3 The Ghost at the Farm Read online

  Andy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Billy followed Andy up the steep stairs to the bedroom floor. The toilet in the ancient bathroom was an original, with the water tank up by the ceiling. From the water stains on the outside and corrosion of the pipes, it was shot. Everything in this house was shot.

  Andy looked in the first bedroom and knew it had once belonged to Andrew’s parents, John and Rose Jefferson. Matthew’s room was next, and then the smallest room. “This was Andrew’s room. I’d like to keep the iron bed. Maybe I can sand off the rust and repaint it.”

  Billy nodded. “It’s worth a try. Are those gas lights on the walls?”

  “Yes. I want to try to save some of those.” They probably wouldn’t work, but they were relics of the past and keepsakes of Andrew Jefferson’s life. Let’s check out the attic first.”

  Andy set up the ladder under the attic opening in Andrew’s room and punched the cover loose. Even with the masks, the smell of mold was overwhelming. They wouldn’t want to stay in here long. He grabbed the edge and pulled himself up and into the attic. Then he leaned down through the hole and asked, “Billy, did you bring the flashlight?”

  Billy pulled the flashlight from his hip pocket and handed it up to Andy.

  Scanning the big, open attic, Andy said, “There’s not much up here.”

  Leaving the flashlight on the attic floor, Andy followed the beam of light to the first trunk. It was a big one. He pulled it across the floor to the hole. “Here’s the first one.” Holding the handle on the end, Andy eased it down through the opening to Billy. “Careful, it’s heavy.”

  “Got it.”

  Andy heard it hit the floor below and repositioned the flashlight. A minute later, the second trunk was in the bedroom below, and Andy explored the attic looking for anything else worth keeping. He found the roll of papers, tucked it under his arm, and picked up a stack of old ledgers. That was all he found except a moldy dress form, mouse droppings, spiders, and a century’s worth of dust. As with the rest of the house, Otis had already taken what he wanted.

  After handing down the papers and ledgers, Andy eased himself down to the ladder and climbed on down. He had what he wanted, and he was anxious to examine the papers and the contents of the trunks. “I’ll come back later for the bed and stove and gas lights.”

  Billy helped Andy carry the trunks into the barn.

  Kayla asked, “Otis, do you like lasagna?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Then Billy will come and get you at five-thirty, and you can come have dinner with us. We live just down the road.”

  Otis nodded. “Thank you kindly.”

  The puppies had puppy food all over their faces and paws, so Andy washed off the squirming little fur balls and cleaned up the mess. He didn’t especially want to feed the mice.

  “It’s starting to rain,” said Billy. “Time to go home, kids. We’ll come back and see the puppies again.”

  Michael bounced and whined. He didn’t want to leave. Billy grabbed him around the waist and carried him to the car, and the kid giggled. Andy watched the touching family scene. Billy was a good father, just like Dad.

  If Andy had to pick a wife for Billy, he couldn’t have picked a better one than Kayla. She was smart and sassy, a loving wife and mother, and she sang like an angel. She also saw ghosts. Someday he wanted to ask her about the ghosts on the farm, but this wasn’t the right time.

  He walked her out to the car. “Thanks for inviting Otis to dinner,” he said quietly.

  “He seems like such a nice man.”

  “He is. The hospice nurse comes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. She’ll make him dinner those days.”

  “Then I’ll help out on the weekends.”

  He hugged her. “Thanks.”

  Andy waved to the kids as Billy pulled out of the driveway. Someday he wanted kids of his own, but not yet. He wanted to wait until his career was more firmly established. Then he had a farmhouse to design and build.

  Otis walked back to his trailer to rest, and Andy climbed a ladder to the loft in the barn to empty the mousetraps. No sense putting anything else in the loft until the mice were gone.

  He’d just come down the ladder with a bag of dead mice when the vision hit.

  Andrew checked the alignment of the doors to the hidden staircase in the house on Livingston Avenue. The doors were well hidden, as he’d intended. Cal wouldn’t find the latches unless he knew where to look.

