The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion (22 page)

I didn’t know what I was supposed to “brace” Dean Pepper about, but I didn’t waste time arguing. I just handed Brainert my iced tea glass—empty now—and headed Pepper off in the foyer.

“Uh, excuse me? Dean Pepper?”

“Yes?” The dean turned and smiled—still affable enough, but strain at the edges told me I was holding him up and he wasn’t happy about it.

“Uh . . .” I said.

“Mrs. Fromsette’s very nice,” I said, trying not to slur my words. “Why haven’t I seen her around Quindicott?”

Wendell frowned. “She used to be quite active in the community. Head of the Larchmont Avenue Charity Drive, that sort of thing. All that changed when Mr. Fromsette went missing—”

“Missing?” That sounded odd. “But I heard you mention a funeral.”

“There was a funeral,” Dr. Pepper said. “But Arthur Fromsette’s body was never found. Only his sailboat washed ashore, off Mullet Point. He enjoyed fishing. He’d started on Quindicott Pond and then followed the inlet out to the ocean. He did it every day for years. The Coast Guard concluded he’d fainted, had a spell, or perhaps even a heart attack, and fell overboard.”

“How tragic.”

“She never quite got over it,” Wendell said. He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “That black shawl she refused to let Seymour take? She put it on for Mr. Fromsette’s funeral and hasn’t taken it off since. Wears it all day, every day, I understand.”

“Is that why April’s here? To take care of her mother?”

“Yes, but April usually visits every summer,” Pepper said.

“From where?”

“Boston. She was married until recently.”

“Oh, divorced, eh?”

“Separated, but I believe the divorce papers are filed. You should get to know her better, Mrs. McClure. She’s thinking about making a permanent move back to Quindicott, to be near her mother.”

“Really? Wouldn’t that be a difficult commute to her job?”

“From what I recall, she runs her own bookkeeping business so she can probably relocate fairly easily.”

I could certainly sympathize with April’s situation. After my husband’s suicide, I’d wanted to get away—not just from the memories of Calvin’s unholy leap, but of the truth of how bad our marriage really had been. April was obviously on the rebound and looking for a summer fling. Seymour was single, available, and a brand-new, prosperous-looking Larchmont resident.

Pepper glanced at his watch. “I’d better go.”

“One more thing, Dean Pepper. I’m just curious. You don’t happen to know Mrs. Fromsette’s maiden name, do you?”

“Why yes, as a matter of fact. I believe her husband’s funeral announcement listed it as Field.”

“Yes, Jack,” I told the ghost. “It would have been a nice, neat package, wouldn’t it?”

Pepper left and I watched him wander down the dark drive. “That’s odd about Mrs. Fromsette’s husband disappearing, don’t you think, Jack?”

“You think he’s still alive?”

“Or he could just be dead.”

“Yes, you’re right. Miss Todd’s sister is married and lives in Newport—or at least she did. And now I’m almost positive I already got a glimpse of her.”

“Exactly. And remember when she climbed into that Mercedes sedan? There was a chauffeur driving—and wouldn’t someone like that know all about cars and how to sabotage them?”

“True, but I can tell Eddie my theories tomorrow. Maybe he can figure out a legal way to pressure Stoddard into revealing it.”

“Well, tell me in a minute okay? I’m thirsty again.”

I returned to the party and crossed to the bar. As if he’d read my mind, Hardy handed me a third ice-cold glass of tea before I even asked for it. Grateful, I took a long gulp, not caring anymore whether or not it contained alcohol.

“For what?”

“Who?”

“Aw, crap.” I took another sip of spiked tea.

CHAPTER 16

I’ve got to keep in some sort of touch with all the loose ends of this dizzy affair if I’m ever going to make heads or tails of it.

—The Maltese Falcon
, Dashiell Hammett, 1930

 

 

 

“DID YOU KNOW there’s a magic circle under this rug?”

Ophelia turned to face me. Her heavily lined eyes flashed darkly, but she said nothing.

“It’s a pentagram,” I said, “like the one on the gate outside, only it has a—”

“Fleur-de-lis in the center,” she said flatly. “Yes. I know.”

“You can see the circle then? You can see it through this rug?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen the gate
outside
. I don’t have X-ray vision.”

“Oh.”

Ophelia swirled her drink. The ice tinkled softly against the tumbler.
Tink-tink, tink-tink . . .
It was mildly hypnotic, but then, I had consumed some pretty powerful fire juice.

“You know about magic circles, Mrs. McClure?”

“Not much. What do
you
know?”

“In rituals of ceremonial magic, the practitioner stands inside the circle, which forms a barrier against the demons and evil spirits the sorcerer hopes to summon and control. Bend to his will, so to speak.”

I felt a chill, not the ghostly kind, more like the old-fashioned kind, right up my spine. “What can these demons and spirits do?”

Ophelia shrugged. “Whatever the sorcerer wants them to do. Turn lead into gold. Bring you the mate you desire. Grant power and influence, bestow eternal youth—”

“Could the spirits be employed to destroy another person?”

“That, too, I suspect.” Ophelia sipped her green tea, met my eyes. “If you believe in such things.”

I looked away, pointed to the carpet. “That’s where I found Miss Todd’s corpse. Right
there,
on the rug, in the center of the circle.”

“
You’re
thinking there are spirits in this house, and that the magic circle failed to protect Miss Todd, right?”

I took a gulp of my own tea and nodded.

