Mystic Mayhem (22 page)

They had been quite the adventurers.

Cat and I looked at each other again. I laid the phone facedown on the table. She picked it back up, tilting her head to one side.

"That one looks like fun," she said. "I might try that with Q."

"TMI, Cat," I said.

"Definitely," Jack said.

Jack had been right in the first place. You just couldn't unsee that.

But one thing was for sure—Theodore and Penny had participated in one very hot and very heavy affair. I guessed that maybe Cecile Powell, who came along looking like Elway's first wife, was the reason it came to an end.

And therein lay excellent motive.

*   *   *

Part two of our plan was put in motion as Cat and I headed upstairs to Penny's room. While she was occupied by the magical wonders of Hans Ritter, the two of us had it in mind to "toss her room," as Cat had said.
I swear that girl's spending way too much time with Deputy Quincy.
"Toss her room?" Really?

But in the end, that was sort of what we did.

Penny's room was on the third floor, which had originally been the attic of the main plantation house. The rooms up there were quaint, cozy, mostly singles.

Jack had supplied us with a room key. I could only hope the Great Fabrizio mission didn't come back to somehow bite him in the butt. He was brave to break so many rules. The saving grace was that I had no doubt Harry Villars would stand behind him.

Cat took the closet and bathroom. I took the chest of drawers. We got lucky early on. Penny's suitcase was sitting just inside the closet, and it was locked with a small combination lock.

Cat hefted it onto the luggage rack. We were both breathing hard. This espionage stuff was fairly nerve-racking, and we stared at another lock, which meant another unlocking code.

"Use the same letter/number combination to make up T-H-E-O," Cat said. And I bent to obey.

The lock popped open, and I unzipped the bag and lifted the lid, but the thing was empty.

What a disappointment. I turned away, but Cat stood staring down into the empty bag.

She bent and began to run her hands around the edges.

"It's empty, Cat."

"Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't." She unzipped a side pocket. "I mean, why would you lock an empty bag?"

"Oh. Good point."

She reached into the pocket and pulled out a packet of envelopes bound together with a red satin ribbon. Triumphantly, she held them up for me to admire. "Because this one wasn't empty."

She handed them to me. I could hardly breathe. I'd never make a good CIA agent. My hands were shaking. She gave me a funny look and took them back. "Geez, Mel, nervous much?"

Deftly, she pulled one end of the bow, and the ribbon fell away.

The envelope was dirty as if it had been handled a lot. There was a canceled stamp in one corner and a return address—Elway Steel, with a post-office box in Philadelphia—on the opposite corner. It was addressed to Ms. Penelope Devere.

We opened it and removed a piece of trifolded corporate stationary. The letter was typewritten.

I scanned it and looked up at Cat. Only seconds later, she looked up at me. We stared into each other's eyes.

"Oh my goodness." Cat's voice was pained. "It's a
Dear Penny
letter. On corporate stationary? Who does that?"

I nodded. "And look." I pointed to the signature. "Theodore Elway followed with a slash and the initials EJ? The bastard didn't even sign the thing himself. The louse had his secretary send her an
I'm dumping you
letter."

The following letters seemed to be just as harsh and just as final. They were probably written in answer to Penny's (allegedly desperate) pleas to reconsider and take her back. Theodore explained to her in a mean-spirited manner that a man such as he had to think of the family name and stature and that Cecile Powell came from an old Philadelphia family that could trace its roots back to the Mayflower. He mentioned he doubted that Penny could trace her family history back any further than Skid Row. Nice guy, eh?

We had just begun a third letter when my cell vibrated. Text message.

From Jack.

Show ended early. She's heading your way.

Yikes!

*   *   *

The supply closet across the hall from Penny's room was small and stuffy and smelled of furniture polish. Through the crack I left in the door, I saw Penny steamrolling up the hall toward her room. She unlocked the door and went inside, while I settled down for my first stakeout.

