The Legend of Sleepy Harlow (20 page)

A wave licked the side of the
Miss Luella
, pitching it toward the spit of land where I intended to disembark, and the resulting ripples splashed the rocks. The water swished perilously close to one of the snakes, and it raised its head, opened its beady eyes and gave us what I could only call an indignant look before it slithered away.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Luella asked.

I was.

Or at least I had been.

Before I saw the snakes.

Though I tried not to, it was impossible to keep my gaze off the remaining two reptiles. They were maybe three feet long and plenty plump, and the one closest to the boat—closest to where I’d have to step ashore—had a fat white belly.

I swallowed hard. “I need to do this.”

Luella knew better than to argue, but she was, after all, a woman of a certain age, and if experience had taught me nothing else, it was that women of that certain age feel free to speak their minds. It was one of the things I admired about them. Except when I was the one on the other end of what they had to say.

“You could have asked Levi to come along. You know, for backup. I know, I know . . . you can take care of yourself. So can I. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the seventy-some years I’ve been around, it’s that it never hurts to have a guy around when it comes to things like snakes.”

“I could have asked him.” Though I wasn’t anywhere near that certain age, I was never shy about speaking my mind, either. “But I don’t want him here.”

“He might not be afraid of snakes.”

“I might not be, either,” I said, because it was kinder than pointing out that no matter his assets (and there were many), Levi was, in fact, afraid of birds. Could snakes be far behind?

Along with jeans, a sweatshirt, and a thick jacket, I’d worn a pair of sturdy hiking boots, and I pointed down at them. “I’ll be fine,” I assured Luella. “With any luck, I’ll be all the way over to Wilder’s in just a few minutes.”

“Uh huh.” I pretended not to hear the skepticism in Luella’s voice. She swiveled her head to the right and squinted. As a lifelong islander she knew what I knew—Wilder’s was a little more than a mile away. Even on flat land, it would take me more than a few minutes to get there. “Why?” she asked.

I knew she would ask, and she had every right. After all, I had begged this favor of Luella: a few minutes on the
Miss Luella
to get to the beach close to where island natives claimed there were hidden caves. She had a group of fishermen waiting for her back at the dock, and I had no business wasting her time.

“Marianne consulted the harbor master’s records pertaining to one of the trips Sleepy took to Middle Island. According to what she found, it took him two hours to get back here from there.”

She turned to peer north. “Impossible. Unless he rowed across the lake! It’s only seven miles.”

“Exactly. I just wonder what else he might have been up to.”

One of Luella’s silvery brows slid up. “And that matters because it’s important to that book you’re trying to rewrite.”

Luella had, after all, been at the B and B the morning Jerry Garcia paid a visit and ruined the manuscript. She knew exactly what I was up to.

“I guess I’m just curious,” I admitted.

She pursed her lips. “Sleepy might have stopped at Middle Bass or North Bass,” she said, indicating the two nearby smaller and less-developed islands we could see not far offshore of South Bass.

“He might.” I’d already thought of that, too. “But if there’s any truth to the story, he might have had a secret spot where he offloaded his liquor.”

Luella waved a hand. “And you think it might be around here somewhere.”

“I looked over maps of the island last night. Lots and lots of maps. I talked to the old-timers who hang out at the café. This spot makes the most sense. Sleepy could have come from Middle Island, stowed the liquor, then gone to the harbor and docked his boat there. That would explain the missing two hours.”

“But what happened in those missing two hours more than eighty years ago doesn’t really matter, does it? You don’t care about this just because of Sleepy.”

I wasn’t surprised that Luella saw right through me. Chandra never would have. Chandra takes everyone and everything at face value and believes people are, at heart, good and honest. Kate, of course, wouldn’t have waited this long to ask me what I was really up to. But then, Kate’s as no-nonsense as anyone I’ve ever met. These days, she was also worried, silent, and disconnected from the friends who desperately wanted to help her.

Luella was more subtle. But no less practical.

I laid it on the line. “Kate was at the winery waiting for Noreen the night Noreen was killed. But Kate didn’t see her come in on any of the cameras. That means Noreen found another way in, and I wondered if it was through the series of caves that are supposed to be around here. Chandra confirmed it. She and Noreen got in through the caves.”

