Chihuahua of the Baskervilles (9 page)

“Orbs. Energetic spirits.” She flipped to another photo. “There’s one hovering over one of the dolls in our collection. You have to wonder if it’s the spirit of the little girl who owned the doll, and she can’t bear to leave it.”

Michael wondered if Mattel had heard about this, and if the company was working on a Dear Departed Barbie. “What about Emma Crawford? You have a wake for her here, right? Does her ghost ever appear?”

“Emma died before the castle was completed, but the ghosts of other Victorian ladies and gentlemen have been seen.” She put the top photo behind the others. “Which brings me to this.”

Michael looked at the new photo. “What?”

“In the mirror. Do you see it? It’s a figure in a black dress, floating beside that dress mannequin. Only the dress is
not there
.”

Michael took the photo from her hand and squinted at it, trying to make sense of the arrangement of items. The unoccupied black dress did appear to float in midair, and he could see a chair through it. “That’s quite a picture. Do you think I could get a copy?”

“This one is on our Web site,” she said.

“Great.” He handed the photo back. “Listen, my magazine is happy to pay admission, but we don’t have reservations for the Emma Crawford wake. Would it be possible to just stand in a corner? We’d really love to do a write-up on the event for our magazine.”

“I think we can fit you in, as members of the press. You won’t be able to have dinner, is all. Is it just you?”

“Me, a photographer, and the general editor.”

“Do you have a card, so I can tell the organizer that you’re coming?”

Michael reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a business card. Pendergast hadn’t printed any in time, so he’d made his own. “If there’s any problem, give me a call.” He looked around. “I suppose I should tour the castle now.”

She handed him a piece of paper. “Here’s the self-guided tour. That door leads to the doll collection, or you can go that way to start your tour of the castle. Have fun!”

Michael decided to skip the doll collection and walked slowly up the stairs instead, reading the handout as he went. The builder of Miramont, Father Francolon, came from a wealthy French family. Sent to Manitou Springs in 1892, he decided to build a house for himself and his aged mother.

After he and his mother died, nuns took over the house and ran it as a hospital. Afterward, it stood derelict for a while before the people of Manitou Springs restored it through volunteer labor, turning it into a tourist attraction.

The self-guided tour pointed out some original wallpaper that used arsenic as a coloring agent. Moving on, Michael looked out the window at a parapet with no railing and reflected that there were a lot of ways to die in old houses.

Finally he reached the solarium. A full wall of multipaned glass looked out on the surrounding peaks. After soaking in the panoramic view of sun-washed slopes and cerulean sky, Michael looked down at the neighborhood below.

His gaze picked out a small stone building in the backyard of one of the homes, and he realized it was the workshop behind the Baskerville house. As he watched, a pickup truck pulled into the driveway of the house next door—Bob Hume’s place.

The driver’s door opened and a man got out. It looked like Bob, although the distance was too great to tell for sure. Whoever it was went to the rear of the truck and opened the tailgate.

The passenger-side door opened and someone wearing a coat with the hood pulled up got out. Noting the coat’s hot pink color, Michael decided it was probably a woman.

She joined Bob for a moment, then cut across Bob’s yard diagonally, away from the Baskerville place, and walked briskly down the sidewalk.

Bob slid a box out of the truck and put it on the ground as though it were fairly heavy. After closing the truck’s tailgate, he opened the garage and took the box inside.

Michael turned away. He’d been curious as to whether Bob had a girlfriend, but it didn’t look that way—probably someone to whom he’d given a lift.

Michael moved on to Father Francolon’s library and spent a jealous few minutes admiring the tall bookcases and equally tall windows before remembering what he was there for. He should ask Phoebe whether the place had any secret passageways.

Returning to the solarium for a final look at the view, he saw that the small figure in pink had gone right around the block. As Michael peered downward, she went up the walk to the Baskerville house and disappeared inside.

“That’s weird,” he muttered.

*   *   *

Suki parked Angus’s car at the Regency. The sun was shining brightly, giving the rosy bricks a glow that looked anything but macabre. Luckily, it cast the shadow of a large tree across the face of the house.

Carrying her camera on its tripod, she walked to and fro across the graveled drive until she found a spot where the tree’s shadow appeared to be flowing out of the front door like a plague of locusts.
Nice.

