THE CAMBODIAN CURSE AND OTHER STORIES Page 9

  “Kenny,” Simon said, “take care of this.”

  “Right,” Kenny said, passing a credit card to Ivy.

  “Bloody hell,” Simon exclaimed as he opened his door. “Where are we?”

  “What an affectation,” Tamarind whispered. “He’s not British. He’s not even Australian. He’s originally from here in Denver.” She rolled her eyes.

  “The other hotels are full,” Ivy said to Simon. “I knew this one would have room because it’s further out and up on this hill that most drivers won’t brave in a snowstorm. You should all count yourselves lucky you aren’t sleeping on the floor at the airport.” The last of her words were lost on Simon as he slammed the door behind him and trudged through the snow toward the hotel without a glance back at us.

  “I, for one, am thrilled not to be sleeping on the airport floor,” I said.

  Kenny had already slipped his credit card back into his wallet, but he wasn’t moving.

  “Um, Kenny,” Tamarind said, “could you move so we can get out?”

  “Sorry.” He looked up from his phone, a not-sorry grin on his face. “I was looking up the hotel. It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect. I need to tell Simon.” He jumped out, but to his credit, instead of chasing after Simon he stood at our door along with Ivy to help the rest of us navigate safely to the icy ground.

  “Those two are a strange pair,” Dot said, once Kenny was out of earshot.

  The snow was still blowing sideways, but outside the car I was able to see the outlines of a hotel. It looked more like a Victorian mansion than a modern hotel. Two turrets flanked the sides of the three-story building. A curtain fluttered in the high window of the left turret. Was someone watching our arrival? I was half blinded by the snow and darkness, so I couldn’t see whoever was standing in the window.

  More interesting than an inquisitive observer and old-fashioned architecture was the gnarled tree that stood in front of the hotel. “Stood” is perhaps the wrong word to describe it. Its thick trunk twisted around itself, and it had grown not toward the sky but hunched over as if protecting the hotel from an invisible foe. Past the tree, the entryway beckoned. A wrought iron sign above the jade green double door read TANGLEWOOD INN.

  I picked up my bag and walked to the entrance of the Tanglewood Inn.

  iii.

  A lone woman greeted us at the front desk of the hotel, which was decorated with paper cutouts of smiling cartoon turkeys holding a banner that said HAPPY THANKSGIVING. Her thick black hair was so long that it disappeared behind the counter. She held a phone in her hand and wore a frown on her face.

  “I’m surprised you made it,” she said, hanging up a landline phone at the counter. “The storm is getting worse, so they’re not routing any more people this far.”

  She introduced herself as the owner, Rosalyn, checked us in, and showed us to our rooms. I was given the tower room. The one where I could have sworn I’d seen the curtains move.

  “I hope everything is to your liking,” Rosalyn said. “Our maid left before the storm picked up, but I’ll do what I can to get you anything you need.”

  “Your staff isn’t here?” I asked. “I thought I saw someone in the window when we arrived.”

  Rosalyn shook her head. “The guests who were here for Thanksgiving left this morning. Both the maid and chef left for the day. But don’t worry. I have plenty of leftovers. I know it’s late, but I bet you’re hungry. I’ll bring snacks to the library.”

  Kenny and I were the first to arrive in the library, which served as the hotel’s common room. The grandfather clock near the fireplace struck ten o’clock just as we entered.

  Now that he was out of his bulky snow gear, I got my first good look at Kenny. Dressed in jeans and a bright white dress shirt, with an inquisitive expression on his face, he reminded me of my brightest college students. He couldn’t have been much older than them.

  “Why did you say this place was perfect?” I asked him as I surveyed the room.

  Although the hearth held a cozy fire, the best word to describe the room was spooky. A fierce gargoyle glowered at us from the high mantle above the fireplace. Heavy burgundy drapes covered the windows, and I could hear the wind whistling wildly outside. The walls were lined with built-in bookcases that were filled with books so old they looked antique. The towering wood-paneled grandfather clock was big enough for kids to hide inside.

