Blackvine Manor Mystery (17 page)

“
I
WAS JUST STARTING
TO worry about you.” Maxwell holds the door to the small ‘Superintendent’ office open.

Alexis gives him a kiss on the cheek as she slides past him and into the familiar space. “I ran into Bella in the hallway. Did your contacts at the precinct ever find out her real name?”

Maxwell slumps down in one of the straight-backed chairs. “No. Turns out giving the cops a fake name is not enough of a lead.”

“Well, detective, I think I have some more information. Unless she’s lying.”

“What did Ms. LaRue tell you now?”

Alexis slumps down and Maxwell reaches for her hand. The weight of her mother’s passing sweeps over her again; the grief comes in waves and for a moment she feels like she’s drowning. She focuses on his strong hand, his loving quiet, and lets it wash over her.

When the feeling draws back, Alexis tells Maxwell, “Bella told me I’m the reason the poltergeist is at Blackvine Manor. My grief is giving it energy.”

“Well, that’s out there. Who’s going to believe that?”

“George. He came to visit me this morning. It fits his research on poltergeists and he thinks its possible.” Telling Maxwell, Alexis feels the sting. “It can’t be true but he’s believing her over me.”

Maxwell sits up. “George has his head turned by a pretty girl. You need to prove that it isn’t you. You said it can’t be; how do you know that?”

Alexis takes both Maxwell’s hands, grateful to finally have his support instead of his skepticism. “Because if I was the one feeding the poltergeist then its activity would directly correlate with me. It all started when I was staying with you at the loft, remember?”

“The peaceful days?” Maxwell smiles.

“Exactly. I didn’t know about my mother, she was still alive, and I wasn’t even here.”

“Alright, you’ve convinced me.” Maxwell kisses her cheek and goes to his desk. “Now what else did Bella tell you in the hallway? You said you had more information about her.”

Alexis takes a deep breath before she can manage, “I confronted her about following my mother. Bella claims she knew Amelia. They met at St. James Care Facility.”

“Well, we can’t just call and ask because she was probably there under a different name. We could get a picture of her and take it to St. James?”

“They’re very careful about patient privacy.”

Maxwell nods. “How about your mother’s friend, the nurse?”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t want Nurse Diaz to get in any trouble, but I can ask if Amelia was friends with any of the other patients.”

“Bella said they were friends?”

Alexis makes a face. “Yes. She said that was why she was following Amelia; out of concern for her health.”

“When are you going to tell George his crush is working an angle and probably working him too?”

“I can’t tell him that. Plus he won’t believe me right now.” Alexis slumps back in her chair again.

Maxwell rubs his chin, worried. “You don’t think he’s told Bella about the stash of jewels, do you?”

“I didn’t tell him about it. There’s been too much happening and he’s been busy with Bella.”

They both glance over to the old filing cabinet. In the bottom locked drawer, behind a carefully wrapped fur stole that belonged to Delia, is a burlap sack full of stolen jewels. Long ago, Delia helped an old school friend by hanging onto the bag without opening it. Collin Fenton, a notorious jewel thief, then took the bag and hid it at Lakeview Cemetery. When Amelia was threatened, she dug up the hidden jewel cache and buried it elsewhere as leverage. Alexis realized where her mother had hidden the stolen jewels after visiting with Amelia’s ghost.

“I still don’t know what to do with them.” Maxwell rakes a hand through his hair. “If I turn them over to the police, I have to explain where I got them.”

“You mean where I dug them up,” Alexis reminds him, wrapping her blue sweater tighter around her.

Maxwell rubs his hands together, looking up at the thermostat. “So no one knows you found them under Amelia’s favorite bench in the park.”

The small flat screen television, Maxwell’s only update to the small office, flickers to life. Alexis can see Otto through a dark haze. He scowls at the television, flipping through channels and muttering about the useless trivial headlines of local news.

He finds the channel he is looking for just as the evening news jingle begins. The television starts to malfunction, the screen pixelating, freezing, and then fading to black.

“What are you seeing?” Maxwell whispers to Alexis, not wanting to interrupt.

“Your grandfather looking for the antenna and ranting about the shoddy workmanship of new technology.”

Maxwell smiles. “That sounds about right.”

Otto’s ghost manages to turn the television on one more time before a black shadow detaches from the office wall and edges towards him.

“It’s happening again,” Alexis tells Maxwell. “It’s like the darkest shadows know when a spirit is trying to communicate and they move to cover it up.”

“Would that be the poltergeist?”

Alexis shakes her head. “Alice never called it a poltergeist, did she? She said there was a dark force here.”

They both think back to what the psychic medium, Alice Manetti, sensed in Bella’s apartment.

“You’re right,” Maxwell says, getting up to look at the television, “she was trying to tell you something when the bookshelf fell.”

Otto’s ghost is blotted out completely as Maxwell reaches for the television and flips it on. After a short weather report, the anchor opens with a local story of vandalism.

“It seems the bench was torn from the cement base and moved. The police told our reporter on the scene there were no drag marks, meaning the bench was carried. Local authorities would like help bringing the vandals to justice.”

