Hacienda Moon (The Path Seekers) (9 page)

Holding back a smile, Saul took one step closer.  “Then don’t consider it a date. Call it a pre-requisite for a landlord who wants to make sure that his best girl is in the right hands.” He glanced around at the house before moving his amused gaze back to her. “You can’t hide behind her walls forever.”

“I’m not hiding,” Tandie said, scoffing.

“Then I’ll pick you up at 6pm. Oh, and wear something that’s royal blue,” he said, turned around, and headed toward his car.

* * *

Tandie studied her manuscript, flipping past the missing twenty pages for the hundredth time. Many thoughts cluttered her mind. Even though Saul’s bold demand bothered her, she still found herself mentally scanning her wardrobe. The last time she wore anything remotely close to sexy was at the Aeneid the other night. A part of her felt guilty about accepting Saul’s offer; but then, she snapped back to reality. She was a single woman now. Get over it, already.

Tandie stretched, stood up, and headed outside. She was desperate for a break. Glancing over the yard, she sighed. Trigs and leaves lay scattered across the front lawn. Turning to head back into the house, she glanced at her mailbox attached to the wall beside the door. A white card sat in the hooks on the bottom of the mailbox—the contractor guy. In her distracted state, she’d forgotten all about him. In red pen, the man had written the word Contractor, a telephone number, and no name.

“Just as I figured. Typical psychopathic behavior.”

She walked back inside and strolled over to her desk guarded by Breena’s picture. She placed her Sony recorder down on the table and began reading.

Eric Fontaine’s muscular frame towered over Maud’s petite one by almost a foot. His brooding, exotic demeanor intrigued her, even though her instinct and common sense clashed in a battle, a war to determine his true intentions.

Tandie glanced at the contractor’s card sitting beside the picture of Breena’s smiling face. Now that the dashingly handsome Saul Chelby was to her rescue, she didn’t need any other numbers. She moved to toss the card in the trash; but a snip snap noise outside the window caught her attention.

Glancing outside it, she quickly found the source. Ella, the girl from before, held a large pair of shears, almost the same size as her petite frame. She chopped at the rose bushes with a manic fervor. Tandie got exhausted just by standing there watching the girl work as if she were on a deadline.
 

“All right, little girl. That’s enough.” Tandie headed toward the front door, stepped outside, and trudged out to where the girl worked at pruning the branches, unaware of her presence.

“Hello, Ella. What are we up to today?”

Ella glanced up at Tandie, her striking blue eyes hard, her hands and arms bloody from cuts. She wore the same type of long brown colonial-style dress covered by a lace apron as she did the first time Tandie saw her. Today it hung close to her hips and didn’t seem as if she were wearing the shift underneath the skirt to hike it up the way women did in the old days.

Then as if she’d recognized a long lost relative, she beamed the sunny smile Tandie recalled from the first day they’d met.

“Don’t you see what that storm did? That mean old howling wind ripped off all the new buds. It’s not a good thing at all, Ms. Harrison,” Ella said in an emotional voice.

“Ella, I thought we agreed we’d wait until—”

“But you can’t just leave them out here.” Ella’s eyes widened. She dropped the shears and wrung her hands.

“I don’t need a gardener right now. We talked about this,” Tandie said sharply.

“But it’s my job to make sure Chelby’s roses are taken care of. Please let me stay. My mother will be so mad if I can’t do my job. Please.” She clasped her hands together in mock surrender and tilted her head to the side as she begged. Getting reacquainted with the closeness of southern life was going to take some time.

She studied the girl a moment longer and said, “Okay, but on a trial basis, and only twice a week to start.”

Ella shrieked a blood-curdling squeal and
 
jumped up and down. “You mean it’s official? I get my old job back?”

“Yes, Ella, it’s official.” Tandie still didn’t understand why the girl thought she was getting her old job back again. Maybe Saul had used her before, but he never mentioned it.

“I promise I’ll be the best gardener. You’ve just made this the greatest day of my life in over two hund—well, since a very long time.”

“Good. I’ll be writing for the next few hours. So please keep the fuss down.” Tandie turned to go back inside. When she glanced back at the girl, she’d resumed pulling weeds with the energy of a mad artist.

8

The deserted coastline stretched along the ocean, shadowed in the nighttime. Tandie was in a dream on the beach she’d dreamt of many times since she arrived at Chelby Rose. She ran along the illuminated white shores.
“Breena! Where are you, Baby B?”

