Cooking Up Trouble (15 page)

She poured him a glass of wine and then told him about her afternoon with Danny—her belief that he was Moira’s son and that Quint was his grandfather.

Paavo had expected something like that and was glad Angie could confirm it.

She went on to tell him about Susannah’s diaries and Jack Sempler’s letters.

“So,” Angie said as she finished the tale, “we now need to consider a missing heir lurking around somewhere—a grandchild or even great-grandchild of Jack and Elise. What if the missing heir is here, with us? What if he, or she, is one of the guests? Then wouldn’t it make sense that he or she would kill off Finley and Moira, then reclaim the property?”

“There are a few problems with that,” Paavo said. “First of all, Benjamin was illegitimate. It’d have to be proven that Jack Sempler was in fact his father. Remember, Jack had been away for a while. No one knows what Elise was doing to ease her heartbreak. Also, Susannah inherited
Jack’s share of the property upon his death. That part of the inheritance would have to be overturned. Then, depending on what Susannah’s will stipulated—”

“All right, all right. Still, it seemed plausible to me.” She rubbed her eyes, feeling herself growing weary. “Maybe the heir is just really pissed off that Moira and Finley are living here instead of him or her, and for that reason decided to kill them.”

“Then why is Patsy missing?”

“Maybe she saw who bumped off Finley?”

“That’s all too possible. Much as I hate to think it, it seems one of these people must have killed him, the cook, and maybe even Patsy.”

“What a group,” Angie said. “Right before our very eyes—greed, hypocrisy, con artistry, lust, naïveté, self-delusion, arrogance. Just about every frailty except gluttony.” Then she remembered Chelsea’s stash of candy and the way she and Chelsea devoured it. All right—gluttony, too.”

“Given all that,” Paavo said, “what was the one thing that drove someone to murder?”

“I don’t know.” Angie took another sip of her wine, then lay her head against the back of the chair and shut her eyes. “Maybe no one killed anyone. Finley cracked his head on a rock as he fell, Patsy jumped and was carried out to sea, and Miss Greer’s heart gave out. All we have to worry about is Running Spirit starving to death because he won’t shut up long enough to eat.”

Between not having a decent night’s sleep since she arrived and drinking a glass of wine now, she knew she wasn’t making much sense. Who cared, anyway? She was weary, but sleeping was one thing she wasn’t going to do. She planned to stay awake and find out exactly what it was that kept Paavo occupied every night.

Besides that, going to sleep in this place seemed just a little too dangerous. You might not ever wake up again.

She yawned. My eyes are open, she told herself. My eyes are open. My eyes…

Suddenly, she felt herself being lifted. She put her arms around Paavo’s neck as he carried her to the bed, then set her down on it and pulled the covers over her. “You’ve had a busy day, little one,” he said, then kissed her.

She shut her eyes, a warm, lethargic feeling coming over her. “I’m not going to sleep,” she whispered as her eyes fluttered shut.

Angie awoke with a start
. In the darkness of the room, it took her a moment to orient herself, to remember the inn and the ongoing nightmare her vacation had become.

The chilling sound of Elise Sempler’s cries broke the silence.

She turned, flinging her arm across an empty bed. Paavo wasn’t beside her, but then he hadn’t been throughout their few days together.

“Paavo?” It was foolish to call, perhaps, but she was always a fool where he was concerned.

The room, the inn, seemed absolutely still.

She checked the dressing room and bathroom. As she’d expected, Paavo wasn’t there. She opened the door to the hallway and peered down it. Only a small night-light lit the long corridor.

The memory of the diary and letters she’d read came back to her, and she could imagine Susannah, alone in this house, looking down this very hall, thinking she heard a strange noise in the night.

She shut the door and jumped into bed, pulling the covers up to her neck.

Paavo must be downstairs with the others. Maybe, hearing the sounds of Elise, he went off to investigate. Decided to check on Moira. Went to her bedroom…

Impossible! She was letting her imagination run wild.

