Unhappy Medium (15 page)

Ted looked up at me like he’d given up hope I was going to acknowledge him.

“It was a really interesting scrapbook,” I said. “I don’t think I got a chance to thank you.”

“No, I was glad to … get it for you.”

Ted’s feet were apparently quite fascinating, because he resumed looking at them.

“Well, I have a question. For either of you, or both of you. Wasn’t someone murdered in room 504 that year, 1888?”

Ted’s mouth dropped open, and his mother laughed.

“Ouch. You’ve found one of the skeletons in our closet,” Alex said, but she sounded far more amused than concerned.

“Do you know anything about it?” I asked.

“A little bit,” Alex said. “It was a young woman from Massachussetts, as I recall. Traveling alone, no family. Killed in her
room well after midnight. Stabbed, as I recall it.”

Definitely stabbed.

“And they never caught who did it?” I asked.

Alex glanced at her son.

“Oh, they caught him all right. He was staying in the room across the hall from hers.”

My room.

“There was a theory at the time that they were actually meeting at the hotel — that perhaps they were sweethearts, planning
on running off together. And then something happened. And he killed her. Turned himself in the next morning. Young man by
the name of Philip Kenyon.”

“Kenyon?”

“One of the cousins,” Ted said. “That’s why that part of it was hushed up. The Kenyons had a lot of influence locally in those
days. They couldn’t sweep the murder totally under the rug, but they kept cousin Philip’s name out of the papers.”

“There was part of an article in the scrapbook,” I said. “Just the headline and a few sentences — the rest had been ripped
out.”

“Granny strikes again,” Ted said, and Alex gave a hoot of laughter.

“My mother-in-law,” she told me. “The year she married into the Kenyon family, she went through all the scrapbooks and tore
out anything even remotely unpleasant. That’s why almost no one today knows what happened. Which reminds me — how did you
know it was room 504? I didn’t think anyone had that detail but family.”

I smiled cryptically.

“Just a hunch,” I said.

“One heck of a hunch,” Ted said, giving me a very curious look.

Jac had been slowly edging toward us, and now she stepped up to my elbow and cleared her throat.

“This is my friend Jac,” I said. “Ted Kenyon, and his mom Alex Kenyon.”

“The one that —,” Jac began.

I stepped firmly on Jac’s foot.

“We’re going to hike Skytop,” I said.

“Oh, that’s a great hike,” Ted said. “You can see for miles in every direction up there.”

“You should show your friend the labyrinth, too,” Alex said, a twinkle in her eyes. She leaned toward me.

“You know, since you’re learning all our secrets anyway, the labyrinth annex is supposed to be haunted.”

“Is it really?” I said, pretending to look surprised. From the way Alex was looking at me, I wondered just how much she’d
guessed about me.

“Yeah, by a little girl. The daughter of a maid. The child died of influenza in 1915 or ’16, I think. The labyrinth annex
was her favorite place. They say you can see her skipping through it sometimes, holding something … a doll, I think it
might have been, or …”

“A kitten,” I said innocently.

Alex’s eyebrows shot up.

“Now that you mention it, I think it was a kitten.”

“Well, we should get going,” I said. “Are you ready, Jac?”

“Well, if the labyrinth is haunted, I want to go there,” Jac declared.

“No way you’re getting out of this hike. We’ll go later. Bye!”

I waved to Ted and then to Alex, who was standing and staring at me with a half smile on her face.

Jac and I were walking toward the path when Ted called after me.

“Kat?”

I turned around.

“If you want, give me your e-mail address. I mean, if you’re still interested in the Spiritualists. Or anything. I could send
stuff to you. Or my mom could.”

I grinned.

“My e-mail address is MediumGirl @nowmail.com,” I told him.

And without waiting for his or his mother’s reaction, I turned on my heel and departed.

That is my real e-mail address, by the way.

Jac and I talked about everything under the sun as we trudged up the wide and pineneedle carpeted trail. It was like our fight
had never happened, but better. I was really excited about getting to the top and seeing the view that Ted had mentioned.
I loved seeing things from a different perspective. There was always something you could see clearly that you had never noticed
before, even though it had been there all along.

Who knew — by the time we reached the top, I might even be ready to tell Jac her mom had a touch of the second sight.

I was keeping my options open, though.