*
Devin and Rocky had taken the tour many times, so they sat it out, just waiting until the nighttime tour had passed through their rooms, then closing the door and calling it quits for the night.
Griffin and Vickie took the tour.
Vickie was surprised that her mind could focus on the things that had happened during the late nineteenth century—and those that had not. She saw Griffin shake his head slightly now and then—horrified by the restraints put on police officers of the time.
It had been a hot summer. Abby Borden was Lizzie’s stepmother, not her birth mother. Andrew was actually very well off, but frugal with his money. There were theories that Andrew might have been a pedophile, abusing his young daughters—but their guide didn’t believe that. He thought that Lizzie had just been so repressed that she had snapped and lost it—killed her stepmother, and then, in another burst of fury, killed her father, as well. But there were enough doubts that could be planted in the heads of the jury. The girls’ uncle, John V. Morse, had stayed in the house the night before—in fact, it was where Abby had received the death blows, right where Griffin and Vickie were sleeping. He’d had a miraculous memory of his whereabouts when it came to an alibi, down to the numbers on the streetcar, names and precise times. Perhaps his memory had been too good.
And perhaps the biggest blow—other than the lack of forensic evidence—was the fact that other ax murders—unsolved—had taken place not far away.
Vickie thought that law enforcement and the people of Fall River at the time must have wanted to believe that someone else, other than a respectable young woman, had committed the murders.
Just as, it seemed, law enforcement and the people of Fall River had wanted to believe that, despite the differences in the modus operandi, Sheena Petrie had been killed by the occultists in town at the time, the same people who had chopped others to ribbons.
Smoke screens, she thought.
As they traveled the house, the guide pointed out the various period clothing on the several headless mannequins about the house. Some of the clothing was vintage. The dress on the mannequin in the John V. Morse room had been worn by the actress Elizabeth Montgomery in a dramatization of the murders.
Vickie found the clothing intriguing.
She found the headless mannequins eerie.
Eventually, the tour ended. A neighbor “medium” carried out a séance. Griffin wanted to observe; Vickie agreed, and sat with him across the room. They both watched and waited, glancing at each other now and then with a secret smile. Despite the medium’s assertions, there were no ghosts about.
Out in the music room or front parlor, Vickie smiled as she noticed the music on the piano.
“You Can’t Chop Your Poppa Up in Massachusetts” was actually a piece of sheet music.
Eventually, they went to bed for the night. As Griffin closed the door to their room, Vickie asked him, “Do you think we’ve gotten anywhere? It seems to me that the more we know, the farther away we get. Could the man who killed Sheena Petrie thirty-plus years ago somehow be responsible for the disappearance—and more than possible death—of Helena Matthews? And why take Alex Maple?”
“They’re all pieces, Vickie. They’re like pieces in a giant jigsaw, and they will start to come together,” he told her. “Once we recognize the pattern.”
“Griffin, there’s something about the women all looking alike. Do you remember me telling you that a blonde woman was watching me the night we went to the café to meet Alex? Griffin, I think she was there looking for Alex, too. Or maybe she was looking for me because she knew that Alex had been taken. I think that she was dead. I think that she was one of these beautiful women with long blond hair, and that she is trying to reach us, trying to help.”
“It’s more than possible. Let’s hope that she does find you,” Griffin said. He stroked her hair. “Whatever is going on, Vickie, I honestly believe that Alex was taken because of his knowledge of history—and I’m concerned that you’re in danger because of yours. You need to be with one of us at all times until this case is solved.”
“I wasn’t physically attacked, Griffin. Our Jane Doe threw blood on me. She hasn’t come to yet, has she?”
“No. Barnes said that they’re hopeful. And, Vickie, they threw human blood on you—that may have been someone’s sick idea of a warning.”
“Yes, I know. I’ll be careful. I’ll be with you, Devin or Rocky at all times, promise.” She shivered slightly. “Definitely.”
“Great,” Griffin murmured, pulling her closer. “So, here we are. Trying to catch a murderer—lying in a room where a tremendously brutal murder took place. And there could be a ghost—one we don’t already know—trying to find you.”
Vickie laughed softly. “Quit it! Or I’m going to have to get up, turn on every light I can find in the house and gather up the headless mannequins and start a bonfire.”
“I think that would be considered really rude behavior by a guest!” Griffin teased.
Vickie lay in his arms, smiling, eyes open, wondering if she could sleep in that house. She lay just feet from where Abby Borden had been viciously murdered, where she had lain facedown in her own blood.
But it had been a long day that had come after other long days, and she found that she quickly drifted off.
If she’d been going to dream, she should have dreamed about one of the poor blonde women—victims of the cultist killers.
She did not.
She dreamed of the mannequins.
The mannequin in the Elizabeth Montgomery gown was standing before her. She was beckoning to her, with her arms, of course, since she had no head.
She was trying to get Vickie to rise, to follow her.
Vickie couldn’t seem to help herself; she slipped out of bed. It was warm, but she reached for her light silk robe and followed the mannequin.
Out in the upstairs hall, other mannequins were waiting. They beckoned her downstairs. She walked through the girls’ entry to the parlor where Andrew had been killed—and where he had lain through the night following his death, since the autopsies had taken place in the house.
Andrew lay there in her dream; Abby, she knew, was on the table in the dining room.
Andrew suddenly sat up. His head was a ruined mess, and he was missing one eye. “Misdirection.” He shook his head sadly. “Misdirection. It works every time.”
She turned away from him. From where she stood, she could see through to the dining room. Abby was on the table, but she wasn’t moving.
Syd was sitting in a chair, just as he had been earlier. “The pictures are so alike,” he said. “Ted Bundy had a type.”
She felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned slowly, afraid that the headless mannequin was trying to summon her to move on.
It wasn’t a mannequin. It was no one.
And suddenly, she wasn’t in the bed-and-breakfast at all anymore. She was standing in the forest. She could hear the rush of water.
And someone calling her name.
“Vickie, Vickie, please, please, please...”
She was following the path through the trees, dread filling her because she knew where it would take her.
She came to the clearing. She could still hear the whisper in her ear.
“Vickie, Vickie, Vickie, please.”
Then the scream. The scream that seemed to rip through the air and the trees and even the water that rushed by, bloodred.
And there was the inverted cross, and the woman hanging upside down, her throat slit.
She’d never really recognized the woman as the blonde who had looked for her in the coffee shop because she hadn’t been able to see...
That her hair had been blond. It was so drenched in blood that the color was impossible to ascertain.
And still...
She couldn’t tell if the woman was Helena Matthews, or one of the poor victims who had died so many years ago.