The Ghosts of Notchey Creek Read online

  The Ghosts of Notchey Creek

  A Harley Henrickson Mystery

  Liz S. Andrews

  Copyright © 2020 by Liz S. Andrews

  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.

  ISBN: 978-0-578-61936-1

  For Drew and Scout,

  always.

  “There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories - Ghost Stories, or more shame for us - round the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it. “

  * * *

  ~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Tree

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Books in the Harley Henrickson Mystery Series

  Smoky Mountain Morning

  Demerara Syrup

  Brown Sugar Syrup

  Holiday Cheer Cocktail

  Hot Buttered Whiskey

  Mayor Montgomery’s List of Grievances Hot Cocoa

  Grandma Ziegler’s Gin Martini

  Christmas Cider

  Rusty Nail

  Whiskey Eggnog

  Opha Mae’s Cosmopolitan

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  1

  A Ghost of Christmas Past

  Moonlight filtered through the windows, sending a pool of gray light over Beau Arson in his bed.

  A sound in the hallway had woken him, and he strained to hear beyond the bedroom door. Footsteps rapped down marble tiles, past the oil portraits, and toward the grand staircase and foyer below. The back entrance—had he heard those grand double doors opening, allowing in a swell of cold air from the terrace?

  In the darkness, the smooth weight of leather-bound pages rested on his chest. The digital clock on the nightstand read 12:00 a.m., and he realized he had fallen asleep reading Great Expectations again. Pip had been in the graveyard, he remembered, searching among the headstones for the family he had lost, the parents he had never known.

  He thought of his own parents, James and Marian Sutcliffe, buried beyond the doors of his ancestral mansion, parents he had never known either. He was thirty-two years old, an orphan brought up in the foster care system, his true origins revealed only recently.

  He held Great Expectations in his hands, marking the open page with a bookmark given to him on a fateful summer day long ago, by a little girl with dark brown braids.

  You are Loved

  Harley Henrickson

  He ran his finger down the length of it, then pressed it into the book’s spine.

  He rose, not reaching for his robe. Though it was the second week of December and the winter wind howled beyond Briarcliffe’s limestone walls, he was not cold. Not here.

  Los Angeles had been cold. He remembered the harshness of the streetlights, the gray expanse of asphalt stretching across endless desert, of camera flashes, of being surrounded by worshipful, beautiful people, yet feeling entirely alone.

  There was warmth to be found here, tucked into the folds of these ancient mountains. The blanketing silence of old-growth forest quieted his soul. The Smokies seemed to embrace him like an old father, welcoming their prodigal son back into the fold.

  Long hair fell in waves down his bare back as he lowered his feet to the Persian rug. Rising from the immense bed made of ancient walnut, his thoughts drifted to the twenty-five generations of timber barons who’d slept there, caressing the sheets and pillows with their own trademark golden hair.

  A path of moonlight led to the tall windows, and he flinched as his bare feet transitioned from plush rug to marble tile.

  Snow crystals rattled against the panes, peppering the night sky and the expanse of lawn as it rolled toward the pinewood forest and the snow-capped Smokies beyond. Nestled in the valley below lay the sleeping town of Notchey Creek. The little houses were dark. Traces of smoke rose from their chimneys.

  A brood of dark clouds eclipsed the moon, darkening the night sky, the lawn, and the forest. Suddenly, like a little match being ignited among the trees, a light appeared in the woods—flickering, disappearing, then reappearing once more with the sweep of the pines. It grew brighter, swelling like a heartbeat, as it approached the edge of the forest and the tree line.

  He readjusted his eyes, wondering if his imagination was conjuring images, remnants of a lingering dream, or the spectral aftermath of late-night whiskey.

  But the light breached the forest and entered the grounds, floated across the grass, made its way toward Briarcliffe. It came toward him, as if it knew he was standing there, watching it from the window.

  He shivered, and a prick of dread crawled up his back, bringing the tattoo there to life. The angel’s wings expanded and retracted with a tremble.

  He thought to look away, to return to his bed, to bury the ghost with sleep. But he found he could not turn away, and could not bury it. The vision had transfixed him, paralyzed his attention on the window and the spirit that beckoned beyond the paned glass.