  But none of that was what made the library feel like it belonged in a haunted house. It was the ornate candelabra hanging above a central oak table, with faux candles held in the mouths of pewter serpents that looked as if they were waiting for a séance to take place on the table beneath. Like the image of the hotel from the outside, the inside looked like it was frozen in time from over a century ago.

  “You didn’t look this place up when we arrived?” Kenny asked.

  As a historian, I had a complicated relationship with the internet. While helpful for finding good restaurants, when it came to history it led me on the wrong path more often than not. I shook my head.

  “Simon hired me as his research assistant because of my location scouting experience,” he said. “I’m always on the lookout for good settings.”

  “He likes creepy settings that he acts like he hates?” I watched the shadows dancing across the bookshelves as the fire crackled.

  “He likes places with a good story.”

  Rosalyn stepped into the room carrying a heavy tray as expertly as the best servers I’d known when I’d been a waitress.

  “This place has a great story,” she said. “That is, if you like ghost stories. The Tanglewood Inn is supposedly haunted.”

  Kenny’s eyes lit up. “So it’s true. Maybe Simon will set his next book here. The desolate setting is fantastic.”

  “I wondered if he was that famous author,” Rosalyn said as she set the tray on the séance table. “The fridge is filled with Thanksgiving leftovers, so help yourself to as much as you’d like.” She unloaded bowls of shredded turkey stewed in cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes with cranberries on top, and sweet potato pie with cranberry compote. “I hope you like cranberries. Cranberry scones are in the freezer for breakfast.”

  I would have eaten almost anything at that moment. Even more airplane food. The spread made me forget to roll my eyes at the suggestion the hotel was haunted.

  “OMG, cranberries.” Tamarind’s voice filled the air as she strode into the library. Her short blue hair was wet, and she’d changed her combat boots to bunny slippers. “You’re my hero, Rosalyn. Can I come back here each Thanksgiving? Sometimes I feel like nobody besides me fully appreciates the cranberry. It starts out tart on the outside but is sweet once you coax out its flavor. Just like me.”

  “What’s the history of the hotel’s name?” I asked Rosalyn.

  “My father named this place Tanglewood Inn for the krummholz tree you passed coming into the hotel.”

  “I’ve never heard of that variety of tree.”

  “Krummholz isn’t a type of tree, but a concept. It means ‘crooked wood’ in German. In cold, windswept places, trees grow like this to shield themselves from the elements and survive.”

  As Tamarind and I filled our plates, Simon stepped into the room with Dot on his arm, living up to his reputation as a charmer of women of all ages. After his trial, there had been speculation that one or more of the jurors had fallen in love with him, causing the unexpected Not Guilty verdict. I hadn’t followed the case closely, but I remembered one part clearly: Simon had an alibi that made it impossible for him to have killed his girlfriend in the park where she was found. Even though forensic evidence suggested he was at the scene, it was his alibi that swayed the jury.

  “Rosalyn was going to tell us the story of the hotel,” Kenny said. “Nobody is afraid of a ghost story, are they?”

  “I’d think your boss would be,” Tamarind said. “Especial
ly one told by our host. Isn’t that his MO? Afraid of strong women?”

  “What’s your problem?” Kenny said. “He was found Not Guilty. As in innocent. And it’s thanks to his generosity that you’re here in this warm hotel for the night instead of stuck at the airport.”

  Because Tamarind had flattered him before she realized who he was, I thought to myself.

  Simon glared at Tamarind, but quickly covered it with a smile. “I’d love to hear the ghost story, Rosalyn,” he said.

  Dot settled into the sofa close to the fireplace while the rest of us served ourselves plates of food and sat at the round table underneath the candelabra.

  “My father bought this hotel years ago,” Rosalyn said, pausing to take a bite of sweet potato pie. “I grew up here. It was a wonderful childhood, having this big old house to play in. We’d always been too poor to buy a house, but this place was cheap. Because of the incident.”