“You think that’s how the killer got in, too.”

“Either they were together, or the killer followed Noreen. Noreen knew the killer was coming. She was waiting for him so they could film that phony ghost scene together.”

“And that person wasn’t Kate.”

I puffed out a long breath of frustration. I’d told Luella all about what had happened with Chandra at the winery earlier in the day, so I didn’t need to catch her up on that part of my thinking. “You know it wasn’t Kate, Luella. And you know it wasn’t Chandra. So do I. I thought if I could go in through the caves the way Noreen and Chandra did—the way Noreen and her killer might have—I thought maybe I’ll see something or find something or . . .” I squeezed my hands into fists and grumbled with frustration. “Or I don’t know what! But I know I have to do something.”

“And what if you run into ol’ Sleepy down there?”

“You think I should be more afraid of the ghost than I am of the snakes?” I asked Luella.

“I think you should be careful.”

I assured her I would be, and that I’d be perfectly safe, too. I had experience as a caver, if only a casual one, and I wasn’t dumb. I had a personal GPS tracking device on me, as well as a lantern, flashlight, and a first aid kit in the backpack slung over my shoulder. Before she could convince me that it wasn’t the best idea in the world and that maybe I should reconsider, I hauled myself over the side of the
Miss Luella
and hopped onto the nearest large, flat rock. The snake that had been basking there in the sun did not appreciate the interruption. It reared, hissed, and—thank goodness—decided I wasn’t worth the effort. The last I saw of it, it was slithering over to another, smaller rock where there was just as much sun and less human interference.

One snake down, and who knew how many hundreds more to go.

Before the heebie-jeebies got the better of me, I turned to signal to Luella that it was all right for her to leave. I watched the boat head west toward the harbor and felt suddenly like a shipwrecked sailor marooned in the middle of nowhere.

“Ridiculous!” I reminded myself in a voice loud enough to annoy that third snake lounging nearby. It gave me a snaky little glare, settled down, and went right back to sleep. I was as ready as I’d ever be, and besides, I had no choice but to move forward. Now that the
Miss Luella
was long gone, I could stay exactly where I was and accomplish nothing at all, or start out along the beach. I was twenty yards from where I’d hopped off Luella’s boat when I finally found a dark, damp entrance tucked into the hillside.

“Like you expected a cave to be anything else?” I reminded myself.

I got out the flashlight and the battery-operated lantern and, thus armed, I edged into the cave. I’d gone no more than ten feet when I met a solid stone wall. So not what I’d been hoping for! I arced the beam of the flashlight left and right and relief washed over me. There was another opening not far away.

I splashed my way through nasty-smelling puddles and stood in openmouthed awe in a cavern with a high ceiling where stalagmites (or were they stalactites?) hung in suspended animation like stone icicles.

A noise from the coal-black darkness behind me sent me spinning around.

A footstep. I swear it was a footstep.

I glided the beam of my flashlight around the cavern, fighting to block out the noise of my own suddenly frantically beating heart.

Silence pressed on my ears, disturbed only now and again by the
ping
of dripping water.

Nothing else. No footsteps.

I told myself to get a grip and kept right on walking, and was rewarded for it when I finally saw a crude wooden door positioned in the rock wall in front of me.

I set down my lantern so I could use both hands to give the doorknob a tug. That’s when I heard another noise from the darkness behind: the sharp slap of a footfall against stone.

“Hey! Another cave explorer! I’ve got lanterns and flashlights,” I called out, forcing myself to sound like discovering someone else down there in the dark was actually a good thing. “Come on and join me and let’s see where this passage leads.”

Brave words.

Or at least they would have been if the dull echo of my own voice didn’t fall dead in the musty silence.

Like it or not, my mind flashed to Crown Hill Cemetery and that disturbing bit of shadow that had played hide-and-seek with us.

That is, right before it flashed to that long-unused storage room where I’d found Noreen’s body.

