check of her bloodstream showed toxic levels of alcohol and barbs. Took a little prying to get the facts on that. Family likes the version where she died of a heart attack or something while the doctors worked over her.
“But let me freshen those ice cubes for you. This show-and-tell session is murder on the throat.”
Stryker hopped out of his chair. “Here, we’ll carry our own glasses.”
Smiling, she led them into the kitchen. Russ lagged behind to work at the cheese. He hadn’t taken time for lunch, and he’d better put something in his stomach besides bourbon.
“There’s another thing,” Gayle was saying when he joined them. “The antique clocks.”
Russ followed her gesture. The ornate dial of a pendulum wall clock stared back at him from the dining room wall. He remembered the huge walnut grandfather’s clock striking solemnly in the corner of the living room.
“Came back one night and found both cabinets wide open. And you have to turn a key to open the cabinets.”
“Like this?” Stryker demonstrated on the wall clock.
“Yes. I keep the keys in the locks because I need to reset the pendulum weights. But as you see, it takes a sharp twist to turn the lock. Explain that one for me.”
Russ sipped his drink. She must have poured him a good double. “Have you ever thought that someone might have a duplicate key to one of the doors?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gayle answered, following his train of thought. “That occurred to me some time ago—though God knows what reason there might be to pull stunts like these. But I had every lock in the house changed—that was after I had come back and found lights on or off that had been left off or on one time too many to call it absent-mindedness. It made no difference, and both the TV and the clock incidents took place since then.”
“You know, this is really intriguing!” Curtiss exclaimed, beaming over his notepad.
Gayle smiled back, seemed to be fully at ease for the first time. “Well, I’ll tell you it had me baffled. Here, let me show you the rest of the house.”
A hallway led off from the open space between living room and dining area. There was a study off one side, another room beyond, and two bedrooms opposite. A rather large tile bath with sunken tub opened at the far end.
“The study’s a mess, I’m afraid,” she apologized, closing the door on an agreeably unkempt room that seemed chiefly cluttered with fashion magazines and bits of dress material. “And the spare bedroom I only use for storage.” She indicated the adjoining room, but did not offer to open it. “My son sleeps here when he’s home.”
“You keep it locked?” Russ asked, noting the outdoor-type lock. “No.” Gayle hastily turned the knob for them, opened the door on a room cluttered with far more of the same as her study. There was a chain lock inside, another door on the outside wall. “As you see, this room has a private entrance. This is the room they rented out.”
“Their boarder must have felt threatened,” Russ remarked. He received a frown that made him regret his levity.
“These are the bedrooms.” She turned to the hallway opposite. “This was Cass’s.” A rather masculine room with knotty pine panelling, a large brass bed, cherry furnishings, and an oriental throw rug on the hardwood floor. “And this was Libby’s.” Blue walls, white ceiling, white deep-pile carpet, queen-sized bed with a blue quilted spread touching the floor on three sides. In both rooms sliding glass doors opened onto the backyard.
“Where do you sleep?” Russ wanted to know.
“In the other bedroom. I find this one a bit too frilly”
“Have you ever, well, seen anything—any sort of, say, spiritual manifestations?” Stryker asked.
“Myself, no,” Gayle told them. “Though there are a few things. My niece was staying with me one night not long after I’d moved in—sleeping in Libby’s room. Next morning she said to me: ‘Gayle, that room is haunted. All night I kept waking up thinking someone else was there with me.’ I laughed, but she was serious.”
“Is that when you started thinking in terms of ghosts?”
“Well, there had been a few things before that,” she admitted. “But I suppose that was when I really started noticing things.”
Russ chalked up a point for his side.
“But another time a friend of mine dropped by to visit. I was out of town, so no one answered her ring. Anyway, she heard voices and figured I was in back