Slowly, as she came more and more awake, the quiet of the night struck her. The rain had stopped, and so had Elise’s cries. For the moment, at least. Angie sat up. That’s no ghost, she told herself. And with startling clarity, she knew her thought was the absolute truth. Who or what was making that noise? And why? Why was anyone going to such lengths to scare her and the others at the inn into believing the place was haunted?

She threw back the covers and went to the window. The soft mist created a halo around the moon. Beyond the lawn, the trees appeared as no more than black shadows. Just as she was ready to turn away, a beam of light appeared back by the trees. It seemed to be moving. A flashlight?

She could just make out a shape—Paavo! She’d know that man anywhere.

Quickly putting on her shoes and a robe, she stuck her head into the corridor and listened. No sobs from Elise, no strange thumps, not even humanlike footsteps. Scurrying down the hall, she paused by Chelsea’s door. No sounds of Jack Sempler, either.

She flew down the stairs and out the front door.

As she ran across the lawn, her pale robe billowing, the mist swirling, and the moonlight streaming down upon her, she gave a quick glance back to the dark mansion. She felt like the heroine on the cover of a gothic novel.

But no supernatural mystery was involved here. The troubles at the inn were being caused by a very human, very dangerous person. That realization was a lot more
frightening than the possibility of it being one, or even three, unhappy spirits.

The flashlight she’d seen from her window had either been turned off or Paavo had gone in another direction, because ahead of her all was dark. Reaching the trees and shrubbery where she’d seen the light from her bedroom, she stayed on the edge of the lawn area and strained to see into the thicket. “Paavo?” she called in a loud whisper. “Paavo? Are you here?”

Suddenly someone grabbed her arm. She began to scream when a hand clamped down over her mouth.

“Ouch! Angie, stop kicking and don’t yell. You’ll wake up the whole house.” He lifted his hand from her mouth. “What are you doing out here?”

“What were you trying to do? Scare me to death?”

A voice from behind Paavo slurred, “Don’t be annoyed, fair damsel. He was trying to save me.” Martin Bayman leaned against a tree, swinging a bottle of bourbon as he spoke. “Trying to save me from the creatures of the night, from the powers of the occult, and most of all, from myself.” With that, he attempted to bow with a flourish, and nearly toppled over.

“I heard some noise,” Paavo explained. He grabbed hold of the shoulder of Martin’s jacket and helped Martin stay upright. “I looked out the window and there was Martin sitting on the lawn. I came out to see what was wrong.”

“I’d slipped on the wet grass,” Martin said, still swaying. “That’s all. No need for worry. Never need for worry. Eat, drink, and be merry. As long as it’s not soybeans or soy milk.”

“Are you all right?” Angie asked.

“Just fine, lovely lady.”

She glanced at Paavo. “Should we get him inside and up to bed?”

“The problem is, Angelina,” Martin waved her closer, then changed his voice to a stage whisper, “I don’t want to go inside. And I want to go to bed even less. How easy do you think it is to live with someone who channels?”

Angie felt a sinking in the pit of her stomach as she saw how the clever, poetic man under the moonlight was now reduced to this slurring mess. “I don’t know. I never have,” she said.

“Well, don’t, if you can avoid it.” Martin hiccuped. He grabbed hold of a low-lying branch, then tottered as the branch swung from side to side. “Bethel’s been at it for years and years. She’s got quite a following. Or at least she used to have. Once lots of people wondered what Allakazam had to say. Lots and lots of people. In the sixties, he used to talk—should I say yak?—about planetary cooling and the coming of the next ice age. These days he worries about just the opposite—the polar ice cap melting and drowning us all.”

“Maybe we should help you inside,” Angie said, trying to take hold of his arm.

He kept moving it out of reach, and the branch he held swayed further, making him totter more, like a drunken Tarzan, until Angie stepped away, afraid she was doing more harm than good.

“Did you know that Bethel still has people who throw good money at her to get this joker’s advice on how to deal with global warming? Who would know better than a dead Eskimo, right?”

