The Stranger Vanishes, page 1
Contents
Cover
Also by Wendy Corsi Staub
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Also by Wendy Corsi Staub
Lily Dale mysteries
NINE LIVES
SOMETHING BURIED, SOMETHING BLUE
DEAD OF WINTER
PROSE AND CONS *
Standalone
THE OTHER FAMILY
Nightwatcher series
NIGHTWATCHER
SLEEPWALKER
SHADOWKILLER
Social Media
THE GOOD SISTER
THE PERFECT STRANGER
THE BLACK WIDOW
Mundy’s Landing
BLOOD RED
BLUE MOON
BONE WHITE
Foundlings trilogy
LITTLE GIRL LOST
DEAD SILENCE
THE BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER
* available from Severn House
THE STRANGER VANISHES
Wendy Corsi Staub
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2023
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
This eBook edition first published in 2022 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © Wendy Corsi Staub, 2022
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Wendy Corsi Staub to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5017-1 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0775-3 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0774-6 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
In loving memory of my dear father-in-law
Leonard Staub
Somehow, Dad, I truly thought you’d live forever …
But you will in the hearts and memories of all who loved you –
especially my three men who proudly carry your last name and legacy,
and to whom I dedicate this book, as always:
For Mark, Morgan, and Brody Staub, with love.
‘What’s past is prologue.’
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
ONE
‘It’s been a year.’
Odelia Lauder’s words startle Bella Jordan. Not just because she’d been lost in thought and forgotten she’s not alone here at the water’s edge behind Valley View Guesthouse, but because Odelia seems to have read her mind.
That probably shouldn’t be startling either, given, well … Lily Dale.
On the surface, the gated lakeside colony is like any other in this picturesque corner of New York State. Narrow lanes are lined with ancient shade trees and ramshackle cottages. Many homes, including Valley View, date back to the town’s nineteenth-century roots, with gingerbread trim, fish-scale shingles, turrets, and mansards. A few, like Valley View, are winterized and occupied year-round, but the majority are empty from Labor Day till June.
One distinct feature sets this cottage community apart from the others. As the birthplace of modern spiritualism back in the 1800s, Lily Dale remains populated to this day by people who talk to dead people.
Most homes have a sign bracket and shingle announcing the occupant’s specialty.
DORIS HENDERSON, SHAMANIC HEALER
MISTY STARR, PSYCHIC CONSULTANT
And of course, right next door to Valley View: ODELIA LAUDER, REGISTERED MEDIUM
As a newcomer and outsider, Bella is pretty much the lone skeptic among believers who spend their days channeling thoughts, spirits, healing energy, auras – just about all things paranormal, as far as she can tell.
Sometimes, her friends here do know things they couldn’t possibly have known. And sometimes – like now, with Odelia – they really do seem to be reading her mind.
It’s been a year.
Just before Odelia uttered those words, Bella had been gazing at the shimmering sunset on Cassadaga Lake and thinking of Valley View’s previous manager, Leona Gatto, found dead almost on this very spot last June nineteenth.
Not merely dead.
Murdered.
‘Odelia? It’s June nineteenth, so when you say “it’s been a year”, are you talking about—’
‘It’s Juneteenth. That’s the official name for today’s date.’
Bella nods. It’s all their mutual friend Luther Ragland has talked about for weeks, as chair of the Juneteenth committee in neighboring Dunkirk, where he resides. This evening’s events include a statue dedication, speeches, and a banquet to benefit Black youth.
‘It’s a federal holiday now, you know,’ Odelia goes on, ‘commemorating the emancipation of African American slaves.’
‘Wait – is that what you meant when you said it’s been a year?’
‘My goodness, no! That happened in 1865!’
Bella heaves an inward sigh, accustomed not just to these circuitous conversations, but to Odelia’s ability to ‘remember’ incidents that occurred centuries ago.
She may have been born in the 1950s – this time around, as she likes to say – but she claims to have been reincarnated as everything from a Native American tribal chief to a nineteenth-century astronomer to a freighthopping Depression-era hobo. So when she talks about the emancipation, it’s not unreasonable to expect her to claim she’d been an eyewitness to the Gettysburg address, or some such milestone.
In this moment, however, Odelia isn’t lost in a past lifetime.
‘What I meant, Bella, is that Juneteenth is the date last year that our dear Leona Gatto crossed over.’
‘Right. I was just thinking about that, too.’
Predictably, Odelia says, ‘I know you were. Seems that it was just yesterday, doesn’t it?’
