“I’m telling you, Jon, there’s something going on here.”
Darcy had been back in their room for the better part of an hour now, and she had only just finished telling Jon the whole story of what she had discovered, starting with bumping into Sharlene, and finishing with the tour of the Hideaway Inn’s personal cemetery. The graves were showing them that the history of the Inn was not what it seemed to be.
But how did it tie into the murder? She still hadn’t answered that question.
They sat together on their bed while the kids watched television. With everything that had happened, the trip to the Fun Center had to be postponed until tomorrow. Nobody seemed to mind. Not after the unforeseen arrival of their lovable pets. Cha Cha was sitting pressed up against the side of Zane’s leg. Tiptoe was curled up in Colby’s lap, but she was only tolerating it because Colby was stroking her fur, head to tail, over and over. Brother and sister seemed totally distracted, but Darcy kept her voice down anyway.
“I need to find Neil’s ghost,” she said, “and ask him what the connection is.”
Jon had listened thoughtfully to everything she said, searching for clues in these new bits of information. Now he pursed his lips…and shook his head. “The words on Piter’s grave could mean a lot of different things, right? It doesn’t necessarily mean that Orson Bylow stole his thunder. I mean, the grave also said that Piter was an architect, so he might have been hired by Orson Bylow to design or even build this place.”
“All right,” Darcy granted, “but what about his name? Piter. We’re in Pittsfield, not Orsonville, or Bylowburg, or whatever. The town isn’t named after Orson, it’s named after Piter.”
“Yeah, I admit that certainly sounds true. You name your town after the founder, not the handyman, no matter who was really here first.”
“And the fact that his last name is Perkins, just like Neil’s…?”
“Makes him a distant ancestor, which might be the connection you’re looking for. Whatever the truth is about what the gravestone said—and we have to admit we can’t know for sure—it’s very possible that Neil found out, and was,” he drew a finger across his throat as a sign for killed, “for that very reason. Sharlene wants this place real bad, and if Neil was going to reveal something that kept her from that dream then, yeah. That kind of connects the dots.”
“It makes a trail,” Darcy said, “leading us right to her. We just need a few final answers to get her arrested and convicted.”
He leaned over to plant a kiss on her forehead. “Look at you, finding all the clues to put the mystery together. We’re closing in on solving the whole thing.”
“Uh-huh. I just wish I could be sure.”
“What’s not to be sure about?”
She shrugged. “Well, in all the times we’ve investigated mysteries before, when have we ever guessed the bad guy right from the start? It’s never the first person you suspect. Ask anyone who reads cozy mysteries. Ask the members of my book club. They’ll tell you.”
“Darcy, this isn’t a book.” He chuckled at the way she condensed all of their past mysteries down to one short cliché.
“Books reflect real life, Jon. People enjoy them because they can see themselves in them.”
“Okay, you’re not wrong about that, but it doesn’t mean our first guess has to be wrong every time.”
“It has been before.”
“There’s a first time for everything, right?”
Listening to him, she felt the warm fuzzies blossom deep inside her. He kept telling her how great she was at all this mystery stuff, how she was finding all the clues to solve it, and she loved to hear his words full of love for her…but she wouldn’t go so far to say she’d put the mystery together. Not all of it.
In fact, she had more questions than answers.
Maxwell Bylow had talked at length about his family tree, and how he was the direct descendant of the town’s founder, Orson Bylow. He was proud of that fact. He’d gone to great lengths to hide family secrets so that people wouldn’t know how much of a monster Orson was, all to keep the prestige of being part of that family. He’d been so sure.
What would he do, Darcy wondered, if he ever found out the founding father of Pittsfield was actually Piter Perkins, now laid to rest in an unassuming grave in the very back of a nearly forgotten cemetery? She had to believe it wouldn’t do anything good to his state of mental health.
But then, if the true founder of the town was Piter Perkins, how did Orson get to be the owner of the manor house? Why did history record him as being the one who gave the land grant to start the town?
Was it all a lie?
Darcy was beginning to believe it was. A lie that Sharlene Latham would be willing to kill for. She only owned the Inn if she was a descendant of the original owner.
If the original owner wasn’t Orson, but Piter instead, Sharlene was out on her ear. Not that Darcy wouldn’t pay to watch that show, but guesswork and hunches wouldn’t make it so. They needed proof they could hold in their hand.
