Blackvine Manor Mystery (10 page)

A
LEXIS BREATHES DEEPLY
, WAITING AT the corner for the light to change. Despite being downtown, the avenue is unhurried and quiet. She looks around and frowns. There is no one on the street: not a person, not a spirit, not a flicker from her former extrasensory abilities.

She shakes her head and runs across the street in defiance of the flashing red light. In the back of her mind she hopes for the rush of oncoming headlights, the screech of skidding brakes, anything to jolt her back to the way she was just days ago. She slows down, shuffling on the sidewalk as she remembers the anniversary of Delia’s death at Blackvine Manor Apartments.

Otto Charles was there, in a trance that had him seeing the same night nearly 50 years earlier. Alexis saw it too, in the unsettling way she could clearly see Delia’s ghost pleading for her husband to stop. Otto had stopped when he spotted Alexis. In his residual rage he mistook her for her mother, Amelia. Racing to escape him, Alexis had seen the entire night as it played out all those years ago. She had seen through her mother’s eyes as she ran from the apartment building into her father’s waiting car.

Except Alexis had dodged across the sidewalk only to narrowly miss being hit by a modern day car. Maxwell had thrown himself in the way to stop her. He’d saved her life. Her heart warms at the thought though there is an ache with every beat. When she’d fallen she felt it all knock out of her: the vision, the clairvoyance, the ability to hear the whispers coming from the notoriously haunted Blackvine Manor.

“Good evening, Ms. Cole.” The doorman tips his cap to her.

“Hi, Darren. How’s your Tuesday?” She shifts the bag of groceries to her hip as she stops to chat.

“Quiet, everyone’s working hard. Is that what Mr. Charles is doing?”

“I hope so; he’s supposed to be studying.”

Darren looks out at the gathering storm clouds and smiles mischievously, “You’re brave to hang out in his condo all alone. Don’t you know it’s haunted?”

Alexis brightens up. “Oh, really? Do tell!”

“Back when this place was a real working warehouse, not frou-frou lofts, there was a horrible accident.” Darren rubs his hands together, getting into the story. “One of the workers was using the freight elevator. His team was running late for a deadline and they decided to add a few more loads before he took it down. It was too much weight and the elevator plunged all the way to the basement. Folks say that worker is still up on the top floor, your floor, trying to finish his work so he can go home.”

“I don’t know, Darren,” Alexis shrugs. “Not very scary.”

He smiles. “Just think about it on your way up.”

She laughs as he holds the elevator doors open for her. Once they close she puts down her bag of groceries and hits every button so the ride will take longer. Taking a few deep breaths, Alexis swings her hands in a circle, trying to open up a channel of communication like the psychic taught her.

There’s nothing, not even a whisper and she can feel tears stinging her eyes. The elevator doors open on the top floor and she can hear music coming from Maxwell’s condo. He swings open his door and smiles broadly at her, coming out to take the groceries and give her a kiss.

She can’t complain that everything is so blissfully normal, yet she still feels like crying.

M
AXWELL POURS HER ANOTHER GLASS
of wine. “I could get used to this.”

“What? Keeping me prisoner?” Alexis flashes him a smile.

“Come on, you can’t tell me you miss that little studio apartment.” He settles down on the leather couch next to her and gestures to the skyline out the wide windows. “I think we have a good thing going here.”

She wants to tell him how much she misses her abilities. Not being able to see or hear spirits has left a tear in her heart. It is strange how just a few months ago she thought she felt the same about being laid off from her job. Now, having felt how fulfilling her true purpose was, she aches without it. Just as she was learning to control and focus her clairvoyance, it all evaporated.

Maxwell jumps up when the oven dings and pulls out a pan of brownies. It may be a pre-made mix that just needed water but he made her brownies for dessert. She watches him as he carefully cuts large pieces, humming happily. His sense of relief emanates like an aura she can’t see.

“How did your studying go?” Alexis has to change the subject.

“Good. A lot of it feels like common sense. Maybe Otto was right; police work is in my blood.”

“Well, you have a long, hard road to go before you make detective.”

He smiles and brings her a warm brownie. “I’ll make it, with a little help.”

