Cooking Up Trouble (19 page)

“
It’s still a mess out there
,” Paavo said to Moira as he walked into the drawing room. “We couldn’t even get close to the area near the mud slide. As it was, we nearly lost Vane in a slide of his own making.” He went to the fireplace, trying to thaw his nearly frozen hands and feet. Bethel and Chelsea sat at a table scribbling on a large notepad, oblivious to the outside world. “Where’s Angie?” he asked.

Moira sat facing the fireplace. “Does it look at all promising?”

“The water’s going down, but still running too fast to try to cross. There’s a chance it’ll be crossable tomorrow, as long as we don’t get any more heavy rains. Why isn’t Angie here with you? Have you seen her?”

Moira looked around. “I’m sure she’s nearby. What about the search for Patsy?”

“We’ve scoured the hill, over and over. She had to have been swept out to sea, got off this hill somehow, or is deliberately hiding.”

“Are you giving up?” Moira asked.

“No.”

Moira nodded.

“I told Angie to stay with you,” Paavo said. “Didn’t she?”

“I was lying down. I just got here.”

“Bethel, Chelsea.” Paavo walked toward them. “Where has Angie gone?”

“Angie?” Chelsea looked around. “She was right here.”

“She gave me a wonderful idea for my channeling,” Bethel added. “She’s so clever.”

“Damn!” He ran up the stairs two at a time to their room, and in scant seconds he was back. “She’s not up there. What about the kitchen?”

“I don’t know,” Moira said. “She might be there.”

“I don’t believe this,” he muttered as he hurried down the hall, looking in the dining room and the kitchen, his heart beginning to beat a little too fast, a little too fearfully, in spite of himself. She wasn’t there.

She was nearby, he told himself. She was fine. She was just poking around where she shouldn’t be, but that didn’t mean she’d come to any harm. She never listened, that was all. Someday maybe he’d get her to listen. If he didn’t wring her neck first for worrying him.

He ran to the library. If he knew her, she was probably sitting in there reading a book.

Small chairs had been moved near the windows and draperies lay over them. “Moira,” he shouted. “Come here. Fast.” He had no patience for her slow, sleepwalking ways now.

In no time, he heard her gasp. “What happened?”

“I’d hoped you would know.”

“It’s much too bright in here,” she said, walking into the room.

He ignored her and ran to the foyer. Which way? Where could Angie have gone?

The banging of a door, followed by shouts and the sound of running footsteps, stopped him cold.

“Good God,” Moira cried, looking toward the ceiling where the cry had come from. “The ghosts are sounding more human all the time.”

“That’s no ghost,” Paavo said, running up the stairs. “That’s Angie.”

He put his arms out and Angie ran into them full steam, clutching his neck in a stranglehold. He held her tight, relief filling him.

Reginald Vane was right behind her, bellowing almost as loud as Angie was shrieking. “You caught her! Thank God!” he cried. “She’s a thief! I wouldn’t be surprised if she is a murderer as well.”

“Arrest that man!” Angie yelled. “He’s a murderer. I have proof!”

“You idiot woman!” Vane yelled. “You won’t get away with this. I caught you red-handed. The jig’s up.”

“You won’t get away this time, you, you…Sempler!”

“Quiet,” Paavo ordered. “Both of you. Let’s go talk this over.”

“Where’s your gun, Paavo?” Angie asked as Paavo held her arm and led her toward the library, where Moira waited. “You can’t trust him.”

“Don’t worry about it, Angie.”

“She doesn’t have to worry,” Vane said, “but I do. You came here with her. How do I know the two of you aren’t in cahoots?”

Angie glared at Vane as Paavo took her to the center of the library and stopped. “Will you can’t stop using that Wild West jargon, Reginald? It won’t go any easier on you just because you sound like Wyatt Earp.”

“This is the Wild West,” Vane intoned. “And I just caught Belle Starr.”

Angie flushed. “You—”

“Both of you sit down,” Paavo ordered. “Now.”

They sat without argument.

Paavo gave each a long, cold stare. Angie could imagine what it must feel like to be on the hot seat in Homicide. “Let’s start at the beginning. Angie?” he said.

She sat primly on the edge of her chair and cleared her throat. “Well,” she said. “It’s good we came to this room, because it all started here.”