Another thought occurred to her. What if Neil wasn’t the only one who knew the secret of his ancestry. The cemetery had been tended by Yasmine, who had planted all those flowers there to make it less dreary. She would have seen Piter’s grave at some point. She would have read what it said. She obviously had bad feelings about Neil, too. Did that make Yasmine a suspect?
Yes…no…maybe?
One thing was for sure. She did not have this mystery figured out. Not yet.
What she needed, was to talk to Neil Perkins.
“Can you watch the kids for a while?”
He gave her a comically insulted look. “Do you really need to ask?”
“No. I suppose I really don’t. I love you, Jon Tinker.”
“I love you, too, Darcy Sweet.”
“Hey, Mom?” Zane suddenly called over to her from the other side of the room.
She smiled at her son as she held Jon’s hand. “Yes, Zane?”
“I love you, too,” he told her.
Her heart just about melted in her chest.
So much for the kids not being able to hear what they were talking about. Thankfully, she and Jon had learned years ago to modify the words they used whenever they were around their kids. He was a police officer, and she saw dead people, and their life was hardly the stuff Dr. Seuss was made of. They had decided years ago that Colby and Zane deserved to have as much of a regular childhood as possible, unburdened by things like killing and jealousy and the hatred some people hold in their hearts. So they kept the macabre talk down to a minimum whenever they could.
Kids should be kids as long as they can, in other words. Darcy had always believed that.
She went over to give them each a loving kiss on the top of their heads before she left, ruffling the fur between Cha Cha’s ears, and scratching Tiptoe under the chin. The dog wagged his stubby tail enthusiastically. Her cat scolded her with a look. Colby rolled her eyes. Darcy supposed that was proof that love could be expressed in many different ways.
Taking her time on the stairs, going down one riser at a time, she peeked around into the lobby to make sure Sharlene wasn’t around this time. She’d been there when Darcy came back with Eleanor, but as soon as she saw them, she marched off to the West Wing and up the stairs, no doubt straight to her room.
How she thought she was going to run an Inn when she was never down here to take care of the guests, Darcy didn’t know. Although she wasn’t going to complain about it this time. She would be able to get to Neil’s room this way without having to explain herself.
There were a few guests walking through the lobby, leaving for a trip to town, or just walking around to look at the detailed woodwork that was an intricate part of the Inn’s motif. She saw a few people further down the first-floor hallway of the West Wing, around the rooms set aside as historically accurate representations of how things had looked here in the past. The original furniture, old portraits on the walls, the works. There was even a secret passageway at the back of one of the rooms, but she and Jon had made very certain it was sealed tight and no one could accidentally open it up. The latch was hidden to begin with, and a simple strip of duct tape had covered it up to keep curious fingers from feeling it.
She smiled at everyone on her way through, making small talk with a few of them about their rooms and their stay, and whether it was supposed to rain. It was an honest concern, given the upcoming fireworks on the Fourth, but the weather report promised nothing but clear skies all week.
Darcy honestly liked everyone she had met here. Thanks to a little small talk she knew their names, and the towns they came from, and for a lot of them she knew why they were in town. Vacation, mostly, but Saunders Hofstetter was actually in Pittsfield for business. He wanted to open up a new coffee shop and he had to meet with the town board and the code enforcement officer and a few others. He was proud of what he was creating and had showed his plans to both her and Jon last night. She hoped it worked out for him. Those zoning rules sounded harsh.
“Oh, listen to me,” he said as Darcy tried—unsuccessfully—to extricate herself gracefully from the conversation. “I’m just going on and on about this and you obviously have so much to deal with. We just heard the horrible news about that Neil fellow. The one that was making the big scene yesterday. It’s so terrible to think that he’s dead now.”
“I agree,” she told him. “It’s very sad.”
“Yeah. I guess he was here forever. His family worked here for generations, or some such thing. That’s what the television reporter said. Suicide, they said. A bunch of us were watching the television in the common room together when we heard it. We simply couldn’t believe it. I guess small towns like this only make the news when somebody dies.”
Darcy nodded, thinking about Misty Hollow and all of the times they had been in the news for murders and kidnappings and other bad things. At least the news was saying Neil’s death was a suicide. It might not be true, but in a weird way it sounded better than ‘local man murdered in hotel room, details at six.’
