seventeen

“Here’s your roast beef.” Leo tossed a paper-wrapped sandwich over the cash register.

I caught it one-handed. “Thanks. I’m starving.” Above me, the air conditioner rattled and hummed, fighting a losing battle with the noon-time heat. But if the museum wasn’t exactly cool, it didn’t seem to deter my Thursday visitors. Half a dozen people roamed the three rooms. A couple in T-shirts and shorts perused the exhibits in cases on the far wall, opposite my perch.

“Why’s the motorcycle shop closed today?” Leo asked, pulling a wad of napkins from the pocket of his Paranormal Museum hoodie.

Throat tightening, I paused in the act of unwrapping my sandwich. Mason’s shop had been closed when I arrived that morning. What was going on?

“I don’t know,” I said. “Mason must have taken another day off.”

“I was hoping he’d look at my bike.”

“You have a motorcycle?”

Leo colored. “I got it used.”

“You mean, you bought it recently?”

GD leapt to the counter and nosed at the sandwich.

His chin jutted forward. “I’m an adult. It’s my money.”

Had Leo already started spending in expectation of his inheritance? That wasn’t a good sign.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked.

GD butted against my hand.

“The plan is I eat this sandwich.” I glared at the cat. Mine. “Then I take the grape press to the haunted house and make sure everything’s ready for tonight’s opening.” Jorge had helped me load the press back into the truck. “You stay here and hold down the fort.”

Leo’s brow rumpled. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go? I know the electronics.”

This was true, but in my role as girl detective, it was my duty to sniff around the haunted house. People would be there who had known Jocelyn and Romeo. Also, I suddenly needed to get as far away from the motorcycle shop as possible. “There may be some administrative stuff with Ladies Aid to deal with there. If I get hung up on the electronics, I’ll call, and you can walk me through the tech.”

Leo nodded. “You know where to find me.”

Gathering my sandwich, I rose from behind the counter and motioned to my wooden seat. “The captain’s chair is all yours.” I grabbed my messenger bag from the shelf beneath the register and headed through the bookcase to the Fox and Fennel. The tables were filled by babbling diners, but Adele was nowhere in sight. Since I’d been banned from the kitchen (don’t ask), I went to her office and rapped on the door. It swung open beneath my fist. Adele, neat in her white blouse and apron, looked up from behind a sturdy metal desk.

“Mind if I eat here?” I asked. “Short of huddling inside the spirit cabinet, there’s no privacy to be found in the museum.”

“Go ahead.” She pulled a pencil from her chignon and made a notation on a spreadsheet. “But you’ll be dining alone, I’m afraid.” She motioned around the cramped room at the neat bookshelves, the printer, the stacked boxes. “I just came in here to check on an order.”

“How’s your day going?”

“Busy.” She brandished a stack of receipts. “Marcelle called in sick, business is booming due to the haunted house opening tonight, and I have to prep for the Death Bistro.”

“Mmm. It’s been busier than usual at the museum too.”

She set down the papers and peered at me. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“How are things with you and Mason?”

“You noticed his shop was closed too?”

“Is it? Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh. Is something wrong?”

“Not something. Just about everything.” I unloaded—the ex-girlfriend, the evasions, his declaration of love.

Adele listened, frowning. “Mason strikes me as an honorable man,” she said. “I don’t think he’d tell you he loved you if he didn’t mean it. Is that why you’ve been avoiding him?”

“I haven’t been avoiding him. Mostly he’s been avoiding me, or he’s just been unavailable.”

“Mostly?” Her left brow rose. “It doesn’t sound like you’ve been trying too hard to get to the bottom of this. What are you afraid of ?”

“I’m afraid something’s gone wrong.”

“And so you’re fixing it by avoiding the problem?”

It sounded stupid when she put it that way. “I planned to talk to him today, but his shop is closed.”

“Have you tried calling him?”

“Of course. I mean, I left a message. If I call again, I’ll seem desperate.”

“Oh, we’re playing that game, are we? You’re better than that, Maddie.” She stood and edged from behind the desk. “Call him. I’ll give you some privacy.” Leaving the room, she closed the door softly behind me.

Adele was right. I was being at worst a coward and at best a fool. Digging my cell phone from my messenger bag, I called Mason.

It went to voicemail, and my breath hitched. I shouldn’t have run when I saw him yesterday.

He rumbled through his greeting.

I plastered a smile on my face because I’d read that people can sense over the phone when you’re not smiling. “Hi, Mason, it’s Maddie. It’s been a while since we’ve spoken, and I know you wanted to talk to me about something. It seemed like you had a lot on your plate, so I thought I’d give you some space, but now I’m feeling like I was wrong. Anyway, please call me when you can. I miss you.”

