The Ghost of Grey Fox Inn (2 page)

A group of people were clustered around a small central table, which had been laid out with glass pitchers of iced tea and tiny sandwiches. The couple I guessed were Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin were both lean and well
dressed, and Mrs. Goodwin sniffed at the sandwiches as if she wasn't sure whether to trust them. Bess had told us that Charlotte's family lived in Connecticut—her mother was a real estate agent, and her father worked on Wall Street.

Also standing at the table was a handsome young man with ash-blond hair, dressed in a cream-colored linen shirt and oxford shorts. An older couple stood on either side of him like bookends, a stark contrast to the Goodwins. Unlike Charlotte's parents, these two were short and stocky people; the man had an ostentatious mustache, and the woman wore her bleached-blond hair in a bouffant that looked as if it were hair-sprayed within an inch of its life.

“Well, Parker,” the older man was saying, “aren't you going to introduce us to your new in-laws?”

“Sure, Dad,” Parker replied, a little awkwardly. He gestured to Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin, saying, “These are Charlotte's parents, Russell and Sharon.”

Parker's father stepped forward and pumped Mr. Goodwin's hand with fervor. “Welcome to Charleston,
y'all. The name's Cassius Hill—but my friends all call me Cash.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hill,” Mrs. Goodwin said, a little stiffly, and extended her hand to him.

But instead of shaking it, Mr. Hill brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. “The pleasure is all mine, madam,” he said playfully.

I watched as Mrs. Goodwin's face paled.

“Allow me to introduce my lovely wife, Bonnie,” Mr. Hill said. Mrs. Hill moved to stand next to her husband, her light blue, flouncy dress fluttering around her as she went. “Forget the handshakes,” she said in a heavy Southern drawl. “I'm a hugger!” She threw her arms around the startled Goodwins, just as Charlotte came through the door and saw what was happening.

“Oh,” she said, clearly dismayed. “I see you all have already met.”

“Yes,” Mr. Goodwin said, extricating himself from Mrs. Hill's embrace. “We have.”

“And they say Yankees and Southerners can't get along!” Mr. Hill chortled, a little too cheerfully. The joke was greeted with a stony silence.

Mrs. Hill cleared her throat and looked around the room, seemingly searching for something to talk about. Her eyes landed on the girls and me. “Now, Charlotte, who are these lovely young ladies?” she asked, stepping toward us.

Relieved to have the focus off her flustered parents, Charlotte pointed us out in turn. “This is Bess Marvin, my cousin—she's going to be one of my bridesmaids. And these are her friends George Fayne and Nancy Drew.”

Mrs. Hill nodded politely at Bess and George, but her eyebrows went up a little when she took a closer look at me. “A redhead!” she said, almost to herself. And then a little louder, “How very nice to meet you all.” She moved back to the table with her husband and son. Parker began pouring iced tea for everyone, while Mr. Hill regaled the Goodwins with the history of the inn. As he was talking, Mrs. Hill
surreptitiously rapped her knuckles three times on the surface of the table. If I hadn't been watching, I would have missed it completely.

Parker saw it too and came over to me with a drink. “Don't mind her,” he murmured with a smile. “My mother is extremely superstitious, and this whole wedding thing has her on high alert for bad luck.”

“But what does that have to do with Nancy?” George asked.

Parker looked apologetic. “Well, redheads are sort of like black cats. If one crosses your path . . .”

Bess laughed. “Well, Nancy is known to attract mischief wherever she goes!” She went on to tell Parker a little bit about my exploits as an amateur detective.

Parker looked intrigued. “If only you lived in Charleston!” he said. “I would love to interview you for a local color piece.”

“Parker is the lead anchorman for one of Charleston's news stations,” Charlotte explained. “He was doing a story about the Charleston Historical Society when I was working there as an intern. It's actually how we
met.” She smiled up at him, and Parker reached over to squeeze her hand.

A moment later Mr. Hill's strident voice boomed out, silencing our conversation. “What's that you were saying, Russ?”

I turned to see Mrs. Goodwin looking stricken. “It was nothing, really—” she started to say.

But Mr. Goodwin interrupted her. “I was saying that this is a lovely inn, but that I still don't understand why we couldn't have the bridal party stay at a less expensive venue.”

Mr. Hill's face colored slightly. “Well, sir, I don't know about you, but in my family, we like to give our children the best we can, especially for such a special day.”

The room became uncomfortably quiet, and I glanced over at Charlotte. The smile had fallen from her face, replaced once more by that anxious expression she'd worn in the parking lot. It made me wonder if there was more to her nervousness than normal pre-wedding jitters. “I'm suddenly really tired,” she announced in
a flat voice, turning to Parker. “I'm going up to my room.”

“Hey, Char, wait—” Parker called out. But Charlotte shook her head, her lips pressed into a tight line. She set down her glass on a side table nearby, grabbed her suitcase, and climbed the spiral staircase without another word.

Bess and George looked at me, their expressions curious. As casually as I could, I said that we should probably check in to our rooms as well. The Goodwins and the Hills barely acknowledged us as we went off to find the front desk.

“Man,” George whispered as soon as we were out of earshot. “Trouble in paradise, huh?”

“It's pretty common for there to be some tension between the bride's and groom's families,” I reasoned. “It's probably just nerves getting to them. I'm sure they'll get along much better once all the excitement begins.”

“I hope so,” Bess said, her eyes filled with concern. “I know Charlotte was worried about the two families
getting along, but I didn't realize it was this bad.”

Around the corner, we found an older man with salt-and-pepper hair and a close-cropped beard sitting behind a tall desk. “Welcome to the Grey Fox Inn,” he said pleasantly. “My name is John William Ross, and I'm the owner here. How may I help you ladies?”