Paavo glanced at the room with the draperies and chairs all out of place. “I suspected that.”

“I decided to make the room better looking. Sorry, Moira. I moved the drapes and chairs, but when I did, I found a cord and a little electronic device attached to one of them. It’s under the seat on that one.”

Paavo walked over to the peacock-blue chair Angie pointed to and tilted it, finding the mini-projector. He looked the thing over, then gave it to Moira.

“That projector,” Angie continued, “made me think of who, of the people here, knew the most about electronic devices. I came up with Reginald.” She cast a pointed stare his way. “I decided to look in his room, and sure enough there were tape recorders, VCRs and other things in the attic off his bedroom. I know it was wrong of me to look—but we’re dealing with murder here.”

“We’re dealing with breaking and entering!” Reginald roared. “So what if I have electronic equipment. Most people do, Miss Amalfi! Finley wasn’t electrocuted. His head was smashed in. Forgive me, Miss Tay.” He looked at Paavo helplessly. “I fail to see any connection.”

“You haven’t heard the most important part.” Angie glanced from one to the other.

“Go ahead,” Paavo said.

“I found his family Bible.”

“Did you both hear that? There! She admitted it. I demand she be arrested,” Vane yelled.

“I put it back exactly where I found it. But the thing is, the Bible showed that Reginald Vane is the great-grandchild of Jack and Elise Sempler. It proves he’s the killer.”

“My good woman,” Vane said, jumping to his feet. “It proves no more than that my family has passed a Bible from one generation to the next. Years ago I came across a magazine article with the names of some ghosts here in the States. The same names as in my family Bible. That was when I learned about the American side of my family, when I learned that there was more to me than being the last of a rather unimportant line in Canada. I discovered a home, a heritage. A birthright.”

“But it’s not your home,” Moira said. “Finley bought it.”

“That’s the problem,” Vane admitted. “With this much land and this view, even a vacant house was priced much higher than I could afford. The owner was a distant relative who lived in Connecticut, never even saw the place, and cared nothing about it.”

“So why are you here now?” Angie asked.

“Six months ago, I learned someone was interested in buying the place. I also found out that Tay was having trouble getting together enough cash for the sale. I volunteered to pick up a piece of the house on the condition that if Finley couldn’t make a go of the inn, I could assume his bank loan, and he would lose his down payment. He agreed, in writing, to those terms.”

“That was a terrific deal for you,” Angie said. “A good reason for you not to want to see this inn succeed.”

“Yes.” He folded his hands. “It was. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one Finley duped into making a partner. One day I received a call from Patsy Jeffers, saying she and her husband were part owners, and that there were
others. I knew then that I had to find a way to scare them off, to have them pull out of the deal with Finley or we’d all end up in court. I could no more afford a lawyer than I could this house.” Vane lowered his head and sighed.

Worry and weariness lined Vane’s high forehead; his mouth had taken on a grayish cast, his lips turned down in a frown. Even his straight, thinning hair seemed somehow to have shrunk.

“In other words,” Paavo suggested, “if you got the others to pull out, Finley would be that much less solvent, and you could get the inn that much sooner.”

“That was my thinking. So I brought my equipment and pretended to be a spiritualist. I thought I’d scare them away. I never expected that the group Finley brought together would think that the place being haunted only made it that much more attractive!”

“Killing Patsy and Running Spirit,” Angie said, her certainty that Reginald Vane was behind all this beginning to slip away, “also lessened the competition for the place.”

Reginald shook his head. “So what? Once Finley was gone, I learned he’d made agreements, written and verbal, with everyone here. The legal fees alone to sort them out would be far more than I could afford. My dreams of owning this house are gone. Everything is.”

“Why did you continue with the noises after we learned Finley was dead?”

“It seemed right. There are those in this house who want to believe in the Sempler ghosts. I let them.”

Paavo leaned back in the chair and looked at Moira. “Questions?”

She studied Vane for a moment. “How did you make the thumping noises?”

“The magazine article said that my great-great-grandfather Ezra was very paranoid about his wealth.
He moved to this hill for that reason. These days, one would call him a survivalist, I believe. Anyway, he was rumored to have built this house with secret passages so that he could hide if it ever was attacked. From an engineering standpoint, it’s a simple matter to determine where any such passages might be located. Equally simple was to rig up speakers. Using the VCR timers, I set up prerecorded tapes with the kinds of sounds I wanted.”

