The Legend of Sleepy Harlow (11 page)

“Cause harm to the living? Of course they can. In fact, if you ask me, that might explain what happened to Noreen.”

This time, I couldn’t help myself, no matter how much I tried. I barked out a laugh. “You think she was killed by a ghost?”

“I believe it’s a very real possibility. Think about it. Noreen’s been hot on the trail of your local dead celebrity for a couple of years now. She’s the one who took that video of Sleepy last year. And being caught on camera . . . Well, we don’t understand it all completely yet. But from what I’ve been able to discover, apparitions don’t like to have their ectoplasm disturbed. My own theory is that cameras disrupt the electromagnetic fields around spirits. That they break up their signals. You know, like static on a radio. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sleepy wasn’t looking for a little revenge.”

“Really?” I gave the question all the oomph that could be managed by a woman in a red plaid robe and bunny slippers. “You’re telling me that a ghost can—”

“There are plenty of documented cases. Poltergeists, for instance. You’ve heard of them. They’re spirits that cause all sorts of problems. And there’s other evidence, too, about ghosts that lure people to their deaths. Your Sleepy just might be one of them.”

“He’s not
my
Sleepy,” I told him, even as I reminded myself that he sort of was. At least until I could re-create his life and times for Marianne’s history. With that in mind, I figured Dimitri was fair game. I mean, when it came to finding out more information about Sleepy.

“What about the real Sleepy?” I asked him. “If Noreen and the rest of you were interested in the legend, maybe you know something about the man, too? Could there have been something in his life that someone wanted to keep secret? Something worth killing for?”

“You mean the whole thing about his treasure.” Dimitri said this like it was the most natural thing in the world, then laughed when I froze, mid-egg-whisking.

“You live on this island and don’t know about the treasure,” he said.

“I’m new to the island, and I don’t know about the treasure. Tell me.”

“Well . . .” He brushed muffin crumbs from his hands. “They say that Sleepy haunts the island in October because—”

“Because that’s when he was murdered.”

“Right. That’s one of the stories. Another one is that he’s looking to get revenge on the rival gangsters who murdered him. Some people say he’s actually roaming the island because he’s looking for his head. Other people believe that Sleepy’s looking for the treasure he buried before he died.”

“If he buried it, why does he have to look for it?” I asked. “Why doesn’t he know where it is?”

One corner of his mouth pulled into a sneer that should have been enough to tell me this was a stupid question. Still, Dimitri felt obliged to elaborate. “While we’ve learned a great deal about the Other Side in the last few years, we don’t know how it all works. Not yet. Maybe a spirit’s memories get all mixed up. Maybe time over there isn’t the same as time over here. Maybe Sleepy doesn’t know where to find the treasure because on the Other Side, he hasn’t even buried it yet!”

Maybe it was time to change the subject, and I guess my expression must have said that, because Dimitri laughed.

“My guess is you don’t believe in any of this, right?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Hey, I’m used to skeptics. In this business, you have to have a thick skin. But the fact of the matter is, what you believe doesn’t matter. Our research tells us that people have been seeing Sleepy’s ghost on this island for years. Ever since back in nineteen thirty when he was killed.”

1930.

I thought about the old magazine I’d found in the storage room and wondered what Hank made of it. I’d told him about it before I left the winery, and no doubt he’d already gathered up the magazine as evidence.

For now, that wasn’t my problem. Sleepy’s history, on the other hand, was. So was Kate’s freedom. “He’s been dead a long time, and all that time, you say folks have seen Sleepy. All over the island?”

Dimitri nodded. “Not just at the winery, if that’s what you’re thinking, though he worked there for a while. Some people think he even used some old caves nearby to store the liquor he smuggled into the country from Canada. I can’t say if that’s true or not, but Noreen believed it. She claimed if she could find the caves, we’d have a better chance of gathering evidence.”

