Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) (26 page)

“Stunning,” Ellen gushed for the third time
in as many minutes. “Absolutely stunning.”

Taryn bristled with pride, feeling the tips of her ears grow warm as she watched her current boss nearly touch her nose to the canvas and then back away again, continuing to study Adena Cottage. Amy stood off to the side and sent Taryn a wide grin and comical wink.

“This truly is amazing. And I love the way you’ve included a figure in the painting as well. It’s subtle and not even that noticeable from a distance, but it’s just one of those wonderful details that bring it to life,” Ellen declared. “I have to say, this most certainly exceeds any expectations I might have had.”

“Well, there’s another one so don’t get your hopes up yet,” Taryn warned her.

Taryn then removed the cloth she’d draped across the framed painting of Ivy House and stood back to let Ellen scrutinize it as well. It was always difficult to reveal her final product to her boss. In most jobs the person who hired her was somewhat involved with the process, often checking in on her and the work to see how it was going. Some even offered suggestions which Taryn always smiled politely at and tried to utilize when she could, if for no other reason than to stay on their good side and receive the recommendation she needed. However, Ellen had left her almost completely alone and hadn’t even bothered to see how she was coming along, save for once when she was first getting started.

The reveal for Ellen was a complete surprise.

Taryn watched now as both Ellen and Amy moved in together and studied the historic cottage, now entirely intact and in all its glory, brought to life on her canvas.

“My God,” Amy breathed, her eyes wide in appreciation. “It looks like the house is breathing. Like it’s alive!”

“Well, it is a little,” Ellen agreed. “And our artist here understood that.”

Taryn brimmed with pride. It was one of the few times Ellen had referred to her as an “artist.” She found herself reveling in a mixture of satisfaction and sadness. It was always hard to say goodbye to her paintings once they were finished. She’d lived with them for so long, after all. She almost felt like they were friends. She’d talked to them, taken care of them, pampered them, sang to them, carried them around, worried over them…and now they were leaving her.

“My dear,” Ellen turned to Taryn again, her face aglow. “You have a true gift. We will be honored to show these to the architect, use them in our renovations, and display them proudly in our lobby for everyone to see.”

Taryn felt the prickles of tears forming behind her eyes and told herself that it was probably from exhaustion. She stayed up all night worrying about the events that had unfolded on the island, trying to fit the canvases into the ornate frames, and piecing together the fragments of information she had that didn’t make sense on their own.

“I imagine I need to go ahead and pay you now, although it seems a shame to just let you go,” Ellen said worriedly as she walked back to her desk.

“We don’t have to do it right now,” Taryn said, always a bit uncomfortable when it came time for final payment. “I’m not leaving for another two days. If that’s okay, of course.”

“Oh Taryn, we were planning on you staying for another week,” Ellen laughed. “You finished early. Stay on if you’d like. Enjoy the island, do some sightseeing. You’ve earned it. In fact, I’d like for you to come to dinner tonight. We’re having a lovely seafood dinner tonight with a celebrity chef. We had several cancelations. You’re welcome to bring a guest if you’d like. Your young man perhaps?”

Taryn was surprised. She didn’t know Ellen knew about Matt. Of course, Amy probably told her when she’d let them root around in the records.

“I’d like to come, yes,” Taryn answered. “What time does it start?”

“It’s rather late at 9:00 pm. That’s the seating time our cancelations were for I’m afraid,” she said with regret.

“No, that’s fine,” Taryn assured her. “I’ll be there. And thank you.”

In fact, nine o’clock would be perfect. It would give her plenty of time to do what she needed to do and get cleaned up first. She’d had an epiphany in the middle of the night. She just hoped her instincts were right this time.

“’Look’,” she repeated to herself as she hopped in her golf cart and started back to her house. “’Look.’ Okay, Georgiana. I’m certainly going to try.”

“
I don’t
like it, Taryn,” Matt said worriedly as she filled him in on her plans. “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all.”

