I told her the whole story, starting with the ghostly voice calling my name, and ending with my dramatic rescue, which, of course, she had seen on the evening news.
“You really think someone's trying to kill you?” Cassie asked in an incredulous voice. “Don't you think you could be overreacting?”
“No, I don't.” But I knew I didn't sound convincing. Ethelind had already planted seeds of doubt in my mind.
“P. J. often received death threats, Tori.”
“She did? What for? Did a band of enraged gypsy moths threaten to get even with her for dissing them in the Farm News column?”
“Don't be silly. Anybody who writes for a newspaper is bound to make enemies. The point I'm trying to make here is that nobody ever followed through and actually tried to kill P. J.”
My fingers touched the plastic bag in my pocket, and I had an idea that I didn't want to say out loud, not yet anyway. I crossed over to my desk and opened the folder of stories I'd been working on for this week's paper. All were more or less finished. I then looked over the material submitted by our freelance writers and found it all to be well written. A third folder held reports of club meetings, submitted by a dozen Lickin Creek organizations, from Elks to Rotarians. I worked for about an hour cutting and reorganizing these articles.
While I was scratching out and moving words around, Cassie went through the week's photos and selected about six she thought would reproduce well.
I called a few advertisers and reminded them we needed copy immediately if they didn't want to advertise last week's sales. Then Cassie called some subscribers and pleaded with them to come back to the fold. She even offered them a special rate for renewing.
By noon we were both looking exhausted, but happy. I still had Letters to the Editor to go through, and we had twenty of our disgruntled subscribers back.
I dropped my pencils into the cup and turned off the computer. “Think I'll take a long lunch break,” I said. “Be back in a couple of hours.”
Cassie nodded. “Have a good one,” she said.
“I will,” I told her, and my fingers once again touched the plastic Baggie in my pocket.
First I drove to the college. The central lawn looked as if nothing awful had ever happened there. More than a dozen girls, in jeans and LCCFW sweatshirts, crossed it on their way to the gothic-style library. There was a new receptionist at the desk busily sorting mail, so I walked right past her as if I had every right to be in the building and went down the stairs to the basement.
Even I, a smidgeon taller than five feet, had to duck to avoid some of the overhead pipes. Last night's adventure had left me feeling extremely anxious about being alone, and I paused for a minute to listen for footsteps. But all I heard was the clanking of pipes.
The corridor was lit by only one hanging bulb, and the door to the storeroom at the end of the hall was in almost total darkness. My neck bristled, as if someone was watching me. How I wished I hadn't listened to the ghost stories about the hospital in the college basement. But even if there were such things as ghosts, these were nuns, I told myself. It stands to reason that good people would turn into good spirits.
I tried the key that hadn't unlocked Mack's door last night, and it turned easily. When the door swung open, I didn't go in. There was no need to. I relocked the door, pocketed the key ring, and skedaddled out of there faster than a ghost could say “boo.” I now knew how Mack Macmillan had died.
As I drove across the mountain, I noticed that while many trees were now in full autumn color, a great many others had already dropped their leaves. Even some of the evergreen trees had shed their needles, and their twisted brown branches stretched toward the sky above as if longing for the warmth of the sun. At one bend, the view was so spectacular, I pulled over and stopped for a minute to enjoy it. Below me the little river danced over gray, moss-covered rocks before disappearing into a copse of trees. Beyond were green and golden fields dotted with dollhouse-like farmhouses, barns, and silos. Then came orchards of peach and apple trees, their branches bare and stark against the sky. And off in the far distance were the hazy lavender-blue outlines of the next range of mountains. Once I'd thought of Pennsylvania only in terms of big cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh or small, dingy mining towns. Cities and mining communities were part of Pennsylvania, that was true, but they were far away from lush, mountainous rural south-central Pennsylvania. Here was proof that not all of America had been turned into Anytown, Anywhere, U.S.A. Here, at least, America was still a land of amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesty.
As I drove past Dr. Washabaugh's office, I saw a few cars and trucks in the parking lot. More people picking up their medical records and hearing the latest gossip from Vesta, I was sure. If they watched the evening news last night, I was probably the subject of conversation. I kept going until I came to the top of the hill that overlooked my destination, Shoestring Hill Farm.
The drive down to the stone house seemed to take forever, perhaps because I had no desire to tackle the task that would face me when I reached the house. On either side of me, horses played behind white board fences. The fences, the barns, even the wood trim around the windows of the house, looked freshly painted. The woodpile near the house was neatly stacked. Charlotte Macmillan had prepared her farm for whatever winter brought.
I knocked on the front door, waited, knocked again, then noticed the small doorbell on the door frame. A moment later, the door opened inward and a Plain woman in a lavender dress, wearing a white net bonnet, looked out at me.
“Yes?” Her tone wasn't very inviting.
“I've come to see Mrs. Macmillan.”
“Is she expecting you?”
“Yes,” I fibbed. Anything to get in.
She stepped to one side, and I walked past her into a large center hall.
“Name?”
“Tori Miracle.”
“Mrs. Mack's with her personal trainer. She should be finished in about fifteen minutes. You'uns can wait in the living room.” She led me through a curtained archway into a large, expensively decorated room. The furniture was all mahogany and walnut from the Federal period, and although I'm no expert, it all looked genuine to me. No reproductions allowed at Shoestring Hill.
“Can I get you'uns a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Then I'll get back to my chores. Have a seat.”
Instead of sitting down, I moved around the room admiring the furniture and the artwork. The painting over the fireplace was of a King Charles spaniel. The two behind the sofa were primitives of a man and woman. I wondered if they were the ancestors of either Charlotte or Mack Macmillan. An arrangement of autumn leaves on top of the Steinway grand piano repeated the soft gold of the silk wallpaper and the rust and moss green of the upholstered furniture.
French doors at one end of the room were closed, and velvet drapes, as green as an evergreen forest, hid from view what was behind them. They opened quietly when I pulled on them, and I stepped through the doors into a cool study, lit by diffused sunlight streaming through sheer curtains at the far end of the room. A great mahogany partners desk was centered on the Oriental carpet. The telephone on the desk had a light on it, and next to it was a small machine with a typewriter keyboard.
One wall, from floor to ceiling, was covered with books. I took one from the shelf and saw it was a treatise on the Civil War. Glancing quickly at its neighbors, I saw that the war was the subject of all the books. They ranged from modern fiction like Killer Angels to old leather-bound volumes dating from the late nineteenth century. At first glance, it looked like a collection any university library would be proud to own.