The Realm of the Shadows (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 2) (5 page)

“That’s not the deal Graeme made with my dad,” Teddy said, unfazed. He whipped out his phone. “Shall we discuss it with him?”

“With whom? Your dad? No. And Graeme Huntington is unavailable, so we’re at an impasse. No red-lining, no filming.”

Jazz scowled. Teddy scowled. I beamed.

“Oh, all right!” Jazz said in a spiteful little way. She drew a line through the part of the contract Michael didn’t like and Teddy initialed it. Michael initialed it too, then signed the release itself.

It was a little victory, anyway. Possibly miniscule. I wasn’t going to bring it up in front of the war party, but looking at the product was not the same as being able to demand changes to it.

In her agitation, Jazz was jerking at her skin-tight skirt and fiddling with her jewelry. As she waited for Michael to finish signing, she jerked her diamond earrings out of her ears and dropped them into her purse, as if the feel of them on her earlobes was driving her crazy. Then she got a tube of lipstick out and ran it over her lips. She took her copy of the document back from Michael and shoved it into her briefcase, but before she could close it, Teddy said, “Oh, Jazz, don’t forget our little gift.”

“Oh, yeah.”

She took a DVD case out of her briefcase, left it on the kitchen counter, gave her hair a shake-out with both hands, and wiggled off.

“I gotta change for the show. Get out here as soon as you can,” she yelled at Teddy. “It’s getting dark. We’ll be ready to film soon, and nobody’s done any blocking or lighting at all yet. It takes a freakin’ bullwhip to get these idiots organized.”

“So just what is your plan for the show?” Michael asked, shoving our copy of the release into the nearest kitchen drawer, which happened to be the silverware drawer. “With no haunting going on, are you and your friends just going to wander around and call to the spirits, hoping somebody answers?”

“The show is going to be based on the history of the house,” Teddy said. “We always research these things first.”

“When did you have time to research?” I asked. A very nasty suspicion was growing somewhere in my beautiful, trusting mind.

“Research is at the tips of your fingers these days,” Teddy said, miming that he was typing on a keyboard. “And of course, we knew we were coming to St. Augustine months ago. We set the schedule at the beginning of the season, and this is going to be the finale. Someone from the show always checks the next project out ahead of time. And . . . now that you know that my father and Graeme are long-time buddies, haven’t you figured it out yet?”

I had. “You’ve been here before. Probably when you were a child.”

“Bingo.”

I huffed, and let my gaze wander to the French doors, where the inside and outside worlds were visible at the same time – reflections of the great room furniture being transparently superimposed against the soft remains of daylight on the river.

“You remember being impressed by the solitude of the place, the age of the house, and the status of the family,” I said.

“Yep.”

“And maybe, through your father, you heard some gossip about the Cadbury family that you’re planning to spin into an episode of your show.” I turned to Michael. “I wonder if any of this was explained to Graeme.”

“Oh, he knows exactly what we’re doing here. My dad made him watch the show when it debuted, since Graeme knew me as a kid.”

Michael’s mind was working fast. “So this show you’re doing – it features some members of the Cadbury family itself? People you knew? Does Graeme know about that?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. In a general way.” Unconscious of the offense he was giving, Teddy became animated. “Elizabeth Hull Cadbury. Everybody called her Betsy. That lady that died this summer – Vesta? – her mother. She had a tragic life, and died right out there in the river, drowning while saving her only child’s life. Vesta was just a toddler at the time. And poor Betsy was a very haunted lady. Did you know she was a spiritualist? She held séances right here in this very house. So naturally we’ll want to do a recreation. Don’t worry; we won’t be filming in the house for long. In and out. A puff of smoke and we’re gone.” He dusted his hands theatrically. “We know how to do these things.”

Before we could say a word, his hand-held device squawked and somebody told him to get his ass to the cemetery.

He left us.

“So what was the little gift?” Michael asked, drifting away into the great room.

I picked up the DVD case, and there was a huge shot of Teddy’s face on the cover, surrounded by much smaller head shots of his co-stars, all looking grimly determined.

“’
The Realm of the Shadows
, Seasons I, II and III,’” I read. “For our edification, gratification and amuse-ification, no doubt. Hot damn, he autographed it.”

“I think watching that could actually lower our IQ’s,” Michael commented.

After arranging our things in the master suite, we tried to settle down in the great room, but we’d never been in the house after dark before, and it actually started to feel spooky. The gallery above the great room was in shadow by then, and in the gloom, I began to see strange shapes and a hint of movement. Finally we looked at one another, sighing at the same time, and I said, “Maybe we’d better get out there and see what they’re up to.”

