The Legend of Sleepy Harlow (12 page)

“That’s so nice of you!” Fiona plunked down on one of the tall stools at the breakfast bar. Like every time I’d seen her, she was wearing that spectacular howlite necklace, and the light above the counter caught the stone and made it shine like newly fallen snow.

When I handed it to her, she wrapped both her hands around her teacup. “I’m starving! We worked so hard today. We were out at the lighthouse.”

“Did you find anything?”

“You mean evidence of paranormal activity?” Fiona gulped down one of the tiny egg salad sandwiches and reached for a second. “Maybe a couple EVPs. You know, Electronic Voice Phenomena. That’s when you make a recording and you don’t hear anything with your own ears, but when you replay the recording, you pick up the voices of spirits.”

“Well, for your sake, I hope you caught plenty of them. Noreen would have liked that.”

“Noreen. Yeah.” Fiona changed her mind just as she was reaching for another sandwich. She sat back and glanced over her shoulder. From here, we could hear the lively conversation going on in the dining room. “They don’t care,” she said.

“Maybe they know they don’t have the luxury. You’ve got a TV show to finish producing.”

“I guess.” Her shoulders rose and fell. “But it seems kind of harsh, doesn’t it? I wish the cops could figure out what really happened to Noreen.”

“They talked to you?” I knew Hank had, but Fiona didn’t know that I knew. “And you told them that when EGG left the winery the other night, they forgot to take you with them?”

She tried for a smile. Oh, how she tried. I actually might have been convinced the expression was genuine if Fiona’s eyes didn’t get misty. “They were in such a hurry to get out of there, they never even bothered to think about me.”

“But you made it back on your own. At least that’s what Dimitri told me.”

Apparently, now that we weren’t talking about Noreen directly, Fiona’s appetite returned. She wolfed down a ham salad sandwich. “I walked all the way from the winery to Chandra’s.”

“But before you got back, did you see anything else at the winery? Anyone else?”

Fiona might have been young, but she was nobody’s fool. Her eyes went wide. “You mean, did I see the killer?”

“Something tells me we can’t be that lucky. What I mean is think back, Fiona. When you snuck out of the winery, were there any other cars around?”

“You mean other than the EGG trucks and Ms. Wilder’s?” She shook her head. “I didn’t see any. Maybe if I had . . .” Tears filled her eyes, and I knew I was going to lose her if I didn’t get her thinking, and fast.

“How about on the way back to Chandra’s?” I asked. “Did you pass anyone on the road?”

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then they flew open. “A golf cart. I know I passed a golf cart. I was wondering what anyone was doing out. You know, because it was late and it was dark.”

Golf carts are the island’s preferred mode of transportation, for both residents and visitors. Still, we were making progress. “Good,” I told Fiona. “And this golf cart, was it headed for the winery?”

Thinking, she wrinkled her nose. “I dunno. I don’t think so. I think it turned.” She waved an arm in some indeterminate direction. “Sort of that way. Not toward the winery.” Her shoulders dropped. “Sorry. I wish I could be more help. I guess I just wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention.”

“You’re doing great,” I assured her. “How about when you got back to Chandra’s? Did you notice if the other members of EGG were already back here?”

She nodded. “I saw three trucks in your driveway.”

“And did you see one of the trucks leave again that night?”

When she shook her head, her hair glowed like a new penny in the light. “I was kind of upset,” she admitted. “I mean, first I thought for sure we were all going to end up in jail. I was just coming back into the winery from the truck, see, with a piece of equipment Noreen had asked me to get, when you and Ms. Wilder showed up. I heard what Noreen and Ms. Wilder said to each other. It was impossible not to, right? There was so much shouting. Then when the cop got there . . .” Color shot through Fiona’s cheeks. “Well, I stayed as far back in a dark corner as I could. I figured everybody was going to get hauled into jail and I didn’t want the police to find me. Then that Ms. Wilder, she said nobody should get arrested and I was so relieved. And I guess everybody else was, too, because they cleared out so fast, they left me behind. By the time I got back to Chandra’s, I was more upset about that than anything else.” Fiona shot a look toward the dining room.

“I went to my room, lit some incense, and did my meditation. When I get that upset, it’s the only thing that calms me down. After that, I went right to sleep. And I slept really well, too, only . . .” Thinking, Fiona tipped her head.