Panic manifested itself in my suddenly damp palms. I grabbed the doorknob in shaky fingers, but the wood around it was wet and rotted. When I pulled, the knob came off in my hand. I tossed the old knob on the ground, stuck a hand through the opening left by the missing doorknob, braced my fingers against the far side of the door, and pulled.

The door whooshed open and a sickening, rotted smell filled my nose. I found myself in a room walled with bricks laid in a basket-weave pattern, just like the room in which I’d found Noreen and the battered plasmometer, and I forced myself to visualize what these rooms had been like back in the day when both Grandma Carrie and Sleepy Harlow had lived on the island. The winery had used this room and others like it for storage, but I could also see why they had been eventually abandoned. This close to the shoreline, mold stained the walls in long black streaks, and water pooled on the floor. If I bent an ear and listened very carefully, I could hear the sound of the lake just on the other side of the wall. There were rotted wooden shelves here, too, just like there were in the room where I’d found Noreen, and there was something on one of those shelves.

I froze, the beam of my flashlight trained on an old wooden box.

“Treasure chest?”

Even to my own ears, the words sounded ridiculous. But the siren call of them was impossible to resist. I carefully stepped around a wide, deep hole that must somehow have been directly connected to the lake; the water in it swished back and forth.

Like there was some primordial creature breathing in there.

I slapped the thought aside, grabbed on to the box, and flipped open the top.

There was a layer of fabric inside, and I carefully unwrapped it and found a stack of letters wrapped with ribbon, along with something else—something that winked and flashed in the beam of my flashlight.

I was so busy reaching inside to see what it might be, I didn’t realize that I felt a change in the air and by the time I did, it was already too late. A cold gust of musty air crawled over my neck and down the back of my jacket, and I spun around.

I barely had time to react before something hard whacked me in the side of my head.

My arms flew out to my sides and my knees locked. Right before stars burst behind my eyes and I crumbled onto the wet stone floor, my flashlight beam arced across the room, and for one terrifying moment, I caught sight of my attacker.

There was no mistaking the black, gaping hole where his head should have been.

  19  

C
old water tickled my nose.

Somewhere inside my thumping head, I knew this was a bad thing, and automatically, I lifted a hand that felt as if it were made of cast iron to brush the water away.

Just as I had hoped, the slimy water retreated. For like half a second. Then it washed back at me. I gasped, and it rushed into my mouth.

I choked, and spit and gagged. I sat up like a shot, and when my eyes flew open, I found myself in total, impenetrable darkness.

My heart raced, and panic didn’t just lick at the edges of my composure—it tore it away completely with sharp-edged teeth. My jeans were soaked. My hair was wet. My head felt like a split coconut.

For I don’t know how long, it was all I could do to keep from falling back down onto the wet floor and curling into a fetal position. That is, until consciousness rose like the quickly climbing water. Or maybe it was that chilly, foul-smelling water itself that made me shake myself back to reality. With what felt like a kick from a mule, I remembered that I’d been attacked, and the quick glimpse I’d had of the man without the head.

At least his didn’t hurt like hell.

Not funny,
I told myself.

This was no time to be funny.

The water inched up to my ankles and I remembered the hole I’d seen in the floor, the one I’d guessed was directly connected to the lake. Looks like I was right. There are no tides on the Great Lakes, not like there are in oceans, but there are what are called
seiches
.

“Saysh.” Slowly and carefully, my tongue too thick and my throat too dry, I pronounced the word the way I’d heard islanders say it, and thought about how they’d explained it: When wind pushes down on one part of a lake, water in other parts automatically rises. It made sense. Even to a physics-challenged person like me. Those waves undulate back and forth, back and forth, like water in a bathtub. Seiches can affect the lake for days after the kinds of strong storms we’d had earlier in the week. I’m no scientist, never have been, but I knew the seiche was making the water rise out of that hole and fill the cavern where I’d been lying unconscious since being attacked.

“You’ve got to get out of here, Bea,” I told myself. Good plan. Too bad the voice that echoed back at me from the darkness didn’t sound anywhere near as brave as I’d hoped it would.

Hanging on to the wooden shelves I’d seen when I arrived at the storage room, I managed to get to my feet, and I kicked through the water, hoping to make contact with my flashlight or my lantern.

