A Fatal Twist of Lemon (19 page)

“Oh, I sure will. We'll see how great a time he has.”

I grinned, gave her a hug, then turned to go into the house. I didn't get two steps.

“Gina.”

“Hm?” She looked up from unlocking her car.

“Look at the dining parlor doors.”

A warm glow of light came through the gauze-curtained glass. I heard the hiss of Gina's sudden inhalation.

“Shit,” she said. “It's haunted.”

 

 

 

 

11 

“W
ho else has a key?” Gina asked, coming up to stand beside me on the porch. We both stood staring at the light in the dining parlor.

“Only Julio,” I said. “He wouldn't mess with me.”

“Maybe he forgot something and came back to get it.”

I gave her a skeptical look. “In the dining parlor?”

“Okay, no. Are you sure no one else has a key?”

“Positive. I changed the locks when I bought the house.”  I took out my keys. “Well, thanks for corroborating. It's nice to know I'm not nuts.”

“You're not nuts, and I'm coming in with you.”

“Thanks, hon, but you don't have to,” I said, unlocking the hall door.

“Yes, I do.” Gina's face was set in a look of grim determination.

“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Stand guard over me all night? Stay in the dining parlor and turn off the light whenever it comes on?”

“I'm going to walk through the house with you and make sure it's empty.”

I gave in, feeling comforted by her concern even though I thought there was nothing she could do. I held the door for her, then locked it behind us. Gina nodded toward the dining parlor door. I opened it.

No one in the room. I walked over to the outside door and verified that the deadbolt was thrown.

“Look,” Gina said, pointing at the chandelier.

One of the crystals was swinging back and forth. “Yeah, it does that,” I said.

“That is creepy!”

“It's probably just a vibration. Maybe when I opened the door it jostled the ceiling.”

“But wouldn't they all be wiggling, not just one?”

I glanced at the chandelier again. Just the one crystal moving, all the rest were still. The skin on my neck began to crawl.

“Thanks, Gina. That'll really help me sleep tonight.”

I turned off the light switch and stepped out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind me. Gina shrugged.

“Sorry. I just call ‘em like I see ‘em.”

We went through the house, turning on lights and carefully turning them off behind us. The staff had restored the north parlor to its usual configuration, with the pocket doors pulled mostly closed and the credenzas and screens dividing the alcoves. All the tables were set with fresh linens and clean china for the next day.

The fresh flowers filled the rooms with cheerful color, and I found myself drawing deep breaths, trying to catch a whiff of scent. My tearoom was a beautiful place, I reminded myself. A place to be proud of. Destined for success.

I tried to believe that as I collected the pitcher of roses from the mantel in the north parlor. Gina came with me up to my suite. I set the roses on my bedside table.

“Willow was at the party today,” I said, following her as she looked in the offices, mirroring what I had done the previous night. Just as I had found then, there were no intruders.

“Maybe she's the one turning on the lights!”

“To convince me there's a ghost?” I considered it, then shook my head. “She'd have to have some kind of remote control, or she'd have been seen. And she hasn't had access to install something like that.”

Gina looked disappointed. “We didn't check the kitchen.”

“I'll come down with you and look.”

We started down the stairs, the ancient boards creaking beneath our feet. Gina glanced back at me.

“Want to spend the night at my place?”

I gave her a weary smile. “Thanks, but you know, that's not going to solve anything in the long run. Whatever's going on in this house, I'm going to have to live with it.”

“Somehow that doesn't sound very cheery. Oh, crapola!” she added as she reached the hall and turned toward the back door.

“Light on again?” I asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Uh-huh.”

There it was, the familiar splash of light across the floor of the darkened hall. I sighed, then strode toward the dining parlor, flipping on the hall light switch as I went.

This time when I opened the door, I saw four of the chandelier crystals moving. One crystal in the precise center of each side of the chandelier, lined up with the walls. That was pretty undeniably weird, I thought as my stomach did a slow flip.

“Okay,” I said to the room. “I get that you're here, but could you please not keep turning on the light? It wastes electricity.”

“Sylvia wouldn't waste electricity,” Gina whispered in my ear.

“Captain Dusenberry probably never worried about conservation,” I whispered back.

“Yeah, he probably used oil lanterns anyway,” Gina agreed.

“Why are we whispering?”

We looked at each other. Gina reached out and turned off the light switch, and I pulled the door shut.

“Still want to look in the kitchen?” I asked.

Gina shot a resentful glance at the dining parlor door, then went into the kitchen and pantry entrance across the hall. “Might as well. You got any booze in there?”

I turned on lights as we passed the pantry and entered the kitchen. “Just the stuff Julio uses for cooking. If you want a drink we can go back upstairs.”

“Nah.”

Gina stood by the center island, gazing around the empty kitchen. She frowned at the narrow stairs that led up to the small attic, which we used for storage.

“It's locked,” I said. “Julio and I have the only keys.”

“OK. And that cubby under the stairs?”

We went over and checked it. The entrance to the cubby space, also storage, had no door and was covered by a calico curtain. Gina pulled it aside, revealing nothing scarier than sacks of sugar and flour. She let it fall again.

“I guess I'd better get home. You sure you'll be all right?”