I hung up, making a face. Good thing I was an independent woman in the twenty-first century who was not going to make mountains of molehills. Ha. I ripped the paper off my sandwich and tore into it, wishing I’d asked Leo to buy barbecue chips too. Sue me. I’m an emotional eater.

Picking a slice of jalapeno from the damp paper, I popped it in my mouth, enjoying the vinegary burn. I could limp to the corner market and buy those chips I was craving. They would take my mind off Mason for maybe thirty seconds. Or I could step up and get some actual investigating done.

I scrounged for Detective Slate’s business card in my leather wallet. He picked up on the second ring.

“Slate here.”

“Hi, this is Maddie Kosloski. I was wondering if you’d found anything on that old murder-suicide?”

“I found the file in the archives—actually, the archivist found it for me—but I haven’t had a chance to go through it. Things have been busy around here.”

“An understatement, I’m sure. Is there any chance I could come by and take a look at it?”

“Sure. I’ve checked it out in your name. If I have to go anywhere, I’ll leave it with the desk sergeant.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Crumpling up the remains of my sandwich, I dropped it in the metal wastebasket beside Adele’s desk and left through the alley door.

I unlocked my pickup and glanced up at Mason’s apartment windows.

His blinds were shut, and that meant he probably wasn’t home. Mason was all about natural lighting. Where was he?

I climbed into my truck and drove to the police station.

In the mint-green reception area, I announced myself to the desk sergeant.

He made a call, and Detective Slate strode into the room. He was jacketless, his shirt sleeves rolled up, a manila folder in his hand. Smiling, he jerked his head toward the hallway. “This way.”

He led me to a glass-walled conference room and dropped the folder on the long wooden table. “Are you planning another mock retrial?” Back in the spring, I’d cosponsored a mock retrial for the McBride case.

“Do we need one?” I tweaked the pull cord on the dusty mini-blinds, energy fizzing through my veins. This was exactly what I needed—more research, less moping.

“Not if this file is anything to go by. There’s not much here.”

He opened the folder and spread a series of black-and-white photos on the table. “Crime-scene photography came into its own in the 1920s. This was the only murder that year, so the local photographer went all out. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t give us much to work with.”

I leaned over the photos. “Alcina’s burnt cottage.” Even in grainy black-and-white, the photographer had captured the horror. Charred bodies sprawled on the floor, the ruins blackened rubble.

Slate’s dark brows rose. “You knew?”

“The bit about the remains being discovered in her burnt cottage was in that old newspaper article I showed you. But what I don’t understand is, who burned the cottage? If this was a murder-suicide, and both bodies were found inside, who set the fire?”

“Luigi could have set the fire after killing Alcina, and then shot himself before the flames consumed him. It’s not that uncommon. The murderer is ashamed of what he’s done, so he tries to blot out the evidence before he kills himself.”

I grimaced. And that was the difference between a professional investigator and amateur Maddie. Slate actually knew what he was talking about.

“At any rate,” he added, “the police report seems cut and dried.” He drew out a yellowed piece of paper and handed it to me.

Our fingertips brushed, and again electricity shivered through my core.

Not daring to look up, I laid the paper on the table and focused on the writing. We’d reached the era of the typewriter, so the report was legible even if some of its letters had faded. “Alcina’s father had to be hospitalized from shock and smoke inhalation after trying to put out the fire.” The poor man. When had he realized his daughter was inside the burning cottage? I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine that sort of loss.

“There wasn’t much police and fire department cooperation in those days,” Slate said. “It’s kind of impressive that the two worked together in this case.”

“The good old days, when San Benedetto was cutting edge.”

“You should read the police reports on bootlegging. San Benedetto was a hotbed of excitement.”

“You’re kidding. I thought San Benedetto avoided all that business by selling grapes direct to homes so people could make their own wine?”

“Yeah. Well. Whenever you make something illegal, someone will find a way to make a profit from selling more.”

“So much for San Benedetto as sleepy backwater. And as far as the Paganini murders, I don’t suppose you’ve—”

“Maddie, you know I can’t discuss those cases, especially not with you.”

My hands curled around my middle. “I get it. I’m a suspect.”

“You’re sticking your nose in. Last time you tried that, you nearly got yourself killed. You’re lucky I haven’t charged you with impeding an investigation.”

“Impeding? How have I impeded?” And how had he managed to keep Laurel from charging me with something?

“That story about dropping your pepper spray in the Trivia parking lot? Do you really think I’m that gullible?”

“No.” I picked up the folder. “But a girl can hope. Thanks for turning me on to Red’s, by the way.” I lifted my key chain from the front pocket of my messenger bag. The pepper spray jangled against my keys.

“Let me see that.”

I handed him the key ring, and he removed the spray canister from its leather wrap and squinted at it. “All right, this stuff’s okay. It expires in a year, though. You’ll have to buy another next October.”