Martin planted his feet, let go of the branch, then started to unscrew the cap on his bourbon bottle. Paavo reached out and stopped him. “Time to go in now, Martin,” he said firmly. He took Martin’s arm with no trouble and began walking toward the house.

“Go in, goin’, gone!” Martin shouted, waving his arm,
then turned around to go in the opposite direction. “Beautiful dawn,” he cried to the sky. “No, poor dawn. It’s time for Running Mouth to come out and destroy you.”

“Destroy dawn?” Angie asked, walking around in circles beside Martin as Paavo tried to get him headed toward the inn.

“If he’s not astrally projecting himself,” Martin said, “he’s out here beating on his drum trying to commune with his brotherhood or sisterhood or whatever damn thing he last heard he was supposed to commune with. Why the hell doesn’t he project himself into another dimension?”

“Maybe he should have been called Drumming Spirit,” Angie suggested.

Martin stopped moving around. He laughed bitterly, then said, “I wish to God and the devil he’d turn into Disappearing Spirit.”

Angie grabbed his other arm and she and Paavo were finally able to steer Martin toward the house.

“Have you and Bethel known Running Spirit long?” Angie asked.

Martin tried to think. “Five days? Six? It seems like an eternity. No, actually we met Greg Jeffers the first day. Then he had a session with Moira and found out that he was Running Spirit in another life. Or something like that. Who the hell knows anymore? Who cares? It’s all over, anyway.”

“What’s over?” Paavo asked.

“It was supposed to be empty. That was the whole idea.”

Angie asked, “What was supposed to be empty?”

“Let me ask you,” Martin began. “Does this look like a well-run establishment?”

Paavo frowned as he and Angie took hold of Martin’s
arms again. “It doesn’t look like anything in the middle of the night. Come on, Bayman.”

“Nanook of the North told her to worry, but Nanook never explains anything. I’m the one who has to do that. It’s all up to me.” Martin looked at Paavo. “She’s thinking of opening an institute. To study psychic phenomena. Can you believe it? She thinks she’ll attract government grants. She’ll probably attract the IRS. Then what?”

“Come on, Martin,” Angie said soothingly. “Let’s get you inside.”

“There’s no money in it. I know how to get money. Disneyland. That’s the way.”

“Let’s go, Martin,” Angie coaxed.

“No, listen.” He stopped walking. “A Disneyland for the ages—the New Ages—get it? I’ve got it all worked out.”

“I’m sure you do,” Angie said as she and Paavo finally got him walking toward the house again.

“All those books, all those talk shows, and where are we now? Too much competition. Channelers are coming out of the woodwork. Like cockroaches.”

“Aren’t you a believer, Martin?” Angie asked.

“What does it matter?” He sighed wearily as Paavo walked up to the front door and held it open for him. “One way or the other, ‘The ghosts are gonna get you if you don’t watch out.’”

Angie sat on the bed
, Paavo in a chair.

“Is everyone acting stranger than ever, Paavo, or is it just my imagination?” Angie asked.

“It’s not your imagination at all.” Paavo’s expression was as grim as his words.

“It’s as if this inn is part of a spring that’s being wound tighter with each passing day we’re stuck here,” Angie said. “Whoever killed Finley for sure never imagined we’d be marooned here. They probably thought the investors and townspeople would travel back and forth, arguing and hurling threats about opening the inn. If, in the midst of all that, Finley was discovered murdered, there’d have been all kinds of suspects.”

“Instead of just one houseful,” Paavo added.

“I wonder if Miss Greer might not have died, or if Patsy might not have disappeared. Now, though, how much more will whoever is behind this try to get away with?”

Paavo shook his head. “Whoever’s behind it all is smart. Smart enough to know the noose is tightening with
every passing day, with every statement made. There’s a possibility that someone will slip, that something will be said or done that will turn suspicion around to the right person.”

“Besides the murderer worrying about getting caught, the others see people dying or disappearing—and are getting more and more nervous that the same will happen to them. No wonder it’s as if we’re sitting on a powder keg ready to ignite.”

