Murder Under the Mistletoe Read online

  But what about the handyman earlier tonight, she wondered. The way he’d acted, floating in and out of the wall, hadn’t that been a call for help? The way he’d been prancing around the room, waving to her, disappearing again…there must have been some reason for that, right? He was trying to get her attention to tell her something. She just didn’t know what, because there was this language barrier between the living and the dead.

  One that she knew how to cross.

  “You’re being pretty quiet,” Jon said to her suddenly. “What are you thinking?”

  She let her head rest against the crook of his shoulder, ready to finally let sleep take her. “I was thinking that the ghosts haven’t had anyone to talk to them in a long time. I wonder…” A yawn interrupted her, and she had to start again. “I wonder what they would say if someone was here to ask them stuff?”

  “Mm-hmm. You mean, someone like you?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” he told her.

  Her eyes popped open again. “You what, now?”

  “I said,” he repeated, with a kiss on her nose, “that it’s a good idea for you to try to communicate with the ghosts.”

  She tried in vain to read his eyes in the dark. “Who are you, and what have you done with my husband Jon Tinker?”

  “No, I’m serious.” He shifted, one leg slipping comfortably between hers. “There’s something going on here. Sure, we can’t charge anybody if these people were killed all those years ago, but Maxwell is acting funny. I mean, not ‘ha-ha’ funny. He might look like a clown but he’s not. He’s worried or scared, or something, but definitely suspicious. I want to know why, and the ghosts might tell you. Even if they all died by accident—and yes, I admit that’s a lot to swallow—they might know what’s going on right here and now.”

  “Do you think he’s trying to protect the reputation of his great, great grandfather—”

  “Great, great, great,” Jon corrected her. “He said it often enough for me to remember how many ‘greats’ are supposed to be in there.”

  “Whatever. Don’t you think Orson Bylow is the most obvious suspect for the murders? He killed his wife, surely his mother-in-law, too. Husbands hate their mother-in-laws.”

  “I don’t hate mine.”

  “That’s because you’re a special breed of man, and I was lucky to ever find you.”

  “Yes. You were. Okay, even if we suspect Orson for the deaths of his wife, Jennifer, and his mother-in-law, Millicent, what about the others?”

  “He could have killed the handyman. You heard Maxwell talking about what Orson thought of servants. They had a station, and they weren’t supposed to step out of it. This great, great, great grandfather of Maxwell’s might be a serial killer, Jon. Don’t you think it’s important that we uncover that?”

  “It’s one of those things that might be important, but it’s not anything that will matter to most people. We can’t put anyone in jail, we can’t parade them in front of a judge…it’s just historical fact at that point.”

  “I know. You said that already, but still. He needs to be held responsible for what he did, even if we can’t…you know…really hold him responsible.”

  “You know, it might not have been Orson.”

  Now Darcy pushed herself up on one elbow, awake again. “It had to be Orson. Who else could it be?”

  “He had two sons, remember. Only one of them died.”

  “So, what? You’re saying the son who lived might be the killer?”

  “Sure. It’s the rule of the last man standing. That’s usually your guy.”

  She let that sink in. He was right. There were two people in the family who lived, when everyone else in the house seemed to be dying around them. Orson outlived everyone, but so did the second son. What was his name? Peter. Right. Peter and Rupert, and Rupert died. Peter lived. All that death, and Peter lived. Jon was right. They didn’t have one suspect, they had two. Orson Bylow, and his son Peter Bylow.

  Very interesting.

  Then there was the other thing that Jon had just said…

  “Do you really think that Maxwell is being suspicious?”

  “You don’t?” he said with an ironic laugh. “The man is literally changing accents every five minutes, and dodging questions about things he should be completely versed in and happy to discuss. There’s something going on there. I promise you that.”

  “Then we should find out what it is,” she said, kissing his cheeks. “There’s a mystery here, for sure.”

  “And we’re going to find out what it is.” He kissed the tip of her nose, and then her lips.

  “I guess we really shouldn’t have expected it to be any other way, right?”

  She giggled as he kissed the side of her neck. They wouldn’t let it go further than kisses right now, not with two kids sleeping in the room with them, but they could be affectionate. They were good at being affectionate. They’d had years of practice, and many more years to look forward to.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” she asked after kissing the rim of his ear. “We’re sleeping in the same house with all these ghosts and a guy who’s being weird. Aren’t you afraid we might get strangled in our sleep, or something?”

  “Nah,” he told her, hugging her tight. “I’ve got the deadbolt in place and the chain hooked, and I always sleep with one eye open.”

  “You do? Since when?”

  “Always. I like to watch you sleep.”

  “Oh, Jon…”

  They kissed each other again, and sleep didn’t come quickly.

  Which way?

  She stopped where she was, and looked, and listened. She was alone. That wasn’t something new to her but it was a little scary, in the cold, in the dark…

  Forward. She had to keep going. She had to find a way to tell her.

  It was important that she reach Darcy Sweet.

  There was trouble.

  Darcy Sweet needed to know…

  The sound of something going thump in the en suite bathroom woke Darcy from a sound sleep the next morning.