“But Chelsea and I saw Elise’s ghost one night,” Angie said, then glanced at Paavo. “I should say, we saw what we thought was Elise’s ghost.”

Reginald laughed. “I heard the commotion that night and knew you and Miss Worthington were awake and that no one was outdoors. I used a mirror and flashlight from the attic and reflected them on the rocks near the cliffs. I thought it might help Chelsea, I mean, Miss Worthington, get over being upset.”

“Because you knew what had upset her,” Paavo said.

Reginald stared at him. “No!”

Paavo paced. “Since you knew about the secret passage, you also knew it led to Chelsea’s room.”

Angie sat upright in her chair.

“I didn’t,” Vane said.

“You had to have known, between your engineering background and going up and down the passageway—and your obvious interest in Miss Worthington.”

Vane stood. “Don’t tell her. I beg you.”

Angie stared at him, appalled. “You went into her room!”

Vane spun toward her. “Don’t look at me that way. I meant no harm. I’d never harm her. This world is hard on her and she’s retreated to the spiritual. I understand that. She loves someone else. She’d never care for me. Good God, I’m twice her age! But that night she’d been so
upset at dinner I was worried. I just wanted to see that she was all right.”

Angie was furious. “Considering the deaths that had happened here, how could you frighten her like that?”

“I don’t know.” He hung his head.

Angie looked at the lonely man before her, hanging his head at his adolescent stunt, when all he wanted was to be close to Chelsea and to see if she could care for him. “Tell her what you told us,” Angie said, her voice low and gentle. “Tell her it was just you.”

He blushed, but his eyes were bleak. “You’re right. It was
just
me. She should know that. She shouldn’t be worried that it was someone who meant her harm. Or some ghost. It was just a very foolish person.”

“I’m sorry, Reginald,” Angie said quietly.

He drew himself up and smoothed his bow tie, the epitome of the British stiff upper lip. “She has every right to hate me for this.”

Angie mentally crossed her fingers for Chelsea’s sake. “She might surprise you.”

“One more question, Vane,” Paavo said. “What was the projector for?”

“I planned to liven up one of Moira’s séances,” he said. “Using a remote, I could turn on the projector to where I have a tape of the Sempler photos. Unfortunately, when she finally held a séance, you were nearby, Inspector, and I was afraid you might walk in on us. I couldn’t chance it—except for about one second—the other night.”

“Moira,” Paavo turned to the woman, who’d been sitting in quiet surprise listening to all this. “What do you think of Vane’s story?”

She hesitated only a moment. “I believe him.”

Paavo stood and slowly paced back and forth in front of Angie. “That leaves the most troublesome part of this
afternoon’s episode, Angelina—the fact that you broke into and entered his room, without permission.”

Mr. Inspector, not Paavo, stood before her, carrying the full weight of the law in his hands. She felt as if all the blood had drained from her body. “I did not! I used the key. I’m an employee here. I had every right.”

“Mr. Vane might want you to argue that to the sheriff. Mr. Vane has rights, too.”

“The sheriff?” Angie shuddered at the thought of being in the hands of Sheriff Clark G. Butz, even if it did give her the chance to find out if his middle name was Gable. “But I was just trying to help!”

Paavo leaned over her chair, his blue eyes piercing. “That’s why there are police, Angie. If you suspect something, you call an officer of the law, you don’t take the law into your own hands. Is that clear?”

“Yes.” Her voice was tiny, her eyes wide. She glanced at Reginald, wondering what he’d decide to do.

“I hate the idea of anyone going into my room uninvited,” Vane said evenly. “I hate the idea of anyone going through my things.”

Angie’s hopes sank.

“On the other hand, my actions practically invited anyone with an inquiring mind to do just that. This was all my fault. I couldn’t possibly press charges against her. I can only hope Miss Worthington will be as forgiving.”

Just then, Angie saw Bethel and Chelsea walk into the library, arm in arm, smiling broadly. “We thought we heard voices,” Chelsea said. “Did we miss anything?”

“Nothing at all,” Angie replied.

“Good,” Bethel said. “We’ve got a surprise for all of you. We’ve been practicing in secret all afternoon, but we think we’re ready. Chelsea?”