The Legend of Sleepy Harlow (16 page)

I did not acknowledge this comment because I didn’t want to think about the fact that if the Coast Guard hadn’t arrived when it did, Chandra might actually be right.

“But the ghost in the story isn’t really a ghost,” I reminded Chandra. Heck,
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
is only something like thirty pages long. The way I figured it, even Chandra should have read the assignment. “What Ichabod thinks is a ghost is really Brom Bones, the local alpha male who’s in love with Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter of a rich farmer, just like Ichabod is. Brom wants Ichabod to leave Sleepy Hollow, so he—”

The thought hit and I sat up like a shot. “Brom Bones pretends to be the headless horseman,” I said.

To which my fellow book discussion group members—well, except for Chandra, who believed that the Headless Horseman really was a ghost—gave me blank stares that pretty much said,
No duh
.

I scooted forward in my seat. “But don’t you see? Brom was trying to scare Ichabod, so Brom pretended to be the ghost. What if someone’s pretending to be Sleepy?”

“You mean like a real, living someone?” Chandra asked.

“Exactly.”

“But why would anyone do that?” Kate asked at the same time that Luella offered her own comment.

“Well, if that’s true,” Luella said, “it’s somebody who’s been pretending to be Sleepy Harlow for a very long time. Even when I was a girl, folks talked about seeing Sleepy’s ghost on the island.”

*   *   *

I admit, it wasn’t the most seamless theory I’d ever had. Still, the idea of someone impersonating Sleepy burned through me like fire. Even after Marianne asked me to call her back once Luella, Kate, and Chandra were gone, I couldn’t let go of the thought.

That is, until I realized what Marianne wanted. I hoped I didn’t gulp too noticeably when she picked up the phone.

“How is it?” Marianne asked, her excitement vibrating through the air all the way from Cleveland. “What do you think of the book?”

“It’s fascinating! Who knew there was a gangster of Charlie’s status here on the island.”

“Exactly!” I didn’t have to see Marianne on the screen in front of me like we had during the discussion group. I knew she was sitting tall, a smile on her face. “That’s why I decided on doing the book in the first place. Sleepy’s story is an interesting one. It deserves to be told.”

“Absolutely.” Could I sound any phonier? I told myself to get a grip.

“I’ll be home for the Halloween party,” Marianne added. “That’s on Friday. Then on Monday, I’ll send off the manuscript. Will it be ready by then?”

For one instant, panic overwhelmed me, and I thought that somehow, she knew the true story of what had happened to her book. That is, until Marianne added, “Are there a lot of typos and things I have to fix? Because then maybe it will take a couple extra days to send it off.”

“No typos.” I could pretty much guarantee her that. I am nothing if not a crackerjack typist and proofreader. “You’ve included so much interesting information, Marianne. But tell me . . . this is something I’ve always wondered about writers . . . do you remember . . . do you remember everything in your book? Like, every word?”

Her laughter sent chills down my spine. “Every word.”

Every word.

Thinking back on the conversation an hour later, I felt as cold and wet as if I were outside in the storm. I spent the time looking through what I had of a manuscript and deciding what I still needed. But have no fear—just because I was thinking about Sleepy didn’t mean I wasn’t ready when at ten o’clock the ghost getters got back from what must have been a long, cold, and very wet hunt.

I waited until they’d peeled off their wet slickers and hung them near the back kitchen door, then offered them coffee and the rest of the brownies and bided my time until, one by one, they began to straggle their way up to bed. David and Liam had just said good night and Jacklyn was refilling her coffee cup when I stepped between the kitchen door and her, effectively culling her from the pack.

“So, how did the hunt go tonight?” I asked her.

Jacklyn’s hair was soaked, and a shower of raindrops spotted the shoulders of her black EGG sweatshirt. She brushed away a drop that dribbled down her forehead. “Dimitri figures as long as we’re stuck here, we might as well do all the investigating we can. He decided on the hotel tonight.”

