The Realm of the Shadows (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 2) (7 page)

“You want me to come back and
live
there?” she said eagerly.

“I know it’ll be hard moving away from Florence. You two had been separated for so long, you’re just getting to really know one another again.” Her eyes had narrowed, so I decided to drop the baloney. “Look, Myrtle, you and Florence are absolutely nothing alike, and you get on one another’s nerves. Wouldn’t it be better for everybody if you went back to only seeing each other on birthdays and holidays?”

“And you really want me at Cadbury House?”

I leveled with her. “Let’s put it this way, Myrtle. You’re needed there. Let’s give it a try. If it turns out that you don’t like the situation, you can move back with Florence any time you like. Why don’t you think it over, and if you want to come, I’ll pick you up tomorrow and bring you out there myself.”

“You sit right there,” she said, popping out of her chair and moving like someone half her age. “I’ll call Florence and tell her I’m leaving, then pack. Won’t take me but a minute.”

I waited in the antique living room, wondering if I was about to make everything ten times worse.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said about twenty minutes later, dragging a suitcase into the room.

“That’s all?” I said, looking at her medium-size suitcase.

“If I need anything else, I’ll call Florence and have her pack it up and get it to you. Now let’s go. Can I have my old room back?”

“Of course,” I said, picking up the old-fashioned suitcase and carrying it out to the car. She was like a kid going off to camp.

On the way back to Cadbury House, my cell phone rang. I looked at the Caller I.D. and saw that it was Edson.

“Hey, Ed.” I put him on speaker.

Myrtle spoke before Ed could. “I heard about you hiring that silly man from St. Augustine,” she said to me.

“We’re on speaker, Myrt,” I said. “He can hear you.”

“Who’s that?” Ed asked.

“Myrtle Purdy,” we said simultaneously.

I glanced at my passenger. “Do you mind?” She made a sniffy noise, then turned her head away and stared out the window.

“Go ahead, Ed.”

“Well, I did as you asked,” he told me.

So much was going on in my world that I had no idea what he was talking about. “Oh, good. And that was . . . .”

“You wanted me to set up an interview with Frieda Strawbridge to see what she knows about the history of Cadbury House.”

There was another loud sniff from the passenger seat. I ignored it.

“And?”

“Well, I wasn’t optimistic, but I gave it a try.” In a voice of wonder, he told me, “She said yes.”

He may have been surprised, but I wasn’t. Lonely old ladies like to talk, especially about the days of their youth. “Good.”

“I’ll be coming back tonight to observe in the cemetery.” Myrtle’s head snapped around, and I ignored her. “We can leave in the morning for Santorini around 9:30. She’s expecting us at ten.”

“Excellent. We’d better take both cars. Then you can go back to your house afterward and compile your notes.”

“Okay. I’ll have dictating equipment, so we have a record of the interview. Just exactly what is it you want to know?”

“Off the top of my head, we can start with the lady in the barn.”

Myrtle said, “Lady?” and I shushed her.

“I wouldn’t,” Ed said.

“Oh, really? Why not? It’s where the trouble started.”

“Not Frieda’s trouble, and she’s not going to be interested in anything that doesn’t directly involve her. We need to get her going on other things, then work our way around to the barn. You’d better let me handle this.” Pause. “Are you there?”

“I’m here. Sure. Fine. You’re more used to this kind of thing than I am. You take the lead.”

“Thank you. We’ll talk more about our plan of attack when I see you.”

“Okay.”

I hung up, muttering. Northeast Florida’s premier crackpot had just told me that he had better people skills than I did. Well, we’d just see about that. I may not have interviewed people on ghostly infestations before, but I’d been around a lot of old ladies, and I made a bet with myself that I’d get more out of her than Edson.

Myrtle was cackling for some reason. I ignored it. I was going to see if I could get the information I wanted out of her later. But first, I was going to get her installed in the house, pacify her by letting her feel like she was in charge, and keep her the heck away from the people from
Realm of the Shadows.

I managed to get Myrtle into the house without anybody noticing her.

Once we were indoors, I carried her suitcase up to her old room and sat down to talk to her.

“I’m sure you noticed all the hubbub outside,” I began.

“It’s the people from
The Realm of the Shadows
. I know. It’s all over town.” She picked up a few pullovers and began to hang them. “Is the leading man – Teddy Force – is he here too?”

She said it very nonchalantly, and I groaned. “Don’t tell me you watch that show, Myrtle.”

“And why not?” she said. “It’s an excellent show. The hauntings they’ve investigated are very interesting.”

“Myrtle, I want you to stay away from those people. And don’t, for goodness sake, tell them anything about the Cadburys.”

“The Family? I’d never!”

I relaxed. “I know you wouldn’t. Sorry. I’m sure you know about the trouble we’ve been having with the work crew? It’s all over town. They don’t want to go into the barn. You know, because of the loft. I suppose there’s been trouble with that for many years now.”

Myrtle gave me a knowing look, and I could see that I’d blown it already. “I knew that was why you were bringing me back here. Well, I hope my job here doesn’t depend on you getting information out of me, because I don’t have any.”

“About the lady in the barn?”

“There is no lady in the barn. And shame on you for letting that silly man spend the night in the cemetery! I never
heard
of such a thing. But as for The Family, they were not in the habit of airing their dirty laundry in front of the staff, and I, for one, would never have presumed to ask.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” I said, but I didn’t believe her for a second. Myrtle and Vesta had been close; toward the end, she had been closer to Vesta than she’d ever been to her own sister, Florence.

So much for Round One. Oh, well, it had been worth a quick try.

I got up. “I’ve got things to do. See you later.”

I went outside looking for Charlie. My plan for the cat house (actual cats, not the other thing) didn’t involve the barn or the seawall or any of the other hot zones we had developed, and I figured now we could get on with that part of the project.