Finally she went up to the entrance. It felt strange to go in without knocking, but it was a restaurant, after all.

The foyer, a symphony of cream upholstery and dark wood, was deserted. She took a few photos of the fireplace, staircase, and molded-tin ceiling.

“Hello?” Suki called. “Anybody here?” She wandered down a hall and into yet another graceful room, with a bar on one side. “Hello?”

The temperature suddenly dropped, and she heard a sucking sound behind her. Her camera came up automatically as she turned.

“Sorry to make you wait.” The woman approaching Suki wore jeans and a flannel shirt. “I was in the wine cooler and didn’t hear you.” In the alcove behind her, a glass door closed, the gasket making a suction noise. The flow of cold air died away.

“No problem.” Suki introduced herself. “I’m here to take pictures of the manor for
Tripping
magazine.”

“Right. I’m Barb Metcalf.” Barb had a sweet, round face topped by curly blond hair. She looked admiringly at Suki’s clothes. “I love your outfit. I wish I could be super fashionable like that.”

“Like any hobby, it can be a real money sink,” Suki said.

Barb smiled at her. “Do you want to take the tour first, or look at the stuff I put together for you? There’s not a lot, because you can get pretty much anything you need off the Web site.”

“Let’s do the tour.”

“Okay, we’ll start with the basement. That’s not something most people get to see.” She led the way into a huge light-filled room, windowed on two sides. “Your magazine has such an interesting concept—paranormal and travel, I mean,” she said, threading her way through tables set with linens and china.

“Yeah. Can you hold up a minute? I want to get a shot of the dining room.”

“Sure. This is the largest of the dining rooms.” Barb came back and waited while Suki took several photos. “Is your article about haunted restaurants?”

“No, it’s about a local family being haunted by one of their dead pets.”

“I know who that is! The Baskervilles, right? My son, Jay, dates their granddaughter, and he told me about it.” Barb led Suki into the brightly lit kitchen. A few men were already prepping vegetables and laboring over a steaming pot of soup.

“If you’re a friend of the family, maybe Michael or Angus should interview you,” Suki said.

“Oh, I don’t know Charlotte or Thomas that well. But I am friends with Ellen Froehlich.”

Suki nodded, mentally contrasting chatty Barb with quiet Ellen. Ellen must be the listener in that relationship. “I guess Ellen is really a big part of the company.”

“Not as big as she should be, that’s for sure. On the other hand, Charlotte saw Ellen through a really tough time.”

“Yeah?” As they went past a series of industrial refrigerators, Suki wondered how to encourage Barb to gossip, but it appeared encouragement wasn’t needed.

“Ellen lived with a man for twelve years,” Barb said. “The guy was very against marriage—talked about it being a tool of the state. Then one day, he comes home and tells Ellen he’s met someone and is hot to marry
her
. Can you believe it?”

“That’s pretty bad.”

“
And
he took their dogs. They’d been his to begin with, I guess. Anyway, Ellen was so depressed, she quit her job and was living off savings in some poky apartment, because of course the house was his and she’d been spending her extra money to keep up with him on vacations.”

“How did Charlotte come to know Ellen?” Suki asked.

“From dog walking. Charlotte asked her to help fill orders for Petey’s Closet. I don’t know if she really needed the help, but it gave Ellen something new to think about, which was a good thing.”

“Was Ellen into sewing before she started working with Charlotte?”

“She knew the basics. Charlotte taught her more, and pretty soon Ellen was coming up with designs on her own. Charlotte likes to say it was the dog movie that made business take off, but it was around that same time that the first catalog came out with all of Ellen’s designs.”

“And now Ellen lives with Charlotte, as well,” Suki said. “That’s a lot of togetherness.”

“Uh-huh.” Barb opened a door. “These steps are really steep, so hang on to the rail.”

Suki wondered if Ellen paid rent to Charlotte. She waited to see if Barb would dish on that, but they had reached the cellar and the conversation turned.

“We used to keep more supplies down here, but it’s not handy for the kitchen. Now we only use it for overstock—you know, like if we get a super good deal on canned tomatoes or something.” Barb shivered. “Feel how cold it is? I brought you down here first because it’s where something happened to me.”

