . . .” She pretended to consider my plan. “We’ll see. For now—”

Dimitri came down the steps so fast, he was huffing and puffing by the time he got to the bottom. “Everything’s set,” he said, stopping to catch his breath. “Liam, get the cameras into the truck and—”

Noreen cleared her throat. “I’ve got everything under control,” she told Dimitri, then turned to Liam. “Get the cameras into the truck, and Dimitri”—she gave him a rattlesnake smile—“don’t worry about it.”

Without a word, he elbowed his way past her and into the parlor, checking to see that all the equipment that had been in there had already been moved. Tonight, Dimitri was dressed much like Noreen was, in a heavy jacket emblazoned with the blue EGG lettering. Like Noreen, he wore a fisherman’s vest over his jacket and, just like hers, his was crammed with wires and batteries and what I could only imagine were bits and pieces of ghost-finding gear.

“Good luck,” I told them when they went to the door, then wondered if that was the proper parlance in the woo-woo world. If these were theater people, I’d say, “Break a leg.” If they were sailors, I’d wish them “Bon voyage.”

I called after Noreen and Dimitri, “Or should I say I hope you’ve got a ghost of a chance of finding something!”

When she grimaced, Noreen was not especially attractive. “Yeah,” she grumbled, “like we’ve never heard that one before.”

They tumbled out of the house and took their equipment with them, and I got back to work.

“Charles Harlow was born on South Beach in ____,” I typed, then figured that should actually say South Bass and made the correction even as I reminded myself that I’d have to double-check county records to make sure this was true.

And so it went. At one point, I had to come up for air, and stepped out on the front porch for a minute or two. At another, I did an Internet search to find the proper spellings of some places Marianne mentioned that I couldn’t quite make out.

The next time I looked at the antique mahogany clock on the mantel, it was nearly nine and my eyes felt as if they were about to ooze right out of my head. My temples pounded and the fire that had been fed by the soggy pages was nearly out. I was getting nowhere fast, and in the hopes of tomorrow being another (and better) day, I twist-tied the garbage bag with Marianne’s manuscript in it closed and looked over the pitifully few pages I’d transcribed. There were more blank spaces than words on them, and the words that were there hardly made sense. There was no way I could re-create Marianne’s manuscript, not like this, and the realization settled inside me like a lead weight.

I massaged the bridge of my nose with the tips of my fingers. “I’m doomed,” I groaned, and dropped my head into my hands when I realized the project wasn’t going to get any easier. The longer Marianne’s manuscript marinated, the soggier it got, and the soggier it got, the more difficult it was for me to read.

Doomed, indeed.

I would have gone right on feeling by turns either sorry for myself or in a complete panic if I didn’t hear the sounds of a car out on the road. Not so unusual, except that its brakes squealed against the pavement and the reflection of headlights skimmed the parlor walls when the car turned into my driveway.

“Ghost getters,” I grumbled, closing my laptop. “Back from the hunt. I hope they found something they’re excited about so they don’t spend the rest of the night bickering.”

“Bea!” My front door slammed open. “You’ve got to come. Now!”

I spun around and found Kate standing in the hallway, one hand pressed to her heart. She was pale, and breathing fast.

I popped out of my chair. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” Her voice shook, just like her hands did. Her teeth clenched around the word. She took one wobbly step into the parlor and put a hand against the wall to steady herself. “I just got back from the mainland,” Kate growled. “It was . . .” Kate is the most practical and levelheaded person I know. I guess that’s why it felt like a fist to the gut when I saw that she had tears in her eyes. “It was a wild goose chase,” she said. “A big ol’ waste of time.”

This, of course, made no sense. Unless . . .

I closed in on Kate. “Your wine reporter never showed.”

“My wine reporter . . .” She folded her fingers against her palms and tucked her thumbs over them, anger simmering in her every clipped word. “I waited at the restaurant for an hour. Then I decided to give her another half hour. You know, as a professional courtesy. Still no Deidre. That’s when I called the magazine office in Chicago, just to make sure I hadn’t gotten the time or the place mixed up. And that’s when I found out”—the color in Kate’s cheeks was the same flaming red as her hair—“that’s when I found out Deidre Mannington wouldn’t be joining me for dinner. See, she’s on assignment. In Hong Kong.”

The truth dawned on me much as it must have on Kate when she heard the news. I flinched like I’d been slapped. “Noreen?”

“I’d bet any money on it.” Kate spun to the door. “I’m going to the winery, Bea, and you’d better come along, because I’m going to need a witness to testify in court about my mental state when I go on trial for Noreen’s murder!”

  4  

I
’ve never seen anybody, anytime, anywhere, turn the color Kate did when we pulled around to the side of Wilder Winery and saw the EGG trucks tucked against the back wall, where I’d bet any money they thought no one would ever see them.

Kate’s cheeks were maroon. With purple tinges.

The way she slammed on the brakes, I was pretty sure I’d have a bruise in all the same rainbow hues across my torso courtesy of my seat belt.

“I’m going to kill her, Bea.” Kate’s words were punctuated by her heavy breaths.

