by K. J. Emrick
His shrug was almost apologetic. “I don’t know what to tell you, Miranda. I don’t know the bloke. He’s tall and skinny. He’s wearing jeans and he’s got a really bad haircut. What do you want me to say?”
She grimaced at him, and his help, and then opened the door. The man stood there just as Kyle had described him. His checkered shirt hung off his shoulders but his smile was cheerful. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
She waited for him to say more, but instead he just leaned against the doorframe as his smile slipped away. He was sweating, and now she could see he was out of breath. “What’s the matter?”
He swallowed, shaking his head.
In Miranda’s mind, she had flashbacks of when Josh Bates had rushed up to the back door of Ragged Rest, murder hot on his heels.
Was it happening again?
“Sorry, sorry,” the man finally said to her. “I’m Leon Peniston. I was looking for you, Miss Wylder. I’m sorry, can I… can I possibly get a glass of water?”
Miranda could see that he needed it, for sure, and she was just about to let him in and get some water from the fridge, when she stopped. Without making it obvious she looked up at Kyle. She could see the same question written all over his ghostly face.
“How in the world,” he said, “did he know your name?”
Exactly what she was wondering. He’d called her Miss Wylder even though she hadn’t introduced herself. She looked him up and down, but she definitely did not know this man.
“How do you know who I am?” she decided to ask him, taking a good grip on the door in case she needed to slam it quick. “Look, my boyfriend is a police officer, and I expect him back any time now…”
She trailed off as Leon started sliding down. His knees buckled and he used the doorframe to keep from falling flat on his face. Even if he had arrived with some malicious intent, he was slowly succumbing to some illness, or something that was sapping his strength.
"Leon?" she said to him. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, he better not be contagious!” Kyle said frantically. “If he dies and gets you sick too then I’m going to make his afterlife a living Hell!”
Miranda ignored him. Leon was obviously in distress and needed help.
“I don’t know… what’s wrong,” he said, panting, “I just feel suddenly really ill. My heart is racing. My stomach is all twisted in knots. Please, please can I have some water?”
“Um. Sure. Yes, of course. I’ll just get it for you, but you wait right here, okay?”
With obvious effort, he nodded for her.
Glancing at Kyle, she flicked her eyes to Leon, passing on the silent message to watch the guy as she darted away to the kitchen to get the water. She took a bottle quickly from the fridge and then she was on her way back to the front door.
When she gave it to him he drank it down greedily, as if his life depended on it.
She waited until the last of it was gone. “Is that any better?”
He seemed to be breathing easier, at least, even if his color was still pale and gray. “Yes, it is. A little, I guess. Thank you, Miss Wylder.”
He handed her the empty bottle, and she tossed it aside on the floor to keep her hands free. “Why are you here Leon? What brings you to my door, and how do you know who I am?”
“I’m here…” He stopped to take another breath. “I’m here to confess something.”
Kyle blinked at the man, floating closer. “Say what now?”
“What do you mean?” Miranda pressed. “You want to confess what?”
“Something that’s getting to be more trouble than it’s worth,” he said. “You see… I was the one…”
Suddenly, his eyes widened and turned glassy. Sort of blank.
“Leon?” Miranda said, but an awful feeling was already creeping up on her.
This time, Leon couldn’t keep himself from falling. When he hit the ground, his eyes were still open. Miranda realized immediately that he was gone.
“For God’s sake, he’s dead!” Kyle blurted out.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Miranda felt for a pulse anyway, just in case. Then she was up on her feet and running back into the kitchen where her mobile was on the counter waiting for her. “I’m going to call for an ambulance.”
Her hands were shaking so much that she almost dropped the phone before it connected to the emergency dispatcher. She told them her name, and where she was, and then after requesting an ambulance she asked them to tell Detective Jack Travis to hurry back.
It might have been her imagination, but she thought she heard the dispatcher sigh when she said there was another death down at Ragged Rest.
