The Inn (11 page)

“W
ake up, you old fool.”

Zeke opened his eyes. Sunlight was streaming into his room and Cordelia was standing over him, glowering at him, her arms akimbo.

“What time is it?” Zeke asked, sitting up, just as a headache pushed him back down.

“It's past time, you miserable man,” Cordelia scolded.

“Oh, no,” Zeke said, sitting up again, slower this time, rubbing his forehead.

“I've taken care of things,” Cordelia said. “No thanks to you.”

“Is everything all right?”

Cordelia's eyes darkened. “Everyone is sleeping off their hangovers in their rooms. After all that noise last night, I presume they'll sleep well past noon.”

The old man got up out of bed. He was still wearing the clothes he had on yesterday. He smelled of beer and sweat.

“It's been so long, Cordelia,” he told her. “So long since I just had a good time . . . unwound . . . had a few beers. Don't be angry at me.”

“You had more than a few beers, apparently. I came in here two hours ago and couldn't get you to wake up for the life of me.” She folded her arms over her chest. “So I had to take care of things myself.”

“And everything was all right?”

Cordelia narrowed her old eyes at him. “I think she's figured out how to deal with that lock.”

“The door was locked, wasn't it?” Zeke asked.

“It was locked,” Cordelia said. “But I don't think it was locked all night.”

“What makes you think so?”

She brushed her hand at him. “I don't have time to stand here jabbering with you. We have things to do today.” She scowled. “Annabel has some people coming to see her.”

“The mason,” Zeke said, nodding.

“Make sure he stays far away from that fireplace,” Cordelia said, before hobbling out of Zeke's room.

A
nnabel opened her eyes.

For a moment she had absolutely no idea where she was. She looked up at the ceiling and didn't recognize it. She sat up and looked around. The room made no sense to her.

Then she realized she was at the Blue Boy Inn, and Jack was snoring beside her. They both were wearing the same clothes they had worn the day before.

What had happened last night?

She'd hallucinated, that was what had happened. She'd thought she'd been locked in a closet by Daddy Ron. It had been horrifying.

You're safe, Annabel,
she heard her therapists telling her.
You are completely safe.

“I'm safe,” she whispered to herself.

Annabel swung her legs off the bed and placed her feet—still in shoes—against the floor. Her hands covered her face and she felt as if she might cry. She hadn't had a childhood flashback like that in a very long time. During her breakdown and her time in rehab, such flashbacks had come frequently. Many a night she had thought she was back in the closet, locked there by Daddy Ron. But recently Annabel had begun to hope that she was finally free of such nightmares, that she had finally moved past those terrible memories.

Apparently not.

Dr. Adler had warned her that the flashbacks might come back if she was stressed or experienced some sort of trauma.

Annabel removed her hands from her face and looked over at Jack, snoring like a grizzly bear beside her.

She remembered the trauma of last night.

Jack had been flirting with Priscilla. He may have even had sex with her.

Annabel stood and pushed herself over to the mirror. She looked into her eyes. They were puffy and bloodshot.

What had she seen? Jack and Priscilla. What had they been doing?

She turned to look at her husband.

How she hated him.

No
, she told herself.
You love Jack. He stayed with you through everything. You love Jack. You owe him so much.

Annabel had to get out of that room. She felt boxed in. The air was stale and smelly.

Out in the hallway, she breathed better.

And suddenly she remembered the contractor and the mason were coming this morning. Yes! For some reason, the thought cheered her. She looked at her watch. They would be there in an hour. She hurried to the bathroom to get ready.

C
had Appleby was finishing up his breakfast at Deb's Diner.

“You want more coffee, Chad?” Tammy asked him.

“Sure, Tam. Just a splash.”

She refilled his cup.

“You know, I can't say I liked Roger,” Chad said, “but I'm sorry if what happened has left you upset.”

Tammy gave him a wan smile. “I appreciate that, Chad. I suppose it's good that he won't be coming around anymore. Jessica was scared of him.” She sighed. “But nobody deserves to get stabbed to death and get his arm cut off.”

“Cops have no idea who did it?”

Tammy shook her head. “The chief has talked to all of Roger's friends and all of his enemies, and nobody seems to have had anything to do with it, or figure out any motive. I mean, why cut off his arm?”

