A Deadly Snow Fall (23 page)

“May I ask Mary a question, Sir?”

The Chief smiled at me and nodded. I stood
and moved my chair up next to Mary’s and she turned to face me. It
was now or never.

“Mary, the night of the fire at the Snow
place, you said something that I’ve been wondering about. You said
something to the effect that the fire would have driven something,
some things, away. The fact seemed to please you very much. What
were those things to which you were referring, Mary?”

“Dear, Elizabeth; the ghosts, of course.”

“The ghosts? Do you mean that the Snow house
had ghosts?”

“Oh my, yes. Although they used to reside at
the Cranberry Inn, your Aunt Libby’s place. But that’s a story you
should ask dear Emily to tell. It’s her story too. She was there
that night when they were sent away.”

When the Chief had heard enough, he had James
drive Mary home before he called Doc to have him schedule an
appointment with a good psychiatrist in Boston. Mary was hardly a
flight risk and the sixty year old murder of Estrella would require
some deep thought for Chet Henderson. Much to his chagrin, the
Chief’s beloved hometown was becoming a hotbed of intrigue. In
other words--a damned nuisance for a man who ought to have retired
already and was now reconsidering just that move.

Later, James and I sat in a window seat at
Napi’s, sipping Mojitos, trying to gel the surprising day into
something we could manage. The very cold case of the wandering
bones could be closed. But we still had other mysteries to unlock.
I didn’t say so at that time but I was pretty sure I knew who set
the Snow house ablaze; I just needed a little more information that
meant another visit to the miasma of the Fairies in the Garden
shop. I sneezed in negative anticipation and James handed me a
crisply ironed white handkerchief.

I took a deep drink of the cocktail that
tasted like summer in a glass. I needed some answers from Emily to
close the arson case. What a complete surprise I had in store.
Striving to keep my face unreadable to my favorite Irish cop, I
said, “Just one more thing I want to check out, James.”

“You have that mysterious look on your face,
woman. Just promise me it’s not a dangerous mission you’re
pursuing. This thing is still volatile until we put it to bed. Not
everything is known yet for sure. No danger, okay?”

“Don’t worry; no danger.” I crossed my
fingers under the table.

“Hello! Emily! Anyone here?” I called out but
the shop felt empty. Well, empty only considering that there were
no customers and Emily was not in evidence. But empty of stuff it
was not. Even more stuff than usual it looked like. The smog,
however, was the same as always. It had reached critical mass and,
I believed, couldn’t get any worse. Not that that helped my
stricken sinuses.

“Why, hello, dear; come to have your fortune
told today?” Emily came through the front door that she always left
unlocked when she slipped out to get some lunch. She was looking
very pretty in a turquoise cotton dress. More bright color than I’d
ever seen her wearing.

“No, actually I have two reasons for being
here. I realized recently that I failed to pay for your services on
the two occasions when you…and Eloise were so helpful to my
inquiries.”

“No, dear; not necessary. After all, you are
helping the police with their investigation so as a good citizen,
it’s my duty to assist for free.”

“That’s very kind of you, but I really feel
that I should pay you.”

Emily smiled and motioned me to sit at the
lace covered table. She placed her hands on the table palms down
waiting. I felt obliged to say something.

“All right. Perhaps I could treat you to
lunch one day soon.” Emily nodded.

“Today I am here for some personal
information. Well, not exactly personal, but about my house…and the
Snow house.” Emily’s eyes changed; I could have sworn they went
from light blue to deep violet with silver sparks.

“I simply can’t imagine what your house and
the Snow house might have in common, however, I will help if I
can.” Emily’s hand began to shake as she pulled Eloise toward her,
I noted. Had I hit a nerve?

“Actually, I don’t believe we will need
Eloise’s help on this one, Emily. I just need some information on a
subject that I thought might be in your purview. Ghosts.”

“Ghosts. Oh, my dear, that term is not used
in my work. They are non-corporeal spirits. ‘Ghost’ is a term made
popular by Hollywood.”