Chapter 2
“They’re on their way,” Miranda said to Kyle as they stood over the body laying on her doorstep. She still had her mobile in her hand, wondering if there wasn’t maybe someone else she could call. Something else she could do. “Oh Kyle, I need to cover him up or something. I can’t just stand here looking at him.”
Kyle floated down close to the man, where he lay akimbo in the open doorway, and then shrugged. “He just looks dead. There’s no blood. No bruising. No horrible, raggedly torn flesh. As death’s go this one is pretty lame.”
“Kyle!”
“Sorry. I just mean, of all the dead people we’ve seen, this one’s maybe a two on a scale of ten, you know?”
“Usually,” she reminded him in a low grumble, “I don’t see the dead people. I just see their ghosts.”
“Well, sure, but you’ve seen plenty of the real thing, too.” He shrugged, righting himself again like a puppet on strings until he was standing with his feet dangling inches off the floor. “I just don’t see why it affects you so much. My death was a lot worse, if you remember.”
“I do, thank you.” She shivered and ran her hands up and down her arms. “If this was a novel, and I was the main character, death wouldn’t affect me at all. This isn’t a novel though. This is real life.”
Looking down at the dead Leon Peniston again, she sighed. Death would always affect her. Always.
“Tell you what,” Kyle offered. “How’s about I watch over him until the cops get here? You go inside, and sit down or whatever, and I’ll yell to you when they get here.”
Miranda thought about that, and she really wanted to take him up on the idea, but there was something else she thought she had to do first. “I’m going over to my neighbor’s,” she told Kyle. “I need to know if they saw anything. Maybe they saw who broke in earlier. Maybe they even know who this Leon Peniston is.”
“What? You mean Isabel and Deirdre? Those neighbors?”
“Yes, Kyle. Those neighbors.”
He actually rolled his eyes. “Why on Earth would Isabel or Deirdre know anything?”
"Because," Miranda said with a sigh. "Deidre is the biggest gossip I've ever known in my life. If anybody on this street saw anything or knows anything it will be her. And by association Isabel will probably know also. Just tell me if Leon's ghost shows up, okay?" Kyle ticked a list off on his fingers. “Tell you if a ghost shows up, watch for the ambulance, watch for Jack, make sure no one else breaks into the house. Right. Got it. All in a day’s work for your friendly neighborhood spirit guide.”
It was a short walk from Ragged Rest to the next home up the street. All of these homes hugged the top of the slope that led down to the gently rolling waves on the beach below, and in some cases stood proudly on top of cliffsides overlooking the water. When Miranda had first moved into her ancestral home, she’d thought of the place as isolated and lonely. It turned out that just a few hundred yards down from her driveway were the first of her neighbors, Isabel Mullins and Deirdre Sims.
Isabel was a nice old woman, elderly and kind, the sort of person you expected to be baking cookies all Sunday long for the grandkids. Deirdre, her niece, was a crotchety middle-aged busybody who enjoyed nothing more than spreading her perpetual bad mood around to everyone else. They were like night and day, and if not for the similarity
in their wide faces and the color of their eyes, no one would have ever guessed they were related.
The night had come on quick, but the moon was bright enough to light Miranda’s way as she walked across the lawn and through the sparse growth of trees to the house next door. Isabel was outside on the front steps. Miranda was glad it was her. Of the two, she much preferred talking to Isabel. In that, she and Kyle definitely agreed.
When Isabel saw her approaching, she quickly dropped a cigarette from her fingers to crush it out beneath the toe of her shoe. “You caught me,” she said with a light chuckle. “Nasty habit, I know, and I have to do it out here so that Deirdre doesn’t find out. That niece of mine keeps me from doing anything I enjoy… My goodness, Miranda, are you all right? You’re as white as a bedsheet.”
Miranda had hoped to ease into this conversation, but obviously the strain from the events of the evening—in fact, the whole weekend—must be showing on her face. “There’s a man on my doorstep, Isabel, and he’s dead. He just died right in front of me.”