Ophelia forced a laugh. “Which proves your fears are baseless. If this house really was haunted, and if those spirits suddenly menaced Miss Todd, shouldn’t she have been safe from harm inside the magic circle?”

“Well, I guess . . .”

Ophelia sighed like a patient teacher with a particularly slow student. “For starters, sir,” she whispered to the air just above my head. “Ritual magic is not the same thing as witchcraft. Ritual magic is a conceptual system that asserts human ability to control the natural and supernatural world.”

An exceedingly uncomfortable moment of silence stretched between us.

“Do you see him?” I whispered.

Ophelia nodded. “Don’t you?”

“I just hear him. Unless I’m dreaming. He sometimes comes into my dreams, influences them. But then he disappears. He did that after our last dream.”

“It takes energy to manifest. They draw it from the molecules around them. That’s why the air’s cold whenever they’re present. A dream like the one you’re describing probably took a lot of energy from him.”

I glanced uneasily around us, making sure no one could overhear our discussion.

“You mean he has to rest after expending a lot of energy?”

“Just like we do.” Ophelia studied me closely for a moment. “You suspect me of something, don’t you, Mrs. McClure?”

“You’re a psychic, right? Not just a medium or whatever you call yourself?”

“I call myself Ophelia.” She sniffed. “Listen, I can see spirits, which is obvious, right? And I can read emotions of maybe six out of ten people. You’re easy to read. You’re an open book.”

Jack laughed.

“Okay, Ophelia, if I’m such an open book, then you must know
what
I suspect you of.”

She shrugged. “Not really. I just know you suspect me of something. Why don’t
you
enlighten me on the
what
?”

“I need to know the name and address of Miss Todd’s living sister. It’s important.”

“Why?”

“I think she’s trying to hurt Seymour.”

Ophelia’s eyebrows rose. “What makes you think that?”

“A lot of things make me think it, but I’d rather not go into all of that right now.”

“Cleo?” Ophelia frowned and glanced around. “Who’s Cleo?”

“You,” I informed her. “Your makeup reminds Jack of Cleopatra.”

Ophelia rolled her eyes. “The ‘smoky eye’ look is in, sir.”

“As opposed to dead?”

This whole thing was freaking me out. I drained my glass, which began to impair my ability to stand completely straight. Whoa.

“It’s my attitude. Live with it. Oops. You can’t, can you?”

The room began to spin a little and suddenly got a whole lot colder. I shivered. “Stop pissing him off,” I warned, knowing instinctively it was Jack creating the chill and not some other spook.

“Sorry,” she said, but her tone was still insolent.

Then Ophelia’s handbag rang—or rather the cell phone inside it. She fished it out and took the cell call in front of me (and Jack).

“Yes?” She glanced at me, then higher up. “I’m at Mr. Tarnish’s,” she told the other party. She listened some more, then looked back at me. “Excuse me.”

She walked away, her voice a whisper. After a minute, she closed the phone, threw me an uneasy glance, and approached Seymour, who was laughing with April Briggs on the red velvet, claw-footed loveseat in the corner.

“Alas, I’ve got to go,” Ophelia announced.

Brainert wandered over to say goodbye to Seymour as well. As I bid him pleasant dreams, I noticed Leo Rollins had finished working on the television and was drinking a bottle of Sam Adams. His gaze appeared preoccupied with Ophelia. Did he know her? It sure seemed to me she threw him a nod of recognition when she’d first walked in.

I addressed the ghost: “I was just thinking . . .”

“No, not thinking.” I shook my head, trying to clear it. “More like remembering. Leo Rollins has that suspicious knife with the Todd Mansion pentagram design. And Leo was on the road that day I found Miss Todd’s corpse. Don’t you recall? I heard that Harley motor of his first, and then I saw him pass me going in the opposite direction.”

“So Leo was coming from Larchmont. He could have been at Miss Todd’s house. He could have been involved in her death!”

I passed Bud Napp, who was loudly complaining about the construction vehicles parked in front of his business. As I approached Leo, I noticed him glance at me, then nervously shift his bottle from one hand to the other.

“He’s looking awfully uncomfortable, Jack.”

“Who, me?” I pushed up my black-framed glasses. “Get a grip!”

“Hi, Leo,” I said, a little too loudly. (The Long Island Iced Tea was most definitely talking now.) “I wanted to thank you
again
for helping my aunt and me on the highway the other night!”

“No big deal,” he grunted, then lowered his eyes.

“So, are you having fun?”

“Sure,” he said with a shrug.

“Really something about that pentagram design on the floor, huh?” I pointed to the rug. “It looks
just
like the one on
your
dagger.”

Leo’s head bobbed once. “I guess.”

“Tell me
again
where you got that—”

“Hey, Leo,” Bud cried, interrupting.

“Yeah,” Leo said, looking past me.

“You know Jim Wolfe, right? You did work for him last year. Can’t you ask him to move his trucks?”

“I haven’t seen him much, not this summer. He cut back—having a bad year, I think. I’m not on his payroll. Anyway, I’m just an independent contractor. He’s not going to listen to me.” Leo drained his bottle, and before I could speak with him again, he whirled and headed for Hardy Miles and a refill.

Sadie appeared just then, and offered me the last pass on the tray of fried chicken. I wolfed down two wings, suddenly ravenous, and realized eating might help me sober up. I found more snacks, then headed to the bar again and ordered myself a soft drink. “Dr Pepper!” I giggled. “Oops! He already left!”