Or Shakespeare. Deciding not to get into a
discussion of Hamlet, I moved on, hoping to catch the woman off
guard.

“You once said that my inn had ghosts. I
wonder what you based that comment on. Did my aunt complain of
things that go bump in the night, maybe?”

“Your aunt was a lovely woman, Liz. A smart
business woman and a generous member of the community. She was very
kind to me when I first arrived in town years ago. She helped me to
approach my…oh well, that’s hardly important anymore. She let me
stay at the inn for a couple of weeks until I found this storefront
with a small apartment upstairs for me to live in. I couldn’t have
managed without her.”

“That’s very nice to hear, Emily; but what
about the ghosts?”

“She had some gho…non-corporeal spirits left
over from long ago when the first family built the house. It was a
successful sea captain who went off whaling for years at a time and
while he was gone, his wife fooled around with a young sailor who
rented a room in the house. The young man had been badly injured
aboard her husband’s ship and she took him in and nursed him back
to health. They fell in love and when the captain returned and
found out he killed them both. The captain’s wife and her lover
remained to haunt Libby’s inn. But have no fear, Liz; they are gone
now. Definitely gone.”

“Gone? Exorcised?”

“Moved on.”

“How do you convince ghosts to move on,
Emily?”

“As it happened, this woman from Philadelphia
came to stay at Libby’s inn one summer years back and, like the man
who came to dinner, she just stayed and stayed. She did séances and
fortune telling. It was that clever woman, Maude Muckle, who taught
me all I know about the crystal ball and tarot cards. When I opened
this place, it was basically a gift shop. But once Maude trained
me, I found that I had a real calling and from then on I had a
better way to make my living. Libby asked Maude to do a séance so
she could talk to her ghosts because at that time she did not yet
know their identities. The first séance went nowhere, but the
second was a great success. If you could call a truly frightening
night of howls and blood and mayhem a success.”

“So, the murdered lovers appeared? Is that
what happened?”

“They more than appeared; they put on a show.
We sat there around that table and watched them being slaughtered
by the furious sea captain. He used an axe. He split them asunder
and there was blood and guts everywhere, even hunks of flesh
landing on the lace tablecloth and into our teacups. I will never
forget that night. But that is not all that happened; it got even
wilder when Edwin showed up.”

“Edwin? What was he doing there? Had he been
invited to the séance?”

“Oh, no! He hated such things; disapproved of
any kind of mystical stuff. He and Libby were still on and off in
their friendship at that time and he just happened to drop by. He
saw us all there looking like frightened rabbits, and although
afterwards he claimed he never saw anything but a bunch of silly
woman sitting around a table in candlelight drinking tea, I knew he
saw them too. Libby was always such a daring and independent woman.
I know I said she was friendly with Edwin, but he also got on her
nerves. She loved a good joke and he was an easy mark. She got a
clever idea while he was standing there calling us names and
telling us we were all crazy. She whispered to Maude that she
should try and convince the ghosts to move on to Edwin’s house.
Imagine that?”

“Can that be done? Can you convince ghosts to
move from the place they are attached to just by telling them they
ought to?”

“I am no expert, but Maude evidently was
because she made up some wild story about how Libby’s house
dishonored their memory or some such and that they would be happier
in the Snow house. She even gave them directions. What a hoot.
Well, Edwin, that miserable excuse for a man, just harrumphed and
slammed the door behind him when he heard Maude’s words.”

“What happened to the ghosts?”

“As I recall, Libby never had another peep
out of them from that day forward.”

Hardly an answer to the question, but I
decided to move on before she shut me out. She most certainly knew
a whole lot more than she’d ever let on without prodding. So, I
meant to prod.

“Do you know if Edwin believed they came to
live...er...dwell in his house after that night even though he
feigned disbelief in such things?

“I believe that after that night, he became a
believer. But when he came to me just before he…died, it was
something else troubling him more than ghosts.”

“What are you talking about, Emily?”