After Cat and I bustled around putting everything back the way we found it, except for the kiss-off letters, Cat took the letters and headed back downstairs to give the letters to Jack. The plan was for Jack and Harry to support us with what had been discovered about Penny so far and to get Quincy on board. Cat would call him when she was back downstairs.

My job was to keep an eye on Miss Psychic Killer to make sure she didn't bring harm to anyone else before an arrest could be made.

My back hurt. I'd begun to sweat. And now I had to pee. This detective gig wasn't for wimps.

I checked the time on my phone. Just after eleven thirty. I'd been in the supply closet for over an hour.

Penny's door opened. Uh-oh. Show time.

She stuck her head out and checked both ways before opening it wider and stepping out into the empty hallway.

Was that even her? What in the name of Jean Lafitte was she wearing?

It was grey. I mean, really grey, and just the one shade of grey. It hung on her in tatters like it had been shredded by time and decay. Something really gross sat on top of her head. It appeared to be the face of a ghoul with patchy cobweb hair.

And then it hit me. It
was
the face of a ghoul, a mask, and this was Cecile's ghost, or what Rosalyn believed was Cecile's ghost.

Everything started to tumble around inside my head like clothes in a dryer, round and round, shifting and somersaulting, and what ended up on top was a revelation—what Billy said about Penny's relationship with his grandfather before he even met Cecile, what Rosalyn believed about her stepmother's involvement in Theodore's death after she took up with the caterpillar man, what Penny said about Rosalyn having been considered a little wonky in the head, the explicit selfies on the phone, the Dear Penny letters, the Halloween dress-up—it was Penny Devere, the psychic. Penny who murdered Cecile to get back at her for stealing her man and maybe for killing him, Penny who was haunting Rosalyn to have her declared incompetent so she could get her hands on the trust, probably even Penny who stole the hundred grand.

I waited for her to move a ways down the hall before stepping out of the supply closet and following her.

On the fly, I put my phone in silent mode and texted Jack and Cat. Neither had answered by the time Penny approached the bookcase at the end of the hall where she stopped and looked around suspiciously. I jerked to a stop at the corner and eased back. Penny turned back to the bookcase and pushed on the left side. I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep her from hearing my gasp as the right side of the bookcase swung out to reveal a dark passage directly behind it.

Holy secret passage, Batman! How'd she know about that?

Oh, yeah. She took the tour. I was going to have to do that one of these days. There was obviously more about The Mansion at Mystic Isle than met the eye.

She went through and pulled it closed behind her.

I began to squirm. What now? I glanced down at my phone.
Jack? Cat? Where the heck are you guys?

From directly across the hall, the Villars family's grandfather clock suddenly began to clang loudly, scaring me half out of my shoes. Midnight. The witching hour?
That's what they say, anyway.
I was carried back to stormy nights when Grandmama Ida would make my hair curl with tales of haunted cemeteries and swamp monsters. That didn't seem to be the case here. My ghoul was flesh and blood, not ectoplasm and cobwebs. And for some reason that scared me even more than the other kind. Penny had already killed once, so she had little to lose if I backed her into a corner.

If the clock was striking midnight, Hans Ritter's second show of the night had just begun. That was why I hadn't heard from Jack. He was part of the show, tied up, maybe literally, or maybe even being sawed in half by now. But what about Cat? I could only hope she'd gotten my text and was rounding up a posse to come and help me catch this killer.

Chicken-livered or not, I had to move. Penny was somewhere in The Mansion—dressed to kill? I sucked it up and headed for the bookcase.

I waited a minute or two, unsure if enough time had passed since Penny went through to mask my own entry. There wasn't really any way to know, so I leaned against the left of the bookcase as Penny had done, and when the bookcase swung aside, I stepped in.

I just stood there looking around. After about a half minute, the dang bookcase swung shut all on its own.
OMG!
Knock it off, Melanie. It's not haunted. Not! It's probably on a timer or something.

I've been in caves on moonless nights that were brighter than it was in there. No way I'd make any progress without falling down and breaking a leg unless I had something to light my way. Ah, yes. Smartphone.

