Case of the Highland House Haunting Read online

  I shook my head, “Are you serious? No. I mean, do you expect to see something?”

  Harry was shaking his head.

  “What do you think, man?” he whispered to me. “We’re in her house, poking through her stuff. Don’t you think you’d be teed off if someone did that to you in your own house?”

  “You’re really freaked out by this, aren’t you?” I observed.

  “What? Me? Of course not.”

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts, pal.”

  “Says you. Mark my words. This place will make a believer out of you.”

  “Mm-hmm. Have you finished looking around up here?”

  “There’s one more room over here,” Julie called, overhearing my question.

  “Get to it, amigo,” I said. “Jillian and I will be downstairs, okay? Oh, and if you see anything, scream like a little girl. I’ll send Sherlock up to protect you.”

  “Bite me, man.”

  “What was that all about?” Jillian asked, as we headed back down the stairs.

  “Julie and Harry are going to check the last room. I told Harry to scream like a little girl should he encounter a ghost. If I haven’t died laughing, then I’ll send Sherlock up.”

  “You’re mean,” Jillian observed.

  I should point out here that she did smile at me.

  A few minutes later, we both heard just that: a blood-curdling scream, but it didn’t come from upstairs. This time, it came from somewhere behind us. Had Vance pulled another prank? Surely, my friend, the detective, wasn’t stupid enough to prank his wife two times on the same day, was he?

  The door on the immediate right of the staircase opened, and Tori appeared. She hadn’t taken more than a few steps toward us when Vance appeared a split second later. I studied both of their faces, to see if I could determine what had happened. Tori appeared out of breath, while Vance had a wild-eyed expression on his face. And, oddly enough, he was seen tucking his shirt back into place, as though it had been forcefully yanked up. What that could possibly mean, I didn’t know. I could only figure Vance had just booked himself a month-long stay at Doghouse Central.

  “That…” Vance stammered. “That sooo wasn’t cool, Tori.”

  Tori took one look at Jillian and burst out laughing. Comprehension dawned. Vance hadn’t pulled a prank on Tori, but the other way around. From the sounds of things, Tori had just settled the score with her joke-loving husband.

  “What’s the matter there, buddy? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Jillian and Tori both giggled, while Vance shot me as dark of a look as he could muster.

  “I had better not find out this was your idea,” he began. “If it was, then… then…”

  “Then what?” I asked, after the girls had stopped laughing. “But, for the record, I had nothing to do with whatever happened down there. And, I will admit, I’m curious as hell. What did happen?”

  “Would you like to tell him, or should I?” Tori wheezed out, between laughs.

  Vance grumbled something unintelligible and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Me it is. So, Captain Courageous here is poking through a few boxes we found down in the basement, and just so you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a basement that big. It’s like a third story. Anyway, my dear old husband has his back to me, and just then, I see a bug running along the ground.”

  Jillian clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “You didn’t.”

  “I most certainly did,” Tori said, as a wicked smile formed on her face. “I snatched that nasty little sucker up and dropped it down the back of Vance’s shirt. You would have thought that he had just sat on an ant hill. Oh, I only wish I had recorded that. It would have been the second video on YouTube that would’ve gone viral.”

  We all heard footsteps on the staircase and looked up. Harry and Julie must have finished their inspection of the second floor. Or else they heard the commotion and were curious. Probably both.

  “What happened down here?” Harry wanted to know. “We could hear the screams all the way up there. Tori, are you okay? Vance, not cool, bro. I can’t believe you’d try to punk your wife again.”

  Vance pointed a finger at me and Jillian.

  “How do you know it wasn’t one of those two?”

  “Please,” Harry scoffed. “Zack would never pull something like that. He never did in high school, and I can’t imagine him starting now.”

  “True story,” I admitted, with a shrug.

  “I wasn’t the one screaming,” Tori said, which drew another scowl from Vance.

  Harry stared incredulously at Vance.

  “Dude, that was you? Man, you sounded like a 12 year old girl!”

  “Kiss my ass,” Vance growled.

  “What happened?” Julie wanted to know.

  “Tori dropped a live bug down Vance’s shirt,” Jillian said, between giggles. “I can only figure he thought it was a spider. What was it, anyway?”

  Tori shrugged, “It wasn’t a spider. Maybe some type of beetle? Now that I think about it, it could’ve been a cockroach.”

  “Call an exterminator,” Jillian quietly noted to herself, as she set a reminder on her phone.

  “You’re afraid of bugs?” Harry continued.

  “Absolutely not,” Vance argued. “I’m just not expecting to find any inside my shirt, thank you very much.”

  “Behave yourself and perhaps there won’t be another time,” Tori admonished.

  “Did you find anything down there?” I wanted to know. I was anxious to change the subject because I could see the look that had appeared on Vance’s face. He was embarrassed and very close to having a full-fledged argument with Tori. Personally, I didn’t want to be a witness to that. “And no, I’m not talking about ghost stuff. Find anything cool?”

  Vance turned to look at me. His face finally softened and he smiled. He nodded.

  “As a matter of fact, we did. We found a pool table hiding under a tarp. It’s in really good condition. I might try to buy that off of you, Jillian, only I’ll need to buy new balls.”

