“Dad. Hi. What brings you here? I’m about to close. Can you flip the sign on the door and turn the lock?”

  He did so. “Good day?”

  “Good enough for this time of year. Spring’s come early, and the weather’s been nice, so we’ve had people from the cities, venturing out for a day by the lake. Browsers most of them, but a few shoppers.”

  “You mother tells me you and Vicky were involved in an altercation earlier.”

  “Hardly an altercation, Dad. An annoying man said some annoying things to Vicky. He was leaving when Mom interfered. What did she tell you?”

  “She might have embellished her role a tiny bit.”

  “My mother, embellish? Perish the thought.”

  We both laughed. Aline Steiner Wilkinson had been an opera diva. She might be retired now, but she remained every inch the diva.

  “She told me the man was yelling at you and Vicky, and she feared he’d turn physical. She was about to whack him over the back of the head with her shopping bag, when he turned around. So instead of whacking, she stepped directly into his path. I’ve seen what she had in that shopping bag, and it might well have done some damage. She bought two pairs at an end-of-season sale on winter boots. So, what was it about?”

  “Let’s go into the back. I’ve been in and out all day, so Mattie hasn’t had much of a break from the office.” Even when the store was closed, I never let the dog into the front. He’s not quite the size of a bull, but close enough, and I do own a china shop.

  Mattie doesn’t get excited at much, but he loves my dad and is eager to prove it. After enthusiastic greetings were exchanged, I snapped the leash on his collar, and we went into the back alley. We strolled up and down while Mattie checked every garbage can and doorway and followed a zigzagging trail only he could see.

  “The man in the street,” I told my father, “is named Jim Cole. Nephew of Charles Cole, of Cole House on Lakeside Drive. You know the one?”

  “Of course I do. That place was once the glory of Rudolph. No longer. It’s been an eyesore for years. Neighbors are always petitioning the town to do something about it, but our hands have been tied, as they’ve kept the electricity and water connected and done regular, although minor, maintenance. Enough to keep the place from falling down or spontaneously bursting into flames. I’m well aware that high school kids have been known to climb the fence on dark nights and party on the grounds. I am, of course, mentioning no names. If I were a few years younger, I would likely have done the same. I also know Mark Grosse and Vicky Casey recently bought the property. They’ve moved in and have long-term plans for renovating, reconstruction, and reclaiming.”

  “As usual, you pretty much know everything.”

  “First, I’ve heard of this Jim Cole character, though. I’ll have a word with Tom Casey. We can’t have angry people accosting visitors or residents on our main street in the middle of the afternoon. We can’t have people accosting people anywhere at any time, but you get my point, honeybunch. What’s his problem?”

  “He claims he’s the rightful heir to Miss Emmeline Cole, and thus the house belongs to him.”

  “Unlikely, but as I said I’ll check with Tom.”

  We continued down the alley. Rachel McIntosh from Candy Cane Sweets came out with a bag of trash and called, “Good afternoon, Noel.”

  “Rachel. How’s business?”

  She tossed the bag into the bin. “Can’t complain. Fortunately, kids like candy as much at Easter as at Christmas, maybe even more. My handmade chocolate eggs are a big hit with their mothers too.”

  “Save a few for me,” Dad said.

  “Already done, Noel. Already done.” She went back inside. Mattie took his time checking out the fresh scents, and then he lifted his back leg to give the trash bin his seal of approval.

  “Tell me about the Cole family,” I said to my dad when we were moving again. “The history, I mean. I know Charles Cole intended the house to be handed down through his descendants, and then he never had any from his daughters. I don’t know why the house was abandoned for all these years. Why didn’t his surviving daughter sell it if she didn’t want to live in it?”

  Dad grimaced. “It’s a sad story, honeybunch. It’s also a long one, so why don’t we have a drink at A Touch of Holly and I’ll tell it to you.”

  “I can do that,” I said, and I called to Mattie to turn around.

