Better Homes and Hauntings

  “No. I walked into your office to talk to you about the book.”

  He sighed. “Dotty, I don’t want to hurt you, but we both know this new book isn’t ever going to get off the ground. You’ll make a mess of whatever progress Cindy is trying to make organizing the house, lose interest in a few months, and be off to do something else.”

  Dotty would allow that, considering that she had cut and run on several projects in the past. “Not this time, Deacon. It’s too personal. I think it’s important to me and to you that we sort through this family stuff once and for all. I mean, how many times did we try to talk to our parents about it, only to have them shut us down and tell us it was too hurtful to talk about?”

  Deacon frowned at her. “Uh, that would be never, because my parents didn’t actually talk to me about anything.”

  There were times when Dotty hated her aunt and uncle, she really did. Her own parents were decent enough, she supposed. But they were absent, hard to pin down, moving from place to place, because “starting over” in each new exclusive community gave them a new audience for whom they pretend they were the affluent, high-flying Whitneys. Uncle Robert was cold, selfish, and willing to sacrifice his own son’s financial well-being to keep up appearances. When Deacon had made his money a few years ago, Robert was the first one to come to Deacon with his hand out, claiming that he was owed a share of his son’s success for all of his parental sacrifices.

  “It’s important, Deacon. We need to know why this happened to our family, why the effects have rippled through the generations. Is it a curse? Bad karma? Or do we just have unlucky genes? Don’t you want to know?”

  “Why is it so important to you to prove that there’s a curse?” Deacon demanded. “Your parents still speak to you. You had a relatively stable childhood, even if they move around a lot now. I don’t get why you need some curse to blame for how your life turned out.”

  “Oh, my God, you enormous idiot!”

  Deacon frowned. “Well, that was . . . unexpectedly harsh.”

  “I’m not looking to blame something for my messed-up life. I’m looking for some cause for your messed-up life.”

  “Uh, Dotty. My life isn’t miserable. I have four houses, the largest collection of Flash Gordon memorabilia in the continental United States, and one of the original Batmobiles. William Shatner sang ‘Rocket Man’ at my last birthday party.”

  “First of all, that’s a sad commentary on what you think makes a person happy. And second, he didn’t sing it. He spoke it.”

  “Did I mention I own my own chocolate factory?”

  “Deacon!”

  He sighed, flopping back into his chair. “Fine.”

  “Despite that rather upsetting list of assets you just mentioned, Deacon, you still act like you expect everything to just—poof—up and disappear. Because of the curse, you think you’re going to lose everything.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Really? You don’t think that investing a crapload of money to restore our great-great-grandparents’ cursed house is some sort of subconscious curse-breaking gesture?”

  “I think that was a crapload of pop psychology.”

  She picked up a stress ball shaped like a Storm Trooper and threw it at his head. “Ugh, you are so frustrating. You haven’t dated anyone for more than a few months since college, because you’re afraid to get married and start a family. You bought those houses as an investment, and you haven’t been to any of them except this one. You stay holed up in your apartment because you knew the super before you started making money, and you know he won’t evict you if the worst happened. And the only people you spend any time with are your coworkers, me, and Jake. Everybody else you keep at an arm’s length, because you don’t want to find out whether they’ll stick around if you lose your money. You don’t want to know if they’re true friends.”

  He would have whacked his forehead against the desk, but it would have given her too much satisfaction. “I hate it when you’re insightful.”

  “Look, the good news is that if there is a curse—which there is—then by the rules of the universe, we can break it. And then maybe you’ll stop waiting for the other shoe to drop and start to really live your life. Maybe with a certain shy redheaded landscape architect who for reasons I don’t understand finds your particular brand of social ineptitude adorkable.”

  Instead of protesting, as Dotty expected, Deacon sat straight up in his chair with a suddenly serious expression. “Did she say something?”

  Dotty nodded. “I know it’s been a while, doll, but when a woman spends that much time staring at your mouth, it’s not because she’s wondering what sort of ChapStick you’re wearing. She’s been throwing serious come-hither vibes your way, in a socially awkward, almost indecipherable way that most people wouldn’t be able to pick up on.”

