A Haunting at Hensley Hall (A Ravynne Sisters Paranormal Mystery) (26 page)

Charlie stopped and looked at him. A light breeze tugged at his hair…his eyes were dark and unreadable…while his mouth wore that beguiling smile that made her pulse quicken. “No one. I don’t need, or want, anyone to take care of me!” she lied, hoping vehemence would lend credence to her words.

He cupped her chin with one hand and leaned in closer…too close. She wanted to slap his hand away, but she didn’t. Instead, she held her breath as he leaned closer still. His lips brushed hers. A feather touch that promised much. She shivered reflexively and would have pulled him even closer, but he moved away with a low laugh. Her eyes were full of her bewilderment, as she looked into his. “Still don’t remember me, do you?” he asked, then moved on ahead, calling over his shoulder, “Coming”

She shook off the tumult of sensation he had aroused as best she could and caught up with him in three long strides. “Wait a minute. What did you mean back there?”

“You’re the one that likes to ‘snoop’ according to your very own sister. Meanwhile shall we do what we came out here to do?”

Angry now, Charlie brushed past him and almost ran towards the front gates, stopping less than thirty feet from the end of the drive, where a marble bench nestled in a screen of rhododendron bushes. “I’d be willing to bet that was where she waited for her boyfriend,” Zack told her, when he reached her side.

“Perfect place to see what’s coming and going without being seen,” she murmured frostily. “I’m going to
snoop
around, if you don’t mind!”

He smiled to himself, hoping she wouldn’t notice. She clearly wasn’t in any mood for levity. Charlie made the first find. “Look…a freshly broken twig and too high up to be some animal.”

“And over here,” he called. “The leaves have been disturbed. The top ones are still too moist.”

She bent down next to him, as he carefully turned over the leaves. He picked up one and showed it to her. “What does that look like?”

“Looks like dried blood to me. This was where Brittany was taken and not without a struggle of some kind,” she replied.

“Yep, we need to get the cops out here. Chief Beasly needs some serious redirecting,” he told her.

“He’s not going to believe anything I tell him. Would you, if you hadn’t been to Meg’s seance and saw what you saw?” Charlie asked, refusing to look at him directly.

“Probably not. He’ll insist on the ‘stranger in town’ theory like before,” Zack replied, his fingers aching to brush back a stray tendril of silvery blonde hair that threatened to poke her in the eye. And then he did.

She jumped back, and, reflexively, smacked at his offending hand. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“You were in danger of losing your sight in one eye. They are beautiful eyes. A matched set and they should stay that way,” he told her with a smile lifting one corner of his sensual mouth.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re here investigating a crime scene. I’m not playing whatever game you’re playing and, I might add, not playing very well,” she scolded as primly as her mother ever had. “Whoever did this must have known she was here. Followed her from the party? I don’t think it was just a chance meeting.”

His smile deepened, then vanished. “Or Jayson told one of his friends, who beat him to her. The cops need to ask him that. Find out who knew she’d be waiting here all alone in the dark.”

“Adrian left early after a fight with Rayne,” Charlie told him with a thoughtful frown.

“The very same Adrian, who was with her the night she was chased through the woods.”

“The very same. Maybe we need to find out where he is?” she asked.

“Sounds like a bug we could safely put in the Chief’s ear. Let him poke around and see if he’s holed up in town somewhere,” he told her.

“Zack, do you believe in destiny…fate…whatever you want to call it?” she found herself asking.

He looked at her for a long moment, then replied, “I can’t be standing here next to you and not be a believer.”

“What does that mean, Zack? Then, again, maybe I don’t want you to answer that. You’ve been a problem since I first laid eyes on you.”

He moved closer and she took a step back. “Maybe I should tell you,” he mused. “I was hoping you’d find me as unforgettable, as I found you, but under the circumstances maybe that’s asking way too much. But now isn’t the time and this isn’t the place. Or is it?”