A
LEXIS CAN FEEL
THE TEARS rolling down her cheeks but she doesn’t move to wipe them as she watches the footage of the vandalized bench. That bench was the last place she saw her mother. They sat side by side and talked for the first time in years. Only Alexis did not realize at the time she was talking to Amelia’s ghost.

“Someone went looking for the jewels,” Maxwell surmises as he turns the television off.

“Can I have the key to Amelia’s old apartment?”

Maxwell startles at Alexis’ quiet request. “It’s been empty for years. There’s nothing in there. Why do you want the key now?”

“Amelia witnessed Delia’s murder. She was running from your grandfather. But she also saw Fenton meeting with your grandmother. She knew enough to move the jewels. They must have been the leverage that stopped Otto from pursuing her. She could have revealed the motive for Delia’s murder but she kept them hidden and stayed safe out of sight. If someone else is looking for the jewels, Amelia’s old apartment is the first place they’d look.”

“Okay.” Maxwell squats down and unlocks the bottom drawer. “If we’re going to start there we might as well take one of these.”

He pulls out a diamond necklace and stuffs it into Alexis’ pocket. She frowns at him. “Amelia only ever touched this pearl pendant she gave to me. What am I going to get from a stolen necklace?”

Maxwell grabs his superintendent keys and opens the office door. “Fenton touched that necklace. He went to prison for that necklace. If we want to find out who’s searching for his stolen stash then we have to find out more about Collin Fenton.”

Alexis follows him upstairs to her mother’s old apartment. The dust is thick on the dark wood and the air is still and stale. She moves to the middle of the room and takes deep breaths, drawing up her energy. Stretching her arms out, she sweeps them in a circle, creating space for communication. Removing her necklace, the symbol of her protection, she opens herself up to any spirits connected to the room.

From a distance further than the eight feet to the door, Alexis hears Maxwell whisper, “Concentrate on the necklace. Collin Fenton’s obsession.”

She sees the necklace in her hand, her hand changing to a brown leather glove. The diamonds glitter as it slips through Fenton’s gloved hand and into the burlap sack he carried. Then the light changes and Alexis looks up at the bluish light of florescent bulbs buzzing over a hospital bed.

“What do you see?” Maxwell asks from impossibly far away.

“A hospital bed, a guard; it must be a prison infirmary.”

“Is he there?”

Alexis gathers all her energy to turn inside the vision and look. “Yes, Fenton’s here. I recognize him from the visions of the fountain. Except he’s old now, and so frail.”

Maxwell watches as Alexis leans down, her hands out as if hovering over a bed railing. He bites his lips and waits while she listens.

“He’s muttering in his sleep, he sounds delirious.” Alexis startles, her fingers spreading wide as she recognizes his words. “Willow. He said, ‘Willow.’ He’s talking about the headstone where he hid the jewels.”

She leans in closer. “He keeps saying, ‘her.’ He did it all for ‘her’. Do you think he’s talking about Delia?”

“That doesn’t make sense; he would have just given Delia the jewels instead of asking her to help hide them. What else do you see?”

Alexis strains to see other details, ignoring the dusty hardwood floor incongruously underneath his hospital bed, “There’s a card. Hand-drawn with crayons.”

“Is there a name on it?”

As she squints, trying to make out the name, the black crayon center of the flower spreads. It stains the vision and spreads outward until Alexis is pushed back into the old, empty apartment with Maxwell.

She blinks at him. “All I saw was a flower. Like a little kid would draw. Did Collin Fenton have children?”

Maxwell opens his mouth to respond but a yell shakes them both out of their speculations. “HELP!”

A floor shaking crash spurs them both into a run as Alexis calls, “We’re coming, George!”

They charge around the corner to George’s door and Alexis starts pounding on it as Maxwell fumbles for the right key. “George, George, are you alright?”

There’s no sound from inside his studio apartment as Maxwell finds the right key and opens the door. Alexis jumps over the jumble of camera equipment and rushes into the room. Not seeing her friend anywhere, she dodges into the kitchen and shrieks.

“In here, Maxwell, help!”

Maxwell skids around the corner and his jaw drops open. George’s refrigerator has detached from the wall and crashed across the kitchen. He’s curled up underneath, crushed between the heavy appliance and the countertop.

“Oh, God, George. Hang on, we’ll get you out!” Alexis kneels down and reaches for his hand.

“I don’t know how we can lift this. We need to call for help.” Maxwell strains to budge the refrigerator.

“I’m okay, hold on, I’m okay,” George mutters, squeezing Alexis’ hand.

He uncurls himself enough to realize what a tight spot he is in before saying, “I think you’re both going to have to pull.”

They grab his hands and pull him out from underneath the refrigerator, amazed that he is unscathed.

“What happened?” Maxwell asks as he hauls George to his feet and helps him to his saggy Futon.

“I don’t know.” George rubs his head and reaches for Alexis’ hand again.

“Are you okay?” She holds his hand tight and sits next to him. “I was so scared.”