Well, they knew the news would reach the Inn and their guests eventually. First the café in town, and now here. There was no way to stop the spread of gossip in small town America. If the world came to a screeching halt tomorrow and the internet and the televisions and the radio all ceased to exist, there would still be gossip running rampant from mouth to mouth.
She thanked him for his concern about Neil, and promised to look over his plans for the new coffee shop in more detail later, as soon as she had the time. That subtle hint did the trick, and Saunders let her go with a little wave, whistling a tune as he went.
Moving past the museum-like rooms with the old furniture and paintings, Darcy took a moment to pause and look up at the looming portrait of the long-deceased Millicent Cussington. The woman was seated, wearing a black dress against a bleak gray backdrop, her frown set in a disapproving scowl. Her eyes were intense and framed by the deep wrinkles brought on by her age and her sour disposition. From her last visit here to the Hideaway Inn, Darcy knew that Millicent had thought very poorly of her son-in-law, Orson Bylow. She had to wonder if the woman knew anything about the real history of the Bylow Manor, and what her son might have done to usurp the legacy of Piter Perkins.
The portrait continued to stare, and Darcy walked away.
She took the right turn at the end of the hallway that led her into the rooms reserved for the staff, peeking around the corner first to make sure no one was there who would see her. Then, quickly slipping down to the third room on the left, she took out the master key to let herself in. She pushed the door open—
And something small and fast streaked between her legs, brushing against her ankle as it went. Darcy jumped, and although she didn’t want to admit it to herself, she might have made a noise that sounded exactly like a yelp.
Then the streak of fur sat down on her hind legs in the middle of the room and stared up at Darcy with those pearl-green cat eyes of hers. Tiptoe curled her tail around her side, and flicked her whiskers as if to say, you weren’t seriously going to do this without me, were you?
“I swear,” Darcy told her, “I’m going to get you a bell so I can hear you coming.”
Tiptoe sneezed and made a sound that could best be translated as don’t you dare.
Behind her, Darcy heard someone’s footsteps softly echoing on the thin hallway rug. She took a giant step inside Neil’s room and closed the door again, just in time to avoid being seen. She pressed the side of her head up against the door until she heard the footsteps move past, and out of earshot.
She sighed out the breath she’d been holding. Well, she was here. Tiptoe was here, too, ready to help her with the spirit communication just like they’d done so many times before. Now it was time for Darcy to do her thing. All she needed was a personal item that had belonged to Neil Perkins, something he cared about, and a few moments to center herself and reach out to the other side…
That train of thought evaporated as she turned a full circle, looking around the entire room, and saw there was hardly anything in here. Hardly anything at all.
The rooms for the Inn’s staff were much smaller than the rooms reserved for guests. It might be a perk for them to live rent free, but they certainly weren’t living in the height of luxury. Or even moderate luxury, for that matter. Darcy figured this room was less than half the size of the one her and Jon and the kids were staying in. The bed was up against the wall opposite the door, the sheets rumpled and unmade. A desk to the left had a few paperback novels on it, and nothing else. The bureau drawers to the right were all pulled out, all of them empty except for a stray white sock hanging over the side of the top one. No posters on the walls. Nothing in the open closet. When she peeked into the attached bathroom she found more of the same—nothing. No shampoo, no razors, no toothpaste. Nothing at all.
She’d been hoping for a watch, or a knickknack, or at least a decorative wooden cross hanging on the wall. It was always harder to find a personal item for men than it was for women. For the most part, women tended to collect more things that had an emotional attachment for them. Guys didn’t have the emotional depth that girls did, usually, so she was expecting to have slim pickings for what she could use to contact Neil Perkins.
But she wasn’t expecting…this.
Standing in the nearly empty room, she tried to understand where all of his stuff was. It was weird. There hadn’t been anything in Neil’s room at the All In Motel, and there was nothing to speak of here, either. Was Neil some sort of monk? Had he taken a vow of poverty, owning nothing but the clothes on his back and a few books to read when he wanted to pass the time?
“Know what, Tiptoe? Men suck.”
The cat yawned and didn’t argue the point.
This wasn’t going to be easy without something personal she could use as an anchor point to reach Neil with. There might be enough of his essence in this room for her to use instead. Every space soaked in the energy of those who lived in it. Their aura became a part of the walls, the furniture, even the air, and she knew how to draw on that to create a tenuous connection between her, and the ghost. All she would have to do was hook her own energy onto that string and see where it led.