  “No, really, did she say something?” he asked absently.

  “Several things, none of which I am willing to tell you.”

  “Because that would be too simple and straightforward?”

  “Because that would ruin my fun.” Dotty picked up the cube Deacon was just now noticing on his side table. “Also because I just found this giant box hidden in Catherine Whitney’s room, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to help me figure out what happened to her right before she disappeared.” And with that, she left.

  “WHAT? DOTTY!” DEACON flopped back into his captain’s chair and started talking to himself. “She wants me to follow her. She wants to draw me into this Scooby-Doo mystery mess. She wants to Dottify me, once again. So I’m just going to sit here and do my work and stay sane.” He nodded sharply and sat up, pulling his wireless keyboard into place. “Right, good plan.”

  Then again, Nina would probably be there when Dotty opened up the box. She seemed just as interested in this family-history bit as Dotty and Cindy. Her big green eyes would probably be bright with curiosity and excitement. And her cheeks would be all flushed . . . and her mouth . . .

  “Damn it.” He sprang up from his chair and followed after Dotty.

  NINA AND CINDY were taking their lunch break in the ladies’ quarters, relaxing at the long table and eating pasta left over from the previous night’s dinner. Jake, the Wednesday-night cook, knew his way around a carb, so it was worth revisiting.

  “Hey, look what I found—aw, are you eating the last of the primavera?”

  “And I’m not even sorry,” Cindy told Dotty, slurping a noodle into her mouth.

  “I saved you a plate,” Nina said, hopping up and cuffing Cindy lightly on the back of her head.

  Dotty dropped the heavy box onto the table.

  “What’s that?” Cindy asked through a mouthful of pasta, nodding toward the cobweb-covered cube.

  “I don’t know. I found it in Catherine’s dressing room. I was going to open it, but now that I know where I fall in your friends-versus-delicious-Alfredo-covered-pasta lineup, I don’t think I’m going to share this with you. Clearly, Nina is a better friend than you.”

  “We knew that anyway,” Cindy said dismissively. “Come on, it could be the jewels!”

  Cindy disappeared into her room and returned with a pink toolbox.

  “Really?” Dotty laughed. “A pink toolbox?”

  “It comes in handy,” Cindy told her. “You never know when you’re going to have to hammer in frame hangers or dismantle some ugly entertainment center.”

  “They didn’t have one covered in glitter?” Nina asked, smirking at her.

  “With My Little Pony decals?” Dotty added.

  “If you don’t want these bolt cutters to chop that padlock off, keep talking,” Cindy said, holding up the pink-handled tool and nodding toward the rusted brass clasp on the box.

  “I don’t need your bolt cutters, thank you very much,” Dotty said primly as she fished a small screwdriver and a long, skinny awl out of her bag. “They don’t make locks like this anymore. We can’t cut it. I can get it unlocked some other way.”

&
nbsp; Dotty inserted the tools into the lock and manipulated them back and forth, listening for the telltale click. She was so concentrated on the task at hand she didn’t even flinch when Deacon and Jake pushed their way through the servants’ entrance. Deacon sat next to Nina on the long dining table, and she gave him a smile that made his run across the island worth it.

  “What are we doing?” Jake whispered, standing over Cindy’s shoulder.

  “Watching Dotty perpetrate an act of extreme optimism,” Cindy said, waving her bolt cutters at Dotty with an expectant expression. “Sweetie, the lock is probably rusted shut.”

  “Why do you have pink bolt cutters?” Deacon asked, just as the lock clicked, opened, and fell to the floor. Nina’s jaw dropped, her eyes oscillating between a triumphant Dotty and the defeated lock.

  Dotty winked cheekily and lifted the lid of the box. Jake jumped to his feet. Cindy squealed and clapped her hands, only to let loose a disappointed “hmph” when the contents turned out to be stacks of small booklets with matching brown leather covers. At least twenty of them. Each one was stamped “CGW” at the bottom right corner.

