Chapter 13
IVY JUMPED into Alex’s arms the moment Alex opened her bedroom door. She shifted her to her left arm and took her silk handbag out of the bureau with her right. After all that had happened at the Godfrey’s that day, Alex had forgotten to give the key to Pauline’s room back to Edna.
Alex handed her handbag to Rick. “The key’s in the bottom, but be careful not to stick your finger on my embroidery needle.”
“Since when did you take up stitching?” Rick set the lantern he’d brought from the kitchen on the bureau, separated the handbag’s drawstrings, and peered inside. He pulled out a small container and held it up to the light. “Crickets?”
Alex pointed to the jar on top of her wardrobe. “They’re for Alistair. He’s sort of Vera’s good luck charm. She made me take him with me.”
“And the stitching?” Rick set the jar of crickets on Alex’s food tray.
“Vera showed me the basics and told me it might help me keep my mind busy while I was on the train. She was right. The train ride was long enough that I almost finished an entire pillow cover.” Alex glanced away from him. “Thank you for her, by the way.”
“Sure.” He fumbled through her handbag again. “Ouch!”
“I told you to watch out for the—”
He smiled weakly—was he feeling badly again?—and pulled out his hand. It wasn’t hurt at all. “I believe this is the key?”
Alex rolled her eyes. “You know this is serious, don’t you?”
“Serious doesn’t mean dead. Sorry. Poor choice of words.”
Alex shook her head, followed Rick, who was once more carrying the lantern, into the hall, and closed the door behind them. Rick’s expression pinched just before he doubled over.
Her mouth turned dry. “Please stop kidding around.”
Rick’s shoulders drooped. “I thought the tea had fixed whatever had upset my stomach earlier, but I guess I was wrong.”
Alex petted Ivy, hoping it would soothe her cat enough that she wouldn’t meow and wake everyone in the house. “Maybe you should go to bed. This can wait until morning.”
“It’s all right. It’ll pass in a minute.”
Alex studied his face. “I’m not so sure.”
Rick pressed his lips into a straight line, eyed Alex out of the corner of his eye, and slowly straightened his stance. The pinched look softened, but only slightly. Had the sickness subsided, or was he only pretending it had? Alex suspected it was the latter, but if she was right, why would he push himself now? Pauline had died years ago. Surely investigating her room could wait until the morning.
Rick slipped the key into the lock and turned the knob. “It’s been a while since we’ve been alone together in the dark.”
Alex jolted. Was that what this was about? His sickness, the inability to sleep—just a ruse to be alone with her in the dark?
He pushed the door open and stepped into the center of the room. She, sighing in relief, followed him.
Pauline’s room had originally been a guest room, but the day she’d died, after her quarrel with Uncle Henry, she’d angrily retired to that room for the night. It contained only a few of her personal belongings.
Ivy leapt from Alex’s arms to the floor.
“That’s odd,” Alex said. “Ivy usually won’t let go of me, especially in the dark.”
“I can’t say I blame her for that.” Rick set the key next to an empty food tray on the small table next to the door and walked to the middle of the room. He held the lantern at arm’s length in front of him. His hand shook slightly. “Where do you want to start?”
Alex scanned the room. Pauline’s bedchamber looked much like her own room, with a large plush chair, a bureau, a rocking chair, an unmade bed, an end table beneath the window, and a wardrobe closet. “How can one know if an intruder’s been in the room if everything is just as it was when you last saw it?”
“You’re thinking of your nightmare.”
“Or whatever it was.”
Rick moved back to her and straightened the collar of her night robe. When his thumb brushed the side of her neck, shivers shot through her body.
He held her gaze. “My only suggestion is we look for something unusual. When my partners and I finally found the burial place for Bavo the Great’s lost treasure, we found the blade of a seventeenth-century knife among the surrounding rocks. It’s what led us to the treasure.”
“What’s so unusual about a knife?”
“Bavo the Great hid his treasure in the fifteenth century.”
“You mean someone got to the treasure before you did.”
“It looked like it.”
“But you collected it, didn’t you?”
“We did.”
“But if someone had already been there, why didn’t he take it?”
“We don’t know.” He grinned. “Maybe a ghost fed him Monk’s Bane, and it killed him.”
Alex moved to the window so Rick wouldn’t see her smile. Their bantering was one of the things she had missed. “That’s not likely.”
“Or—maybe someone was still guarding the treasure after all that time and killed the earlier robber. I’ve heard stories of such things.”
“A two-hundred-year-old guard?”
“You never know. Maybe he drank an elixir of life.” Rick moved the lamp beneath his face, casting distorted shadows across his features.
She turned away from him and opened the wardrobe.
Groan.
Alex whirled. Rick still stood in the center of the rug.
“Is your stomach bothering you again?” she said.