  * * *

  “The Cole family, like several others at that time and in this place, made a lot of money in Great Lakes shipping in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They probably, like several others, enjoyed a nice bit of extra income during Prohibition from smuggling rum over from Canada. Henry Cole built the house we’re talking about in 1893. He had two sons, names of Charles and Robert, and two daughters, both of whom left Rudolph on their marriages and whose names are largely forgotten.”

  “As women’s too often are.”

  “You’re right about that, honeybunch—I mean Merry. Henry’s first wife died when Charles and his sisters were young. Henry remained unmarried for a long time, but eventually he did remarry. The second son, Robert, was a good deal younger than his half-siblings.”

  “Jim must be Robert’s son then, or claiming to be so.” I sipped my wine. I’d taken Mattie back to the office, promising him I wouldn’t be long, and Dad and I crossed the street to A Touch of Holly. We were comfortably settled in the bar, at a table for two overlooking the street, with drinks in front of us. “The Charles Cole we’re talking about is Emmeline’s father? The one who wrote the will we’re talking about?”

  “Yes. Charles was the eldest child in Henry’s family. Henry died in 1945 after making even more money manufacturing munitions for the war. Charles took over the businesses on his father’s death, as well as becoming master of the house. Charles married a woman from, of all places, Muddle Harbor, which was not the shocking incident it would be if it happened today. I believe her name was Ethel, but I don’t recall her original surname. They in turn had three children. All girls.

  “At this point the sad part of the story begins. The first girl fell out of a tree on the property when she was around fifteen years old, and she died as a result of head injuries suffered in the fall. The second daughter was killed in a horse-riding accident when she was in her early twenties. I should mention that, at the time, the Cole House property was far more extensive than it is today, including a substantial piece of lakefront. The house had stables and plenty of land for the girls to ride on. Charles himself died a year before the second daughter did, and Ethel sold the horses and much of the land, including what the stables were on, after the death of her second daughter. She likely was in need of the money.

  “By that time the family fortunes were dwindling considerably. The heyday of Great Lakes shipping was at its end. No one needed to run rum anymore, and although there’s always a market for munitions, Charles’s declining health in his later years meant control of the company had largely passed out of his hands. It was sold on his death, and his family—meaning his widow and sole surviving daughter—had no more involvement. Charles’s younger brother, Robert, left Rudolph for college, never came back, and as far as I know was never involved in the family business.”

  “Emmeline and her mother were left rattling around in that big old house.”

  “Yes. Eventually, only Emmeline remained. Her mother died in 1980, when Emmeline would have been a bit over thirty. Now, obviously this isn’t that long ago in the scheme of things, but the Coles were a very traditional family. Emmeline and her sisters had a good education at private boarding schools. I forget where they went, but they were never intended to have proper careers. After the death of her mother, Emmeline remained in the house, on her own. It was only forty years ago, and plenty of people remember her well. Or rather, don’t remember her well. She was young, just over thirty, but she rarely mixed with townspeople and isn’t known to have had much in the way of friends locally. She’d gone out of town to school, remember. She had a maid or two who did most of her shopping. She wasn’t entirely a recluse, though, and she did occasionally come to charitable functions or help out at fundraising events.”

  “I suppose that might explain why she left Rudolph,” I said. “If she didn’t have any friends or any prospects here. Doesn’t explain why she didn’t try to sell the house, though. It was worth a lot of money; she could have used that money to provide her with a fresh start and a full life. Instead, she moved all the way to Rochester? Not,” I added quickly, “that there’s anything wrong with Rochester.”

  Dad sipped his beer. “Emmeline herself got engaged in the spring of 1982 to a man from New York City. Something about his sister having gone to school with Emmeline, and the sister putting them in touch. He brought Emmeline out of her near seclusion. I have vague memories of them coming to the Easter dance at the community center. That was before Rudolph truly got into the whole Christmas Town thing, and the dance was a fundraiser for the hospital.” My father looked into the distance, and his thoughts were momentarily lost in memory. “I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to Emmeline and her date, because it was the first time I brought your mother to a Rudolph function.”