“Oh, my dear girl, I’m so sorry, come here.” Isabel threw her skinny arms around Miranda and ushered her inside to sit at the small kitchen table. “Let me make us some tea. Oh, are the police on their way? Do you need to be at your house when they arrive?”
“No,” Miranda hedged. “I, um, I’ve got it covered. Someone is waiting there for them.”
“Good. Then you sit right there and let me take your mind off this terrible thing. I’ll set the kettle to boil and we’ll have a cup together. You just try to relax, and you tell me what happened.”
Isabel always made Miranda feel better. She was a kindly old lady, one with a big heart. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for one of her friends or neighbors. Old age had slowed her down and kept her from doing as much as she used to, but nothing could diminish the depth of love she felt for everyone.
Funny how long the story took, now that Miranda was telling it. Of course, she had to edit what she said to take out the parts about Kyle, and she had to give a brief background about what had happened to them over the weekend with the murder case at the Blue Jay Bed and Breakfast to give the story context. When she finally got to the part about what Leon Peniston had said, Isabel was sitting at the table, sipping at the tea she’d poured for both of them.
She finished by asking Isabel, “Did you know him? Leon Peniston. Is he someone from town, perhaps?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’ve certainly never heard of him. My goodness. He said he wanted to confess? Do you think he was about to apologize for something?”
“Yes, I do, but…” Miranda just couldn’t understand what the man might have been talking about. “I don’t even know him. I have no idea what he thought he had to confess to me.”
“I was the one,” Isabel quoted quietly to herself. “The one who what, I wonder?”
“Whatever it was,” Miranda said, “it was important enough for him to come and tell me, rather than go to a doctor when he was about to die.”
“Who died?” a new voice said. It was a man’s strong tenor, and it spooked Miranda enough that she jumped in her chair. Across from her, Isabel put a hand up over her mouth to hide a smile.
“Oh, I’m sorry dear, really I am. I suppose I should have told you we weren’t alone, considering the fright that you’ve already suffered tonight. Deirdre and I took in a boarder to help with the finances a bit.” With one hand, she gestured to the man standing in the kitchen doorway. “This is Mister James Jones. James, this is—”
“Miranda Wylder,” he said before Isabel could finish the introductions. “Oh, I know who you are. Big fan. Big, big fan.”
He stuck his hand out for her to shake, and Miranda took it, although she couldn’t help thinking to herself how annoying it was that everyone she met today seemed to already know who she was.
He was an odd-looking man, this James Jones, more so because of his clothes than anything else. The black plastic-rimmed glasses, the red cardigan sweater and pleated khaki pants, the two-toned dress shoes. It was like he was dressed for the nineteen-fifties, rather than this modern world.
“Uh, hi,” she said to him. The moment stretched between them.
Who was this man, this stranger who had just arrived in the neighborhood and seemed to know everything about her…
This man, the thought suddenly occurred to her, who had shown up just as her house had been broken into and ransacked.
Suddenly his smile seemed thin, and false, and she wondered if those hands with their slender fingers had gone through her paperwork and her bookshelves and—God forbid—her underwear drawer. Could this be the person who had intruded into her home?
Miranda swallowed, disguising the nervous gesture with a gulp of her tea, and then tried again. “Hi there. You seem to have me at a disadvantage. Do we know each other?”
“Don’t I wish,” he chuckled. “I’m an aspiring author. That’s right. I’m trying to break into the industry and, well, this is a little embarrassing, but you’ve always been one of my favorite influences. Your books are amazing. The details, the twists and turns, the emotion you pour into your characters. I’ve read each one to the end and half the time I can’t begin to guess the real killer until the last chapter.”
The suspicion she’d been feeling toward him faded some. Of course. She was a bestselling author, and it was only natural that some people would know her because of that. “You’re a writer?”
“Well actually, I’m an accountant. But I want to be a writer,” he insisted. “I actually took a twelve month break from my job to try writing my first novel, out here in the country. When I heard there was a room for rent on the same road where you live, Miss Wylder, well I just had to snap it up.”