I would have grabbed on to her and urged caution if she had given me the chance. Instead, she pushed open the door and jumped out of the car.

Turns out a woman in fashionable black stilettos can walk pretty fast when she’s fueled by pure anger.

This woman in her sneakers had a hard time keeping up when Kate zipped along the side of the building and on toward the front entrance.

Wilder Winery had been built back in the late 1800s. From what I’d heard from folks on the island and from Kate herself, the original building had been a grand and glorious Old World sort of monstrosity, complete with half timber framing, plenty of stucco and even a gigantic cuckoo clock in a tower above the main door. Because of an electrical fire soon after Kate’s parents stepped back from running the business and she took over, Kate had been forced to start anew. Kate being Kate, she’d rebuilt with practicality—rather than historical ambiance—in mind.

The current building was a pleasant, farmy-looking place, a lovely slate blue in the daylight that, now that it was dark, looked gray and (dare I say it?) ghostly. The building had a peaked roof above the spacious entryway and a wide foyer that opened to a sleek and modern showroom and tasting bar where there was plenty of room for wine sippers—most of whom turned into buyers—to mix and mingle. Kate had her fingers in every aspect of the business, including the gift shop, which was quickly gaining a reputation on the island for unique and elegant products that included local artists’ works.

The front porch of Wilder’s was scattered with benches, and picnic tables were strewn around the lawn under the gigantic oak trees that dotted the property.

I was breathing hard when I caught up to Kate right outside the front door, where there was a massive planter jam-packed with mums. I’d been to Wilder’s just a week earlier to pick up a case of wine; I knew the mums were yellow and orange. In the pale light of a sliver of a moon, they looked anemic. Like eyes that swayed and bobbed in the breeze off the lake. Eyes that watched our every move.

“Don’t do anything stupid.” I grabbed Kate’s arm just as she was about to open the door. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

“Oh, come on, Bea!” In the glow from a security light somewhere behind me, the smile she flashed was predatory. “If I got to draw and quarter Noreen Turner . . . if I burned her at the stake . . . or used that guillotine to chop off her head, the one that weird rock band brought to the island last summer for the Bastille Day celebration”—she released a long, slow breath—“honest, Bea, I wouldn’t regret any of that. Not one little bit.”

I didn’t doubt it for a moment.

Which is why I wedged myself in front of her and dashed into the winery the instant Kate had the door unlocked.

She flipped on a phalanx of overhead lights and a startled voice cried out, “The lights out there came on all by themselves. Nobody touched them. It has to be paranormal. There’s no other explanation!” I followed the sound past the tasting bar and back toward the room where the newly fermented grape juice was stored in rows of gigantic stainless steel tanks.

No explanation?

Au contraire!

EGG should have figured that out when they heard the crack of Kate’s footsteps against the hardwood floor, along with the noise she made from deep in her throat—the one that sounded a whole lot like thunder.

Call me crazy, but when I touched a hand to the light switch on the wall in the fermenting room, I thought the ghost hunters would look a little less disappointed to see good ol’ corporeal me—and a little more nervous about the whole breaking and entering thing.

Instead, Ben and Eddie simply took the cameras off their shoulders and stepped back to watch.

Liam and David and Rick paused, Mel meters and whatnots at the ready. Dimitri flicked off the digital tape recorder he held in one hand. And Noreen—

“We were in the middle of filming,” Noreen said when she saw me, puffing out a breath of annoyance. “You can’t just walk in here like that and turn on all the lights. We work in the dark for a reason, you know. The UV rays from light make it harder for spirits to manifest. You ruined the shot and maybe a chance for a spirit to communicate!”

“I’ll ruin
you
.” Do I need to say that this comment came from Kate? Fire in her eyes, she raced into the room and pushed right past me and that gigantic lantern-looking thing I’d seen in the purported ghost video. Step by infuriated step, she backed Noreen toward one of the stainless steel tanks. “You’re trespassing. You’re breaking laws. You’re—”

“Wait a minute!” Dimitri stepped forward. “Chill out, honey. We’ve got permission to be here.”

If I thought Kate was upset before, I was as wrong as wrong can be. She stopped, and when all the color drained from her face, she looked like an ice queen. Dimitri must have felt the transformation, too; when Kate spun his way, he froze.

“I own this winery,
honey
,” she snapped. “That’s my name on the front door. And I’m the only one who can give you permission to be here.” Kate’s voice was so controlled and quiet, it terrified even me. “I never did that.”

Dimitri’s gaze shot to Noreen, his cheeks flushed and his breaths coming in long, hard puffs. “You . . . you liar! You told us—”

“That’s for sure.” I didn’t know if it was Ben or Eddie who spoke up, I only knew it was one of the cameramen and that both of them backed up a step, distancing themselves from the confrontation. “She told us it was okay,” the cameraman said, glancing from Kate to Noreen. “Don’t blame us, lady. Noreen told us that after you two had your little . . . er . . . disagreement back at the B and B yesterday, she talked to you again and that she arranged everything with you. That you told her—”

“Oh, I told her, all right.” Kate took another couple steps forward, until Noreen was as flat as a camouflaged pancake against that stainless tank. “I told her no. In fact, I told her no, no, and no again. I told her to stay away. And never to darken my doorstep again.” Kate glanced around at the crew. “So if she told the rest of you any different, Dimitri here, he’s right. You are a liar, Noreen.”