“Any ghosts?”

She stretched a kink from her neck. “Management wasn’t exactly thrilled with the possibility. They told us we could investigate all we wanted, as long as we stayed outside.”

The way the rain was pounding on the kitchen windows, believe me, I felt her pain.

“I guess Dimitri was telling the truth when he said ghost hunting is a tough business. Sorry you came back to EGG?”

“You’re kidding, right?” The sound Jacklyn made wasn’t quite a snort of derision. She was way too aware of her status as the group’s sex symbol for that. “I’m thrilled to be back with EGG. I just wish that Noreen—” She swallowed the rest of what she was going to say.

Except for Fiona, the other ghost hunters seemed to be decidedly unconcerned that their one-time leader had been bludgeoned to death. The raw emotion on Jacklyn’s face was something of a relief.

“You think I care,” she said when she noticed me watching her. “The way you looked, all touched when you thought I was about to talk about Noreen. You were all set to tell me how sorry you were that Noreen is dead.”

I had been.

“But see, here’s what you don’t get.” I’d turned off most of the lights in the kitchen, but still, Jacklyn’s smile was radiant. “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m thrilled that she’s gone. In fact, the only thing I’m sorry about is that I never got a chance to thank Noreen.”

“For allowing you back in the group.”

“Don’t be naive. If Noreen was still here, I wouldn’t be part of EGG again. When I came to the island, I didn’t think I would be back with the group. I only showed up here so I could tell Noreen in person. You know, about how I got the role on the soap opera. Leave it to Noreen to get killed before I ever had the chance to rub it in her face.” Jacklyn twitched away the thought. “But hey, I might not have gotten the chance to thank her for dying, but at least I ended up with second billing on a reality show. That’s better than a soap opera walk-on. And I wouldn’t have that,” she added matter-of-factly, “if I wasn’t sleeping with Dimitri.”

The first thing I thought was that I wasn’t surprised.

The second thing was that if Jacklyn wasn’t using her room, she should have offered it to Fiona.

Truth be told, neither was surprising, so it wasn’t hard to say, “Noreen was jealous because you’re so much prettier than her.”

“Prettier. Better dressed. Way smarter. And a much better actress. Combine that with what I know about the paranormal and with investigating and you’ve got the perfect fit.”

“So were you going to put all that to good use on the soap opera? Were you going to play an investigator?” I’d seen weirder story lines on the daytime dramas. “I didn’t know they had that sort of thing on soap operas.”

“They have actors on soap operas,” Jacklyn said, and looked at me hard. “Oh, come on. How stupid do you think I am? You don’t think I believe any of this, do you?”

“I . . . I . . .” I guess this wasn’t a surprise, either. I mean, not completely. Yet Jacklyn’s frank confession left me feeling a bit as if the proverbial rug had been pulled out from under me. “The ghost-getting thing, it’s all made up?”

Jacklyn leaned back, her elbows propped on the counter behind her. “I said, how stupid do you think
I
am. The rest of them, they’re plenty stupid. They believe all this hooey. Me, I script it all in my head. You know, before we arrive at a place we’re going to investigate. That way, I can decide when I’m going to spin around and gasp, ‘What was that?’ like I actually heard something. Or when I’m going to jump like some invisible hand touched me. All the usual ghost-hunting garbage!”

First I’d had to suspend my disbelief to wrap my head around the fact that there were people who actually looked for ghosts. Now, Jacklyn was challenging me to turn my opinion another one hundred and eighty degrees. There were people who looked for ghosts who really didn’t believe in ghosts.

Well, at least one person.

“What about Noreen?” I asked. “Was she a true believer?”

This time, she did allow an unladylike snort. “Noreen! Noreen would believe in anything that would get her noticed. I saw her fake evidence. You know, she’d get her camera rolling, then stand off to the side and stomp her feet, then pretend she’d heard disembodied footsteps. What a crock!”