  “Cal is due back tomorrow,” Charity told him. “I’m so scared. He didn’t want more kids, and look at me. The baby is due any time now.”

  “Charity, if you and Sonny want to come home with me, you can live at the farm. The house isn’t as nice as this one, and you and Sonny will have to share a room, but you’ll be safe there. Betsy will take care of you during your confinement, and I know she’ll help with the kids. Matthew’s wife is a good woman.”

  “I’m sure she is, and it’s very kind of you to offer, Andrew, but you know I can’t go. If Cal finds me there, he’ll kill me and Sonny and anyone else who gets in his way. I can’t take that risk.”

  Andrew worried about her, but he couldn’t afford to support them. Matthew’s last crop didn’t bring in enough to pay the bank what he’d borrowed, and the taxes were overdue. And Andrew didn’t have another job lined up for when he finished Charity’s house. They’d be lucky to get through the winter.

  He worried about Paulina, too. She wanted so much to get married. Didn’t she understand he couldn’t afford a wife now? No, probably not. She was the only child of older parents, people who gave her everything she’d ever wanted. Andrew couldn’t give her anything but love.

  Matthew seemed sure he’d be home when the war ended, but Andrew wasn’t so sure there’d be a home to come back to. What if he couldn’t earn enough to pay the bills? What if he lost the farm?

  Andy’s vision left him shaken. Mom had always seemed sure Andrew loved Charity. From what Andy had seen, Andrew worried about Charity and her children, but he loved Paulina.

  As the rain poured outside, Andy turned on the lights inside the barn and unrolled the papers from the attic. He could scarcely believe his eyes.

  He’d found Andrew’s plans for the Jefferson Inn.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Brent sat in the doctor’s office at the hospital, groggy from the pills they’d forced him to take that morning. He tried to answer the doctor’s questions, but the words swirled in his mouth and stayed there. All he could think about was Julie. “See her.”

  “See who?” the doctor asked.

  “Julie. Wedding… uh…” He couldn’t remember when they were supposed to get married. The only thing he knew for sure was she loved him.

  The doctor’s droning voice nearly put Brent to sleep. All he heard was “adjust the medications.”

  Yes, they needed to adjust the meds. They were giving him so much he couldn’t think, couldn’t function. “Mother knows…”

  “Mother knows what, Brent?”

  “Meds.”

  “Yes, okay, we’ll ask your mother.”

  An orderly took him back to his room, where he lay on his narrow bed. The door lock clicked. They’d locked him in again.

  This place was worse than prison.

  <>

  Julie spent the morning searching for her mail. After checking the mailboxes at her apartment and on Manor Drive and finding them empty, she went to the post office. She explained the situation and showed her ID. Minutes later, someone opened a post office box Brent had rented in both their names and allowed her to take her mail. Most of it was ads and catalogs, but her electric bill was there, as well as a bill for car insurance and a credit card bill. Her cell phone bill was addressed to Julianne Bosch. She stared at it, wondering how many places Brent had changed her name. Wondering how long it would take her to get everything straightened out.

  Angry the post office would change her address without her knowledge or permission, Julie rented a box
in her own name and filled out a change of address form in both names—Julianne Tandry and Julianne Bosch. Donovan said to report everything to the police, so as soon as she left the post office, she called the police officer who’d given her his card and told him about the mail. She’d already taken care of that little problem, but it was another thing the prosecuting attorney could tell the judge, another reason to keep Brent locked up somewhere he couldn’t do any more harm.

  Julie spent the rest of the morning packing the kitchen at her apartment and scrubbing off the fingerprint dust. Her arm itched and she tried not to scratch it. She and Andy had stopped at the hospital last night on their way home from dinner and had the second set of stitches removed. The first ones were under the skin. The scars on her arm didn’t look pretty, but the redness would fade in time. The ugly red lines were a reminder not to get involved with unstable men.

  At least she could hook her bra now.

  The landlord tapped on the open door. “Julie, everything all right?”

  “Brent is in the state hospital, if that’s what you’re asking. The judge sent him for a psychiatric evaluation.”