Chad used his last piece of bacon to wipe up the egg yolk on his plate and then forked it into his mouth. “And they haven't found the arm yet, have they?” he asked as he chewed.

Again, Tammy shook her head. “The whole thing creeps me out,” she said, before moving on down the counter to refill the next customer's cup.

Chad looked at his watch. Paulie was supposed to meet him here fifteen minutes ago. But Paulie was always late. Back in high school, Paulie got more demerits for showing up late to class than any other kid in their class. He was a stoner, but Paulie was also a damn good builder and mason, and that was why Chad had asked him to come out with him this morning to the Blue Boy Inn.

He couldn't believe that was where he was going. Dad had asked him, “Hey, Chad, you want to take on one very weird job?”

“And what would that be, Dad?”

“The Blue Boy Inn wants its chimneys inspected,” his father had told him.

The Blue Boy Inn. Everybody in town knew that old place was haunted. Or at least had so much creepy history that it should be haunted. There was the time that little girl went missing but blood was found all around the place. And a guy was found shot dead in the woods a stone's throw from the place. Plus, there were stories that lots of people had died in the rooms over the last hundred years or had never been seen again after they'd gone inside. The Blue Boy was legendary in these parts.

And the two old people who ran it, that guy Zeke and that ancient Mrs. Devlin, looked like they were cast members of
The Addams Family,
all wrinkled and hunched over and dressed in black.

Chad had told his father that he was glad to take the job. He'd never been inside the Blue Boy, and he looked forward to finally getting a peek inside the spook house.

“Sorry I'm late, my man,” came a voice behind him suddenly, a hand on his shoulder.

Chad looked around. Paulie had arrived, and his red, glassy eyes revealed he'd been four-twentying in his truck on the drive over.

“Sit down and have some coffee, Paulie,” Chad told him.

Tammy brought him a cup.

“So you anxious to get a look inside the Blue Boy?” Chad asked.

Paulie grinned. He was a doughy-faced guy with floppy ears. They made an odd-looking pair, Paulie so soft and stout and Chad so chiseled, slender, and tall.

“Sounds cool to me, man,” Paulie said, taking a sip of coffee. “Hope we don't run into any ghosts.”

“Remember that Halloween you and me and Nicky Malone went up there and threw rotten tomatoes until the old lady came out and scared us away?” Chad laughed. “Jesus Christ, we were bad kids. I'm surprised the old lady didn't call the cops on us.”

“Maybe she did,” Paulie said, his floppy ears wiggling. “Maybe we were just too fast.”

“Well, we're reformed now, aren't we, Paulie? Model citizens.”

Paulie laughed.

In truth, antics like the one at the Blue Boy, tossing those tomatoes, bothered Chad to remember. He'd never been a bad kid, really, but there had been other pranks like that. Like the time he and Nicky had pointed a DETOUR sign down an old dirt road and caused half a dozen cars to get stuck in ruts. And another time he'd rigged up a bucket of water over the front door of the high school and pulled a string so it doused stuffy old Mr. Hillcrest, the principal. Nobody could ever pin any of those things on Chad and his friends.

Now he hated to remember them. He was twenty-four years old, and intended on doing Dad proud as his assistant in the family contracting business. His older brothers had no interest in taking over the company. They were lazy good-for-nothings. But Chad imagined a day when Dad retired and Appleby Contracting would be his own.

Maybe he'd even hire old Paulie to work for him full-time. Providing the wacky weed wasn't still a daily ritual.

“Well, come on,” he said all of a sudden, getting up off his stool and plunking down a twenty and a couple of ones on the counter. It was a bigger tip than Chad was used to leaving, but he felt sorry for Tammy. “If we don't get a move on,” he told Paulie, “we'll be late getting to the Blue Boy. I told the new owner we'd be there at ten.”

Paulie downed his coffee and stood, a little shakily, to follow his friend out of the diner. Chad waved good-bye to Tammy and placed his hand on the door, but suddenly Paulie stopped him.

“You know,” Paulie said, looking up at him with those bloodshot eyes, “maybe we oughta smoke a little something before heading up to that haunted house.”

“I'm fine, Paulie,” Chad told him. “And I think you're already higher than the Blue Boy's weathervane. In fact, why don't you ride with me? Leave your truck here.”

Paulie smiled. “All right, captain. You're the boss.”