“It’ll blow soon, Angie.”

“Will it?”

She never heard his answer. They jumped up. The sound of a crash from the next room had jarred them. Was it danger, or just an accident? Then a voice, a woman’s, was crying out for help.

“Oh, God!” Angie cried. “Chelsea!”

Paavo grabbed his .38 revolver from the bureau. Angie hurried down the hall behind him. He tried Chelsea’s door. It was locked. Ramming it hard with his shoulder, the door and frame sprang apart. Chelsea screamed again.

Paavo flicked on the lights.

“In there,” she cried, pointing at the dressing room.

Paavo stepped to the side of the dressing room door. Holding his gun barrel up, he pushed the door open. Once, twice, he darted his head to look into the room, and when no one shot at him, he entered. The dressing room and the bathroom beyond were empty.

The walls in the dressing room were paneled—the kind that opened up in old movies to reveal secret passages. But that was only in the movies, wasn’t it? God, Paavo thought, he was starting to think like Angie.

Chelsea sat on her bed in Angie’s arms, sobbing quietly. Swathed in a loosely billowing pink ruffled cotton
nightgown, she looked three times bigger than Angie, rather than the usual two.

“What happened?” Paavo asked her as he slid the gun under the waistband at his back.

“I’m not sure.” Chelsea’s sobs grew louder. Her body shook like warm custard. “I was asleep, and suddenly I felt someone in the room with me. I reached for the lamp but knocked it over. I saw him step forward, almost as if he were going to help. I screamed, hoping you’d hear. Thank God you did.”

“Then he ran into the dressing room?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes!”

“Describe him to me, Chelsea, as best you can.”

“I don’t know!” she wailed. “It was so dark.”

“It’s all right, Chelsea. Take your time.” Paavo sat on the edge of the bed. His voice nearly purred. Angie gawked—she’d never heard him sound that way outside of the bedroom. “All I’m wondering is if he was big or little, short or tall.”

“He didn’t move.” Chelsea pulled at her thick red hair. “He was just a blob. A scary blob.”

“What was your impression?”

“Big. Huge, actually.”

“Do you mean muscular or just heavy?” Paavo asked. “Was he big like Running Spirit?”

“Running…” Chelsea stopped speaking as she thought a long, long moment. “I couldn’t say. To me, he seemed a lot bigger than even Running Spirit. More like the ghost of John Wayne.”

“Running Spirit, of course!” Angie jumped up. “That loud-mouthed blowhard, that disgusting creep. After the nasty things he was saying at dinner, who else—”

“No!” Chelsea covered her ears.

“I think we should find him.” Angie waved her fists in the air, more convinced with every word she spoke. “Confront him and see what he has to say for himself!”

“Don’t!” Chelsea screeched. “Please, don’t do that.”

“Leave it for now, Angie,” Paavo said. “We have no proof. Anyway, whenever someone breaks into a person’s room or house, the intruder seems to be at least ten feet tall.”

“Who else could it be?” she asked.

He looked back at Chelsea. “Are you certain it was a man?”

“Well…”

“Could it have been a woman?” he asked.

“I thought…maybe…it was…Jack.”

Paavo and Angie glanced at each other, then back to Chelsea.

Her face fell. “You’re right. It couldn’t have been Jack. He wouldn’t have scared me. He wouldn’t have run off.” She covered her face in her hands. “Good God, am I a fool to have believed Finley Tay? I just don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe I just imagined the whole thing.”

“Can you think of anything said to you or that you overheard,” Paavo asked, “that made you feel uneasy in anyway?”

She rubbed her forehead. “Don’t we all feel uneasy with these deaths?” Her eyes began to tear again.

“What if whatever happened to Patsy,” Angie said slowly, “happened the same way? Someone might have been watching her, then grabbed her. She was awfully frazzled that last day before she disappeared. We all thought it was because of Running Spirit and Moira. But what if it was a lot more than that? What if the killer is after us, all of us, for another reason, a reason we haven’t
figured out yet? He or she went after Finley, Miss Greer, Patsy, now Chelsea—”

“Angie, enough!” Paavo ordered.