“Oh, stop worrying,” she scolded him. “I’ll be fine.”

“And what about your housekeeper and her brother? She has to know what you saw and she must have been the one to let him in with the snake.”

“That’s funny. Last week you thought it was David,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, well, he’s not off the hook yet either,” Matt muttered.

“Look, I’m keeping my mouth shut about that. David has kind of taken over that nonsense, and I’ll let him deal with it. It’s his area anyway, not mine. Besides, I’ve got other things to worry about,” she said.

“Have you talked to him?”

Taryn slipped on a pair of loose fitting pants and rummaged through her dresser drawer for socks. She needed to be as completely covered as possible for what she was about to do. “No, actually. I went over to his house earlier to see if I could find him, but I didn’t see him. I was going to ask him something.”

She left out the part where she was going to ask him to accompany her to dinner that night. She’d rather wait and tell Matt afterward, especially since he was still so paranoid about the other man. It was funny that he wasn’t necessarily concerned that they were going to form a romantic connection–he was concerned David might try to kill her. What had her life turned into anyway? An Investigation Discovery show?

“Ah ha!” she cried triumphantly.

“What? Everything okay?”

“Oh yeah,” she replied, tossing the socks on the bed. “I just finally found two socks that didn’t have holes in them.”

“Well, before you run off on this wild goose chase, I need to talk to you,” Matt began in his most serious tone.

Taryn glanced at her watch. It was a little after six. She still had time. She’d need to hurry, though.

“I’ve told you, Matt, I’m going to go over there. It won’t take long and–“

“No, it’s not about that,” he sighed with resignation. “I can’t tell you what to do. Or what not to do. It’s about something else.”

Taryn stretched out across the foot of the bed, threw her legs up in the air, and began tugging on her socks. She let the phone, on speaker now, fall beside her head. “Yeah? Shoot!”

“It’s about Sarah’s house.”

“Oh.” Taryn stopped what she was doing and let the sock dangle from her toes. “What about it?”

“I want you to fix it.”

Taryn laughed. “Well yeah, so do I. I don’t want to sell it. But I don’t have that kind of money and no bank is going to loan it to me, not with my employment status and credit report.”

“I have the money.”

“What?”

Matt took a big breath, and she was surprised to find he sounded nervous. “I want to fix it for you,” he finally said in a rush.

“What?” He’d spoken so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d understood him correctly.

“The money,” he explained. “I want to invest the money and fix the house for you.”

Taryn was speechless, not normally something that happened. A million thoughts rushed through her mind, but she couldn’t grab onto a single one of them. Her head was suddenly a big jumbled mess.

“Oh,” she finally said again. It was all she could manage.

“The thing is, I have the money, but not all of it. I’d need a loan as well. And I could get one. There’s just one small catch to it,” he explained, sounding logical and clear-headed again, like the Matt she knew.

Taryn knew what the catch was. “You can’t get a construction or renovation loan on a house you don’t own,” she quietly finished for him.

“Right.”

“I can’t…”

“I know what you’re thinking, Taryn, and I have a solution,” Matt explained gently. “Sell me the house. Sell it at a fair price. I’ll get the loans, I’ll get it in working order for you, and then I’ll sell it back. You’ll win both ways. You’ll make some money from the sale, and you’ll get your aunt’s house fixed.”

“And then what?” she asked.

“I was thinking that perhaps it could be our home,” he said shyly. “Or maybe just a summer home. A vacation home. Whatever you want.”

Taryn suddenly found herself faced with a proposition she wasn’t ready for. Their home? A home she’d share with Matt? It was a big step, even just as a “vacation home.” Things did not always work out well for Taryn. She’d had a slew of bad luck. What if something happened between the two of them and she lost her house? Lost Sarah’s house due to a fight or silly argument or–

“Everyone wins, Taryn,” Matt interjected gently. “Nothing bad will happen. I can put the title in both of our names. I’ll sell it back to you for $1 and you can own it outright if that’s what you want, without my name attached at all.”

