Page 9 of Dead Calm (Cold Case Psychic #38)

When they’d gotten back to their suite, Ten had ordered dinner from room service.

Chicken noodle soup for Ronan, and a Caesar salad with grilled chicken for himself.

He’d kept his eye on Ronan while they ate, in case his sick stomach came back.

Thankfully, it hadn’t. Ten had no doubt his husband would be back to normal and wolfing down pancakes at the breakfast buffet in the morning.

“How do you want to go about this investigation?” Ten asked, knowing these sorts of cases were Ronan’s bread and butter.

“I’m going to look through the police database for incidents occurring at this hotel.

Thanks to a case we worked jointly with the Providence police, I’ve got login credentials for their database.

Why don’t you look for information about Vivienne and Walt?

Where are their graves, for a start? Why did no one claim their bodies?

” Ronan wore a puzzled look. “How do you not come forward and claim your daughter’s body? ”

Ten frowned. He’d been wondering the same thing himself.

“The hurricane hit during The Great Depression. People were on the move looking for work or were forced to move in with other relatives. I guess it’s possible that no family could be found.

Based on what Lainie told us, this area was a mess after the storm.

Maybe their relatives were displaced by the storm and they didn’t have access to a phone or newspapers. ”

“Maybe,” Ronan agreed. “I wouldn’t have stopped until I found my daughter.”

“Same,” Ten agreed. He wouldn’t have eaten or slept until his child had been found and laid to rest. He grabbed his phone and pulled up the website for The Providence Journal .

According to the page, the paper had been in existence since 1829.

Most of which had been digitized. He typed “Holbrook Pointe” into the search field.

The articles that came back mostly dealt with Davidson Holbrook mourning the loss of his only child, Henry, in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

After his death, the family had gone to wrack and ruin, with Davidson’s wife, Cecile, passing two years later.

Five years after that, Davidson sold the house and land to a developer from New York, who wanted to create an upscale retreat for rich people who didn’t have the kind of money needed to spend summers in Newport like the Vanderbilts.

Lastly, were the articles about the hurricane.

He clicked the first one and couldn’t believe what he saw. “Oh, wow!” Ten muttered.

“What?” Ronan asked.

Ten turned his phone toward Ronan. “This is what the hotel looked like before and after the hurricane in 1933.” The pictures were one on top of the other.

The devastation was catastrophic. The wrap-around porches were completely wiped away, as were most of the heavy river stones that comprised the hotel’s facade.

All of the windows on the first floor were broken out and there was a gaping hole taking out nearly the entire right side of the building.

“See this line?” Ronan pinched out the photo, where a dark, dirty line was visible just above the blown out windows.

“Yeah, what is it?” Ten asked.

“The high water mark.” Ronan shook his head. “It’s gotta be twenty feet from the ground to this spot. I can’t imagine how terrifying it must have been when the storm-driven waves came ashore. Vivienne and Walt didn’t stand a chance. Did you find any articles about them?”

Ten scanned through the articles. “Yeah, this one talks about the number of dead and missing people. There were 138 people killed in Rhode Island alone and dozens of people were missing.” He kept reading until one line of the article stopped him cold.

“The owner of the hotel at the time of the hurricane was a man named Albert Cross. He’s quoted in the article as saying he mourned the loss of Vivienne and Walt, but that they’d been given the order to evacuate one day before the storm was set to strike.

What were they still doing at the hotel when the hurricane came ashore? ”

“That’s a good question to ask Vivienne the next time you speak to her. Didn’t Lainie say that she’d gone back for something she forgot and that Walt drove off without her?” Ronan asked, sounding puzzled.

“If Walt and Vivienne were killed in the storm, who knew the circumstances of their failed evacuation?” None of this made any sense to Tennyson.

“Maybe the timeline Cross gave was wrong?” Ronan was silent for a few seconds. “What if he was lying about giving the order to evacuate one day before the storm hit?”

“It’s possible,” Ten admitted. He went back to scanning articles. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“Tell me!” Ronan scooted closer to Ten. His eyes glowed with curiosity.

“According to this story, Albert Cross was arrested six months after the hurricane on charges of fraud. He owed every bank in Newport money. He’d used Holbrook Pointe as collateral on loans he’d secured.

The only problem was that he didn’t own the hotel.

” Ten was stunned. How was such a thing even possible?

“What?” Ronan sounded incredulous.

