Page 95 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
“Get. Off. Me!” Shea shoved Marnie away from her, and Marnie fell against the lighthouse window. Her body crumpled to the metal floor, but Marnie reached for part of the lantern’s mechanism, pulling herself to her feet.
“Where is it?” Marnie’s breaths came swiftly, and the women stood in a sort of standoff, the lantern between them, the waves and the storm held at bay only by the grace of the lighthouse’s frame and glass. Marnie’s nightgown—eerie and all too familiar as the ghost of Annabel—fell to her ankles.
“Where’s the map?” Marnie swiped blood from her lip where Shea had nicked her.
“I don’thaveit!” Shea shouted.
Marnie shoved her long hair back, hair that when waitressing had been pinned into a tidy roll. Now she looked like a crazed version of a humantryingto be a ghost. “I won’t let it go,” Marnie spat. “You don’t know what it means to have it!”
“How do you know you’ll even have rights to the silver vein if you find the map?” Shea shot back. “Most of this area is state park land! Even if the map tells you where it is—”
“It’s not about that!
“Everyone thinks that Rebecca’s secret should be kept.” Marnie shook her finger at Shea. “The stupid map should stay hidden. But Gene knows where it is. He always has! But Jonathan found out where it was!”
Jonathan.
The name startled Shea.
“Jonathan Marks?”
Marnie’s face shifted into a sneer. “Penny’sman. I know he found out where it’s hidden. It isfamily legacy. Family legacy, I tell you, and I will not be cut out!”
“Cut out?” Shea said, clueless as to what Marnie meant.
Marnie took a menacing step toward Shea. Shea backed away, glancing behind her to gauge the space between her and the stairs. If she could get to them, she could run. Run awayfrom Marnie and the lighthouse. How had Marnie even gottenintothe lighthouse to begin with? With Captain Gene and Holt and Pete, she would have had to pass them all to get in. Unless ... she had snuck inbeforeShea had been stopped by Holt at Annabel’s grave. Marnie had to have waited for an opportune moment to sneak into the lighthouse, and when Shea left the lighthouse tonight, she must have made good of the moment. Which meant...
“You’ve been watching us? Here at the lighthouse?” Shea accused.
“At least you figured that out,” Marnie scoffed.
“Didyouhit Pete with your car?” Shea glared at the woman, who didn’t even flinch.
“He was in the way.” Marnie’s admission was unemotional. “He never even saw me.”
“In the way of what?” Shea shot back, inching toward the stairs.
Marnie laughed. “You!I’ve spent my entire life trying to get out of Penny and out of Captain Gene where the map is hidden. Holt has been worthless. Messing with the lighthouse, inviting guests. At least when Jonathan lived here, I was able to toy with his brain and get him all mixed up about Annabel’s ghost. The man thought he was losing his mind!”
“You’rethe ghost,” Shea stated. Marnie was the footsteps. The woman on the shore. She was dressed to fool the occupants and play with their superstitions. She must have a key—some way to enter. “But why? How does haunting a lighthouse have any effect on its occupants?”
“It was supposed to make Jonathan leave,” Marnie said with satisfaction. “It was supposed to makeyouleave.” She grinned with clenched teeth. “I can’t search this place with people here. I had time for a while, after Jonathan and before Holt turned the lighthouse into a rental. I have a key—I could search everywhere, but then ... people. People everywhere. They never stopped coming!”
“I don’t know where the map is hidden!” Shea’s foot found the first stair, and she stepped down onto it.
Marnie was rounding the lantern. “That’s what Jonathan said, but he was lying.”
“But you shot him anyway?” Shea had already drawn that conclusion, yet now she voiced it.
Marnie clucked her tongue. “Well, it was a pity the gun misfired. I hadn’t intended...” She paused, seeming to check herself. “He wasn’t supposed to die. Then my pathetic nephew buys the lighthouse—Holt has always been in the way.”
Confusion spread through Shea. She paused on the lighthouse step. “You and Penny are sisters?”
“Stepsisters,” Marnie corrected. “Captain Gene married my mother, Edna, after Penny’s mother died. My mother already had me, but I should have been his daughter too. I was just a child! Yet it was always Penny first.Always.And Captain Gene told me as much when I was a teenager. The family legacy—theHilliardfamily legacy—would always be hers through his bloodline. She washis.”
Marnie’s expression seemed to soften. Vulnerability entered her voice. “Haven’t you ever just wanted to be loved for something? Without the Hilliard legacy, I’m just Marnie the waitress. The spinster. The daughter of the second wife, Edna. My mother doesn’t care. She always loved the history, and when she and Captain Gene divorced over thirty years ago, she didn’t care about losing the legacy. But Ido.” Marnie’s words stunned her. They were so poignant, so brutally true that they knocked the breath from Shea’s intent to flee. “And I won’t let Gene keep me away from that legacy—the silver, the money. It should also include me!”
Shea remembered the gravestone.Edgar. “And how does Edgar fit into the story? The lighthouse keeper?” she asked.