  “I’m sorry about—”

  “I know. I trusted him, too.” She squirted cleaner on the door frame and washed the black powder off. “I’m looking for an apartment with good security. Any idea where to look?”

  “Not right off hand. You’ll have to pay more.”

  “I know.” Everything Brent did cost her money, and she didn’t have any to spare.

  The rain started again, and Julie shivered in the open doorway. The gloomy day matched her mood. Brent had managed to screw up her life, her mother cared more about a membership in an exclusive club than her daughter, and a sweet old man was dying. The only good thing in her life was Andy Kane. She was falling in love with the hunky architect.

  Too bad he didn’t love her back.

  <>

  Andy sat in the barn and examined Andrew’s drawing of the inn. Windows wound around and up a stone turret on what had to be a staircase. Two-story porches gave the building a welcoming look, and the third story had dormers much like Mom and Dad’s house. The building looked well-proportioned, well balanced. Pretty. Inviting.

  The floor plans showed a kitchen big enough to serve a small restaurant and a dining room overlooking the river. The two-story living area was anchored by a big stone fireplace. There were also three bedrooms and a bathroom on the main floor, and a powder room off the kitchen. The second floor had eight roomy bedrooms and three bathrooms, a lot of bathrooms for 1918. Andrew had thought ahead, but not quite far enough ahead. He wouldn’t have had any way of knowing his inn would be built so many years after he designed it.

  Andy liked the look and the general plan, but he needed to bring it up to today’s standards. If he increased the square footage slightly, he could give each bedroom a private bathroom and put in an elevator without losing the scale and proportions.

  The puppies sniffed around the food dish, so he mixed some food and watched their little tails wag happily as they ate. The rain had stopped, and Cassie went outside to do her business on the grass. If he kept a puppy, he’d have to housebreak it. Not a job he looked forward to.

  Otis came in. “I got some soup on the stove if you want some.”

  “Sounds good. Have you seen this?” He unrolled the plans for the inn.

  “Yeah, my father showed it to me way back when. My grandmother said Andrew intended to build the inn on the knoll overlooking the river, but…” The old man shook his head. “He went to work one day and didn’t come home. Nobody knew what happened to him until my mother came along. She said he’d been killed.”

  Andy nodded. “My parents found his body buried in the basement the year before I was born. My great-great-grandfather found the hidden staircase Andrew had built for his wife and thought they were having an affair. Since she was pregnant and he’d been gone, it was a logical assumption, I suppose. Still, he didn’t have to kill Andrew.”

  “My grandmother figured something happened to him or he would have come home.” He looked straight at Andy. “Her name was Paulina, and her father owned a farm down the road at one time. Name was Smith. Sound familiar?”

  Stunned, Andy could barely speak. “Andrew’s Paulina?”

  “Yep. She married another man, but I don’t think she ever stopped loving Andrew. By the time she died, she’d elevated Andrew to sainthood. Now I know he was a good man, but I can’t believe he was a saint.”

  No, he wasn’t a saint. Andrew Jefferson was a man with problems—a bad foot, a brother who expected more of him than he could give, an abused friend who needed his help, and a girlfriend who loved him and wanted to marry him. Andrew was eaten up with guilt about the Army taking Matthew instead of him, and he fully intended to take care of the farm and Matthew’s family while his brother was gone.

  If Andrew had known Cal thought he was having an affair with Charity, he might have been more watchful, more cautious. He had no reason to believe Cal would kill him, no way to know he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his obligations to his family.

  In spite of living various scenes from Andrew’s life, Andy could do nothing to change what had happened in the past. What was done was done. He hoped he’d have the strength to prevent the same thing from happening to him in the future.

  Otis motioned toward the barn door. “Well, I’d better go check on the soup.”

  “Be right there.”

  Paulina and Andrew loved each other. If Andrew’s life hadn’t ended when it had, they would undoubtedly have married and had a family. Andrew would have built his inn, and he would have taken care of Betsy and Annie. Cal had snuffed out Andrew’s life as if it didn’t matter, but Andrew’s life mattered. People loved him and depended on him.

