Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2) (6 page)

Thirteen

At ten after six, finally free of rush-hour traffic, the Nunmobile exited I-79 at 285 West. As Giulia circled the off-ramp, she could just see the top of the lighthouse. At the end of the ramp she saw water and turned left on Water Street. Cute.

Giulia presumed the Conneaut Lake beach possessed a wide strip of accessible sand, but she couldn’t see much of it. Kids running and shrieking, old couples walking, and young ones kissing covered ninety percent of the space she glimpsed from the car. A volleyball game off to one side revealed the largest patch of actual sand visible for a quarter mile.

“It should be right up here somewhere—” Her words cut off in a gasp as she slammed on the brakes.

A beach ball bounced off the hood. A little boy chased it into the street and stopped a whisker away from the car’s hood. An adult male dashed after the boy and scooped him up.

“Thanks.” He nodded at Giulia.

Cars going in the opposite direction also stopped. The man kicked the ball onto the far sidewalk and followed it out of danger to the boy and himself.

Giulia blew out a breath. “Adrenaline is more effective than espresso.”

The street rose at a gentle angle as she neared the lighthouse. Giulia had thought it would be on its own point of land. Instead, a lighthouse-shaped sign directed her to an open wrought-iron gate. It arched six feet above the Nunmobile, a pattern of four-petaled flowers along its upward curve. The wide driveway beyond split in two around a grassy island. She drove around the left-hand side of the oval toward a carriage house larger than her and Frank’s little Cape Cod. The carriage house concealed an eight-car parking lot on the side away from the entrance drive.

Giulia removed her suitcase from the trunk and took in the view: The lake beyond, lined with pine trees and shimmering in the afternoon sun, framed a brick three-story house with a white porch. Behind and to the left rose a lighthouse built out of the same deep red bricks as the house, its gallery visible two stories above the house’s roof.

With the picturesque buildings shielding her from the noises of Sea-Doos on the lake and people on the beach, Stone’s Throw couldn’t have looked less like a haunted lighthouse.

Giulia walked up the porch steps and petted a calico cat sitting in a regal pose on a white wicker chair. A beagle lying next to the chair opened one eye when Giulia stroked the cat, didn’t appear to consider Giulia a threat, and closed it again.

Giulia knocked on the screen door frame and opened the door, walking into an antique kitchen complete with trestle table, coal-fired stove, vintage high chair, and deep enamel sink with attached water pump. Mac entered from a doorway to the left, holding a can of spray polish and a dustcloth.

“Welcome to Stone’s Throw. I’m MacAllister Stone, the owner. Please call me Mac. Everyone does. You must be Giulia Driscoll.” She stage-winked at Giulia as they shook hands.

Laughter came from down a hallway opposite the screen door.

“Pleased to meet you,” Giulia said. “My husband had a work emergency, but he’ll arrive tomorrow.”

“That’s no way to start a vacation.” Mac moved toward the hallway. “Let me show you up to your room. Breakfast is at nine a.m. every day including weekends. We have a bonfire on the beach Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. Eight o’clock. S’mores fixings are provided.” She stopped at the second floor landing. “What’s a vacation on the beach without a bit of your childhood thrown in, right?” She continued toward the lake side of the house. “I’ve put you in the Sand Dollar room, across the hall from the library.”

She opened a door painted the color of real beach sand, not the pale kind sold in plastic bags at the toy store. “Our beach is semi-private with only a low fence, so you can easily access the public beach from it without going all the way around by the street. We have croquet and bocce ball set up on either side of the patio. Boat and Sea-Doo rentals are available a quarter-mile east along the beach, near the shopping district.” She opened the windows and stood by another door like Vanna White showing off a new puzzle on
Wheel of Fortune.
“The bathroom is in here. You’ll find locally crafted soap and hand lotion in the basket on the sink.”

A door opened behind Mac and a woman’s voice said, “The first martini of the night is calling me. Let’s go.”

“Thank you,” Giulia said to Mac. “I’ll certainly call on you if I need anything.”

Mac stage-winked again and left. Giulia closed the door behind her. More voices and footsteps in the hall. Everyone appeared to be headed out to supper. Perfect.