I pulled it from my skirt pocket and activated the flashlight, holding my breath, waiting for Penny to jump me. When she didn't, I inched forward.

The secret passage must not have been as big a secret as I initially thought. It appeared to be finished inside, walls painted, floor tiled. It could possibly be used by staff to move between floors. Hmm. Who knew?

Obviously Penny did.

Curving—maybe three, three and a half feet wide—a gradual downward slant. The light from my phone went ahead of me about ten feet and gave me some sense of safety at least as far as the next bend. I found myself holding my breath, waiting for…for what? I wasn't really sure, but I didn't have to wait long for it to happen.

Where I initially went in was just that one opening at the bookcase, and for quite a distance into the corridor I saw no other openings, and then there was one, an actual door, then another, and…

The third doorway flew open, and Penny, still in the ghostly garb, jumped me.

She must have had about fifty pounds on me, chunky monkey that she was, and she hit me like Jennifer Grey on the fly at the end of
Dirty Dancing
,
sending me straight to the floor
.
Her anger gave her an edge and momentum, and while I was down she thwacked me on the head. I threw up my arms to ward her off. With a second blow she sent my phone flying. The light went out, and we were in complete and utter darkness. I couldn't see her, but she couldn't see me either. I rolled out and away from her, got my feet under me, and began to go hand over hand down the hall, using the walls to guide me.

She was right behind me, huffing and puffing like an old locomotive. "Give it up, Melanie," Penny wheezed. "You can run, but you can't hide."

Really? Cliché, much? There was nothing else to do but throw back at her, "Are
you
talking to
me
?" I didn't wait around for her next gem.

My hand closed on a doorknob, but it wouldn't turn. The door was locked. I moved on, rushing now. By the sound of her breathing, she was closing in on me. And to use another tired but fitting line, "I'm a lover, not a fighter."

Two more doors failed to open, and then there weren't any more. I wished I could see. I wished I could just turn and flat out run. I wished I was in Philadelphia.

In about another thirty or so feet, I sensed a change in the passageway. Cooler air came at me from more than one direction. I came to a corner and went around it. But for some reason I stopped, turned around, and went back. Crossing the hall, my hands stretched out in front of me, I felt for the opposite wall, which never materialized. The corridor had branched out, and I seemed to be standing at a crossroads. From the way air circulated around me, I had the impression I could go straight ahead, right, or left.

I chose to go left, having absolutely no idea where I was in the hotel except I was pretty sure I'd made it down to the ground floor. I came to several more doors, but again, none would open. It would likely take a service key to enter or exit from this hidden hallway, which made me wonder how Penny had managed to get around so well.

And speaking of Penny, where the heck was she? I hadn't heard her bellows-like wheeze for a minute or two. I stopped and listened for it, but instead the sound of muted laughter and applause drifted along the hallway until it reached me. Drum rolls. More applause. Oh, thank God! The magic show. It drew me up the hall, my feet less careful than before, adrenaline coursing through me. The door was suddenly before me. I put my hand on the knob and turned it. But, no. Nothing. It was locked. Just like the others. From behind me came the unmistakable thump of heavy feet at a run, and a light bobbed up and down growing closer and closer. No wonder I hadn't heard her for a while. The bitch went back upstairs and found my phone!

The light hit me, and I began to pound on the door, yelling at the top of my lungs. "Help! Help me, please. Jack! Anyone! I'm here, I'm—oof."

She hit me like a linebacker, about hip high, and carried me away from the door and down, once again, onto the floor. I was gonna be black-and-blue in the morning, if I lived to count the bruises, that is.

She got astride me and sat up. My phone landed beside me, the light eerily illuminating Penny's wild-eyed hatred and ratty tendrils of fake hair writhing around her face like Medusa's snakes. That alone was terrifying. She held my throat with her left hand, and as she raised the right one, I saw the silhouette of the gun she was holding.

Had to do something. Had to do it now, or Harry would be looking for a new tattoo artist, Cat a new roommate, and Jack? No. We hadn't even really begun to know what we were to each other.