  The entire room fell silent.

  Vance’s face flamed up, “Now wait a minute. That’s not what I meant. Those balls were pink and I don’t want to play with pink balls.”

  No one moved a muscle, nor uttered a peep.

  “Billiard balls, for crying out loud. Would you guys get your minds out of the gutter?”

  The girls shared a look together at the exact same time both Harry and I snorted with amusement.

  “And where would you put a pool table?” Tori asked, bewildered. “We’re short on room as it is.”

  “Vance, I’d like to see this table,” Jillian said. “Will you show it to me?”

  We followed Vance and Tori as they retraced their steps to the basement. Tori was right. The basement was huge! Judging from the looks of it, it had just as much square footage as the other two floors. Talk about having your own private storage facility!

  “You can find it right over there,” Vance said, pointing at a large, flat object covered by a yellowing tarp.

  I pulled the musty tarp back to reveal a somewhat dusty walnut table with a surprisingly blemish-free playing field made of an olive green felt. I then noticed the table had eight legs, and each leg was hexagonal by design. Noticing something that was ‘off’, I studied the table for a few moments before I realized what it was. The size.

  This table was closer to the ground than any pool table I had ever seen. I would have guessed that it was less than three feet tall. It also looked larger. I looked over at Jillian and saw that she had her phone in her hand and was busy tapping something on the screen. After a few moments, her face lit up with a smile and she showed me her phone.

  “It’s a snooker table! Do you see the smaller pockets? And that there are only six of them?”

  “I’ll be damned,” Vance muttered. “I didn’t even pick up on that.”

  “Snooker?” I quizzically repeated. “W
hat’s that?”

  “It’s played on a larger table than pool,” Jillian explained, as she read from her phone. “You use 15 pink numberless balls, six numbered object balls, and the cue balls.”

  “I told you they were pink,” Vance haughtily informed us.

  The room fell silent again. Harry snorted, and received a thump in the gut from Julie.

  “I didn’t know anyone played snooker anymore,” Tori said.

  “I don’t think they do,” I added.

  “I’m sorry, Vance,” Jillian said, as she gazed fondly down at the table, “but I’m afraid the snooker table isn’t for sale. This is just the sort of thing I want upstairs, in the house. Think of it as another way to bring back a little piece of the past.”

  “Look at all the boxes in here,” I said, as I looked around the vast area. “Did you go through any of them?”

  “Just a few,” Tori admitted. “I didn’t want to get too nosey. These things all belong to Jillian now.”

  “I really don’t mind,” Jillian assured her friend. “So, what did you find?”

  “That one over there had some old drinking glasses. And that one? The one closest to you, Zack. It had a couple of photo albums in it.”

  Jillian perked up.

  “Photo albums? In that one? Zachary, would you pass them to me, please?”

  “Sure.”

  I opened the fragile, crumbling box and saw the albums in question. After handing them to Jillian, I pointed upstairs.

  “Let’s head back up. I think we’ve kicked up too much dust down here.”

  Right on cue, I heard Sherlock snort. I looked down just as both dogs looked up. Each corgi was sporting a fine film of dust on their shiny coats. And, Sherlock had several smudges on his face, as though he found something interesting on the ground and shoved his entire snout in it, as he was wont to do.

  “Come on, you two. I think we could all use some fresh air.”

  As we relaxed up in the living room, comparing notes about what we had found, I couldn’t help but notice that not one person said anything about the existence of ghosts. Aside from Vance’s prank with the spooky sound effects and Tori’s retaliatory insect attack, it had been a spook-free night. A small part of me was disappointed, in that I was hoping some type of supernatural presence would have made their presence known, even though I’m sure it would have scared the bejeesus out of me.

  I was about ready to park my butt on the closest flat surface, being anxious to give my tiring feet a break, when Sherlock tugged on his leash. Curious, I looked down at him, but he only had eyes for Jillian. Right about then, I noticed Jillian wasn’t talking, but staring, open-mouthed, at one of the photo albums we had brought back from the basement. I also noticed her phone was in her other hand.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Jillian didn’t respond.

  “Hey, are you okay over there?” I asked, raising my voice a little so that I knew she’d be able to hear me.

  My girlfriend finally looked my way. Her astonished eyes met mine and she then held up the photo album.

  “I… I think I know why Dame Highland was murdered.”

  “Why?” I asked, as I rose to my feet. I promptly leaned over Jillian’s shoulder to look at the picture that had caught her attention. “Is this her? Dame Highland?”

  Jillian nodded, “Yes.”

  “Looks like she’s wearing one of those outfits we saw in the closet,” I observed. “One of the, uh, racier ones.”

  “Look at her,” Vance argued. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it. She’s got the body for it. She was definitely a looker, that’s for… but you know what? No one cares about what she looked like. I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Nice save, genius,” Tori quipped, as she gave her husband a scowl.

  Everyone crowded around the picture. There, sitting in a shiny old-fashioned roadster, waving enthusiastically at the photographer, was a young woman who must have been in her twenties. She was slim, had short dark hair, and was wearing a slinky, off the shoulder dress with a dark cloche hat.

