Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The rising wind tore through the open windows, and unsecured shutters banged all over the house like running footsteps.
The rain steadily increased, and thunder growled from somewhere over the Atlantic, growing closer with each boom.
The Cottage creaked and moaned under the assault, but it was the best place on the island to ride out the storm.
According to Nigel, the catamaran’s mooring ropes had been untied, the vessel blown away or sunk to the bottom, it was hard to say. No one questioned that Gloria was the culprit.
He finally understood her fury. Horrors had happened here, as attested to by the mass grave. Maybe something equally terrible had happened to her back in Winston-Salem. If she’d been fleeing her father, fallen down the stairs…
Was that why Ullman summoned her ghost? Because she’d escaped him in life, but he was determined to possess her in death?
Either way, she’d been trying to get someone, anyone, to care. To reveal the truth about the men who gathered here, to expose their vile deeds to the light of day. Get some justice for herself and the other victims, however slim.
The Vanderwalls must have found the bodies.
They’d sunk all of their funds into making The Cottage into a B&B, though.
Any work would have to be put on pause, at least for a little while, so the remains could be investigated.
Worse, no guests would want to stay in a place where so many terrible things happened.
The Vanderwalls had stood to lose everything, so they kept their discovery to themselves.
No doubt they’d hoped to remove the skeletons from the beach before opening to the public.
So Gloria turned against them. Then Robin, Lawson, and Montague arrived, and she tried again. And again, the cover up continued.
Robin paid the ultimate price. Clearly, her spirit wasn’t at rest, wanted to make amends by visiting Ms. Montague in her dreams and urging her to fix things.
Instead, they came here, and once again ignored Gloria. By the time they’d found the mass grave, it was too late. The catamaran was already gone, unleashed to trap them here so Gloria could take out her vengeance on them as she’d done with Robin.
And perhaps Ullman, long before. He’d been furious about people digging into his private business.
Had Gloria tormented the Pack after being summoned to the island?
If any of Ullman’s friends had been wavering, thinking about confessing their sins, it would have been a good motive to sabotage the boat and kill all of them.
Then he shot himself to put an end to any questions.
No one would look too closely at a bunch of grieving families—rich families.
And if the servants spoke up, they’d only be implicating themselves as accomplices.
Now they were stuck here with an enraged ghost, a storm bearing down on them while they hunkered in a creaky old house that might blow in on top of them for all he knew.
They’d tried putting in a call to the coast guard over the satellite phone, but the coasties were busy responding to SOSs from ships caught by the unexpected speed of the storm.
So long as they were sheltered and not in imminent danger, they were going to have to wait.
While Montague and Ethan retreated to the trailer to gather anything they didn’t want to risk being blown away, the rest of them trooped back into the dining room.
The salt lines had gotten broken when they’d been taking their belongings out earlier, so Oscar stopped to pour fresh ones.
As he finished up, Chris said, “Wait—was that here earlier?”
“What?” Oscar turned, salt canister in hand, and saw Chris staring down at an unlabeled VHS tape lying near the middle of the table.
“It’s the tape from earlier—I must have put it there after Dr. Lawson had the chance to watch it.” Nigel took off his glasses and wiped the rain away with his t-shirt.
Chris went to the VCR, which still had power thanks to the generator, and hit the eject button. The unlabeled tape they’d watched earlier popped out. “Nope. It was still in the machine.”
Oscar felt as though he was out in the storm still, cold rainwater running down his spine. “Could Robin have apparated it here?”
She wasn’t a strong spirit. To move it here, from wherever she’d hidden it in the house, would have taken a lot of energy. Maybe with the salt lines broken, she’d been able to suck some from the generator via the VCR?
She’d hidden a second tape somewhere, away from the first in case…what? If Montague discovered one, she at least wouldn’t get both?
Dr. Lawson had gone pale. With visible effort, she went to the table and picked up the tape. “Well. Let’s see what’s on it.”