“I suppose so.”

I took the precaution of locking up the house and pocketing the key. As we walked across the yard, I said, “It’s funny Teddy didn’t say anything about the barn. I don’t know if it’s haunted or not, but it’s what’s been happening lately. For a moment there I was beginning to suspect Teddy got called in by Ed, or that Ed got sent in by Teddy to stir things up before he got here. But Ed would’ve sent him to the barn, wouldn’t he?”

“Not if they had this all worked out in advance. The story of the lady in the barn loft came from Charlie, not Ed.”

“Still, you’d think they’d take advantage of a thing like that, if they knew about it.”

As I walked across the lawn toward the cemetery, I stepped on something hard, stopped, reached down and picked up a broken pen with the
Realm of the Shadows
logo drifting across it in misty white letters. I shoved it into my cargo pocket, making a mental note to talk to Teddy about his messy crew when I got a chance.

They were in the cemetery itself, and Teddy was standing next to Elizabeth’s flattened tombstone, saying something poignant to the camera about the neglected graves of forgotten ancestors. Kingsley’s grave had been filled in again, so it hadn’t drawn their attention, thank goodness.

I have pretty good long vision, and as we came nearer I went up on my tip toes and looked at Elizabeth’s tombstone in the flood of TV lights.

I got close to Michael and whispered, “I don’t know where he got that cock-and-bull story about Elizabeth drowning while saving Vesta, but when Elizabeth died, Vesta was in her sixties, not a toddler.”

“And as I remember it, she didn’t drown, either,” Michael whispered back.

We were shushed.

A friendly voice from behind us whispered, “Why don’t you folks come back here and stand with me while they get this shot.”

I turned to look into one of the most beautiful male faces I had ever seen. He noticed my look, gave me a warm smile and extended his hand, saying, “Seth Hardy. I’m in the cast.”

Uh huh. They’d sent in the pretty boy to handle us. As Teddy began his bogus story about Betsy Cadbury, we allowed ourselves to be drawn back about ten yards, where we were joined by a pudgy young man and Jazz.

The tramp assistant had ditched the pencil skirt and spike heels and was now wearing the same black jumpsuit as the men were. It had the show’s logo emblazoned across the back of the shoulders, a lot of useless hardware like zippers and shiny metal rings, and lots of pockets. Down the front, latching over the button band, were heavy lobster claw clasps, giving the outfits a tough, S&M look. I noticed that Jazz’s jumpsuit was a girlier version of the men’s, with a tight fit to her slim waist, somewhat flared shoulders, a plunging neckline, and leggings that amounted to tights. Apparently this was how one dressed for hard-core ghost-hunting, except for the flip flops, which didn’t go with the rest of the get-up. She’d also ditched the executive briefcase and had a black canvas satchel with the show’s logo on it, which she threw down on the ground beside her. She’d replaced the diamond earrings with large hunks of onyx surrounded by diamond chips: black, to match the jumpsuit, of course. The glasses were gone. I wondered if she was going to change into combat boots before the show. They were the only thing missing from her tomb-raider look.

Seth stood beside me, and at some point murmured into my ear, “I’m the team psychic, though all of us receive messages from time to time. My natural abilities are the strongest, though.”

The pudgy dude glanced at him with pure loathing. Then he turned to me, leaned in, and said, “I’m Perry Farnham, by the way. Equipment tech. I handle the monitoring apparatus, analyze data, and research the local lore. You could call me the first line of attack,” he said a trifle smugly. “I observe the situation, weed out the hoaxers, then I decide if it’s even worth an investigation. The wrap-up of each episode is mine, where I analyze the data we’ve collected.”

“Call him Pluto,” Seth told me. “Everybody does.”

I had a hazy memory of the artwork on their van. “It seems like somebody’s missing,” I commented.

“Oh, that’s Wizard,” Seth said. “He never shows up until filming begins. He mostly keeps to himself in his workshop until it’s time to try out his latest invention.”

“Wizard?”

“He’s our mechanic. He’s back at the lab in Jacksonville, working on his containment device. He’s been tinkering with it for years, but it’s tricky. Ghosts don’t want to be locked up any more than the living do, and the theory behind it is still, you know, like, theoretical.”

I stared at him. He seemed serious. As I looked I was surprised to see that Jazz was hanging on his arm and gently pawing his bicep.