Chelsea was close to hysterics. Angie patted her hand. “I’m sorry,” Angie said. “I just wanted to consider all sides of this, since the sheriff obviously doesn’t think it’s important to come here to protect us.”

“You saw the road, Angie,” Paavo said. “Even after it stops raining, he’ll have to dig his way in.”

“They could send a helicopter.”

“In this storm? And he has no reason to think there’s any emergency.”

“That’s just ducky. Before Butz bothers to think anything, how many more of us will have been killed?”

“Oh, God!” Chelsea wailed. “I want to go home.”

“We
all
want to go home.” Angie helped Chelsea put on her robe, then took her hand and pulled her from her bed. “You’re not staying here alone tonight. Come to our room.”

A flicker of relief lit Chelsea’s eyes, but she pulled her hand free. “No, I couldn’t intrude that way.”

“It’s no intrusion,” Paavo said. “Angie’s right. You shouldn’t be alone after this.”

“Thank you.” Chelsea picked up her pillow and hugged it against herself as she walked with Angie and Paavo down the hall.

Once back in their room, Paavo took his pillow from the bed and tossed it onto a chair by the fireplace. “You ladies get into bed. I’ve got a few things I want to check out.”

“I couldn’t take your bed,” Chelsea said.

“It’s all right. I wasn’t planning to use it tonight anyway.” He glanced at Angie and remembered his fleeting thought of making up with her when he first came up to the room tonight. It seemed like centuries ago. “Not
much, at least.” He took his gun from the back of his waistband and put it on the nightstand next to Angie. “Keep this near, in case you hear anything strange.”

“A gun?” Chelsea cried. “Oh, my God.”

Angie couldn’t believe Paavo would leave them. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to check out her room. There’s got to be another way out of it. Men don’t disappear.”

Angie stood up. “I’m going with you.”

“Don’t leave Chelsea alone.”

Angie saw that Chelsea was still fixated on the gun. “I guess you’re right. But be careful.” She ran across the room, threw her arms around him, and kissed him.

Paavo held her close, then gave a single nod and left the room.

Paavo eased open the door to Chelsea’s room. Before entering, he checked to see if anyone was there or if anything had been disturbed. It appeared the same as when they left it.

Shutting the door so softly he could scarcely hear it latch, he tiptoed across the room to the dressing room. Carefully eyeing the way the clothes hung in the closet to see which might have been disturbed, the nap on the carpet to see where someone might have stepped, and the way the panels fit into the walls, he found the spot where a secret panel would be—if one in fact existed.

He racked his brain trying to remember the things he’d learned in robbery detail about the various kinds of doors and latches and ways to break into them. He remembered that a lot of them used a spring latch mechanism that simply required two spots to be pressed at once. Remembering that most people didn’t have the
height or long arms that he did, he shortened his reach. All of a sudden, when he wasn’t even too sure which magic duo he’d touched, the panel sprang open.

He pushed the panel open as far as it would go—it was hinged on one side like a door—and went into the passage. No lights or light switches. In Chelsea’s room there’d been a gaggle of candles of varying sizes and thicknesses, arranged in a circle on her dresser. He went into the bedroom, picked up the largest, and lit it.

Back in the passageway, he saw that the walls hadn’t been finished but showed the beams that held the building’s structure.

As he descended the stairs, he felt more and more like a character in a Vincent Price film. At the bottom stood a panel much like the one he’d entered from. He placed his fingers along the edges near the spots where the spring locks had been placed upstairs and pushed. The panel sprang ajar and began to turn.

“What’s that?” Chelsea asked as she sat up on the bed, clutching the blanket to her breast.

Angie stopped stoking the fire. Her fingers tightened on the poker. The rain had stopped, and now soft keening sounds could be heard. “Someone’s crying.”