“Then that video of Sleepy she got last year . . .” Oh yes, I waded into this tentatively, hoping it would sound as if this were a new thought to me and not that it was what I’d wanted to discuss with Jacklyn all along. “Was someone just pretending to be Sleepy?”

“Well, that’s just the thing, isn’t it?” Jacklyn’s dark (and perfectly shaped, by the way) brows dropped over her eyes. “When Noreen first showed us that stupid video, it’s exactly what everyone thought. But Noreen . . . she swore it was the real deal, and none of the experts who’ve examined the tape have been able to prove otherwise. Pretty ironic, don’t you think? There I was making up every minute of every investigation. And there were the guys wanting so much to believe that it hurt and trying so darn hard to find something—anything—that would prove the existence of an afterlife. And in spite of it all, who gets the real evidence? Stupid Noreen.”

  15  

D
on’t think I hadn’t been paying attention.

Though I was inclined to believe Jacklyn when she said she was faking the whole paranormal investigation experience, I hadn’t failed to catch the undercurrent of her each and every word.

She hated Noreen with a fiery passion.

And not for the same reasons the guys hated her.

The guys took exception to Noreen’s bossy ways. The guys didn’t like dealing with the whole OCD thing, or Noreen usurping leadership of EGG. The guys were jealous that Noreen had caught that video of Sleepy all on her own.

But Jacklyn . . .

I reminded myself that I’d seen Jacklyn at the ferry dock right before we discovered Noreen’s body. There was no way she could have killed Noreen. Tell that to my investigatin’ instincts! Try as I might to eliminate Jacklyn from a pitifully small pool of suspects, I couldn’t forget the way she hovered around Dimitri, brushing her hip against his, lightly touching a hand to his arm.

She might as well have a neon sign flashing over her head:
My Man—Stay Away!

Since I had no intention, then or now, of making a move on Dimitri, that was fine with me. But believe me, I knew what it meant: Jacklyn was one very jealous woman.

Could her jealousy have extended to Noreen?

Noreen and Dimitri?

As unlikely (not to mention icky) as it seemed, I intended to find out.

I kept that in mind when my ghost-tracking guests arrived at the breakfast table the next morning. They were a sullen and solemn bunch; that is, when they weren’t complaining about the evidence—or, more accurately, the lack of it—they’d ended up with after nearly a week on the island.

“Production needs to be finished in three weeks,” Dimitri grumbled, pushing scrambled eggs from one side of his plate to the other. “And so far, we don’t have much to show.”

“We need the plasmometer,” Liam said. “At least then we’d have a fighting chance. You’ve got to talk to the cops, Dimitri. You’ve got to explain that we can’t do our jobs without the plasmometer. There’s got to be some kind of law about how they can’t keep it. We need to repair it or rebuild it, and that will take time. Tell them that. Tell them we need it to make our living.”

“We might have EVPs.” Fiona was much too chipper. At least that’s what the looks they threw her said. She either didn’t realize it or she didn’t care. I was going with the she-didn’t-realize-it theory. Fiona heaped her plate with scrambled eggs, grabbed a blueberry muffin, and sat down opposite Dimitri. “I spent a few hours listening to the evidence we collected last night. There might be a few EVPs.”

Dimitri did not look convinced.

Or maybe he was just distracted when Jacklyn strutted into the room swaddled in a pink kimono, her hair piled up on her head, her skin dewy and trailing the scent of musky bath gel. When she leaned over to get the coffee carafe from the middle of the table, she caressed the back of Dimitri’s neck with one hand.

“Fiona thinks we got EVPs,” Rick told her.

“Isn’t that sweet.” Jacklyn’s gaze drifted to Fiona for the briefest of moments before it traveled to where I stood in the doorway just waiting for someone to take the last of the bacon off the serving platter so I could refill it. She didn’t need to say a word; I knew exactly what the look meant:
See how foolish the poor child is! If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be so darned optimistic.