It was an alternative method for a spirit communication, and one that Darcy didn’t much like. It would take a lot more time, and it was much more demanding on her, body and soul. It was pretty much the mental equivalent of trying to push a square boulder up a mountain. She wasn’t looking forward to it by any means, but what choice did she have?
As she was contemplating the massive headache a spirit communication like that was going to give her, she heard a thump and looked over to find Tiptoe had landed gracefully on top of the desk, and now she was sniffing at the paperback books standing up in a row. She sniffed at them, one at a time, before pawing at one in the middle. Her claws hooked into the top of the spine and eased it out from the others. When it was free it tipped, and fell, and landed with the cover facing up.
Assassin’s Apprentice. Darcy looked over the gray cover, with its powerful image of a sailboat on a raging ocean surrounded by jagged rock outcrops that threatened to break the troubled craft apart. The name of the author was written in a Viking-esque script. Darcy didn’t recognize the title, but of course she knew the author Robin Hobb, and she knew a well-loved book when she saw one. The cover was worn and one corner was bent. The front of the pages were discolored from being flipped through over and over. The spine was permanently creased in more than one place, top to bottom. Neil had obviously read this book many times. A good story drew the reader back, time and time again.
It looked like she might have something personal of Neil’s, after all.
“Good job, Tiptoe,” she told her cat. “You always know just what I need, don’t you?”
With aloof feline grace, Tiptoe flicked one ear.
“Don’t be a snob about it, little girl. This is going to be a team effort.”
She picked up the book and held it in her hand, feeling the solid, soft weight of the pages between her fingers. She absolutely loved books. Her Great Aunt Millie had left her a bookstore to run when she passed away, and after all these years it was still exciting to find a book she’d never seen before. There was a feeling of wonder that filled her when she looked at a book’s cover, imagining what worlds of fantasy might be hidden inside its chapters. New characters, new places, all wrapped into a story full of new emotions to explore.
Well, she didn’t have time to read Assassin’s Apprentice now. For the moment, she only needed this book to act as a conduit between her, and the ghost of Neil Perkins.
Ordinarily she would use candles from her kit to form a circle that would help her focus her energy and slip into the trance state between the worlds of the living and the dead. There were other helpful odds and ends in the kit as well, but it had been enough of a chore to get in here with no one asking her what she was up to. If she started walking the halls with a hand-carved wooden box under her arm, she would have never made it this far.
The hardwood floor creaked as she sat down and crossed her legs. Once upon a time when she was younger it was a lot easier to get into this position. Now, her left knee ached in protest and she had to shift around to get her, um, backside comfortable. She might have to start using a little cushion when she did this. One more thing to add to the spirit communication kit.
Now that was a truly sad thought.
Then again, she could have just sat on the bed. That would have been a good idea, if she’d thought of it before she got down on the floor. Now that she was here, book in her right hand, left hand resting on the floor, getting back up would be more trouble than it was worth. She was already focusing her mind, getting herself into that proper mental state for what she needed to do.
Breathe in, breathe out…
A gentle weight landing squarely in her lap startled her out of her rhythmic breathing. Her eyelids popped open again, and she found herself staring into Tiptoe’s face as the cat kneaded the thighs of her jeans—thankfully without using her claws—and then laid down.
“Gonna watch over me?” she asked her feline companion.
Tiptoe blinked and closed her eyes.
There was a very old myth about witches and their animal familiars. In cartoons, every witch owned a black cat, or a raven, or—in the case of Ursula the Sea Witch—moray eels. The whole idea that witches needed an animal companion was a fiction based around a little kernel of truth. Darcy was no witch, not by any stretch, but what she was able to do might look like magic from a certain point of view. When she was deep in a trance state, lost in herself, it helped to have someone sitting close by to watch over her. Someone who could pull her out if she got in too deep. Sometimes, she could be in the space between the worlds of the living and the dead for hours, and the human body could only take so much stress. At some point she needed to come back to herself to take a drink or stretch her muscles. Or pee, for that matter. If she didn’t come out herself, she needed someone to gently wake her up.
People could do that for her, but in Darcy’s opinion, nothing beat a cat.
Having a feline friend close to her made her feel safe. Cats had an innate sense that told them when people were in trouble, and she knew Tiptoe would bring her out of the spirit communication if she felt something was wrong. Just like her daddy Smudge used to do.