She swallowed hard. What would she be getting herself into, if she allowed him to cross the line and tell her who he really was…how she knew him…and why she shouldn’t have forgotten him? And was all that even something she wanted to know? Probably not. Why stir things up, when she had thought herself safely settled? So, she changed the subject. “You do believe in ghosts now….I mean really believe? You don’t still think Meg’s seance was a lot of hocus pocus on our part, do you?”

He laughed then. “Yes, I do believe in ghosts, though I never in a zillion years thought I would. Besides the seance, I’ve heard plenty of rustlings, whispers, singing, laughter and God knows what else, since I’ve been here. And there’s a big fluffy invisible cat that’s been sharing my bed.”

“So Cloud’s been visiting you, too! Why am I not surprised. He seems to be making the rounds. Anyway, bottom line, Meg and I think Devon is probably staying in town. Who’d recognize him after forty years? And we think Old Thumper, the evil spirit Meg conjured up, .is involved somehow in Brittany’s disappearance. That the past is repeating itself for some reason. We don’t think it was Devon who killed those girls. We think it was his father. You read Breanna’s journal, which I would appreciate back by the way, what do you think?”

“Devon’s love for Breanna was obsessive…possessive, but a killer? I don’t know, as I said earlier, there’s Tommy’s death to consider.”

“Timmy,” she corrected automatically. “A spirit can’t carry off a grown girl, wouldn’t have the energy for it, or at least that’s what we
think
. Devon is capable of doing that for his father.”

“Because? He hated his father, remember?”

“Yes, hated him and feared him with good reason. What if his father is
possessing
him? Making him do his bidding? You saw that thing at the seance. That was a very powerful force and I for one would not like to be its prey!”

Zack raked his hand through his dark hair distractedly, then said, “You’ve got me pretty much convinced, but how in the hell are you going to convince Chief Beasely that a ghost is behind this disappearance?”

“Or that Devon is still alive for that matter. Let’s get back to the house and give him a call. After that?”

“Yeah!
After that
we will do what we can to convince a hard headed cop what even we find difficult to believe.”

Meg stuck her tongue out, as she locked the door behind her sister. If she was going to be treated like some child she might as well act like one. “I don’t like being ordered about. Who does?” she asked Freddie, who was more interested in the scraps she was piling in his dish. “What do you think? Not talking, huh. Hey! I think we have enough leftovers here to make a nice breakfast for Annie. She’s always waiting on us, maybe she’d like someone to wait on her for a change?” Freddie woofed once, as he worriedly watched her load the bacon and pancakes he’d been anticipating onto a plate and pop it in the microwave.

A few minutes later, she unlocked the door and looked around. Just the usual bird sounds…nothing alarming…but she felt guilty as she stepped outside. Freddie tried to go with her, but she nudged him back inside, telling him, “You stay here and be the watch dog I know you can be if given the chance. Tavish is too old for your shenanigans and Annie doesn’t need to be upset.

She closed the door firmly and slipped through the kitchen garden and past the big brass sundial. Off in the distance, she could hear Charlie and Zack arguing or what sounded like arguing. There was definitely something going on between those two, but she didn’t know just what. She hadn’t had enough time to pry it out of her yet, but she would as soon as things settled down a bit.

Right now they were still down at the end of the drive and, if she hurried, she could beat them back and not have to endure another one of Charlie’s penetrating glares. She was never just
mad
. It was always, “I’m disappointed in you”, which was worse than a good old fashioned hissy fit.

Balancing Annie’s breakfast carefully, she sprinted across the open area and into the shadows, then up the stairs to Annie’s apartment. She could hear Tavish whine on the other side of the door. “Annie!” she called, knocking at the same time. There was no answer so she called and knocked even louder. “Annie, it’s just me! I’ve made breakfast for you. Your recipe. Please let me in. I’m beginning to get really worried about you!”

She was about to leave, when she heard “Tis open. Come on in, if you must.”

She opened the door and slipped around Tavish, who wriggled his pudgy brown body in greeting. “Hi, Tavish,” she told him patting his white muzzle. “You may be having some of this, if Annie won’t eat it. But, to be perfectly honest with you, it won’t do your figure any good.”

