The Ghost of Grey Fox Inn (8 page)

“Oh, good,” Piper said, looking relieved.

“We're going to head back there too,” Morgan said. “Do you two need a ride, or are you going to stay here for a while longer?”

“I'm going to help the rest of the bridal party collect the centerpieces and other things from the tables first,” Parker said. “How about you, Nancy?”

“Well, I was planning on staying behind and giving you a hand with all this,” I replied.

“That's so nice of you,” Parker said gratefully. “Well then, we'll just grab a ride with someone after we're done, okay?”

I nodded. Piper and Morgan said their good-byes and followed the rest of the crowd out of the restaurant. I glanced outside, where a crescent moon had risen over the river, and I could see the winking lights of sailboats bobbing along on their way back to shore. If only the evening inside this room were as peaceful as the scene outside its windows.

After an hour of cleanup, Parker and I hitched a silent ride back to the inn with Mr. and Mrs. Hill. We all trooped, exhausted, back into the main lobby. “Thank you for your help, Nancy,” Mr. Hill said before I turned to go upstairs. “I know you're not really part of the
wedding, so it was mighty kind of you to stay behind and lend a hand.”

“Of course,” I said. “Even a stranger would see how much Charlotte and Parker love each other. I'm happy to do whatever I can to make sure their big day is just as they always dreamed it would be.”

At my words, I saw Mrs. Hill blush. She looked at Parker's tired face and reached out to grab his hand. “I'm sorry I got so hot under the collar back there, sweetheart,” she said to him. “I know Charlotte's a grade-A gal, and no amount of bad luck will keep you two lovebirds apart. Okay?”

Parker looked at his mother and smiled. “Thanks, Ma,” he said.

I smiled too, glad that I could help put the wedding back on track—even in this small way. But a niggling worry in the back of my mind warned me that the culprit wasn't done with their mischief just yet.

Parker and his parents retired to their rooms on the first floor. Just as I was ascending the staircase up to mine,
Bess and George emerged from the hallway above and spotted me. “Nancy!” Bess exclaimed, rushing down the stairs to where I stood. “I'm so glad you made it back. We were starting to worry.”

I sighed. “It took a while to finish cleaning up. How's Charlotte?”

Bess's shoulders slumped. “Okay, I guess. We just got her settled down for the night.”

“Not the best way to spend the final hours before your wedding day,” George muttered.

“No, it isn't,” I said, frustrated. “In all the chaos, I never got a chance to talk to Alicia or Tucker more. I hope I can get a chance to do that in the morning—before the culprit can do any more damage!”

A moment later I heard someone shout “No!” from below us. It sounded a lot like Parker.

“I think,” George said, “we might be too late.”

The three of us tore down the rest of the stairs back to the first floor and down the hallway toward Parker's door. Before I could hammer on the door with my fist,
it flew open, revealing Parker standing there, his eyes wide with panic.

“They're gone!” he cried, panting heavily.

“What are?” I asked.

“The wedding rings!” he replied.

MY HEART SANK TO MY
knees. The fear that had been lurking at the back of my mind had come to fruition—the person behind all these incidents had finally done something really serious. Something that could bring this wedding to a screeching halt.

I locked eyes with Parker, trying to bring him into focus. “Show me where you were keeping them,” I said, keeping my voice level.

Parker nodded wordlessly and led Bess, George, and me into his room. It looked much like the other rooms in the inn, albeit a bit grander—it had lofty ceilings and a large fireplace in the center of one wall. On the floor of the wardrobe, Parker pointed out a small metal box, its lid ajar. A combination lock lay next to the box, also open.

“That's the inn's version of a lockbox?” George asked skeptically.

I agreed. The box and its lock were a pitiful excuse for security. The lock was made by a common household brand that anyone with a paper clip and the Internet could break into.

Parker shrugged. “This inn isn't normally a hotbed of criminal activity,” he said. “There's no reason for top security here. The windows are all locked tight, and the door was bolted shut when I got here. I have no idea how this person got in or out.” He walked over to the four-poster bed and slumped onto it. “What am I going to do? Those rings were priceless heirlooms. They've been in my family for six generations—they're
part of Charleston's history, for goodness' sake!” I thought back to the gossipy article Bess had shown me on the plane. The reporter had been covering all aspects of the wedding, and they had mentioned something about the history—and the six-figure value—of the wedding rings.

“How am I going to tell my parents?” Parker was saying. “How am I going to tell Charlotte?”

It suddenly became clear that my investigation needed to get serious—and fast. I needed to find out who was behind all this and get those rings back ASAP, or else there might not be a wedding tomorrow. “Stay here—and for now, keep this news under your hat. We don't want the guests and bridal party to panic any more than they already have. Try to get some rest. In the meantime, there's something I need to figure out, once and for all.”

I left Parker with his thoughts and pulled Bess and George out of the room with me. “After you guys change, come to my room,” I said. “I hope you're not too tired, because we have work to do.”

“Whatever it takes to help Parker and Charlotte,” Bess replied.

George nodded. “I just don't understand how people are getting in and out of locked rooms!” she said as we climbed the stairs. “First the ‘ghost' haunting people in the night, and now this! How are they doing it?”