  “Do you see it yet?” Jillian anxiously asked. “Have you spotted it?”

  I was about ready to tell my girlfriend that I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about when I noticed Vance’s eyes widen with surprise. He leaned closer, presumably for a better look. Then his shocked eyes found Jillian’s.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “We can’t be certain its authentic,” Jillian excitedly began, “but I’m pretty sure we’ll find out that it is.”

  “What am I looking at?” I asked again, growing frustrated.

  Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t spotted whatever Jillian was trying to show us. Harry and Julie looked just as puzzled as I felt, and Tori? She… nope, there she goes. I could tell she had just spotted the same thing Vance had.

  “Oh, this changes everything,” Tori told her friend.

  FIVE

  The following day, by noon, we were hundreds of miles away from Pomme Valley. Why? Allow me to explain. That picture from last night? The one of Dame Highland, in her car? Well, as you know, Jillian had spotted something remarkable in the photo – which Vance had confirmed – and that was the reason why we were currently in the middle of a 7 hour road trip. What was it she had noticed? Well, let me take you back to last night, when the photo’s significance had to be explained to me.

  “Do you see this here, Zachary?” Jillian had asked me, as she came up beside me to point at Dame Highland.

  “It’s our ghost, but in pre-ghost form,” I joked.

  “Do you see what she’s wearing?”

  “Looks like a dress. I can’t see all of it, ‘cause she’s leaning out of her car’s window. Are you talking about the hat? I’ve seen them before. I know it’s bell-shaped, and probably has a proper name for it, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s a cloche hat,” Jillian explained.

  “Right. She’s wearing a cloche hat. What about it?”

  “What else do you see?”

  I held the picture closer to my face.

  “Well, she has on a few pieces of jewelry.”

  “Right! Exactly.”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s anything to get excited about. They’re just rings.”

  Jillian’s elation slowly evaporated. She leaned forward to tap a point on Dame Highland’s neck.

  “No, this here. Do you see this?”

  “Looks like a broach, I guess. Isn’t that what typically holds a cloak together?”

  “You think she’s wearing a cloak?”

  “Well, no, but obviously the style of clothes back then might have had something similar. Besides, isn’t she wearing something over her shoulders?”

  “That’s a shawl,” Jillian corrected.

  I squinted at the photograph.

  “All right. So, we’re talking about this broach-which-isn’t-a-broach. What about it?”

  “A broach is a large pin that is typically worn on a winter coat. No, this is being worn, like a necklace. Do you see it now?”

  Vance, being the schmuck that he was, produced a magnifying glass and, with a huge grin on his face, offered it to me. I shot him a dark look, but no one was paying attention. Jillian took the magnifier and held it over the photograph. Then she pointed at the junction of the shawl, which happened to fall on the base of Ms. Highland’s neck. And… that’s when I saw it.

  “If this isn’t a broach, then what is it? It looks like a big jewel.”

  Jillian nodded excitedly, “It is! I did a quick search online and found an obscure reference to something so bizarre and rare that it needs confirmation.”

  “What? What do you think that is? Is it really a jewel?”

  “I think so.”

  “What kind?”

  Jillian shrugged, “I don’t know. That’s what I’m hoping to find out. Typically, jewels that large have names.”

  “And how are you going to identify a piece of jewelry from a
n old photograph?”

  “We found out a relative of hers is still living,” Jillian reminded me. “A niece, I think.”

  “And this niece is going to be able to identify that?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Let’s find out together, shall we? What do you say to a road trip?”

  Now, let’s return to our regularly scheduled programming.

  Here we are, speeding north, in an attempt to track down a living relative who may – or may not – be able to tell us what Dame Highland was wearing in the picture. I can only assume that this jewel, if that’s what it really was, had to be at least several hundred carats in size. I had to admit, a jewel that large would probably be worth a pretty penny. What I wanted to know was, what type of stone was it? I didn’t think it was a diamond, since the photo showed the gem wasn’t clear. True, the photo was black and white, and determining the exact color would be impossible. However, we could also tell that it was a darker color. Maybe a sapphire? Emerald?

  Curious, I performed several quick searches on the internet. There simply wasn’t any recorded precious stones that were that size and shape which were known to exist in that time frame. Of the ones I did find, and were roughly the same size, I could only drool. We’re talking about jewels worth millions of dollars. Was Jillian right? Could this be what Dame Highland was murdered over? Could someone have found out that she was in possession of some priceless piece of jewelry, and that was why she had been attacked and – presumably – tortured to death? And, if all the above happened to be true, and seeing how none of Dame Highland’s jewelry had ever been found, did that mean there’s a chance this mystery jewel could still be somewhere on the property?

  I returned my attention to the road. Yes, that had to be exactly what Jillian was thinking. Why else would she want to make a long road trip in the middle of the week? And, for Pete’s sake, why didn’t this relative have a computer? The ability to scan a picture and electronically attach it to an email had to be the easiest way to transfer a photo from one end of the country to the other. Plus, it could be done in the blink of an eye. However, did Ms. Katherine O’Connor own a computer? Did any of her friends?

  No.

  “Penny for your thoughts?”