Joanna Wayne - The Amulet

“It’s an old Indian legend.” He pulled into the driveway of a gray clapboard house with a black mixed breed cur curled up on the front porch. The dog perked up, then uncurled and came loping toward them.

Rich jumped out of the car and greeted the dog like they were old pals, scratching him behind the ears while the dog’s tail wagged like mad. The dog ate it up. Surprise. Who’d have thought dogs would like him?

“Yeah. Good to see you, too, Jackson,” Rich said, still walking toward the house.

She got out of the car and followed Rich and the dog up the narrow walkway. Obviously they were at his grandparents’ house. She wasn’t sure why they’d stopped, but before they left she planned to hear the details of the Indian legend and find out why Maizie was convinced the mountains had supernatural powers.

Rich’s grandparents’ house possessed a warmth that seemed to seep from the painted walls and the worn rugs themselves. The furniture was heavy and over-stuffed, made for settling into with a good book or a mug of hot chocolate. The coffee and end tables were knotty pine, possibly homemade.

It was different than the foster home where she’d grown up. Most of the furniture in the house had been off limits. She was pretty much ignored except when the social worker came to call. Then everything was rosy.

Rich took off his jacket and tossed it on top of a stack of newspapers on the coffee table. “Make yourself comfortable. I won’t be but a few minutes. I need to check on a couple of things while I’m here.”

“It looks as if your grandparents just stepped out for a few hours,” Carrie said, running her fingers across the carvings on the back of a wooden rocker before draping her own jacket across the beautiful wood.

“In their mind they have,” Rich said. “They think they’re coming back as soon as Gramps gets his strength back from his last heart attack. It’s the only way they’d agree to leave the place.”

“Hello, Jackson,” she said, bending to pet the dog who was nosing her leg and sniffing her fingertips. “You like the smell of Maizie’s cooking, don’t you, boy?”

Jackson licked her hand in answer.

“Don’t they allow pets in the home where your grandparents are?”

“No, but even if pets were allowed, they wouldn’t have taken Jackson.”

“They can’t just leave him out here by himself.”

“He’s not by himself. He’s got the mountains and the neighbors.”

“But he’s grieving for your grandparents.”

“Missing someone doesn’t kill you. Being thrown into an environment where you can’t run free might.” He walked away, leaving her standing by the brick hearth and an enormous fireplace that still held the smell of wood smoke. On the opposite wall, three windows looked out on the mountains.

Haunted mountains where a man could go hunting and come back without his mind. She stared into the distance for a while, trying to make sense of Maizie’s story. Finally, she gave up and went in search of Rich. She found him in the kitchen, replacing a bulb in the overhead light fixture.

She started to question the need for replacing bulbs in a house where no one lived, but decided what Rich did in his grandparents’ house wasn’t her concern. She rested her hands on the back of a kitchen chair. “Tell me more about the Indian legend.”

He finished changing the bulb and climbed down from the chair he’d been standing on. “It’s just a bunch of nonsense.”

“Like what?”

“It has variations. Which one do you want?”

“Let’s start with the variation Maizie believes, the one she thinks robbed Tom of his reasoning abilities.”

Rich opened the freezer section of the refrigerator, took out the old ice and dumped it in the sink. Once that was done, he straddled one of the kitchen chairs. “Basic legend is that the dead sometimes got trapped in the mist and their spirits can’t break away from the mountains.”

“Why would it trap them?”

“That’s the part that varies according to who’s telling the story. Some think it’s a form of punishment. Some say the undead are warriors left to guard the land. Some believe it was because they had some task that was still unfinished and they can’t be released until they fulfill their obligation.”

“That’s downright creepy.” But she could see where they got that idea. The mist had seemed almost alive the other night when she and Rich had hiked to the ravine. “Do they believe all the ghosts are Indians?”

He exhaled slowly, and she got the distinct impression that it bothered him to talk about this. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if she was going to jump on the ghost bandwagon.

“Some folks think that when the original Fernhaven Hotel burned to the ground that a large number of the guests were trapped in the mist.”

“Why would they be trapped?”

“I don’t know. It’s a ghost story. It doesn’t have to make sense.”

“It could be that when the guests died so suddenly, many of them were in the prime of life,” she said.

“Who cares? It’s fiction. Get it?”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Then make sure you remember that wasn’t a ghost who abducted Elora Nicholas and shot Bart. It was a live, human killer that I plan to apprehend.”

“That we plan to apprehend,” she corrected him.

“Whatever.” Rich stood and scooted the chair back to the table, clearly ready to drop the conversation.

She wondered if he really feared she was flaky enough to buy into the ghost story if he talked about it too much. If so, he had a lot to learn about her. Not that she gave a darn if he learned it or not. When this case was over, she hoped to be through working with him.

Her mind went back to Bart. God, how she’d love to talk to him about this and get his take on the ghost gambit and how that might or might not hinder their chances of getting the locals to work with them on this.

Bart’s insight in situations like this was always amazing. He wasn’t from around here, not even from the state of Washington, but he had a way of getting people to open up to him—the way he’d got her to talking about herself that night after she’d first had to pull her gun on a suspect.

She’d spilled her guts, shed a few tears and then ended up laughing over a stale cream-filled donut in the middle of the night.

Rich turned and walked toward the front door with the mixed-breed hound at his heels. He didn’t bother telling her he was ready to cut out anymore than he’d asked her if she wanted to stop at his grandparents’ house in the first place. He just did things. Maybe it was the mountain way, but she doubted it. It was more likely the Rich way.

She mulled over the ghost idea as she followed him to the car. She didn’t buy the legend, but something might have happened that night to spook old Tom right out of his mind.

If so, the investigation could get really creepy before it was all said and done. But in the end, they’d get their man. She had no doubt of that.

Their killer was not trapped in the mist.

KATRINA HELD the diamond-and-emerald pendant in her palm, letting the silver chain loop around her fingers. The jewels warmed her hand as if they contained a literal fire. It was the only warmth she felt anymore, and it made her ache to get on with this and finish what she was here for.

She stood in front of the window, watching the world go by, a world she didn’t understand anymore. Maybe she never had. She’d certainly gotten love all wrong. And when love was wrong, all of life was wrong.

She wondered if the man she’d seen in the ballroom the other night had gotten love all wrong? Or was he still searching? She thought it might be the latter. His eyes had been so penetrating, so intense she’d felt as if he were touching her.