Sinister Lang Syne: A Short Holiday Novel (Wicks Hollow)

  Sinister Lang Syne

  A Short Wicks Hollow Novel

  Colleen Gleason

  Copyright © 2020 by Colleen Gleason

  “In Which Victoria Gardella Receives Three Gifts” © 2010 Colleen Gleason

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Orbra's Honeybear Hot Toddy

  BONUS: In Which Miss Gardella Receives Three Gifts

  Wicks Hollow

  Updates!

  Notes

  About the Author

  Also by Colleen Gleason

  Prologue

  New Year’s Eve 1929

  It was a brisk, snapping cold night to celebrate the ringing-in of the new year—a new decade that many hoped would eventually see the end of the Eighteenth Amendment.

  Despite Prohibition, however, the people of tiny Wicks Hollow village held glasses of champagne, mugs of beer, and bottles of whisky as they thronged in front of the Tremaine Clock Tower. Being situated near Lake Michigan on the shipping route from Canada to Chicago meant that residents of the small town had easy access to shipments of the illegal beverages.

  Women wearing the flimsy, loose flapper-style dresses currently in fashion covered themselves with heavy wool coats and jaunty cloches over cropped-short hair, with gloved hands gripping their drinks as they jostled in the crowd. Their companions, men in heavy coats and trilbies, fedoras, or Homburgs, bundled the women closer against the crisp bitter cold and helped to keep them warm.

  White clouds of breath mingled and meshed as a hundred people talked, sang, and laughed in the midst of their small, close-knit town. It was a night of celebration for many reasons.

  They gathered below the wrought iron balcony of the brand new Tremaine Clock Tower, where Miss Brenda Tremaine, the town’s most famous socialite, was about to marry the handsome and debonair State Senator Barclay Langford beneath a starry winter sky. Their vows would be made as soon as the clock struck midnight.

  Despite an ugly scene between Senator Langford and his former love, Lonna Dunne, last week, the bride and groom were happy and excited with eyes glowing and cheeks pink from the chill. Nothing would stop them from sealing their wedding vows—not even a crazed, wild-eyed woman and her threats of curses.

  The construction of the Tremaine Tower—overseen by Tremaine Construction with the help of Wicks Development—had been completed only two weeks earlier, and tonight was its inaugural event. Imposing and elegant, the dark brick building boasted a large, three-sided clock face, which could be seen from over a mile away. Above the clock was the bell tower, with seven bells prepared to ring in the New Year and the marital junction of the powerful Langford and Tremaine families. Extending from the top of the bell tower was a short spire where a glittering ball perched. The ball would burst into sparkling light on the twelfth stroke of midnight as the crowd watched and celebrated the entry into a new decade.

  Brenda and Barclay stood on the balcony below the clock, waving to their friends and family. A large banner with their logo for the celebration—two ornate, intertwined Bs above a framed January 1, 1930—fluttered from the iron railing in front of them.

  Despite the chill, Brenda had donned neither coat nor hat nor gloves to spoil her appearance. Slender and boyish in figure—as most of the women of the time aspired to be—she wore a stunning champagne colored dress that glittered with beads of silver, white, pale gold, and ice pink. Frothy, delicate feathers shivered from her shoulders with every movement, and the gown fell in a straight, unbroken line to just the tops of her knees. A large brooch sporting a half-dollar-sized crystal of pale rose surrounded by more feathers glinted from the center of her gown. Her short blond hair, crimped into finger waves, was held in place by glittering pins, and a headband with more gems and feathers cut across her creamy white forehead.

  She held the stem of a broad, shallow glass filled with the dark red cranberry champagne cocktail she’d asked to be created specially for her wedding. In the room behind the balcony waited a small and elegant reception with a champagne fountain spilling with the same cranberry bubbles, and trays of tiny shrimp sandwiches, fruit kebabs, and minuscule pastries.

  “Brenda! You’re going to catch your death!” cried one of her friends from the ground below. “Put on a coat!”

  “I’m not the least bit chilled,” the bride called back, leaning over the railing with a smile. “I’m ablaze with the warmth of love!”

  Her groom was just as handsomely attired in a creamy-white jacket with tails. His tie was also festooned with sparkling gems and sequins, and his dark blond hair was slicked back from a

  clean-shaven face. He crowded behind her at the railing, wrapping both arms around the bride and offering her his warmth.

  “It’s nearly midnight!” someone cried, and everyone’s attention turned from the gorgeous bride and groom to the massive clock face above them. “Three minutes!”

  “Are you ready, my love?” said Barclay, turning his bride to face him.

  “So very ready,” she replied, looking up with a smile.

  She had no worries about Lonna Dunne and her mad threats. Despite the madwoman’s ugly words, there was no such thing as a curse!

  Barclay bent to kiss her, then they turned together to watch the last two minutes tick on the clock above them.

