Page 14 of Ghostridden
“Chamomile tea.” She settled next to me with her own cup and Gil immediately slunk onto to her lap, the traitor. “I figured you could do with something calming.”
“What I could do with is a stiff drink. Or maybe ten.” But I took a sip of the tea. The warmth was comforting, anyway, combating the chill that had descended on me once I realized these people actually believed a ghost had vandalized my house.
“There’s a pub in town. I’ll take you down there in a bit and stand you at least a couple of rounds.” She nudged my shoulder. “Although we should probably wait until at least lunchtime for that.”
I glanced at her sidelong. “Do you really believe this could be ghost-related?”
She gazed down into her cup, her fingers cradling its bowl and laced through its handle. “You have to understand, Maz. I grew up here. My dads both grew up here. We were raised on the tales of Thaddeus Richdale and his quest to reach beyond the veil.”
“Richdale? Like the town?”
She nodded. “His father, Josiah, was a blacksmith who parlayed his smithy into a fortune supplying 49ers with shovels and pans during the gold rush, which convinced his son that only fools chased anything as chancy as gold.”
“Wait. Gold was chancy, but ghosts were a safe bet?”
“Ghosts were Thaddeus’s thing. Josiah’s thing was money. Money and paranoia. He moved his family up here after the gold rush ended, convinced that everyone in Sacramento was trying to rob him.”
“And people in Oregon weren’t?”
Taryn smirked. “They’d have had to find him—and his money—first. When he parked his family here, there weren’t any people around for miles. The isolation probably sent all of them a little loony. After Josiah passed suddenly, Thaddeus became convinced that he’d hidden half his fortune somewhere. He became obsessed with finding a way to reach beyond the grave and shake the truth out of him.”
“I take it he didn’t succeed?”
“Not for lack of trying. He built Richdale Manor as a mirror of the Winchester Mystery House because he’d heard Sarah Winchester had succeeded in contacting spirits. He started Richdale University—although it was only Richdale College then—and endowed it with the proviso that half the income would go to the parapsychology and paranormal studies departments, and should either of those departments be shut down, his money would immediately be withdrawn from the school and held in trust for the person who finally discovered Josiah’s hidden treasure.”
“I take it nobody’s managed that either.”
“Frankly? I don’t think there ever was a hidden treasure.”
“Ah,” I said, tapping the side of my nose. “Daddy issues.”
She snorted a laugh. “Something like that.”
“So why is the college in Richdale, but Richdale Manor is here in Ghost?” It was, in fact, across the street from my house—what I’d taken for a park.
She shrugged. “Josiah wanted an estate. A big one.”
“So nobody could get close enough to steal his money?”
“Yep. But he needed a population center to supply his family’s needs, so Richdale grew beyond his property line. Our town built up around the manor later, as Thaddeus sold off parcels of land in his never-ending attempt to keep up with Sarah Winchester.”
“Did he name the town Ghost?”
She smiled crookedly. “No. That was something the first townspeople started.”
“Because the place was haunted?”
“No. Actually, because Thaddeus Richdale turned into a virtual ghost himself, getting more and more desperate to crack the secret of the beyond before he passed through the veil himself.”
“So—” I gestured to Saul and Patrice, who’d cleared enough of the mess that the library rug’s jewel tones peeked out between the books and papers that still remained. “—care to explain their attitude?”
“Thaddeus never succeeded, but he left the Manor in trust to the town, provided they continue to search for proof of the hereafter.”
“And the treasure, presumably.”
“Pfft.” She waved a hand. “Nobody takes that seriously anymore. The Manor’s a museum now—Dad is the director—but finding proof has turned into something of a town hobby. We’re proud of it, of our relationship to the University and its paranormal studies program. We’re proud of being the town that never stops looking. But we’ve never found evidence.” She nodded toward the library. “Until now.”
“I’m still not convinced,” I grumbled.