“Um, thank you.” She didn’t know what else to say. The whole thing was beginning to be rather surreal. There was a dead man on her doorstep and an admirer not twenty paces away from her. “It’s always nice to meet a fan, James.”
“Jimmy,” he corrected her. “I prefer Jimmy. Isabel here insists on calling me James, but she just reminds me so much of my grandmother that it feels right when she does it.”
“Oh, you,” Isabel said with a smile in her eyes. “You’re just a flatterer. Now, Miranda, you should believe him when he says he wants to be a writer. I’ve read the pages he’s written so far. They’re quite good.”
So, Miranda thought to herself. Jimmy Jones really was a writer. Or at least, he was trying to be one. His story checked out if Isabel had actually read what the man had put to paper.
But, did that mean he couldn’t also be the person who broke into her house?
If she had a moment to think about it, she could have come up with the right questions to ask him. Questions that would tell her if he wasn’t as innocent and eccentric as he seemed…
Through the front wall of Isabel’s house came a hazy blue Kyle, waving to her frantically.
“Miranda! Miranda! Jack is coming up the street. He’s got two other patrol cars with him, too. Best get back. Hey, who’s the geek?”
He was pointing at Jimmy, and Miranda was glad no one else in the room could see him being so rude. As a ghost, little things like manners had fallen by the wayside for Kyle.
“I really should be heading back,” Miranda said to Isabel. She turned and smiled at Jimmy, and even extended her hand for him to shake. “It was nice to meet you. Perhaps you’d let me read what you have written for your book someday.”
“Really?” he said, and his voice actually squeaked. “Oh, that would be a dream come true, thank you. Wow. I still can’t believe I’m meeting the Miranda Wylder. What luck!”
Kyle floated closer to Jimmy, looking him up and down. “Bit of a suck up, isn’t he? What’s his story?”
Miranda motioned to him with her eyes, telling him that maybe they should leave if he expected her to be able to say anything at all to him.
She thanked Isabel again, with a quick hug, and then she hurried outside into the war
m night air. In the driveway, she found a car waiting for them. She was immediately on her guard. The headlights nearly blinded her, but as her eyes adjusted she realized she didn’t need to see through the windshield to know who this was. She’d seen that car any number of times, and even a blind person would recognize the shrill voice of Deirdre Sims.
Isabel’s niece, Deirdre, was the exact polar opposite of her aunt. Where Isabel was kind and patient, Deirdre was abrasive and inconsiderate. She was also hampered by an unfortunate face that was best described as flat with deep lines that were etched around her mouth from years of smoking. Obviously, that bad habit ran in the family.
Apparently mistaking Miranda’s momentary hesitation as a willingness to stand and talk, Deirdre levered herself out of the car. She was a heavy woman, to put it delicately, and she didn’t carry it well.
“Oh,” Kyle said, “and by the way, Deirdre’s almost here.”
“Thanks a lot,” Miranda muttered to him under her breath. Out loud, she said, “Hi, Deirdre. Sorry I can’t stay, I have to get back to my house. The police are meeting me there because there’s—”
“Let me guess,” she interrupted. “There’s a dead body, right? Miranda Wylder, you are a curse on this town. You bring all this trouble here. We all lived quiet lives before you came.”
“That’s not quite fair, don’t you think?”
“Well, it’s true,” she said, hands on her hips. “So who was it who died this time?”
“I don’t know him,” she answered honestly, “and I don’t know why he died. But the police are arriving and I don’t have time for one of your snarky tongue-lashings.” Miranda’s words made Deidre visibly recoil.
“That’s right!” Kyle said with a wild slash of the air with one hand. “We’ve got no time for this. We have important spirit guide and amateur detective work to do.”
“Deirdre,” Miranda said in a conciliatory tone, “I’m not sure what happened to the man that led to his death, but I will do this. As soon as I know anything I’ll be sure to pass it on to you. Does that make you feel any better?”