“That wasn’t me.”
“Please don’t tease me about this.”
“I’m not.”
Groan. It was a woman’s voice. It came from the bed.
Goose bumps flashed over Alex’s body. She whirled. “Ivy!” Ivy’s fur glowed like white light. She jumped off the bed and scampered beneath it. “She’s doing it again.”
“Doing what?” Rick said.
“Making sounds come out of nothing.”
“You think the cat’s doing that?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Whenever she glows, l—we—hear something—a ghostly something.”
“Whenever she’s glowed here in Massachusetts, you mean.”
And in the cave. “More than here, Rick.”
Groan.
Despite Alex’s determination to keep her faculties about her, her hands turned clammy. She shoved them beneath her folded arms and hunched her shoulders.
Rick placed his hand on her upper arm. “Should we leave? We can come back tomorrow—when it’s daylight.”
Warmth from his touch spread through her, but she shook it off. “Of course not! We’ve got to investigate that noise now.”
“That’s my girl.” He stepped toward the foot of the bed and looked under it. “Ivy? Where’d you go?” Rick’s knees gave way. He clenched the bedpost and pulled himself face-first up onto the mattress.
“Rick!” Alex grabbed his shoulders and pulled him around onto his back. She pressed her hand against his forehead, checking for a fever. His skin felt cold. “We’ve got to get you back to your room.” She sat beside him.
A noise sounded outside the door. She looked to it. Was someone out there?
“I’m fine,” Rick said. “Whatever it is will pass in a minute.”
Light burst from beneath the small table by the door. So that’s where Ivy had gone.
The tinkling of metal on glass. A clatter.
“Dash it all!”
Ivy shot across the room and leapt into Alex’s lap. More whispery sounds filled the room.
“You coddle the children too much,” Aunt Pauline’s voice said.
“I’ll do better, ma’am.”
“See that you do, or I’ll have to let you go.” Clinking. “There’s something wrong with this tea.”
“I made it the same as always.”
Pouring liquid. Another Clink. “Th
en make it again. No-no! Leave the plant and get me a new cup!”
Ivy turned round and round atop Alex’s lap before jumping onto the end table and then to the windowsill. She pressed her body against the glass. The glow disappeared.
Rick took Alex’s hand. “Did you recognize those voices?”
“Aunt Pauline and Edna.” Alex placed her hand against Rick’s cheek. “How are you feeling now?”
He didn’t answer, but his gaze intensified.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Did you hear what the voices said?”
For a moment, Alex thought Ivy might jump back into her lap, but when Ivy instead scampered to the corner chair, Alex recalled each of the sounds and voices that had filled the air moments ago. Groans, dishes, Aunt Pauline and Edna, and . . . Alex’s breathing paused . . . and Aunt Pauline threatening to let Edna go.
Alex jumped to her feet. “It was a one time, off-the-cuff threat.”
“Are you certain?”
Alex’s thoughts flashed over memories from her past. Aunt Pauline had been angry with Alex during so much of her first years at Watson Manor, but Edna had always smoothed things between them. Later, Alex had figured her view of Aunt Pauline had come through child-colored eyes, but now . . . Had Aunt Pauline threatened Edna more than once? Did Edna have—motive?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alex said. “We don’t even know if what we heard is what really happened. Maybe it’s a trick of some kind.” She rubbed the back of her neck. The cave, the office, the cellar, this room. Could a cat be a magician?
“You know as well as I do it wasn’t a trick. Ivy is a cat, not a witch. What we heard in the office and then again in the Godfrey’s cellar came from real events, real emotions. I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to accept it, Alex. The dinner dishes, the voices, even the dead plant your uncle listed in his file—all of it makes sense when connected with Edna.”
“What do the dead plants have to do with anything?”
“It sounded as if your aunt poured the tea on the plant.”
Alex’s breath came too fast. Her thoughts flashed from one point to the other. Monk’s Bane tea could kill plants. “A dead plant isn’t physical proof of—of anything.”
“Maybe not.” Rick smiled sadly. “But I think you’ll soon have more than enough proof.”
“What do you mean?”
“Edna brought me a dinner tray this evening.”
“What of it? She brought me one too.”
“I can’t move my legs, Alex.”
“What?” Alex grabbed Rick’s calves. Even through his pants, his legs felt more like stiff clay than warm flesh. “I’ll go for the doctor.”
“Don’t,” Rick said. “The cold is quickly crawling up my body. I’m afraid I won’t be here when you return, and I’d rather you were here when—”
Alex held her breath.
“I’d rather not die alone.”
“You’re not going to die!”
The door opened, and Edna walked into the room. She softly closed the door behind her, locked it with the key Rick had left on the end table, and slid that key into her apron pocket. She took a deep, satisfied breath. “Yes, he is.”
***