Mirror of Shadows (15 page)

“No. Actually Ella needs a ride to Mr. Howard’s office. He has something for her and she wanted to talk to him about something.”

“Oh. Right. Look. I can’t promise I won’t slip up and throw a snarky comment at you from time to time, but I can promise I’ll try and meet you half-way—for the most part—for Ella’s sake.”

Jeremy grabbed a handful of pipes and headed for the door, meeting Matt on the way. “I’ve got some pipes that need repairing, so…”

“Right. Pipes.” He offered his hand. “For Ella?” he said.

With Jeremy’s free hand he shook Matt’s hand and said, “For Ella,” and then continued out the door and under the house leaving Matt in the shed.

Chapter 15

Matt knocked at the front door.

“Hey! I didn’t hear you drive up,” Ella said when she answered.

“Oh. I’ve been here for a while. I had a little chat with Jeremy,” he explained. Ella couldn’t believe her ears. Matt actually got Jeremy’s name right. She smiled.

“Oh? What about?” Ella asked as they made their way to the truck.

“Just thought we should bury the hatchet. I mean, if I’m going to be around for a while, and Jeremy obviously isn’t going to be done with the house anytime soon, maybe we should work things out. After all, it can’t be easy for you with us at each other all the time.”

“Really?” she said surprised by this change in attitude towards Jeremy.

“You seem surprised.”

“Well, yeah. I am. Last night you accused him of being out to take all my money and make me look crazy. Why the change?”

“They say to ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’. If I befriend him I can keep an eye on him and the less he and I argue, the less stress for you. It kills two birds with one stone in effect,” he explained.

“How very logical and sensitive of you,” she said sliding over and kissing him on the cheek with gratitude.

“Well, I would have done it sooner if I knew I’d get that kind of reaction from you,” he said as he leaned in for a more intimate kiss. She even blushed a bit and smiled when he pulled away smiling, giving her a wink.

He started the truck and headed down the hill when she said, “I really appreciate you giving me a ride. Jeremy works so hard I hate interrupting him to give me a ride.”

“Not a problem. Guess you ought to start thinking about getting a new car though.”

“Yeah. Just so much has been going on; I haven’t had a chance to deal with it. At least you won’t have to give me a ride home. Marlin said he’d take care of that.”

“Great. I’ve got some things I need to do, so you’ll have to live without me tonight.”

“Well. I’ll do my best,” she said as he pulled up the Marlin’s offices. “Would you like to come in and meet him? I’m sure he’d love to meet you, maybe even go all ‘Dad’ on you!”

“As fun as that sounds, I can’t today, but I look forward to meeting him soon,” he said.

She leaned over and he met her with a long and luscious kiss, which she returned and then even gave him an extra peck on the cheek before leaving the truck. “Bye,” she said as she closed the door.

He waved and drove off.

*****

Marlin was finishing up with a client when his secretary seated her in the waiting area. Ella scrounged around in her purse looking for a pencil or a pen, anything long enough to reach in her cast and scratch the itch on her arm. Though as many times as she had attempted this since the cast was put on, any object she used never seemed to be long enough to get to a particular spot that was driving her nuts.

“Ella, my dear, it’s good to see you. How’s the arm?”

“The swelling has finally gone down but the itching is driving me bonkers,” she admitted, pulling an unsharpened pencil from the cast. “Pencils just aren’t long enough but the eraser feels great when you get the right spot.”

Marlin laughed. “I remember. When I was a kid I fell out of a tree and broke my leg. I was cramming all kinds of things in the cast to itch my leg. My mother was constantly yelling at me. What worked for me was a bent up wire hanger.”

“Good advice,” Ella said.

“Denise, will you hold my calls while I have a little catch up with Ella?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Howard,” the secretary said.

Marlin ushered Ella into his office. Like one would expect, it was full of books and had a huge desk. Marlin had an affinity for collecting old ship items. He had an old ship’s compass on his desk in amazing condition for its age, an old clock that rang a large brass bell every half-hour, a shiny brass diving helmet that weighed a ton, and the biggest ship’s wheel she had ever seen hanging on the wall. He had an amazing picture of a lighthouse about to be engulfed by what looked like a tsunami and he often had sounds of the ocean playing from a CD low in the background. He told Ella it helped him de-stress.

He sat down and said, “I’m so glad you called. You must have been reading my mind, because I quite literally was about to pick up the phone and call you.”

“Really? Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. No. I got you a little something.” He handed her what looked like a watch case. “Well, actually it’s from me and Meme. She insisted. Now if you don’t like it or want another color, or model, don’t hesitate to trade it in for what you want.”

“What is it?”

“Well, open it and find out, silly girl.”

She smiled and opened the box. Inside she found a key; at least she thought it was a key. It had a button for lock, unlock, trunk open, and the word Volvo on it.

“You bought me a car?” she asked with surprise.

“Yep. But not just a car—an SUV—the safest one we could find. It has more technology and safety stuff in it than I’ve ever seen, plus it has all wheel drive for going up and down the hill. Meme had the most fun time picking out all the features.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I have money to buy my own car; I just hadn’t gotten around to it.”

“I told you, Meme insisted. You are the closest thing she and I have to a daughter of our own, and well, we were both just so scared when you went off the road. We really wanted to do this. Meme thought with all you’ve been through that this was something she could do for you— something you needed—but mostly to let you know you still have people who love and care about you. We may not be family but we think of you as one of our own.”