“Pepper spray has an expiration date? Really?”

He slid the canister back into the leather. “The date’s on the canister.”

“Does it really expire, or is that just one of those marketing gimmicks to make you buy more?”

“Expired spray isn’t as effective. You might also want to take a class in using it.”

“I think I can figure out how to press a button on my own.”

He grinned. “Just make sure the wind’s blowing in the right direction.”

“I should have gotten a Taser.”

He laughed, an infectious baritone. “Do you want to take the file with you?”

“Yes, please.”

“You’ve got it for two weeks, then I come after you.”

“I’ll return it before you have to put out a warrant.”

Slate walked me down the hall, past an open cubicle area. Uniform and plainclothes officers milled in the hall, hunched over computers. A female officer hailed him, waving him over.

We stopped in front of a largish empty cubicle with his nameplate on the wall. “Do you mind waiting here?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“And don’t even think about rifling my desk for clues.”

“If I thought you had a clue—”

“Don’t say it.” He hurried to his colleague. She spoke to him in a low tone and motioned toward her computer monitor.

He bent over it, squinting.

Rifling his desk would have been rude, even if I’d had the nerve to do it in front of a dozen cops. So I satisfied myself with a hands-free perusal. Nature calendar pinned to the cubicle wall and surrounded by a random design of pushpins. Computer (off). Stack of multi-colored index cards (blank). Box of lemon bars …

Lemon bars?

I rocked on my heels. Ladies Aid had boasted they “owned” a cop. And they’d used lemon bars to extract donations from one man. Was Ladies Aid using the pastries to literally keep their inside man at the police station sweet?

But Detective Slate? I didn’t know what was worse—that he could be corrupted, or that he’d been corrupted and still wouldn’t tell me the details of the investigation.

Lemon bars! I swayed, grasping the edge of the cubicle divider. There had been lemon bars at Jocelyn’s house the night she’d been killed. She’d set them out on the table along with a bottle of sparkling wine. But she and Ladies Aid were on the outs—Jocelyn was part of Mrs. Gale’s splinter group. How could she have gotten her hands on the coveted lemon bars? Unless someone from Ladies Aid had brought them to her, perhaps as a peace offering. The killer?

I shook my head. Corrupting a cop was one thing, but murder? Could someone in Ladies Aid possibly …? And my mother! This put a whole new slant on why she’d gotten me involved in the investigation. I took a deep breath. It wasn’t possible. Just another case of my imagination—

“Maddie? Are you okay?”

I shook myself.

Detective Slate loomed over me, his face creased with concern.

“Lemon bars!” I stabbed my finger at them. “How could you?”

He blinked. “Do you want one?”

“No. And I’ll find my own way out of the police station, thank you very much.”

I turned and headed left.

“The exit’s to the right,” he called.

Turning, I hobbled in the opposite direction. Were lemon bars the new street drug? Did they lure its victims with their sunshiny innocence, and then hook them with sweet and sour decadence?

Manila folder pressed to my chest, I stumbled from the police station.

I had to face facts.

My mother was dealing.

I drove through the vineyards and mulled the lemon bar connection. There was probably an innocent explanation. But there was definitely something weird about those bars.

A massive new gate rose at the entry to CW Vineyards. Shiny with fresh paint, it stood open, and I turned down the gravel track.

I bumped past the colonnade of almond trees, slowing to a halt in the packed parking lot of the Gothic haunted house. Women in blue T-shirts buzzed around, their gray caps of hair no doubt concealing devious plots. On the south side of the lawn, the barn’s tall doors were shut fast.

I should have asked Leo to come set up the grape press and final electronics. But sending him into this lion’s den of matronly mafiosa hardly seemed fair. I was the boss, and I would take the risks.

Slithering out of the truck, I limped to the rear and unlocked the tailgate, sliding out the dolly. I maneuvered the grape press to the edge and hefted it onto the ground. My vision blurred, and I clutched the press’s circular handle. Was it my imagination, or had my life gone south ever since the press had entered, stage left? Maybe it was cursed.

Oh, what was I thinking? The only person I had to blame for the current chaos in my life was myself. Jamming the dolly beneath the press, I rolled it to the porch steps and bumped it up and inside.

A narrow-faced woman gripped a clipboard and gazed at me over her spectacles. “And you are?”

I flinched. Name, rank, and serial number only. And if I could avoid giving out my name, I would. “Paranormal Museum. Here to finalize the preparation for the Haunted San Benedetto room.”

She consulted her clipboard. “Ah, yes. Miss Kosloski.”

She knew my name! Ladies Aid was worse than the NSA.

The woman pointed with her pen to one of the openings beside the divider. “Through there.”

