The Bone Elixir by Carrie Rubin

Author:Carrie Rubin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indigo Dot Press

22

Ben stared blankly at the envelope in his hands. On it, Irving Jones’s words about something being off with the Claxwell family blurred in and out of focus. Could the answers he and Laurette sought be inside? Was he sure he even wanted to know? Discovering a piece of information was like launching a grenade. Once you pull the pin and let go, there’s no turning back from the blast.

“What is it?” Laurette asked, clearly sensing his discomfort. Outside the parlor windows the sky had grown even more overcast.

Ben showed her the envelope, its contents more than the weight of a standard letter. From the foyer, the grandfather clock—a clock that hadn’t functioned the entire time Ben had been at the inn—chimed.

Loudly.

He and Laurette jumped in unison.

One, two, three chimes in total.

“Did you…” she paused, “fix that clock?”

Ben ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Nope. Looks like our friends are waking up.” He pointed to the porcelain figurines inside the china cabinet that fronted the hidden library. “What’s next? A song and dance number from them?”

He and Laurette sat rigid on the love seat, their breaths shallow, waiting, watching, wondering what was coming next. But nothing more happened. There was only the flowing traffic from the highway below, a few structural house groans, and the familiar hiss and pop from the basement, albeit dulled at this distance.

Didn’t matter though. As far as Ben was concerned, something in the inn had made that clock chime as a signal to them it was watching. It knew about the manuscript. It knew what he and Laurette had uncovered. But whether it was pleased about their discovery or not was the question.

“No time like the haunted present,” Ben muttered, ripping open the sealed envelope. As he did so, he wondered if Simon from Simon’s Books had steamed it open out of curiosity after reading the manuscript for his author friend. Given the shop owner’s acute fear in the parking lot two hours earlier, it seemed likely.

Inside the envelope were newspaper clippings about The Abigael Inn, including historical descriptions of the architecture as well as two interviews, one with Clara and another with Frederick and Elizabeth. Puff pieces, mostly, the first praising Clara for her charitable donations over the years as well as providing free rooms to Shelby residents who’d been left temporarily homeless due to flooding or fire. Although pleased to finally see a picture of his mysterious benefactor, Ben learned nothing significant from the article beyond the fact she was a fashionable woman with cat-eye glasses and blessed with the same thick locks as her brother. He passed the clipping on to Laurette who read it silently.

The piece on Frederick and Elizabeth was equally positive, extolling their successes in real estate and investments, such that they were able to help keep Shelby running in lean times. When a new playground was needed, the Claxwells stepped up. When the high school sought IBM personal computers in the 1980s, the Claxwells forked over the cash.

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