I scooted closer. “Only what?”

“Now that I think about it, I woke up around midnight. It was so quiet, I could hear the waves swishing against the shore. And I thought about how peaceful it was, and about how lucky I was to be here on the island, doing what I love doing. And then . . . yeah, that’s right.” Her eyes lit. “I heard a car start up. And I thought that was really weird, because it was so late and it was so quiet, and so I got up, and I looked out the window. Bea . . .” Fiona swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, I forgot. I forgot all about it. I did see something. It was one of the EGG trucks. It was pulling out of your driveway.”

Since I knew Noreen had ended up back at the winery, this wasn’t a big surprise. Still, I felt obliged to ask, “You didn’t see who was driving it, did you?”

She gave me a puppy dog look. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“Not a problem!” I assured her, because, actually, she had been helpful. She had confirmed what Chandra had already told me: that after the incident at the winery, Fiona had come back to Chandra’s and was in her room meditating and playing a CD of chanting monks.

As for Noreen going back to Wilder’s, we already knew that. But now we also knew that she drove. And since that’s where she died, I think it was a safe bet to say she wasn’t the one who returned the truck to my driveway.

Noreen hadn’t gone out alone. Or, if she had, she’d been followed by someone who’d returned the truck to exactly where it belonged.

I wasn’t sure precisely what any of this meant, but I knew the answers might be in my dining room.

I pushed a plate of cookies closer to Fiona and excused myself with the explanation that I wanted to see if anyone needed anything else.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to go far—I met Liam in the doorway. He had the empty sandwich plate in his hands.

“More?” he asked.

“Plenty,” I told him as I stepped back to let Fiona scurry out of the kitchen. Like I had with Fiona, I gestured to Liam to follow me and took my time loading the serving dish with a brand-new array of sandwiches.

“Any luck with the ghosts?” I asked him, carefully arranging cucumber sandwiches on the Depression glass platter.

Liam Nash, EGG’s technical and equipment specialist, was a guy of thirty or so with short-cropped dark hair and a couple dozen tattoos on his arms, the tops of his hands, and his legs. And those were only the ones I could see thanks to the T-shirt he wore with cutoff denim shorts. “But then, maybe you don’t know yet,” I added. “Fiona tells me you’re never quite sure what you’ve captured until you have a chance to review the evidence.”

“When she’s around, we’re lucky we capture anything,” he grumbled. “She’s a cute kid. Okay, I get that, I get that we need someone young on the team to attract a younger demographic of viewer for the show. But Fiona, she’s like a bull in a china shop, traipsing through the areas we’re investigating, making all kinds of noise. The digital recording I listened to from last night, all I could hear was Fiona in the background, complaining about how cold she was. I’m going to have to talk to Dimitri about it. I hate to cause trouble for the kid, but I really don’t have any choice. I can’t have Fiona mucking up our investigations.”

“Maybe she’s just a little too eager?”

He grabbed two egg salad sandwiches, stacked them one on top of the other, and chomped them both down. “That’s what I keep telling myself,” he said, his mouth full. “But I dunno. I think maybe she’s just not cut out for this sort of work, you know?”

“I know Dimitri tells me it looks easy, but it’s really hard to be a paranormal investigator.”

“Harder not to be.” He flashed me an eggy smile. “I mean, some people are in the field for the fame and the glory.”

“Some people like Noreen?”

He gave a snort but didn’t comment further, so I had no choice but to push.

“And Dimitri?”

“He’s a pretty boy,” Liam said. “But I’ll admit, he knows his stuff.”

“Noreen didn’t?”

“There are some of us who do this job because we can’t help ourselves,” he said. “We’ve got to find out if there’s really something out there, something that’s left behind when our bodies poof away to dust. Me? I’m pretty sure I’m the luckiest guy in the world because I get to do what I love doing. I just wish we could find more evidence.” He stressed the importance of this statement by swallowing down another sandwich. “Noreen was a true believer, but she was smart when it came to marketing. She knew the value of publicity.”

“Like that video of Sleepy.”

“Man!” Liam’s smile was beatific.

“It must have been something to be there and see the ghost, then realize you got the proof on film.”

His smile faded and Liam shook his head. “Wish that was true. Fact is, Noreen was all alone when she got that footage. With a handheld camera, of all things.” Exactly what Dimitri had told me. I made a mental note of it.