The wind whipped her hair across her eyes, and her long white dress flowed around her ankles. It was identical to the one Breena wore during the first dream she had about this place. The scent of the ocean stung her nose with its ancient saltwater smell.
 

In the distance, a ship fired a canon. Right away, Tandie’s feet sunk into the sand, unable to move as if they were glued to the spot. She turned toward the sea where the canon had blared. A chill rode across the air, biting at her bare arms with its frigid embrace.

In the distance, an old-fashioned ship loomed into view. It was the kind with the sails stacked on top each other as if it were taken from a pirate movie. The ship sailed toward the shores. It moved quickly, and a strange horn blared through the air. Tandie slammed her hands over her ears.

At once, another canon shot blasted through the night, sending waves of fear through Tandie. She now stood in the midst of a battle between the mystery ship and another one approaching from the left side of the harbor. The area sprung to fiery life under the cannons as the ships opened fire on one another.

Tandie grabbed her leg and tugged at her stubborn feet but they refused to budge from the sands. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she feared for her life as she stood in the midst of a war, terrified that her daughter was lost among this madness.

She glanced over at the ship to her right. The men standing on the decks were dressed in red uniforms and shouted in phrases that warbled together like a song playing in slow motion. The general standing on the deck shouted orders at his men. Tandie couldn’t make out the words, but she knew it was something concerning the other ship.

That was when he glanced down and saw Tandie, his expression turning sour. Frowning, he directed his men to move toward her. Panic seized her chest as she struggled to get free of the sand. She pulled her legs so hard that she lost her balance and fell backward, tiny grains blowing in her eyes and scratching them.

She screamed silently. More sand blew around her and formed a funnel, suffocating her until she fell into darkness.

When she opened her eyes again, she found herself surrounded by a circular wall of dirt, towering about ten feet above her head. “Help me! Please! I’m down here. Oh God, help me!” Sobs wracked her throat, while her fingers ached from trying to claw her way out of the hole.

A small voice that was humming a lullaby of some type drifted overhead. Tandie glanced up at the opening. A child’s smiling face peered down in the hole.

“Wake up, Mommy. Be strong for us,” Breena said, her spirit beginning to fade.

“I can’t be strong without you, Baby B. Don’t go,” Tandie said through sobs.

The child drifted down into the hole, her white light filling the dirt prison with a soft glow, and touched the pink topaz hanging around Tandie’s neck.

“I’m giving it back, Mommy.”

“What are you giving back, Baby B?” Tandie’s heart was racing.

“Your tattle-tale stories. The ones that—” The child’s spirit began to fade. “—help you see what happened a long time ago.”

“No! Don’t go, Baby B!” Tandie’s voice filled the chasm just before dirt started falling down on her head.

“They’re burying me alive. My God! They’re burying me alive!”

Tandie bolted upright in her bed and almost dropped the photograph of Breena she held as she fell asleep every night. She clasped her forehead, feeling a bit anxious and cursing the headache from hell. “Thank you for saving Mommy again,” she said to her daughter’s picture.

A few more sobs heaved through her chest. The nightmare felt so real, and this time she was being buried alive. These latest dreams, visions, or whatever they were made her thirty second glimpses from before feel like a game. How much longer would it take before she went completely mad?

Preparing to stand up, Tandie stepped on what felt like a wet shaggy dog. The flokati rug beside her bed was drenched. “What the—” Tandie followed the trail of liquid to her bathroom, hearing the sound of water running before she flipped the light switch. The faucet in both the sink and the bathtub gushed at full blast.

She stepped through the water on the floor and headed toward the faucets, half expecting to see a stripped washer or some other explanation for the mystery plumbing issue. Instead, she was able to turn the faucets off like normal, making it seem as if someone snuck in while she slept and tampered with them.

“I’m beginning to think you don’t like me, Chelby Rose,” Tandie muttered. Saul said the contractor would start in a few days. That wasn’t very comforting. The house could very well sink by the time he arrived.

She flipped through the Brunswick Town phone book, scanned the section labeled plumbers, and then picked up her cell phone.

“Yes. I’m trying to find out if you have someone available in the Bolivia area,” she said to the receptionist at the first company. “No, I’m not in South America. I mean honestly, why would I be calling you for my repairs?”

No plumbing company was available to help Tandie. The towel supply soon decreased and the unstoppable faucets kept turning themselves back on. Her conversation with Minerva played through her mind and she started feeling like Chelby Rose was more than just an old house with plumbing problems.

