Лейганн Доббс - A Whisker In The Dark

Of course, the door to the west wing was locked, just as I’d been instructed by our new building inspector to do, so I had to detour into the kitchen and grab the key out of the drawer. When I came back, I had to clear the Biddefords away from the door to open it. Doris had been bent down peeking through the keyhole.

I unlocked the door, and it swung open. My gaze went immediately to the stairway on the right. That’s where the body had been just a few weeks ago. Today, though, there was only some dust. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Merooo! Nero ran over to me and then trotted back to the doorway that led to the room where Ed was. He stopped and looked over his shoulder as if waiting for me to follow. All sounds of hammering and sawing had stopped.

“Ed, are you okay?” I yelled. Ed was elderly, maybe he’d had a heart attack or something.

“I’m fine but I don’t think this guy is…”

This guy ? I steeled myself as I entered the other room.

The room Ed was working in had been a ballroom at one time. It wasn’t gigantic but it wasn’t tiny either. It was in quite a state of disrepair; water-stained ceiling, wallpaper coming off in strips. Remnants of the original black-and-white marble-tile flooring were chipped and cracked, and most of the windows were boarded up. I was planning on turning it into a game room. Ed had been replacing the old plaster walls first since we already knew there was water damage.

He was standing in front of the worst damaged section of the wall. He’d made good progress and a large section of the old horsehair plaster had been removed to reveal the inside of the wall. The demolition had created a dusty pile of rubble, and I could see the slats inside the wall. Too bad I could also see something else. A skeleton.

A human skeleton.

“Talk about skeletons in your closet.” Bob came up beside me and leaned forward to peer at the bones.

Human bones didn’t faze me in the least. I’d been in the middle of training as a medical examiner before giving up my career to raise a family. I immediately took note of the appearance of the bones. They looked dry, brittle. No tendons or flesh stuck to them. The skeleton had been in there for a long time. What was it doing inside the wall? Had it been buried in the wall when the place was built or put in sometime later? And why had no one noticed? Seems like a dead body would have smelled, unless already a skeleton when it was shoved in there.

Paula dug a nip out of her purse and I recognized the black-and-white label of Jack Daniel’s. Guess discovering a skeleton called for the hard stuff.

“This calls for a drink!” She downed it in one quick swig to the disapproving glare of her siblings.

Doris didn’t admonish Paula. She was busy staring at the skeleton. Her face was pinched, her eyes narrowed. She swayed a bit and I was worried she might faint, but it turned out she was just trying to get a closer look. Before I knew it, she was crouched down beside the skeleton, lifting up its hand. It was wearing a ring—gold with an oval carnelian signet.

“Lordy! It’s Jedediah Biddeford! He’s come back to enact the curse just like he said he would!” Doris dropped the hand and the bones clattered as she shot up to a standing position.

Ed raised his brows at me.

The cats sniffed the ring.

“Wait a minute? What curse?” Arlene’s gaze shifted between Doris, Earl and the skeleton.

“You didn’t tell her about the curse?” Doris shot a look at Earl.

Earl shrugged. “It’s just a stupid old wives’ tale.”

Carla gestured toward the skeleton. “Apparently not. I mean he is here.”

Earl scowled. “He is not here . That’s just a skeleton. It’s not like it’s his ghost or anything.” He turned to his wife. “There’s an old family legend about an ancestor who will come back and haunt anyone who digs up his treasure.”

Carla frowned. “Hey, wait. Does that mean someone dug up treasure?”

Doris’s dark eyes scanned the faces of her children. “Well, did anyone?”

They shook their heads.

“I doubt there is an actual treasure…” Bob said slowly. He looked distracted, as if he was wondering if there really was a treasure and, if so, where it might be.

“We don’t even know that this is Jedediah,” I said. I’d heard about the curse from Millie. Millie’s family had bought the guesthouse from Jedediah’s family back in the day. Apparently old Jedediah Biddeford had issued some curse meant to warn anyone away from the treasure he was planning on bringing back from Europe. He claimed he’d come back and haunt whoever messed with his treasure.

“That’s his ring.” Doris pointed toward the hand. “I saw an old picture of it once. My granddaddy said Jed always wore it. Never took it off.”

“But Jedediah never came back from Europe. So that can’t possibly be him in there.” At least that’s what I’d been told.

Doris looked at me like I had five heads. “Don’t you know? He always said he’d return. And this is the form he’s taken. And if he’s back you know what that means?” She looked around at her kids like a lady who was sure she had the winning lottery ticket. “The treasure came back too.”

“I’ll drink to that!” Paula had dug out another nip. She raised the Jack Daniel’s in the air then threw her head back and chugged it down.

Ed scowled at Doris. “Lady. This isn’t a ghost. This is a skeleton. He hasn’t come back.” Ed poked at the femur bone with a long old-fashioned oak folding ruler. “This guy’s been in here for a couple hundred years.”

“What the—”

I turned to see the guesthouse maid, Flora, in the doorway. Flora had sort of come with the place. Millie had assured me she did a great job. At what, I had no idea because for most of the tasks I gave her, she simply claimed she didn’t “do” that sort of work. I did see her dusting sometimes, but mostly she could be found watching the new TV in the parlor. She must have been on a commercial break and come to check out the ruckus.

Flora was a tiny thing with a shock of white hair and round glasses that made her eyes look gigantic. I had no idea how old Flora was but if I had to guess I’d say she was about as old as the guesthouse itself. Probably knew Jedediah Biddeford personally.

She narrowed her gaze at the skeleton. “What’s that?”

“Jedediah Biddeford,” Doris said.

Flora’s brows shot up. “You mean the guy who buried the treasure? He really did come back from Europe?”

Great. Even Flora believed in the curse. That’s all I needed, a bunch of treasure hunters digging up the place.

Doris nodded. “Yep.”

“I doubt it’s him,” Ed reiterated.

“Did he really bury treasure?” Henry seemed interested in something for the first time since he’d arrived.

“Doubt it.” Earl didn’t sound convinced.

“Stranger things have happened.” Paula leaned against the wall, probably to keep from falling down.

“It’s nonsense,” Ed said, waving his hand dismissively. “Old rumors probably got all misconstrued over the years. I’d be more concerned about how the guy got here. Someone stuffed him in and closed up the wall. That’s no curse. That’s murder.”

The room fell silent as we all let Ed’s words sink in.

Flora broke the silence. “I don’t know who he is, if he buried treasure or who put him in there, but I do know that I’m not cleaning this mess up. I don’t do skeletons.” She gave me a pointed look and then turned and shuffled off toward the hallway.

Ed had a point. Whoever the skeleton was, he didn’t get into that wall on his own. And while I didn’t believe in curses and I was darn sure there was no treasure buried at the guesthouse, I did know one thing. This discovery was a police matter.