She appropriated the right-hand sides of the two dresser drawers and unpacked. The weather for the next several days promised to be a bit of everything, so she’d packed for everything. Capris, sneakers, and casual shirts, plus jeans and a sweatshirt. The downside: None of those items could conceal her Glock.

The room had a classic Entrance to Narnia wardrobe. She opened it hoping for fur coats, but no luck with that in June. No snow fell on her hands, either, when she reached to touch the back panel.

Adulthood had its disappointments.

She kept her gun and its ammunition in her suitcase, which she locked and set against the back of the wardrobe. The key she dropped into her travel jewelry box at the back of the top dresser drawer. She didn’t anticipate using the gun on this case, but she wasn’t naïve enough to assume.

The nightgown she’d purchased on her way out of Cottonwood rolled into a surprisingly small tube. It looked like another pair of socks, if one didn’t inspect it too closely No laundry for either of them on vacation, so no danger of Frank noticing her odd silky “socks.” Giulia smiled to herself in anticipation of his reaction when she put it on tomorrow night.

Silence greeted her when she opened the bedroom door. Excellent.

First order of business: How many haunting gadgets had Mac installed for Halloween week? Ancillary business: How many hidden gadgets had the psychic installed, and could Giulia tell them apart?

Giulia walked softly downstairs, making no assumptions about the inn’s deserted state, and started with the cellar. Cement walls and floors. Laundry room, storage room, chest freezer, fruit cellar. Everything on open shelves. Phone ready to take incriminating pictures, she moved and replaced tools and canned goods, inspected boxes of dishes and paint supplies and soap. Not a suspicious gizmo anywhere. Eh. She hadn’t expected it to be that easy.

Back to the first floor. The main hallway connected the kitchen to a music room, a living room, and next to that, a screened-in porch facing the lake. Back in the antique kitchen area, a square archway on the right past the vintage stove opened onto a formal dining room. A narrow doorway to her left, behind the trestle table, led to an L-shaped modern working kitchen. Near the water pump, another door, locked.

She started with the trestle table. No hidden speakers or wires under the table or benches, or in the vase holding freesia and daisies. Nothing remotely modern in the stove or the deep sink and attached water pump.

On to the dining room. No hidden wires in the drapes. No switches or miniature speakers under the intricately carved table and chairs. The piano and bench in the music room: Clean. Also the wall art and throw rug. The living room drapes and coffee table: Clean as well. The cumbersome 1930s-style radio complete with speakers resembling a cathedral window hid a modern receiver and CD player. She didn’t see any overt signs of tampering. Neither Mac nor her psychic were following the huckster’s rulebook.

A china doll lay in a baby carriage at the foot of the stairs, both carriage and doll from the turn of the last century. If Mac had claimed this doll floated in the air or performed an
Exorcist
-style head spin, Giulia might’ve believed her.

The stairs were narrow by today’s standards. This time up she touched one of the worn Oriental carpet runners in the hope of feeling the real thing, but her fingers informed her it was polyester. A pedal-operated sewing machine was the second floor’s antique of choice. The stained glass window was the true prize of the hall. The setting sun through its panes created ribbons of jewel-colored light on the oak floor.

She went into the library first, starting at the walls lined with bookshelves. Two overstuffed armchairs sat at right angles to each other on a different oriental rug. The white curtains let in diffused sunlight, making the room cool and inviting.

Giulia checked the curtains and the small side tables next to the chairs. Clean. Maybe the psychic used portable tricks because he or she only came here once a week. That would explain the lack of gadgets, but it would also make this case difficult.

Carpet runners in a third pattern lined the next flight of stairs. A narrow table in this hall supported a lamp with red-edged fringe, eight scooped side panels in different lace patterns, and eight glass panels in different floral patterns angling to a point at the top. A brass pineapple finial crowned it. Giulia couldn’t wait for Frank’s reaction to it tomorrow when she showed him around.

Two of the three bedrooms on this floor showed signs of occupation. Giulia gave all three the same inspection, adding a check under the beds and in the wardrobes. The edges around one windowsill let in a whiff of breeze, but nothing extreme. Mac must have spent a fortune restoring this place. It showed. But she found no haunting equipment anywhere on the third floor.