Concentrating on her breathing again, she closed her eyes, and held the book tighter.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
She cleared her mind, putting away all the mundane worries of the day. Running the Inn. Jon and the kids. How things were going back in Misty Hollow. She owed her sister a call. Her palm was itchy… She identified each of the thoughts cluttering her mind, one by one, and pushed them to the back of her mind, into a little box that she then closed and set aside.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
In the empty blankness of her mental space, she pictured herself standing, breathing, looking into an infinite landscape without end.
Gray mists rolled into the emptiness all around her. They coiled and spun, moving as if they had a life of their own, collecting around her until she couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. This was the bridge between the living and the dead, the place where the souls of the departed could be called upon and spoken to. They could reach Darcy in this space, and she could reach them in turn. One step away from life, one step removed from death.
Silence echoed through the vast distances of eternity.
There was no one here. She was all alone.
Darcy didn’t know if she was breathing anymore. She’d lost the connection with her own body. That part of her was still sitting back there in Neil’s room. She was here, and here was all that mattered.
In the middle of the nothingness, the emptiness, silence became whispers. Bits of things that might have been words, or that might have been nothing more than her imagination. She had to start the call, before anyone could answer.
“Hello?” she called out. That single word didn’t carry. Her voice was swallowed up in the stillness.
This wasn’t real air around her, of course. It was a place without physical reality. Her voice was a projection of her thought, and her will. She just had to make herself heard.
“Hello! I’m here for Neil Perkins. I’m here to talk about the history of his family.” She listened, hearing only silence. “His ancestor is Piter Perkins. I need to know the connection between them. I need to know why Neil died.”
Slowly, the mists began to part, here and there like curtains, revealing shadows moving among them.
Ghosts.
They were moving closer to her now that she had announced her presence. They were coming to see who wanted to talk to them.
And now they knew her.
Darcy…Darcy…Daaaarrrccy…
She swallowed and made herself stay focused. They were all trying to reach out to her at once, wanting her attention. Wanting her help.
Shouting into the mists now and expecting to get an answer from one particular spirit would be like sending out a batch email to get in contact with one person on your contact list. She might get back a thousand responses, or none. The one person she needed to talk to might answer, and he might not.
That was where the book she was holding came in. She could use the connection Neil Perkins had to that book as an anchor point. It created a direct person-to-ghost call, direct to Neil Perkins.
She cleared her thoughts again and spoke his name into the mists.
“Neil. Neil Perkins. I need to talk to you.” There was a stirring among the shadows all around, but silence met her request. “Neil? Neil if you’re here, I want to help you. I want you to help me, too. I know you were murdered. I want to find out who did that to you.”
Silence again. The shadows slowed in their restless shuffling and faded back into mists from where they came.
Darcy stared after them, trying to see through the gray swirls and coils and wisps of foggy uncertainty. Well, this usually didn’t happen. Ordinarily she would be crowded with spirits wanting to have their say. So what was different this time?
“Neil!” She shouted this time, as loud as she could, hoping that would help. “Neil! I can help you. I know something happened with this place, back when Pittsfield was first created. I think your great, great ancestor had this place taken away from them by Orson Bylow. I think Orson’s whole story is a lie. Is that it?”
Silence.
“Can you tell me the truth?”
Silence again…but then a shadow moved.
It came closer, a ghost sliding through tendrils of roiling mist that obscured the details of its appearance. It hovered across the space between itself and Darcy, silently approaching, coming ever closer.
“Neil?” There was no answer, just more movement in the mist. Her connection had been made. “Okay, good. Now, can you tell me who murdered you? Let’s start with that.”
The silence was broken by whispers again. They tickled the edges of Darcy’s ears and squirmed into her thoughts.
…ssssooonnn…lllooowww…
Darcy strained to hear through the distortion of echoes.
What was he saying?
…lllooowww…Ooorrr…
“Neil? Tell me. Tell me who killed you.”
Then the ghost stepped out from the closest edge of the mist, very close, too close, and she stumbled back as its face distorted in an angry scream, a name howling like a blustering wind.
Orson Bylowwwww!
Darcy felt a flickering in her chest that would have been her heart beating, if she was really in her body in this eternal place. The ghost faded back into the mists, where she couldn’t see him, leaving her with that one answer.
An answer that didn’t make sense.