She more than claimed it. She had probably been trying to prove it by finding her way into the old storage room through the series of caves and tunnels that Kate wasn’t even sure existed. I did not bother to mention this to Dimitri. The exact place of Noreen’s murder was one of the facts Hank wanted to keep from the public as long as he was able.

“What else can you tell me about Sleepy?” I asked Dimitri.

“Not a whole lot.” He finished his cup of coffee.

“Then how about Noreen? What else can you tell me about her? You say you came back here together the other night. Did you know she went out again?”

“I had not a clue,” he said. “But then, I’m a pretty sound sleeper.”

“But when you didn’t see her around on Thursday morning, you didn’t wonder?”

His shrug tugged that already snug T-shirt across his chest. “Noreen was”—he cocked his head, searching for the right adjective—“difficult. Surly. High-and-mighty. Ornery. Truth be told, I was glad when I didn’t see her Friday morning. It meant I didn’t have to deal with her craziness . . . Hey, we won’t have to arrange the equipment alphabetically anymore!” This was apparently a new thought, because his grin lit the room. “That’s perfect, because I’ve got this way better method for packing and moving the equipment based on what it’s for and how much we use it and—” His grin melted into a sheepish expression that would have disarmed a weaker woman. Or one who wasn’t as concerned that her friend was going to prison for a murder she didn’t commit.

“Sorry. I’m pretty excited to be back in the driver’s seat.”

“You used to be the head of EGG?”

Dimitri’s dark brows dropped low over his eyes. “Seven years ago, I was the one who founded EGG. Let me tell you, it wasn’t always easy keeping the group going. We all worked full-time jobs, and we did our investigations at night. Try explaining to your boss why you’re falling asleep at your desk when you’re falling asleep at your desk because you were up until four in the morning running around some old, abandoned cemetery—and then there are the volunteers!”

He pulled a face. “Sure, lots of people are interested in paranormal investigating, and all those shows on TV make it look so glamorous. But nine times out of ten, our volunteers try it for a week or two, then give up. It’s always left to the core group to keep going, and it was always up to me to try and make everybody remember that what we were doing was important. Try being enthusiastic when you’re standing in the middle of some ruin of an old orphanage in the middle of the night and you haven’t found one shred of evidence and it’s raining and everybody you’re with knows they’ve got to be up and out the door and to work in less than three hours.”

“Still, you kept the group going.”

“You got that right.” A muscle jumped at the base of his jaw. “And little by little, every year, we got a little better, a little smoother. We started gathering some really convincing evidence.”

“Like that video of Sleepy.”

Dimitri grunted. “It was that darned video! It should have been the best thing that ever happened to us, right? And in some ways, it was. I mean, it got us plenty of attention. But once Noreen had that video . . .” He shook his head. “Once that happened, nothing could stop her. Nobody could toot Noreen’s horn like Noreen could, and she tooted for all she was worth. There isn’t anybody in the field who hasn’t seen the video. And not one who doesn’t think the Turner Plasmometer is the Holy Grail of paranormal investigation.”

“You mean you think that contraption really works?”

“‘That contraption’
 
. . .” Dimitri repeated the phrase but added a certain note of reverence I couldn’t have mustered if I tried. “It’s the greatest innovation in detection equipment in the last ten years. There’s no way we would have gotten that video of Sleepy last year without it. The plasmometer, see, sends out waves of electromagnetic energy that spirits can use to manifest. Other folks have tried similar inventions, and they’ve had some minimal success. But Noreen—I don’t know how she did it, but she got the wavelengths just right. And the radio frequencies. I didn’t like the woman. You may have noticed! But I’m the first to give credit where credit is due.”

“So that was the plan, just like last year? You take the camera crew and the plasmometer. You lie in wait at the winery and you get more video of Sleepy.”

“No.” When he shook his head, a curl of inky hair dipped over his forehead. With one hand, he pushed it back in place. “See, last year, we had spread out over the winery to get some base readings and see what we could see. Noreen, she was all alone when she took that video. She caught it with her handheld camera. Since she was back at the winery all by herself when she was murdered, my guess is she thought she could duplicate the conditions. She was after the same thing all over again.”