I scuttled through the entrance to my Haunted San Benedetto room, rolling the dolly before me. The room looked pretty much as I’d left it. Blank-faced mannequins surrounding the table with the ghost-hunting equipment and TV monitor. The fencing for the grape press stood hooked in a square, defending empty space.

I shoved the fence aside, put the grape press where it belonged, and lifted the fence over the press.

Whisking the Invisible Haunted Grape Press sign from its hook, I rummaged in my bag. The original Haunted Grape Press placard was buried beneath a wad of receipts from the taqueria. I hung it on the fence and hobbled to the electronics table.

Footsteps and women’s laughter tumbled down the stairs.

I froze, hoping no one would peek around the hanging divider wall and find me. What had I gotten myself into? More to the point, what had my mother gotten herself into?

“What are those things?” a masculine voice asked.

“Augh!” I jumped, turned, landed on my bad foot, and groaned.

Chuck grinned through his elaborate facial hair. He tucked his tie beneath his tweed vest. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Why would I be scared? Just because San Benedetto is in the grip of a conspiracy, and I’m in a haunted house, and there’s a killer on the loose? Is there a basement here? Because if there is, I think I’ll go investigate, alone, and twist my ankle on the way down the steps.”

He angled his head. “Bad day?”

I began to agree, but my problems paled in comparison to Leo’s. And poor Jocelyn. At least no one was trying to kill me, but if that was my low bar for happiness, then my attitude needed adjusting. I changed the subject. “How’s the other setup going?”

“I’ve been assured all will be ready when we open at seven,” he said. “I find it hard to believe, but at this point, things are out of my hands.”

“You’re a risk-taker.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“Putting your tasting room in the hands of Ladies Aid for the haunted house.”

He shrugged. “Oh, right. Well, it’s Ladies Aid, isn’t it? It’s not like I’m joining forces with the mob.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’d better get back to the electronics. Do you know who’s going to be in charge of the actual event? I’d like to show them how to turn the equipment on and off.”

Chuck looked around the room. “I think Betsy Kendle is the lady you’re looking for. I saw her upstairs earlier.”

My stomach plunged. It would have to be the dragon lady’s second in command. “I’ll check there. Thanks.”

Chuck shambled off.

I approached the ghost-hunter table. The mannequins regarded me, their gazes critical.

Ignoring them, I tackled the monitor setup. After a few misfires with the tangle of cables and remote controls, I set the video to replay the five minute loop.

Satisfied, I surveyed the room. The video screen flickered, and the mannequins watched, diverted. The grape press stood, in all its haunted glory, in the center of the room. At the far side, above the display about the McBride murder, the noose swung morosely from the balcony.

I did a double take. Swung? Why was it swinging? No one should have been up on that balcony—not after I’d nearly gotten flattened by an empty wine barrel. Had Chuck reached up and jiggled the noose on his way out? Uneasy, I hurried to the stairs, keeping a wary eye on the barrels above.

On the second floor, I searched for Betsy and found her in the haunted library. She teetered on a stepladder, stringing spider webs between bookshelves. Cadaverous portraits frowned down at us. Yellow police tape marked the shape of a body on the wooden floor.

Something brushed the top of my head and I darted sideways, sucking in my breath.

Betsy twisted on the stepladder and laughed, her cornflower-blue eyes twinkling. “Gotcha!”

Feeling foolish, I brushed the fake spiderweb away. “And in broad daylight. Nicely done.”

She clapped her pudgy hands together, delighted, and I felt silly. There was nothing menacing about Betsy, even if she was part of the Ladies Aid crew. I’d once again let my imagination run wild.

“And the eyes in the portraits glow red,” she said. “Did you need something?”

I explained about the electronics. Dutifully, she followed me downstairs and watched me demonstrate.

“It seems simple enough,” she said. “I’ll make sure they’re turned on before start time and off when we pack your room away for the night. I’m glad you kept things simple. If I had to rehang cobwebs every afternoon, I’d go mad.”

I lifted the tablecloth. “There are some spare batteries down here.”

“Got it.” She walked beneath the noose to the McBride display and touched a finger to the photo of the victims. “Who would have thought a small town like San Benedetto would have so much horror in its history?”

My gaze flicked to the loft. “Not to mention its present.”

“Oh.” Her expression turned serious. “Jocelyn and Romeo. Have you gotten any farther on your investigation?”

“I really can’t say,” I said, playing it cool.

She winked. “I understand. I’ll tell the committee you’re closing in.”

“There’s a murder committee?”

She laughed. “Heavens, no. The external affairs committee.”

“Of course,” I murmured.

“Your mother has called in a lot of markers for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Not everyone approves of your museum, or your … activities. Your mother’s always been your champion.” Her eyes glinted. “It would be a shame to let her down. You know how organizations can be. Some people might take a failure the wrong way.”

I gulped. No, that didn’t sound like a threat. No, not at all.