  She lifted her head up from the pillow, blinking her eyes into focus as sunlight crept in around the heavy window curtains. Zane was sprawled across the bed sideways, asleep and drooling. From where she was, she could just see Colby’s foot sticking out of the blanket at the edge of the air mattress. Nobody else was stirring.

  So what did she hear?

  Thump.

  scraaaatch.

  That last sound had been faint. A scratch with a lower case ‘s,’ just barely there. That was odd…

  She heard it again, and this time she could almost identify the sound. It was familiar, sort of. Like something she should know.

  “Jon?” she whispered to him. He was fast asleep, dead to the world, and even a few gentle shoves against his shoulder didn’t rouse him. That was all right, she decided. He could sleep while she checked it out. Probably, it was nothing more than a bottle of shampoo falling. Or a mouse in the walls. This was an old building, after all, and old buildings had mice.

  Slipping out from under the sheets, she put her feet into her slippers and wrapped her arms around herself. Was it cold in here? Maybe it was just because Jon had been so warm to cozy up to. She huffed a breath out in front of her face…

  It plumed frosty and white in front of her before disappearing. She could see her breath. It wasn’t just cold in here, it was frigid.

  The thermostat was over by where Colby was sleeping. She would practically have to step over the air mattress to get to it. She didn’t want to wake the kids up. She just wanted to find out what was making the noise in the bathroom, and then return to bed and cuddle into Jon’s warm back.

  The bathroom light was on. Funny, she was sure they shut it off when they went to sleep so that it wouldn’t keep the kids up. Someone must have gotten up in the middle of the night to do something in there, and then left it on. Not a big deal. She’d just turn it off when she was done looking for the sour
ce of the—

  Thump…scraaaaatch…

  The sound.

  With her hand on the open doorframe, she hesitated. She wasn’t imagining this. There was something making noise in there. A sound that tickled the back of her mind with how familiar it was.

  She took a single step inside the bathroom. The light was bright in here against the white tile and chrome. The room was spotless, cleaned to the high standards of an Inn of this caliber. Their own stuff, the toothpaste and her makeup kit and Jon’s razor and the rest, were laid out neatly on the sinktop counter. Their wet towels from their nightly showers were hung over the curtain rod to dry.

  There was nothing else here.

  She stood there, listening to the room, listening for the noise to come again. While she did, she stared at her reflection in the mirror. It was a heavy sort of glass, framed by a wide metal strip edged with little metal leaves, expertly crafted with delicate details. It might even be one of the original pieces from the mansion. Possibly not, though. Mirrors from that time period were usually made of leaded glass which got foggy over time, and usually had several wavy imperfections in it. This glass was so clear that it was easy to believe you were looking through into another room, one that copied this one perfectly in every detail, except that it was all reversed…

  She winked at her image.

  Her image blinked back. Both eyes closed. Both eyes opened.

  Except, those weren’t her eyes. They were a cold, harsh black against the whites. Her eyes were a light green.

  That wasn’t her.

  Thump…scraaaatch…

  Now she realized what the sound was. A hand tapping on glass. Fingernails, scratching across a flat, glass surface.

  Something was behind the mirror.

  Something…was trying to come out…

  Her face in the mirror rippled, and clouded over, and as she watched it appeared to come right out of her reflection, changing shape, becoming someone else. Darcy jumped back as another face appeared, and hands stretched out through the glass and grabbed for her.

  It was a young boy, maybe a teenager, in stained long underwear. He reached for Darcy, and she stumbled back from him, and he reached for her again.

  And then he tripped on something on his side of the mirror, and fell out, and landed headfirst on the white tiled floor. He lay there, face down, not moving. If he was alive Darcy would have asked if he needed help, but…he was a ghost. All she could do was stare.

  He looked up at her from the floor, rubbing his head, a coy smile bringing a glimmer of humor to his black eyes. “Dad always said I fell down too much.”

  “Are you…are you okay?” she asked him.

  “I fall down a lot,” he repeated.

  “But are you…are you okay?”

  “No,” he laughed softly. “I’m dead.”

  The joke was so unexpected that Darcy burst out laughing, and as she laughed the ghost faded away, leaving her alone in the bathroom.

  When she looked up at the mirror, it was her face smiling back.

  Then she faded away, and wasn’t there.

  With a jolt Darcy sat up in the bed, back under the sheets next to Jon like she’d never left in the first place. Which, she realized, was exactly what had happened. She’d been asleep, right here, and dreaming. The whole thing just now, had been a dream. But, that was the ghost Colby had seen and sort of talked to. Rupert Bylow, dead at a young age in this house nearly two hundred years ago. He’d been so real, right there in front of her coming out of the mirror and falling down…

  I fall down a lot.

  Her dreams were often more than just dreams. Sometimes, she actually spoke to ghosts in her dreams. Sometimes she learned things that she wouldn’t have, in her waking life. Most of the time her dreams were anything but normal dreams.