Meg carried the plate to the table and looked around. Neither she nor Charlie had been up here since Annie moved in. It was spotless but surprisingly austere. Somehow she had expected more bric a brac. Pieces of Annie’s life…family photos and such. “Annie, are you all right?” she called, looking down the tiny, dark hallway. “Do you mind if I come back and check on you? You might be sicker than you think and need a doctor?”

There was a long silence and then she heard, “Come on back, Meg. I should have known you’d come pesterin’ an old woman.”

“Well, I won’t be but a second and then I’ll leave you alone,” Meg called as she made her way down the hall and opened the door. The blinds were pulled and the room quite dark, but she could see the mound on the single brass bed. “Honestly, I won’t be
pestering
you long. I just need to make sure you don’t have a fever,” she said as she crossed to the bed. “Annie?”

The door closed behind her with a solid bang and she whirled to see why. A man was standing there in the shadows, then moved with a cat-like grace across the floor. His salt and pepper hair was clubbed back in a long ponytail and his torso was bare. “If you’ve hurt Annie I’ll…I’ll…I don’t know what I’ll do but you won’t like it,” Meg told him, balling her hands into fists.

He laughed then and said, “Go see to your Annie, since you’re so worried about her.”

Afraid to turn her back on him, she edged along the wall and drew back the blankets with a tremulous hand. “Annie?” she began and gasped. Under the blanket was Annie’s dress and sensible shoes. Her wire-rimmed glasses lay on the pillow along with two bushy gray eyebrows.

Meg’s eyes rounded in horror. “What have you
done
to her?”

“Perhaps I melted her like the witch in the ‘Wizard of Oz’, remember?” he told her. Moving to the window, he opened the blinds. “Saints presarve us.would I be harmin’ old Annie?” he mimicked in ‘Annie’s‘ Irish brogue.

She stared at him in fascination. Fleetingly, she remembered telling Annie that she ‘could be pretty’. The man in front of her was all of that! He was beautiful…an older masculine version of Breanna. She was stunned. Of course, he was Devon, who else could he be?

She opened her mouth to scream, but he was too quick for her. Clapping his hand over her mouth, he pushed her onto the bed and threw his weight over her. His face was inches from hers, when he whispered, “I knew you’d come. I counted on your kind heart. Do Charlie and Zack know you are here?”

He took his hand away from her mouth so she could answer. “Yes, I told them I was bringing you…Annie…breakfast,” she told him, trying to avoid his eyes.

“You’re lying of course. Something you don’t do very well. I saw them head down the drive. Where were they going, Meg?”

“To find out what happened to Brittany. What happened to her, Devon? Why the masquerade?” Meg asked. “We trusted you! You were part of our family!”

“Ah, yes! The Ravynne family. I wish, with all that’s left of me, that could have been true. But I’m one of the cursed Hensleys…my soul damned forever because of what I’ve done…what I’ve become. You are my heart, Meg. I meant that. I lost mine along with my soul years ago.”

She looked at him with a mixture of absolute horror and fascination. “The white roses!
You
are my secret admirer! Then why are you doing this to me? This is sure a funny way to show your admiration. Just let me go and I will find a way to help you. But Brittany needs help first…”

“I’m going to tie you to the bed, but I won’t gag you unless I have to. Do you promise not to scream?”

She nodded, but knew she would if the opportunity arose.

“I won’t hurt you unless you leave me no other choice, is that understood?”

She nodded again and he drew a coil of nylon rope from the dresser and tied her securely to the brass posts, then drew up a chair next to her. Outside she heard Charlie calling her and groaned. He was too close for her to get away with even making a peep. She looked at him and he smiled…Annie’s smile. It was so uncanny, it made her flesh crawl.

He seemed to know what she was thinking. “You’re wondering how I got away with it all this time…being Annie. First of all, people tend to see what they want to see. I became what you were expecting, an old Irish cook and housekeeper…an animal lover just like you. I modeled myself after Mrs. Poole our cook here at Hensley Hall. She let me sit in the kitchen with her for hours and taught me a lot about cooking…things that I passed on to you, Meg. If my dialect slipped from time to time, I had hoped you wouldn’t notice.