The Realm of the Shadows (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 2) (18 page)

“I imagine it did,” I said. “By the time I saw him he was down on his knees, and when I called to him, his first priority was to fold the grabber up and get it out of the way before I could see it. That would’ve been a lot more obvious than a wet strap lying on the ground. I would’ve noticed it. I would’ve asked about it, and most of all, I would’ve remembered it. So he folded it up quickly and stashed it, but I was getting close by then, and he simply left the strap on the ground where he’d dropped it from the claws of the grabber, instead of drawing my attention to it by picking it up and putting it in his satchel. Then I took him off for a walk, and before he could get back and retrieve it, Porter found it. Bad luck, Pluto.”

“You can’t prove any of this,” Pluto said in a thin voice.

I shrugged. “It all hangs together. Circumstantial, yes, but now that I’ve raised suspicion, a forensic examination of your bank account – and Seth’s – and any e-mails and texts between the two of you will back up everything I’ve said. I doubt if we’ll find a paper trail back to Skinner; he’s too smart for that. But as to what went on between you and Seth, the proof is there. It’s just that nobody would’ve found it if they hadn’t even been looking. The police thought it was an accident. If it hadn’t been for those little clues, and the fact that Porter brought us that strap, you would’ve gotten away with it.”

He never even bothered to deny it. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all after that. When Kyle Longley came in and said, “Let’s talk about this, son,” Pluto put his head down and went along without a word.

The only one beaming was Wizard, who had a prototype of his grabber out and was unfolding, then folding it.

“It does fold up pretty fast, doesn’t it?” he said.

Which solved all of our problems except for the one we had started with: the lady in the loft.

I found Charlie at work with his crew and pulled him aside. We were actually making progress now, and in fact, they were just about finished. I knew that all the men on his crew, particularly Tripp, were worried that he wouldn’t stay away from Cadbury House after they were finished.

I brought him down to the seawall and we sat. Nothing was said for a few minutes.

“Charlie,” I began awkwardly, “we tried. We even brought in a professional medium from Spud.”

He smiled. “I know. Purity something, right? I’ve heard of her. She does fortune-telling at a hundred bucks a pop. Never understood that kind of thing.” he said shaking his head.

“We tried to –“ Words failed me.

I was still groping for the right way to say it when he lifted a hand to stop me. “I know what this is about. You don’t have to worry about her any more. She’s gone.”

I gaped at him. “Are you sure?”

His face sagged heartbreakingly. He’d lost weight, and I saw wrinkles I hadn’t noticed before.

“I’m sure. I’m the one who worked it out with her. It was time for her to move on, but she just couldn’t let go. I kept company with her; I guess I gave her the connection she’d been needing. The connection to another human being. I tried to comfort her, and give her courage. And peace. She left me last night. She won’t be back.”

I touched his arm, but the wound was still too fresh. He stood up and took a deep breath.

“No offense, ma’am, but I can’t wait to get away from here. It’s empty now. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to work.”

He started walking away, then turned and stood still, looking at me for a long minute.

“How can it be that I’m more alone now than I was before? She wasn’t real.”

“She was real,” I told him. “What you felt was real.”

He gazed at me a moment, then walked away.

When I got back in the house, Ed was standing at the breakfast bar with his travel bags around him and his computer case slung over his shoulder.

“Well, Taylor,” he said with a barely-concealed smugness, “I guess this is it. Problems solved.”

I didn’t tell him that the main problem I’d hired him to solve had been taken care of by somebody else. The man had enough self-doubt.

“Thank you so much, Ed. You can send in your bill whenever you figure it out.”

“Sure, sure. Not that I want to give you any ideas, but I feel like I should be paying you. I’ve searched for years, and this particular haunting has been my first legitimate case. And it was a success! I can’t wait to write it up.”

I’d forgotten about that. We’d agreed at the beginning, though, so I didn’t feel I could stop him now. All I could say was, “Remember what we agreed with Charlie, though. Names changed to protect the innocent, yadda yadda.”

“Oh, sure. Naturally that’s what I plan to do. So it was Pluto, eh? How long have you known?”