She lets him steal a kiss before trying to articulate how she feels. “Doesn’t knowing what you want to do feel good? A sense of purpose makes everything … I don’t know … brighter.”

Maxwell looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, I suppose.”

Alexis shifts to face him. “It makes all the hard work, all the learning and trying, and even the failing feel right.”

The wariness has completely taken over his face and he’s trying to form a careful response when his phone rings. After a brief few minutes he hangs up and leans his head against the back of the couch.

“Otto died. After the heart attack he had that night at Blackvine Manor, they didn’t expect him to recover. The doctor said it was peaceful, while he was sleeping.”

Tears spring to her eyes. “Oh, Maxwell, I’m so sorry!”

He turns to look at her. “I am, too, as strange as that is. He
may
have murdered my grandmother in a jealous rage; he
may
have forced your mother to go on the run; and he definitely tried to attack you. But he was still my grandfather.”

Alexis takes his hand. “You could just remember how much he loved Delia. Before everything else, he loved her with all his heart.”

Maxwell leans over and kisses her softly.

* * *

H
e’s still eating
toast as he heads for the door. “I’m going to the precinct to tell them the news about Otto.”

Alexis is curled up at Maxwell’s round kitchen table finishing her coffee. “Do you want company?”

“No, it’s alright. While I’m there I can find out about the Willow grave too.”

“Really? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Maxwell turns in the open door, “I can’t abandon my first investigation and I might as well follow up on your hunch. If Fenton hid all those stolen jewels there it might explain why your mother was at Lakeview Cemetery.”

After he closes the door, Alexis considers the round table. She gets up and puts her empty coffee mug in the kitchen sink before returning to stand next to the table.

“Please work,” she whispers before trying her ritual again.

Closing her eyes, she breathes deeply, drawing her energy up. Stretching behind her with both hands, she sweeps them all the way from the left to the right, creating a circle around her. Taking off her black onyx necklace, she opens herself up.

“Otto, come talk to me. If there is anything you want to say, I’m here. Please.”

Alexis breathes and waits, envisioning the circle around her and letting herself be open to communicate with spirits. “If there is anyone here who wants to speak, I’m listening.”

After a long while, she exhales on a heavy sigh. Sweeping the circle closed, she picks up her black onyx necklace and hangs it back around her neck. Knowing that Maxwell will be gone awhile, she grabs her car keys and heads to Blackvine Manor Apartments.

“He’s not home,” Mrs. DuBois tells Alexis as she pounds one more time on George’s door.

“Hi, how are you? Any more mysterious arguments waking you in the night?”

Mrs. DuBois frowns tightly. “No, nothing. No sounds, no ghosts, no nothing.”

She pats Alexis on the hand then hurries past her down the stairs. Alexis stands, befuddled for a few minutes, before heading down the hallway to her apartment. There she sees Doug, just returning from yet another business trip.

“Hi, Doug. How’s work?”

They chat casually for a few minutes before she asks, “How’s your apartment? Have you had any more incidents with that shadow man?”

Doug’s eyes widen, remembering the shadowy figure he once saw ransacking his apartment before fading without a human trace. “Ah, no. Nothing. Nothing’s been happening around here at all.”

Alexis frowns as he disappears inside his apartment, wondering if the spirits have disappeared for good and taken her abilities with them.

D
ISAPPOINTED
BY HER QUIET MORNING at Blackvine Manor, Alexis goes directly to her father’s house. She’s avoided him for months, ever since her vision showed him helping her mother.

Her anger spills over as soon as he opens the door. “How could you lie to me like that?”

A. J. Cole scrunches up his eyebrows. “Nice to see you too. How’s the job hunting?”

Alexis marches inside the house where she grew up. “You knew Amelia had gone back to live at Blackvine Manor Apartments. You helped her run away. All these years I’ve been asking what happened and you told me you didn’t know where she went. You drove her away!”

“How could you possibly know that?” A. J. skirts around her and goes to sit at the kitchen table.

“The same way Mom knew Delia was in trouble. I saw it. Spirits, ghosts, whatever, I see them the way Mom did.” Alexis leans on the kitchen counter, arms crossed.