‘Not for me. It feels like another lifetime. Not reincarnation,’ she adds quickly. ‘I just mean so much has changed since last June, I can’t think of anything that hasn’t changed.’
‘All for the better, Bella. All for the better.’
This time last year, Bella was a widow of six months, coping with her own grief and concerned about her son Max, a shy kindergartner who’d grown increasingly introverted after his father died. She’d just lost her middle school science teacher job to budget cuts, and her landlord sold the suburban New York City building she and Sam had moved into as newlyweds. Homeless, jobless, and penniless, she and Max were heading to a fresh start in Chicago with her mother-in-law when – thanks to a pregnant stray cat – they landed in Lily Dale instead.
‘She’s pleased with how things have turned out for you, Bella.’
‘Hmm?’
‘Leona,’ Odelia says. ‘She’s touching in from the other side to say she couldn’t have chosen a more capable person to take over in her absence.’
A year ago, Bella would have been confused by this. Now, she’s accustomed to the way her Lily Dale friends casually mention ghostly conversations as if they’ve just been chatting with a friend in the next room.
‘She’s saying you’ve done a bang-up job getting Valley View ready for the season,’ Odelia goes on.
The season …
Lily Dale revolves around a ten-week event calendar. Every day is packed with activities, from group readings to renowned speakers to workshops in everything from beginning mediumship to spoon bending. Visitors travel here from far and wide, all of them searching for something – contact with a lost loved one; psychic guidance about the future; physical, spiritual, or psychological healing.
Some are day-trippers, but many need a place to stay. Valley View is the largest guesthouse in the area. Tomorrow night, and nearly eve
Though he’s just two doors down Cottage Row at his friend Jiffy Arden’s house, she’d been reluctant to let him go. Jiffy’s mom, Misty, isn’t the most conscientious parent in the Dale.
Still, this is a safe small town – or so Bella keeps trying to convince herself. And her son is flourishing here. He’d recently turned seven and has only one more week as a first grader, growing up fast.
‘Leona is thanking you for taking such good care of her home and the cats,’ Odelia informs her. ‘And for uncovering the truth about the circumstances of her departure from the earthly plane.’
As opposed to her death, because in Lily Dale, there’s no such thing.
Initially, her departure had been deemed a tragic accident. Leona couldn’t swim, but kept a rowboat and kayaks for guests. On that stormy night, the authorities theorized that she might have gone out to make sure the boats were securely tied to the pilings, lost her footing, hit her head, and fallen into the water.
It could have happened that way. Only it hadn’t.
‘Leona’s saying that if you hadn’t come along, her killer would still be at large and she wouldn’t be at peace. She’s so grateful to you.’
‘Oh, well, tell her that it was my …’
Not pleasure. Solving a murder shortly after Bella’s arrival at Valley View had been far from pleasurable.
She runs through alternative words that are closer to reality, yet not quite accurate – duty, responsibility, obligation …
Before she can settle on one, Odelia lets out a little gasp and murmurs, ‘What do you mean?’
She isn’t talking to Bella.
After a moment, her round face crinkles as if she’s heard something she’d rather not have heard, and whatever it is involves Bella.
‘I see. I see. Yes. Yes, I’ll tell her. Thank you, Leona.’
Goosebumps rise on Bella’s bare arms and legs. ‘Tell me what?’
‘Leona has some concerns, Bella.’
‘Concerns about what?’
‘I think his name is … it sounds like Barry.’
‘Whose name is Barry?’
Odelia shushes her, eyes closed, head tilted as if she’s listening intently.
Bella hears only power tools buzzing at a neighboring property, where someone is removing the plywood that covered the windows throughout the rugged snow belt winter.
She leans back in her Adirondack chair and notices a fat crow watching her. It’s perched atop ‘Piano Rock’, an ancient flat-topped boulder shaped like an upright piano, and about the size of one.
Yesterday, Jiffy had produced ‘an antique pirate map’ he claimed to have found. Max believed him, though it was drawn in a child’s hand in black Sharpie on ruled notebook paper. An X depicted buried lakeside treasure between Piano Rock and an ancient Gingko tree. A gaping hole now yawns in the grass where Bella had allowed the boys to dig, keeping them busy while she weeded the flowerbeds.
‘Fill it in before someone steps in it and twists an ankle’ is currently at the top of Bella’s endless To Do list. But it, like most everything else, will have to wait until tomorrow.