After stressing through seven or eight more phone calls to plumbing companies, Tandie slammed the phone down on the receiver and fought back tears of frustration. Jack’s last words the day they had signed the divorce papers came to her mind. He had said that she’d never make it without him, and especially in her attempt to purchase a house. Although she was hell bent on proving him wrong, she wasn’t off to a good start.

Jumbled thoughts rushed through her head: Saul Chelby’s red-gold hair, the dead man he told her about, her missing manuscript pages, the dreams of Breena, Abby’s accusations, and the handsome guy from the airport and later, the club…Saul’s wonderfully delicious pout. They all tied together in some way. Well, maybe not Saul’s pout; but everything else pointed to Chelby Rose. There was a common element to all those things. Her daughter’s spirit revisiting her in a dream was the most shocking aspect of them all.

The psychic in Tandie might be broken, but the detective had reawakened.

She sighed, shook her head, and glanced around the room until her gaze rested on the contractor’s card laying on the nightstand beside her bed. “How odd. I just don’t remember bringing that up here with me.” Sighing, she picked up the card. “Okay restless house. What are you trying to tell me?”

* * *

“Please don’t take this job.” Pastor Jeffries pleaded with Eric.

The Pastor was concerned about the beach house he rented from the Atwaters, another family with a history tied to his ancestors. His rental sat just outside Bolivia’s borders in a place called Sunset Beach. “I already have to deal with a grieving Shania McKinnon, may the Lord bless Virgil’s soul. He seemed lost sometimes; but he was a good man to his wife. I would hate to add your name to that list.”
 

“What happens if I leave? You’re the spirit guru. There’s no guarantee that this so-called Broken Heart Curse will magically disappear,” Eric said, feeling frustrated and heated. “I guess I should just let my family and friends all croak one by one. Real smooth suggestion for a man of God. I’m sorry, Pastor.”

During the past ten years, Eric had run. He ran from the nightmares he had of his father’s death. He ran from the bullies who pushed him around because he was so frail in build; and he ran from his fiancée, leaving her with memories of the affairs with other women, a flaw he blamed on his own insecurities. Maybe it wasn’t a lack of confidence. Deep down, Eric always knew his family curse would eventually affect any woman he loved.  If there were such a thing as a Broken Heart Curse then he intended to end it.

“You’re right. I am the expert. My faith gives me the armor I need to conquer anything. But when I visit the sick people that live in that town, there’s something that walks behind me. Something that wants to hurt me and force me to stay with the others. I can sense the restless spirits; but I can’t see them. I’d help if I could.”

“Pastor, every single Fontalvo male except for my father died by the time they reached age forty-two: natural causes, freak accidents, you name it. I don’t believe in coincidence. Our ancestors used to tell a story about a man who claimed that a witch brought him here. Now either he was crazy, or he knew exactly what he was talking about. A couple of people say they saw Ms. Harrison talking to Virgil just before he was…killed. I don’t believe she’s a witch; but I can’t ignore the police report. I have to know. This contracting job is the way. It’s not only about my family anymore. My good friend is dead.” Emotion winded him and choked his voice.

Getting closer to the mystery woman had turned into a mini-obsession for Eric. He felt drawn to her, connected to her in some way and he didn’t know why. It wasn’t only about her striking beauty, that smile that lit up a room, or her intriguing bi-colored eyes, the ones that hooked him the moment he glanced into them the first time they met. The oddity of the situation surrounding them made approaching her that much more difficult for him.

“No more running, Pastor. This time, I walk straight into the minefield.”

Pastor Jeffries studied him with a sad face. “All right, son. But if you must meet the devil on his playing ground, then you’ll need to have your own set of armor ready. “Hold tight.”

Pastor Jeffries stood up and walked into his office. He returned with a black box covered in velvet. He let out a sigh as he plopped down beside Eric. “These old tired bones.” He gave the box to Eric. “It’s not rigged. Open it.”

“What’s this?” Eric opened the box. A golden shamrock about the size of a 2x2 sticky note lay inside it.

“That’s your armor, son. Some sort of family heirloom,” he said. Eric made a light laugh and frowned. “I promised your father that I’d make sure you get it if anything ever happened to him. He told me that you would know what to do when the time came.”

“I have no idea what to do, Pastor,” Eric said, examining the intricately carved details on the shamrock’s leaves.

“Look at me, son. Stand for something. Or you’ll fall for anything.”

Eric’s cell phone buzzed against his leg. He pulled it out and read the text box. Saul Chelby. The time for testing the pastor’s theories had arrived.