  I smiled to myself. I could just imagine a young and incredibly glamorous Aline Steiner, already making an impact in the world of opera, attending an Easter dance at the Rudolph Community Center. My parents were total opposites in almost every way, but their love for and devotion to each other remained complete.

  My father pulled himself back to the here and now and continued. “The date was a good-looking man, as far as I remember, and Emmeline— I didn’t really know her—looked so happy and so beautiful that spring.”

  “Let me guess,” cynical me said. “The guy stole what was left of her money and dumped her.”

  “He died.”

  “Oh no. What happened?”

  “The wedding was scheduled for the day after Christmas. It was going to be a small private affair. Emmeline’s parents were dead, as were her sisters. She had no relatives on her mother’s side, and on her father’s there were aunts and an uncle, but they’d moved away and had little to no contact. The fiancé arrived in Rudolph to spend the holiday with Emmeline prior to the wedding. He fell down the stairs on Christmas Eve. Broke his neck.”

  I gasped. “That poor woman. All that death surrounding her. Was there any suggestion of foul play? That someone might have pushed him?”

  “Not that I heard. He was apparently sneaking downstairs to put Emmeline’s special present under the tree. They’d been to a restaurant for dinner, and he’d had a lot to drink, and then, so the autopsy said, several more when they got back to the house, before turning in.”

  I twisted the stem of my wineglass in my hands. A sad story indeed.

  “Emmeline left town Christmas Day, leaving the house exactly as it was, Christmas tree in the front hall, decorations up. She took a small suitcase and never came back. She never sent for anything either. She never stepped foot inside Cole House or its grounds again. She initially went to a friend in Rochester, and then she bought a small house in that city. Which, so rumor goes, she never left other than to venture into town for some grocery shopping. Even that stopped when online delivery became a thing.”

  “You remembered all of this?”

  My father smiled at me. “No. When I heard Mark and Vicky were moving into Cole House, it got me remembering. I had to look up many of the details.”

  “I can see why that house has a bad reputation. Two young daughters died in accidents on the property, and then the fiancé of the sole remaining Cole had a tragic accident in the house. Why is this story not better known, Dad? I’ve always known the house was supposedly haunted, but never the details of why. Never thought to ask, now that I come to think of it. It was enough for us that it looked haunted.”

  “Hard to say, honeybunch. Maybe people just wanted to forget. Not long after the death of the fiancé and Emmeline leaving, we hit on the idea of trying to revive the fortunes of the town by taking advantage of the name and marketing Rudolph as a Year-Round Christmas destination. We didn’t want any negative thoughts associated with Christmas, so the story of the Cole family was swept under the rug.” By we, my dad meant I, but I didn’t bother to correct him. The whole thing had been his idea, and it was his hard work to make it happen that was responsible for the prosperity our town enjoys today.

  My dad stared into space. “Perhaps Emmeline would have eventually returned had we not taken on the Christmas Town idea. They say she never celebrated the holidays again. That her house in Rochester was wrapped in shadow all of December, and a wreath with a huge black bow hung on her door every Christmas Eve.”

  I ducked my head. What a tragic story. I wondered if Vicky knew this about her new house. I’d overheard the women in the bakery saying the grounds themselves were cursed. Was that what was bothering Vicky’s sleep?

  Chapter Seven

  “This movie’s terrible,” I said to Vicky.

  “Isn’t that the point?” she replied.

  “There’s bad movies and there’s terrible movies. I say we give up on it.”

  Vicky picked up the remote, pointed it at the screen, and the room was plunged into near darkness. We hadn’t had a “bad movie” night for a long time, so when Vicky suggested I come to her house to drink wine, eat pizza, talk, and watch a movie, I’d eagerly agreed.

  Sandbanks and Mattie snoozed contentedly on the floor next to the coffee table. Vicky had brought a small table and a sofa into what had once been some sort of study or office at the back of the house, next to the morning room they were using as their bedroom. No curtains covered the windows, which didn’t matter as the rear of the house looked out onto dark, shrouded woods.

  Without exchanging a word, we’d passed on selecting a horror movie for tonight.