“Um,” I said, trying not to stare at the petting going on beside me, “by the way, I found something your crew dropped on the lawn. You might tell your people to be more careful about throwing things around here.”

He looked down. “Oh, that’s just one of our pens. We hand them out by the thousands.” He gave me a benevolent smile. “You can keep it.”

“That’s not the point –“ I stopped because I’d lost him. He was gazing at the activity in the cemetery, and the bright lights glazed his young skin with a ghostly radiance.

Never mind, I thought. I’d talk to his boss about it later.

Seth seemed to be somewhere in his twenties. He had the kind of blond-angel beauty that must’ve been giving him free passes since Kindergarten. He had the light build of a lean man who hadn’t yet hit middle age, and was about my height – average for a man. Teddy had at least ten years on him. In addition to the bodybuilding, Teddy had a natural beefiness that would someday be a problem if he didn’t watch his weight. I looked at Teddy in the cemetery, the focus of all eyes and cameras, posing and gesturing in the lights, and wondered if the extra pounds added by the camera weren’t making him look like he was carrying too much bulk already. Teddy had better watch his back.

By now, Jazz had let go of Seth and was chewing on a sculptured nail. In a sudden, compulsive movement, she removed her earrings and threw them into the messenger bag. I could almost hear her nerve-endings jangling around inside of her, and once she’d ripped off the jewelry, she stood next to Seth, humming. I had to look away. Just the sight of her was getting me agitated.

Michael and I exchanged a look, and at that moment, something exploded with a huge flash, and a couple of the bright lights set up around the cemetery fell over with a crash. Invisible birds left their roosts in the old oaks and flew away, tittering.

Jazz screamed an expletive and ran to help, with Pluto waddling along behind her. But Seth just stood beside us, shaking his head.

“I told Teddy this would happen,” he said. “It was too much juice for the generator. This is not good.”

He walked away, but not in the direction of the film crew. He looked like he was going back to relax on the veranda while everybody else fixed whatever the problem was.

They got things going again in about forty-five minutes, and the cast used the time to gear up for the hunt. Teddy put the finishing touch on his warrior look by swiping black greasepaint over his cheekbones. It was rather attractive, very dramatic, and of course it emphasized the hypnotic eyes. Then he did a little shadowboxing and percussive breathing, conscious that Michael and I were watching, but pretending to ignore us, just a lonely warrior preparing for battle.

They began again in the cemetery, hovering around Betsy’s grave in a kind of pre-game huddle, and the cameras rolled.

“You can feel the vibrations emanating from here, can’t you Seth?” An aside to the camera. “Seth, as you know, is the most sensitive psychic on the team.”

Seth ran with it. “I felt the vibrations when we first arrived, my brother. She is strong. She is one strong lady.”

Murmurs of assent percolated around the valiant little group.

In an astonishing change of persona, Jazz said, “It frightens me. I’m not ashamed to admit it. The power – it’s awesome. The last time I felt this kind of power . . . .“ She shivered. “Remember San Francisco?”

Murmurs of remembrance.

“You got pretty scratched up,” Teddy said. “That was one mean presence, and it wasn’t going to go down quietly. Frankly I was surprised myself that we managed to handle it. May that poor, confused child remain at peace.”

Murmurs of amen.

Arm around Jazz, reassuring voice of the fatherly leader. “Don’t worry, Jazz. We’ve got your back.”

Reassuring murmurs from the manly wall of protection
.

Focus ahead, past the eyes of the viewers: “You’re late, man.”

A large, bear-shaped hominid ambled into the spotlight, scruffy, unkempt, and emanating sadness. A thinning mop of hippie hair had yielded to the wind, and though he was a tall man, his stooping posture only added to the impression of a lonely, mission-driven, harmless fellow who only wanted to be left alone in the lab.

Wizard had arrived.

Teddy embraced him as he broke into the huddle.

“What have you got for us this time, Wiz?” Teddy asked, talking directly down into the grave of the lady ghost he was hoping to fool with whatever wind-up toy Wizard had come up with.

“Well, I’ve made some adjustments,” Wizard said in a surprisingly mild voice for a man of his size. “As we discussed, electromagnetic fields can be merciless. Enough is too much, you might say. Layman’s terms. I managed to trick it out with a digital read-out for greater precision. What have you got for me here?” he said, looking down through the dirt, as it were, to the next subject.

“Elizabeth Hull Cadbury,” Teddy said. “The lady of the manor.”

