Chapter Seven
“Look here.” Sam pointed to the computer screen. “Grislan, Sr. practically built the whole town. He came in as a big benefactor, but no one knew who he was. But he had money apparently, and financed the town.”
“So he had money when he got here, but from where?” Honey mused. They had left the house for the motel and Sam’s computer, to track down Grislan Sr.’s history. Honey guessed it was more credit card fraud that financed the laptop’s existence. It bothered her that the boys had to resort to such measures, but now she knew why. It boggled her mind to think of how life had changed in the last week.
A week ago she lived in her normal life, with no possibility of ever coming across demons and restless spirits. Not just ghosts, but demons, from what the boys were telling her. Werewolves were real. Even vampires. The tales Dean told with relish made her shudder. Dean loved his life as a Hunter, but Sam…Sam didn’t seem to cherish nearly as much.
She definitely wasn’t the same Honey now.
“There’s nothing on family lineage,” Sam said. “It’s like he just showed up out of the blue.”
Honey reached for her cell phone and hit three buttons. “Lawrence? Madeleine Wheeler. Good…good…listen, I have a name I need you to do some digging on…”
Sam half listened as her tone stayed business-like through the call and her manner efficient. She snapped her phone shut just two minutes later.
“He’ll call me back in a few minutes. Don’t ask me how, but the man can track down anyone or anything,” she said offhandedly, then realized Sam had tensed at her words. “Hey, I didn’t mean—don’t worry, okay?”
“I can’t help it,” Sam said. “Dean can’t be found.”
Honey put one hand on his face, looking down at him from where she stood over him. “Lawrence knows how to A, keep his mouth shut and B, hide as well as find. He’ll track this Grislan down if there’s a record anywhere on earth.”
Sam reached up and covered her hand with his. “I trust you, Honey. But what should we tell Trixie?”
“I’ll deal with her later.” Honey brushed the topic off. “Right now, we need to figure out how Beatrix got her hands on that gold—if it was her.”
Sam pulled her into his lap.
Honey giggled. “What are you doing?”
Sam didn’t answer as he pressed his lips against hers. Honey slid her arms around his neck, leaning into him as his hand caressed her back. Sam wanted to carry her to the bed but he knew it was too soon for both of them. Neither of them was the sort to just fall into bed with someone, and the last two women he had been with both ended up dead. He wasn’t going to risk that again.
Their tongues began to dance as her hair fell forward, brushing against his cheek. Sam pulled her closer when her phone rang shrilly. Groaning, Honey pulled back and reached for the phone.
“Madeleine Wheeler. . . yes. Hang on.” She leaned forward from Sam’s lap to grab the legal notepad and pen. Sam watched as she wrote in a smooth, elegant script. He read as she wrote, intrigued.
“You’re a peach, Lawrence. Send me the bill. Thank you.”
She closed the phone and turned to him, hazel eyes shining. “I told you, the man can find anyone.”
“Grislan was Grislaener?” Sam asked, reading her notes.
“It’s a good possibility. The dates are right. Grislan arrived with pockets and trunks of gold. A couple of weeks before, a pirate ship attacked the La Quinta, a Spanish merchant ship. No survivors. Three pirates were caught and hanged, but not before they gave up names of their escaped cohort, who made off with all their booty. One Jebediah Grislaener,” Honey finished.
“So he changes his name, finds a new town, plays wealthy benefactor. Not a dumb move,” Sam said, snuggling her against his chest. “Ingratiates himself to the town and with that kind of money, what tiny little town is going to question it? They must have seen him as their saving grace.”
“Exactly. He probably used local help in building the house, endears him to society more. Married a local girl, Cecilia Baits, had Junior. She died while the boy was young, and Grislan Senior himself died after Junior married and brought his wife Eugenia home to live there.
“Suspiciously?”
“Not back then. A lot of people were listed as dying of things like consumption, and of course, accidents happen. Maybe Junior found out what Dad did and knocked him off to keep the gold. Money is the best motivator for pretty much any crime.”
“Then Beatrix arrives. . . wait, was Senior alive when Beatrix came to live here?”
Sam reached for the notes he had been keeping through the case. “Yes.”
“Think Bea knocked off the old man? We don’t know who did the chimney,” Honey pointed out, trying not to be distracted by his eyes, which at the moment, were very green and very alluring.