She had asked Neil to tell her who killed him, but the answer to that question couldn’t possibly be ‘Orson Bylow.’ Orson had been dead for generations. Whoever killed Neil, it wasn’t him.
“No, I don’t think you understand,” Darcy tried to explain. “Neil?”
In silence, the mists rolled, and cast shadows where there was no light.
“Neil, can you tell me the name of your killer?”
In her hands, she could feel the invisible shape of Assassin’s Apprentice. Her physical hands were still holding it, and she held them out toward the ghost, trying to make the connection stronger, to call Neil out of hiding. She could feel the energy flow out of her, connected to her own spirit, flowing out of her, casting out toward Neil…
Only, something felt different. The flow of that energy didn’t end like it should. It sort of…scattered around the ghost. She could feel him. She could sense where he stood, just out of sight, hidden by the mists of eternity, but the connection she was trying to build just went all fuzzy on his end.
“Neil…?”
When the mists parted this time, the ghost rushed her but Darcy had been prepared for something like that this time. It still spooked her, and maybe added a few gray hairs, but she stood her ground. She needed to show Neil that he could trust her, and open up to her, and answer the question of who…
She stopped, because now that the mists had parted away from the ghost, she could see it clearly, for the first time.
This wasn’t Neil Perkins.
Ghosts always reflected the way a person had looked in real life. It was an afterimage, of sorts, based on the person’s individual energy. This was what most people called the soul, the inner reflection of the physical form. Others understood it to be the energy of their life force, carrying on into eternity with their image. Different words for basically the same thing.
Neil’s ghost would look like…well, it would look like him.
Darcy had met Neil, even if it was just once. This ghost was someone else entirely.
Tall and thin, he was dressed in simple clothing that would have been suitable to anyone of low standing a hundred years ago, around the turn of the twentieth century. A wool overcoat and suspenders. Pants with rolled-up cuffs. A newsboy cap. He was lanky and lean but with a hard look to him, like he was used to physical labor. A patchy scruff along his cheeks was highlighted against a ghostly face that was pale and translucent.
No. This was definitely not Neil Perkins.
Darcy sighed her disappointment. Sometimes when you called out across the void like this you got someone you didn’t expect. Even with something to make a connection with, the message sometimes got delivered to the wrong ghost. Usually, it was a ghost who felt they had a strong need to talk to the living. Something left undone, some unfinished business. It was inconvenient, because when it happened—like now—Darcy would have to find a way to send the ghost back into the mists and make her call all over again.
She needed to know who had killed Neil and this ghost talking to her about Orson Bylow killing him was definitely not going to help in her investigation. She already knew Orson was not a nice man, and that was why it didn’t surprise her in the least to think he might have done something to Piter Perkins to take the manor house from him, and the land for the town, and…and…
Wait a minute.
She thought back to what she had asked. The specific words. She’d been directing the question at Neil Perkins but she had asked…oh, for Pete’s sake. She’d been talking about this place being taken away from Piter Perkins by Orson Bylow, and how that might have something to do with Neil being killed. The root cause, somehow. She might have been talking to Neil, but she’d asked the question in a way that made it even more important to someone else.
Could this be…?
Clearing her throat, she took a chance.
“Piter Perkins? Is that you?”
The spirit’s blank eyes looked sad for a moment. Reaching up with one hand, he tipped his cap to Darcy.
This wasn’t Neil’s ghost. She’d called out into the void and conjured up someone else entirely. This wasn’t what she had been looking for at all. She needed answers from Neil!
Still…now that she had Piter here, maybe she could get answers to some of her other questions, firsthand answers from someone who was there when Orson Bylow took over the manor house and the town and—
Hold on a second. Darcy thought about the whispered words he had said just a moment ago. Was he saying…?
“Piter? I asked who killed you.” Well, at the time she thought she was asking that question to Neil, but it had been Piter who answered. “You said Orson Bylow killed you? Did you…did you mean that?”
Another tip of the newsboy cap was her answer. She took that to mean yes.
So, Orson Bylow didn’t just take the manor house. He didn’t just take the land and pretend it had been his all along. He was a killer, too?
“Piter…why? Why would Orson Bylow kill you?”
The spirit seemed to waver like a shadow in the sun, shimmering from nearly transparent to an opaque black and back again, blending into the mists around them before becoming solid again—or, as solid as a ghost could be. Piter’s eyes were blank, and white, and she had no way to know what color they had been in real life, but there was an unmistakable resemblance to Neil, in the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders. His face was expressionless though, as he opened his mouth to speak.