  Within the light a figure appeared.

  Hair of raven black fell past her shoulders, like a dark stain against the prism as it carried her across the lawn. A length of rope hung about her neck and draped down her chest. The pale flesh stood out in stark contrast to her black dress, as it flowed down her body, swallowed by the light.

  She opened her mouth to speak, and the wint
er wind howled. The trees quaked, rattling the window glass, seizing him from his terror, and returned the clarity to his mind.

  He grabbed the heavy drapes and snapped them closed, welcoming the quiet dark of the bedroom again. His heart pounded in his chest as shallow breaths escaped from his lungs.

  A sense of foreboding fell over him as his breathing settled. Terror became anesthetized by a new reality in his mind, and hope diminished.

  He had left Los Angeles, left the metaphorical ghosts behind, only to find a new one here, in this place of promise and innocence.

  2

  Aqua Vitae

  Eight Hours Later

  Water trickled beside Harley Henrickson as limestone walls arched and descended into darkness. In the first hours of morning, when the skies were dark and the world lay sleeping, she had taken a break from her work at the whiskey distillery. She ventured to this ancient place where the stones sat hard at her back, and snowflakes dappled the moonlight outside.

  She found comfort in this place—in the still, dark quiet. Once a safe haven for woodland creatures, now it was a safe haven for her.

  The cave, a constant and temperate vessel of fifty-six degrees, was very much alive. It pumped cool, crisp spring water from the earth’s belly. Its limestone walls erased the iron and baptized the liquid into something greater.

  For as the snow cleansed the outside landscape, so too did the cave cleanse the water, returning it to a state of innocence.

  Aqua vitae, the monks of the fifteenth century had called it. The water of life.

  The lifeblood of whiskey.

  She removed a water testing kit from her pocket and lowered a paper strip into the spring, checking to ensure the water was free of iron and other impurities. Beneath the cave, a pipe ran from the spring to the distillery, dispensing hundreds of gallons of water each day for the purpose of distilling Henrickson’s Whiskey.

  A swell of light pooled from the cave’s opening, the surrounding forest and fields bleached and silenced by blankets of snow. Waves of snow rolled and crested in an endless progression toward the foothills. It crashed and gathered at the base of pines and boulders, and ascended the Smoky Mountains in layers—thickening, then collapsing in sun-kissed heaps.

  Brightness assaulted her senses as she emerged from the cave; and she drew in a deep breath of fresh air. The sun had risen, igniting the snow-covered fields and ice crystals into heaps of treasure. The intensity of the sky cast a blue gleam over the pale landscape.

  Crusts of snow and pine needles crunched beneath her boots as she descended the hill and tunneled through the trees. She pushed back snow-heavy limbs, as the wet cold spattered against her hands and face.

  She often walked this way, taking in the Henrickson whiskey distillery from afar, and admired the silver slant roof gleaming through the pines. The distillery was a red expanse of barn with two silos and a mill. The mill’s persevering wheel churned above the creek and the collection of brown sheds, their roofs now frosted like gingerbread houses.

  It was all hers, the legacy left to her by her late grandfather, Jackson Henrickson. After ten years of fighting cancer, he succumbed to the disease a year prior.

  Harley was twenty-six, an orphan since the age of eight, who had sacrificed a Harvard scholarship to care for her grandfather, and save the ailing distillery. There were many things she had wanted to do with her life—attend college, write novels, travel abroad—but circumstances had dealt a different hand. While she felt sadness and regret over losing those opportunities, she realized she had made the only decision she could have made.

  She had cherished the time spent with her grandfather, even when things became excruciating near the end, when the only thing really left of his ailing body was his soul. She cared for him just like he had always cared for her, acting not only as her mother and father, but as her very best friend.

  Oh, how she missed him!

  His memory was still very much alive in this place. Everywhere she looked, it was a constant reminder of the lives and land he touched.