“If Bea was anything like Trixie, I’d be surprised if she didn’t take over the running of the household,” Sam chuckled.
Honey grinned. “Good point. I suppose it’s possible Bea moved in, took over, murdered the old man, might have made the fireplace, murdered the wife, then the husband.”
“That’s a lot of murder,” Sam said softly.
Honey shook her head. “I hate the thought that Trix is related to someone who could kill so many people.”
“Well,” Sam pointed out, “we don’t know that it was Bea. It could have been the husband.”
“True,” Honey admitted. “I don’t think Trixie has seriously considered her great aunt might have been a cold blooded murderer.”
“Hopefully we can prove otherwise,” Sam said.
***
Trixie called Honey to tell her about the corpse. Honey and Sam agreed if the cops were called, they had to wipe the place clean of fingerprints. Trixie was surprised by Honey’s firm stance to back Sam. Her quiet friend should have been protesting that it was a felony to tamper with a crime scene.
Sam Winchester was having quite an effect on Honey, Trixie thought to herself with a smirk. Straight as an arrow, goody-goody Honey Wheeler was suddenly willing to take a walk on the darker side of humanity. Like her and Jim, Honey and Brian just hadn’t worked out as a couple.
There was no plausible way to dust everything without raining suspicion, so Trixie and Dean went through the house while Trixie touched everything Dean thought he or Sam might have handled, trying to hide his prints with hers. It might be a small town, but murder was murder. If Dean’s fingerprints turned up at another crime scene, the town would be crawling with FBI agents.
Finally, as the sun was going down, Trixie called the sheriff to report the remains.
The sheriff came himself, followed by the coroner. Sam and Honey returned, leaving Honey and her car as the boys left in the Impala. The four would rendezvous back in town. After a brief examination of the body, the sheriff shook his head.
“Ain’t no tellin' who it is. We’ll hope the examiner finds some i.d. I sure ain’t reachin’ ‘round him to find out.”
Trixie and Honey just smiled. The sheriff glanced around, warned them to be careful, and left.
“So much for thorough investigating,” Trixie griped.
Honey chuckled. “It’s probably a drifter passing through, Trix.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Trixie gasped and turned to Honey. “What if it’s the missing caretaker? Ella? None of them really examined the body, not even Dean. ”
Honey didn’t look surprised. “Cellars were used for storage and for keeping things cool before refrigeration. But how did Bea—or whoever—get the body down there? Bea wasn’t exactly a spring chicken, you know.”
“Which kind of goes back to Grislan.”
“C’mon. Let’s get back to town. I promised Sam we wouldn’t stay late, especially once the sun was down.”
Trixie raised one sandy eyebrow. “You promised Sam? Gee, I didn’t realize you two were so…intimate.”
As she expected, Honey turned red as they walked to the car.
“It’s not like that, he’s just…really nice. He’s genuine.”
“And hot,” Trixie added with a laugh. Honey ducked her head to hide her smile.
“Yes, that too.” They reached the SUV and got in. Honey felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Turning, she looked back at the house and gasped.
“What?” Trix asked. “Honey, what is it?”
Honey stared back oat the old house. In the very last rays of the dying sun, an eerie light was cast over it. Honey stared at the figure in the window, and the figure stood still, finally letting the curtain fall.
“Did you see it?” Honey demanded. Trixie hurried around to her side.
“See what?”
“That ghost!” Honey whispered.
“What ghost?” Trixie turned, eyes searching.
“It’s gone now, but Trix—there was someone in that house, I swear. It was all white and hazy and—” her voice was rising.
“Calm down,” Trixie ordered, grabbing her friend’s arm. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll come back with the boys in the morning.”
She took the keys from Honey and hurried her friend into the seat. Before she pulled out, she glanced back at the house, now silent and gray in the twilight. Repressing a shudder, she started the engine and they headed for the hotel.
***
Dean rubbed at his eyes. “You saw a spirit.”
“I’m sure of it. It was white, kind of misty, no particular form,” Honey answered. “It was at the window, then the curtain moved and it was gone.”
“Sounds like a different spirit than before,” Sam commented.
“One more unknown factor,” Dean muttered.