  Now she felt like there was some simple truth in what had just happened to her. Some detail she was missing. The ghost had seemed friendly enough…after he stopped trying to reach out and grab her. It was like he was angry at first, and then happy, and then he was gone.

  That didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Or the others, either. She remembered the way Millicent Cussington had looked at her in the library. Like she would just as soon hang her as look at her.

  Although, with the handyman’s ghost tripping over his own feet, and the ghost in the bathroom falling flat on his face while trying to be scary, maybe these ghosts were more of a danger to themselves than to anyone else.

  Did that mean they were murdered, or died accidentally?

  She honestly didn’t know.

  Darcy sighed. Ghosts would always be a mystery to her, no matter how much time she spent around them. The afterlife had its own set of rules. Some of them she knew and understood. Some of them were secrets to everyone, except to those who had passed on to become spirits already. Darcy was probably the most knowledgeable person in the world when it came to anything to do with life after death, and she still didn’t have all the answers.

  Of course, that was part of what kept things interesting. If she ever reached a point where she did have all the answers, she would probably be bored stiff.

  “But what is going on in this place?” she wondered out loud, keeping her voice low. Her mind might be racing and keeping her from sleeping, but that didn’t mean she had to wake anyone else—

  “Mmpff,” Jon muttered. “What’s going on? What is it?”

  Darcy smiled at the back of his head and stroked her hand across his shoulders. “It’s okay, Jon. Go back to sleep.”

  “Mmpff?”

  “Shh. It’s still early. Everyone’s still asleep.”

  “S’alright. Just gonna…”

  He yawned, and rolled over onto his back, and the rest of what he said turned into a snore. That was okay. Darcy got the idea.

  She wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep so easily, however. They didn’t have much planned for today, other than a walk through the woods down the trail behind the Inn. They would probably do that after a midmorning brunch, which meant they all had a couple of more hours before they had to be awake. She should at least try to shut her eyes.

  After all, the mystery of the Hideaway Inn wasn’t going to be solved right now. She had a few pieces of the puzzle rattling around in her mind now, but nothing that seemed to make a picture. Not yet. She needed to think on it some more. Rest would help with that. If she was going to get back to sleep, though, she needed to stop thinking so hard. A few chapters of the romance novel she’d brought with her would help. A glass of water, too.

  Slipping out of bed for real this time, she found her slippers were already on her feet. Her dreams weren’t always normal dreams, she reminded herself.

  She tiptoed to the bathroom, looking over her shoulder to make sure Zane and Colby were still asleep. Good. They needed their rest. Maybe if they were up for it later today, she would talk to Jon about bringing them back to the fun center. It was a little expensive, but they were only going to be here until Thursday. She wanted the kids to enjoy themselves.

  In the bathroom she found the light was already on, just like it had been in her dream.

  She let that pass, too, because thinking about it would only make her thoughts bounce around even faster. The light was on. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.

  Planning to splash some cool water on her face, Darcy stepped in front of the sink, and looked up at the mirror.

  It was fogged over, from one side of the metal frame to the other, even though no one had used the bathroom in hours.

  In the steam, words had been written by a ghostly finger.

  I fall down.

  Knowing that Jon would want to see this, too, Darcy rushed back out to the dresser beside the beds as fast and as quietly as she could and picked up her cellphone. Once upon a time she would have never thought of carrying one of these things, because ghosts were constantly getting her number, and calling her to talk. The conversations weren’t always pleasant. Jon had eventuall
y gotten her one that only had apps, without any phone capabilities. That token of his affection had eventually convinced her to try again. Now she had a phone that did everything any other cellphone did.

  Including, of course, a camera.

  By the time she got back into the bathroom she had the app up and ready, her finger hovering over the button that would snap a picture of the writing in the steam.

  When she aimed, and focused, she was surprised to see more words had been added.

  I fall down.

  It’s not always my fault.

  Chapter 5

  For kids who had just been whining about not wanting to go outside in the cold, Zane and Colby both seemed to be having a lot of fun.

  The hiking trail was cold, yes, and it had started to snow lightly again, but that didn’t keep them from finding things to do. Colby had already challenged Zane to a snow-angel making contest. In hats and mittens and boots, they flopped down onto their backs and worked their arms and legs back and forth with feverish glee. They both knew the trick of sitting up and then jumping out to keep their creation intact.

  Colby said she won because hers was the biggest. Zane pointed out that wasn’t fair because he was already smaller and so his “sn’angel” would be smaller too. He said he was the winner because he used sticks to give the angel arms and legs.

  Jon had sided with Zane, saying that even stick people could be angels.

  Colby huffed and grumbled, but Darcy could tell she was impressed with her brother’s artistic touches. She found some fallen pine tree twigs and twisted them into circles before laying them down as halos above both of their angels. She got a big hug from her brother when she did. Darcy said they were both winners now.

  That got her an eye roll from her daughter, but there was a little smile there, too.

  An exposed hillside with jutting boulders like a climbing wall held the kids’ attention for a while, as they tried to get to the top. Colby made it after her second try. Zane found a workaround by using a gentle slope at the side that led up to the top the easy way.