“Sleepy.”

“Yeah, Sleepy.” Cynicism dripped from every syllable. “And the fame that would come along with getting more footage of him. You see, that’s really all Noreen cared about. Not advancing the science. Not illuminating what’s been a mystery for millennia. Noreen wanted to be a guest on talk shows. She wanted to be the keynote speaker at paranormal investigation conferences. And she was going to do anything to make that happen, even if it killed her. I guess she got her wish, huh?” Dimitri twitched away the thought. “Hopefully tonight, we’ll get some footage of activity here on the island so that we’re not wasting our time while we hang around.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to.” When he gave me a blank look, I explained. “I mean, I thought after what happened, you’d take some time off. Or spend your time talking to each other. You know, a little therapy.”

“Paranormal investigating is the best therapy known to mankind.” He grabbed an apple, tossed it in the air and caught it in one hand, then strolled out the door. “Hey, with any luck, maybe we’ll run into Noreen’s apparition tonight while we’re out. That would be something, huh? Noreen would actually be good for something besides the Turner Plasmometer. And that would be hilarious. You know, because she’d be more useful after she was dead!”

  10  

T
he next day was Saturday, and I spent all day working on reconstructing Marianne’s book about Sleepy.

I know, I know . . . I should have been worried about Kate. I
was
worried about Kate. But worrying would get me nowhere, and I knew that. Neither would trying to get through to Kate. See, Kate being Kate and as single-minded and as stubborn as anyone I’d ever known (except for maybe the possible exception of me), she threw herself into her work to forget her troubles, shutting herself in her office at the winery. Her employees had strict orders that no one—no matter who—could bother her.

At least that’s what they told me when I called.

By ten o’clock, I had two dozen more pages for the manuscript. They were mostly blank, with a word here and there that I’d been able to make out. I hoped those words would work like a trail of bread crumbs, leading me to the information that would help me rewrite Marianne’s story. I’d talked to Alvin, and learned that Marianne had come through her surgery with flying colors. But the docs on the mainland wanted to keep an eye on her, and they insisted she stay close.

I had a couple days’ reprieve.

With that in mind, I waded my way (gagging all the while) through three more chapters. Lucky for me, it was a short book (hurray!) that I assumed would be illustrated with historic photos of the island, the lake, and, of course, Sleepy. After all this time reading about him, thinking about him, and trying to reconstruct his life, I was anxious to see what the man looked like.

With his head.

Thank goodness, the pages I worked on next were slightly more readable. Being farther down in the pile, they weren’t as soaked as the earlier ones. It was tough going, but I refused to lose heart. By the time I was done, I’d deciphered enough to know exactly where on the island Charlie Harlow was born, and I’d learned that as a young man, he was a day laborer. Smart guy that he was, he recognized an opportunity to make some real money when Prohibition was enacted. He started out small with a gang of locals who smuggled real liquor (not the nasty bathtub variety) out of a place called Middle Island, Canada, and he soon became their leader. He made contacts (or the word might have been
contracts
, which I guess would have made sense, too) with the larger world and with gangsters on the mainland, both in the US and in Canada. He had the reputation for being quiet (hence the nickname), and once he had a few ill-gotten bucks in his pocket, he was known to be generous with those who deserved it and less than cooperative when it came to explaining to the right side of the law about where all that money came from.

The rest of those few chapters were fuzzy.

Or I should say, more descriptively, soggy.

I needed a break to clear my head. And my nose. I’d just made a turkey sandwich and a glass of iced tea and taken it out to the front porch when Hank pulled in.

He made his way up the front porch steps between the pots of purple mums and the pumpkins I’d put out in honor of the season, and when he got over to where I sat, he gave my lunch the careful sort of once-over that I imagined he used on perps.

Which made me think about Kate.

Which made me not so hungry anymore.

“Sandwich?” I asked Hank.