Returning to the second floor, she checked out the other two bedrooms, then her own. Her bathroom boasted a Victorian shower and a pull chain toilet. Frank’s reaction to this might surpass his opinion of the fringed lamp. That and the lace canopy over their bed.

All of it proclaimed its innocence of any motive other than to make a guest’s stay comfortable and relaxed.

Well, she wasn’t licked yet.

Fourteen

Twilight fell as she returned to the first floor and the glass-eyed doll. At the foot of the stairs she turned left instead of to the right, back into the living room. She entered some kind of history and souvenir room crowded with small tables, an intricate dollhouse, and a bookshelf of kitsch.

She passed through this room into a vestibule with an oak door to her right leading to the patio. Yet another door faced her. She opened it and stepped back. A complete suit of armor guarded the lighthouse stairs. If she’d come upon it in the dark, her heart would’ve leaped out of her chest through the door, taking any attempt at stealth with it. The darn thing looked as though it could come to life if needed to protect the house against intruders.

Giulia climbed the narrow spiral stairs up into the lighthouse proper. The wooden steps, firm under her feet, emitted hardly a creak. When she reached the first deep-set window she sat on a step and examined the treads and the railing. New and sturdy construction, all of it.

The stairs ended at a catwalk running around the inside of the tower. A five-rung ladder led up to a cluster of industrial-sized light bulbs in the very top covered with a red, white, and blue gel shade. A narrow opening half the width of a standard doorway led from the catwalk to the gallery outside. She went sideways through this doorway and stepped out onto the gallery. The door faced the lake. She looked down on the flagged patio and part of the house’s roof.

She shook this wooden railing like she had the one inside. Good and solid. Heights weren’t Giulia’s nightmare, but it was reassuring to have a safety net of sorts. She circled the entire gallery, looking out over the beach, the lake, the town, and more beach before she reentered the lighthouse.

On her descent Giulia sought and found the wall scratches in the photo Mac had showed her. She didn’t attempt to reach them.

One of the window recesses held a hurricane lantern and the other a ruby glass vase. Cobwebs covered both, perhaps to evoke the Halloween atmosphere even this early in the tourist season.

Giulia studied the suit of armor before leaving the vestibule. An effective prop as well. A man or woman could worm themselves into it and scare a year off a guest’s life. In the twilight glow the metal visor appeared to be eying her with suspicion.

“I’m not Scooby-Doo,” she whispered at it. “Go scare someone else.”

At the doorway into the rest of the house, she stopped and listened. Everyone must have been out to dinner still, because the only sound was a brisk wind off the lake. The curtains in the living room puffed in the breeze. They whipped over the back of the sofa exactly like they had in the photo Mac had shown her in DI’s office. Giulia snapped several photos with her phone. She’d have to look up this “Woman in White” legend to see if that kind of ghost preferred fluttery white dresses.

Next: Round two on the stairs. In the cooling air the second and fourth treads creaked.

Last: The foot of the attic stairs. Giulia wouldn’t swear that floorboards settling in the attic didn’t sound like a ghostly footstep. She cranked the volume on her phone and tried to capture the sound.

Two floors below, the screen door opened and voices returned to the house. Giulia dashed downstairs into her room.

Stone’s Throw wasn’t a business hotel and the room had no space for a desk and chair. Giulia piled the pillows against the headboard and propped her iPad on her knees.

True to her fears, the Wi-Fi took forever to connect. When the page of images finally loaded, it confirmed Giulia’s white nightgown theory. Combining that with the Trip Advisor review about something rigged up in the attic, Giulia came up with Mac and the psychic working together to create a nightgown ghost.

She frowned. More ways to interpret that conclusion: Mac hired DI to boot the fake psychic and make a selling point out of it. Or the psychic wasn’t fake and Mac hired DI to give cachet to her. Giulia’s frown deepened.

She couldn’t think of a casual way to meet the other guests until breakfast tomorrow. The rest of the night would be a waste of time.

An orange glow appeared in her windows. Fire! She jumped off the bed, iPad bouncing onto the quilt, and pressed her face against the glass.