“All that expensive equipment,” Liam said, “and Noreen, she gets the Holy Grail on handheld! What I wouldn’t give for another piece of footage like that! Say . . .” He glanced my way. “You’re one of the locals. I don’t suppose you could talk to that cop, the big guy with the attitude. Rumor is that the cops have our plasmometer. I don’t suppose you could talk him into giving it back. We were hoping to use it on this investigation. You know, Noreen, she could be a royal pain in the neck. But that plasmometer of hers, it was brilliant.”

“So everyone says.”

Liam grabbed the plate of sandwiches and headed back toward the dining room. “I’ll tell you what, when she showed up with the plans for the plasmometer, I was all set to blow her off. But I’m glad I took a second look, and I’m glad I worked on building it. That plasmometer, it’s amazing.”

“And now, what if it’s gone?”

There was a swinging door between the kitchen and the hallway, and Liam pushed it open with his butt. “That would be a shame, but if that’s the case, it will take us a while to get the money together to buy the parts for another one, but have no fear, EGG is on the job! I’ll build another plasmometer one of these days.” Hanging on to the sandwiches, Liam headed back into the dining room.

I stood in the kitchen for a bit, nibbling on a cookie as I thought about all I’d learned.

The stuff from Hank?

More than interesting, considering one of the things I’d learned was that he wanted to believe that Kate didn’t kill Noreen and he was willing to work to prove it.

The information from Fiona?

Pretty much just confirmed what I knew about EGG all along: they were so absorbed in their ghosts and their TV show and their stardom, they never even bothered to worry about the intern who did so much of the grunt work.

And everything Liam had said?

Now that . . .

I brushed cookie crumbs off the front of my sweatshirt and got to work cleaning up the kitchen.

Of everything I’d heard that day, what I heard from Liam was the most interesting.

See, I didn’t want to offend, so I didn’t say anything, but let’s face it, from what I knew of Noreen, she was picky and annoying and a walking poster child for OCD.

Oh yeah, Noreen was a lot of things, but from what I’d seen, she certainly wasn’t brilliant.

  11  

T
he witch at my front door looked mighty familiar. And mighty impressive, I must say, in a conical hat decorated with a wild array of orange, gold, and purple silk flowers; a flowing black robe studded with sparkling sequins; scarecrow earrings; and green paint on face and hands that would make the Wicked Witch of the West proud.

I opened the front door wider to allow Chandra to step into the house. “You’re a week early for Halloween.”

Chandra had a pumpkin tucked under one arm, and she pointed to it. “Pumpkins. You invited us over to carve pumpkins tonight.”

I groaned. Right after I was done cringing. “I honestly forgot! With all that’s been going on this week, I—”

There is nothing quite so sad as a green witch in full disappointment mode.

“Of course we’re carving pumpkins tonight!” I closed the front door and motioned a now-smiling Chandra toward the kitchen. “I’ve got some sloppy joes in the freezer. We can warm those up, and there are plenty of cookies left from this afternoon’s tea, and—”

The doorbell rang.

I opened the door to find Luella waiting on the porch. No costume, but she had a pumpkin, too.

“Come on in.” As long as the door was opened, I darted out to the porch and grabbed one of the pumpkins from the front steps. “We’re just getting started.”

Luella eyed Chandra’s getup. “You’re going to get pumpkin guts all over your costume.”

“Just trying it out.” Chandra put her pumpkin on the stairs so she could whisk off her hat and tug her robe over her head. The green makeup on her face and hands looked especially ghastly with her orange sweatshirt, which had the words
Happy Halloween
spelled out across the front of it in frolicking black cats. She shook out her hair and combed her fingers through it, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that even after she was done, there was still one clump suffering from serious witch hat hair. It stood up straight at the very top of her head.

“I have to make sure my costume is perfect for the party on Friday night,” Chandra said.

“I’d go with the other earrings.” Luella pointed to the cute ceramic scarecrows that dangled from Chandra’s ears. “You know, the witch hats you had on the other day. Keeps the spooky theme going.”

“Witch hats. Sure.” Chandra scurried into the kitchen, and we followed her.

Luella waited until I spread newspaper over the counter, then she set down her pumpkin.

“No Kate?” she asked.