  She continued up the well-worn path, and as she mounted the hill, she could see for miles beyond, to a vineyard of famished Muscadines that drooped on a hillside among outgrowths of rhododendron. Beyond the vineyard lay a series of meadows and farms, their boundaries obscured by drifts of snow. Above them, the lifts that bisected the ski slopes were ready to carry passengers to the summit so they could sweep back down through the trees once more.

  It was ski season in the Smokies, and she looked forward to greeting the tourists at her liquor store downtown, Smoky Mountain Spirits.

  As she descended the hill, the last of the snow clouds departed, and a swell of sunlight ignited the tin roof of the Henricksons’ ancestral home. Where a log cabin once sat in the 1790s, a two-story white farmhouse now stood, its wraparound porch lined with homemade rocking chairs. A cluster of maples stretched their skeletal arms across the roof and porch below. The roof and porch exposed a worn coat of paint; the eaves and shutters shivered in the wind.

  The house was always quiet before noon. Its single occupant, Harley’s great-uncle Tater, was given to late nights at Bud’s Pool Hall, and he would not stir until the early afternoon.

  Uncle Tater had never married, his favorite quote being, “Why get married and please one, when you can stay single and please ’em all?” And that was what he did.

  Harley, for her part, also lived alone, but in a small yellow cottage in town. Her great-aunt, Wilma True, the other remaining Henrickson, lived with her husband, Uncle Buck, on a turkey farm about a mile down the road.

  Her morning sojourn at an end, Harley approached the distillery’s white double doors, beat the snow from her boots, and surveyed the parking lot.

  Aunt Wilma had arrived for work, her trusty green lawn mower parked outside with the awning still up, providing shelter from the wind and snow. Parked beside the lawn mower was Opha Mae Shaw’s pink Ford Pinto, a pair of fuzzy dice dangling from the rearview mirror, and a Mary Kay decal affixed to the driver side door. With the recent uptick in business, Harley had hired Opha Mae to assist Aunt Wilma in her duties at the distillery.

  Harley opened the distillery’s doors and embraced the warmth.

  3

  Of Pigs and Elves and Muffins

  A Christmas tree smiled from the distillery office’s corner, and a fire popped and crackled from the belly of a wood-burning stove. Above them, strings of lights and garland wove like strands of sparkling ivy across the wooden beams, illuminating the whiskey barrels on the second floor.

  Among this picture of wholesome festivity sat two women in muumuus and holiday cardigans, painting their fingernails in between chomps of whiskey fudge and sips of hot coffee. Their eyes were fixed on a flat-screen television mounted to the opposite wall, and Harley thought they must have just survived their rite of watching a dramatic soap opera passage. One of Opha Mae’s curlers had sprung from her gray head, and Aunt Wilma’s blond wig was tilted to one side.

  While some people wore day-of-the-week underpants, Aunt Wilma wore day-of-the-week wigs.

  It was Friday, which meant it was Liberace day.

  Lying on the floor in front of the desk was Harley’s pet pig Matilda, wearing a green elf costume stretched across her pink mammoth body. A matching pointed hat was secured by a string beneath her chin, and the hat fell sideways against the wood floor as she slept. Two of Opha Mae Shaw’s pet chickens were also in residence. Lady McBawk lay nestled in the crook of Matilda’s leg, and Pecker was—well, pecking at crumbs on Wilma’s desk.

  “Merry Christmas,” Harley said, closing the distillery’s doors behind her.

  Aunt Wilma shoved her index finger to her mouth. “Shh, young’un, we’re watchin’ our stories.”

  Knowing better than to interrupt the lifelong friends during their stories, Harley waited for a commercial break before she dared ask about something as trivial as their work.

  Right on cue, melodramatic music signaled the scene
had ended and it was time for a commercial break.

  “Well,” Wilma said, “I reckon the show’s been goin’ downhill ever since Stefano put that demon in Marlena, and then that priest boyfriend of hers exorcised it out.”

  “Them was the good ol’ days,” Opha Mae said, smacking her lips. “Ain’t been the same without Stefano. God rest his poor ol’ evil soul.”

  The distillery grew quiet as the two women observed a moment of silence in honor of Stefano. In the background, a pharmaceutical commercial advertised its latest drug, two of the side effects being uncontrollable laughter and projectile diarrhea.