George’s ear turns pink. “All I remember is I was cold so I was going to make some instant coffee. I heard all this clattering, the ice cubes coming loose in the freezer, and I ducked down just as the refrigerator tipped over. Who knew I’d ever be thankful for a narrow galley kitchen?”

Alexis smiles even as her hand clutching his shakes. “Thank God you’re okay.”

He pats her hand, reading her upset face. “I know you didn’t do this.”

Maxwell snorts. “You mean bring a poltergeist here and tell it to squish you with a refrigerator? Glad you got some sense knocked into you.”

George pushes up his glasses with his free hand. “It doesn’t make sense. The poltergeist activity doesn’t match Alexis’ emotional spikes. If it was her, the two would correlate.”

Alexis beams up at Maxwell, both of them relieved her best friend is back to his normal self.

“
G
EORGE
!” THE SHRIEK FROM THE door is a curious mix of anger and concern.

Bella rushes into the room and yanks his hand away from Alexis. “Are you okay? What did she do?”

Alexis moves off the couch as Bella pushes her way between them. “If you heard the crash what took you so long to get here?”

Bella scowls up at her. “I was doing laundry downstairs. This is all your fault, you and that demon you called up.”

“That’s funny, we were just talking about that.”

Bella turns to George. “I told you she was always around when the darkness does things. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It was a near miss but I’m okay.”

Maxwell is moving Alexis towards the door but she can’t help telling Bella, “Your theory is full of holes. And since when are you an expert? I remember when you first moved in you didn’t believe in any ghost ‘mumbo jumbo’.”

“So I’m a fast learner”—she snuggles closer to George—“and I had a good teacher. We thought about it and you seem to be at the root of all the poltergeist activity.”

George clears his throat uncomfortably. “Actually that’s not true. I’ve been thinking it over and the poltergeist doesn’t coincide with Alexis at all. She wasn’t even living here when it started.”

Bella looks confused so Maxwell reminds her, “Alexis was staying with me when the so-called poltergeist activity started happening.”

Alexis catches George’s eye and says, “And remember how Alice didn’t jump into the whole poltergeist conversation? She was warning us about something else when the bookshelf fell.”

“What is going on? Your friend gets hurt and all you can do is bother him about your wild theories?” Bella recaptures George’s hand.

Throwing her hands up in disgust, Alexis turns to Maxwell. “Did I start this conversation?”

Again, Maxwell starts steering her towards the door but Bella throws one more parting shot. “What makes sense to me is that bad things happen to the people you love.”

Alexis whirls around. “Don’t you dare talk about my mother again! I don’t care how you think you know her.”

Just as she clenches her fist, the coffee table cracks in two.

Bella screams. “See what you did?!”

“Enough!” Maxwell barks. He grabs Alexis by the waist and pulls her into the hallway.

* * *

“
A
re
you sure you don’t want to go to my loft?” Maxwell asks again as he hesitates in the doorway.

Alexis is curled up on her red sofa under a blanket. “No, I refuse to be pushed out of Blackvine Manor just because Bella thinks I’m the devil.”

“You’re not, you know.” Maxwell reminds her, “You are not the one causing all the strange accidents.”

He blows her a kiss and leaves. Unfortunately, she can’t take his words to heart and worries that somehow she is to blame. Of all the people at Blackvine Manor, she is the most likely. Her life is a lightning rod of strange phenomena and lately she has been on an emotional roller coaster.

There’s a timid knock on the door and just as Alexis is deciding to ignore it the door opens and George comes in.

“Are you okay?” she asks him from under her blanket.

He shrugs and gives her a smile. “Now that I’m over the initial shock, you know me, I’m totally excited. Finally something paranormal happened directly to me!”

Alexis smiles. “Too bad you didn’t catch it on camera.”

George’s smile fades. “But I caught something else. And you’re not going to like it.”

“If it has anything to do with Bella, you’re right. I don’t like it.”

He sinks down onto the sofa next to her with a sad sigh.

“I’m sorry, George. I just don’t understand why she hates me so much. What did I do to her?”

“She’s really very nice. When it’s just the two of us, she’s really sweet and she loves hearing all my stories. Even all my theories about Blackvine Manor.”

Alexis sits up but keeps the blanket tight around her. “I want you to be happy, George, but there’s something off about Bella. Maxwell thinks so too. In fact, he wants to talk to you about it.”

George shrugs his shoulders, wanting to ignore her. “First let me show you this.”

He opens up his laptop to show her the video from earlier, fumbling quickly to turn down the sound so they don’t have to relive the argument she just had with Bella. As they watch, the coffee table trembles and then cracks in two, collapsing in front of them all.

“I know, George, I was there. That doesn’t mean I caused it.” Alexis feels her throat tightening at the thought that her friend doesn’t believe her anymore.

“When I slowed it down and watched it again, I saw this.”

They watch again, the footage going frame by frame. When the table begins to tremble, George pauses the video and points to Alexis’ hand.

“You start to flex your fingers right here, and when you curl your hand into a fist it gets worse.”

Alexis watches as her hand clenches into a fist and, in the frustration of the moment, she jabs her fist down. At that exact moment the coffee table cracks in two as if a force smashed it down from above.