No luck, and no way I was going to search with my hands. I wasn’t so out of it that I’d forgotten the lews.

My hands slick and unsteady, I got my phone out of my pocket and turned on the flashlight app.

When I confirmed that I was alone in the storeroom, I let go a shaky breath.

No headless ghost.

I shined the light in the direction of the watery hole I’d discovered earlier and saw that now, it looked more like a pond than simply a puddle. Water slapped my shins.

I needed to find a way out of the old storeroom.

And fast.

I’d already started to feel my way along the wall, the wooden shelves as my guide, when I remembered the box I’d been looking through when I was bushwhacked. Step by careful step, I made my way back to the other side of the room, aiming my light at the shelves and grumbling a curse when I saw that the box was gone.

“You fell, it fell.” I wasn’t sure how good the theory was, but at least it gave me hope. If nothing else, there in that lightless room with the cold water inching higher every moment, hope was what I needed.

I shined my light under the shelves, and the first thing I saw was a fat lews, looking decidedly unhappy at being disturbed.

“Not going to panic,” I told myself, backing away. “Not going to panic.”

I knew the mantra would calm me only so long.

My heart in my throat, my stomach tied in painful knots that tightened by the second, I ignored the reptile and kept on looking.

When the light landed on the wooden box, I admit it, I hummed a bit of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Water had already starting licking at the stack of letters inside the box, and I couldn’t take the chance that they’d get even wetter. I closed my eyes (yeah, like that was going to help if there was a snake hiding under the fabric that lined the box), grabbed the letters, and felt around for the shiny object I’d seen in the instant before I got conked. My fingers closed over something cold and metallic, and I stuffed that in the inside pocket of my jacket along with the letters, made sure there was nothing else in the box, and knew it was time to get out of Dodge.

There was less chance that the headless ghost went toward the winery than there was that he was hiding out in the caverns through which I’d already come, so I focused on finding the door that would lead me to the next old storeroom. Thank goodness, it wasn’t far away.

The moment I stepped into it, drippy, smelly, and grateful, I knew where I was.

It was the storeroom where I’d found Noreen’s body.

*   *   *

One shower didn’t seem like enough, so when I got home, I took two: one to get rid of the stench of mold, and the other to soothe my aching muscles and calm my still-shattered nerves.

The way I figured it, a glass of really good Chilean Carménère wouldn’t hurt, either.

With EGG gone for the evening, I had the house to myself, and I put on my favorite jammies (the ones with the pink flamingoes on them), built a fire in the parlor, and poked and prodded it until the blaze was bright and the heat of the flames seeped through me and warmed me inside and out.

It was only then and with half the glass of wine gone that I allowed myself to think about what had happened earlier that day.

Of course I knew that headless assailant who conked me in the cavern wasn’t really Sleepy Harlow. I mean, not the real Sleepy Harlow, the dead Sleepy Harlow. It was someone who was playing our local ghost; maybe the same someone Noreen had arranged to take Chandra’s place. Someone who didn’t want me poking around in his business.

A shiver skittered over my shoulders, and I grabbed for the knitted afghan I kept on the back of the couch and tugged it over my shoulders.

Between headless mobsters, dark caverns, and snakes—I couldn’t help it, I shivered again—I was pretty sure I’d never calm my jumpy stomach.

I needed a distraction, and I found it in the form of the letters I’d brought out of the cavern with me. With the flames cracking and throwing a soft orange glow, I untied the ribbon bound around the letters and started looking them over.

Two hours later, I was no closer to discovering who killed Noreen.

But I had learned some pretty amazing things.

It was almost enough to make me forget my headache.

*   *   *

The ghost getters got in very late, and by then, I was totally wiped. From the place where I’d fallen asleep on the parlor couch, I listened to them spill into the house and climb up the stairs, promising myself I’d waylay them one by one in the morning.

I was as good as my word, and when breakfast was done, I made my move.

“Hey, Liam.” He was about to disappear back upstairs to listen for recorded EVPs, or look for spooky evidence on video, or take a nap—whatever it was ghost getters did when they weren’t getting ghosts. Lucky for me, Liam was too polite to plow right through me. And I was too smart to move away from the bottom of the stairway so he could get around me.