I had reckoned without Pluto.

The show’s wrap-up, where he displayed his tech toys and replayed moans and creaks for the rest of the cast, was his time in the spotlight. Nobody hijacks the spotlight of a ‘personality,’ no matter how minor.

These wrap-ups were done with him enthroned in his equipment van, pushing buttons and displaying green screens full of pulsing horizontal lines. He’d replay an audio recording three or four times, and suddenly they would all hear, “Mother, please!” or whatever. And as I was beginning to realize, it took hours to come up with a mere ten minutes of show time.

I was out in the yard with Charlie, who had shown up with his crew as usual, and we were going over the blueprints for the old kitchen and servants’ quarters. The elusive blueprints had finally decided to stop flying away by themselves and then popping up again in the wrong place. Charlie was probably sleeping on them now.

“I want to combine these two cabins at the end for the ferals to use,” I was telling him.

About that time Wizard came wandering over the lawn toward us, wearing bib overalls and a plain, rust-colored tee shirt. He looked like he’d been born in them, and I realized he was the only member of the on-camera cast who didn’t gear up like a commando and go into the danger zone on the show. He had a strangely calming presence, which was probably why. “Don’t worry, children,” I could just hear him say. “Fester is a
friendl
y ghost.” Not what Teddy would want. But Wizard’s Dr. Zarkov persona added a dash of scientific grounding to the show, and he definitely added variety.

“Mornin’ folks,” he said. “What’re we doing today?”

We looked up from the blueprints. “Trying to get some work done. Do you mind?” Charlie said.

“I don’t mind. What kind of work? I hear you’re putting in an animal shelter of some kind?”

Surprisingly, Wizard was truly interested in what we were doing. He asked intelligent questions, made a few suggestions, and gradually I found myself edged aside as Charlie and Wizard pored over the plans like a couple of old buddies.

“Yeah, that could work,” Charlie said. “But I’m worried about taking out the wall. I don’t know if it’s load-bearing.”

“Let’s take a look,” Wizard said. “Maybe a pass-through would do just as well.” They began to walk off together.

Remembering me suddenly, Wizard lowered his head and turned back, saying, “Dang it! I’m sorry ma’am. I’m Walter Sheets. This bunch,” (he jabbed a thumb at the camera and audio men milling around by the cemetery) “calls me Wizard, but I’d druther you’d call me Walter.”

Suddenly I loved this guy. “Taylor Verone,” I told him, extending my hand to shake his. “One of your fans just told me to give you a hug, but let’s just shake.”

At the mention of a fan, Wizard looked abashed. “Who was that?”

“A nice little old lady who volunteers at the animal shelter I run.”

He perked up. “Ah. I get all the nice, elderly ones. The ones who send me homemade cookies and hand-written letters, not e-mails. Teddy gets the hotties, and he’s welcome to them. They’re a pain in the . . . hey, listen,” he said, coming closer and lowering his voice. Charlie closed in behind him. “The gang here might be getting in your way today, just a little. They decided to go ahead with the show, making it a memorial to Seth.”

“I was afraid of that,” I told him. “What about tonight? I’ve got Edson Darby-Deaver coming over to spend the night in the cemetery.”

The concept didn’t seem new to him, and he didn’t react to that part. Instead, he closed his eyes and shook his head, then looked at me. “They’re talking about filming after dark, and they will be in the cemetery. They just can’t resist that kind of thing. They’re telling me the show is going to be dedicated to all those who have sacrificed their lives to the science of the paranormal, or some such nonsense.”

“’The show must go on.’” I quoted.

“Yeah. Sorry. And they’re doing Perry’s segment this morning.”

“Perry?”

He sighed. “Pluto. Anyway, they do that in daylight, so they want to get it in the can now, then have another go at a night-sequence tonight.”

“I can’t believe this,” Charlie said, turning to gaze at the crew.

“I can. Are they going back to the seawall?”

“I don’t know. They might try to work up another scenario, but with Seth being called to the great beyond by a ghost, it’s probably too good a storyline to lose completely. I just wanted to warn you.”

“How long does it take for them to get an episode made? I thought they’d only be here the one night.”

Walter shrugged. “Used to be it took weeks to craft a show. Even a reality show. Now, they got all this whiz-bang equipment, everything’s digital and wireless, so the cameraman and audio tech can run around after them without falling over their own cables; they can throw something together pretty fast. For parts of the show, the on-screen cast actually carries their own cameras. Usually the ‘hunt’ is done in one night. They do a lead-in, explaining where they are and what kind of ghosts they’re after, the history of the place, and then Perry has his segment in the control van. They’ll probably do another night of filming here, then be out of your hair. A few days back at the production company and they’ll have it mixed and edited and ready to go – if it is a go. I’ve got my doubts about the network airing it at all, but times are changing. Nothing’s sacred anymore. And even if it doesn’t get on the TV, it’ll show up on the internet somewhere. So they’ll follow through, just in case. As I understand it, we’re off to that lighthouse next; if we can’t use the stuff we got here, we can fall back on that.”

“And after that – central casting,” I added bitterly. “They’ve got to find another hot young guy to replace Seth. Walter, you seem like a pretty decent fellow. In fact, you seem like the only sane person in the whole box of wing nuts. Why do you do it?”

He shrugged his bearlike shoulders. “It pays a few bills. I don’t mind the lunacy. And they give me the lab and a budget for equipment and leave me alone to tinker most of the time. In any organization, things come down from the top, and here the top is Teddy. He’s not a bad guy, really.”

“Does he actually believe in what he’s doing?” I asked.

Walter considered for a moment. “Sometimes I think he does. Sometimes I think he has doubts. But one thing I do know: he loves the life.”