“Doc had told him that he only had only a
short time to live. Had a tumor or some such. He was upset, of
course, but also he couldn’t sleep because of them. They were
tossing things around and making a terrible mess of his orderly
life.”

Remembering the description James had
provided about the condition of Edwin’s house, I doubted that one
more mess would upset him.

“Yes, Edwin lived in what appeared to be a
tightly packed warehouse, but to him it had order and the piled
boxes and rolled up rugs made him feel that he was safe in a kind
of fortress. He liked living that way and he was persnickety about
how things were kept. The so-called ghosts made a mess of things
regularly and they were driving him crazy. He said they were
tossing out closets and drawers.”

That explained the tossed office at Edwin’s
house. But what were the ghosts looking for? Asking myself that
question, I began to doubt my own sanity. Was it the sea air, the
shock of losing one career and beginning another totally unrelated
to anything I’d ever imagined for myself? Surely, if I, a
scientist, was asking about ghosts, I needed immediate professional
help. Well, I had no choice but to follow along on the present line
of inquiry.

“What did you do for him, Emily? Did you help
him get rid of his ghosts?”

“Oh, no; I hated that man and wouldn’t have
done a thing to please him, but he offered me the opportunity to
vex him.” Emily smiled. “The few times he came here, I could see he
really believed I could help him. Well, I suppose he was just so
desperate he was ready to try anything.”

“It occurs to me, Emily, other than an
exorcism, how would one get rid of pesky ghosts?”

“That’s not really my territory, but in my
profession you do hear about other similar…sciences. I’ve heard
that the most successful method is to burn them out. Burn the place
they have come to inhabit and that sends them off to their final
resting place.”

Now we were getting somewhere. I was sure
that Emily had passed that information along to Mary Malone.
However, would she admit it to the authorities? Not that it would
help poor Mary at that point. However, it would help to solve the
mystery of the arson of the Snow house.

“Did you ever tell Mary Malone that?”

“Yes, Mary inquired. Why do you ask?”

I looked at my watch and rose, thanked Emily
for her time and rushed away on the excuse that I had a dentist
appointment. What I needed was an eye, ear, nose and throat
specialist.

I left the Fairies in the Garden shop gulping
fresh air like a woman drowning. Now, if only I believed that Edwin
had been so driven to distraction by the so-called “ghosts” that he
had chosen to jump to his death, all the mysteries would be solved.
But I knew better.

Like the pieces of colored glass in a
kaleidoscope, a design began to form in my over-taxed mind. I
walked to MacMillan Wharf and sat in the warm sun on a bench
surrounded by squawking seagulls. My mind was on over-drive. If
Emily had found out about the missing Estrella, knowing what a
threat she had been to Edwin, set up to walk away with his
inheritance, why not try blackmail on the old man? Assuming, as
Emily would have, that Edwin had killed the gold-digger, Estrella.
However, might there be another club Emily had used on the old man?
Before I could pursue that, I needed one more solid piece of
evidence for my theory.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I sat in the Chief’s office while he
reminisced. I’d brought him his favorite cranberry pecan scones and
he told me about his dead wife Trudy. Then, he moved along to the
period a few years later in his time as a widower when he was ready
to meet another woman.

“You know, when that pretty little lady first
came to town, I was a recent widower. Trudy had been dead for
almost two years and I was feeling mighty lonely. Trudy always told
me, in no uncertain terms, that I was to find me a new wife to take
care of me should she pre-decease me. Well, let me tell you, it
didn’t seem right, but then pretty little Emily Sunshine showed up.
Truly a ray of welcome sunshine. Summoning up all my courage one
day, I asked her out to dinner.”

“Good for you Chief. How did it go?”

“It didn’t. Turned me down flat. Oh, she was
sweet and kind but she said she just didn’t date. She gave no
reason but with my self-confidence being pretty fragile at the
time, I never asked again. Never asked anyone.”

“Oh, Chief, any woman would be lucky to get
you. Time to try again.” I didn’t add, but definitely not Emily
because I expect she will soon be in either the state penitentiary
or the state hospital for the criminally insane.