  Catherine Grayson Whitney.

  “Diaries,” Dotty said, flipping through the inside covers, checking the dates that had been painstakingly inscribed on the first page of each. Even in the thrill of discovery, Dotty couldn’t help but marvel at Catherine’s neatly looped, even script. Her own handwriting was a chaotic mix of cursive, block print, and shorthand. Product of a different generation and school system, she supposed. “Catherine’s diaries, starting years before her death. This could be her complete journal collection for her adult life.”

  “Not as cool as jewelry but still exciting,” Cindy conceded, trying not to let her disappointment show.

  “Yes, Dotty has given us the gift of reading,” Jake said with a shudder. “Reading really old, cramped, faded cursive.”

  “This is exactly what I was hoping for!” Dotty exclaimed, launching herself across the room and throwing her arms around Cindy. The blonde’s knees buckled under the force of Dotty’s enthusiasm, and the women went sprawling to the floor.

  “I’m sorry.” Dotty giggled as Jake helped the girls extract themselves from their person pretzel. “I just can’t believe it! I found my great-great-grandmother’s diaries, which no one in my grasping, devious family has managed to locate in almost one hundred years. That’s huge!”

  “How did you find it?” Deacon asked, laughing when Cindy’s and Dotty’s legs tangled together and they fell back to the floor in a heap.

  “I’m just that good,” Dotty told him as solemnly as she could from the bottom of the person tangle. And when Deacon gave her the now-familiar deadpan face, Dotty added, “My scarf caught the corner of a false wall panel, popped it loose.”

  “Jack Donovan designed a lot of little hiding places around the house, the passages between the floors, but I doubt half of them are actually shown on the blueprints,” Jake said, thumbing through one of the journals. “There’s a wall in Gerald Whitney’s library that revolves so he could access a direct stairway to the master suite. And there’s a hallway from Mrs. Whitney’s room to the children’s wing. I guess it was so she could bypass a couple of staircases to get directly to their rooms at night or when they were sick.”

  “Secret passages and revolving walls? Suddenly, my Scooby-Doo jokes don’t seem so lame,” Cindy mused.

  “It was en vogue at the time to add an air of mystery to one’s home,” Dotty said, searching through the diaries for the latest date. “And when one’s home is this large, it makes sense to try to skip a few hallways to save time. Plus, rich people tended to have a lot of secrets.”

  Dotty frowned, absently tucking her candy-colored hair behind her ears as she sorted through the diaries.

  “What’s with the pout?” Cindy asked. “You were so excited a few minutes ago.”

  “Oh, I still am,” Dotty assured her. “But I can’t find the last diary. You’d think it would be near the top of the box. But the latest one I can find is about six months before she died.”

  “Well, she probably wrote in it every day, right?” Cindy said. “She wouldn’t go to the trouble of breaking into her secret lockbox every evening. She probably kept it somewhere she could get to it easily, like her nightstand or her vanity.”

  “Probably,” Dotty said, frowning again as she searched the bottom of the box for the first volume. “But trust me, those would have been the first places my relatives would look for valuables. And no one has ever mentioned finding a diary. It would have provided some valuable insight into what was going on in her head.” Dotty fished the earliest volume from the box and placed it on top. “In the meantime, I can start at the beginning and get some idea of what Catherine’s marriage to Gerald was like . . . and maybe I’ll skip a little, because I’m one of those people who read the last chapter of a murder mystery first.”

  “That’s just wrong,” Cindy said, shaking her head.

  “Of all the things she just said, skipping to the end of a book is what bothers you most?” Jake asked.

  Cindy crossed her arms and set her chin. “I hate spoilers.”

  Marriage Counseling for the Ancient Greeks

  CINDY ENJOYED CLEANING windows. She didn’t see why so many people made cracks about not doing them. She found it soothing, wiping layers of grime away to reveal a clear, shining surface. Few people were blessed enough to see tangible evidence of the difference they made with their work every day. She swore by an equal mixture of white vinegar and dish soap, which took longer to clean but left a brilliant shine behind.

