Chapter Thirty-Four
Thirty-Four
The note in the window of Highbaugh’s gallery announced it was closed due to the storm.
Rats. That was a bit of a letdown. Harper had been amping herself up the entire way to Carmel.
It was probably just as well, she decided.
She started this trip with a great sense of purpose, but on the drive down had given Ellen’s warning some thought.
If Alastair Highbaugh really was responsible for Delilah’s death, Harper might need more than pepper spray to protect herself.
She debated stopping at Ellen’s to borrow her gun, but then what?
Was she honestly going to attempt a citizen’s arrest of a violent murderer?
And if not, then why was she going there?
Harper kept thinking of the old photograph of Isabel Perles, and everything she had learned about the poor woman.
She imagined Isabel living in that house with her grave-robbing brother conducting autopsies—and who knows what else—down in his laboratory.
She imagined what had happened between the siblings, and the baby that had resulted.
According to Sigrid, Isabel had forged some kind of connection with Harper through that shrouded mirror. And she must have done the same with Delilah. It made no rational sense, but at this point Harper was willing to entertain the possibility that there was something supernatural going on.
Perhaps one real conversation with an otherworldly spirit would clear up this entire mystery. If Harper were brave enough to gaze once more into that mirror, then maybe, just maybe, she could communicate with Isabel Perles and get some answers.
Harper decided she would return to the Perles Mansion. But she needed backup.
Unfortunately, she did not have a lot of friends in the area. Especially kick-ass ones who could provide backup. That did it: Presuming she did not die soon at the hands of a murderer or an angry spirit, she was going to get out more.
After a moment’s hesitation, Harper called her one kick-ass friend, but she was not surprised when Tariq did not pick up.
She had essentially accused him of murder just a few short hours ago, and now she was going to ask him to escort her to have a chat with a spirit in a mirror? She did not leave a message.
She at least needed someone with an open mind and a sense of whimsy, Harper decided. She called Gabe.
“You know how you said you wanted to see inside the Perles Mansion?” she said. “Meet me there in twenty minutes.”
The storm seemed to be easing up by the time she arrived at the mansion and let herself in through the gate. Running through the rain toward the front door, she noticed that it stood ajar.
“Gabe?” she called out.
She pushed the door open slowly.
“Hello? Anybody here?”
Harper…
The voice was disembodied, barely there. An echoey whisper. Isabel.
“Gabe?” she called again. She looked behind her, but saw no sign of him in the garden. She should probably go wait in the car for him. She started to turn back when she heard it again, this time sounding more urgent.
Harper…!
The telescoping sensations came over her once more as she slowly crept down the hallway and into the living room. Standing in front of the fireplace, Harper gazed up at the covered mirror.
She took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, then reached for the shroud. The cloth slipped off with a quiet whoosh. Gathering her courage, Harper stared into the shiny looking glass.
All she saw was her own pale visage, looking the worse for wear. Anxiety and a lack of sleep did a number on one’s face, especially after forty.
But after a moment, another image appeared. A woman in a white gown, with a colorful rebozo wrapped around her head and shoulders. Her eyes glowed.
Harper…
Harper heard the voice in her head, not in her ears. “Isabel?”
The next moment Isabel’s image was no longer behind her but overlaid Harper’s, as if she were facing Harper from inside the mirror. Isabel’s face and features were hidden by the rebozo, but Harper forced herself to look into those glowing eyes.
“Isabel?” Harper asked. “What do you want to tell me…?”
Suddenly, Isabel held her hands out in front of her, palms out, and shook them, as if trying to issue a warning.
Harper…!
“What in God’s name are you doing?”
Harper whipped around. It was Alastair Highbaugh. Were his eyes always so cold?
“Did it tell you?” he asked.
“Did what tell me what?” She tried to keep her panic in check. Her heart beat wildly and her mouth went dry. Where the hell was Gabe? Why hadn’t she waited outside for him?
“It sees, you know,” said Highbaugh, his voice bleak. “That damn mirror. It sees everything. That’s what Delilah was trying to say, in her paintings. The face in the mirror. The wrong face.”
“So you covered it with a shroud?”
“I had to.”
