5. The Graveyard Shift #3
Helga takes me around the rest of the hotel, pointing out the breakfast hall where Josh was exploded.
The auditorium where Peter was stabbed. The indoor pool where half a naked man was found floating.
The spa where an old woman named Elsie Maplethorpe vanished from a massage table.
The grand staircase where, very recently, Camille Ciel fell—I guess that explains the broken neck—and back to my room, the honeymoon suite, where the body of ‘90s rock star Pixie Maynard was discovered spreadeagled on the plush antique rug beside the window.
“A guy named Stove was also found in the caves under the hotel, but you can only reach them during low tide, so I could show you that tomorrow,” Helga says.
Again, another tomorrow. But I guess it can wait. These tangents could potentially divert my attention away from my real mission. I need to focus on Imogen, but I’m not sure how I’ll work her back into the conversation without Helga getting suspicious of my motives.
“Is there a coastal path that runs alongside the hotel?” I ask instead. Imogen was known for her daily evening walks. Perhaps there’s a lead or two to be uncovered there.
“Sure. It runs directly along the ley lines,” Helga says.
I hold a finger up. “Ley lines?”
“The imaginary ‘lines’ that connect all the most haunted places in the country, like a criss?cross map of spectral activity. It’s said that the spirits are more powerful on the ley lines.
Some people even claim ghosts can travel using them.
” She frowns at me as though suddenly realising that, as a ghost “expert,” I should probably already know about ley lines and that it definitely, definitely shouldn’t be my first ever time hearing the term.
“Ah, yeah . . . um, my real question is how far from the ley lines is the hotel? That could really explain a lot,” I say instead.
“They run right underneath, through the caves, and straight over the peninsula,” Helga replies.
“The caves where Stove died?”
“Yup.”
“Stove?” I say again, because seriously, what the fudge? “Not Steve?”
Helga nods. “Stove MacLeod.”
“Of course. Of course.”
“Perhaps he had an accent?” she suggests. “MacLeod is a Scottish name?”
Something akin to a little bell jingles in the back of my head. “So, you never met him?”
“I mean, I saw his body?” Helga says it like a question, like she’s asking if viewing his corpse counts as an introduction. “Hellllluva mess. Stalactite . . . stalagmite . . . stala . . .”
“Stalactites are the ones that hang down, stalagmites go up,” I clarify.
But apparently she still doesn’t understand, and shrugs instead.
“All I know is that somebody had walloped him on the head with a big long cave rock and there was blood everywhere. You can see where it’d been knocked off the cave ceiling, but I don’t think it was an accident.
To me it looked like Stove’d been in a fight with a bear.
He was doing some sound recording or something in the caves and still had his boom mic in his hands when he died.
There were scratches all over the pole where he’d obviously used the thing to shield himself.
The tide was coming in, so we had to move his body out of there quickly, and by the time Sergeant Davies got to the scene, the Atlantic Ocean had cleansed all the blood from the rock surfaces. ”
So, all the evidence was washed away. Convenient.
“Did you notice anything else while you were there? Any footprints in the sand other than Stove’s?
Was he by himself, or did he have a crew?
” She mentioned a boom mic, so I’m assuming where there’s sound recording, there are also picture?recording people.
“They were preparing to film a documentary on the beach, and I was told he popped into the cave to do a sound check or . . .” Her sentence trails off, the technicalities of video production lost to her.
“No other footprints besides his and Franny’s obviously—Franny was the one to find him—which again leads me to think it must have been spectral activity that caused his death.
A poltergeist.” She shrugs, but I know she’s already made up her mind. “There’s no other explanation.”
The little alarm bell in the back of my brain morphs into one of those school dinner bells. Now that’s old Franny Driscoll connecting at least two of the deaths. Trystan and Stove. I wonder how many others there are where she was the first at the scene.
“Quick question,” I ask, as we arrive back in the main foyer of the hotel. “Did Franny and Imogen know each other?”
“Oh yes,” Helga replies without hesitation.
“Thick as thieves, those two. I used to think they were related. They look very similar, except Franny’s .
. . petite, and Imogen was . . .” She looks me up and down, and even though I know the word “fat” is on the end of her tongue, she won’t use it for fear of offending me. “Vivacious.”
Hell, that’s a buttload worse than “fat.”
I feel violated.
“But they weren’t related, just very close friends.” Helga places a hand on my fat shoulder. “Perhaps even childhood friends.”