“That's exactly what I want to find out,” I said. “And since our culprit was able to get into my locked room, we should be able to figure out how they did it from there.”

Once we got upstairs and changed out of our fancy dinner clothes, we got down to business. First we checked the obvious things—any trick locks on the windows or doors that might allow someone entry without a key. Nothing. I checked for a hidden entrance in the clothes closet or the bathroom, but that was a dead end too.

After ten minutes of searching, George decided to take a break. “Ugh!” she exclaimed, letting her head fall back against the wooden paneled wall with a thump. “Another dead end!”

I froze in place. “George,” I said slowly. “Do that again.”

George looked at me curiously. “Do what again?”

“Thump your head against the wall.”

She blinked. “You've got to be kidding.”

“Nope, totally serious.”

George shrugged and thumped her head against the wall. It was just as I'd thought.

“What is it, Nancy?” Bess asked.

I walked over to another part of the wall in the bedroom and rapped on it with my fist. “Don't you hear the difference?”

Bess and George stared at me blankly. I walked over to where George was standing and rapped on the wall behind her, and then immediately again on another panel a couple feet away.

Bess's eyes widened as she recognized the subtle difference in tone. “It's . . . hollow!”

I grinned. “Bingo. I think we've found our hidden entrance. Now, all we have to do is figure out how to open it.”

I peered closely at the wooden paneling, tracing around its edges with my fingertips, searching for some kind of release button. Sure enough, I found a circular knot in the wood on the right-hand side that wasn't flush with the rest of the wall. I pushed against it with my thumb, and it sank into the wall with a muted click. I took a step back as the whole panel swung inward, revealing a dark passage within.

“The plot thickens . . . ,” George muttered.

“Do you have a flashlight?” I asked.

George whipped her smartphone out of her pocket and tapped its screen twice. A blinding beam of light shot out of the back and illuminated the first few dusty feet of the secret passageway. A mouse caught in the beam skittered across the wooden floor and out of sight.

“Eek!” Bess shrieked.

“The answers are in there, I just know it,” I said. “Are you guys coming?”

“Wouldn't miss it!” George answered.

Bess sighed and nodded in agreement. “Maybe that's the only mouse in there,” she said hopefully.

I doubted it, but that was what made Bess so great. I could always count on my friends to follow me into adventure—even if it was infested with mice!

With George's glowing smartphone in hand, I took the lead, with Bess following and George bringing up the rear. We walked silently, trying to avoid having the bare wooden planks squeak beneath our feet. About fifteen feet ahead of us, I saw a tiny circle of light shining on the left wall of the passage. I crept up to the little hole in the wall and set my eye against it. It gave me a full view of a very familiar room—the bridal suite! Charlotte herself was curled up in bed, reading a book by her bedside lamp. Then I noticed a panel similar to the one in my room that I presumed opened into Charlotte's room. “This is definitely how our ghost got in and out of the rooms unnoticed!” I whispered to the girls.

George sighed. “Too bad. ‘Ghostly haunting' is so much more fun than ‘peeping Tom.' ”

We continued down the dark hallway. The passage seemed to follow a circuitous path through the inn, providing entrance into quite a few of the guest rooms,
including Piper and Morgan's room, Alicia's room, and others who had been victims of the inn's “ghost” the night before. At the end of the passage, a final peephole revealed a glimpse of Tucker Matthews sitting in an armchair with a drink in his hand. He was leaning back, a smartphone pressed to his ear.

“You should have seen the look on his face,” Tucker was saying, the side of his mouth lifted in a smirk. “His fiancée pulls a knife out of this pretty little box, and his whole ‘Good evening, I'm Parker Hill' poise goes right out the window. I swear he looked like someone just ran over his dog.” He chuckled, listening to the person on the other end. “I know, right? Parker thinks he's an angel without wings, but it looks like not everybody in this town agrees.” Another pause. “Who sent the knife? Well, I—”

At that very moment, a scream broke the silence. I whirled to see Bess, her hands clamped over her mouth, trembling all over, staring with horror at a little gray mouse clinging to the front of her shirt.

“What was that?” Tucker exclaimed, dropping the
phone to his side and glancing around his room. The three of us froze, afraid to move or even breathe. After what seemed like an eternity, Tucker relaxed back into his chair and resumed his conversation. “Huh? Oh, I just thought I heard a weird noise coming from the walls. This is such an old place, it was probably just a mouse or something.”

Little did Tucker know how right he was!

Meanwhile, the mouse had made it up to Bess's shoulder, where it was eagerly sniffing at the beads of her necklace. “Get it off!” she whispered fiercely.

George looked back and forth between us, making a
who, me?
gesture. Bess and I both nodded vigorously. George rolled her eyes and reached out to lift the tiny mouse by its tail off Bess's shoulder and onto one of the wooden beams that lined the walls of the passage. “Happy trails,” she whispered, as the mouse scampered away. She turned back to us. “Both of you are utterly hopeless,” she muttered.

“Sorry!” Bess whispered.

“It's okay,” I said, though I was sorely disappointed
that Tucker had changed the subject and wasn't saying any more about who had planted the knife at the rehearsal dinner. But even without that information, Tucker was quickly becoming my prime suspect. I said as much to Bess and George once we were out of earshot of his room.