“But you’d still be stuck with the loan payments,” she pointed out. That didn’t seem fair.

“I don’t care. Let me do this.”

“But you can’t buy it from me,” she insisted. “I didn’t do anything to earn it. I could sell it to you for $1. Would that work?”

“I don’t mind paying a fair price for it, Taryn. Why not get it appraised and let me pay what it’s worth?”

“Because that’s not right.”

“It would give you some extra cash so that you’re not so worried. You could take some time off…”

“It would be taking money from you, Matt, and I won’t do that.” The idea was mortifying. She didn’t need him to take care of her financially. “And the down payment you’d use? The money you’d invest in the house? I know you’ve been saving that for years. You can’t use that for a house that’s mine.”

“Ours,” he corrected. “Or yours if that’s the way you want it. I need to do this for you. I can’t let you lose that house. At least think about it, okay?”

Taryn hung up the phone a few minutes later in stunned silence. What he was offering was an unreal proposition. It would solve one of the biggest problems in her life at the moment. Sarah’s house would be fixed and Taryn would have a place in which she could live. She’d have a
real
place to raise a family in if she wanted. She could get out of her cramped, soulless apartment in Nashville. She could start the next phase of her life…the next phase with Matt.

“I can’t lose that house,” she whispered to herself. “I can’t.”

She
didn’t have much time and had to move quickly. The car or golf cart would’ve been faster, but Taryn chose her bike since it was less conspicuous, and she could tie it to the bike rack with all the others nearby.

The good thing was that at 7:30 pm most people were safely tucked away at home or in restaurants, enjoying supper. There wasn’t anyone milling around Adena Cottage when she walked up to it. Not a soul in sight.

Her tennis shoes were a change from her regular sandals, but a necessity. They felt tight on her feet as she walked around the back and studied the windows on the lower floor. She didn’t know what she’d find inside and didn’t want something biting her or, worse in her mind, to step in the middle of a pile of something icky. Her pants and long-sleeved shirt were hot and she was already dripping sweat from the ride over on the bike. She’d have to work at breakneck speed if she was going to do what she needed to do and get back to her house, shower and change, and make it to the hotel in time.

The back of Adena backed up to a grove of trees. There wasn’t a road, building, or bike path that someone could be using and, therefore, watching her. She was shielded there, unlike the front of the house which faced the road.

Luckily for her, one of the windows on the first floor had all the glass knocked out of it. Taryn placed her hands on the frame and shook it slightly, testing its strength. It didn’t move. Taryn took a quick look around to make sure nobody had walked up to the house, grabbed hold of the ledge, and hoisted herself up with a grunt.

She barely moved.

“Well shit,” she grumbled.

She’d never had a lot of upper body strength.

This time she spread her hands farther apart, pulled, and used her legs to push against the side of the house. She could feel herself moving upwards at last but when her upper body reached the windowsill she was unable to control it and suddenly found herself flying through the opening, arms flailing and feet kicking behind her.

With a mighty “thump” she landed inside the house, her face slamming onto the wood.

“Oooh,” she moaned, curling up in the fetal position and rubbing her shoulder. She’d landed on it hard, but it didn’t feel broken or even dislocated. That was something at least.

When the stars behind her eyes disappeared and she felt steady on her feet again, Taryn stood up, dusted her pants off, and looked around. She’d landed in what appeared to be a dining room. It still boasted a heavy sideboard and mahogany table with seating for ten guests.

She wasn’t worried about the floor on the first floor caving in. In spite of its outward appearance, the foundation was still good. Adena had a solid base of nineteen brick piers in the basement, along with a steel support system. Trusses distributed the weight. She hoped they’d continue to work.

She’d tucked her flashlight into the back of her pants and brought it out now, just in case. Shadows bathed the house, but since it was still daylight outside it wasn’t yet dark. She could still see to move around.