  They made a pretty picture: the pair of gleaming blond heads, their willowy champagne-colored figures as they stood with their backs to the audience, looking up at the clock, drinks in hands ready to toast the new year.

  “Ten…nine!…eight!” chanted the onlookers. “Seven! Six!”

  Brenda looked at Barclay and said something no one on the ground could hear. He smiled lovingly at her, and they both turned to face each other beneath the clock as the countdown continued. It made a stunning picture, and many flashbulbs went off as they captured the iconic moment.

  “Five…four…three!…two!…ONE!”

  Above, a single bell in the steeple began to bong the twelve tolls for the hour just as the silvery ball atop it exploded into life. Lit, glittering, glowing, the ball dropped.

  And then someone screamed.

  “Brenda!”

  “Oh my God!”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Brenda!”

  Barclay Langford, the stunned bridegroom, stared down at the crumpled form of his bride…an unmoving pile of sparkling fabric and awkward limbs on the balcony next to him.

  The broken champagne glass glittered on the balcony next to her, and the dark red cocktail had splattered all over her face and the front of her frock.

  She was dead.

  One

  Present Day

  The last time Callie Quigley had been inside the Tremaine Tower was when she was sixteen.

  On New Year’s Eve.

  Just before midnight.

  That was sixteen years ago, and it had been a memorable night…in more ways than one.

  And there were parts she definitely didn’t want to repeat.

  And yet, her
e I am.

  She chuckled nervously and pushed against the heavy door. Too late to back out now.

  The door creaked and protested, swinging open with great reluctance to reveal the stairs that wound up to the clock tower’s only chamber.

  The metal steps rang dully as she climbed, her boots making solid sounds with each step. She hoped the noise would scare away anything that might lurk inside the tower…whether it be of the furry, scuttling sort or the darting, wing-thwacking kind.

  She was not going to think about the wispy, ghostly type.

  The Curse of the Tremaine Clock Tower was well-known among the residents of Wicks Hollow—about how Brenda Tremaine had been cursed by her fiancé’s former lover, and how she’d dropped dead on the twelfth stroke of midnight—just before making her wedding vows.

  But that event alone hadn’t been enough to cement the story of the curse. There’d been several other strange and sudden deaths over the years since December 31, 1929.

  All on New Year’s Eve.

  All during weddings.

  All unexplained.

  All cursed.

  Callie shivered a little, and not just because it was mid-December in Michigan near one of the Great Lakes.

  Why did I decide to do this again…?

  Because CQEvents is going to be one of the premier wedding planners in West Michigan and this is a great marketing move.

  At the top of the stairs, she found herself on a spare landing with a door that she knew opened into a small room, along with dust motes, cobwebs, and piles of other stuff she didn’t care to examine too closely.

  The lock to the room was a little cranky, but the key she’d been given eventually turned, and she pushed open the door.

  Sixteen years hadn’t changed much about the place—including the fact that it was still as shadowy, dank, and eerie as she remembered from that fateful night.

  Callie walked over the threshold, her breath making short, compact white puffs in the chill air. The small room—which was hardly more than a waiting area for the Clock Tower’s extravagant balcony—had two large windows on either side and was cast in the long shadows of a late afternoon in December.

  A few straight-backed chairs were angled around a low table, and Callie wondered if they’d even been moved since she and Ben and the others had high-tailed it out of there that night. Some dusty bottles—including one still lying in the center of the table from their Spin the Bottle Truth or Dare game—littered the floor.

  They’d been there to celebrate the New Year while “braving” the Curse of Tremaine Tower…and to have a few bottles of champagne and a little bit of weed, unseen by their parents. Ben brought his iPod and portable speaker, but they dared not play the music too loudly for fear they’d be discovered inside what was supposed to be a dark and empty building beneath the illuminated clock face.

  They’d reveled in the idea of being in the tower when the clock struck midnight and the ball lit up above it, unseen by the crowds of people that would gather in the square below.

  So, in anticipation of the big moment, the seven of them had gathered around the low table, listened to music, spun the bottle…and waited to see what would happen with the curse.

  “What a stupid thing to do,” she said aloud now, needing to hear something other than the rustling of vermin—mice, she hoped, and not rats—and the creepy clattering of a tree branch against one of the windows.

  Thud.

  Callie stifled a gasp as she spun around. No one was there, nothing had moved…

  “Stop it,” she told herself sharply. Aloud again. “You’re being—”

  Thud, thud, thud…

  Now she recognized the dull, ringing sound of boots or shoes as they ascended the metal stairway.

  Okay, okay, it’s just the caretaker, she told herself. They said he’d stop by to make sure everything was all right.

  “Hello?” she called in a jaunty voice, but she curled her fingers around the can of pepper spray on her keyring. It didn’t hurt to be too careful nowadays.

  Especially in an abandoned building.

  “Yo,” returned a deep voice as the clanging sound drew nearer. “Everything all right up there?”