“I have no idea what you are talking about. Alexis, is this some kind of break down? I know the lay off was rough but you’ll recover.” He leans back in his chair, rubbing his forehead.

“Stop lying to me!”

He looks at her with pleading eyes. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Your mother kept secrets from me, but I loved her.”

“And you came when she called for help.” Alexis tries to steady herself.

A. J. covers his eyes with his hand, rubbing wearily. “She was being threatened, so of course I went to pick her up.”

“Where was I during all of this?”

“You stayed at a friend’s house. Amy? I think her name was Amy.”

Alexis slides into a chair across the table from her father. “Why didn’t Mom come home?”

“This isn’t healthy, Alexis. It’s all in the past. Your mother made her choice and left. Didn’t we do okay on our own?” He reaches for her hand.

She can’t help but pull away. “Keeping all of this from me is not okay.”

Her father doesn’t say anything so Alexis gets up and roams around the kitchen, trying to remember what her mother was like. She remembers Amelia always singing while she was cooking, using the big wooden spoon as her microphone.

Alexis reaches up and pulls a tattered looking cookbook from the shelf next to the refrigerator. She recalls her mother letting her drum on it with the measuring spoons while she sang. As she holds the book in both hands, there is a flash of blue light. Her mother is sitting on the floor in front of the kitchen sink, head on her knees. Moonlight comes through the old striped curtains. Amelia holds her breath, hoping her daughter doesn’t hear her, then lets out one last jagged sob.

Coming to stand at the counter, A. J. sees his daughter staring down at the floor in front of the sink. “Your mother wasn’t well. She used to come out here and cry. She didn’t want to wake you.”

“What was wrong with her?”

He groans. “I don’t know. She saw things that weren’t there, heard things that weren’t possible: she was mentally ill.”

“She couldn’t control her abilities,” Alexis says, mostly to herself.

“She needed help,” A. J. tells her gruffly, “instead she chose to run away and hide out at that horrid apartment building.”

Ignoring her father’s derision, Alexis asks, “What happened to Amelia at Blackvine Manor?”

He snorts. “All her talk of visions came back to bite her. She saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. That nice woman, a friend of your mother’s, was murdered. Turns out she was the police chief’s wife and he didn’t think your mother was a reliable witness. He threatened her and the threats got worse. Your mother was worried we were in danger, that he’d use us as leverage. So she left.”

“You helped her leave.”

A. J. scrubs his hands over his face again. “I helped her leave. Alexis, it was for the best.”

Alexis clenches her jaw. “Where did you take her?”

“I drove her right to her friend’s house and dropped her off. She didn’t even stay there one night. She wanted to make sure we knew nothing.”

“What was her friend’s name?”

“I don’t remember,” A. J. says defiantly. “It was a long time ago and if I did remember I wouldn’t tell you. This isn’t healthy, Alexis. Let it go. Your mother is gone and you have a good life. All you need is a new job and you can get your feet under you again.”

She squeezes her eyes then pops them open. “Do you still have Mom’s pearl? The single pearl pendant?”

“The one you told me to throw away?” A. J. looks at his daughter’s tear-bright eyes. “It’s upstairs in your room. A little blue box on your old chest of drawers.”

Alexis heads upstairs and finds the pearl easily. She slips it on the chain alongside her black onyx crystal and grips the charms in her hand. Breathing deeply, she stretches her hands out and creates a circle, hoping this time the spirits will communicate with her.

“Please, please, tell me the name.”

She tries not to hold her breath, wishing she could hear the whispers like those that came to her at Blackvine Manor.

“Apple Berry Cart.”

Alexis opens her eyes, certain she heard the voice correctly. Thanking the powers that be profusely, she closes the circle, and puts on her necklace. Her mother’s pearl feels warm next to the cool of the black onyx. Hoping she is not going crazy, she goes to the bookshelf, tipping her head and running her finger along the book spines until she finds the old favorite.

Amelia used to read her the alphabet book every night before singing her to sleep. Opening the familiar book a photograph slips out. Amelia arm in arm with an old friend, and in her handwriting on the back Alexis reads “Jane Dalton.”