Echoes came out, whispery bits of words that bounced about in the infinity around them before connecting themselves in proper order.
…ted…he…wan…
…I…what…ted…
…wan…ted…create…I…
He…wan…ted…
…ted…what…I…
…wanted…I…
He…wanted…
He wanted what I…
He wanted what I created…
The echoes faded away then, and Darcy had her answer. Orson Bylow had coveted what Piter had created.
Piter was the first settler in Pittsfield, a town named after him. She knew that from the inscription on his grave. He was an architect as well. A man who built things…like the manor house now known as the Hideaway Inn.
“This house was yours, wasn’t it? You came to this place, and you built this house?”
A tip of the cap.
“But…then Orson Bylow ended up with it somehow, and you and your family were the servants here instead. That’s how it’s been ever since…right down to today, when Maxwell Bylow is running the place as an Inn with your descendant Neil as an employee…”
Darcy noticed the way the spirit quivered again as she mentioned the Bylow name. The dark outline blurred, fading against the mists, like he was disappearing.
No, Darcy thought to herself. More like he was being erased. Forgotten. Written out of history.
Just like Orson Bylow had done to him in real life.
It was just like Eleanor Frankles had said to her, while they were standing out in the cemetery over Piter’s grave. History could be changed, for better or worse. Her whole understanding of the town, and the lineage of the founding family, had been turned upside down. The same charter that made it necessary for the building to be owned by the descendants of the original owner, now and forever…that was all in doubt now, too. If the Bylows weren’t the original owners, then Maxwell didn’t have any claim to the Hideaway Inn.
Neither did Sharlene.
In fact, if Neil had known about this, and challenged Sharlene with it, that would explain why she fired him. To keep the thing she wanted so badly, it would even be motive for murder.
Once again, Darcy puzzled on that sequence of events. Why fire Neil, if she was just going to kill him? Well, maybe she thought firing him would keep him quiet and when it didn’t, then she resorted to murder. Either way, this was obviously proof that Sharlene was a killer.
Well. It would be proof, anyway, if ghosts could be used as witnesses in criminal cases. It was enough to prove it to Darcy. Now she needed something she could show the world.
“Um. Piter? Do you have anything that shows the building…the land…all of it was stolen from you? How did Bylow even manage that?”
The ghost, now part shade and part gray mist, raised a hand, palm towards his face. His other hand came over to make a motion like he was plucking something out from between the fingers of the first.
Oh, great, Darcy thought to herself. It’s time to play charades.
Darcy wasn’t sure she understood. “He…pulled out your fingernails?”
The ghost’s blank eyes gave her a look that told her she was being stupid.
“No. No, of course not. That would be a little too gangster, wouldn’t it?” He made the motion again, more emphatically this time. Pluck, pluck. “He…stole your gloves? No. He never washed his hands. No, that’s just silly. He said he would take your fingers off one by one unless you gave him everything…yeah, I know that’s not it. Look, Piter, I’m really trying here but you’ve got to give me more than just pantomime.”
He cast her another look with his blank eyes, and nobody could do a look of patient suffering like a ghost could. Darcy shrugged helplessly. Whatever he was trying to mime to her, she just wasn’t getting it. She was getting frustrated, but what could she do? Ghosts only revealed their secrets when they were ready, and hardly ever in a direct way. If they talked at all, it was usually with a single word or phrase, and it was never easy.
All she could do was wait and keep trying.
Piter’s ghost finally reached out and plucked a scrap of mist away from the rest. He shook it by one edge until it was the shape of a small rectangle, and then he settled it in his upturned hand. He did the same thing with another, and another. When he was done he had five small slips of mist held in his hand, thin and rectangular, their edges evaporating away even as Piter fanned them out as if he was holding—
“Cards!” she exclaimed. It suddenly seemed so obvious. “You’re holding cards, and you’re saying Orson Bylow won the house and the land from you in a game of cards! Wait. You lost all of this to him in a game? By gambling?”
She wanted to add that was quite possibly the stupidest thing she had ever heard in her life, but she knew how sensitive ghosts could be and she didn’t want him to stop talking to her because she said the wrong thing. Even so…dear God, how could anyone let that happen? The Hideaway Inn had an eight-figure value now—which was no doubt why Sharlene wanted it so badly—but even back when it was first built, this place had to have been worth a fortune. Add to that the value of the acres of property that Pittsfield sat on, and the price tag would be mindboggling no matter what century you were in.