“Can I take your picture while you tell me?” Suki asked, putting the tripod in place.

Barb looked flattered. “Okay. It was about two years ago, and I came down here to get some stock.”

“Chicken?” Suki lowered the camera a tad, so the flash would throw slight shadows up onto Barb’s face.

“I think it was cannellini beans. Anyway, I was getting the beans when the light suddenly flickered and went out. And then, from somewhere behind me,
I heard a can fall off the shelves.
”

“That must have freaked you out.” Suki took a couple of shots and wished Barb were wearing something without a plaid pattern. Plaid wasn’t scary, except in a cheesy
Blair Witch Project
kind of way.

“You bet it scared me!” Barb said. “I let out a bloodcurdling scream and started feeling my way toward the stairs, but I think I would have had a heart attack if José hadn’t been passing by and turned on the light.” She held up a hand. “And to those people who say José turned it off to play a trick—first of all, he swore on a Bible that he didn’t, and second, that doesn’t explain the can that fell off the shelf.”

At that moment, the overhead lights flickered and went out.

Barb let out a scream that made Suki’s ears ring.

The light came back on. “Sorry!” a man’s voice called from the stairwell. “Didn’t know anyone was down there.”

Barb stood with her hand pressed against her chest, eyes bulging and mouth open as she took panting breaths.

Suki took her picture and smiled with satisfaction. “Perfect.”

*   *   *

Angus took his time walking to the Chamber of Commerce. The city had a ton of quirky charm. Because it lay in a fairly narrow canyon, there wasn’t room for businesses that didn’t fill a strong need.

In fact, Manitou Springs brought to mind one of those miniature villages people put under Christmas trees. It even had a small train—the Pikes Peak Cog Railway. No wonder Charlotte Baskerville did so well with her line of tiny clothing.

He pushed open the door to the Chamber of Commerce.

A grizzled man with a beard and wire-rimmed glasses sat behind the front desk. “Hello,” he said. “Help you?”

“I’m Angus MacGregor, from
Tripping
magazine. We’re doing a story on the ghost of Petey.”

“
Tripping
magazine? What drugs do you have to take to see this Petey?”

“No,
Tripping
is a travel magazine about paranormal destinations.”

“Oh.” The man looked thoughtful. “Petey … I know a lot of local ghosts, but that one’s new to me.”

“Petey was Mrs. Charlotte Baskerville’s Chihuahua.”

The man gave a bemused nod. “We’ll add him to the list.” He stood and stuck out a hand. “Shermont Lester.”

Angus shook it. “You have a list of ghosts?”

“And one mummy. Tom O’Neal.”

“What’s his story?” Angus asked.

“Died in a saloon brawl in the late 1800s. No family came to claim the body, so Doc Davis, a man with a scientific bent in addition to being county coroner, decided to turn Tom into a mummy. It worked real well. When the doc died, his family buried Tom O’Neal, but grave robbers took the mummy. It wound up in a traveling sideshow, tricked out with a wig and tomahawk and billed as a petrified Indian found in the caverns around here.”

Angus smiled. “I hadn’t heard that story, but apparently there was a spate of sideshow mummies with similar backgrounds during that time.”

Shermont nodded. “Those wacky Victorians.”

Angus laughed and handed Shermont a card. “Would it be possible to e-mail me a copy of your ghost list, for our article?”

Shermont took the card. “Will do.”

Angus leaned on the counter. “I understand Manitou Springs has several yearly festivals.”

“
Several
doesn’t begin to cut it. There’s the Emma Crawford Coffin Festival, the Great Fruitcake Toss, the Buffalo BBQ, Huck Finn Day, the Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo Cook-off, Mardi Gras Carnivale Parade—”

“That last must be a little chilly, during February in Colorado.”

“There’ll be no bare breasts, I can tell you that. Even if a woman wanted to show something, the parade would be long past by the time she got it out from under four layers. We’ve got a couple of art and music festivals, a wine festival, the historic speaker series, and Author Fest of the Rockies. Lotta creative types in this town.”

“One thing you don’t seem to have is a pet-oriented festival.”

Shermont pursed his lips thoughtfully. “You got me there. What’d you have in mind?”