  Vicky reached for her wineglass, curled her legs up underneath her, and said, “So, as long as we’re not watching a movie, we have to talk. You start.”

  “I last saw you yesterday, so I don’t have a heck of a lot to talk about. Did you show Mark your wedding dresses?”

  “Of course not. I don’t have a scrap of respect for tradition in my body, as you are well aware, never mind wedding traditions, which are the worst of them all, but even I know it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride’s dress before the ceremony.” Her face crinkled. “I might have to give that more thought. I bet his first wife kept her totally over-the-top wedding gown a secret, and look how well that marriage turned out.”

  An empty cardboard box and two plates containing nothing but scraps of crust were all that remained of our pizza dinner. I reached for a lemon lavender tart Vicky’d brought home from her bakery. As an Easter touch each perfect little piece of pastry had a tiny chocolate egg piped on the top. I took a bite: it tasted as wonderful as it looked.

  “My mom was going to invite you and Mark to their house for dinner on Easter Sunday. It’ll be the usual collection of whoever Mom gathers up at the last moment. That was before you made your sudden wedding plans. Would you still like to come, or are you going on your honeymoon?”

  “I’d like to come, but I’ll be on my own. We’re taking Saturday off to get married, but then straight back to the routine. We’re having brunch at my parents’, and then Mark’s going in for dinner shift. Easter Sunday’s a big day for treating the grandparents to a fancy dinner out.”

  “He’s working the day after his wedding?”

  “Yes. I won’t be, because the bakery’ll be closed, but I’ll be in on Monday, bright and cheerful. We’re putting our money into the house, as well as any vacation time we manage to get.”

  Mattie woke with a start. His big head jerked up, and his ears stood at attention. He bounded nimbly (as nimbly as he is ever inclined to do) to his feet. Old Sandbanks was almost completely deaf, but he felt Mattie moving and was startled awake. He gave a woof of surprise.

  A second later we humans heard it too. A loud knock, sounding like someone rapping on a door. Vicky and I exchanged glances. Her eyes were wide, and the color had drained from her face. It sounded again.

  “Someone’s at the door,” I said.

  “It’s coming from inside the house.” Her voice shook.

  I jumped to my feet. “Nonsense. I’ll get it.”

  I ran down the long dark hallway. Mattie passed me. I felt Vicky behind me, and old Sandbanks trying to keep up. The bulbs in the enormous chandelier hanging above the front hall had not been replaced, but a small light burned above the stairs leading to the second floor.

  I threw the lock, turned the handle, and opened the door. No one was there. I peered out. It was dark now; most of the trees were not yet in leaf, but there was no moonlight for them to block. Lamps lining the driveway weren’t on, and we were too far away from the street for the streetlamps to be visible.

  I stepped onto the porch and looked around. Nothing and no one appeared out of the darkness, and all was quiet.

  Mattie woofed softly. I looked down at him. His hackles were standing on end and his ears were up. I laid my hand on the top of his head, feeling the strong, solid warmth beneath.

  “Hello?” I called.

  “Come inside,” Vicky said. “Quickly.”

  I did so and called to Mattie. He didn’t move. “Mattie. Matterhorn. Come here.” I reached out, grabbed his collar, and pulled him after me. He came, although reluctantly. He was a well-trained dog. At his size, he has to be. If he didn’t want to move, Matterhorn did not move, and there would be nothing I could do about it.

  Vicky slammed the door.

  Almost against my will I looked at the stairs leading up into the darkness of the unoccupied second floor. Then I looked at the cracked black and white tiles at my feet. Emmeline Cole’s fiancé had fallen to his death down these stairs. He would have landed near where I was standing. Maybe on the very spot. It had been approaching midnight on Christmas Eve, and he’d been on his way to playfully place a gift for his loved one under the tree. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to wake her by turning on the light, and so he’d stumbled in the darkness. Fallen from the top of the steps maybe. The steps were steep, and there were a great many of them. Had Emmeline heard him fall, or had she woken bright and early on Christmas morning, full of the joy of the season, and …