“I’ve suspected it for a while now. I was suspicious about Seth’s drowning as soon as it happened, and when I thought it over, any kind of trap could only have been set up by Pluto: he was the advance man for the team. And he was the only member of the team to have the use of the company van. The night he vandalized the barn, he left on a bicycle. He must stashed it in the van, parked halfway down the dirt road after the rest of the crew drove away, pedaled back here to mess around in the cemetery and barn, then made his escape on the bike. Teddy drives a little sports car, and Jazz has an open Jeep. Wizard has a pick-up truck, but he wasn’t in the water when Seth died.”

“And you definitely thought the vandal was also the murderer?”

“I didn’t know. I suppose we could’ve had both, but as the pieces began to fit together, yes, I thought we were dealing with just one guy. Oh, no,” I said suddenly, looking through the windows to the parking area and seeing two things I didn’t want in my house.

We’d stopped locking the doors when the
Realm of the Shadows
crew had left, and Teddy simply stepped on up to the veranda, waved to us inside the house, and came on in. With Porter.

“Hey, guys,” he said, as if last night hadn’t happened. “Look at my new partner. We came straight over from Orphans in the Rain.”

Porter was very happy to see me, and began heaving and snorting, straining at the leash to get at me. Fortunately, Teddy was strong enough to hold him back, so nothing in the house (including my bones) got broken. They came forward at Teddy’s pace and Porter nearly strangled himself before he got to me.

I knelt and petted him, and he got me in the face with his streaming tongue. I laughed and roughed him up with both hands. I really was happy to see him.

I stood up and looked at Teddy. “So you’ve been to the shelter?”

He gestured at the dog grandly, and Porter gave him an adoring look. “Meet Porter, the ghost-sniffing dog.”

I turned to Ed and we burst out laughing. Then I turned back to Teddy. “Shouldn’t it be Porter the crime-sniffing dog? After all, he did sniff out a clue to a murder.”

“Consider the source,” Ed muttered to me.

“I’ll always feel that he was guided by the spirit of Seth,” Teddy said solemnly.

“Or something like that,” I said. It had finally come to me by that point that Porter had been the messenger Bastet had spoken of. At first I’d thought she meant Ed, but I was the one who had sent for him; Porter had just – arrived.

Teddy was nodding. “He’s a multi-talented canine. Listen, Ed,” he said, shifting focus as only Teddy can. One minute you exist, the next, you don’t. “I’ve been meaning to have a serious talk with you, my man.”

“Bring it on,” Edson Darby-Deaver said, getting scrappy.

“No! Peace, brother. I mean I have an idea for a show. You and me. The skeptic and the believer. You know – a ying-and-yang kind of thing. And the thing that really puts us over the top, that sets us apart from all the other paranormal shows is, we’ll have Porter, the ghost-sniffing dog. It can’t miss!”

I looked at Ed.

“Listen, Teddy, I appreciate the offer,” he said. “But I’m planning a book on our investigation into Ellen O’Hare.”

“Dude, Rome isn’t built in a day. You start writing, and I’ll make the deals and get the production company together. By the time we’re ready to roll, you’ll probably be finished with the book. All you have to do is transcribe your notes, right? Come on, come on, come on,” he said, breaking into a boxer’s dance and making Porter go crazy. The wiggling dog kept snapping at Teddy’s feet until they both calmed down.

“I’ll think about it,” Ed said finally. “I’ll let you know, okay? It’s the best I can do for now.”

With a silky voice, Teddy said, “Think of all the investigations you’ve wanted to dig into, but didn’t have the resources. We’ll have backing, Ed! We can do anything we want. The Hammond Castle. The Winchester Mystery House. Boone Hall. Hell, we can even storm England. I’ve always wanted to do St. Albans Abbey. They had some kind of battle there back in the day.”

“And it’s haunted?” I asked.

“Gotta be.”

Ed was being seduced; I could see it. “I’ve always wondered about The Casements. It’s just down the road in Ormond-by-the-Sea. John D. Rockefeller died there. It would be fascinating – no! You’re not going to suck me into this. I have a book to write.”

“The Stanley Hotel,” Teddy crooned. “Alcatraz.”

Ed put his hands over his ears. “Stop!”

Porter began to bark.

Teddy did his best, but Ed was firm. Finally, to stop the pressure on Ed, I tried to divert Teddy. “I’m sure you’re full of ideas for your new show. What is your first investigation going to be?”

He gave me a serious look and said, “Can’t you guess? We have unfinished business here. I need to help Seth.”