  Andrew hadn’t been educated as an architect, but the building he’d designed—the Jefferson Inn—was professional quality work. Dad always said Andrew was a genius, and seeing this plan, Andy believed him.

  Was the inn one of the issues from the past he was supposed to resolve?

  He cleaned up the puppy mess and washed muzzles and paws, then headed for Otis’s trailer, wondering if Paulina was another one of those issues.

  Over lunch of soup, cheese, and crackers, Otis said, “I’d like to visit the River Valley Cemetery this afternoon, while I’m still able. I’ll show you where Andrew’s parents are buried.”

  Andy nodded. “Andrew is buried there, too. My parents couldn’t find his family, so they buried him beside Charity. Whether he loved her or not, it’s obvious from the diaries she left that she loved him.”

  “From everything I’ve heard, Andrew had a big heart. His mother did, too. They helped everyone in need. Her name was Rose, and she was from Ireland.”

  Interesting that Otis knew so much about Andrew’s family.

  Andy washed the lunch dishes and then drove Otis to the cemetery. The narrow lane skirted the oldest section of the cemetery, a small section fenced in black, with moss-stained stones. The marble statue of an angel stood in the middle.

  Otis motioned toward the fenced area. “The first members of the Jefferson family were buried here in the 1800’s. The last generations were buried outside the fence.”

  Andy stopped by the gate in the fence and stepped out of the car.

  Andrew helped carry his mother’s coffin to the open grave and set it beside the deep hole. He swallowed hard and tried not to cry. Grown men weren’t supposed to cry even when they were putting their mothers in the cold ground. Mama was only fifty-two years old, too young to die. At least she’d died quickly instead of lingering like his father had. She’d only been sick four days.

  Someone squeezed his shoulder and someone else rubbed his back. Everyone in the area had come to the funeral to pay their respects.

  Overcome with grief, Andrew dropped to his knees in front of his father’s gravestone. “I’m sorry, Papa. We promised we’d take care of her, and we let her die.”

  Andr
ew wiped at his eyes, brushing away tears that refused to stay hidden. He loved his mother more than anyone else in this world, and now she was gone.

  Matthew helped him to his feet. “They’re together now, Andrew. They’ll be together for eternity.”

  Andy shook off the vision and stared at the slightly crooked gravestone for Andrew’s father, John Matthew Jefferson. A similar stone for Rose Ellen Jefferson sat nearby, tilted back a little. He died in 1914, and she died just two years later, in 1916. Matthew and Andrew should have been buried here beside them, but the last Jefferson buried here was Anna Marie Jefferson, age seven. Annie died in 1919.

  Otis pointed to the little girl’s gravestone. “A lot of people died of the influenza in 1918 and 1919, not just here in this country, but in Europe. Our soldiers got hit with it, too.”

  “Matthew?”

  “No, he wasn’t gone long when he was killed in a battle somewhere in France.”

  Andy looked down at the gravestones. “How did John and Rose die?”

  “He got hurt in a farm accident, cut his leg real bad and it got infected. The doctor wanted to amputate and John wouldn’t let him. She had pneumonia. Caught it from one of the neighbors. Andrew had a job in town, and she wouldn’t let him come home for fear he’d get it, too. She always worried and fussed over Andrew. He was her youngest, the crippled one.”

  Andy looked at Otis and asked, “How do you know all this about Andrew’s family?”

  “Best way to tell you is to show you.” He pointed. “The others are buried over this way.”

  They walked a little way down the gravel road and off to the left, where Otis stopped in front of a tall tombstone. “This is my grandmother’s grave.” The stone read Paulina Smith Bedford.

  He pointed to the next stone. “Read the name and dates.”

  Andy read aloud, “John Andrew Bedford, 1919—1992. This was Paulina’s son?”

  “Yep. John Bedford was my father. He was born in April, 1919, but Paulina didn’t marry Wallace Bedford until 1925. I think the only reason she married him was because he promised to buy the Jefferson farm. Andrew’s home. She wanted Andrew’s son to grow up in the same house he’d grown up in.”