“You know, ever since that night of the ghost tour, I’ve been thinking about Delilah Mason,” Harper said in the calmest voice she could muster.
The gallery owner was clearly unstable, but so far he seemed calm.
If she could keep him talking long enough for Gabe to arrive, together they could deal with him.
She hoped. “She was so talented. Hard to believe someone would want to do her harm.”
Highbaugh frowned. “You’re a historian, correct? Surely you know better than most that surface appearances can be deceptive.”
“Oh? I heard she could be difficult to deal with at times, but—”
“ ‘Difficult’ is an understatement,” Highbaugh said, contempt in his voice. “She was arrogant and condescending, constantly demanding special treatment.”
“Aren’t a lot of artists like that?”
“She hadn’t earned that right! I’m a big part of the reason she achieved the success she did, and she had the gall, the gall, to demand I reduce my commission!” Highbaugh’s face was turning red, and he spit a little as he spoke. “Threatened to show her work at another gallery!”
“That must have been hard,” Harper said, keeping her voice neutral.
“ ‘Oh, Alastair, darling, I’ve been approached to show my work at the Williams Gallery in New York City,’ ” he said in a mocking falsetto. “ ‘But it’s an exclusive contract. I’m going to take it unless you lower your commission to twenty percent.’ Twenty percent! That’s extortion!”
“Twenty percent isn’t fair?”
“Most gallery owners receive fifty to sixty percent! I was only charging her forty!”
“That must have been disappointing.”
“Disappointing? It was infuriating!” Highbaugh took a deep breath. “Artists. Divas, all of them, and none more so than Delilah Mason.”
“But Delilah must have—”
“And that wasn’t the worst of it,” Highbaugh continued.
“Delilah said doctors weren’t to be trusted, but that her natural tinctures could cure everything.
She said it was based on years—nay, a century—of research.
I spoon-fed that crap to my mother myself.
Can you imagine?” His voice broke. “But Delilah lied. It didn’t help at all.
Mother started seeing things. She thought I was my own father, can you imagine? And then she…she died.”
“That’s tragic. I’m so sorry, Alastair, honestly.”
“It was Delilah’s fault. And that ridiculous creature, Joel Aristide. A…a fop. He was in on the scheme, pushing that poison Delilah brewed. So I gave him a dose of his own medicine. Actually, it took several doses, and several days…but how was I supposed to know he would jump out a window?”
“The ‘medicine’ can cause hallucinations,” Harper said quietly. She kept glancing behind him toward the hallway, hoping against hope that Gabe would show up.
He gave her a strange half smile. “Jenny’s learning about those hallucinations, even as we speak.”
“Jenny?”
“She was in on it, too. She and her little friend went around selling that crap door to door, like a couple of witches bringing poisoned apples to the innocent. Or poisoned tonics, in this case. I don’t have the other girl yet, but this one made it easy, came to me all by herself, believe it or not.
I offered to refill her water bottle and slipped a little gift—a little of Delilah’s Gift—into it. ”
“Where is she? Highbaugh? Where is Jenny?”
He gave a half smile. “She’s learning what it feels like to be helpless, to watch your life slip away.”
From overhead, a scream ripped through the sounds of the rain that still pelted the windows.
Harper bolted from the room and ran up the stairs, fighting against the disorienting sensations that had afflicted her once again.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw someone pass by.
Clad in a long white gown, the figure disappeared when Harper looked straight at it.
She heard her name whispered repeatedly: Harper…
And then she found herself in the doorway of the mirror room.
“Professor Grae?” came a shaky voice. “Help!”
Jenny lay on the floor in the center of the room, tied up, surrounded by candles that reflected to infinity in the numerous mirrors. Harper kneeled on the floor and used her nails to dig into the tight ropes and pull the knots apart.
Jenny’s brown eyes were wide with terror as she stared at the mirrored walls, first in one direction, then the next. “I don’t…I don’t know what’s going on! Get me out of here!”
“Try to calm down, Jenny,” said Harper. The young woman’s agitated movements were making Harper’s attempts to free her that much harder. “I’ll get you out of here.”
Jenny looked toward the hallway and screamed.
Highbaugh, still wearing that strange half smile, was in the doorway. He had a knife in his hand.