“What do you mean? Whoa there, Teddy, that situation is resolved. We caught the killer, remember? There’s no reason for a haunting now.”

“We’ll see. We’ll see. Anyway, I will be in touch with
you
,” he said, pointing at Ed, then turning to me, “and I will see
you
again, as soon as Seth begins to make his presence known.”

“And I will see
you
to the door,” I said. Then I looked down at the floor. “And your little dog, too.”

“Little, my foot,” Ed said when I’d escorted the hyperactive duo out.

I laughed. “What do you think, Ed: is he really desperate enough to play second fiddle to a dog?”

“Worse. He’s desperate enough to share the spotlight with a skeptic.”

“Well? Are you going to do it?”

He exhaled heavily. “It sounds like it would be exciting, but after two days of trying to work with Teddy I’d strangle him.”

“
That’d
make for good TV.”

“I’ll think about it.”

We left it at that.

As he was leaving, I said, “I think I might come down to your neighborhood one day and have another visit with Frieda.”

He stared. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I understand her. And in a strange way, I like her. I think we owe it to her to let her know how it all came out.”

“Okay. I’ll set it up through Dolores.”

“Ed,” I said, putting a hand on his arm. “Do you mind if I visit Miss Frieda without you?”

After gazing at me for a moment, he said, “Sure, go ahead. I was only going along to give you moral support. If you think you can face her alone, I’m all for it.”

“Thanks for understanding.”

“I didn’t say I understood,” he said, hoisting his bags. “I said I was all for it.”

And with a wry little smile, Edson Darby-Deaver made his exit.

I called Dolores the next day, and we made a date for Sunday morning. As on the first visit, Miss Frieda was sitting near the window overlooking the beach and ocean, and when I came in, she had her back to me.

“Oh, you’re here,” she said, as Dolores turned her wheelchair around.

“Hello, Miss Frieda.” I waited until Dolores had left the room, then said, “I thought you might want to know the result of our investigation.”

She made a tight smile. “You can tell me what you think, anyway.”

“I think that the maid, Ellen O’Hare, was in love with Hunter Barrett. The one you called Chipper. I think she believed he would marry her, and when he married a girl from his own class and didn’t come back for her, she hung herself.”

She was surprised. “Well, well. You did get at the truth, after all. I had no idea Edson was actually any good at what he did. Did he find out the awful way the little maid found out her lover was marrying another woman?”

“No.”

“It was a miscalculation on Betsy’s part, and it must have made the pain even worse. The Cadbury family knew about the affair. I don’t know how. But somehow they came to find out about the meetings Chipper was having with their maid in the loft, and when he became engaged, they wanted to let her know it was hopeless, before she could become –
well
! Of course, they couldn’t discuss it with her directly.”

“Of course not,” I said wearily.

“So they did it indirectly. It was that particular maid’s duty to clean the morning room, where Betsy wrote her letters. Betsy left the wedding invitation on her desk for the maid to see. It turned out tragically, of course, but Betsy couldn’t have known that. I believe she was quite broken up about it when the maid hung herself. She was always much kinder to her people after that. There was another maid at the time – a girl named Mabel – of whom she grew quite fond.”

I knew then. It hadn’t been a dream, and I hadn’t been sleeping. Ellen really had found out about the wedding exactly as I’d seen it. And there
was
a maid named Mabel.

I briefly considered telling Miss Frieda about the séance – not the one Purity had staged – the one I had experienced. But when I looked into her sharp brown eyes, I decided not to. Frieda was ruthless in her judgments on other people. In a way, she fascinated me; they don’t make them like her anymore. But I knew she could never accept my experience as genuine.

Instead, I asked about Chipper. “How did things turn out for him?”

“These arranged marriages almost never turned out well. No one expected them to. The woman was to do her duty and provide heirs, and the man could amuse himself any way he chose, as long as he provided for his family. But Chipper and Eugenie never had children. I blame Eugenie. She was such a dreadfully boring person, prone to weeping and always suffering from some exotic illness. Delicate flowers were fashionable among society women in those days. Still, it might have had something to do with the little maid after all. Going against his parents and making an inappropriate marriage would have meant forfeiting his inheritance and being shunned. He chose money and status over the girl he loved. If he loved her. And then there was no going back. She died.”

As I was leaving, Frieda invited me to come see her again some time. I suppose I will. She’s not a sweet old lady, but sweet people aren’t all that interesting.