A light scratching sound came from the room next door, followed by the scurry of tiny feet. Mice. Well, she’d seen worse.

Taryn knew where she had to go, but she wasn’t looking forward to it. The cottage was in dire condition, even by her perilous standards. As a teenager and young adult, she hadn’t thought a thing about climbing through windows and stalking around abandoned houses with rotting floors and questionable roofs. Now she knew it was just plain dumb luck that had kept her from getting hurt or worse.

Taryn cautiously slipped through the rooms on the first floor, mildly disappointed that she didn’t have time to stop and take pictures. She walked carefully through the dining room, gun room, parlor, and what appeared to be a servant’s dining room.

She loved the peeling wallpaper, original wainscoting, cracked crown molding, and antique furniture that had been left to rot in some cases. It looked like someone had just gotten up and left one day and never returned, leaving the house mostly intact. She hoped that when they began renovating it they were able to go in first and salvage many of the pieces that were still there.

There were eight rooms on the first level. At least, there were eight rooms she had to walk through to get to the staircase. There were some on the other side of the house that she couldn’t enter at all and she skirted around these, crossing her fingers that what she was looking for wasn’t in any of them.

The giant winding staircase was a thing of beauty. Mice and rats had made nests in the corners of the steps over the years and bits and pieces of their former homes were scattered across the stairs. Sand had blown in as well, leaving a dusty film to coat the beautiful wood. Still, the banister was ornately carved and shone through the years of neglect, giving her a glimpse of what it might have once looked like.

Taryn tested the first stair with her weight and gave a little bounce. It didn’t even creak. She moved up to the second and did the same. The bottom of the stairs felt sold enough. From her current position she could look up and see the second-floor landing. There wasn’t any noticeable water damage or other issues with the floor, not any she could see at least, so she was going to give it a try. She only needed to go in one room up there and it was on the other side of the landing. She knew its placement from studying her own painting.

“Oh please don’t fall in on me, please don’t fall in on me,” she chanted as she tiptoed up the stairs, focusing on treading lightly and making herself as weightless as possible.

Near the top, she looked back down behind her and became acutely aware of how high the staircase actually was. It was a long way to fall if the floor decided to give out on her. She trembled then, the flashlight in her hand shaking.

“You can do this,” she said encouragingly. In two more steps she’d be at the top. “You can do it!”

The landing was a different kind of beast. As soon as she put her foot down on it the floor gave a disgruntled moan under her weight. The wood felt spongy here, bouncy. Taryn took a step forward and there was a faint but clear “crack” underneath her.

“This is the hardest part,” she reminded herself. “Get past this where there isn’t much support and get to the bedroom.”

Closing her eyes and biting her lip, Taryn gathered her courage and quickly moved the ten feet to the other side, taking care not to run and to keep her weight distributed evenly on the sides. Waddling in such a way was awkward but when she reached the bedroom door she let out a huge sigh of relief.

“Oh man,” she laughed. “Well, that was fun.”

It was starting to grow dark now. The sun had set and the last rays of sunlight filtered in through the upstairs windows, tossing long shadows that seemed to reach out to her. She needed to hurry before she freaked herself out.

The heavy bedroom door was open a few inches, the brass knob tarnished and dull. Taryn gave it a push and stepped inside.

This room, Georgiana’s bedroom, was pitch black. The windows had been boarded up in here, keeping out any pale remnants of light that might have existed. Taryn flipped the flashlight on and kept the beam low to the ground.

Like the other rooms in the house, there was still furniture left behind. A four-poster bed took up most of the floor, but the mattress and bedding were gone, leaving behind nothing but an empty shell. A wardrobe was up against the wall; both doors flung open revealing nothing but a hatbox on a shelf at the top. A winged-back chair in the corner of the room had claw marks on it. The stuffing was pouring from it and littering the floor. It was difficult to tell what color it had originally been. Aside from what looked like a music box on the ornate fireplace mantle, there was nothing else left in the room.