“The article says the hotel was owned by John Cross, Albert’s uncle, who was seventy-five, when the hurricane hit. Albert had been given his uncle’s power of attorney. He nearly bankrupted John. Cross was sentenced to ten years in prison, but only served three.”

“Don’t tell me they let that asshole out for good behavior?”

Ten shook his head. “No, Albert was shivved in the shower. He owed the wrong people money. Just like on the outside, he wrote checks his ass couldn’t cash. He was whacked by a member of a prominent Boston crime family who’d been convicted of bootlegging and murder in Rhode Island.”

“What happened to the hotel after the hurricane?”

“It sat vacant until 1964 when it was purchased by a prominent real estate broker. James Walsh sunk nearly ten million dollars into the restoration of the broken down hotel. He wanted it to rise like a phoenix from the ashes. Walsh was also responsible for rehabbing the barn and turning it into guest quarters. He renamed the place Hurricane Pointe as a way to show his triumph over the storm.”

“Does he still own the hotel?”

Ten shook his head. “Walsh died in 2006. The property was put into trust and is managed by Walsh’s daughter Maggie.” Ten sighed and reached for his bottle of water. “That’s all the news I’ve got on my end. What did you find out about crime at the hotel?”

“Turns out you were on to something when you mentioned a time loop of sorts. In the sixty years Hurricane Pointe has been open to guests, there have been forty-one cases of police reported assault. Of those cases, thirty-two involved employees of the hotel.”

“Okay, that can’t be a coincidence. This happens like every year.”

Ronan nodded. “Notice I said police reported abuse. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that a lot of these assaults went unreported.”

Ten knew Ronan made a good point. “Okay, so of the thirty-two reported cases, were they one a year like we think? Or were there years when there were several?”

“It’s usually one per year, which is an odd statistic in itself, but there’s something even crazier here.” Ronan studied his phone for a few seconds.

“What do you mean, crazier?” One reported assault per year between two members of the staff at Hurricane Pointe was pretty crazy. What the hell could possibly be more off the wall than that?

“Each of these assaults takes place the week before Labor Day.” Ronan shrugged. “In all my years of studying crime statistics, I’ve never encountered anything like that before in my life.”

Ten couldn’t believe what Ronan was saying. “That’s this week.”

Ronan nodded. “Just one more reason to confirm your time loop theory. Have you ever encountered anything like this before?”

“I’ve never witnessed this phenomenon first hand,” Ten said. “Psychics call this a residual haunting. I would take it a step further and call it a psychic imprint.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a residual haunting that coincides with the change of season, atmospheric pressure, the amount of sunlight in a day.

That’s exactly what’s happening here. This is the last week of the season at the hotel.

It closes for the year on Labor Day. So, not only is there a change of seasons, along with the days getting shorter, we’ve also got the end of seasonal operations for the hotel.

All of these things come together at once and form a psychic storm, a hurricane of emotions, if you will.

” Ten shook his head. He’d read about these kinds of hauntings but had never been involved with one.

“It’s a perfect storm,” Ronan said, softly. “We’re gonna have to keep extra close tabs on Lainie and Kurt. If this relationship is a powder keg about to explode, we need to stop it from happening. ”

“Agreed,” Ten said. “I’m going to see if I can get Vivienne to come speak with me again. I’m also gonna talk to Cope and maybe Everly on how we can stop this crazy train from roaring down the tracks not only this week, but forever.”

“If you’ve never encountered this kind of haunting before, how could Everly know how to stop it?” Ronan asked.

Ten smiled. “Our daughter has this extra sixth sense for helping people in pain. With Everly, it’s pure instinct. She might not need to understand the circumstances to help Vivienne, and even Walt for that matter.”

“Is he here?” Ronan asked. “Did Vivienne say anything that made you think Walt is behind this?”

“When I asked her about crossing over, Vivienne said that she needed to stay here to help keep women safe and that she didn’t want to cross over and run into Walt.

I have to imagine if Walt was here terrorizing her, she’d know it.

It’s possible that Walt’s keeping himself well hidden, the same way Vivienne did when we arrived. ”

“Walt’s still pulling the strings from the afterlife,” Ronan said. “He’s controlling and keeping her close and she might not even know it. God, what an asshole.”

Ten couldn’t agree more. It was on the tip of his tongue to caution Ronan about speaking of him in a derogatory fashion, but maybe that was the kick to the ass, no pun intended, that Walt needed to reveal himself and his evil plan.