She swiveled a gaze that could have cut through steel in Noreen’s direction. “Is that what you did, Noreen? Because if you just forgot what I told you, you have one short memory, lady. But if you flat-out lied to your crew, then you just got yourself and them in some really hot water.”

“Now, wait a minute!” Dimitri put a hand out toward Kate, then thought better of the move and tucked his hand in the pocket of his jacket. “You can’t blame us for what Noreen . . . for what this lunatic did. We didn’t know. She told us—”

“Shut up!” Noreen’s voice shot up to the high ceiling and echoed back at us. “She’s got it all wrong.” She swung her gaze from Dimitri back to Kate. “You’ve got it all wrong. I remember what you said, and—”

“And I said no.”

Was that a smile Noreen attempted? It came and went so fast, I wasn’t sure. But hey, after years in New York in a high-powered, high-pressured, high-income profession, I was sure I recognized kissing up when I saw it, and what happened next was so classic, it turned my stomach.

Noreen tucked her meter into her pocket so she could scrape her palms against her camo pants, and I swear, I could just about see the effort it cost her to lower her voice. Like she was standing in front of a firing squad, she pulled back her shoulders. “I know what you said, Ms. Wilder, and believe me, I thought about it plenty and I understand why you feel the way you do. What we did last fall when we were here . . . well, that was wrong. We were wrong. If we hadn’t gotten so carried away by catching that video of Sleepy Harlow, it never would have happened. I swear. But that’s what it all comes down to, don’t you see?” Noreen made a swirly sort of motion with her hand and, for a moment, I thought maybe she was twitching because she was nervous.

I should have known better.

No sooner did Noreen gesture than both Ben and Eddie lifted their cameras to their shoulders and started filming again.

Perfect timing, especially when Noreen looked right at one of the cameras and said, “We caught that video of that apparition last year and now, we owe it to ourselves and to the scientific community as a whole to see if we can find more evidence. It’s not just something we want to do; it’s something we have to do. It’s our mission, our duty. That’s why I knew you wouldn’t mind. Look around!” Noreen did, but Kate sure didn’t. Like a sniper homing in on a target, Kate’s gaze was trained on the leader of the ghost getters.

“We haven’t touched a thing,” Noreen assured her. “We’ve been very careful and, of course, respectful of you and your business. Between that and all the publicity you’re going to get from our TV show—”

The screech rose out of Kate like a banshee’s wail and cut Noreen off. She immediately signaled to the cameramen to stop filming. Too bad. Had they kept on, they would have gotten some darned sensational footage of Kate when she darted forward, her hands raised and her fists clenched.

Time for me to insinuate myself into the middle of the tiff.

“You’re going to have to leave,” I told Noreen, one hand on Kate’s shoulder to calm her. “You heard Kate. She doesn’t want you here.”

“She’ll change her mind when she hears what we’ve already found tonight.” Noreen was so sure of herself, she lifted her chin and signaled that the filming could recommence. “I think all the paranormal activity has something to do with the geological makeup of the island. It’s mostly limestone, you know. And limestone near running water is known to increase the incidents of paranormal activity. That’s because limestone can hold information. You know, like a camera recording historic events. The limestone records it, then releases it, and that information plays back over and over again as what we call a residual haunting.”

“They call it the stone tape . . . theory,” Dimitri added, breathless at the very thought. He would have been better served realizing that neither Kate nor I cared. The cameramen did. They swiveled around and began recording Dimitri. “It works because . . .” He gathered his thoughts. “Because limestone can trap vibrations and then, if conditions are right, the vibrations play back, like a tape recorder or, you know, a DVR.”

“And some theories even say the limestone is like a battery.” This came from David, a tall, good-looking African American who, when it came to vibrations, had apparently missed the whole I’m-going-to-kill-her vibe coming off Kate and thought that an actual discussion about all this horse hockey was appropriate. With the cameras rolling on him now, he said, “The limestone holds energy and that energy keeps the haunting going. But like Noreen said, this only works when it comes to residual hauntings. It’s important to remember that. These aren’t intelligent hauntings, not entities you can interact with. These are residuals, like watching a movie projected into the air. They don’t know we’re here. They just keep playing over and over. Like the apparition we caught last year. Which is why, with the help of the plasmometer there”—he looked at the big lanternlike contraption—“we’re pretty sure we can catch the apparition on film again.”

“Or the whole stone tape theory might actually work because electromagnectic fields are generated by water flowing over the limestone,” Liam put in, stepping in front of David and, not incidentally, in front of the camera, too. “You know, like—”

“Like are you all deaf?” I whirled around, taking them all in, and at the sound of my voice ping-ponging against the stainless steel, both Ben and Eddie lowered their cameras. “Limestone, batteries, residual whatevers . . . the only thing that matters is that you get out of here. Now.”