“We’ll need to review all the footage,” Dimitri said, daring to be optimistic, too. “And listen to the tapes. After breakfast. My room. Bring everything you have.”

I left them to it and went to the kitchen to leave last-minute instructions with Meg, who agreed to take care of the breakfast cleanup duties while I went out for the day.

Time was a’wastin’. Marianne and Alvin would be returning to the island soon. I had more to do, more to find out, before they got back home. I had to finish re-creating the manuscript, then get it typed, edited, and proofread to perfection. And I had to do it all fast.

Thank goodness that though temperatures had cooled, the sun was shining again. Still, I wasn’t going to take any chances. Along with my jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a heavy sweater, I pulled on a jacket thick enough to keep out the wind that blew from the direction of Middle Island, and a pair of knee-high rubber rain boots. Where I needed to go, it was likely to be muddy.

I left the house, and less than fifteen minutes later, I pulled my SUV through the two stone pillars that marked the entrance to Crown Hill Cemetery. According to what I’d been able to decipher from Marianne’s manuscript, Charlie Harlow’s grave was at the end of the drive. I wouldn’t have slammed on my brakes when I arrived there if I didn’t see Levi’s black Jeep already parked there, or Levi himself waiting for me, a bunch of red carnations in one hand, their long stems swaddled in green tissue.

“What are you doing here?” Yes, it was a little too proprietary. After all, anybody could visit the cemetery. I just didn’t like it that Levi was visiting it exactly when I was visiting it. My gaze flickered to the flowers and heat shot into my cheeks. “You’re paying your respects to someone buried here.”

“Peace offering.” He handed the flowers to me.

I was too surprised not to accept them and too unsure how I felt about the whole thing not to be awkward. I tucked the bouquet into the crook of my arm like a Miss America pageant winner. “What do you want?” I asked Levi.

He laughed. “What, you think I have an ulterior motive? You’ve got trust issues.”

“Only if that means I don’t trust you to make a peace offering I didn’t know I had coming.”

“You’re right. Technically, you didn’t have it coming,” he said, and then, because my shoulders automatically shot back just as my chin just naturally shot forward, he laughed again. That is, right before the gleam of amusement in his eyes settled into a warm blue glow.

“Truce?” he suggested.

The word hung in the air between us long enough for me to be tempted to ask him to elaborate. But then, I’m smarter than that, right? I didn’t need an explanation. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

It was all about that mistake we both made the summer before.

All about how we’d nearly made it again out at Middle Island.

It was based on the fact that we both believed that this was the wrong time and the wrong place for either one of us to start into a relationship, and about how if we really meant that, it was time to simply admit it and get on with our lives.

I stuck out a hand to shake his. “Truce.”

There. Done.

Finally.

Hoping I didn’t look too eager to break off the contact, I pulled my hand back to my side and adjusted my hold on the carnations. Their spicy scent tickled my nose.

Maybe Levi was as relieved as I was that we’d finally come to some sort of agreement. He turned and strolled across the grass. It was still wet from the recent rain, and it was slick. I was grateful for my boots.

“Meg’s the one who told me, by the way. I called your place a little while ago and she said you were headed over here.”

I hadn’t asked, but I appreciated the explanation. “Did she tell you why?”

“She didn’t have to.” He stopped and looked down at the gray granite marker nearest his feet. “This is where Charlie Harlow is buried.”

It was, and Sleepy’s grave was exactly what I wanted to see.

“I couldn’t read the information clearly,” I said, bending down so I could brush away fallen leaves and get a better look at the stone. “I know he died on October third, nineteen thirty, but I couldn’t read Marianne’s pages clearly.” I pulled a notebook out of my pocket and jotted down what I needed. “Eighteen ninety-eight. He was born in eighteen ninety-eight. I figured it was pretty important to get that right.” I would confirm the information through local county records, but for now, I was satisfied.