He accepted with a nod and scooped up half the turkey and avocado on wheat. “I already ate lunch,” he said between mouthfuls. “So you have the other half.”

I sipped iced tea instead.

“Just thought you should know . . .” Finished with the half sandwich in three efficient bites, Hank dropped into the wicker rocker next to the couch where I sat. No matter how hard the cushions had been scrubbed or how many times, I swear I could still smell the souvenirs of Jerry Garcia’s disastrous visit to the porch, and I’d tossed the cushions from all the furniture and ordered new ones online. Until they arrived, I’d folded up a cushy chenille throw in a luscious shade of grape that matched the trim on the house and was ensconced on that. I doubted Hank was as comfortable in the rocker sans cushions. Then again, it was a little hard to tell. Hank always had a pained expression on his pug-ugly face.

“We checked into Kate’s phone calls,” he said, and maybe he winced because an errant bit of wicker poked him. Or maybe he just didn’t like what he had to say. “The other day when she got called to the mainland by that wine critic? That call came from Noreen Turner’s cell.”

“I’m not surprised.” Which didn’t mean I wasn’t disgusted. “Getting her hopes up like that! What a lousy thing to do to Kate!”

“Yeah, well, Ms. Turner and her bunch wanted to get Kate away from the winery. I guess they figured it was a pretty good way to do it.”

“Dimitri claims they didn’t know what Noreen was up to.”

“That’s what he says.”

“You don’t believe him.”

“It doesn’t much matter. Kate refused to press charges for the breaking and entering. End of story.”

“So why tell me about the phone call?”

He shifted in his seat, and the wicker groaned. “You’re a smart woman, Bea.”

I swiped a finger along the outside of my glass, getting rid of a drop of condensation. “I’m glad you think so.”

“So you know what I’m getting at.”

I locked my gaze onto Hank’s. “I know you’re wrong.”

“Are you telling me Kate didn’t realize that call was a scam? That she wasn’t mad about it?”

“Yes, she realized it. And of course she was mad. You know that. She admits it, and who can blame her? But that doesn’t mean—”

“When she figured out where the call really came from and why Noreen made it, she must have just about busted a gasket.”

“Maybe, but—”

“And that’s when Kate told you she wanted to kill Noreen Turner.”

Believe me, if I could take back what I’d told Hank about the conversation I had with Kate after she returned from the mainland, I would have. In a heartbeat. But it was too late for that.

“She didn’t mean it,” I told him. “Not literally. And even if she did, that certainly doesn’t prove she did it.”

“You don’t think I’m enjoying this, do you?” Hank hauled himself out of the rocker and stalked to the porch railing. It was another glorious fall day, and across the street, the sun glinted off the waves that kissed the shoreline. Tourists were taking advantage of these last wonderful days. The road was busy with buzzing golf carts. Hank might have been watching it all, but I knew it wasn’t what he was thinking about. His back to me, he planted his feet and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “So who else do you think could have done it?” he asked.

If he’d been facing me, he would have seen my mouth flap open. There was a time he wouldn’t have asked for my opinion. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I wish I did.”

“Well, we’re going to have to find out. It’s the only way we’ve got any hope of helping Kate.”

I hadn’t even realized there’d been a knot in my chest since I saw Kate get into Hank’s SUV. That is, until some of the tension eased. “You don’t really think she did it.”

He spun to face me. “I don’t want to think she really did it. But the facts—”

“Can’t be right.”

“Until the test results arrive back from the state crime lab and tell me any different, facts are all I have to go on.”

I scooted forward in my seat. “I know, but—”

“So unless we find some other facts and those other facts point us to other people, things aren’t looking good for Kate.”

“Yes. You’re right. Of course you’re right.” I found myself nodding like a bobblehead and stopped before I made myself dizzy. “What do you want me to do?”

A slow smile relieved some of the surliness of Hank’s expression. “I was hoping that’s what you’d say. What have you found out so far?”