And Piter lost it all in a game of cards?
Dramatically, the ghost wiggled his fingers, and spread his hand wider, and suddenly there weren’t five ‘cards’ in his palm…there were six.
“There aren’t supposed to be six cards in a hand, are there?” Darcy didn’t gamble, but she had played cards plenty of times. Her and Jon, her sister and her sister’s husband, all got together for a friendly game of poker now and then. It was always five cards… “Oh! You’re saying Orson cheated? He got you to play cards with him and the stakes were, um, really high.”
Piter shuffled the cards of mist, pulling one out, tossing it down on an imaginary table where it evaporated into tendrils of nothingness.
“Okay. So he got you to use the house and the land as a bet and then he did something to cheat you out of it?”
Another tip of the cap. Squeezing his hand tight, he made the ‘cards’ disappear in a puff of gray.
This was huge. This was bigger than huge. The great Orson Bylow had stolen everything he ever had from Piter Perkins. If people found out, it would be the end of the Bylow reputation. People would kill to keep that a secret.
In fact, that’s exactly what had happened.
“Do you have proof?” she asked him next. “Something that proves he did that to you? Anything that I can show people so they’ll understand?”
The ghost faded, and then came back into view, faded and came back, and Darcy didn’t know if that meant he was thinking about her question, or if he was done talking and about to leave.
Darcy really hoped it wasn’t that. She had other questions lined up in a row to ask him, and if he didn’t have an answer to this one, he might have answers to others. She was just about to ask one at random when Piter’s ghost snapped back into clarity, one hand raised in triumph. He’d remembered something. Darcy wanted to be excited about that, but she knew it would mean another round of charades. She might be stuck here until the end of time trying to guess the right answer.
He must have sensed her concern because instead of acting out another word or phrase, he opened his mouth, and held it open, and let the whispers slide out to echo around them.
…deal…
…is…in…
…the…deal…in the…
…proof is…in the…
…proof is in the deal…
Then he tipped his cap to her again, and with that he was gone.
Darcy spent what felt like an hour calling out to Piter again, without any answer. She tried for Neil again, and got nothing but silence. In the end she had to admit to herself she should give up. She’d gotten all she was going to get. Maybe if she had something of Piter’s, instead of Neil’s, it would be different, but of course she didn’t. She couldn’t. He was long dead, and there was nothing of his left to use.
The proof was in the deal. What did that mean?
She was going to have to wake herself up to find out.
Standing in the infinite nothing between the worlds of the living and the dead, she blinked.
And in the real world her eyes opened, and there she was, sitting with a cat in her lap.
Tiptoe looked up at her and whipped her tail back and forth before jumping off to sit on the floor. She licked one front paw, pretending to be completely disinterested in whatever Darcy had found from her spirit communication.
“Thanks, little kitten,” Darcy told her. “You did good.”
The cat continued to lick her paws, but Darcy thought maybe she saw a smile there on her lips.
Checking the screen on her phone, she saw that she had been in her trance for nearly half an hour. It had felt even longer to her, but still, that was plenty long enough. Her legs were tingly from having been crossed for so long. Her back was tense. She sighed and made herself unfold and stand up. Her hand was cramped from gripping ahold of the book all this time. For a moment, she considered taking it with her. It had been Neil Perkins’ favorite. Maybe she would enjoy reading it, too.
When she turned to the door to go, she found Neil’s ghost standing there, floating a foot above the floor. His transparent face was etched with lines of worry and anguish.
“Oh, sure,” she said with biting sarcasm. “Now you show up.”
He gave her a shrug but didn’t bother trying to apologize.
“I’m trying to help, you know that, right? What am I supposed to do?” He nodded, and then shrugged again. “Oh thanks a lot, yeah, that was perfectly clear. I don’t suppose you know what Piter meant when he told me the proof is in the deal? If you want me to prove it was Sharlene who murdered you a little help would be nice, is all I’m saying. Do you expect me to do it all myself?”
Neil’s ghost frowned…and disappeared.
Darcy shook her head. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”
Behind her, Tiptoe meowed.
“Yeah, you’re right, kitten. It’s just like I said…men suck.”