“Well, now what?” Taryn muttered. She was agitated and disappointed. When she’d seen the image of Georgiana standing in her window Taryn had been so sure that she was trying to tell her something. With the book in her hand, the Bible Eldean had claimed, Taryn had convinced herself that she was meant to explore the bedroom and find it.

“It’s supposed to be here,” she wailed. “Damn it!”

Taryn stomped her foot on the floor in frustration, forgetting to be careful. The wardrobe doors shook and then slammed shut, the wood cracking under the force.

Startled, Taryn trained her flashlight on the wardrobe and began walking slowly towards it. As she drew nearer, the doors began slowly opening again, the creak of their movements sounding like the opening to a portal in another world. When Taryn arrived at her destination both doors stood wide open again, the hollow blackness inside reminding her of a giant mouth, open and ready to swallow her whole.

Hand shaking, she shone her flashlight around the interior, the pale beam seeking the dark corners and crevices. There was nothing there. Taryn pushed against the back, hoping for a secret compartment or small door to pop open, but nothing moved.

Again sighing in disappointment, Taryn turned to leave.

She’d barely taken a step forward when the bedroom door slammed shut, the strength of it powerful enough that even the boards on the windows rattled. Nails flew through the air and rained down around her, scattering on the floor. She watched as some rolled under the bed and disappeared.

A low earthy voice filled the room then, its authoritative tone belying the smooth femininity. “Look,” it commanded, seemingly coming from all directions, and yet nowhere, at once. “Look.”

Swallowing hard, Taryn turned back to the wardrobe. She tried hard to keep the flashlight steady as she did another swoop. She couldn’t see a single thing other than the hat box. But surely, if there had been something inside of it, the box wouldn’t have been left behind? Still, it was the only thing she had to go on.

Stuffing the flashlight down the front of her pants so that the light pointed upwards and illuminated her face and ceiling, Taryn stretched up on her tiptoes and brought down the octagonal hatbox.

She knew before she even removed the lid that it was empty. Still, she balanced it on her knee and removed the top. Sure enough, there was nothing inside, not even a hat.

“There’s nothing here,” Taryn complained. “Honestly, there’s nothing here!”

“Look! “ The voice shouted again. More nails flew from the boards and one sailed across the room and scraped Taryn’s arm.

“Oh my God, I’m looking, I’m looking,” she grumbled, returning to the hat box.

After turning the box over and over again in her hands, and seeing nothing, she put it on the floor. Now, with the lid in her hands, she turned to it. There obviously wasn’t going to be a book hidden in the lid. She flipped it over three times and was about to set it down as well when she noticed something odd. On the underside of the lid was an advertisement for the hat company. The faded ad contained a picture of a hat, along with the address of a shop in New York City. The paper had yellowed with age. There wasn’t anything unusual about it at all. If the flashlight hadn’t been at such an odd angle, causing a shadow to fall across the lid, she might not have even noticed the other thing.

The advertisement wasn’t flat. There was something under it.

Using her fingernail, Taryn peeled up part of the paper and to her surprise found that the edges had been sewed down with white thread. A few good tugs had the paper ripping in her hands and a small, silver object landed on the floor by her feet. Taryn knelt down and moved the flashlight around. When it landed on the tiny key, Taryn picked it up and studied it in the faint glow. It was a tiny key, not big enough for a door. A box perhaps?

She spent the next few minutes searching the room, looking for something the key might fit in. She couldn’t find anything that would work.

Realizing that she only had about forty-five minutes to get home, get dressed, and get to the hotel Taryn slipped the key in her pocket. “Okay,” she said to the room in general as she placed her hand on the knob and gently re-opened it. “I ‘looked.’ I’ll keep trying. But I am running out of time. You’re going to have to help me.”

The house didn’t answer.