“Look,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and pushing her toward the mirror.
Kate opened her collar and saw it—a line of scratches on the side of her neck, as though they had been made by fingernails. She stared at Simon in the mirror.
“What is this?” she asked him, her eyes wide.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Nothing like this has ever happened at Harrison’s House. Nothing. Before or after Grandma died. Like I said, if we have ghosts, they’re family.”
“So, who or what did this to me, then?”
He hugged her from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder, staring into the mirror and their shared reflection. “And, why?”
Kate felt a chill work its way up her spine. “I had just found the datebooks,” she said. “I wonder if it didn’t want me to know what was in them.”
But later, after Kate and Simon had finished their lunch and she was settled by herself at a table by the window in the coffee shop, datebooks strewn before her, she couldn’t figure out what the third-floor ghost was trying so hard to keep her from finding.
To Kate’s eye, these were just simple datebooks, records of dinners, parties, and other events. They made for interesting reading, to be sure. Menus, lists of guests, who came, who didn’t. What her great-grandmother Celeste was going to wear. “18 for dinner. Cornish game hen. Blue dress, taffeta.”
She was hoping to find the name Addie, but it was not to be. Kate saw that, back then, couples were referred to by the husband’s name. “The Preston Hills,” “the Olav Johnsons.” She did not know that another name in the margins, “the Jess Stewarts,” was the name she sought. It didn’t mean anything to her, and she passed right over it, unaware.
Kate was so immersed in dinners eaten and outfits worn during the last century, she lost track of time until the buzz of her cell phone drew her back into this century.
She didn’t take the call, but she did notice the hour. Nearly three o’clock! She had to get back up to the house to meet with Nick Stone. She gathered the datebooks and put them back into her tote, dropped her phone into her purse, and headed out the door.
Out of breath and panting by the time she got back up the hill, Kate found Detective Stone sitting in the living room with Simon, cups of what she presumed to be coffee or tea in front of both of them. Alaska was curled up at Nick’s feet, but when Kate came in the door, the dog stretched and trotted to greet her.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, taking a few deep breaths and giving Alaska a scratch behind the ears.
“No trouble at all.” Simon grinned. “I was just getting to know your detective.”
Nick stood up as Kate joined them, eyeing her cousin. “Simon, will you get me something to drink?” she said, wanting him out of the room for a minute.
“Coffee or tea?” He sniffed.
“Surprise me.”
When he had gone, she turned to Nick.
“Hi,” she said, settling into the armchair across from him. “Thanks for coming.”
“My pleasure,” he said. “I’ve been wondering all day what this was about, actually.”
Kate ran a hand through her hair. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. But he was here now, and she had to tell him something. It might as well be the truth.
“I’d start off by saying this is going to sound crazy, but I think you’ve heard that phrase enough from me for one lifetime, and frankly, I’m tired of saying it.”
He chuckled and leaned back, crossing his legs. “Go on, Kate. What’s this all about?”
She reached into her purse and pulled out the photograph she had put into her wallet for safekeeping.
“I think I know why you can’t find any information about our victim,” Kate said, sliding the photo across the coffee table toward Detective Stone. “You’re looking in the wrong century.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Nick reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses.
“I’m not sure what to say about this, Kate,” he said, picking up the photo to get a better look. “Could it be her? Maybe. There’s a resemblance, sure. But I think that’s all there is to it.”
Kate was silent for a moment as he stared at the photograph.
“It really does look like her, though,” he said. He shook his head as he stared at the image. “I’m assuming this is the husband you mentioned?”
Kate nodded. “That’s him. This is why I couldn’t find anyone resembling him in your treasure trove of mug shots.”
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“In one of the trunks upstairs,” she told him. “Simon and I were looking for old mementoes to display. The other couple in the picture are my great-grandparents. Harrison and Celeste Connor, the people who built this house. We think it might have been taken sometime around 1905.”
Nick leaned back and let out a sigh. “This doesn’t make any sense, you know,” he said, eyeing her. “The condition of the body . . . There’s no way she could’ve died a century ago.”
“I know.”
Nick ran a hand through his hair. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but if we don’t get a break, this is going to slip into cold-case territory. We’ve got a murdered woman and a baby, and every lead we’ve had has taken us down a dead end.”
He didn’t tell her that if she and Kevin hadn’t been so close to Johnny Stratton himself, they’d have been building a case, however flimsy, against them.
“Johnny wants me to keep at it, but the only clue we have—the Anderson Mills tag on her dressing gown—is pointing us right into the center of your mystery.”
“That’s right!” Kate said. “That is, at least, a shred of proof that I’m not making all of this up. Mary Jane’s thrift shop here in town hasn’t carried any vintage nightgowns like that. Sure, she might have bought it someplace else but . . . How else could that tag be explained?”
“I have no idea,” Nick said. “I really don’t. Did you find anything else in those trunks?”
Kate smiled. “Not anything too helpful. This morning I was looking for datebooks. I found a bunch of them, actually.”
“Why datebooks?”
“I thought I might find some names in them. ‘Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So, dinner, April twenty-fifth.’ To help me search online for who this woman and her husband were.”
“But I don’t get it. Even if you found the right name, how would you know it was the right name?”
“Well, I think I already know her first name. That’s the thing. I was talking to my cousin and I blurted out a name when I was mentioning the woman. ‘Addie can wait,’ I said to him. I was looking for that particular name in the datebooks, but I didn’t find it. All of the couples are referenced by the husband’s name. ‘The Harrison Connors,’ for example.”
He nodded. “Ah, yes. That’s how they did it back then, didn’t they?”
“Supremely unhelpful,” Kate said. “I don’t know what to do now. It seems like I’m in front of that brick wall again.”