  It was like a meditation exercise. When she was finished, she felt relaxed and at peace. So even though she didn’t necessarily have to clean the windows in the family wing, she found herself with her trusty newspaper clutched in one hand, moving it in slow, sure circles as she stared out through the glass. Her mind wandered over the day’s to-do list, Jake’s many vaguely inappropriate requests for dates, what it might take for her to say yes to one of those requests. Slowly, the light outside shifted from the clear, sharp air of late morning to the golden blaze of full afternoon. Cindy was so zoned out she barely noticed the difference.

  And then she heard an angry shout from outside. Her eyes scanned the lawn to find a woman in an ornate, high-waisted blue gown arguing with a dark-haired man with a mustache. Cindy looked down and saw a dingy rag in her hand. Her sleeve was black cotton, connected to a plain dress and a starched white apron.

  A maid’s uniform.

  Cindy peered through the glass. The man seemed to be pleading with the woman, gesturing toward the house and then between the two of them. The woman was shaking her head, trying to pull her hands from his grasp. He pressed her hands to his chest and gently kissed her fingertips, but she jerked away from him and turned toward the house.

  Cindy finally got a look at the woman’s face, a face she recognized from photographs and paintings all over the house. The tear-stained face of Catherine Whitney.

  The sound of glass shattering on the floor brought Cindy out of the vision.

  Jake stood behind her, a pitcher of iced tea in one hand and a drinking glass in the other. His other glass lay shattered at his feet. Jake’s usually tanned face turned pale, and his pupils were the size of olives. “You saw it, too, didn’t you?” he whispered.

  “Saw what?” she asked carefully. There was no reason to admit her vision until he tipped his hand in this game of Who’s a Thundering Loony?

  “Out on the lawn,” he said, stepping closer to her. “I was bringing you something to drink, and I saw a woman who looked like the old pictures of Deacon’s great-great-grandmother.”

  “Arguing with a dark-haired man in a vest and tie?” Cindy asked.

  Jake nodded, and his hands started to shake.

  Cindy took the pitcher and the glass from him and set them aside. “Were you wearing a maid’s uniform?”

  Jake frowned. “No. I just looked through the window, ov
er your shoulder. I didn’t see what I was wearing.” He shivered. “Why would we both see something like that? Why? I mean, if it was dark outside, I could just say that we were scared and misjudged what we saw or that someone was playing a trick on us. But it was in broad daylight, Cindy. How did we see that?”

  Cindy shook her head. “It felt like a memory, like we were seeing someone else’s memories.”

  “It probably was. Anything’s possible here. I hate this house,” Jake confessed. “I have since I was a kid. I’m only here because Whit’s my best friend, and he asked me for help. I’ve always felt like someone was watching, waiting for me to drop my guard. I would see things, shadows shifting, things moving from where we’d left them. I’d hear angry footsteps on the landing by the third floor, though no one was there to make any noises. But I could never tell Deacon, because it would stress him out, or he would just write it off as me being paranoid. I know he’s seen things here, too, but he just can’t bring himself to admit it. Because his rational, math-fueled brain will not accept it. Also, it’s not very manly to admit that you’re afraid of ghosts.”

  Cindy smiled at him, remembering the sweet boy she’d accepted a date from, the boy who wasn’t afraid to admit that he couldn’t dance and brought her a box of Junior Mints because he remembered that she liked them. “Do you know who the dark-haired man was?”

  “He looked like the old tintypes of Jack Donovan, the original architect for the house.”

  “It didn’t look like they were talking about construction scheduling,” Cindy muttered. Why had Catherine been so upset by a conversation with her architect? It seemed that the rumors about Catherine getting “close” with a man other than her husband were true. The poor soul had looked devastated, and Catherine had seemed . . . irritated. She hadn’t looked heartbroken by love that could never be. She looked annoyed. Was it because she was afraid her husband would see them from the house?