  “The haunting,” Simon said calmly, looking at Tamarind.

  “Yes,” Rosalyn said, picking up a book encased in a glass box. It had been placed apart from the other books on one of the bookshelves. “Our library’s avenging ghost.”

  “The ghost lives in a book?” Tamarind asked.

  “Perhaps.” Rosalyn shrugged. “As the years go on, the story gets more and more fantastic. I can’t complain. It drives up business. What I do know for a fact is that something very strange happened here in the 1930s. The house was already a hotel before we bought it. One of the guests, a Mr. Underhill, died here in this library. This book had something to do with it.”

  I looked at the glass-encased book in our host’s hands. It was difficult to see the title because it was an old hardback book that had lost its dust jacket, and the hinges of the glass container obscured my view further. I stepped closer to see the lettering on the green fabric cover. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. Four handwritten words had been scrawled on the face of the book in black ink: You win. I’m guilty.

  “Supposedly,” Rosalyn continued, “this book drove him insane.”

  “That’s what I’m not clear on,” Kenny said. “The online descriptions say the police looked into the case as a murder but ultimately ruled it a suicide. Was it a cover-up?”

  “Mr. Underhill had ripped books from the shelves here in the library. It wasn’t clear if he was doing so in anger or if he was looking for something. The only things we know for sure are one, that it was his handwriting on the Agatha Christie mystery; and two, that he impaled himself on a poker from the fireplace.”

  “You could add more grisly details for effect,” Dot said, not looking up from her knitting.

  Kenny laughed.

  “What?” Dot said. “‘Impaled’ is a rather vague word, isn’t it? There are much more evocative ways I can think of to describe a—”

  “How do you know he stabbed himself?” I asked, not wanting to hear more from Dot’s imagination. “It seems like a strange way to commit suicide.”

  “Because,” Rosalyn said, “anything else would have been impossible. Anything, that is, besides a ghost.”

  “Now this is getting interesting,” Simon said. He polished off a bite of pie and leaned back in the upholstered chair. His black hair and light eyes shone under the candelabra.

  “While Mr. Underhill was destroying the library, he moved a large table to block the door. This very table, if the stories are to be believed. The table wasn’t simply holding the door shut—it was jammed underneath the doorknob. There’s no way anyone could have gotten in or out. The authorities had to use a ladder and break the window to get inside.”

  “Meaning the killer could have gotten out through the windows as well,” Kenny said.

  Rosalyn shook her head. “Bolted from the inside.”

  “Locks can be tampered with,” I said as I walked to the windows where the heavy curtains were drawn. I pulled back the curtains and was greeted by the twisted tree that gave the hotel its name. “This second floor is pretty high, but the tree is close enough.”

  “Not quite,” Rosalyn said, lifting the sleeve of her sweater to show us a ragged scar on her forearm. “I tried it once when I was a kid. Missed by a mile, but luckily only broke my leg and got this scar. But even if a full-grown adult could reach the tree, it would be much easier to climb down the side of the house. The problem is that the windows were checked by experts after Mr. Underhill’s death. Authorities didn’t want to believe a supernatural explanation. They wanted to solve it. They focused on the chimney for a while, too, but it’s far too small.”

  “They simply gave up?” Tamarind asked.

  She shook her head. “In the investigation, they discovered that Underhill used many names and that he’d been cheating a lot of people out of their life savings. This was right after the Great Depression, so it was even worse. Two of the people he conned killed themselves.”

  None of us spoke while Rosalyn paused to take a sip of water. She was staring at the glass-encased novel she’d placed on the table. Shadows flickered across her face. That was odd. It was as if the lights were moving. I glanced around. Nobody had entered the room. And we were all sitting still.

  “None of the authorities seemed too eager to solve the case after that,” she continued. “They ruled it a suicide. Said Mr. Underhill must have snapped from the guilt of leading people to their deaths. But not everyone thought it was his conscience.”

  “That’s when the hotel got its haunted reputation,” I said.