“She’s never late,” Chandra said, though since she was studying her pumpkin and had a Sharpie in her mouth, it came out sounding more like, “Shsh n lt.”

No matter which way she said it, Chandra was right.

“I don’t like it,” I said. I’d just finished giving my pumpkin a quick rubdown with a damp paper towel, and I scrubbed my hands against the legs of my jeans. “She’s shutting everyone out.”

“Or she forgot. Just like you did.” Chandra took out her phone and gave Kate a call.

“Pumpkins,” she said, the moment Kate answered. Chandra listened for a bit. “You can’t be serious. It’s going to be a whole lot of fun. Bea has margaritas.”

I didn’t. Not made. But the little get-a-move-on gesture Chandra made told me to get crackin’.

She listened some more. “But it won’t be any fun without you. Sure. Yeah. Of course.” She set her phone on the counter and when she frowned, green makeup settled into heavy creases around her mouth. “Kate’s staying home. She says she’s not in the mood to carve pumpkins.”

It was exactly what I was afraid of. “Maybe we should go see her,” I suggested.

“We could take the pumpkins to her house!” Chandra suggested. “Once she sees me in my witch costume, she’s bound to change her mind and want to join in the fun.”

“I don’t think so.” Luella put a hand on Chandra’s arm. “Something tells me this is a problem that can’t be solved with pumpkins.”

I settled on one of the high chairs at the breakfast bar where we were working. “I wish there was something we could do.”

Luella shook her head. “Only so much we can do. I know you’re looking into the murder, Bea. Kate knows it, too. She knows you’ll get to the bottom of things. Just like you always do.”

“Hank’s working hard, too,” I reminded them. “I know he’s talked to all my guests.” They were gone for the evening, and from what I’d heard when they piled out of the house, they weren’t out investigating. Dimitri said something about a night off, and they whooped and scattered. I had no doubts that bar patrons up and down Put-in-Bay would be hearing about ghost hunting tonight.

“They must be done checking out the winery, right?” Chandra drew huge, round eyes on her pumpkin and I hoped for the sake of pumpkin aesthetics that she’d be carving outside the lines, not inside. Her circles wobbled. “I mean, the cops must have found all the evidence they’re going to find. By now, I mean. Right?”

“I guess.” I gave my pumpkin a careful look. I’d bought a variety of pumpkins, big and small, from a local stand just a week earlier. The one I’d grabbed from the porch was one of the big ones and it was nice and fat and round. I considered what kind of personality I wanted to give it.

Chandra set down her Sharpie with a slap. “Maybe we should go back there.”

“The winery?” Luella asked.

At the exact same time I said, “You’re not going to find Sleepy. No matter how hard you look for him.”

Chandra pouted. Not an especially good look for a woman covered in green. “I just thought we could help.”

“We are helping.” Luella plunged a knife into the top of her pumpkin and carved around the stem, and when she was done, she lifted it and scooped out seeds and stringy pumpkin innards.

“But we haven’t found anything. Not like a real clue,” Chandra said.

“Really?” Since Luella was done with the knife, I grabbed it and started in on my pumpkin. “We found the murder weapon,” I reminded Chandra. I shouldn’t have had to. Chandra has even more imagination than I do; I couldn’t believe she’d forgotten the ruined plasmometer. Or the blood.

I knew I’d never forget the blood.

“And I found that old
Life
magazine,” I reminded them.

“In that back storeroom.” Chandra
tap, tap, tap
ped her fingers against her pumpkin. “If there was anything else back there . . . you know, anything that pointed to someone other than Kate . . . they would have found that, too, right?”

I hoped my shrug said it all, but when Chandra still stood there looking quizzical, I said, “Like I said, I guess they would have.”

“And they would have done something about it, right? Like they would have arrested that somebody else.”

“I wish,” I admitted. “Then Kate would be off the hook.”

Luella agreed.

Chandra? She just stood there looking a little green.

*   *   *

Luella and Chandra were gone within a couple of hours and a pumpkin with triangle eyes and a zigzag frown looked out at the world from my front porch. Halloween wasn’t until the following Friday, but I lit a candle in the pumpkin when I put it out there, anyway. Like Chandra with her witch costume, I wanted to try out my jack-o’-lantern, and besides, it wasn’t too early to contribute to the holiday mood of the neighborhood. Already there were flickering candles in Chandra’s front windows, dry ice that billowed out of a cauldron outside her door, and music coming out of the speakers she’d set up outside her garage that was spooky enough to give me the shivers and loud enough to be heard over half the island.