With a loud caw, the crow flutters its wings and disappears into the Gingko’s arching limbs. Suddenly chilled in her tank top and cut-offs, Bella notes that the air temperature seems to have dropped several degrees. Daylight is fading fast, the sinking sun igniting hilltops on the opposite shore.
If Max were here right now, he’d be peppering her with questions. He’d want to know why daylight lasted well past his bedtime tonight as opposed to in winter, when dusk descends as he hops off the school bus. He’d want to know about tomorrow’s solstice and meteorological conditions and geographical coordinates.
Not Sam, though. Bella’s poetic husband would prefer to just sit appreciating the ‘sushi sky’, as he’d once memorably called a spectacular seaside sunrise. She’d never shared the phrase with anyone before a Lily Dale medium mentioned it just months ago, purportedly channeling Sam’s spirit.
Bella shivers at the memory.
‘Is someone walking on your grave, Bella?’
‘What?’ She turns to see Odelia’s eyes narrowed behind her red-and-orange speckled cat-eye glasses. The frames complement her dyed hair and freckled skin tone, but clash with her neon purple kimono and lipstick.
‘It’s just a phrase – it’s what you say when someone shivers for no reason, like you did just now.’
‘I have a reason. The breeze … it’s a little chilly, that’s all.’
‘What breeze? It’s stifling out here tonight.’
Bella shrugs. ‘I felt a chill.’
‘What you felt was Spirit.’
‘I doubt that,’ she says, though the lake water is barely rippling, the air is thick with warm weather insects, and Odelia’s ruddy face is moist and flushed with humidity. ‘But if it was Spirit … what did you say Leona was telling you about … was it Barry?’
‘That’s what it sounded like, although clairaudience isn’t high tech by any means. It’s—’
‘Like talking on the telephone with a staticky connection,’ Bella cuts in, heading off a lengthy and oft-repeated mediumship tutorial.
‘At times, yes. Or like hearing a voice underwater. Spirit communicates on a much higher frequency. Often, it can—’ Interrupted by an electronic vibration, she pauses and pulls her cell phone from her pocket, screen glowing with a text. ‘Speaking of communication, here’s Luther at last. I was beginning to think he’d forgotten me.’
‘I still think you should have gone to the festivities, Odelia.’
‘Not with the season starting tomorrow. We have much too much to do.’
‘No, I have much too much to do. You should have gone. I feel terrible that you missed it.’
‘Please don’t. I bought a ticket, so the charity got my donation, and if I wanted to go, I would have. Luther’s much too busy to pay me any mind. Anyway, the last thing I felt like doing tonight was eating rubbery chicken and listening to the guest of so-called honor pontificating at a podium.’
She’s referring to high profile medium David Slayton, host of the cable television program Dead Isn’t Dead and author of a bestselling memoir by the same title. He comes from a long line of mediums, and devoted an entire chapter in his book to his illustrious ancestors, including the famed abolitionist John Slayton.
That connection had earned David a prominent, if controversial, role in the Juneteenth festivities. Odelia, like many, felt that the honored guest should have been a person of color – say, Terry Truman, the incumbent congressman Slayton’s planning to run against this fall.
The committee was leaning in that direction before Slayton’s publicist pitched him as a local. He does own a house just outside Lily Dale, but everyone knows he divides his time between Hollywood and his Manhattan penthouse.
Still, the committee chose Slayton, counting on his celebrity to boost fundraiser attendance.
It’s been an ongoing cause of friction in Luther and Odelia’s fledgling romance, and Bella has been privy to many a contentious conversation about it.
‘The Underground Railroad transported thousands of slaves, including my own ancestors, to freedom,’ Luther pointed out to Odelia just yesterday. ‘John Slayton was a true American hero, and he was from this area. So is David Slayton.’
‘Oh, please. He’s not even coming to town until right before your event, and there’s nothing heroic about him,’ she retorted. ‘Or his son, for that matter.’
‘What does this have to do with his son?’
‘He’s a Slayton. They’re not to be trusted.’ Odelia types a quick reply to Luther’s text and pockets her phone. ‘Good. He’s on his way to the Dale. We have a date.’
‘At this hour?’
‘We’re going dancing. The night is young and so are we. At heart, anyway.’ Her flat western New York accent infuses the word ‘dancing’ with an extra syllable – dee-anc-ing – and lends a hearty pirate-like emphasis to the ‘ar’ in are and heart.
‘Wait, Odelia, before you go … What did Leona tell you? About Barry? That’s what you think you heard?’
‘Yes. Do you know anyone by that name?’
‘I don’t think so. Are you sure that was it?’