  Rosalyn nodded. “Because of the supposed connection to a haunting, nobody stayed here for a long time. Not until my dad got the idea to play up the haunting angle. To get people to come here who wanted to see a ghost. It was a ‘vigilante ghost,’ after all, so nobody else would be in danger. And it’s worked for decades. Like the people we had staying here over Thanksgiving weekend. A few families who thought it would be fun to have someone else cook for them while getting the added entertainment of this haunted library, including getting to see the original Agatha Christie book involved in a ghostly murder. I took over as manager after my father died several years ago—and before you ask, he died peacefully of natural causes, not at the hands of the ghost. Nobody else has died in the library.” She paused and grinned. “It makes a great story, though, doesn’t it? Now, who wants coffee?”

  Rosalyn left for the kitchen. I stretched and looked at the books that lined the shelves.

  “This place needs a librarian,” Tamarind said to me. “Big time. Gothic ghost stories from the nineteenth century are next to natural history books from the twentieth. There’s no method here. Damn.” She eyed the empty sweet potato pie platter. “Who wants coffee if there’s no more pie?” She left in search of the kitchen.

  “Can you see if there’s nondairy creamer?” Kenny called. When Tamarind didn’t answer, he went after her.

  “Turmeric is your research assistant?” Simon asked.

  “Tamarind,” I corrected. “And she is sometimes. But don’t let her hear you say that. She’s a librarian at the university where I teach.”

  “She doesn’t look like a librarian.”

  “Definitely don’t let her hear you say that. You won’t survive the night.” Self-declared post-punk post-feminist Tamarind Ortega was one of the most brilliant people I’d ever met. She was also big, tall, and tough, an asset at a public university library in the heart of San Francisco.

  The electric lights of the candelabra flickered overhead.

  “Wouldn’t it be something if we were trapped in the dark with the library ghost,” Dot said with a laugh. She adjusted the bun on her head, and I noticed it was held in place with knitting needles.

  Simon picked up the glass case that held the ghostly copy of Murder on the Orient Express. “One of the most ingenious mysteries ever written,” he said. “Thrillers are more my forte, but one has to appreciate the genius of Dame Agatha.�
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  “I read mostly nonfiction,” I said, “but I remember finding this on my dad’s bookshelf when I was a kid.” I thought back on my father’s own haphazard bookshelves, which he offered up as a neighborhood lending library. My brother Mahilan hated that our Berkeley neighbors would come by at all hours to borrow or drop off a book or snacks, but I loved observing the range of quirky people who’d congregate in our living room. It was a study in human nature. “I remember how well Agatha Christie planted clues about human nature, like being able to tell when people know each other even when they pretend they don’t. And her knowledge of poison was impressive.”

  Rosalyn, Tamarind, and Kenny returned with coffee. The lights overhead flickered again. This time, darkness followed.

  Simon swore, but nobody seemed too distressed. We were rational adults, after all. Or perhaps it was the fact that the light from the fireplace was enough to see. Rosalyn walked calmly to a cabinet near the library entryway and removed a box of flashlights. She handed one to each of us. “It happens during storms,” she said.

  A door slammed in the distance.

  This time, we all jumped. A yelp escaped Simon’s lips. Even Rosalyn gasped. Dot stopped knitting. The sound of the stairs creaking, step by slow step, filled the silence that followed.

  “What the—” Kenny murmured.

  “I thought the roads were closed,” Tamarind whispered, biting her lip.

  The creaking stopped, and a moment later a shadow appeared in the open doorway of the library.

  Our taxi driver Ivy stepped inside. Her hair and face were wet with melted snow, making her unruly curls look like strands of wild ivy. “Do you have an extra room? I couldn’t make it down the road. We’re trapped for the night.”

  iv.

  I awoke with my heart pounding furiously. I shot up in the strange bed. That sound…Where had it come from? My arms prickled with goose bumps. I couldn’t tell if it was from the chill in the room or from fright. Had the sound of a muffled scream come from somewhere in the hotel, or from the confines of a dream?