  “Yes, I—Ben?” She goggled when her old friend came into view at the doorway. It actually took her a second to recognize him, because he’d grown a beard and mustache since she’d last seen him a couple years ago.

  “Callie? Is that you?” He stepped onto the landing as she backed up into the ante room once more. “Hi.”

  She was suddenly, wildly relieved she hadn’t taken off her hat, and that the deep blue slouch—which she was fully aware made her eyes look bluer than blue—was keeping her wild, bright-penny-colored hair under control. With static electricity and the dry winter air, an unhatted head would make her look like she’d stuck her finger in a socket—or like a too-curvy candle with a flame on top. “Wow, Ben…it’s been a long time. Are you the caretaker here?”

  He was wearing a hat against the winter cold as well—a stone gray beanie that sat just above his dark blond brows—but unlike Callie, no gloves or boots and only what looked to her like an impractically light athletic jacket. And the short beard, which…wow. It looked really good on him. “No—the caretaker’s off for the weekend. So when I heard someone was coming in to check out the tower, I volunteered to be the one to check on things.”

  He stood there, ungloved hands on his hips, and looked at her as if he wasn’t sure what to make of the situation.

  “Right. That makes sense. After all, your family still partly owns the place, I guess.” She felt like she was babbling even though she’d only said a few phrases, and so she clamped her mouth closed and reminded herself that silence is power.

  That was one of the first things she’d learned in the business world: be quiet and let the other person speak.

  Ben Tremaine looked around the room, then walked casually to the door that opened onto the infamous balcony. But he didn’t open it. Instead, he circled around and brushed a hand lightly over the back of one of the chairs. He seemed just as uncomfortable as Callie felt…which wasn’t all that surprising, considering what happened the last time they were in this room.

  She swallowed hard and glanced over to where Frida had laughingly hung up the mistletoe all those years ago. Her eyes widened.

  It was still there.

  Tattered, dusty, chewed on…but still hanging there.

  Callie yanked her eyes away and her attention bounced around the room, touching on the two paintings that hung on the walls and finally the tattered curtains that swagged the pair of windows.

  “Uh…so what exactly are you planning to do…here?” Ben asked after the silence stretched.

  “I’m having a wedding.”

  His attention snapped to her. “You’re having a wedding? Here?”

  “On New Year’s Eve.” Even as she said those words—strongly, boldly; as if she were tossing down a gauntlet—Callie felt something move in the air. A wisp of hair that had escaped from its fuzzy blue covering buffeted her cheek, giving proof that the sudden waft wasn’t her imagination.

  Her breath puffed out in a white cloud, much more solid and dark than it had been a moment ago.

  Ben’s breath was doing the same.

  And it felt a lot colder all of a sudden.

  Their eyes met across the shadowy space as the air eddied around them. A few crisp leaves—how they’d come to be in here, Callie didn’t know—tumbled and swirled on the floor.

  “At midnight,” she said, figuring she might as well go all the way. “The wedding will be at midnight on New Year’s E—”

  Something crashed behind her, and she spun around as Ben bolted toward her, nearly flying across the room to get to her side.

  The large picture that had been hanging on the wall had fallen.

  Even though the painting had landed facedown, Callie already knew whose portrait it was.

  Brenda Tremaine.

  She
and Ben stood next to each other without touching—but close enough that she could feel his warmth—breaths heavy and white as they looked at the painting. She refused, absolutely refused, to look at the aged plastic mistletoe that hung just a few feet away.

  “It was old,” Ben said after a minute. “The wood, the hanger, the string. Something must have just, you know, collapsed after all these years.”

  Callie, who’d grown up reading her mother’s Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mysteries, was skeptical. She’d long released the pepper spray from her fist, but now she dug in the deep pocket of her long down coat to pull out her phone.

  Swiping on the phone’s flashlight, she went over to the painting to examine it. Her breath no longer clouded up quite as white, and whatever she had felt in the air seemed to have gone. It was just her and Ben Tremaine, a bunch of vermin (please don’t let it be rats) (or bats), and a painting that had just fallen off the wall at an eerily opportune moment.

  “The hanger looks completely intact,” she said in a neutral voice as she skimmed the light over the back of the painting and pulled on the wire with a gloved finger. “It’s made from wire and though it’s a little rusty, it’s not broken or even bent.” She looked up at Ben, who hovered over her.

  “I’ll check the wall,” he said, pulling out his own phone for the light.

  Callie didn’t stand back while he did the examination. She wanted to make sure it was done to Trixie’s standards, so she joined him at the wall where the painting had hung. She shined her own light over the mildewed and stained wallpaper as they edged right up to the wall, their two beams mingling like the clouds of their breath. She could smell faint mint coming from Ben, they were that close, and Callie was very glad she’d eschewed the cup of coffee she’d considered earlier and had had lemon-flavored sparkling water instead.