“Ah, yes, I remember you, dear,” Wizard said gently and kindly. He managed to convey true affection, and I began to wonder how many of the crew had had acting classes. He was good. There was a tired authenticity about him, and in a cast of assorted hotties (and Pluto), I found he attracted me the most. You could curl up by a fire with him.

And then he started the tech-talk again about his new gizmo, and I tuned him out.

I was getting bored and thinking about taking Michael back up to the house for a glass of wine when Seth went off.

He had turned his Botticelli profile to the camera and was gazing blankly toward the river, listening.

“What is it, Seth?” Teddy asked tensely.

“He’s picking up something,” Jazz said, her voice edged with fear and her long nails crawling up her own arms. “It’s
her
.”

“Oh, God,” Pluto said. “It’s – it’s where she went in. Into the river. It’s where Betsy died saving her child.”

“Could he have picked something up so quickly?” Wizard said, detached, but interested.

Teddy began some blather about spirits not knowing how to tell time, but Seth took the focus away, yielding to the siren call and flying off, stage left. The camera followed and suddenly everybody was moving: the cast, the crew, me, Michael, and whatever spirits had gathered to watch the show.

Seth was far out ahead of the pack, and the lights picked him up again standing precariously on the seawall, looking down into the water.

“Seth!” Teddy called. “Stop! You must resist her! Fight it, Seth!” He turned to the videographer running along beside him, confiding to the viewers. “The spirits are sometimes jealous, even spiteful. We have known them to put us in danger before. We have to catch up with Seth before he’s bewitched into doing something dangerous!”

He outpaced the videographer, who kept filming Teddy as he sprinted for the river.

I looked at Michael and he looked at me. “This is getting out of hand,” I said.

“Don’t worry. They probably practiced it in daylight, before we got here. They’re used to creating drama, or who would watch the show?”

We stayed back about ten yards from the action, but Seth was clearly visible in the stark lights, standing on the seawall in a gust of wind. He was gazing out over the water, his hair lit white in a throbbing halo around his head, his lithe, young-man’s body stretched up in a pose of surrender.

“I feeeeeel her,” he sang ecstatically.

“Oh, brother,” I whispered to Michael, but I was getting a little scared myself. Whatever nonsense they were up to, I wanted them to get it over with and get Seth down off that wall. He looked like he was about to fall in.

“Yes,” Seth said, lifting his voice to the starry sky. “Yes – you can have me. Embrace me. I’m here for
you
, Betsy.
Take me
.”

And he jumped in.

It was an almost sexual surrender, and he made a beautiful physical gesture in diving, entering the water almost without a splash.

“The river’s too low,” I said to Michael, getting really frightened. “He’ll break his neck.”

“It’s high tide,” he told me. “Relax.”

Somebody in the crew shushed us, but apparently Teddy had heard us. “Is the tide out? How deep is this water?”

Pluto stepped up. “I researched the area before we got here, and studied the local tide charts. At low tide it’s only about seven feet, but high tide is in half an hour. He should be okay, but we’ve got to get him out of there!”

Suddenly Pluto dropped his e-meter or whatever it was, stepped out of his flip flops and jumped in.

Jazz, conveying fear and courage, flipped the sandals off and dove in after him.

We waited tensely, while the lights focused on Teddy and Wizard, having a chit-chat about the dangers of their chosen field.

Minutes passed.

It seemed to occur to everybody at the same time that the divers had been in the water too long.

Suddenly Pluto and Jazz broke the surface, hauling themselves half onto the seawall.

Pluto sputtered, choked and clawed for purchase on the cracked and crumbly wall.

“
I can’t find him
!” he shrieked.

“He’s nowhere,” Jazz said hoarsely, gasping for air. “Oh, God, Teddy, this is for real! We can’t find him!”

The situation palpably changed, and the amateur theatricals flashed over into a surge of real panic. Prickles crawled over my scalp and arms and I couldn’t turn my head to look at Michael. After a frozen moment, we ran to the seawall with everybody else and stared down into the river.

“Lights!” Teddy screamed. “
Get the lights on the water.”

The videographer suddenly focused away from the star and the crew aimed everything at the river. The moss-green of the water glowed where they pointed, and somewhere at the edge of the circle, there was a dark shadow.

“I see him!” somebody shouted, pointing with his whole arm. Pluto took a huge gasp of air and went under again, quickly followed by Jazz. More crew members were jumping into the water now, and Michael and I stood transfixed at the life-or-death drama that these fools had created. I took Michael’s arm and hugged myself against him.