“Elise Sempler,” Chelsea whispered.

“Or someone in the inn trying to make people believe in ghosts for their own crude purposes—like what happened to you tonight.”

“No, it’s real.”

As abruptly as it started, the sound stopped. “I guess she’s gone back to sleep,” Angie said. “We should, too.”

“I think the sound came from outside,” Chelsea whispered.

“Let’s take a look.” Angie shut the off lights in the bedroom to better see and the two crept to the windows. As they neared, the cries began again. She found Chelsea’s hand and held on tight.

A misty, whitish glow appeared at the edge of the cliffs, then disappeared almost as quickly. A few seconds later it appeared again, but only for an instant. This happened three more times before it disappeared altogether. The cries were heard twice more. Angie watched, fascinated, unsure what she was seeing.

“It’s Elise!” Chelsea exclaimed. “And seeing her proves that Jack is here. Maybe it was Jack in my room.”

Angie frowned. “If it was Jack, he sure isn’t the man you thought he was.”

Paavo stepped into the library. He’d always thought tales about secret passageways in old houses were a myth. He learned now that he’d been wrong. Someone, who was it? had said old Ezra Sempler was a survivalist. Was that why he had secret passages and panels put in the house? What else had he built here?

He opened the door to the hall and looked up and down. No one was there. Creeping down the hall toward Finley and Moira’s quarters, he heard voices.

“I don’t care what you say!” It was Moira.

“You can’t blame me for this, Moira. It’s your fault. All of it is,” Running Spirit said.

“I hate you!”

“Do you, now? How can I believe that when you asked that I come here and head my own ashram?”

“I never did any such thing!” Moira’s voice was indignant.

Running Spirit gave a low, crude snort. “Finley told
me all about it. How you’ve wanted me all these years. How we have to get Patsy out of the way.”

“Anything between us was a lifetime ago. You made your decision then. It’s taken a lot of years, but now I can thank you for it. You did me a big favor.”

“Bitch!”

“How articulate of you.”

“I’m warning you, Moira. This inn is the answer to a lifetime of dreams. I won’t give it up. Do you understand me?”

“This inn will be mine soon, and I’ll throw you out of it.”

“Yours? The bank’s, you mean. Without Patsy’s and my backing, you’ll lose it even faster than Finley would have. With Patsy’s money, I’ll get it—and anything else I want. Including you.”

“How do you know Patsy’s dead?”

“She’s got to be. There’s no way she wouldn’t be with me if she was still alive.”

“You’re so damned arrogant. Same as ever.”

Paavo heard Running Spirit’s loud laughter. “Good night, Moira, love. Pleasant dreams.”

Paavo ducked back into the shadows. Moira’s “Go to hell,” reverberated in the hallway as Jeffers left her room, chuckling to himself.

Paavo quietly entered his bedroom. The glow from the fireplace was the only light. He tiptoed over to the bed.

Angie and Chelsea lay back to back, fast asleep. He stood and watched them for a moment. The thought struck him that that might have been what Jack Sempler was doing, just standing there watching her sleep, when Chelsea woke up and saw him. God, he thought, he was
likening his actions to those of a ghost. This place had to be getting to him.

Turning away, he crossed the room to the little rose-colored chairs and sat. After removing his shoes, he tried to curl his six foot two inch body onto one chair, his feet up on the other, in some way comfortable enough to be able to sleep. No matter how he twisted or turned, some part of him didn’t want to fit.

He finally put a spare blanket on the floor, his pillow on top of it, then lay down.

As he listened to the sound of Angie’s and Chelsea’s deep, sleep-filled breathing, he imagined the reaction of the guys in Homicide if he told them he’d spent a night in a secluded inn with two women in his bed. His old partner, Matt Kowalski, would have bombarded him with jokes and innuendos, not paying any attention to Paavo’s explanation of what actually had happened. But Matt was dead now, gunned down just a few months before. Paavo had been off-duty that night, and Matt had died on the street, all alone.