I shrugged and smiled as best I could. “I was all right last night.”

She grabbed me in a big bear hug. “Maybe it's a friendly ghost.”

“Hasn't throttled anyone that I know of.”

Gina pulled back and stared at me, wide-eyed. She didn't say a word, but her appalled expression told me she was thinking of Sylvia.

“Gina,” I said firmly, “Sylvia Carruthers was not killed by a ghost.”

“Right. Sure you don't want to come home with me?”

“Thanks, but no. Now go get your beauty sleep. You have to look gorgeous for Ted tomorrow.”

I opened the kitchen's outside door for Gina. She glanced across the porch toward the dining parlor door. It was dark.

“Call me if you need anything,” she said. “Anytime. I mean it. Call me if you have a bad dream.”

“I will.” I smiled, trying to look more brave than I felt. “Now stop fretting. I'll be fine.”

She gave me a worried smile back and went to her car and got in. I waved and closed the kitchen door, locking it. I watched out the window as she drove away, then I left the kitchen, turning the light out behind me.

The hall was dark. The only light was a dim glow of the city coming through the lights around the front and back doors. I stood for a moment, listening to the house, the small settling sounds of an older building. Beyond that were the city sounds: distant music, voices of passing tourists or kids out on the town, the occasional rush of a passing car. All normal sounds.

I looked at the dining parlor door. The space beneath it was dark.

“Thank you,” I said, and went upstairs to go to bed.

The next morning was quiet. The dining parlor light remained off, for which I was silently grateful. I spent the early morning doing the receipts from the previous night, and took them to Kris just before ten thirty.

“Thanks,” she said. “I found some more stuff about Sylvia for you.”

“Would you leave it on my desk? I'm going to the funeral service.”

“Ah, that's why the sober look today.”

She nodded toward the plain navy dress I was wearing. She was back in black—a chiffon dress with long, floaty sleeves.

“I should be back in a couple of hours,” I told her.

“I won't say have fun.” She gave me a deadpan look, then picked up the bank bag.

I went downstairs to wait for Aunt Nat, who had offered me a ride. Checking the reservation list I saw that we had only two groups at eleven, so I sat in Jonquil, where I could watch for Nat out of a front window. Dee brought me a cup of Darjeeling.

“That was really fun yesterday,” she said.

“I'm glad you thought so. Thanks for all your hard work.”

“Is every Friday going to be like that?”

“Not that elaborate, no. We'll serve a full afternoon tea, but we won't rearrange the furniture.”

“Oh, good!” she grinned. “That was the least fun part.”

“Amen to that,” I said.

I drank my tea, gazing out at the wisterias on the porch, thinking of all the plans I had made. When the weather got warmer I intended to put patio tables out on the porch for additional seating. If the tearoom lasted that long.

Nat's car pulled up outside just as I finished my tea. I went out to the hall and put on my hat and coat, and was met at the door by Manny Salazar, wearing a dark suit and a gray overcoat.

“I offered to drive,” he explained as we walked out to the car. “She's kind of down this morning.”

“Oh? I hope she's all right.”

“Just feeling her years, I think. You know we're not spring chickens any more.”

Nat waved at me through the car window as Manny opened the back door. I slid into the seat and clasped the hand Nat reached back to me.

“Thanks for picking me up,” I said.

“I'm glad you're coming with us,” she said, turning her head to look back at me. “Nice to have younger people around. This is the third funeral I've attended this year.”

I squeezed her hand, then sat back as Manny drove the short distance to Rosario Cemetery on the north side of town. The oldest cemetery in Santa Fe, it was still active. Having a plot there was a mark of some prestige, and usually indicated a long-time Santa Fe family.

My own family was not Catholic, so my parents were buried in Memorial Gardens on the south side of town, but Sylvia's family was here. I glanced away from the open grave draped with artificial turf as Manny dropped us at the door of the chapel and went away to park the car. Nat took my arm and we walked together into the old, adobe chapel.

This was actually the second chapel, built in the early nineteenth century after the first had collapsed. The original chapel had been built by De Vargas, who had pledged to carry his statue of the Virgin Mary there every year in thanks for the successful return of the Spanish to Santa Fe after the Pueblo Rebellion. The statue, now known as “La Conquistadora,” was kept in the much more elaborate and famous San Francisco Basilica near the Plaza, but once every year she was carried with great ceremony to Rosario Chapel in fulfillment of De Vargas's promise. Her passage, now a full-blown parade, was the basis of Santa Fe's annual Fiesta.

The small chapel was almost filled. Sylvia had many friends, it appeared. As Nat and I took the last spots in a pew near the middle of the building, I thought about the irony of this place of peace being the result of the conflict between the Pueblo Indians and the Spanish colonists.

The structure was simple but lovely, its high adobe walls soft and thick, with stained glass windows glowing like jewels against the whitewash. This chapel felt peaceful, despite its history.

The soft strains of Barber's “Adagio for Strings” played in the background. Sylvia's casket lay elevated at the front of the chapel, a spray of white flowers on top of it and a large photo of Sylvia on a stand beside it. Seeing her face for the first time since her death gave me an unexpected pang of sadness. I hadn't known her very long or very well, but I had reason to be grateful to her and to regret the community's loss.