“Oh, God, Michael. That beautiful boy!”

“He’s all right. It’s all a part of the show. He’s probably got a tank of air under the water or something. Pretty good stuff, huh?” He tried to smile but it was no good; his lips were frozen. He was as worried as I was.

Suddenly it seemed as if everybody under the water surfaced at once, and Pluto and Jazz were on either side of a limp figure. Seth’s face was still down in the water, and they didn’t have the presence of mind to lift it. Equipment was thrown down on the ground by most of the crew while the videographer stayed focused on the action, and arms reached down for the sodden figure of a man, his light hair swaying in the water like seaweed.

They hauled him over the seawall, leaving Pluto, Jazz and assorted flunkies to climb over the wall by themselves.

I had to look away. I’d hauled a drowning victim out of the water myself once. I couldn’t watch. I heard the counting, the squish of the wet clothes against the slim body, the increasing desperation that filled the air around the huddled figures.

“Come on, Seth,” Teddy urged.

I tried to convince myself that it had all been a hoax, a vortex of terror created for the TV cameras, and in a minute Seth would cough a few times, sit up and ask what all the fuss was about, but I didn’t really believe it.

“They’re on the way,” somebody said. “It’s a long way in from the main road, though. Even the ambulance is going to have to take it easy on that dirt road in the dark. Keep pushing.”

The man doing CPR kept pushing.

It finally came home to me that Seth was really dead. Not TV dead. Dead.

I sat down on the ground and cried.

I knew Kyle Longley, the Sheriff of Flagler County. He showed up shortly after the ambulance and came straight to me and Michael.

“What happened?”

Still emotional, I said, “The damn fools pulled a prank to make a TV show, and it went wrong. A man drowned.”

He inhaled loudly through his nostrils. “You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered.

“Does it look like I’m kidding?”

“What kind of a show?”

Michael answered. “A ghost-hunting show.
The Realm of the Shadows
.”

Kyle gave us an incredulous frown. “Wasn’t that a movie or something? Long time ago?”

“It was a clever idea that caught on. This show is only one of half a dozen reality ghost shows running. I guess they were trying to out-do the competition.”

“By making their own ghosts?” Kyle said. “Well, I’d better go talk to them and see what they have to say for themselves. It was all a phony set-up, you think?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Nobody seemed surprised to see him jump into the river, but they genuinely panicked when he didn’t come up again. I think it just went wrong, Kyle. They recorded the whole thing. Make them give you the camera.”

He looked at Michael. “Better take your lady inside now. I’ll talk to you two later, if I need to. She looks about done in.”

For once I didn’t mind a little masculine protectiveness, and when Michael put his arm around me, I held onto it with both hands.

I couldn’t sleep.

We had taken the master bedroom, and we went up and collapsed into bed. About an hour later I realized that staring at the ceiling wasn’t going to take me to dreamland. My body was tired, but my mind was overwrought.

Trying not to disturb Michael, I got out of bed, went down to the great room and turned the TV on with the volume low. Slipping the
Realm of the Shadows
DVD into the player, I sat down to watch. I was pretty sure it was going to do the trick and put me to sleep. Apparently, Seth hadn’t joined them until a later season; he wasn’t in the early episodes on the disk, or I wouldn’t have been able to watch.

Just before dawn, Michael came down and asked me what I was doing. Then he brewed coffee for us and handed me a cup before he sat down on the sofa beside me.

“Michael, did you look closely at the seawall where Seth jumped in?”

“At the wall? No. I was looking at Seth.”

“Well I glanced at the wall. There was a black mark there, directly below where he was standing. I noticed, because there’s an oyster half-shell embedded in the wall just there, and it always draws my attention.”

“A black mark? Like a palmetto bug?”

“Bigger. It wasn’t a bug, Michael. It was a piece of black electrical tape. Something like that, anyway. I looked for it again when we were standing around waiting for the ambulance to come, but by that time it was gone.”

“Or maybe it was a bug and it just crawled off. They don’t like bright lights, and there were plenty of those in the yard.”

“Oh, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m making too much of it, but if it was a mark for Seth to use, somebody got rid of it fast. He could have seen it against the seawall, even with the lights far behind him.”

Michael considered it, angled his head and squeezed his eyes in an effort to accept it for evidence, but in the end he shook his head. “Taylor, this is Florida. It was probably a bug. Anyway, there’s no way to prove or disprove it now, and after the accident, naturally they’d want to get rid of any evidence that they’d planned the whole thing.”