I glanced toward the parlor. “I was wondering if you could help me.”

Liam was a muscular guy with short arms, thick hands, and cheeks like a bulldog’s. He yelled up the stairs to tell Dimitri he’d be up in a couple of minutes, and when I waved my hand, Vanna-like, toward the parlor, he stepped inside.

He breathed in deep. “You made a fire last night.”

“It was chilly.”

He shifted from foot to foot. “So . . . you saw another entity?”

I couldn’t stand the thought of stringing him along. “Nothing like that. It’s just that . . . I heard you and Dimitri talking the other day and you said you could really use your plasmometer. I thought—”

“You’re going to talk to the cops for us?” A smile washed over his doughy face. “That’s great!”

I didn’t make any promises. That much is to my credit. I also didn’t tell him he was dead wrong. I guess that pretty much canceled out the credit.

“I thought you could tell me more about it,” I said.

“The plasmometer? Oh yeah, sure. So you can explain it to the cops, make them realize that we really need it. I figured they didn’t have the slightest idea what the thing is or why it’s such an important piece of equipment.”

Not exactly the way I’d heard it from Noreen’s lips on that video she made right before she died. For now, I was keeping that bit of info under wraps.

“Noreen designed the plasmometer, right? And you built it according to her specifications.”

“That’s right. I can’t take credit for anything other than following the plans. Noreen, she was the genius. She was the one who was brilliant.”

There was that word again. Just like last time I’d spoken to Liam.

“So how does something like the plasmometer happen?” I asked, and I didn’t have to pretend to be interested. I was as curious about the machine as I was about the death of the “genius” who’d invented it. “I mean, you don’t just wake up one day and say you’re going to invent a device that will make it possible for ghosts to manifest, do you?”

“If you’re dedicated to your profession, you do,” Liam told me.

Call me crazy, but I thought a woman who staged a ghostly apparition just so she could film it was anything but dedicated.

“I get that,” I said, even though I really didn’t. “I mean, when you’re really into something like paranormal investigations, it’s all you think about. You want to spend every day improving your craft.”

“Exactly.” Liam perched himself on the arm of the couch, then thought better of it. I was grateful. He was a beefy guy, and it was an expensive couch. “We tried some other things back in the day. You know, some other equipment that we bought. Then we built a few pieces of our own. But none of it worked. I mean, not like the Turner Plasmometer. Genius. That thing is nothing but pure genius.”

“And you’re going to build another one.”

“If we can’t get ours back. Or if we can’t repair ours.” Liam darted toward the doorway. “You want to see the plans?”

He didn’t have to ask me twice.

Within five minutes we were in the kitchen, where Liam unrolled the plans for the plasmometer on the counter. With a dramatic gesture, he stepped back so I could get a better look.

I forgave him the drama. After all, he was on television, or he would be soon. And apparently, an invention of this magnitude deserved something of a drumroll.

The plans were on sixteen by twenty paper, and they reminded me of a blueprint.

Well, a blueprint drawn by a Jack Russell. On a caffeine high. And taking steroids.

There at the center of the paper was a rough sketch of the plasmometer, and around it lines and zigzags and arrows pointed to various parts of the machine and labeled what each was. That made sense to me.

What didn’t was the rest of the mess.

Coffee stains.

Words crossed out.

Erasures.

Some parts of the plan were drawn with even, careful lines and inked in to be easily readable. Other parts of it were filled in with orange crayon.

Some portions of the drawing were so detailed and meticulous, I could see how Liam would have had an easy time following them. Others were smudged and caked with something brown.

I bent closer and sniffed.

Peanut butter.

“Didn’t any of this make you suspicious?” I asked Liam.

“Any of . . .” He glanced down at the plans. “Oh, you mean the smudges and stuff? Why would it? Hey, I might not have a great scientific mind. I mean, not like Noreen. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate brilliance. You know, creative energy and all that.”

“But Noreen was . . .” I didn’t think I needed to soften my words. Not for Liam. After all, he’d worked with Noreen.