“We're part of the Goodwin-Hill wedding party,” Bess replied. “We're just checking in.”

“Very good,” John William said with a nod. “You'll all be on the second floor. Here are your room keys.”

We all picked up our keys—old-fashioned gold ones with fancy handles and long shafts. George leaned in and asked, “So, is it true? Is this place really haunted?”

John William looked taken aback by the question. “Haunted?” he asked.

“Yeah!” George said with enthusiasm. “I read all about it online. This place used to be hopping with ghosts back in the early nineteenth century!”

A strange look passed over John William's face, but then his expression turned to good humor. “It's been a while since anyone has come in asking about ghosts,”
he said with a chuckle. “This inn hasn't been graced by those kinds of guests in many, many years.”

George looked crestfallen. “Okay, thanks anyway,” she said with a sigh.

“Were you hoping for a supernatural visitor tonight, George?” I asked as we ascended the staircase with our bags.

“It would have been a nice way to break up all this business of flowers and dresses,” she said. “But they've got high-speed Internet, so I guess I'll live.”

At the top of the stairs, the landing branched out in two directions, and the walls were inset with beautiful wooden shelves filled to capacity with colorful books. I brushed my fingers against their leather and cloth spines, reading titles like
Behind Parlor Doors: The Story of Old Charleston
and
The City of Three Rivers
. Bess and George went down the long hall to the right, while my room was on the left-hand side. We agreed to meet up again in the main room at seven thirty and discuss dinner plans, after we'd all had a chance to freshen up. On the way down the hall, I passed a room with a bronze
plate on the door that read
BRIDAL SUITE
.
That must be where Charlotte is staying,
I thought.

My room was at the end of the hall, number nineteen. I unlocked the door and stepped inside a beautiful, wood-paneled bedroom. Two stained-glass lamps illuminated a large four-poster bed covered with a cheerful butter-yellow quilt, and a set of vintage cherrywood furniture. I pulled my suitcase onto the bed and began unpacking my things and settling in.

After a long, hot shower and a couple of phone calls—both Ned and my dad always insisted I let them know when I arrive somewhere safely—I cast my gaze out the window and saw that evening had crept up on me. A glance at my phone revealed that it was almost seven thirty, time to meet the girls. I left my comfortable room, locking the door behind me, and was about to drop the key into my purse when a muffled scream pierced the silence of the hallway. I whirled toward the source of the sound. It was coming from the bridal suite!

I SPRINTED DOWN THE HALL
and wrenched at the doorknob to the bridal suite, but it was locked. Calling Charlotte's name, I started hammering on the door—but after ten seconds of that, only silence greeted me from inside the room. I hoped that Charlotte had simply seen a mouse and screamed, or something equally innocent—but the longer I stood there, waiting, the more unlikely that became.

I turned to run downstairs to get a key from the front desk and bumped straight into a young couple walking down the hall. “Excuse me,” I said automatically.

The woman, who looked to be in her late twenties, was magazine beautiful. She was tall and willowy and had flaxen hair that cascaded halfway down her back. She wore a simple mint-green summer dress accented with a thin silver belt. There was something familiar about her face, but in the heat of the moment, I couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was.

“Is everything all right?” the young woman asked, her eyebrows furrowed in concern. “We heard someone shouting up here.”

“I'm not sure,” I said quickly. “I heard a scream coming from the bridal suite, and I've been trying to reach my friend inside, but there's no answer.”

The woman's face paled. “Charlotte . . . ,” she murmured, staring toward the locked room. She turned to the man at her side. “Morgan, that's my sister in there!” she exclaimed.

“Say no more,” he said, and marched up to the door.
He wasn't an overly large man, but I could see quite a bit of muscle pushing through his pastel-blue button-down shirt. Morgan, like his companion, was remarkably good-looking. He wore his light brown hair slicked back and had the chiseled, intense face of a soap opera heartthrob.

He rattled the door, testing its strength, before ramming his shoulder into it with great force. The door burst open, sending Morgan barreling inside, with the woman and me following close behind him. The woman let out a little yelp of fear, and I soon saw why: Charlotte was lying in the middle of the room in her bathrobe, unconscious.

Within seconds we were at her side, and after checking her heartbeat and pulse, I was relieved to see that Charlotte was breathing normally and appeared unhurt. “Can you hear me?” the woman said, shaking Charlotte gently by the shoulders. “Wake up!”

After several tense moments, Charlotte's eyes fluttered. “Piper?” she murmured.

We breathed a collective sigh of relief and helped
Charlotte into a sitting position. I filled a cup with water from the bathroom and pushed it into her trembling hands. When the color had begun to return to her face, I said, “I heard you scream from the hallway—what happened?”

“It was the strangest thing,” Charlotte said, shaking her head. “I came out of the shower and walked in here to get my glasses from the top of the vanity. But when I looked up at the mirror, I saw a dark figure standing behind me! It was kind of dim in the room, so I couldn't make out much detail, but it looked like he was wearing some kind of uniform. Something old-fashioned. That's when I screamed. I tried to run for the door, but I tripped over my suitcase and must have hit my head against the bedpost on the way down.” She rubbed her temple and winced. “That's all I remember.”

I sat back on my heels, thinking. It was an outrageous story—particularly coming from someone as sensible as Charlotte seemed to be. Something occurred to me, and I glanced over at the mirrored vanity to confirm it. “Charlotte,” I said. “You never
got the chance to put on your glasses, did you?”

Charlotte touched her face, puzzled to find it bare. “No,” she said. “I guess I didn't. I saw the intruder before I was able to pick them up.” She looked back at me, a defensive note creeping into her voice. “I see what you're getting at, Nancy—but I know what I saw. My eyes aren't that bad.”