The fact that Kate had yet to complain about the noise said a lot about how worried and depressed she was feeling.

Chandra and Luella had insisted that I keep all the pumpkin seeds, and at Chandra’s urging (which was actually more like badgering, and I discovered I had no defenses against her greenness), I had agreed to roast them. They were washed and picked through, and I’d just put them in salted water to soak overnight when Liam and David showed up at the back door.

“I didn’t think I’d see you this early,” I told them.

“It’s never too early when you’ve had too many beers.” David laughed and, with a slap on the back, sent Liam into the hallway and up the stairs. The way he reeled, I hoped he’d make it, and when I heard his room door shut, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Will he be all right?” I asked David.

He’d grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and settled back against the counter to drink it. “He’ll be fine once he sleeps it off. When it comes to beer, Liam’s a lightweight.”

“You’re not?”

David grinned. He had a nice smile, great cheekbones, and a strong, square chin. I can’t say if it was planned, but I didn’t have a shred of doubt that he’d attract plenty of female fans to EGG’s TV show.

“I’m smart,” David said, and the wink he gave me told me he was only half kidding. “I know when to stop. Two beers are plenty for me.”

“Liam had more than that?”

“Thought they’d have to send to the mainland for more.”

He finished his bottle of water, and I pointed him to the recycle container just outside the back door.

“So . . .” Since I couldn’t risk looking too eager, I went to the sink and wet down a cloth, then swiped it over the countertop. Yes, I’d just cleaned it. David didn’t know that. “No work tonight, huh? That must be a welcome change.”

“Everybody scattered the second Dimitri said we deserved a night off. Most of us went to the bars, but I hear he and Jacklyn took off to some fancy restaurant down by the water.”

I remembered how I’d heard Dimitri coughing earlier in the day. “I hope he was going to order chicken soup.”

David peeled out of his EGG jacket. “His immune system must be shot—guy’s always got a cold.”

“So he deserves a night off.” I hoped I was subtle about getting the conversation back on track. At least back on the track I wanted it to take. “You all deserve a little R & R, what with everything that’s happened this week.”

“You mean Jacklyn coming back.”

“Actually, I meant Noreen’s murder.”

“Oh yeah. Sure.” David was far too self-confident to look embarrassed. “Don’t get the wrong impression. It’s not like I forgot she was dead or anything. It’s just that we’re trying to move ahead. You know? Dimitri, he got everyone together this afternoon and he told us we’ve got to focus. On our investigations. On the show. On our careers. He’s right. This is a huge opportunity for all of us, and we can’t blow it. What’s done is done and what’s over is over.”

“What about mourning?”

“Noreen?” He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “She was a tough lady.”

“And not easy to get along with.”

“I don’t know anyone who liked her.”

“And now she’s dead.”

“And you’d like to know who did it.”

I hoped I wasn’t that transparent.

I lifted a shoulder. “It’s a small island, and there’s nothing like a little gossip to heat things up.” I rinsed the cloth and set it in the sink. “Do you have any theories?”

David laughed. “You sound like that cop! He asked me what I thought, too, and I could only tell him the truth. It could have been anyone.”

“Anyone but you?”

Another laugh, and he swept a finger, crosswise, over his heart. “I didn’t like Noreen any more than anyone else did, but I didn’t kill her. She could really get under my skin. And she could make me so mad, it felt like my head would explode. But she wasn’t worth going to prison over. That’s for sure.”

“And you think the person who did this will end up in prison?”

“You don’t have to like Noreen to hope for some justice, do you?”

He was right.

“So what can you tell me?” I asked him.

“About the murder?” Thinking, he pursed his lips. “Not a thing. You saw the knock-down-drag-out Noreen had with the woman at the winery.”

“Kate.”

“Yeah, with Kate. You heard what they said. You saw how mad that Kate was. I guess the cops think she had a good reason to kill Noreen. At least that’s what we heard in town tonight. People are talking. You know, about how the cops are looking at Kate and thinking they’ve got their murderer.”

“I think they’re wrong.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Kate’s not that kind of person.”

“That’s why you wonder who really did it.”