“Not a bad spot to spend eternity.” Levi tipped back his head and pulled in a deep breath of autumn-crisp air. The small cemetery backed into a grove of trees that were dappled with the same sunlight that danced and glistened against the grass in patterns that changed with the wind. “It’s quiet. It’s restful. It seems out of character that a man who lived as a gangster could rest so peacefully.”

“Unless he’s not. If,” I added, because I was afraid the look Levi gave me said he was worried about my sanity, “if you believe what some people say.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s right here.” There was a heavy fringe of overgrown grass that hemmed in the headstone from all sides, and Levi tapped the toe of his sneaker on it. “He’s always been right here, and this is exactly where he’s going to stay.”

I was sure of it, too. Pretty sure. What I wasn’t so sure about . . .

I looked to where Levi’s shoe rested against the thick grass that threatened to smother the stone. The gray granite of Sleepy’s marker had survived the years better than many of the marble gravestones nearby. Island weather had worn away many of their inscriptions so that the words were soft and nearly indecipherable, like writing on a foggy mirror.

The information on Sleepy’s stone had fared better. Except . . .

Before I jumped to any conclusions, I dropped down on my knees, and, ignoring the way my jeans immediately acted like a wick and started soaking up water, I grabbed at the closest tuft of grass. Thanks to the wet ground, it pulled out with little effort, so when I was done with that patch, I worked on another and another and another. In no time at all, my fingers were slick with mud, and all the grass that had encroached on the marker was torn away and piled nearby.

“Take a look,” I told Levi, pointing. “His name, Charles Harlow, is nice and clear and easy to read. So are the dates of his birth and his death. But look at this.” I ran a finger over the bottom eight inches of granite. With the sun shining on it, the granite glimmered, throwing Sleepy’s name and vitals into relief and making it possible for me to see my own hazy reflection in the stone. But there at the bottom, the granite was rough and pitted. I ran my finger over the grooves that slashed the stone horizontally.

Levi crouched down next to me. “It looks like it was vandalized.”

“But if that’s the case, why not destroy the whole stone?” I set aside the red carnations, scraped my muddy hands against my jeans, and brushed my fingers against the smooth surface, tracing the name. “Why just part of the stone and not all of it?”

“The cops showed up? The person got interrupted? Or maybe there was some kind of storm damage.” There was a gigantic oak tree twenty feet away, and its branches overhung the area. “A branch could have come down and smashed the stone.”

“But this isn’t smashed.” I slid my finger from smooth surface to rough. “These lines were put here deliberately. Like someone . . .” I doubted it would help, but I crouched down even farther, one ear on the tombstone, eager to see it from a different angle and hoping for a better sense of what had happened. “It’s like someone was trying to blot something out. Look.” I sat up again and traced what I could see of a faint pattern with one finger. Just above the gouges, there was a rounded shape carved into the stone. And just below the rough grooves, a clean, straight line.

“This carving is delicate,” I said, following what was left of what had been etched into the stone, first with one finger, then two. “These lines weren’t made with force; not like the ones cut into the granite over them.”

Levi tilted his head for a better look. “So you think there was something else on the stone? Something someone tried to blot out?”

“I don’t suppose it would do any good to contact the monument company that made the headstone,” I said, thinking out loud. “Nineteen thirty was a really long time ago. Even if they still had the records, I bet they’re stashed away in some moldy warehouse and impossible to access.”

“And you think it matters because . . . ?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, and sat back on my heels. “But it’s weird, and that makes it interesting.” I pulled my phone from my pocket. “I wonder if a picture will help.” I took a couple. “Or a rubbing.”

Levi slid me a look. “You know how to do gravestone rubbings?”

Rather than admit I’d never even tried I said, “How hard can it be? All we need is a sheet of paper big enough to cover the part of the stone that’s all chewed up and something to make the impression.” Even though I knew there was nothing in my jacket pockets that would help, I patted them down. “Like a pencil lead.”