C
ordelia watched from the window of her room. There were men coming to the Blue Boy. Men who intended to knock down walls and pry up bricks. She wouldn't let them.

They must be stopped.

She remembered the day she and her husband had first sealed up the fireplace. Cordelia had laid many of the bricks herself. Then, years later, she'd had to lay those bricks again, this time with her son.

She hoped that old fool Zeke wouldn't fail her again, as he had failed her so often recently. Zeke's infirmities were the reason she'd had to ask her grandson to come up and take over. Otherwise, she never would have involved Jack.

But she was going to have to involve him completely soon. Especially if his wife persisted in her cockamamie schemes to renovate the place.

Jack's mother, Cordelia's daughter-in-law, had had similar ambitions.

And look what had happened to her.

“What are you doing?” Cordelia had asked the young woman, all those years ago.

“I'm taking the bricks out of the fireplace,” Jack's mother had replied. “We should have fires in this room. It will make the place more inviting. Cozy and warm.”

Cozy and warm.

The Blue Boy Inn had never been cozy and warm, not one day in all the years Cordelia had lived in the place.

She was going to have to speak to Jack. Soon. Very soon.

The way her husband had spoken to her.

“You're mad,” she had said to him, when he finished.

His weary eyes told her that he was not mad. He was simply terrified.

In her mind, Cordelia heard again the screams of the mother whose baby had been taken from her. The little baby whose arm was found. Only the arm.

How that memory was seared into Cordelia's mind.

She pulled back the dusty old lace curtain and peered down onto the yard. She spied Zeke standing in the shadows of some tall pine trees. Good. He was there, at least. She prayed he'd be successful.

She was so intent on watching Zeke that she didn't hear the soft footfalls behind her.

But Cordelia certainly felt the sting of pain that suddenly seized the back of her head.

Without making a sound, the old woman crumpled to the floor.

Z
eke heard the truck rattling up the dirt driveway before he actually saw it. The snowfall from the night before had mostly melted by now, and the tires of the truck were spraying stones from side to side as they crunched over the path through the woods.

The old caretaker watched carefully as the truck came into view and parked at the far end of the lot. Two young men stepped out. One was tall and blond and rather handsome; the other was shorter, darker, and stout. Without saying a word to each other, the men made their way up toward the house.

“Good mornin',” Zeke shouted, suddenly emerging from the shadows.

The men appeared to be slightly startled. They turned around to look at him. The shorter one seemed to sway just a little bit as he looked at Zeke, and his eyes were red.

“Good morning,” the taller man said.

“May I help you?” Zeke asked. “I'm the caretaker here.”

“We're here to see Annabel Wish,” the man told him. “I'm Chad Appleby and this is Paul Stueckel.”

“I see,” Zeke said. “You're the contractors, I take it.”

“Yes, sir, we are.”

Zeke smiled with his crooked teeth. “Is she askin' you to do a big job?”

“I wouldn't know that yet,” Chad told him. “I haven't seen what she wants to do.”

“Say she asks you to take down a few walls and restore a fireplace and chimney,” Zeke said. “How much would that cost her?”

“I'm not sure,” Chad said, seeming to grow a little leery of talking to him. He kept glancing up toward the house. “I'd have to see the actual work it entailed, and the condition of the house. . . .”

“How about if I told you,” Zeke asked, drawing in closer to the men and speaking in a conspiratorial whisper, “that whatever you quote Miz Wish to do the job she's asking, Mrs. Devlin will pay you that plus half to
not
do the job?”

The men looked at him strangely.

“Mrs. Devlin is sort of sentimentally attached to the house as it stands right now,” Zeke explained.

Chad frowned. “Well, from what Ms. Wish told me on the phone, it's she and her husband who are now the owners.”

“Paperwork hasn't been signed yet,” Zeke told him.

“But if it's going to be,” Chad replied, “then I really ought to speak with the woman who asked me to come out here and give her an estimate.”

“Mrs. Devlin will pay you double whatever you quote to leave the house alone,” Zeke said, his voice hard as he upped the offer.

The two men exchanged looks.

“I think I need to speak with Ms. Wish,” Chad said finally, heading off toward the house. His zoned-outlooking friend followed.

“Remember what I've offered you,” Zeke called after him. “But the offer's no good if you tell Miz Wish about it.”

The men didn't look back. They just continued on toward the house.