I didn’t bother to ask why he assumed I was digging into things myself. Words like
nosy
and
snooping
tend to rub me the wrong way. Especially since I know they’re true.

“I thought they’d all be depressed,” I told Hank, with a look at the house that was supposed to indicate the ghost hunters. Since they’d trouped out early in the morning and he didn’t know that, I figured I needed to elaborate.

“EGG. They’re not the least bit upset,” I told him. “Not any of them except maybe for Fiona. In fact, I’d go so far as to say a couple of them are actually thrilled.”

“That she’s dead?” Even Hank, hardened from years of police work, was surprised.

“Not that she’s dead so much as that she’s gone,” I said. “Dimitri has taken over with a vengeance.”

“I suppose someone has to. They have a contract, and they have to produce something for that TV show.”

“Yes, I agree. I know a little about the entertainment industry and I know that Noreen’s murder is going to give the show a whole lot of publicity. That makes it more important than ever for them to get their filming done and in on time. I get that. Really, I do.” I folded my arms around myself. “I just didn’t expect that they’d go at it with this much”—I wondered how to describe it to Hank and decided that one word would suffice—“glee.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Mostly this Dimitri guy?”

“Mostly. He’s back in the driver’s seat. He used to be lead investigator for the group. Then when Noreen shot that video of Sleepy that made them famous, he got pushed to the background. He likes being in charge. And he likes the idea of getting first billing on the show and being a star. He’ll be good at it.”

Hank nodded. “And the rest of them?”

“I haven’t had a chance to talk them. I want to, but not until I can get each of them alone. You know, so they can’t repeat each other’s stories.”

Another nod, and I knew he approved.

“But I will say that it’s not a coincidence that Jacklyn Bichot is back with the group.”

“And maybe not a coincidence that she just happened to show up the day Ms. Turner’s body was found?”

This I couldn’t say, and I told Hank so. As he’d just reminded me, I could only stick with the facts. “Jacklyn used to be a member of EGG, and she and Noreen didn’t get along. Jacklyn went out and found another job. Now that Noreen’s gone . . .”

“Made her move and got back in, huh?” Hank’s eyes lit. “And the others?” Hank dropped back into the rocker, the better to eyeball me. “They’ll be more comfortable talking to you than they would to me. Oh, I’ve already asked all the usual questions, but I’m thinking you can dig a little deeper. You know, get a little more of the dirt they might not be willing to share with law enforcement.”

“I’ll try,” I promised.

“That’s all I can ask.” He slapped the arms of the chair and stood. But not before he eyed the other half of the turkey sandwich. “Hey, if you’re not gonna eat that . . .”

I gave him permission with a wave, and, sandwich in hand, Hank stomped back down the steps and into his SUV.

I opted for an apple for lunch. Okay, yeah, that sounds healthy enough, but in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that after I sliced it, I slathered each piece with peanut butter. Extra crunchy. Thus newly fortified, I made a quick call to Luella to ask for her help with a little Sleepy research, then got back to work on Marianne’s manuscript, gagging through another few chapters.

By the time I was done, it was late afternoon, and since I’d left a note by each of the ghost hunters’ doors that morning inviting them to tea that afternoon, I wasn’t surprised when they were back at four on the dot.

And plenty hungry, as it turned out.

I set out a china pot of nice, strong black English tea, and another of green tea; a variety of tiny sandwiches that Meg, Luella’s daughter and my go-to person for all things culinary, had come in to make for me; a platter of sugar cookies; and a selection of really nice chocolates.

Then I stepped back to wait.

I have to admit, I wasn’t surprised when the guys and Jacklyn dug right in or that poor Fiona hung back, eyeing the table and quietly waiting her turn. In fact, it was just what I was hoping for.

I caught her eye and waved her into the kitchen.

“By the time they’re through, there’s not going to be anything left,” I said, and I was sure to add a smile, just to gain the kid’s confidence. I led the way to the counter, where I’d kept extras of everything. “Go ahead,” I said. “Help yourself. I’ll get us some tea.”