She jumped out of her chair and came around the desk, tears in her eyes, and hugged and kissed him. “Thank you so much and Meme too. I can’t believe it; a new car.”

“You’re very welcome, Sweetheart. We love you very much you know.”

“I do.”

“And again, if you don’t like the color or would like to see what the other models are like, I’ve made arrangements with the dealer and they will accommodate you. So, do you want to go see it? Or was there something else we needed to talk about?”

“Actually, I’m dying to see it, but I would like to ask you for a favor first. Although, you just gave me a car, so I feel a little weird about asking.”

“Not at all. The car was a necessity. What is it you need? Is Jeremy behaving himself?”

“Oh, he is a Godsend. I really thank you for sending him my way and yes, he’s a perfect gentleman. He’s got almost all the plumbing done in the house converted over to copper, whatever that means. He works so hard and it is so nice to have someone there. It took him a while to warm up, but under that thick skin, he’s a real angel.

“What I wanted to talk to you about is, well, it’s going to sound a little out there, so you need to keep an open mind.”

“That is probably the scariest thing a father, at least a stand-in one, could hear from his little girl.”

“Sorry—hear me out. Since I moved into the house I have been having these visions.”

Marlin’s brow rose.

“In the first one, Grandma came to warn me about some impending danger.”

Marlin rubbed his chin.

“In the second, I saw a woman running from a mob of faceless people only to be caught and strung up in a tree. The eerie thing was she looked just like me.”

Marlin leaned back in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand.

“The latest one showed me the grave of the woman who had been hung.”

Marlin ran both hands through what hair he had and looked absolutely unraveled.

“These visions came to me through that big gaudy mirror in the hallway.”

Marlin now had his thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose as if trying to squelch an oncoming headache.

“When I asked Jeremy to put the mirror away in storage because it was creeping me out, he found a portrait of a woman in the attic that looks just like me. So Jeremy and I thought she must be related and I think she is the one in my visions from the mirror.

“What I’d like you to do is dig up whatever you can about a woman named Willow Owens. I went through a bunch of trunks in the attic and the only reference I could find relating to the Owens family was a small painting of three children—Zachary, Anna and…”

“Peter,” Marlin said with his elbows on the desk and his hand holding his head.

“How did you know that?”

“It’s an old legend around here, at least among the old timers. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Willow Owens is a legend around here. She’s said to haunt the woods up where you live on the other side of the Cauldron Lake.”

When Marlin got no reaction from Ella indicating she remembered any such story, he continued, “Willow was a young widow with three children living up on the hill all by herself. It’s said that a wealthy gentleman named Byron Morton, from the town nearby, had seen her when she came into town to buy some supplies. Byron became obsessed with her beauty and pursued her. He propositioned her and she refused. He was so enraged with her refusal he threatened her life. Still she dismissed him so he went back to town claiming she had bewitched him with her devil magic.

“Willow heard rumors that the townspeople had gathered and formed a mob to hang her as a witch. Scared for the safety of her children, she sent Peter, Zachary, and Anna away with all the money she had stashed away.

“The mob caught up with her and strung her up as a witch. She was buried right there under the tree she’d hung from. When they couldn’t find her children they burned her house down so the children would have no place to return.

“Later, Byron Morton came in and bought up all the land up on the hill and formed his own town around it. He used fear and his money to keep the townsfolk under his thumb, even going so far as to name the town Hanging Willow to remind people that he was not above killing to get what he wanted.”

“Is Byron Morton any relation to Harold Morton?”

“Yes. Byron is an ancestor of Harold’s.”

“But if Byron bought up all the property around here, how did the Greys acquire Grey Manor; and what about the Owens? Didn’t Willow and her family have a deed? That property should have gone to the children, shouldn’t it have?”

“In a perfect world, yes, but in her haste Willow forgot to tell Peter where the deed was hidden; that’s why I think Morton burned down the house in hopes that it would never be found or disputed.”

“What happened to the kids?”

“I’m not sure. Stories have been told that the children all died; others say that Peter survived and moved down south. It’s very odd, though, that you found those portraits. I’m not sure why your family would have them.

“As for the Greys, seems the Morton family overextended themselves in some deal that went awry. The Mortons found themselves in debt to the Grey family. The Greys made a deal with him for the property that Grey Manor was built on. The Mortons have been trying to get it back ever since.”

“Well, that explains creepy Mr. Morton stalking me. Would you be willing to do a little digging on the children to see if the stories are true?”

“Sure, if you think it’s important, but what do you mean when you say ‘stalking’?”

“Well, he scared me to death creeping up on me in the dark when I went into town one night, and just the other day he snuck up on me in the woods.”

“He shouldn’t have been up there on your property,” Marlin said.

“Actually, I was looking for Boo and found what I think must have been Willow’s house, or at least the ruins. I was walking back from there, so I may have been on that property, which I guess he owns, since there was no deed to be found, right?”

“Right. What was it Mr. Morton wanted when he snuck up on you?” Marlin asked.

“He keeps asking me to sell him Grey Manor,” she answered.

“Well, if he gets too pushy let me know.”

“Sure, and thanks for everything. Let’s go see the car now.”

“Let’s!” he said excitedly.

*****