“Let’s review,” Honey said, standing up and smoothing her hair with her hands. Sam’s eyes followed her slender figure as she walked to the table and picked up her notebook. Her ivory sweater and jeans clung to her nicely, and Dean chuckled to himself when he realized Sammy was gazing languorously at her.
“One corpse, identity unknown. Cremated, according to county records. One angry spirit, identity unknown. One body, identity unknown. Possible second spirit, identity unknown. Grislan’s body not in family plot. Circle of death around all graves except baby’s. Gold bricks in the fireplace, possibly pirate treasure from Grislan Senior,” Honey recounted.
“But how did she melt the gold down? Pirates didn’t run around with gold bars, did they?” Trixie asked.
“I can answer that,” Dean said. “I didn’t think about it at the time, but there’s a big ol’ cast iron cauldron down in that cellar and this square looking thing. It must have been the mold I found. Perfect brick shape.”
“Maybe Bea found the gold stash and melted it down. Or one of the men,” Honey murmured.
“I’m more concerned with the spirit who tossed Trixie into the wall the other day,” Dean said.
“Well, I hate to say it, but I think we may have to dig them all up,” Sam said. “Salt and burn the whole family.”
Honey shuddered.
“Digging up three graves?” Dean looked less than thrilled. “Let’s make sure we got the right people first. That’s a hell of a lot of digging.”
***
“Well, the skeleton in the cellar is almost certainly Ella.” Trixie hung up her phone later that evening. “The shoes match what Ella was wearing when she disappeared, according to her Missing Person File. Her daughter is on her way to identify them.”
“So who did her in?” Honey asked.
“I say we go with the assumption that it was whatever drifter Beatrix called about,” Sam said. “He dumped the body down there. It couldn’t have been Bea, that was only three years ago. No way could a little old lady manage that.”
Honey made a note of that in her elegant script. “All right, let’s put that aside for now.”
Dean sat with Trixie on her bed, beer in one hand, pizza in the other. Trixie had Honey’s laptop open and was typing away. Sam had his laptop on as well, sitting at the table.
“Dean, did you grab that trunk from the room under the stairs?” Trixie asked.
His answer was garbled through the mouthful of pizza. Sam just shook his head.
“They’re in the car,” Sam told Trixie. “I’ll get it.”
Moments later, Trixie was fiddling with the lock on the trunk. Sam knelt next to her and lockpick in hand, tried to open it.
“Nice set,” Trixie said in admiration, picking up his lock-picking tools.
“Thanks. They come in handy,” Sam answered with a smile. “But I don’t think it’s going to work. It looks like it might be one of those old fashioned skeleton keys.”
Honey glanced up from Sam’s computer. “Skeleton key?”
“Yeah, like we found in Jim’s uncle’s house,” Trixie answered. “The summerhouse key.”
“Trixie, there was one, remember? In the original lockbox Mr. Clamper brought you, during the will reading.”
Trixie gasped. “I forgot! We didn’t need it to get in the house. It’s in the car.”
So excited was the young sleuth, that she was back only a moment later. She eagerly slid the old key into the rusty lock. It turned slightly, but didn’t open.
“Most likely the key is in that hidden room,” Dean said. “Move. I’ll shoot it open.”
“Yeah, then the people in the next room can call the cops,” Sam answered in annoyance. “A knife might work.”
“Why don’t I just run back to the house and get it?” Trixie asked.
“No way. First off, we don’t know if there is a key, let alone where it might be. Second, there’s no way you’re going alone,” Dean answered. “I’ll go with you.”
Trixie opened her mouth to argue, but gave up when she saw the determination on his handsome face.
“I want to get that key,” she said firmly. “That trunk wouldn’t be locked away and hidden if it didn’t contain something important.”
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Author Notes
- A big "Clowns or Midgets?" to my lovely editors, Mary and Dana!
- The Winchesters went up against vampires in (Season) 1.19 ‘Dead Man’s Blood’, 2.03 ‘Bloodlust’, and 3.07 ‘Fresh Blood’.
-Sam’s two deceased ex-girlfriends are Jessica, from the pilot episode, ‘Pilot’, and Madison, from episode 2.17, ‘Heart’. She was a werewolf and Sam had to kill her.
- Word Count, 2,355
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